The_Lamp_of_Awareness

Tantra has used sex. That is again another very vital force. If you want to go deep, you have to use very vital forces - the deepest in you. Tantra uses sex. When you are in a sex act, you are very near to the center of creation - to the very source of life. If you can go into a sex act consciously, it becomes meditation.

It is very difficult - more difficult than breath. You can breathe consciously in a small measure, of course, that you can, but the very phenomenon of sex requires your unconsciousness. If you become conscious, you will lose your sexual desire and lust. If you become conscious, then there will be no sexual desire inside. So Tantra has done the most difficult thing in the world. In the history of experiments with consciousness, Tantra goes the deepest.

But, of course, one can deceive. And with Tantra, deception is very easy, because no one other than you knows what the fact is. No one else can know. But only one in a hundred can succeed in the Tantric method of awareness - because sex needs unconsciousness. So a Tantric, a disciple of Tantra, has to work with sex, sex desire, just like with breathing. He has to be conscious of it; when actually going into the sex act, he has to be conscious.

Your very body, the sex energy, comes to a peak to explode. The Tantric SADHAK - seeker - comes to the peak consciously, and there is a method to judge. If sex release happens automatically and you are not the master, then you are not conscious of it. Then the unconscious has taken over. Sex comes to a peak, and then you cannot do anything but release. That release is not done by you. You can start a sexual process, but you can never end it. The end is always taken over by the unconscious.

If you can retain the peak and if it becomes your conscious act to release it or not to release it, if you can come back from the peak without release or if you can maintain that peak for hours together, if it is your conscious act, then you are the master. And if someone can come to a sexual peak, just on the verge of o-r-g-a-s-m, and can retain it and be conscious of it, suddenly he becomes aware of the deepest center inside - SUDDENLY! And it is not only that he is aware of the deepest center inside of himself: he is also aware of the center of his partner, the deepest center.

That is why a Tantra practitioner, if he is a man, will always worship the partner. The partner is not just a sex object. She is Divine! She is a goddess! And the act is not carnal at all. If you can go into it consciously, it is the deepest spiritual act possible. But the deepest is bound to be virtually impossible. So use either breath or sex.

Mahavir has used hunger. That again is a very deep thing. Hunger is not just hunger for your taste or for something else - it is for your very survival. Mahavir used hunger, fasting, as a method of awareness. It is not an austerity. Mahavir was not an ascetic. People have misunderstood him completely. He was not an ascetic at all. No wise man ever is. But he was using fasting, hunger, as a vehicle for awareness.

You might have stumbled upon the fact that when your stomach is full, you begin to feel sleepy, you begin to feel unconscious. You want to go to sleep. But when you are hungry, fasting, you cannot sleep. Even in the night you will turn this way and that. You cannot sleep on a fast. Why can't you sleep? Because it is dangerous to life. Now sleep is a secondary need. The first need is food, to get food. That is the first need. Sleep is not a problem now.

But Mahavir used it in a very, very scientific way. Because you cannot fall asleep when you are fasting, you can remember things more easily. Consciousness comes to you more easily. And Mahavir used this very hunger as an object of consciousness. He would stand continuously. You might have seen Buddha's statue sitting, but Mahavir's statues are, more or less, standing. He was always standing. You can feel your hunger more when you are standing. If you are sitting you will feel it less; if you are lying you will feel it still less. When you are standing, the whole body begins to be hungry. You feel the hunger all over the body. The whole body flows; it becomes one river of hunger. From head to foot you are hungry. It is not only the stomach: the feet feel it, even the whole body feels the hunger. And Mahavir would stand silently watching, moving with hunger just like one moves with breath. It is reported that in his twelve-year period of silence, he fasted more or less for eleven years. Only for three hundred and sixty days in twelve years did he take food. Hunger was the method.

Food and sex are two of the deepest things, just like breath. When you go on being conscious of your hunger, doing nothing but just being conscious, suddenly you are thrown to your center, to your being. First hunger moves from the surface. If you do not feed the surface, the deeper layers become hungry. If you do not feed these deeper layers, then still deeper layers become hungry. And it goes on and on and on; ultimately the whole body begins to be hungry. When the whole body is hungry, you are thrown to the center.

When you feel hunger, that is a false hunger. Really, that is more or less a habit, not hunger. If you take your lunch at a particular time, say at one o'clock, then at one o'clock you begin to feel your hunger. This is a false hunger, not connected with the body at all. If you do not take food at one o'clock, then at two o'clock you will feel that the hunger has disappeared. If it was natural, it would have grown more. Why should it disappear? If it was real, then you would feel it more at two and more at three and more at four. But it has disappeared. It was just a habit, a very superficial habit.

If a well-fed man fasts for three weeks, then only can he come to a real hunger. Then, for the first time, he will know what real hunger is. Just now you can never feel that hunger is as forceful as sex. It is more forceful, but only the real hunger. So it happens, when you are on a fast, that your sex desire will die, because now a more foundational thing is at stake.

Food is for your own survival, sex is for the survival of your race. It is a distant phenomenon, not related with you. Sex is food for the race, not for you. You will die, but through sex humanity can live. So it is not really your problem; it is a race-based problem. You can even leave it, but you cannot leave food because that is your problem. It is concerned with you. So if you go on a fast, by and by sex will disappear; it will become more and more distant.

Because of this, many people are just fooling themselves. They think that if they take less food, they have become celibate, brahmacharins. They have not. The problem has only been shifted. Give the proper food, and sex desire will come back - more forcibly, more fresh, more young.

If you fast for even more than three weeks, then your whole body hungers. Each cell, every cell of your body, begins to feel the hunger. Then, for the first time, you are hungry, your stomach is hungry, your whole body is hungry. You are surrounded by a deep fire of hunger. Mahavir used this as a method for being aware; so he would be hungry - fasting and aware.

A man can live without food for three months - a healthy man, of course. A normally healthy man can live for three months without food - for three months! If you go on fasting for three months, then, suddenly one day, you will be just on the verge of death. This is a conscious encounter with death, and that encounter comes only when you are on the verge of leaving your body and jumping into your center, inside. Now the whole body is exhausted. It cannot continue. You are thrown back to your source and you cannot live in the body. By and by you are thrown from the body - inside, inside, inside.

Food takes you outside, fasting takes you inside. A moment comes when the body cannot carry you any further; then you are thrown to your center. In that moment the inner sun is released.

So Mahavir would fast for three months - even for four months. He was extraordinarily healthy. And then, suddenly, he would go to the village to beg for food. It is yet a secret why suddenly, after three or four months, he would go to the village to beg for food. Really, whenever he came on the verge where even a single moment could prove fatal, only then would he go to beg for food. He would again enter the body and then again he would fast, then again go to the center; again enter the body, again go to the center.

Then he could feel the passage: just breath coming in, breath going out; life coming into the body, life going out of the body. And he would be aware of this process. He would take food and he would be aware of this process. He would take food and he would be back into the body, so to speak, and then he would fast again. This he was doing continuously for twelve years. This was an inner process.

So I discussed three things: breath, sex and hunger - very basic, foundational things. Be conscious in any. Breath is the easiest. It will be difficult to use the Tantra method. The mind would like to use it, but it will be difficult. It will be difficult to use the hunger method. The mind would not like it. These two are very difficult. Whether you like them or not, they are difficult. Only the breath process is simple. And for the coming age, I think Buddha's method will be very helpful. It is moderate, easy, not very dangerous.

That is why Buddha is known always as the originator of the middle path - MAJJHIM-NIKAYA - the golden mean. Sex and food are between these two. Breath is the golden mean, the exact middle.

And there are many more methods. With any method you can be established in that inner light. And once you are established, your light begins to flow to your body cells. Then your whole mechanism is refreshed and you have a Buddha-body - an Enlightened One's body.

 

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