Animus and Anima

Consciousness is your treasure, and all the methods that have been invented, devised, down the centuries are nothing but ways to create more consciousness in you, to create more fire in you, to make your life a passionate affair, a flame. People are living dull lives, people are living absent- mindedly, people are living inattentively. How can you live with so much inattention around you?

Inattention is darkness, attention is light. And this treatise will teach you how to create more light in you, so that one day... the Golden Flower.

Two psychiatrists met on the street. 'You are feeling fine,' said one. 'How am I doing?'

People are asking each other. Nobody knows how they, themselves, are doing, they are looking into each other's eyes, gathering information about themselves from others. That's why the opinion of others has become so important. If somebody says you are a fool, you become angry. Why? Or you become sad. Why? You are shattered. You were thinking you are a wise man, because others had told you that you are wise. It was the opinion of others that you depended on. Now somebody else says you are a fool. He can easily shatter your wisdom, very easily. He has thrown a stone and you had made a palace with playing cards. Now all is shattered. That's why one becomes so angry, so enraged, so violent, and one becomes so worried, anxious.

You are continuously looking for what others are thinking, because you know only that which others think about you, you don't know anything about yourself. Now what kind of situation is this? If I cannot know about myself, who else can know about me? From the outside nobody can watch me, I am not available that way. From the outside only my body can be watched. From the inside only I can know my consciousness.

Even when you stand before a mirror you see only your body, you cannot see your consciousness in the mirror. Even you cannot see it in the mirror - your own consciousness. You have to see it directly. It is never mirrored, it is never reflected in anything; it is invisible. You have to close your eyes and be it. And that is the only way of knowing it.

But people live so unconsciously. They simply live by the opinion of others. What others say becomes their soul. Others can take it away any moment. People remain beggars.

Have you known anything about yourself directly? Have you ever encountered yourself directly without bringing the opinion of others into it? If you have not done it, you have not yet lived. Life starts only by encountering oneself, by seeing oneself directly, immediately. Life exists only when you are capable of seeing yourself as you are, not as others think about you. What can they think about you? What can they say about you? They can watch your behaviour, they cannot watch you.

If you want to watch yourself, only you can do that, nobody else. It cannot be done by servants. It cannot be delegated to somebody else. It cannot be done by the experts either. But we are so much interested in others' opinions because we are absolutely absent - there is nobody awake inside. Deeply asleep, we are snoring inside.

The absent-minded professor went in for a haircut. He sat down in the barber's chair, but didn't remove his hat.

'I'm afraid you will have to take off your hat,' said the barber.

'Oh, I'm sorry!' said the professor, 'I didn't know there were ladies present.'

Watch your own absent-mindedness. Watching it will create attentiveness in you. Watch what is happening within you: thoughts passing, memories arising, a cloud of anger, a dark night of sadness, or a beautiful morning of joy. Watch all that passes in you. Become more and more watchful. Slowly slowly you will become an integrated watchfulness. And the method taught by THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER is how to become integrated in your inner light.

This is the story of this book before we enter into the sutras.

The book comes from an esoteric circle in China. The founder of this esoteric circle is said to have been the well-known Taoist adept, Lu Yen. Where did Lu Yen get this secret teaching? He himself attributes it to Master Kuan Yiu-hsi, for whom, according to tradition, Lao Tzu wrote down his TAO TE CHING.

Lao Tzu never wrote a single word in his whole life. He declined again and again the invitation to write anything. He conveyed to his disciples what he had come to know, but he was not ready to write, because he said, 'The Tao which can be said is not the true Tao.' The Tao which can be expressed is already falsified. It can be learned only in intimate contact with the Master. There is no other way of communicating it. It can only be learned in a deep communion where the disciple and the Master meet, where the disciple holds nothing back, where the disciple and the Master overlap, where their consciousnesses merge into each other. Only in such a meeting, communion, can Tao be conveyed. So he refused again and again.

He lived a long life. But when he was going to die he left China on a water buffalo. Why on a water buffalo? His whole teach-ing had been the teaching of the watercourse way. He said: One should be like water - flowing, fluid, fresh, always moving towards the ocean. And one should be like water - soft, femi-nine, receptive, loving, non-violent. One should not be like a rock. The rock appears to be very strong but is not, and water appears to be very weak but is not.

Never be deceived by appearances. Finally the water wins over the rock and the rock is destroyed and becomes sand and is taken to the sea. The rock disappears finally - against the soft water.

The rock is masculine; it is the male mind, the aggressive mind. Water is feminine, soft, loving, not aggressive at all. But the non-aggressive wins. The water is always ready to surrender, but through surrender it conquers - that is the way of the woman. The woman always surrenders and conquers through it. And the man wants to conquer and the ultimate result is just a surrender and nothing else. Hence, he chose a water buffalo when he left the country.

Where was he going? He was going to the Himalayas to die into that eternal beauty. A real man knows how to live and how to die. A real man lives totally, dies totally. A real man lives in benediction and dies in benediction. He was going into absolute aloneness in the Himalayas. But he was caught on the border. And the man who caught him on the border was Master Kuan Yiu-hsi. He was a guard at the last post of the Chinese border. Lao Tzu had to pass that post; there was no other way to get out of the country.

And Kuan Yiu-hsi persuaded him: 'You are going to die, you are leaving the country forever, and soon you will be leaving the body. Please write just a few words. And I won't allow you to get out of the land if you don't write them. This price you have to pay.'

And Lao Tzu had to sit in Kuan Yiu-hsi's hut for three days, and there he wrote the TAO TE CHING.

The tradition of THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER is said to have originated with Lu Yen. Lu Yen himself attributes it to Master Kuan Yiu-hsi for whom, according to tradition, Lao Tzu wrote down his TAO TE CHING. Kuan means 'the Han-ku pass', hence he is called Master Kuan, that is 'Master of the Han-ku pass.' And he must have been a great adept, otherwise it would have been impossible to persuade Lao Tzu to write. His whole life he had declined - he could not decline the invitation of this man. This man must have had something that it was impos-sible even for Lao Tzu to say no to.

This is how the tradition of THE GOLDEN FLOWER is connected with Lao Tzu.

But it didn't start with Lao Tzu. Lao Tzu himself says that whatsoever he is saying has been said before, again and again, down the centuries. He is not bringing a new truth in the world but only a new expression. It is always so. Truth is the same, only expressions differ. What Lao Tzu said is the same as what Krishna had said before him. What Krishna said is the same as what Buddha said later on. What Buddha has said is the same as Mohammed, as Jesus, as Zarathustra have said although their expressions are so different that you will need great intel-ligence to see to the very core. The structure is different, the language is different, their ways of saying it are different; naturally, because they are different persons, different indi-viduals, with their own uniqueness. But truth is neither new nor old; and wherever truth is, it is eternal.

The book, THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER, is one of the eternal sources where one can again become alive, one can again find the door to the divine.

 

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