Tantra East AND West:  Osho (Bhagwan Sri Rasneesh)


"Devi asks:
Oh Shiva, what is your reality?
What is this wonder-filled universe?
What constitutes see?
Who centers the universal wheel?
What is this life beyond form pervading forms?
How may we enter it fully, above space and time, names and descriptions?
Let my doubts be cleared!

"...Philosophy is concerned with the mind.  Your head is enough.  Your
totality is not required.  Tantra needs you in your totality.  It is a
deeper challenge.  You will have to be in it whole and sole.  It is not
fragmentary.  A different approach, a different attitude, a different
mind to receive it is required.  Because of this, Devi is asking
'apparently' philosophical questions.  Tantra stars with Devi's
questions.  All the questions can be tackled philosophically.

"Really, any question can be tackled in two ways: philosophically or
totally, intellectually or existentially.  For example, if someone asks,
'What is love?' you can tackle it intellectually, you can discuss, you
can propose theories, you can argue for a particular hypothesis.   You
can create a system, a doctrine - and you may not have known love at
all.

"To create a doctrine experience is not needed.  Really, on the
contrary, the less you know the better because then you can propose a
system unhesitatingly.  Only a blind man can easily define what light
is.  When you do not know you are bold.  Ignorance is always bold;
knowledge hesitates.  And the more you know, the more you feel that the
ground underneath is dissolving.  The more you know, the more you feel
how ignornant you are.  And those who are really wise, they become
ignorant.  They become as simple as children or as simple as idiots.

"The less you know, the better.  To be philosophical, to be dogmatic, to
be doctrinaire - this is easy.  To tackle a problem intellectually is
very easy.  But to tackle a problem existentially - not just to think
about it, but to live it through, to go through it, to allow yourself to
be transformed through it - is difficult.  That is, to know love one
will have to be in love.  That is dangerous because you will not remain
the same.  The experience is going to change you.  The moment you enter
love, you enter a different person.  And when you come out you will not
be able to recognize your face.  It will not belong to you.  A
discontinuity will have happened.  Now there is a gap.  The old man is
dead and the new man has come.  That is what is known as rebirth - being
twice-born."

_The Book of Secrets_, Rajneesh, pgs. 4-5.


"Devi asks, 'What is your reality, my Lord?'  He is not going to answer
it.  On the contrary, he will give a technique.  And if Devi goes
through this technique, she will know.  So the answer is round-about; it
is not direct.  He is not going to answer 'who am I'.  He will give a
technique.  Do it and you will know.

"For tantra, doing is knowing, and there is no other knowing.  Unless
you do something, unless you change, unless you have a different
perspective to look at, to look with, unless you move in an altogether
different dimension than the intellect, there is no answer.  Answers can
be given: they are all lies.  All philosophies are lies.  You ask a
question and the philosophy gives you an answer.  It satisfies you or it
doesn't satisfy you.  If it satisfies you, you become a convert to the
philosophy, but you remain the same.  If it doesn't satisfy you, you go
on searching for some other philosophy to be converted to.  But you
remain the same; you are not touched at all; you are not changed.

"So whether you are a Hindu or a [Muslim] or a Christian or a Jain, it
makes no difference.  The real person behind the facade of a Hindu or a
[Muslim] or a Christian is the same.  Only words differ, or clothes. 
The man who is going to the church or to the temple or to the mosque is
the same man.  Only faces differ, and they are faces which are false:
they are masks.  Behind the masks you will find the same man, the same
anger, the same aggression, the same violence, the same greed, the same
lust - everything the same.  Is [Muslim] sexuality different from Hindu
sexuality?  Is Christian violence different from Hindu violence?  It is
the same!  The reality remains the same; only clothes differ.

"Tantra is not concerned with your clothes: tantra is concerned with
you.  If you ask a question it shows where you are.  It shows also that
wherever you are you cannot see: that is why the question.  A blind man
asks, 'What is light?'  Philosophy will start answering what is light. 
Tantra will know only this - that if a man is asking 'What is light?' it
shows only that he is blind.  Tantra will start operating on the man,
changing the man, so that he can see.  Tantra will not say what is
light.  Tantra will tell how to attain insight, how to attain seeing,
how to attain vision.  When teh vision is ther, the answer will be
there.  Tantra will not give you the answer; tantra will give you the
technique how to attain the answer."

_The Book of Secrets_, pgs. 5-6.


"'Tell you what, I will take both of them.  I accept both.' And suddenly
through this acceptance there is a transcendence, because there are not
two.  Anger and compassion  are not two.  Love and hate are not two.

"That's why you know, you observe it, but you are so unconscious that
you don't recognize the fact.  Your love changes into hate within a
second.

OSHO Secrets