Animus and Anima_

The sutras:

Master Lu-tsu said:

The word 'Tao' essentially means 'the Way'. Nothing can be said about the goal. The goal remains elusive, inexpressible, ineffable. But something can be said about the Way. Hence, Taoists have never used the word 'God', 'truth', NIRVANA, no; they simply use the word 'Way'. Buddha says, 'Buddhas can only show you the Way. If you follow the path, you will reach to the truth.' Truth will have to be your own experience. Nobody can define the truth, but the Way can be defined; the Way can be made clear. The Master cannot give you the truth, but the Master can give you the Way. And once the Way is there then all that is needed is to walk on it. That has to be done by the disciple.

I cannot walk for you, and I cannot eat for you. I cannot live for you, and I cannot die for you. These things have to be done by oneself. But I can show the Way, I have walked on the Way.

Tao simply means 'the Way'.

And the definition is beautiful.

Lu-tsu says, 'That which exists by itself, that which needs nobody else's support, that which has always existed whether you walk on it or not...' Whether anybody walks on it or not does not matter, it always exists. In fact, the whole existence follows it unknowingly. If you can follow it knowingly your life will become a great blessing. If you follow it unknowingly, then you will go on stumbling, then you cannot enjoy it as it should be enjoyed.

A man can be brought into the garden, and he may be unconscious. He may be drunk or he may be in a coma or under the impact of chloroform. He can be brought into the garden. He is unconscious.

The songs of the birds will be heard by his ears, but he will not know. And the fragrance of the flowers will come riding on the breeze to his nostrils, but he will not know. And the sun will shine on him and will shower light on him, but he will not know. And the breeze will caress him, but he will not know. And you can put him under the shade of a big tree and the coolness of it, but he will not know. That's how man is.

We are in Tao, because where else can we be? To live, is to be on the Way. To live, is to live in God. To breathe, is to breathe in God. Where else can we be? But just as the fish lives in the ocean and is completely oblivious of the ocean, we are living in Tao and are completely oblivious of Tao. In fact, it is so obvious, that's why we are so oblivious. The fish knows the ocean so well... the fish is born in it, the fish has never been out of it, the fish takes it for granted, hence the fish is not aware of it.

We are on the Way, we are in God, we live in Tao, through Tao, but we are not aware of it. The Tao exists, because without the Tao trees will not grow, and stars will not move, and the blood will not circulate, and the breath will not come in. Life will disappear.

Life is possible only if there is a fundamental law holding it. Life is possible only if there is something that supports it. Look at the immense order in existence. It is not a chaos, it is a cosmos. What makes it a cosmos? Why is there so much harmony? There must be a law that keeps the harmony going, flowing, keeps everything in accord. But we don't know about it. We don't know anything about our own being, and we are joined through our being with Tao.

It is the ocean of life that surrounds us. It is within and without - the pure essence. It is existence, it is the primal spirit. No name can contain it. All names are its name, and no shape is particular to it because all shapes are Tao's shape. Tao exists in millions of forms. In the tree it is green, in the flower it is red. In man it is man, in fish it is fish. It is the same law. You can replace the word 'Tao' with 'God' and it will be the same. What Christians and Mohammedans call God, Taoists call Tao, Buddhists call it Dharma, Jews used to call it Logos, but they mean the same thing. No name can contain it, or, it can be expressed by any name.

You can see the form, you can see the body - the body is the form, the substance that surrounds the essence - but you cannot see the essence. The essence is invisible to the eyes, unapproach-able by the senses. It has to be felt immediately, not through any media.

You see my body, I see your body - it is through a medium. My eyes are telling me you are here.

Your eyes are telling you that I am here. But who knows? the eyes may be deceiving - they do deceive sometimes. In the night, in the dark, you see a rope as if it were a snake. And when you see it as a snake it affects you as a snake. You are afraid, you start running. Or you can see in the desert an oasis which is not there, which is only a projected phenomenon because you are so thirsty that you want it to be there, so you create it there. Eyes deceive many times. So who knows?

If truth is known through a medium then it will always remain suspect, doubtful; it can't have any certainty - absolute certainty it can't have. And a truth which is not absolutely certain is not truth at all. The truth has to be absolutely certain; it cannot be approximately certain. Then there is only one way: it should be known without a medium. One should know it directly, immediately. One should know it without any senses. And that's how it is known.

You cannot see life, but you can feel it. It is a subjective experience, not an object.

You have these two eyes. These two eyes for the Taoist are very significant. Only modern science has been able to see the truth of it. These two eyes are not only the visible eyes. These two eyes represent the male and the female in you. Now modern science says that the brain of man is divided into two hemispheres, and one hemisphere is male, the other is female. The right side of your mind is feminine, and the left side is masculine. So your one eye represents the male in you, and your other eye represents the female in you. And when your male and female meet inside you, that meeting is what is called 'heaven' - that meeting, that inner communion of your male and female.

Jesus says, 'When your two eyes become one there will be light.' He is talking like a Taoist alchemist.

When your two eyes become one, there will be light. When your two eyes become one - when your male and female disappear into each other - that is the ultimate ogasmic experience. What you feel making love to a woman or to a man is only a glimpse of it, a very fleeting glimpse. It is so momentary that by the time you become aware of it, it is already gone. You become aware of it only in the past, it is so fleeting. But it is a glimpse, a glimpse of the meeting of the man and the woman.

This is an exterior meeting. It is a miracle that it happens even for a single moment, but there is a deep possibility. And that has been the work of Tantra, Tao, Yoga, and all the great secret teachings of the world: to help you become aware of your feminine and your masculine inside - what TANTRIKAS call Shiva and Shakti, and what Taoists call 'yin' and 'yang'. The polarity, the positive and negative in you, the day and night in you - they have to meet there.

But unless they become one you will not become aware of it. IT IS CONTAINED IN THE TWO EYES. But you cannot see it unless they become one, then it is released. Then there is a great explosion of light. Zarathustra calls it 'explosion of fire'. Lao Tzu calls it 'explosion of light'. It is the same.

You must have come across the statement of John the Baptist. He used to say to his disciples, 'I baptize you with water. After me shall come one who will baptize you with fire.' That's what he meant when he said, 'After me there will come one who will baptize you with fire.'

The baptism of water is an outer baptism. To John the Baptist water represents the outward flow.

Remember this: that the outward and the downward are synonymous, and the upward and the inward are synonymous. Whatsoever goes downward also goes outward, and whatsoever goes upward also goes inward, and vice versa. Water always goes downward, hence it represents an outward flow. It goes away from itself. Its journey is an exterior journey. Fire goes upward, always upward. And upward is synonymous with the inward. Its journey is always interior.

John the Baptist is saying: I am baptizing you with water, I am giving you the outer body of the religion. After me will come Christ who will give you the inner baptism, the baptism Of fire.

Jesus himself again and again says, 'Repent. Repent ye.' And the word has fallen into a wrong interpretation with the Christians. They have made it 'repentance for misdeeds'. It has nothing to do with misdeeds. The word 'repent' actually means: return, go in, go back. It means: turn back... restore your-originality. The word 'repent' means metanoia, turning back - a one-hundred- and-eighty-degree turn. If you go on flowing outwards you remain water. If you turn in you become fire.

And when the two eyes, when these two flames, when these two hemispheres of your consciousness join together, are absolutely bridged and you become one flame, that one flame is what Plotinus calls 'the flight of the alone to the alone'.

And if you can become that One, you have become the great One. This is the Taoist way of saying something about God without using the word 'God'. If you become one, you have become God.

 

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