The purpose of human life is to experience the divine or the higher being. Everybody has given his own idea on this objective. Some say it is God-realization and others say it is samadhi. We have come to one conclusion – the purpose of human life is to evolve in the realm of awareness and we should be able to realize something beyond matter and the mind. Perception, cognition through the mind and senses cannot be the ultimate. Waking, dreaming and sleeping cannot be the only stages of human consciousness.
Even as the primitive mind evolved in the course of thousands of years, and the animal mind evolved in the course of thousands of years, his state of mind must also evolve. The tools of experience must change. Mind is the tool of all experiences. In animal incarnation and in lower incarnation, it is the mind which is the tool of experience. In those incarnations, it is very inefficient. Therefore, sadhana or spiritual practices must be done to make this tool more efficient for experience.
We have come to a difficulty in life. Even the people who do practise yoga, tantra or a religion, one hour in the morning, two hours in the morning, two hours in the night, they do have difficulties with this tool of experience. When you place water near the heater, it becomes hot, when you remove it, again it becomes cold. In the same way, when you expose the mind to spiritual practices, it is perfectly calm and tranquil, but the moment it is removed from the spiritual practice, it is again the same old rotten mind. There is a stage when your consciousness is stabilized. After your mind is stabilized, well established, it becomes steady, constant and continuous. That is not the case with everybody. Then, what has to be done? You cannot go on practising sadhana the whole day. Just because the mind which is the tool of experience changes after spiritual practice, does not mean that you have to practise sadhana the whole day. If you do not do sadhana the whole day, only for an hour in the morning and at night, you know how the mind behaves the rest of the time.
Therefore, thought must be given to the quality of life. We must think very well as to how we must think in life and what philosophy we must maintain. If life is in chaos, your mind will be scattered and become dissipated. If life is aimless, it will affect the mind. If you live life without any awareness, it will deteriorate the quality of your mind. So we come to the conclusion that in addition to the sadhana that you practise in the morning and at night, try to organize your life so that it is relevant to your spiritual progress. This way of life is known as the tantric way of life.
There are so many ways of living – the materialistic, religious, yogic, careless and tantric ways of living. We live our life in a typical pattern. There is a relationship with the purposes and thoughts that are within you. That is point one. Your reactions to persons and events in life, and your reactions to your own self, is point two. Your awareness about yourself and your awareness about things and persons around you is point three. Your assessment about yourself and your assessment about the persons, the events and actions, is point four. This will decide the quality of life you are going to lead, or you are leading.
A materialist has his own philosophy, definite reactions and interactions, definite assessments about life. A religious man, or a yogic person has his own interactions and reactions and assessments and a tantric also has his own. A materialist has his own vision. For him everything is a tool of enjoyment and whatever he can experience with the senses and the mind is the ultimate, there is nothing beyond that. ‘Pleasure is my goal;, I don’t go beyond that. I don’t care whether it is right or wrong. I don’t care if this pleasure culminates in pain or agony, and I am not prepared to analyse the quality of pleasure. Whether it is selflessness or selfishness, I do not care. Whether this is to your advantage or not, I do not care. For me the material experience is ultimate and nothing is beyond that. Whether I go to a temple or a religious place or I go to a nightclub or a bar, I know I am seeking for the pleasures of the mind and the senses.’
This is the materialistic way of life. It is very pleasant in the beginning. We do not even think there can be anything else beyond this, but there comes a time when the senses and the mind refuse to produce the sensation and you begin to feel a diminishing quality of pleasant experience. Diminishing quality of experience is called depression.
Ten years ago, I used to get so much pleasure from this particular act, now the experience has become blunt. What has happened to me? Then personality problems get into you. You think perhaps this object can give you no more pleasure. So go to that object, go to that person, go to that place, you do not get the same thing again. So you go on experimenting upon the new objects of pleasure which ultimately leave you totally broken and exhausted. That is called nervous breakdown. That is called pessimism.
Go to the religious and the yogic way of life. It is a life of discipline, and disciplines are sometimes too hard for an ordinary person to follow. Principles of purity in religion and principles of discipline in yoga are beautiful. What a nice world this would be if that could happen to everyone. Everybody speaks the truth, nobody hurts anybody, everybody is a celibate, and all women are mothers or sisters. Purity internal, purity external. Don’t get angry. If someone slaps you on the right cheek, give him the left cheek. If somebody kicks you, you kiss his feet. If somebody is harming you, you try to think that he is God sent to purify your heart. If anybody comes to your door, give him anything in charity, don’t judge who he is. Be good, do good, be kind, be compassionate, and bear injury – wonderful! If only the world could become like this – but it can never happen.
I am not criticizing yoga and religions, mind you. We have been expecting too much from people. The man is paralyzed and you are asking him to a football tournament. Man is suffering from infirmity of willpower, he is so weak, he knows that by smoking he is going to get cancer. He is afraid, but still – no cancer. After he extinguishes his cigarette he says, ‘Oh! I am not going to have it again.’ After a few minutes, again he is puffing like that. This is called infirmity of willpower.
Our willpower is paralyzed. We know that alcohol attacks the liver. It does cause liver cirrhosis. Thousands die every year, every month from liver cirrhosis; it is one of the widespread diseases of the modern world.
With this weak man, what are you expecting? That is why man has become a hypocrite. Hypocrisy is an outcome of expectation of discipline from a weak person. If I tell you not to tell lies, but you cannot help telling lies, you conceal everything. Then you are a double personality. That is called hypocrisy. Therefore, you will find among yoga-minded people and religious-minded people the largest population of hypocrites. Maybe I am one among them. Well, I am not singular, you are all with me. We are all hypocrites. No, it is not our fault. If we are hypocrites, it is not our fault. It is the fault of the philosophy which expected too much from us.
Here tantra comes as a balancing force. The tantric way of life believes in the sublimation of every form of human experience. If you eat meat it is alright, if you drink wine it is alright, if you are indulging in sex acts, it is alright. Everybody is doing it, and what is the point of criticizing it? Whom are you criticizing? Your own faith? Your own personality? Your own judgments? You are standing on the threshold of sublimation, use it for a noble purpose. You have a dagger or knife, you can kill me, or you can also operate on me, perform a surgeon’s operation. You can also cut one apple and give it to a sick person. A knife is not bad. Through the knife a surgeon gives you life, with a knife you make vegetables every day. With the same knife, at night when you go in the street, it can kill you. Therefore, every tool and every possibility you have in life should be used nobly.
Therefore, in the tantric way of life, there is no exclusive approach to man’s ethics and morality. If you are living in Barcelona and if you have to go to London, you do not go to Geneva. You start from Barcelona. If a person is living in Geneva, he does not have to come to Barcelona. Everybody either in Barcelona, Geneva, Moscow or somewhere in the Arctic is standing at a particular stage of evolution. So it is not necessary that you have to come to my point of evolution. You will have to start wherever you are. This is the first hypothesis of the tantric way of life.
If you want to realize a higher life, be truthful, that it is a religious and yogic life. The tantric way of life never says, ‘Oh, he is telling lies.’ It does not matter, don’t worry about it. You start doing something. Everything will become crystallized. When all the things around the crystal come closer, they get added to the crystal. In tantra, you have to fix just one point – ‘I have to experience the inner being.’ That is all. What is the inner being? You do not have to know it. What preparations you have to make, you do not have to know that. In the course of time, necessary changes will take place because that experience is beyond the boundaries of ethics, morality, society, culture and politics.
Whether you are a Brahmin or a Christian, whether you are married or not married, whether you are young or old, whether you are physically healthy or unhealthy, whether you are a rich man or a poor man, whether you have one wife or many wives, it makes no difference. If these things make a difference, then that cannot be an inner experience because inner experience and outer life are completely two different substances.
When you go on transcending the inner experience plane by plane, dimension by dimension, you do not go with your worldly qualities. Your Brahmin, Christian or Catholic personality does not follow there. My sannyasa personality, your household personality does not go there. That experience has no such distinctions. There is no distinction of ‘I’ and ‘you’ or man and woman. Therefore, the tantric way of life is suited to everybody.
First of all, please don’t say I am a bad man. Don’t even say I am a good man. I am what I am. Don’t say that I am a sinner, and don’t say I am not a sinner; I am what I am. I do not know what I am. I am a wretched man, I have evil habits, I like this, I like that, my mind is like a monkey bitten by scorpions and who has drunk one bottle of scotch. That is my mind. All the time I have passions, passions and passions. I am ambitious and I want money. How can I have the inner experience? No, no, I cannot have it. A tantric will never think like this. He will say, ‘I am a drunkard, this is fun. I am suffering from sex mania. This is a play, a drama. I am running after the pleasures of life and money. ‘Oh, it is a play.’ He is not at all affected. He does not allow his personality to be punished by these rubbish thoughts. When he drinks, he sits in padmasana and says Om, Om, Om. One hour, two hours, no pain here and no pain there. When he eats meat, he says, ‘I am eating the instinct.’ When he is interacting with his female or male partner and the pleasure he is deriving from them, he establishes that here, at the top.
How can you say that this experience is a lower experience?
If that is an inferior experience, then what is the supreme experience, tell me? Emotional experience at a lower level is passion. Emotional experience at a higher level is devotion. Passion and devotion are manifestations of the same raw material.
Have respect for yourself but do not be satisfied with your inner experience. Inner experience must be an insight. Develop a thought, intensify feelings, imagine it and it becomes very clear. Visualize it like a microscope, like on television. Maybe the fortunate ones can even have a living experience?
Get the whole life together, do not go to the philosophy of exclusiveness. Carry your instincts with you, carry your passions, your ambitions and fantasies with you. Let them follow you like demons or monsters follow you. If they are devils, they are, if they are Satan, they are, if they are poison, they are. Let them follow you. Tell them, ‘Come on. Satan follow me. Ambitions follow me, desires follow me, frustrations follow me, cruelty follow me. Anything. All the dogs and donkeys and pigs and cattle come on with me. I am running. I am heading towards inner experience.’ They will say, ‘Master, please wait.’ You say ‘No.’
After a certain level of experience, when you look back, you do not find any one of them. You say, ‘What happened to these devils and rakshasa? I found that ghost, that devil and demons and Satan coming behind me, but now I don’t see anybody. Who are these fellows? Beautiful faces, lovely nose, sparkling and beaming eyes and beautiful colour, white and black and nice necklace. Oh, she was cruelty, isn’t it? She was so horrible. She had two projecting teeth, but now she is so beautiful.’
You see this is how the transformation of the instinct into divine virtue takes place on its own. You change the level of your experience. Things become different. It may be difficult for you to accept this tantric way of life, there may be many philosophies going against it. There are many sectarian philosophies against it. Or you may not accept it. Who knows? I don’t care. I am not coming here to be accepted. I am just coming here to tell you what I think is true.
I know I can get out of this mind. I know I can change the quality and dimension of experience. I like to see the inner colours. I like to see the flowers blooming within myself. I like to interact with you, but I do not want the sensory experience. I want to experience everything within sahasrara chakra, pain and pleasure.
28 March 1982, Barcelona, Spain