90. Touching eyeballs as a feather, lightness between them opens into heart and there permeates the cosmos.
91. Kind devi, enter etheric presence pervading far above and below your form.
Once it happened in a church that after a very long dry sermon, the minister announced that there would be a meeting, a brief meeting of the board, right after the benediction. After the services a stranger approached the minister; he was the first man. The minister thought, `There has been some misunderstanding,’ because the man was absolutely a stranger. He didn’t even look like a Christian; his appearance was that of a Mohammedan, so the minister said, `It seems you have misunderstood the announcement. There is going to be a meeting of the board.’
The stranger said, `So I have also heard — and if there was someone here more bored than me then I would like to meet him.’
But this seems to be the situation of everyone. Look at people’s faces, or at your own face in a mirror, and you will feel you are the most bored, and it seems impossible that there can be someone else who is more bored than you. The whole life seems to be a long boredom — dry, dreary, meaningless; somehow you are carrying it as a burden.
Why has this happened? Life is not meant to be a boredom. Life is not meant to be a suffering. Life is a festival, a celebration, a peak of joy — but that is only in poetry, in dreams, in philosophies. Sometimes a Buddha, a Krishna, appears to be in a deep celebration, but they look like exceptions. Really, unbelievable; not real, just ideal. It seems they never happen. They are our wish-fulfillments, myths, dreams and hopes, but not realities. The reality seems to be our face — bored, in anguish, and with suffering impressed on it — and the whole life is just a `carrying on anyhow’.
Why has this happened? And this must not be the basic reality of life, this cannot be, because this happens only to man. The trees, the stars, the animals, the birds… nowhere else does it happen. Except for man, no one is bored. And even if sometimes pain happens, it is momentary; it never becomes an anguish. It never becomes a constant obsession; it is not always on the mind. It is a momentary thing, an accident; it is not carried over.
Animals can be in pain, but they are not in suffering. Pain looks like an accident; they get over it. They don’t carry it. It doesn’t become a wound. It is forgotten and forgiven. It goes into the past; it never becomes a part of the future. When pain becomes a constant thing, a wound, not an accident but a reality, essential, as if you cannot exist without it, then it becomes a problem — and that problem has arisen only for the human mind.
Trees are not in suffering. There seems to be no anguish. Not that death doesn’t occur to them; death occurs, but it is not a problem. Not that painful experiences are not there; they are there, but they don’t become life itself. Just on the periphery they happen and disappear. Deep down in the inner core, life remains celebrating.
A tree goes on celebrating. Death will happen, but it happens only once. It is not carried over constantly. Except for man, everything is in a festive mood. Only man is bored — boredom is a human phenomenon. What has gone wrong? Something must have gone wrong.
In a way this can be a good sign also. Boredom is human. You can define the human being through boredom. Aristotle has defined the human being as rational. That may not be exactly true; it is not a hundred percent true, because the difference is only of degree. Animals are also rational — less rational, but not absolutely irrational. There are animals which are just below the human mind. They too are rational in their own way; not as much as man, but not completely devoid of reason. The difference is only of degrees, and man cannot be defined by reason alone. But through boredom you can define him: he’s the only bored animal.
And this boredom can come to such a climax that man can commit suicide. Only man can commit suicide; no animal commits suicide. That is an absolutely human phenomenon. When boredom comes to such a point that even hope becomes impossible, then you drop dead by yourself, because then there is no sense in carrying all this. You can carry this boredom, this pain, because somewhere the tomorrow is yet hopeful. This is bad today, but tomorrow something will happen. Because of that hope you go on carrying.
I have heard, once it happened one Chinese emperor sentenced his prime minister to death. The day the prime minister was to be hanged, the emperor came to see him to say a good-bye. He had been his devoted servant for many many years, but he had done something which irritated the emperor so much that he had sentenced him to death. But remembering that this was going be the last day, the emperor came to meet him.
When the emperor came, he saw the prime minister weeping, and tears were rolling down from his eyes. He couldn’t imagine that death could be the cause, because he was a brave man, so he asked, `It is impossible to imagine that you are weeping because you are going to die this evening. It is impossible to conceive. You are a brave man, and I have known your bravery so many times, so it must be something else. What is it? If I can do something I will do it.’
The prime minister said, `Now nothing can be done and it is of no use to say to you, but if you insist, then I am still your servant — I will obey you and tell you.’
The emperor insisted, so the prime minister said, `It is not my death, because that is not of much importance — man has to die one day; any day death will be — but I am weeping because I have seen your horse standing outside.’
The emperor asked, `Because of the horse? Why?’
The prime minister said, `I was looking for my whole life for this type of horse, because I have learned one ancient secret — that I can teach horses to fly — but only of a particular type. This is the type, and this is my last day. I am not worried about my death, but just that one ancient art will be lost with me. That’s why I am weeping.’
The emperor was thrilled, excited — if the horse could fly, this would be something — so he said, `How many days will it take?’
The prime minister said, `At least one year — and then this horse will start flying.’
So the emperor said, `Okay, for one year I will make you free, but remember, if in one year the horse is not flying, you will be again sentenced and hanged. But if the horse is flying, you will be forgiven. And not only forgiven, I will give you half of my kingdom, because I will be the first emperor in history who has a flying horse. So come out of the jail and don’t weep.’
The prime minister rode, happy and laughing, on the horse to his house. But the wife was still weeping and crying and she said, `I have heard, the news has reached before you — but one year only? And I know you know no art, and this horse cannot fly. This is just a trick, a deception, so if you could ask for one year why couldn’t you ask for ten years?’
The prime minister said, `That would be too much. As it is, it is already too much. The horse flying is already too much. Then asking for ten years would have been obviously a trick. But don’t weep.’
But the wife said, `It makes me still more sad that now I will be living with you and after one year you will be hanged. This one year is going to be a suffering.’
The prime minister said, `Now I will tell you one ancient secret you don’t know. In this one year the king can die, the horse can die, I can die. Or, who knows? — the horse can learn to fly! One year!’
Just hope — and man lives through hope because he is so bored. When boredom comes to a point where you cannot hope, when hopelessness is absolute, you commit suicide. Boredom and suicide are both human. No animal can commit suicide, no tree can commit suicide.
Why has this happened? What is the reason behind it? Has man forgotten completely how to live, how to celebrate, how to be festive? While the whole existence is festive, how has man retreated out of it and created a sad milieu around him?
It has happened. Animals live through instinct; they don’t live through awareness. They live through instinct, mechanically. Nothing has to be learned. They are born with whatsoever they need to know. Their life runs on a smooth instinctive plane; there is no learning. They have an inbuilt program, a blueprint in their cells, for all that they need to live and be happy, so they go on living mechanically.
Man has lost instinct; now there is no blueprint to live. You are born without any blueprint, without any inbuilt program. No mechanical lines are available for you to move on. You have to create your own path. You have to substitute instinct with something which is not instinct, because instinct has dropped. You have to substitute your instinct with intelligence, with awareness. You cannot live mechanically. You have gone beyond that stage where mechanical life is possible — it is not possible for you. You cannot live like animals and you don’t know how t live in some other way — this is the problem.
You don’t have a natural inbuilt program to follow. Without a program you have to face existence. And boredom, suffering, is bound to be your destiny if you cannot create such awareness that you can live through awareness rather than living through instinct. You have to learn everything. This is the problem. No animal needs to learn anything. You have to learn everything, and unless you learn it, you cannot live it. You have to learn how to live. No animal needs it.
This learning is the problem. You learn many things: you learn how to earn money, you learn mathematics, you learn history, you learn science, but you never learn how to live. That is creating the boredom. The whole of humanity is bored because a basic thing remains untouched. And it cannot be left to instinct, because there are now no instincts to live. For man, instinct has dropped; that door is closed. You have to build your own program. You are born without a map.
This is good, because existence thinks you are so responsible you will create your own map. This is a glory. This is magnificent. This makes man the highest, the peak of existence, because existence leaves you free. No animal is free: he has to live and follow a particular program that existence gives to him. When he is born, he is born with a program — he has to follow it. He cannot go astray, he cannot choose. There are no alternatives given to him. For man, all alternatives are open, and with no map to move with.
If you don’t learn how to live, your life will become a dreary affair. This has happened. Then you can go on doing many things and still you will feel you are not alive — dead. Deep down something is dead, not alive. You go on doing things because you have to. Just to live you go on doing things, but that `just to live’ is not life. There is no dance in it, no song in it. It has become a business. There is no play in it, and obviously you cannot enjoy it. These techniques of tantra are to teach you how to live. They are to teach you not to depend on animal instinct, because it is no more there. It has become so faint it cannot work for you, it cannot function.
It has been noted, observed, that if a human child is brought up without the mother, he will never be able to learn love, he will never be able to love. For his whole life he will remain without love, because now there is no instinct; he has to learn it. Even love has to be learned. A human child who is brought up without love cannot learn it. He will not be able to love. If a mother is not there, and if a mother doesn’t become a source of happiness, of ecstasy, then no woman can become a source of happiness and ecstasy for that child. When he becomes mature, grown-up, he will not be attracted to women, because now instinct is not functioning.
This will not happen to animals: in the right moment they will start functioning. They will become sexual; they will move towards the opposite sex — that is instinctive, mechanical. With man nothing is mechanical. If you don’t teach a human child language, he will not learn it. If you don’t teach it, he is not going to have it. It is not natural; there is no instinct for it. Whatsoever you are is because of your learning. Man is less nature and more culture. Animals are simply nature.
Man is less natural and more cultural, but one dimension, the basic and the most foundational, remains uncultured — that is the dimension of being alive. You take it as if you already have it; it is taken for granted — that is wrong. You don’t know how to live, because just to breathe is not synonymous with living. Just to eat and sleep and just carry on the bodily affairs is not synonymous with living. You are existing, that’s right, but you re not alive.
A Buddha is alive, not simply existing. That aliveness can come only if you learn it, if you become aware of it, and if you search for it and if you create situations in which it can evolve. Remember this: for man, mechanical evolution is not. Conscious evolution has taken place, and now you cannot do anything about it — you have to move into conscious evolution. You cannot fall back. You can stick where you are — then you will get bored.
That’s what is happening. You are not moving. You go on accumulating physical things, so things are moving, not you. Your riches go on accumulating, they are growing — your bank balance is growing, not you. You are not increasing at all. On the contrary, you may be shrinking, decreasing, but you are not increasing. Unless you do something consciously, you are lost. A conscious effort is needed. It is not asked from the animals because they are not responsible. So you have to understand one very basic thing: with freedom comes responsibility. And you can be free only if you are responsible.
Animals are not responsible, but they are also not free. They are not free; they have to follow a particular pattern. They are happy because nothing can go wrong. They are following a predetermined course: they are following a pattern which has been worked out in millennia, in centuries of evolution. It has been worked out and found correct. They are following that. There is no possibility of going wrong.
There is every possibility for you to go wrong, because there is no plan, there is no map, there is no pattern. Your life ahead is not charted. You are free. But then a great responsibility falls on you, and that responsibility is to choose rightly, to work rightly, and to create your future through your effort. Really, the human being has to create himself through his own effort.
What existentialists in the west say is true. They say man is born without an essence, or you can say without a soul. Sartre, Marcel, Heidegger, they say that man is born without an essence. He is born as an existence, and then through his own effort he creates the essence. He is born only as a possibility, and then through his own effort he creates the soul. He is born only as a form, and then through his own conscious effort he creates the substance.
Just the contrary is the case for all nature: every animal, every plant, is born with an essence, with a soul, with a program, with a fixed destiny. Man is born as an opening with no fixed destiny — this creates burden, this creates responsibility. This gives you fear, anguish, anxiety. And then wherever you are, if you don’t do anything you get stuck. That getting stuck creates boredom.
You can be alive, happy, festive, joyful, only when you are moving when you are growing, when you are increasing, when you are creating the soul; really when you are pregnant with the divine, and when the divine is growing in your womb, when you are going to give birth.
For tantra, God is not the beginning, God is in the end. God is not the creator, but the ultimate peak, the omega point, of evolution. It is the last, not the first; not the alpha but the omega. And unless you become pregnant and unless you carry a child within you, you will be bored, because then your life is futile — nothing is going to come out of it; no fruit is going to come out of it. That creates boredom.
You can make this opportunity a source of evolution, or you can miss the opportunity and can make it a point of suicide. It depends on you.
Because man can commit suicide, only man can grow spiritually. No animal can grow spiritually. Because man can destroy himself, he can also create. Remember, both the possibilities move simultaneously. No animal can destroy himself — impossible. You cannot conceive of a lion thinking about suicide, to jump from a cliff and end the whole thing — no, impossible. No lion can think of it. Howsoever brave, no lion can think of ending himself, destroying himself. He’s not free.
You can conceive of destroying yourself. It is impossible to find a human being who has not thought many times to destroy himself. And if you can find a human being who has not thought of committing suicide, then either he is animal or God. That is very basically human — the possibility to destroy. But that also opens another door; simultaneously both the doors open — you can create also. You can create yourself, because you can destroy yourself.
No animal can create himself. You can create yourself, and unless you start creating, you will be destroying. Unless you create yourself, start creating…. And it is not a thing to create yourself, it is a process — you have to go on creating. Unless you reach to the ultimate, you have to go on creating. Unless the God is born within you, you have to go on creating. If you are not creating, you will be bored — uncreative life is boredom. All these techniques are to help you to create, to be reborn, to become pregnant. Now I will take the techniques.
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