66. Be the unsame same to friend as to stranger, in honor and dishonor.
67. Here is the sphere of change, change, change. through change consume change.
Northrope says somewhere that the Western mind has been continuously searching for the theoretical component of existence — the causal link for how things happen, what is the cause, how the effect can be controlled, how man can manipulate nature. And the Eastern mind, says Northrope, has been on a different adventure. The search has been to find the aesthetic component of reality — not the theoretical, but the aesthetic.
The Eastern mind has not been much involved with the search to know how to manipulate nature, but it has been interested in how to be one with nature — not in how to conquer it, but in how to be in a deep friendship, a deep participation with it. The Western mind has been in a conflict, a struggle; the Eastern mind has been in a mystique, a love relationship. I don’t know whether Northrope will agree with me or not, but my feeling is that science is a hatred, a relationship of hatred with nature; hence, struggle, fight, conquering, the language of victory.
Religion is a love relationship; hence, no conflict, no struggle. In another way, science is a male attitude and religion a female attitude. Science is aggressive, religion is receptive. The Eastern mind is religious. Or, if you allow me, I will say that wherever a religious mind is, it is Eastern. The scientific mind is Western. It makes no difference whether a man is born in the East or the West. I am using East and West as two attitudes, two approaches, not as two geographical denominations. You can be born in the West, but you may not belong there; you may be Eastern through and through. You may be born in the East, but you may not belong; you may be scientific, the approach may be mathematical, intellectual.
Tantra is absolutely Eastern. It is a way of participating with reality — a way how to be one with it, how to dissolve boundaries, how to move in an undifferentiated realm. Mind differentiates, creates boundaries, definitions, because mind cannot work without definitions, without boundaries. The more clear-cut the boundaries, the better the possibility for the mind to work. So mind cuts, divides, chops everything.
Religion is a dissolving of boundaries in order to move to the undifferentiated where there is no definition, where there is no limit to anything, where everything moves into everything else, where everything is everything else. You cannot cut, you cannot chop existence. The consequences are bound to be very different in each approach. By the scientific approach, by dividing, chopping, you can come only to dead particles, atoms, because life is something which cannot be cut into divisions. And the moment you cut it, it is no more there. It is as if someone goes to study a symphony by studying each single note. Each single note is part of the symphony, but it is not the symphony. The symphony is created by many notes dissolving into each other. You cannot study a symphony by studying notes.
I cannot study you by studying your parts, You are not just a total of parts, you are more than that. When you divide and cut and analyze, life disappears; only dead parts are left. That is why science will never be capable of knowing what life is, and whatsoever is known through science will be about death — matter — it will never be about life. Science may become capable of manipulating life, of knowing the parts, the dead parts. It may be capable of manipulating life, but, still LIFE is not known, not even touched. Life remains unknowable for science. By the very method of its technology, its methodology, by the very approach, life cannot be known through it.
That is why science goes on denying — denying anything else other than matter. The very approach debars any contact with that which is life. And the vice versa happens also: if you move deeply into religion, you will start denying matter. Shankara says that matter is illusion, it is not there; it simply appears to be. The whole Eastern approach has been to deny the world, matter, anything material. Why? Science goes on denying life, the divine, consciousness. Deeper religious experiences go on denying matter — all that is material. Why? Because of the very approach. If you look at life without differentiation, matter disappears. Matter is life divided, differentiated. Matter means life defined, analyzed into parts.
So, of course, if you look at life undifferentiatedly and become part of it, in a deep participation, if you become one with existence as two lovers become one, matter disappears. That is why Shankara says that matter is illusion. If you participate in existence, it is. But Marx says that consciousness is just a by-product, it is not substantial; it is just a function of matter. If you divide life, then consciousness disappears, becomes illusory. Then only matter is.
What I am intending to say to you is this: Existence is one. If you approach it through analysis, it appears material, dead. If you approach it through participation, it appears as life, as divine, as consciousness. If you approach it through science there is no possibility of any deep bliss happening to you, because with dead matter bliss is impossible. At the most it can only be illusory. Only with a deep participation is bliss possible.
Tantra is a love technique. The effort is to make you one with existence. So you will have to lose many things before you can enter. You will have to lose your habitual pattern of analyzing things; you will have to lose the deep-rooted attitude of fighting, of thinking in terms of conquering.
When Hillary reached to the highest peak of the Himalayas, Mount Everest, all of the Western world reported it as a conquering — a conquering of Everest. Only in a Zen monastery in Japan, on a wall newspaper, it was written, “Everest has been befriended” — not conquered! This is the difference — “Everest has been befriended”; now humanity has become friendly with it. Everest has allowed Hillary to come to it. It was not a conquering. The very word `conquer’ is vulgar, violent. To think in terms of conquering shows aggressiveness. Everest has received Hillary, welcomed him, and now humanity has become friendly; now the chasm is bridged. Now we are not unacquainted. One of us has been received by Everest. Now Everest has become part of human consciousness. This is a bridging.
Then the whole thing becomes totally different. It depends on how you look at it. Remember this before we enter the techniques. Remember this: tantra is a love effort towards existence. That is why so much of sex has been used by tantra: because it is a love technique. It is not only love between man and woman; it is love between you and existence, and for the first time existence becomes meaningful to you through a woman. If you are a woman, then existence becomes for the first time meaningful to you through a man.
That is why sex has been so much discussed and used by tantra. Think of yourself as absolutely asexual — as if all sex were removed from you the day you were born. Just think: all sex was completely removed from you the day you were born. You will be unable to love; you will be unable to feel any affinity with anyone. It will be difficult to get out of yourself. You will remain enclosed, you will not be able to approach, to go out to meet someone. There in existence, you will be a dead thing, closed from everywhere.
Sex is your effort to reach out. You move from yourself; someone else becomes the center. You leave your ego behind, you go away from it to meet someone. If you really want to meet you will have to surrender, and if the other also wants to meet you he will also have to move out. Look at the miracle in love — at what happens. You move to the other and the other moves to you. He comes into you and you go into him or into her. You have changed places. Now he becomes your soul and you become her soul or his soul. This is a participation. Now you are meeting. Now you have become a circle. This is the first meeting where you are not enclosed in the ego. This meeting can become just a stepping stone toward a greater meeting with universe, with existence, with reality.
Tantra is based not on intellect, but on heart. It is not an intellectual effort, it is a feeling effort. Remember this, because that will help you to understand the techniques. Now we will enter the techniques.
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