Tantra is a basically different approach. Tantra says that unless you can enjoy yourself you cannot help anyone to enjoy. Unless you are really contented with yourself, you cannot serve others; you cannot help others toward their contentment. Unless you are overflowing with your own bliss you are a danger to society, because a person who sacrifices always becomes a sadist. If your mother goes on talking to you and says that “I have sacrificed myself for you,” she will torture you. If the husband goes on saying to the wife that “I am sacrificing,” he will be a sadistic torturer. He will torture because sacrifice is just a trick to torture the other.
So those who are always sacrificing are very dangerous – potentially dangerous. Be aware of them, and do not sacrifice. The very word is ugly. Enjoy yourself; be bliss-filled. And when you are overflowing with your own bliss, that bliss will reach to others also. But that is not a sacrifice. No one is obliged to you; no one needs to thank you. Rather, you will feel grateful to others because they have been participating in your bliss. Words like ′sacrifice′, ′duty′, ′service′ are ugly; they are violent. Tantra says that unless you are filled with light, how can you help others to be enlightened?
Be selfish, only then can you be altruistic. Otherwise the whole concept of altruism is nonsense. Be happy; only then can you help others to be happy. If you are sad, unhappy, bitter, you are going to be violent with others and you will create misery for others.
You may become a Mahatma, a so-called great saint; that is not very difficult. But look at your Mahatmas. They are trying in every way to torture everyone who comes to them, but their torturing is very deceptive. They torture you for your own sake; they torture you for your own good. And because they are torturing themselves you cannot say to them, “you are preaching something to us which you are not practicing.” They are already practicing it. They are torturing themselves; now they can torture you. And when a torture is for your own good, that is the most dangerous torture: you cannot escape it.
And what is wrong with enjoying yourself? What is wrong in being happy? If there is anything wrong it is always in your unhappiness, because an unhappy person creates ripples of unhappiness all around him. Be happy! And the sex act, the act of love, can be one of the deepest means through which bliss can be attained.
Tantra is not teaching sexuality. It is simply saying that sex can be a source of bliss. And once you know that bliss, you can go further because now you are grounded in reality. One is not to remain with sex forever, but you can use sex as a jumping point. That is what tantra means: you can use sex as a jumping point. And once you have known the ecstasy of sex, you can understand what mystics have been talking about – a greater orgasm, a cosmic orgasm.
Meera is dancing. You cannot understand her; you cannot even understand her songs. They are sexual; their symbology is sexual. This is bound to be because in human life the sex act is the only act in which you come to feel a non-duality, in which you come to feel a deep oneness, in which the past disappears and the future disappears and only the present moment – the only real moment – remains. So all those mystics who have really known oneness with the divine, oneness with existence itself, they have always used sexual terms and symbols for their experience to express it. There is no other symbology; there is no other symbology which comes near to it.
Sex is just the beginning, not the end. But if you miss the beginning, you will miss the end also, and you cannot escape the beginning to reach the end.
Tantra says take life naturally; do not be unreal. Sex is there as a deep possibility, a great potentiality. Use it! And what is wrong in being happy in it? Really, all moralities are against happiness. Someone is happy, and you feel something has gone wrong. When someone is sad, everything is okay. We live in a neurotic society where everyone is sad. When you are sad, everyone is happy because everyone can sympathize with you. When you are happy, everyone is at a loss. What to do with you? When someone sympathizes with you, look at his face. The face gleams; a subtle shining comes to the face. He is happy sympathizing. If you are happy, then there is no possibility for this. Your happiness creates sadness in others; your unhappiness creates happiness. This is neurosis! The very foundation seems to be mad.
Tantra says be real, be authentic to yourself. Your happiness is not bad; it is good. It is not sin! Only sadness is sin, only to be miserable is sin. To be happy is virtue because a happy person will not create unhappiness for others. Only a happy person can be a ground for others′ happiness.
Secondly, when I say that tantra is neither moral nor immoral I mean that tantra is basically a science. It looks at you, at what you are. It means that tantra is not trying to transform you, but it actually does transform you through reality. The difference between magic and science is the same as between morality and tantra. Magic also tries to transform things simply through words, without knowing the reality. The magician can say that now the rains will stop; he cannot really stop them. Or he can say that rains will come – but he cannot start them, he can just go on using words. Sometimes coincidences will be there, and then he will feel powerful. And if the thing is not going to happen according to his magic prophecy he can always say, “What has gone wrong?” That possibility is always hidden in his profession. With magic everything starts with “if.” He can say, “If everyone is good, virtuous, then the rains will come on a particular day.” If the rains come it is okay; if the rains are not coming then “everyone is not virtuous, there is someone who is a sinner”.
Even in this century, the twentieth century, a person like Mahatma Gandhi could say, when there was famine in Bihar, “It is because of the sin of the people living in Bihar that the famine has come” – as if the whole world is not sinning, only Bihar! Magic starts with “if,” and that “if” is great and big.
Science never starts with “if” because science first tries to know what is real – what reality is, what the real is. Once the real is known it can be transformed. Once you know what electricity is, it can be changed, transformed, used. A magician does not know what electricity is. Without knowing electricity, he is going to transform, he is thinking to transform! Those kind of prophecies are just false – illusions.
Morality is just like magic. It goes on talking about the perfect man, and without knowing what man is – the real man. The perfect man remains as a dream. It is used just to condemn the real man. Man never reaches it.
Tantra is science. Tantra says first know what the reality is, what man is, and don′t create values and don′t create ideals right now: first know what is. Do not think of the “ought”; just think of the “is.” And once the “is” is known, then you change it. Then you have the secret.
For example, tantra says do not try to go against sex, because if you go against sex and try to create a state of Brahmacharya – celibacy, purity, it is impossible. It is just magical. Without knowing what sex energy is, without knowing of what sex is constituted, without going deep into the reality of it, the secrets of it, you can create an ideal of Brahmacharya. Then what will you do? You will simply suppress. And a person who is suppressing sex is more sexual than a person who is indulging in it because through indulgence the energy is released. Through suppression it is there, moving in your system continuously.
A person who suppresses sex starts seeing sex everywhere. Everything becomes sexual. Not that everything is sexual, but now he projects. Now he projects! His own hidden energy is now projected. Everywhere he will look he will see sex, and because he is condemning himself he will start condemning everyone.
You cannot find a moralist who is not violently condemning. He is condemning everyone; to him everyone is wrong. Then he feels good, his ego is fulfilled. Why is everyone wrong? Because he sees everywhere the same thing he is suppressing. His own mind will become more and more sexual, and more and more he will be afraid. This Brahmacharya is perversion, it is unnatural. A different quality, a different type of Brahmacharya, happens to the follower of tantra, but the very process is totally, diametrically opposite. Tantra first teaches how to move in sex, how to know it, how to feel it, how to come to the deepest possibility hidden in it, to the climax, how to find the essential beauty, the essential happiness and bliss that is hidden there.
Three Elements
Once you know that secret you can transcend it because, really, in a deep sexual orgasm it is not sex which gives you bliss, it is something else. Sex is just a situation. Something else is giving you the euphoria, the ecstasy. That something else can be divided into three elements. But when I speak about those elements, do not think that you can understand them just from my words. They must become part of your experience. As concepts they are useless. Because of three basic elements in sex you come to a blissful moment.
Those three are, firstly, timelessness: you transcend time completely. There is no time. You forget time completely; time ceases for you. Not that time ceases, it ceases for you; you are not in it. There is no past, no future. In this very moment, here and now, the whole existence is concentrated. This moment becomes the only real moment. If you can make this moment the only real moment without sex, then there is no need of sex. Through meditation it happens.
Secondly, in sex for the first time you lose your ego, you become egoless. So all those who are very much egoistic, they are all always against sex, because in sex they have to lose their egos. You are not, nor is there the other. You and your beloved are both lost into something else. A new reality evolves, a new unit comes into existence in which the old two are lost – completely lost. The ego is afraid. You are no more there. If without sex you can come to a moment when you are not, then there is no need of it.
And thirdly, in sex you are natural for the first time. The unreal is lost, the faces, the facades are lost; the society, the culture, the civilization, is lost. You are a part of nature. As trees are, as animals are, as stars are, you are a part of nature. You are in a greater something – the cosmos, the Tao. You are floating in it. You cannot even swim in it; you are not. You are just floating – being taken by the current.
These three things give you the ecstasy. Sex is just a situation in which it happens naturally. Once you know and once you can feel these elements, you can create these elements independently of sex. All meditation is essentially the experience of sex without sex, but you have to go through it. It must become part of your experience, not just be there as concepts, ideas, thoughts.
Tantra is not for sex, tantra is to transcend. But you can transcend only through experience – existential experience – not through ideology. Only through tantra does Brahmacharya happen. This looks paradoxical, but it is not. Only through knowledge does transcendence happen. Ignorance cannot help you towards transcendence; it can only help you towards hypocrisy.
Author: OSHO
Exploration of the Sacred & Conscious; including Sexuality 