---
section: Library
booktitle: "The Tantra Vision, Vol 2"
booktype: "Discourses"
bookcode: "TVIS2"
dategiven: "04 May 1977 am"
place: " in Buddha Hall"
chapternum: "Chapter #4"
chaptertitle: "Trust cannot be betrayed"
acode: "7705040"
shorttitle: "TVIS204"
audio: "Yes"
video: "No"
esttime: "104mins"
displaytitle: "The Tantra Vision, Vol 2: Chapter #4"
---

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<p class="question">WHY AM I ALWAYS INTERESTED IN MARRIED WOMEN?</p>


There is nothing special about it, it is a very common disease which exists in almost epidemic proportions. But there are reasons to it.


Millions of people, both men and women, are more interested in the married person. First, the unmarried person shows that nobody has yet desired him or her; the married person shows that somebody has desired him. And you are so imitative that you cannot even love on your own. You are such a slave that when somebody else is loving somebody, only then can you follow. But if the person is alone and nobody is in love with them, then you are suspicious. Maybe the person is not of worth, otherwise why should he or she wait for you?


The married person has great attraction for the imitator.


Secondly, people love less -- people, in fact, don't know what love is -- they compete more. The married man... and you become interested. Or the married woman... and you become interested -- because now there is a possibility to compete. The triangular fight is possible. The woman is not easily available. There is going to be struggle.


In fact, you are not interested in the woman, you are interested in the struggle. Now the woman is almost a commodity. You can fight for her and you can prove your mettle. You can displace the husband, and you will feel very good -- an ego trip; it is not a love trip. But remember, once you succeed in disposing of the husband, you will not be interested in the woman any more. You want to prove yourself against the man. 'Look, I have taken interest in the unmarried woman now? Again you will start looking for some fight somewhere: you will always make it a triangle. This is not love.


In the name of love there is jealousy, there is competition, there is aggression, there is violence. You want to prove yourself. You want to prove yourself against the man: 'Look, I have taken away your woman.' Once you have taken away the woman, you will not be interested in the woman at all, because she was not the desired thing; the desired thing was a sort of victory.

I have heard...


A certain prominent businessman lost his wife, and the funeral became a public occasion. All the dignitaries of the town attended. and almost all were known to the bereaved. There was, however, a stranger, and he seemed more upset than anyone. Before the funeral was over, he broke down completely.


The widower-husband asked 'Who was this weeping stranger?'


'Ah' whispered someone 'didn't you know? He was your late wife's lover.'


The bereaved moved across to the sobbing man, patted him on the back, and said 'Cheer up, old boy, cheer up. I shall probably marry again.'


Beware. To fall in love with a married woman or a married man is a disease. Look for reasons. It is not love. There is something else working behind your mind, in your unconscious.


Another thing: the married woman is not easily available. That too creates desire. Easy availability kills desire. The more unapproachable, the more inaccessible the woman is, the more the desire; you can dream about her. And, in fact, there is not much possibility that it will ever become an actuality. There is every opportunity to be romantic about a married woman: you can play with your fantasy. It is not easy to make her available to you. You are not interested in unmarried women because they will not leave much chance for romance. If you are interested, they are ready. There is no space left. There is not that long, long waiting.


Many people are interested not in love but in waiting; they say that waiting is far more beautiful than love. In a way it is so, because while you are waiting you are simply projecting, you are dreaming. Of course, your dream is your dream and you can make it as beautiful as you want.


The real woman is going to shatter all your dreams. People are afraid of the real woman. And a married woman becomes more unreal than real.


The same is the case with a married man: he is far away. There is not much possibility that he will really enter into a love-relationship with you.

I have heard...


A young man went to a very wise old man, and the young man said 'I am lovesick, sir. Can you help me?'


The wise man thought, and he said 'There is only one cure for love, and that is marriage. And if marriage cannot cure it, nothing can cure it! If you get married, you will be cured. Never again will you think about love!'


Yes, marriage cures it so certainly, so absolutely, that if marriage cannot cure love, then nothing can cure it. Then you are incurable. It is good to fall in love with a married woman because then there is no possibility of cure; you remain lovesick.


There are people who enjoy their lovesickness tremendously: weeping. crying, waiting, fantasizing, poeticising, reading, writing poetry, painting, making music -- all substitutes. The real woman is dangerous. The real woman only looks musical from far away. Come close, and she is a REAL woman. She is not a fairy, not a fiction. Her reality will have to be reckoned with. And when a woman comes close to you, not only is she real, but she brings you down from your ivory towers to the earth.


In all the cultures of the world, woman is represented as the earth and man as the sky. The woman is very earth-bound; she gravitates towards the earth. She is more earthly than man, more practical, more pragmatic than man. That's why you don't find great women poets, you don't find great women painters, or great women composers, no. They don't fly in the sky so much. They grip the earth, they penetrate the earth with their roots and stand there like strong trees.


Man is more like a bird. When man becomes married, the woman brings him also to the earth. to the practical world. Poets don't like to be married. They always want to remain in love, they don't want to cure that sickness.


People fall in love with a married woman -- this is a halfway house, it is a trick. They can believe that they are in love and they can avoid it also.


Love creates great fear because love is a challenge, a great challenge. You will have to grow. You cannot remain juvenile and immature. You will have to grapple with the realities of life. Your so-called great poets are almost always very childish immature people still living in the fairyland of childhood. They don't know what reality is; they don't allow the reality to penetrate into their dreams.


A woman is a sure destroyer of fictions. She is not fictitious, she is a fact, a truth. So if you want to believe that you are in love and you still want to avoid love, it is good, safe, to fall in love with a married woman or a married man. This is very tricky, this is a deception, a self-deception.


Women are also afraid to fall in love with a free man, because with the free man or free woman there is involvement -- a twenty-four hour involvement. With a married woman the involvement is not that big. You can have a few stolen kisses, you can meet her somewhere in a dark corner -- always afraid that the husband may be coming, somebody may see. It is always half-hearted, it is always in a hurry, and you don't come to know the woman as she is in her twenty-four hour life. You come to know only her painted face, you come to know only her performance, not her truth.


When a woman comes out of her house ready to go shopping, she is not the same woman. She is almost a different person. Now she is a managed woman, now she is a performer. Women are great actresses. In the house they don't look so beautiful. Out of the house they suddenly become tremendously beautiful, joyful, cheerful. delighted. They again become small, giggling girls in love with life. Their faces are different, radiant. Their eyes are different; their make-up, their performance.


Seeing a woman on the beach, or in the shopping centre, you are seeing a totally different kind of reality. To live with a woman twenty-four hours a day is very mundane -- it has to be. But if you really love a woman, you would like to know her reality not her fiction, because love can exist only with reality. And love is capable enough of knowing the reality and yet being able to love her, of knowing all the defects and yet being able to love her. Love is a tremendous strength.


When you are with a person twenty-four hours a day man or woman -- you come to know all the defects: all that is good, and all that is bad too; all that is beautiful, and all that is ugly too; all that is like light-rays, and all that is like dark night. You come to know the whole person. Love is strong enough to love the other, knowing all the defects, limitations, frailties that a human being is prone to.


But this fictitious love is not strong enough. It can only love a woman on the movie screen. It can only love a woman in a novel. It can only love a woman in poetry. It can only love the woman as a faraway, distant star. It can only love a woman who is not real.


Love is a totally different dimension. It is falling in love with reality. Yes, reality has defects, but those defects are challenges to growth. Each defect is a challenge to transcend it. And when two persons are really in love, they help each other to grow. They look into each other; they become mirrors to each other: they reflect each other. They help each other; they hold each other. In good times, in bad times, in moments of happiness, in moments of sadness they are together, they are involved -- that's what involvement is all about.


If I am only with you when you are happy and I am not with you when you are unhappy this is not involvement, this is exploitation. If I am only with you when you are flowing, and I am not with you when you are not flowing -- then I am not with you at all. Then I don't love you, I love only myself and I love only my pleasure. 'When you are pleasurable, good; when you become painful I will throw you away.' This is not love, this is not involvement, this is not commitment. This is not respect for the other person.


It is easy to love somebody else's wife because he has to suffer the reality and you enjoy the fiction. It is a very good division of labour. But this is inhuman. Human love is a great encounter. And love is only if growth happens out of it, otherwise what type of love is it?


Lovers are enhanced by each other -- in every way. Lovers reach to higher peaks of happiness when they are together, and they also reach to the deeper depths of sadness when they are together. Their range of happiness and sadness becomes vast -- that's what love is. Alone, if you cry and weep, your tears don't have much depth. Have you watched it? Alone, they are shallow. When you weep together with somebody then there is a depth, a new dimension to your tears. Alone you can laugh, but your laughter will be shallow. In fact it will be something insane -- only mad people laugh alone. When you laugh with somebody there is a depth in it, there is sanity in it. Alone, you can laugh, but the laughter will not go very deep, cannot go. Together, it goes to the very core of your being.


Two persons together, together in all the climates -- day and night, summer and winter -- in all the moods, grow. The tree needs all the climates and all the seasons. Yes, it needs the burning-hot summer and it needs the ice-cold winter. It needs the daylight, the sun showering on it, and it needs the silence of night so it can close into itself and go into deep sleep. It needs silent, cheerful, joyful days; it needs gloomy, cloudy days too. It grows through all these dialectics.


Love is a dialectic. Alone, you cannot grow. Remember always that if you are in love then don't avoid commitment, don't avoid involvement. Then go totally into it. Then don't just stand on the periphery ready to escape if things get too troublesome.


And love is a sacrifice too. You have to sacrifice much... your ego. You have to sacrifice your ambition, you have to sacrifice your privacy, you have to sacrifice your secrets; you have to sacrifice many things. So just to be in a romantic love needs no sacrifice. But when there is no sacrifice there is no growth.


Love changes you almost utterly: it is a new birth. You are never the same person again as you were before you loved a woman or a man. You have passed through fire, you are purified. But courage is needed.


You ask: WHY AM I ALWAYS INTERESTED IN MARRIED WOMEN?


Because you are not courageous. You want to avoid the involvement. You want it cheaply, you don't want to pay the price for it.
<p class="question">MERCIFUL MASTER, IT IS NOT MAKING LOVE ANY MORE... I FEEL I AM IN A TEMPLE WITH YOU ALL OVER. AT THIS MOMENT I'M AWARE -- WHICH I NEVER WAS BEFORE I MET YOU. EVERYTHING IS DIFFERENT EVERY TIME -- FOR ME AND THE OTHER HALF. THANKING YOU IS NEVER ADEQUATE AT THAT MOMENT. AND YET WE SLIP BACK. HOW CAN WE TAKE OFF? HOW CAN I TAKE THE HELP OF THE WOMAN OUTSIDE TO BE UNITED WITH THE WOMAN INSIDE ME?</p>


The question is from Anand Kul Bhushan.
The first thing: never think of the woman as 'the other half' -- she is not, neither are you. You are whole, she is whole. She is an individual and you are an individual. You are complete and she is complete.


That old attitude that the woman is the other half has proved a great disaster. The moment you start possessing -- it is a sort of possession -- the moment you start destroying the individuality of the other, you are destroying something of great value. It is uncreative. Never think about the woman as the other half -- she is not!


Two lovers are like two pillars in a temple. That's how Kahlil Gibran says it. They support the same roof, but they are aloof; they are not together. If the two pillars of the temple came very close, the temple would fall down: the roof would not be supported at all. Look at these pillars in the Chuang Tzu Auditorium; they stand aloof -- they support the same roof. So should lovers be -- aloof, individual, and yet supporting something in common.


The wife is not half of the husband, neither is the husband half of the wife. Neither the husband is surrendered to the wife, nor is the wife surrendered to the husband; they are both surrendered to the love god. Remember it -- it has proved really paralysing otherwise. Certainly man has not suffered much, because it is man's idea about woman that she is 'the other half'. He does not think that he himself is also the other half, no. It is man's idea that the woman is the other half. Man remains whole; the woman becomes the other half.


That's why after marriage the woman has to take the husband's name, not the husband. She disappears, she is destroyed. She is no longer a woman, she is a wife. The wife is an institution. The man still remains the man he was before. Something is added to the man, but something has been taken away from the woman  -- this is ugly.


The other day I was reading the beautiful poem of a woman:
Tell me not about your love (She says to her lover)...Tell me not about your love
I know it well
I've felt it in your glance
felt it from the lash of the whip
and worse
from out your tongue
Tell me not of your love
It is so fluid
It has drowned me
and mine
in its burning intensity
I have but few places left unscarred
The heat of your love has all but consumed my brain
The security of your love has rendered me
fatherless
The gift of your love branded me bastard
The testimony of your love has imprisoned me
Your song of love has made me voiceless
I shall sing no more
I am no more
You have loved me into oblivion

Let me repeat: You have loved me into oblivion...


Then love has not proved much of love. It is a subtle way of domination. And when there is domination, love disappears. When there is possession, love disappears.


Please don't possess a woman and don't possess a man Possession, possessiveness is not love. Remember, the woman has to remain INTACT as an individual. Her freedom has not to be destroyed; her freedom has to be respected -- whatsoever it means. This is the Tantra vision: whatsoever it means -- unconditionally -- her freedom has to remain intact. If you really love her you will love her freedom too, and she will love your freedom.


If you love a person, how can you destroy his or her freedom? If you trust a person, you trust her or his freedom too.


One day it happened that a man came to me who was really in a mess, very miserable. And he said 'I will commit suicide.'
I said 'Why?'


He said 'I trusted my wife and she has betrayed me. I had trusted her absolutely and she has been in love with some other man. And I never came to know about it until just now! I have got hold of a few letters. So then I inquired, and then I insisted, and now she has confessed that she has been in love all the time. I will commit suicide' he said.
I said 'You say you trusted her?'
He said 'Yes, I trusted her and she betrayed me.'


What do you mean by trust? -- some wrong notion about trust; trust also seems to be political.


'You trusted her so that she would not betray you. Your trust was a trick. Now you want to make her feel guilty. This is not trust.'


He was very puzzled. He said 'What do you mean by trust then, if this is not trust? I trusted her unconditionally.'


I said 'If I were in your place, trust would mean to me that I trust her freedom, and I trust her intelligence, and I trust her loving capacity. If she falls in love with somebody else, I trust that too. She is intelligent, she can choose. She is free, she can love. I trust her understanding.'


What do you mean by trust? When you trust her intelligence, her understanding, her awareness, you trust it. And if she finds that she would like to move into love with somebody else, it is perfectly okay. Even if you feel pain, that is your problem; it is not her problem. And if you feel pain, that is not because of love, that is because of jealousy.


What kind of trust is this, that you say it has been betrayed? My understanding of trust is that it cannot be betrayed. By its very nature, by its very definition, trust cannot be betrayed. It is impossible to betray trust. If trust can be betrayed, then it is not trust. Think over it.


If I love a woman, I trust her intelligence infinitely. And, if in some moments she wants to be loving to somebody else, it is perfectly good. I have always trusted her intelligence. She must be feeling like that. She is free. She is not my other half, she is independent. And when two persons are independent individuals, only then there is love. Love can flow only between two freedoms.


I understand Kul Bhushan's question. He has used this word other half' unconsciously. I have seen his love for his wife, I have seen his wife's love for him. They are not each other's halves, not at all; it is just an unconscious habit of using a word. But I wanted to make it clear.


The second thing: IT IS NOT MAKING LOVE ANY MORE... When love grows deep it becomes something else. When love does not grow it becomes something else. Love is a very delicate thing. If it does not grow, it becomes bitter, it becomes poisoned; it becomes hatred. It can even fall below hatred -- it can become indifference, which is the farthest from love.


Love is a hot energy. So is hate, hot. But indifference is cold, frozen. You can think about love and hate and indifference on this scale. Exactly between hate and love there is a zero point  -- just like in a thermometer there is a zero point -- below it is coldness, above it is warmth. Love is warmth. That zero point is hatred, below it you become even more cold, more cold: you can become ice-cold -- indifferent. If love does not grow, it starts falling dowanwards. It has to move: love is energy; energy moves.


If it moves, soon you will find it is no longer love. It has become meditation, it has become prayer. That's the whole approach of Tantra: that if love grows rightly, if love is tended carefully, it becomes prayer. It becomes, finally, the ultimate experience of God.


Love is the temple of God. So people who live in indifference cannot know God. Indifference is the real atheism. People who live in a cold sort of way... Even the courts understand this: if somebody has been murdered in a hot way, the courts don't take it too seriously. If somebody has been murdered out of passion, then the courts take a lenient view of it. Then the murderer has not to be punished too severely -- it was just an act of passion; out of sudden rage it happened.


But the courts are very hard when there is a murder of cold calculation. The cold murderer is the most dangerous man. He prepares everything in detail. He thinks, broods, contemplates about it: he calculates. He moves in a very, very mechanical and efficient way; very skillfully he goes about his job. He has no heart, he is just cold.


The cold heart is the dead heart. The cold heart is the dead, dried; fossil heart. If love does not go higher, it will go lower. Remember, it cannot remain static -- that is the point to be understood. Love cannot remain in a stasic -- either it falls down or it goes up, but it goes. So if you really want to live a life of warmth, help love to grow.


Two persons fall in love; if their love does not immediately start becoming friendship, sooner or later there is going to be a divorce. Friendship should grow out of love, otherwise enmity will grow -- something is bound to happen. Love is an opening. Immediately start growing in friendship, otherwise enmity will grow -- something is bound to grow.


Love is fertile. If you are not sowing the seeds of beautiful flowers, then weeds will grow -- but something is bound to grow. When love really moves deeper, it becomes prayer. Then the whole quality is non-sexual. Then the quality is non-sensuous. Then you have a certain feeling of reverence for the other -- not sexual lust at all, but some awe. In the very presence of the other you start feeling something divine, something sacred. Your beloved becomes your goddess or your god.


... IT IS NOT MAKING LOVE ANY MORE... IF EEL I AM IN A TEMPLE WITH YOU ALL OVER. That's right, you are blessed. AT THIS MOMENT I AM AWARE -- WHICH I NEVER WAS BEFORE I MET YOU. The more love becomes prayer, the more awareness will happen -- just like a shadow.


This is my insistence: that if awareness happens, then in its shadow comes love; as the shadow comes love. If love happens, then as the shadow comes awareness. Either you grow in love or you grow in meditation, but the ultimate result is the same. Both come together: you try one and the other comes. It depends on you. If you feel more in tune with love, then love is your path -- the path of the devotee, BHAKTA. If you feel more in tune with awareness, then the path of meditation, DHYANA. These are the only basic paths, all other paths are combinations of these two. If love grows, you will become more and more aware at every moment of it. The higher it will go, the higher will become your insight into things.


THANKING YOU IS NEVER ADEQUATE AT THAT MOMENT. It cannot be, and there is no need. In fact, many times when we say thank you, we don't mean it. Somebody passes salt at the table and you say thank you, do you mean it? You don't mean it, it is just formality. Between a Master and a disciple there is no formality, there is no need. I am not passing salt to you.


'Thank you' is a Western mannerism. In the East it is almost impossible. I have never thanked my father -- I cannot. How can I thank my father? I have not thanked my mother. I have everything to thank her for, but I have not thanked her. How can I? It would be too inadequate, it would be too embarrassing, even to say thank you. It would be too formal, it would lack love. It is better to keep silent about it. She understands.


Between a Master and a disciple there is no formality possible; all formality will be always inadequate. But there is no need. I understand, Kul Bhushan. I can see your heart, full of gratitude. Only in silence can it be said. It can be said without saying it. If you try to say it, it will never look right.
<p class="question">THANKING YOU IS NEVER ADEQUATE AT THAT MOMENT. AND YET WE SLIP BACK. HOW CAN WE TAKE OFF? HOW CAN I TAKE THE HELP OF THE WOMAN OUTSIDE TO BE UNITED WITH THE WOMAN INSIDE?</p>


Slipping back is natural. The past is so big and the present moment is so small. The pull of the past is so great, and this awareness is just like a new leaf coming out of the tree -- fresh, young, delicate, vulnerable. And the past is like a great Himalaya -- rocks and rocks and rocks. This small leaf and this great Himalaya of rocks... This leaf had to fight this Himalaya of a past of thousands of lives lived mechanically, lived unconsciously. But still this small leaf will prove stronger than the whole Himalaya of rocks and rocks and rocks. Why? Because this leaf is alive... alive with love, aflame with love. This leaf is the leaf of awareness. It is going to win.


But many times you will feel that you have slipped -- that's natural. Don't be worried about it, don't feel guilty about it. Whenever you remember, again start growing. Always keep the new leaf in your consciousness. Pour your whole consciousness into this new insight that is growing in you. In the beginning, these moments are bound to be far and few between. But even if, once in a while, this moment comes when love is no more and has become prayer, you are in a Tantra moment. Don't be worried about the dark nights: there is no need to worry. Move from day to day. Remember the day to day.


Nights will be there -- sometimes very long nights -- think about those nights just as tunnels of darkness. At one end is light, at the other end is light; between is the tunnel of darkness. And that too is good, because it prepares your eyes to see the light more clearly. It gives rest, it relaxes. Don't think in terms of one night to another night and the day just in-between, no. Even those moments are very few and far between -- and very small moments -- but they are precious jewels... shining. Just think of those moments. One moment happened today, and one moment may happen after one year. Don't be worried about the one year -- that is irrelevant. From this moment to that moment let your eyes be focused: this whole year is just a tunnel from one day to another day, from one light to another light, from one love moment to another love moment, from one awareness to another awareness. Soon the slipping will be less, and soon the slipping will disappear. But there is no need to feel guilty, no need to feel repentant about it. It is natural, accept it.
<p class="question">HOW CAN I TAKE THE HELP OF THE WOMAN OUTSIDE TO BE UNITED WITH THE WOMAN INSIDE?</p>


Don't think of the 'how'. If love is there, it is going to happen. And love is not a 'how', love is not know-how. Just love for no reason at all. Just love with reverence, with awe. Just love: seeing in the other not the body but the soul, seeing in the other not the mind but the no-mind. If you can see the no-mind in your woman, you will be able to find your inner woman very easily. Then the outside woman is just a medium: through the outer woman, via the outer woman, you will be thrown back to your inner woman.


But if the other woman outside is just a body, then you are blocked. If the other woman is just a soul, an emptiness, just a zero, just a passage -- then there is nothing to block you; your energy will move back and will enter and will find your own inner woman.


Each woman and man can be helpful from the outside to find the inner woman and the inner man. But there is no 'how' to it. Reverence is needed. Think in terms, meditate in terms of the other's divinity. The other is divine. Let that attitude prevail. Let that climate surround you. And it is going to happen, it is already on the way.
<p class="question">WHY ARE PEOPLE MISSING YOU? SINCE I TOOK SANNYAS I CAN SEE THEIR STUPIDITY VERY CLEARLY. WHY CAN'T THEY SEE IT?</p>


Don't be too hard on people. And it is none of your business. If they don't want to see it, that is their decision and their freedom. Don't even call it stupidity, because if you call it stupidity, a subtle ego will arise in you: that you can see and they cannot see, that you are intelligent and they are stupid. No, this is not good.

It happened once...


Mohammed went to the mosque to say his morning prayer, and he took a young man with him who had never gone to the mosque before. While coming back -- it was a summer morning and people were still asleep -- while coming back, the young man said to Mohammed 'Hazrat, look at these sinners still asleep. Is this a time to sleep? This is time to pray!' And this was the first time that he himself had gone to pray.


Do you know what Mohammed said? Looking at the sky, he said 'Sorry.'
The young man said 'To whom are you saying this?'


He said 'To God. And I will have to go back to the mosque. And please don't come this time. It was good that you had not gone to the mosque before; I have done something wrong by taking you. It was good that you were also asleep -- at least you would not have gathered this ego. Now you are a saint just because you have made one prayer, and these people are sinners. And because I took you with me, my own prayer is spoiled, so I am going back. And please, never come again. At least I'm not going to take you with me.'


And he went back to pray and to ask forgiveness from God. And he was crying, and tears were rolling down his face.


A few days ago you took sannyas -- or a few weeks -- and you think that others are stupid? That is not right, that is not right at all. In fact, a sannyasin is one who stops interfering in other people's lives. This attitude is an interference. Why? If they don't want to see me, if they don't want to listen to me, if they don't want to understand what is happening here, then that is their freedom. They are not stupid; this is simply their freedom. They have to be themselves.


If you gather such attitudes -- that's how fanaticism is born -- then one day you can become a fanatic, then you can force them to come. 'You will have to come.' Out of compassion, you have to force them. That's what religions have been doing down the centuries: Mohammedans killing Hindus, Hindus killing Mohammedans, Christians killing Mohammedans, Mohammedans killing Christians. For what? Out of compassion. They say 'We will take you on the right path. You are going astray. We cannot allow you to go astray.'


Freedom means total freedom. Freedom means to go astray too. If you don't allow a person to go astray, then what type of freedom is this? If you tell a child 'You are only free to do the right, and I am deciding what is right; you are not free to do the wrong, and I am deciding what is wrong' -- what type of freedom is this? Who are you to decide what is right? Let everybody decide for themselves.


It is very easy to gather such attitudes. That's why, down the ages, this foolishness has happened: millions of people have been killed in the name of love, in the name of God. How was it possible? Christians were thinking that they were doing a great duty, because they thought 'Unless you come through Jesus, you will never come to God.' If you look at their logic, it seems very, very compassionate. If this is really the case -- that you can come to God only through Jesus -- then those people who were burning and killing and punishing people were really great saints.


But that is the problem. Mohammedans think that you can only come through Mohammed -- Mohammed is the latest prophet; Jesus is out of date already. God has sent another message, more improved; a new edition has come. So why bother about Jesus when Mohammed has come? Certainly, the latest one should be the best, so you have to come through Mohammed. Now there is only one God and there is only one prophet of God, and that is Mohammed. And if you don't listen, they are ready to kill you -- just out of love -- for your own good.


And listen to the Hindus. They say that this is all nonsense. The first edition is the best: the Vedas. Why? Because God cannot commit any errors, so he cannot improve. The first is the best! He cannot commit any errors, so how can he improve? The first is the last, the alpha is the omega. God has given once and for all, then why these other editions? These are for stupid people who cannot understand the original. If you can understand the Vedas then there is no need to understand the Bible and the Koran; they are just meaningless. The first was the best; God trusted that man would understand. But then he found that man was very foolish: only a few wise people could understand. Then he had to lower himself down a little. It is not improvement, it is just getting down to where man is, so he gave the Bible. But still it was not understood, so he gave the Koran. Still it was not understood, so he gave the Guru Grantha -- that's how man has been falling. In the Hindu concept, perfection was in the past. Since then man has been falling. This is the most stupid age. Man has not been evolving, man has been falling down. It is not an evolution, Hindus say, it is an involution. So the later the book, the more ordinary it has to be because it is meant for the ordinary people. The perfect people were in the days of the Vedas.


Now, there are three hundred religions on the earth -- and each one claiming, and each religion ready to kill the other. They are at each other's throats continuously. Something basic has gone wrong.


This is what has gone wrong: you are asking me to allow you to become a fanatic. -No, this is not going to happen with me at least -- at least while I am here. Others are free to do whatsoever they like, to see as they like, to interpret as they like. You are not to take it for granted that they are stupid. They have their own mind: it is beautiful.


A Negro boy came home painted white and said 'The kids at school painted me white all over.' So his mother beat him for getting messed up.


Father came home and said 'What is going on?' So Mother told him that the kids at school had painted our Sam white. So father gave him another thrashing for not standing up for himself.


Shortly afterwards, a small voice was heard 'I have only been a white boy for two hours, but I already hate you black buggers!'


And you have been an orange man for just a few weeks... Please be patient, be intelligent and respectful of others' freedom, and others' being, and their way, their style.
<p class="question">WHY HAS SEX BEEN A TABOO IN ALL THE SOCIETIES DOWN THE AGES?</p>


It is a very complicated question, but very important too -- worth going into.


Sex is the most powerful instinct in man. The politician and the priest have understood from the very beginning that sex is the most driving energy in man. It has to be curtailed, it has to be cut. If man is allowed total freedom in sex, then there will be no possibility to dominate him: to make a slave out of him will be impossible.


Have you not seen it being done'? When you want a bull to be yoked to a bullock-cart, what do you do? You castrate him: you destroy his sex energy. And have you seen the difference between a bull and an ox? What a difference! An ox is a poor phenomenon, a slave. A bull is a beauty; a bull is a glorious phenomenon, a great splendour. See a bull walking! How he walks like an emperor! And see an ox pulling a bullock-cart.


The same has been done to man: the sex instinct has been curtailed, cut, crippled. Man does not exist as the bull now, he exists like the ox. And each man is pulling a thousand and one bullock-carts. Look, and you will find behind you a thousand and one bullock-carts, and you are yoked to them. Why can't you yoke a bull? The bull is too powerful. If he sees a cow passing by, he will throw both you and the bullock-cart, and he will move to the cow. He will not bother a bit about who you are, and he will not listen. It will be impossible to control the bull.


Sex energy is life energy; it is uncontrollable. And the politician and the priest are not interested in you, they are interested in channelising your energy into certain other directions. So there is a certain mechanism behind it -- it has to be understood.


Sex repression, tabooing sex, is the very foundation of human slavery. And man cannot be free unless sex is free. Man cannot be REALLY free unless his sex energy is allowed natural growth.


These are the five tricks through which man has been turned into a slave. into an ugly phenomenon, a cripple.


The first is: Keep man as weak as possible if you want to dominate him. If The priest wants to dominate you or the politician wants to dominate you, you have to be kept as weak as possible. Yes, in certain cases, exceptions are allowed that is, when the services of fighting our enemy are needed, only then otherwise not. The army is allowed many things which other people are not allowed. The army is in the service of death; it is allowed to be powerful. It is allowed to remain as powerful as possible: it is needed to kill the enemy.


Other people are destroyed. They are forced to remain weak in a thousand and one ways. And the best way to keep a man weak is not to give love total freedom. Love is nourishment. Now the psychologists have discovered it: that if a child is not given love, he shrivels up into himself and becomes weak. You can give him milk, you can give him medicine, you can give him everything just don't give love. don't hug him. doll ( kiss him. don't hold him close to the warmth of your body, and the child will start becoming weaker and weaker and weaker. And there are more chances of dying than surviving.


What happens? Why? Just hugging, kissing, giving warmth, somehow the child feels nourished, accepted, loved, needed. The child starts feeling worthy; the child starts feeling a certain meaning in his life.


Now, from the very childhood, we starve them: we don't give love as much as is needed. Then we force the young men and young women not to fall in love unless they get married. By the age of fourteen, they become sexually mature. But the education may take more time -- ten years more, twenty-four, twenty-five years  -- then they will be getting their M.A.'s, or Ph.D.'s, or M.D.'s so we have to force them not to love.


Sexual energy comes to its climax near about the age of eighteen. Never again will a man be so potent, and never again will a woman be able to have a greater orgasm than she will be able to near the age of eighteen. But we force them not to make love. We force boys to have their separate dormitories. Girls and boys are kept separate -- and just between the two stands the whole mechanism of police, magistrates, vice-chancellors, principals, head masters. They are all standing there, just in between, just holding the boys back from moving to the girls, holding the girls back from moving to the boys. Why? Why is so much care taken'? They are trying to kill the bull and create an ox.


By the time you are eighteen you are at the peak of your sexual energy, your love energy. By the time you get married twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven... and the age has been going up and up. The more cultured a country, the more you wait, because more has to be learnt, the job has to be found -- this and that. By the time you get married you are almost declining in your powers.


Then you love, but the love never becomes really hot, it never comes to the point where people evaporate; it remains lukewarm. And when you have not been able to love totally, you cannot love your children because you don't know how. When you have not been able to know the peaks of it, how can you teach your children? How can you help your children to have the peaks of it?


So down the ages man has been denied love so that he should remain weak.


Second: Keep man as ignorant and deluded as possible so that he can easily be deceived. And if you want to create a sort of idiocy -- which is a must for the priest and the politician and their conspiracy -- then the best thing is not to allow man to move into love freely. Without love a man's intelligence falls low. Have you not watched it? When you fall in love, suddenly all your capacities are at their peak, at their crescendo. Just a moment ago you were looking dull, and then you met your woman... and suddenly a great joy has erupted in your being: you are aflame. While people are in love, they perform at their maximum. When love disappears or when love is not there, they perform at their minimum.


The greatest, most intelligent people are the most sexual people. This has to be understood, because love energy is basically intelligence. If you cannot love, you are somehow closed, cold; you cannot flow. While in love one flows. While in love, one feels so confident that one can touch the stars. That's why a woman becomes a great inspiration, a man becomes a great inspiration. When a woman is loved, she becomes more beautiful IMMEDIATELY, instantly! Just a moment ago she was just an ordinary woman, and love has showered upon her -- she is bathed in a totally new energy, a new aura arises around her. She walks more gracefully -- a dance has come to her step. Her eyes have tremendous beauty now, her face glows: she is luminous. And the same happens to the man.


When people are in love they perform at the optimum. Don't allow love and they will remain at the minimum. When they remain at the minimum, they are stupid, they are ignorant, they don't bother to know. And when people are ignorant and stupid and deluded, they can be easily deceived. When people are sexually repressed, love-wise repressed, they start hankering for the other life. They think about heaven, paradise -- but they don't think to create the paradise here-now.


When you are in love, paradise is here-now. Then you don't bother, then who goes to the priest? Then who bothers that there should be a paradise? You are already there! You are no more interested. But when your love energy is repressed, you start thinking 'Here is nothing. Now is empty. Then there must be somewhere some goal...' You go to the priest and ask about heaven, and he paints beautiful pictures of heaven.


Sex has been repressed so that you can become interested in the other life. And when people are interested in the other life, naturally they are not interested in THIS life.


Tantra says: This life is the only life. The other life is hidden in THIS life. It is not against it, it is not away from it; it is IN it. GO into it. THIS IS IT! Go into it and you will find the other too. God is hidden in the world -- that is the Tantra message. A GREAT message, superb, incomparable: God is hidden in the world, God is hidden here-now. If you love, you will be able to feel it.


The third secret: Keep man as frightened as possible. And the sure way is not to allow him love, because love destroys fear... love casteth out fear'. When you are in love, you are not afraid. When you are in love, you can fight against the whole world. When you are in love, you feel infinitely capable of anything. But when you are not in love, you are afraid of small things. When you are not in love, you become more interested in security, in safety. When you are in love, you are more interested in adventure, in exploration.


People have not been allowed to love because that is the only way to make them afraid. And when they are afraid and trembling, they are always on their knees, bowing to the priest and bowing to the politician. It is a great conspiracy against humanity. It is a great conspiracy against YOU! Your politician and your priest are your enemies, but they pretend that they are public servants. They say 'We are here to serve you, to help you attain a better life. We are here to create a good life for you.' And they are the destroyers of life itself.


The fourth: Keep man as miserable as possible -- because a miserable man is confused, a miserable man has no self-worth, a miserable man is self-condemnatory, a miserable man feels that he must have done something wrong. A miserable man has no grounding: you can push him from here and there: he can be turned into driftwood very easily. And a miserable man is always ready to be commanded, to be ordered, to be disciplined, because he knows 'On my own I am simply miserable. Maybe somebody else can discipline my life?' He is a ready victim.


And the fifth: Keep men as alienated from each other as possible, so that they cannot band together for some purpose of which the priest and the politician may not approve.


Keep people separate from each other. Don't allow them too much intimacy. When people are separate, lonely, alienated from each other, they cannot band together. And there are a thousand and one tricks to keep them away.


For example: if you are holding the hand of a man -- you are a man and you are holding the hand of a man, and walking down to road singing -- you will feel, guilty because people will start looking at you: Are you gay homosexual or something'? Two men are not allowed to be happy together. They are not allowed to hold hands, they are not allowed to hug each other. They are condemned as homosexuals. Fear arises.


If your friend comes and takes your hand in his hand, you look around. 'Is somebody looking or not?' And you are just in a hurry to drop the hand. You shake hands in such a hurry. Have you watched it? You just touch each other's hand and shake, and you are finished. You don't hold hands, you don't hug each other. You are afraid.


Do you remember your father hugging you ever? Do you remember your mother hugging you after you became sexually mature? Why not? Fear has been created. A young man and his mother hugging? Maybe some sex will arise between them, some idea. some fantasy. Fear has been created: the father and the son, the father and The daughter no: the brother and the sister no; the brother and the brother -- no!


People are kept in separate boxes with great walls around them. Everybody is classified, and there a thousand and one barriers. Yes, one day, after twenty-five years of all this training, you are allowed to make love to your wife. But now the training has gone too deep into you, and suddenly you don't know what to do. How to love? You have not learned the language.


It is as if a person has not been allowed to speak for twenty-five years. Just listen: for twenty-five years he has not been allowed to speak a single word and then suddenly you put him on a stage and tell him 'Give us a great lecture.' What will happen? He will fall there, then and there. He may faint, he may die... twenty-five years of silence, and now suddenly he is expected to deliver a great lecture. It is not possible.


This is what is happening: twenty-five years of anti-love, of fear, and then suddenly you are legally allowed -- a license is issued, and 'Now you can love this woman. This is your wife, you are her husband, and you are allowed to love.' But where are those twenty-five years of wrong training going to go'? They will be there.


Yes, you will 'love'... you will make a gesture. It is not going to be explosive, it is not going to be orgasmic: it will be very tiny. That's why you are frustrated after making love to a woman. Ninety-nine per cent of people are frustrated after making love, more frustrated than they have ever been before. And they feel 'What? There is nothing! It is not true!'


First the priest and the politician have managed that you should not be able to love, and then they come and they preach that there is nothing in love. And certainly their preaching looks right, their preaching looks exactly in tune with your experience. First they create the experience of futility, of frustration, then... their teaching. And both look logical together -- of one piece.


This is a great trick, the greatest that has ever been played upon man. These five things can be managed through a single thing, and that is the love-taboo.


It is possible to accomplish all these objectives by somehow preventing people from loving each other. And the taboo has been managed in such a scientific way. This taboo is a great piece of art -- great skill and great cunningness have gone into it. It is really a masterpiece. This taboo has to be understood.


First: it is indirect, it is hidden. It is not apparent, because whenever a taboo is too obvious, it will not work. The taboo has to be very hidden, so you don't know how it works. The taboo has to be so hidden that you cannot even imagine that thing against it is possible. The taboo has to go into the unconscious, not into the conscious. How to make it so subtle and so indirect?


There trick is: first go on teaching that love is great so people never think that the priests and the politicians are against love. Go on teaching that love is great, that love is the right thing, and then don't allow any situation where love can happen. Don't allow the opportunity. Don't give any opportunity, and go on teaching that food is great, that eating is a great joy, 'Eat as well as you can', but don't supply anything to eat. Keep people hungry and go on talking about love.


So all the priests go on talking about love. Love is praised as highly as anything just next to God and denied every possibility of its happening. Directly, they encourage it; indirectly, they cut its roots. This is the masterpiece.


No priests talk about how they have done the harm. It is as if you go on saying to a tree 'Be green, bloom, enjoy' and you go on cutting the roots so that the tree cannot be green. And when the tree is not green you can jump upon the tree and say 'Listen! You don't listen. You don't follow us. We all go on saying "Be green, bloom, enjoy, dance"'... and meanwhile you go on cutting the roots.


Love is denied so much. And love is the rarest thing in the world  -- it should not be denied. If a man can love five persons, he should love five. If a man can love fifty, he should love fifty. If a man can love five hundred, he should love five hundred. Love is so rare that the more you can spread it the better.


But there are great tricks. You are forced into a narrow, very narrow, corner: you can love only your wife, you can love only your husband, you can love only this, you can love only that -- the conditions are too much. It is as if there were a law that you can breathe only when you are with your wife, you can breathe only when you are with your husband. Then breathing will become impossible. Then you will die. And you will not even be able to breathe while you are with your wife or with your husband.


You have to breathe twenty-four hours a day. The more you breathe while you are with your spouse...
Be loving.


Then there is a trick again: they talk about 'higher love', and they destroy the lower. And they say that the lower has to be denied: bodily love is bad, spiritual love is good. Have you ever seen any spirit without a body? Have you ever seen a house without a foundation? The lower is the foundation of the higher. The body is your abode, the spirit lives in the body. with the body. You are an embodied spirit and an ensouled body. You are together. The lower and the higher are not separate, they are one -- rung of the same ladder.


This is what Tantra wants to make clear: that the lower has not to be denied, the lower has to be transformed into the higher. The lower is good. If you are stuck with the lower the fault is with you, not with the lower. Nothing is wrong with the lower rung of a ladder. If you are stuck with it, YOU are stuck: it is something in you.


Move.


Sex is not wrong. YOU are wrong if you are stuck there. Move higher. The higher is not against the lower; the lower makes it possible for the higher to exist.


And these tricks have created many other problems. Each time you are in love, somehow you feel guilty; a guilt has arisen. When there is guilt, you cannot move totally into love -- the guilt prevents you, it keeps you holding on. Even while making love to your wife or your husband, there is guilt: you know this is sin, you know you are doing something wrong. 'Saints don't do it.' You are a sinner. So you cannot move totally even when you are allowed -- superficially -- to love your wife. The priest is hidden behind you in your guilt feeling; he is pulling you from there, pulling your strings.


When guilt arises, you start feeling that you are wrong; you lose self-worth, you lose self-respect.


And another problem arises: when there is guilt you start pretending. Mothers and fathers don't allow their children to know that they make love, they pretend. They pretend that love exists not. Their pretension will be known by the children sooner or later. When the children come to know about the pretension, they lose all trust. They feel betrayed, they feel cheated. And fathers and mothers say that their children don't respect them. You are the cause of it, how can they respect you? You have been deceiving them in every way, you have been dishonest, you have been mean. You were telling them not to fall in love -- 'Beware' and you were making love all the time. And the day will come, sooner or later, when they will realise that even their father, even their mother was not true with them -- so how they can respect you?


First, guilt creates pretension, then pretension creates alienation from people. Even the child, your own child, will not feel in tune with you. There is a barrier -- your pretension. And when you know that everybody is pretending... One day, you will come to know that you are just pretending and so are others. When everybody is pretending, how can you relate? When everybody is false, how can you relate? How can you be friendly when everywhere there is deception and deceit? You become very, very sore about reality, you become very bitter: you see it only as a devil's workshop.


And everybody has a false face, nobody is authentic. Everybody is carrying masks, nobody shows his original face. You feel guilty, you feel that you are pretending, and you know that everybody is pretending, everybody is feeling guilty, and everybody has become just like an ugly wound. Now it is very easy to make these people slaves -- to turn them into clerks, stationmasters, schoolmasters, collectors, deputy collectors, ministers, governors, presidents. Now it is very easy to distract them. You have distracted them from their roots. Sex is the root, hence the name MULADHAR. MULADHAR means the root energy.

I have heard...


It was her wedding night and the haughty Lady Jane was performing her marital duties for the first time.


'My Lord' she asked her bridegroom 'is this what the common people call love-making?'


'Yes, it is, my lady' replied Lord Reginald, and proceeded as before.


After a while Lady Jane exclaimed indignantly 'It is too good for the common people!'


The common people have not really been allowed love-making: 'It is too good for them.'


But the problem is that when you poison the whole common world, you are also poisoned. If you poison the air which the common people breathe, the air that the king breathes will also be poisoned; it cannot be separate -- it is all one. When the priest poisons the common people, finally he also is poisoned. When the politician poisons the common people's air, finally he also breathes the same air -- there is no other air.


A curate and a bishop were in opposite corners of a railway carriage on a long journey. As the bishop entered, the curate put away his copy of PLAYBOY, and started reading The CHURCH TIMES. The bishop ignored him and went on doing the Times crossword. Silence prevailed.


After a while the curate tried to make conversation. And when the bishop began to do a lot of head-scratching and 'tuttut-tutting' he tried again. 'Can I help you sir'?'


'Perhaps. I am only beaten by one word. What is it that has four letters, the last three are u-n-t, and the clue is: "essentially feminine"?'


'Why, sir' said the curate after a slight pause 'that would be "aunt".'


'Of course, of course!' said the bishop. 'I say, young man, can you lend me a rubber?'


When you repress things on the surface, they all go deep inside, into the unconscious. It is there. Sex has not been destroyed -- fortunately. It has not been destroyed, it has only been poisoned. It cannot be destroyed; it is life energy. It has become polluted, and it can be purified.


That is the process of Tantra: a great process of purification.


Your life problems can basically be reduced to your sex problem. You can go on solving your other problems but you will never be able to solve them because they are not true problems. And if you solve your sex problem, all problems will disappear because you have solved the basic one.
But you are so afraid even to look into it.


It is simple. If you can put aside your conditioning, it is very simple. It is as simple as this story.


A frustrated spinster was a pest to the police, she kept ringing up saying there was a man under her bed. She was finally sent to a mental hospital, but she still told the doctors there was a man under her bed. They gave her the latest drugs. and she suddenly declared that she was cured.


'You mean, Miss Rustifan, you can't see a man under The bed now?'
'No, I can't. I can see two.'


One doctor told the other that there was only really one sort of injection that would cure her complaint, which he called 'malignant virginity' -- why did they not set her up in her bedroom with Big Dan, the hospital carpenter?


Big Dan was fetched, told what her complaint was, and that he would be locked in with her for an hour. He said it would not take that long, and an anxious group gathered on the landing... they heard 'No, stop it, Dan. Mother would never forgive me!'


'Shut up yelling, it's got to be done some time. It should have been done years ago!'
'Have your way by force then, you brute!'


'It's only what your husband would have done, had you had one.'
The medics could not wait, they burst in.
'I have cured her' said the carpenter.
'He has cured me' said Miss Rustifan.
He had sawn the legs off the bed.


Sometimes the cure is very simple. And you go on doing a thousand and one things... And the carpenter did well... just cutting the legs off the bed, and it was finished. Now where could the man hide?


Sex is the root of almost all your problems. It has to be so because of thousands of years of poisoning. A great purification is needed.


Tantra can purify your sex energy. Listen to the Tantra message. Try to understand it. It is a great revolutionary message. It is against all priests and politicians. It is against all those poisoners who have killed all joy on the earth just so that man can be turned into, reduced into a slave.


Reclaim your freedom. Reclaim your freedom to love. Reclaim your freedom to be and then life is no longer a problem. It is a mystery, it is an ecstasy, it is a benediction.
			

> [!info]
> Copyright 1964-1990 Osho (Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh)
>