TANTRA
The Science Of Being.

TAN - to expand, to increase, to extend.

TRA - technique.

TANTRA - Techniques that broaden spiritual knowledge, understanding, and experience.

Morality is just like magic. It goes on talking about the perfect man, and without knowing what man is – the real man. The perfect man remains as a dream. It is used just to condemn the real man. Man never reaches this ideal of the "perfect man."

Tantra is a science. Tantra says, first know what the reality is, what man is, and don’t create ideals right now; first know what is. Do not think of the "ought", just think of the "is". And once the "is" is known, then you can change it. Then you have the secret.

For example, tantra says do not try to go against sex, because if you go against sex and try to create a state of brahmacharya (mastery of the sex function), celibacy, purity, it is impossible. It is just illusion, not real. Without knowing what sex energy is, without knowing of what sex is constituted, without going deeply into the reality of it, the secrets of it, you can create an ideal of brahmacharya. Then what will you do? You will simply suppress. And a person who is suppressing sex is more sexual than a person who is indulging in it, because through indulgence the energy is released. Through suppression it is there, moving in your system continuously.

A person who suppresses sex starts seeing sex everywhere. Everything becomes sexual. Not that everything is sexual, but now that suppressive mind begins to project. "As within, so without." Now he projects! His own hidden energies (the shadow) is now projected. Everywhere he will look, he will see sex, and because he is condemning himself, he will start condemning everyone else.

"As within, so without."

You cannot find a moralist who is not violently condemning. He is condemning everyone; to him everyone is wrong. Then he feels good; his ego is fulfilled.

Why is everyone wrong? Because he sees everywhere the same thing that he is suppressing. His own mind will become more and more sexual, and more and more he will be afraid. This type of brahmacharya is a perversion, unnatural.

A different type of brahmacharya of a different quality happens to the follower of tantra, but the very process is totally, diametrically opposite. Tantra first teaches how to move in sex, how to know it, how to feel it, how to come the deepest possibility hidden in it, to the climax, how to find the essential beauty, the essential happiness and bliss that is hidden there.

Once you know that secret, you can transcend it, because really, in deep sexual orgasm, it is not sex which gives you the bliss, it is something else. Sex is just a situation. Something else is giving you the euphoria, the ecstasy. That something else can be divided into three basic elements. But when I speak about those elements, do not think that you can understand them just from my words. They must become part of your experience. As mere concepts, they are useless. 

Tantra is not for sex (to enhance sex life), tantra serves us as a successful tool of transcendence. But you can transcend only through experience – existential experience – not through ideology. Tantra provides a path to natures real brahmacharya. Only through knowledge does transcendence happen. Ignorance cannot help you to transcend, it can only help you to hypocrisy – and misery.

- Osho: Tantra: Spirituality and Sex.

 MORE ON TANTRA

Tantra accepts desire as the first driving force of human soul, the same one to cause the appearance of the Universe. Consequently, Tantra does not ask its followers to give up desire. Other spiritual traditions recommend avoiding desire, even suppressing it. in fact such an attitude will only bring you to shackles, and it is therefore an obstacle in reaching higher consciousness.

The adepts of such doctrine try to overcome desire through asceticism or through burning the seed of desire in the fire of knowledge so that it wouldn't grow. The result is paradoxical: in order to get to the state in which all desire disappear, you should have a very strong one - the one of being without any.

Tantra treats desires as natural and is based on the idea that as long as we have got a physical body, we'll still have desires. Our sense organs are like windows for desires to get inside ourselves. It means that desires are created beyond our attachment to sensorial "food".

All desires have a physical ground as a great number of electro-chemical impulses. The more we try to suppress them, the stronger they will become. Desires activate the hormones. Concentrating these substances in the blood can create a chemical disturbing or a disease.

Desires are directly connected to the six psychic centers known as chakras. While energy follows its natural course through different chakras it stimulates the hidden desires. These makes a person goes from a desire to another one in 24 hour.

The constant presence of the desire awakens both body and interest towards the object of desire. Most desires center on the physical body and its comfort. People become slaves of their instincts. This is the most common and gross part of a personality and they become victims of agitation, loneliness, excitation, anxiety, dissatisfaction, selfishness and misery.

All religions and sciences that want to perfect the human behavior try to solve these problems pleading for love towards abstract principles such as truth, compassion, benevolence, patience, self-sacrifice, altruism, pure affection and forgiveness. But we need practical methods to apply these principles. We cannot be happy only if we know that these ideals exist. We have to do something to become wise and happy.

Desires do not belong to the self, individual consciousness; they are connected to the main six chakras and can be classified in accordance to them. Chakras represent the place where the five subtle elements manifest themselves: akasha (ether or space), "air", "fire", "water" and "earth". Their source is the subtle aspect called "MAHAT" (the cosmic mind).

In order to transcend the desires we have to transcend these elements. And this is possible only by understanding the seven chakra system and learning to master the functions and connections of each chakra.

We will now follow the relationship between the six chakras and their elements and different desires. The seventh chakra is situated beyond desire. This is the place of enlightened humans, of the self and individual consciousness.

Rajneesh enlightens us with his profound vision regarding on how to transcend desire:
"Common mind destroys itself through its own desires. Yoga says, stop the desires; fight against the desires and become part of that you who is without desires. Tantra says to be aware of your desires. Don't fight them. Move in the desire with a profound consciousness. Thus you will transcend it. You are part of it and yet you aren't. You go through it but stay outside.

Accept yourself no matter what. Be aware of what you are. If you fight then your ego is present and will manifest strongly. And the more you fight, the stronger your ego will be. If you win, you will reach the supreme ego. Tantra says: do not fight. Then there will be no possibility for the ego to appear. If we do not understand Tantra then there will be a lot of problems because for common thinking if there is no fight then there must be a weakness. And then we will be afraid.

For example, you are angry. Tantra will never tell you: don't be angry. It says be angry from the bottom of your heart, BUT be aware. Tantra is not against anger but it is against spiritual sleep, spiritual unconsciousness. Be conscious and be angry. This is the secret of this method. Your anger turns into compassion if you are conscious. So Tantra tells us: don't approach that anger as your enemy. It carries around the seed of compassion.

The same energy that awakens anger, you may convert into compassion if you direct it correctly. So if you win the fight against this energy you will be a dead man. If you fight it, you won't manage to transform it into compassion. There won't be anger because you suppressed it. But it won't be compassion also.

So be a friend of all energies that have been given to you. Receive them, as you should; be happy that you have anger inside, that you have sexual impulses, that you are greedy. Be grateful because they are hidden sources that can be transformed and then sublimated .

The seed is small and insignificant, even ugly at the beginning. But when it wakes up and flourishes then it becomes a great beauty. Do not throw the seed away because you will also throw the flowers that might come with it. You cannot see them yet; they haven't manifested yet the way that you could see them. But they are there. So use the seed so that you can get to these flowers."

Of course that it doesn't mean that we should get angry each time we want to be compassionate. The examples meant to help us understand the fact that everything is transformed in the process of creation.

 And also that by rejecting anything that surrounds us we do nothing else but deny a reality that has been given to us and which, regardless of our denial, manifests strongly. The essence of Tantric learning is that of sublimation and transforming these energies into elevated forms of manifestation like compassion, love, help and knowledge.

The main elements of these inner energies are attention and consciousness in each moment. The true inner feeling is the adequate answer to each stimulus, action or exterior energy.