Tantra

The Word tantra means technique, the method, the path. So it is not philosophical – note this.

It is not concerned with intellectual problems and inquiries. It is not concerned with the “why” of things, it is concerned with “how”; not with what is truth, but how the truth can be attained.

Philosophy asks, “Why this existence?” Science asks, “How this existence?” The moment you ask the question, how?, method and technique become important. Theories become meaningless; experience becomes the centre.

Philosophy is concerned with the mind. Your head is enough; your totality is not required. Tantra needs you in your totality. O2

Vigyan Bhairav Tantra means the technique of going beyond consciousness. Vigyan means consciousness, Bhairav means the state which is beyond consciousness, and Tantra means the method: the method of going beyond consciousness. This is the supreme doctrine – without any doctrine. O6

But Tantra says that this is a duality – unconscious and conscious. If you move from unconsciousness to consciousness, you are moving from one duality to another. Move beyond both! Unless you move beyond both you can never reach the ultimate, so be neither the unconscious nor the conscious; just go beyond, just be. Be neither the conscious nor the unconscious – just be! This is going beyond Yoga, going beyond Zen, going beyond all teachings.

In our experience only love can give a glimpse. That is why love becomes the very basic device to impart tantric wisdom. In our experience we can say that only love is something which goes beyond duality. When two persons are in love, the deeper they move into it, the less and less they are two, the more and more they become one. And a point comes and a peak is reached when only apparently they are two. Inwardly they are one; the duality is transcended. O6

Only in this sense does Jesus’ saying that “God is love” become meaningful; otherwise not. In our experience love is nearest to godliness. It is not that God is loving, as Christians go on interpreting – that God has a fatherly love for you. Nonsense! “God is love” is a tantric statement. It means love is the only reality in our experience which reaches nearest to God, to the divine. Why? Because in love oneness is felt. Bodies remain two, but something beyond the bodies merges and becomes one. O6

That is why there is so much hankering after sex. The real hankering is after oneness, but that oneness is not sexual. In sex two bodies have only a deceptive feeling of becoming one, but they are not one, they are only joined together. But for a single moment two bodies forget themselves in each other, and a certain physical oneness is felt. This hankering is not bad, but to stop at it is dangerous. This hankering shows a deeper urge to feel oneness. O7

In love, on a higher plane, the inner one moves, merges into the other, and there is a feeling of oneness. Duality dissolves. Only in this non-dual love can we have a glimpse of what is the state of a Bhairava. We may say that the state of a Bhairava is absolute love with no coming back, from the peak of love there is no falling back. It is remaining on the peak.

A Bhairava (Bhairavi (f)) lives in love; that is his abode. When I say that is his abode, I mean now he is not even aware of love – because if you live on Kailash you will not be aware that this is Kailash, this is a peak. The peak becomes a plain. Shiva is not aware of love. We are aware of love because we live in non-love. Shiva is love. The state of Bhairava means that one has become love, not loving; one has become love, one lives on the peak. The peak has become his abode.

How to make this peak possible: beyond the duality, beyond unconsciousness, beyond consciousness, beyond the body and beyond the soul, beyond the world and beyond the so-called moksha – liberation? How to reach this peak? The technique is Tantra. But Tantra is pure technique, so it is going to be difficult to understand. O7

We know ourselves through others and the others can only know the outer form.

When you are in love, you again become like children. Jesus says, “Only those who are like children will enter my kingdom of God.” Why? Because if the universe is not a wonder, you cannot be religious. O9

(Mind) In the mind questions come as leaves come on a tree. That is the very nature of the mind – to question. So it goes on questioning. It matters not what you are questioning, with anything given to the mind it will create a question. It is a machine to grind out, to create questions. So give it anything and it will cut it into pieces and create many questions. One question answered, and the mind will create many questions from the answer. O11

“When I was young I used to say, philosophy is an inquiry for ultimate answers. Now I cannot say it. It is an inquiry for endless questions.” Bertrand Russell

Mind is the doubt. It is not that the mind doubts, mind is the doubt! Unless the mind dissolves, doubts cannot be cleared. O11

Do not create the fallacy that an argumentative mind is an alert mind. It is not, because the moment you move into arguments you have lost the awareness, you have lost the alertness. Then you are not here.

Preachers go on preaching. They go on telling people, “Don’t be angry,” without giving any technique. And we have heard this teaching for so long that we never even raise the question: “What are you saying? I am angry and you simply say, ‘Don’t be angry.’ How is this possible? When I am angry it means ‘I’ am anger, and you just tell me, ‘Don’t be angry.’ So I can only suppress myself.”

But that will create more anger. That will create guilt – because if I try to change and cannot change myself, that creates inferiority. It gives me a feeling of guilt, that I am incapable, I cannot win over my anger. No one can win! You need certain weapons, you need certain techniques, because your anger is just an indication of a disturbed mind. Change the disturbed mind and the indication will change. Anger is just showing what is within. Change the within and the without will change. O15

So Tantra is not concerned with your so-called morality. Really, to emphasize morality is mean, degrading; it is inhuman. If someone comes to me ad I say, “Leave anger first, leave sex first, leave this and that,” then I am inhuman. What I am saying is impossible. And that impossibility will make that man feel inwardly mean. He will begin to feel inferior; he will be degraded inside in his own eyes. If he tries the impossible, he is going to be a failure. And when he is a failure he will be convinced that he is a sinner. O 15

The preachers have convinced the whole world that “You are sinners.” This is good for them, because unless you are convinced, their profession cannot continue. You must be sinners: only then can churches, temples and mosques continue to prosper. Your being in sin is their success. Your guilt is the base of all the highest churches. The more guilty you are, the more churches will go on rising higher and higher. They are built on your guilt, on your sin, on your inferiority complex. Thus, they have created an inferior humanity. O 15

Tantra is not concerned with your so-called morality, your social formalities, etc. That doesn’t mean that Tantra says to be immoral – no! Tantra is so much unconcerned with your morality that Tantra cannot say to be immoral. Tantra gives you scientific techniques for changing the mind, and once the mind is different your character will be different. O15

Christianity fought very much against scientific progress. Why? Only because if scientific progress is there in the material world, then the time is not very far off when in the psychological and in the spiritual world also science will penetrate. So Christianity started fighting scientific progress, because once you know that you can change matter through technique, the time is not very far off when you will come to know that you can change mind through techniques – because mind is nothing but subtle matter. O15

Tantra’s proposition is that mind is nothing but subtle matter; it can be changed. And once you have a different mind you have a different world, because you look through the mind. The world you are seeing, you are seeing because of a particular mind. Change the mind, and when you look there is a different world. And if there is no mind… that is the ultimate for Tantra, to bring about a state where there is no mind. Then look at the world without a mediator. When the mediator is not, you are encountering the real, because now no one is between you and the real. Then nothing can be distorted. 

So Tantra says that when there is no mind, that is the state of a Bhairava – a no-mind state. For the first time you look at the world, at that which is. If you have a mind, you go on creating a world; you go on imposing, projecting. So first change the mind, then change from mind to no-mind. O 16

The term Mandala with us has taken on an importance which it does not possess in India, where it is merely one of the Yantras, an instrument of worship in the Lamaistic cult and in tantric yoga.  And mind you, the tantric school is little known in India – you could ask millions of Hindus, and they would not have the faintest idea of what it was.  TPoKY12

Even within the frame of the tantric school the mandala has not the importance that it has with us.  TPoKY12