Tantra understands that man is weak, and therefore the tantric practices are taught according to the capacity of the aspirant. If you eat meat, tantra will never say that you should not eat it. If you drink, tantra will never say that you should not drink.
If you are married and have your own conjugal life, tantra will never say that you should not have that. Everybody has a right to evolve, and for that, you have to start from the point where you currently stand.
In order to evolve in spiritual life, you don’t have to become something or somebody. If you are a householder, you don’t have to be somebody else. If you are a weak man, you have to start at that point. We can teach you the practices which are suitable. In tantra, there are practices for weak persons and for strong persons. You must understand that everybody does not belong to the same category. Some people are passionate by nature. Some are lethargic. Some are mean-minded. Some people like to eat too much. Some people like to sleep too much and some people like to remain alone, away from others. People have different characters. One and the same way cannot fit everybody.
Your children go to school, but you cannot put them all in the same class. If you put them all in one class, many will fail. It is the same in our life. We do not all belong to one category. Broadly speaking, we belong to three categories. They are called the three qualities of man. Some people are harmonious and balanced. They have a good nature, very good habits, their family situations are ideal, they do not have evil habits, they do not have much passion, ambition or desire. This is one quality, or one group of people. Such people are very few in this world.
Then there are people who are very aggressive and dynamic. They have a lot of desires and passions, they work hard at things and they worry too much. They will do anything to fulfil those passions and ambitions. This is another category of people. Therefore, the spiritual practices should be taught according to their aptitude. This is the speciality of tantric philosophy and this is precisely the reason why tantra has a worldwide following.
Many psychologists have been thinking about it. The great Dr Sigmund Freud got so much inspiration from tantra. Even later, Dr Carl Jung and others derived so much inspiration from tantra. As a result of that inspiration, the occidental society has completely changed in the last one hundred years. The occidental society which you see today was not the same one hundred years ago. When Dr Sigmund Freud came onto the scene, he made emphatic declarations. He said, ‘You are suppressing your passions, and therefore you have guilt. You are suppressing your emotions, and therefore you are ill.’ That is how modern psychology came about as an occidental version of tantra.
It is important to know that beyond the physical body, there is another man. The physical body is not the ultimate definition of a human being you have to talk about the mind also. Without mind we are nothing and this mind is an important aspect in our life. This mind can be improved and through this mind we can experience great things.
I am going to talk to you about the expansion of mind. This is the most important topic in tantra: how to expand the mind and what is expansion? Normally the mind operates through the medium of the senses. The senses supply the necessary information to the mind, and perception and cognition take place in coordination with the senses. If the senses are withdrawn, the mind cannot have perception and cognition. The mind has become so dependent on the behaviour of the senses, but if you analyse deeply who actually has the experience? The senses are only the carriers of the experiences. The real experiencer is the mind, but this mind which is the experiencer of all experiences, depends on the senses.
When you delve into the mind through the senses, the mind is isolated. When the mind is isolated, it begins to experience something else. It can see without eyes, it can hear without ears, it can smell without the nose and it can taste without the tongue. Sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch are inherent in the mind, not in the senses. Eyes do not see, it is the mind which can see. In the same way, the senses do not experience, the mind experiences. So it is possible that the mind can experience without the senses.
When your mind can experience without the medium of the senses, that is called expansion of mind. If you can see an object without the eyes open, you have an expanded mind. In the process of evolution of the mind, it should become independent of the senses and that is called the super mind. This in short is the philosophy of tantra, which is important for the man of this century. The yoga which you hear about is an offshoot of tantra. Yoga and tantra are not different. Tantra is the mother and yoga is the child. Hatha yoga, mantra yoga and similar yogas are a part of tantra. In fact, all the yoga teachers and practitioners throughout the world are practising tantra.
What is the difference between higher experience and lower experience?
I will give you a very gross example of that. You take a pin or a needle and prick yourself somewhere on the wrist. You feel a sharp pain from the pinprick. Where are you feeling it? You feel the pain; you experience the pain at the point where the needle pricked you. Does the pain take place here? No.
The experience of pain is in the head. Can you experience the pain here at the eyebrow centre instead of there at the wrist? If so, it is a higher experience. If you experience the pain at the point of the pinprick, it is the lower experience. The experience of all experiences is in the eyebrow centre. The eyebrow centre is in the middle of the two eyebrows. It is directly connected with ajna chakra at the top of the spine. It is there that higher experience takes place.
It is the same with every experience: the experience of taste, the experience of sex, the experience of happiness, the experience of an object. Every experience takes place at ajna, but man experiences it at a lower level. Everybody has the sense of taste, smell, touch, hearing and sight, as well as sexual and mental experiences. Where do you have these experiences? If the same experience takes place within the mind, that is higher experience.
I feel that everybody is a tantric. You are already practising tantra. What does this mean? A man living the life of the senses is a tantric; tantra is not against sensual life. Religions are against the sensual life, monastic traditions are against the sensual life. They always say, ‘Abandon this, abandon that. Control the taste. Control the eyes. Control the mind.’ Tantra says, ‘No, don’t do this. If you want to have an experience, do so, but experience it on a higher plane.’
When you have an experience on a lower plane, there is dissatisfaction. There is frustration, there is nervous breakdown and you get completely exhausted about life, because every time you experience it, you remain unfulfilled.
How to sublimate sensual life? Many people live sensual lives and say, ‘Well, we are practising tantra.’ They just do whatever they like and they say, ‘Oh, I am practising tantra.’ It is not the meat, wine or women that is important in tantra. The important thing is the experience that they generate. If that experience is experienced at a higher level, you are practising tantra, and if that experience is experienced at a lower sensual level, you are not practising tantra.
When you are practising tantra with a higher experience, everything that you do in your daily life becomes a spiritual practice. Then this body becomes the ‘sanctum sanctorum’, the temple. The sensual objects become the instruments of worship. Sleep becomes samadhi, and whenever you walk, it becomes the perambulation of a holy place. Whatever you speak becomes a prayer. Whatever you do, whatever way you live and whatever you experience, all that becomes a form of worship of the divine.
It is not just one hour in the morning, or one hour on Sunday. Each and every act, each and every experience must become a part of that universal experience. Just as every drop of ocean water is saline, every aspect of man’s life must be divine. You cannot say that going to the temple is good, and going to a bar is bad. Why do you compartmentalize life? Why don’t you consider the whole of life itself as a progress on to perfection?
When you incarnated as a human being, everything was given to you for spiritual progress only. You were not told to create two compartments, ‘Here I am spiritual, and there I am worldly’.
Are there two paths? Well, if there are two paths, I have nothing to teach you! I don’t think that there are two paths. There is only one path and that path has many milestones. Every milestone is linked to the next milestone. There is a continuity of the process in life. The bad man is a good man in the making. A saint is the manifestation of a rogue. Poison contains nectar in it, and nectar becomes poison in the making.
Therefore, in tantra we do not focus on the diversity, duality or paradoxes in life. I may be a sensual man and you may be a saint, but you were also sensual once upon a time, is it not so? I will also become a saint later. There are no two paths where, the path of a scoundrel goes this way and the path of the saint goes that way. There is nothing good and nothing bad. Everything is part of the totality, and everything was created for the purpose of man’s evolution. God is not against the bad. In tantra, the definition is very simple. Go ahead and you will eventually reach your goal.
9 April 1982, Martinique