To Be One Again

Now the sutras.

In each being there is anima. 'Anima' means the feminine principle, the passive principle, the inactive principle, the woman, yin... IT IS THE SUBSTANCE OF CONSCIOUSNESS. It is not consciousness itself but the substance. Without it consciousness cannot exist. It is the very matter, it is the house in which consciousness lives. Without it, consciousness cannot live. The woman... and remember by 'woman' I don't mean just woman, I mean the 'woman principle'. And you have to remember that continuously, otherwise you will start feeling that these Taoist people seem to be against woman.

They are not. They are not saying anything against or for, they are simply describing. And they are not saying anything for man or for woman, they are talking about the principles of womanhood and manhood.

That's why women remain too much attached to their bodies - because of the feminine principle.

Man is not so attached to his body, he is really careless about the body. If there is no woman around, the man becomes dirty, dusty. The room becomes unclean, as if he is not aware of all this. You can see whenever you enter a room whether the man lives alone or if there is a woman in the house. It is so simple. You can see whether the man is a bachelor, or not, just by seeing his room. The books have collected dust for months. He is not careful about the body, the material part of himself. But the woman is very careful, immensely careful, hence she stands so long before the mirror.

One day Mulla Nasrudin was catching flies. He caught a few, and he told his wife, 'I have found two female flies and two male flies.'

His wife said, 'This is surprising. How could you discover the sex of the flies?'

He said, 'Two were sitting on the mirror and two were reading the newspaper!'

It is very simple. The woman is immensely tethered to the body, to the substance, to the house. If man had been left alone, at the most there would have been tents but not houses. It is woman who has created the whole civilization, because without houses there would be no civilization, remember.

Without houses there would be no cities, and civilization grows in cities. The very word 'civilization' comes from 'citizens', the people who live in the cities. Woman has created the whole civilization. Man would have remained a vagabond, a wanderer, a traveller, a hunter. He would have continued to rush from one place to another. You can see it in many ways. There are many manifestations of it.

The West is more male-oriented, hence you see so many Western tourists moving around the world. You don't see so many Eastern tourists. The East is very feminine.

The woman remains attached to property: the house, the car, the land, her ornaments, her clothes. This is because of the principle inside. She is the substance of consciousness. And remember, without a woman the spirit cannot soar high. Great poetry is born through man, but the cause is always the woman.

You don't come across great women poets. I have looked into the poetry that women write. They try hard, but nothing much happens. Madhuri writes great poetry, but it is not really poetry, Woman cannot write poetry; she can inspire poetry, that is true, and no great poetry arrives in the world without a woman somewhere in the background. She inspires: her presence, her love, her caring creates it. She need not write it, the man will write it. But she is the inspiration, the cause, a very subtle cause. No women are great painters; not that they don't paint - particularly in the modern age they do everything that man has always been doing...

There is a great competition. They think they have to do all the things that man has been doing. They think it is because of these things that man has become important. The logic is fallacious. They will only become imitation men, they will lose their own soul, and they will always remain second-hand. In the world of men, to compete with men, they will remain secondary. They will never be primary.

That is not the way to compete. If you become like a man, you will never be as competent as a man - how can you be? his male principle is behind him. You will become ugly, you will become rough, you will lose all softness. That's why the Lib-movement has been one of the most disastrous things that has happened to women. And the reason is not that their ideology is wrong, its implementation is wrong.

Woman is equal to man, but she is not the same as man, and she should not be. She should follow her own nature, she should listen to her own soul. She has a different vibe, she has a different function to fulfil in the world, a different destiny. If she follows man and imitates, she is lost. And the more she is lost, the more she will become uprooted from her being. The more she becomes false, plastic, synthetic, the more desperate she will be. That's why the Lib-women are very angry, constantly in a rage. The rage is that they are feeling frustrated. They are not as they want to be, they cannot be - it is against nature; there is no need either.

IN THE BODY IS THE ANIMA. THE ANIMA IS FEMININE, the yin principle, IT IS THE SUBSTANCE OF CONSCIOUSNESS.

Meditate over the words 'substance of consciousness': the very foundation of consciousness. It is not consciousness itself but the house where consciousness lives.

Animus is the male principle, yang.

The feminine principle lives in the body, it is very material. That's why women are always materialistic. Their considerations are very practical, they are very pragmatic.

Mulla Nasrudin was saying to me one day that he never quarrels with his wife.

I asked him, 'How do you manage it? It is almost impossible, or next to impossible.'

He said, 'We have managed it perfectly well for many years. On the first night we decided a single principle, and we have followed it. And the principle is: she decides about small things and I decide about big things.'

I asked, 'What do you mean by small things and big things?' He said, 'For example, what car to purchase, what house to live in, what school the children have to be sent to, what food has to be eaten, what clothes have to be purchased - all these small things she decides.'

And I said, 'What do you decide?'

He said, 'Whether God exists or not, whether there is a hell and heaven or not. All the great problems - that is for me. And the principle has worked out perfectly well. She never interferes in the great things, I never interfere in the small things. I am master of my own world, she is master of her own world. We never overlap.'

The feminine principle is rooted in matter, rooted in the body. But man dreams.

Man is a dreamer. The male principle is the principle of dreaming. No woman can understand why people are so interested in going to the moon. It looks so foolish. For what? What are you going to get there - some shopping? Better to go to MG Road than go to the moon. What will you be doing there? For what? And risking your life? No woman can understand why man wants to climb Everest.

What are you going to get there? It looks so ridiculous. And all women deep inside know that all men are childish. 'Let them play, let them go and do their things.' She knows perfectly well that they are interested in foolish things: the football match, cricket - all nonsense, it makes no sense. You throw the ball on that side and they throw the ball to your side, and this goes on and on. What is the point of it?

The woman is practical, down-to-earth. She is earthly. The male principle is like the sky, and the female principle is like the earth. Man dreams, plans, desires, longs for unknown things. Man is an adventurer, ready to risk his life for any dream that takes possession of him.

The man lives in the eyes and the woman lives in the ears, hence the desire in women to gossip. Such immense joy in gossiping... Just look at two women gossiping - they look as if they are in such ecstasy.

I have heard...

Once there was a competition in China, a competition to decide who was the greatest liar in the country. And many people came and told many lies, but the man who won the prize was the man who said, 'I saw two women in a park sitting silently on one bench for half an hour.'

He won the first prize. It is impossible!

Because of the woman, the fall, the original sin happened. The snake must have tried on Adam first. But Adam is not the ears, he is the eyes; he must have seen the tricky snake, and he must have said, 'Keep to yourself. Don't bother me. I have my own dreams.' But the snake persuaded Eve. He must have gossiped with her. This was gossip: 'What are you doing? And here is the Tree of Knowledge. God has deceived you. If you eat the fruit of this tree you will become as immortal as God. If you eat the fruit of this tree you will know all that God knows. You will be omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent.'

The woman naturally became curious - such a practical thing. The snake persuaded her. The snake was the first salesman. Salesmen don't go to men. They only knock on the door when the man has gone to the office. The woman has to be persuaded. Only the woman has ears.

The ears are the passive part of your being, the receptive part. Something can enter through the ears. The eyes are the aggressive part. You cannot be aggressive with the ears, remember. But with the eyes you can be aggressive. You can look in such a way at a person as if your eyes were daggers. You can offend people with your eyes or you can love people with your eyes. You can reach people with your eyes or you can become unreachable. Somebody can look into your eyes so vacantly that he becomes unreachable. Somebody can look into you so absently that he is unreachable. Or somebody can look with such desire, such passion, such longing, such caring, that his eyes almost start caressing your body. The eyes are the aggressive parts. They can project, they can reach.

In India, the person who stares at women offensively is called LUCHCHA. And you will be surprised:

the word LUCHCHA comes from LOCHAN. LOCHAN means eyes. He is undressing with his eyes; his eyes can almost become his genital organs. Eyes are dangerous.

Ears are very innocent. They only take in. They are feminine.

But whenever you are in a withdrawn mood, in a mood of passivity, then you are chained to the body, and you are chained by the anima. It does not matter whether you are man or woman. If a woman is using her eyes and is trying to see rather than trying to listen, she becomes animus. If a man is trying to listen, he becomes anima. A disciple becomes anima - has to become, because a disciple needs to become all ears and nothing else.

The Master is all eyes, and the disciple is all ears. The Master has to see and has to see the deepest in you. He has to penetrate your very core. And the disciple has to listen, to be attentive, to be available, to allow the Master to reach the very innermost core of his being.

The disciple becomes feminine. That's why women are the best disciples in the world. Man finds a little difficulty in becoming a disciple. Even if he becomes, he becomes a disciple reluctantly. He resists, he fights, he doubts, he creates many many ways to somehow escape. If he cannot, then helplessly he relaxes - but helplessly. The woman jumps joyously. The greatest disciples have been women, and the proportion has always remained the same. If there are five disciples one will be a man, four will be women; that has been the proportion. It was so with Mahavir, it was so with Buddha, it is so with me. It has always been so.

Man thinks women are starry-eyed, hypnotically available, suggestible. These are a man's condemnations. He thinks that he himself cannot be hypnotized. Women are very very ready to be hypnotized, he thinks.

In a way he is right and in a way he is wrong too. If the woman comes to the snake, she will be converted by the snake. If the woman comes to a Buddha she will be converted by a Buddha. Yes, she is suggestible. It all depends to whom she comes. If a man listens to the snake, he will not be converted; he will be saved from the snake. But if he comes to listen to Buddha, he will not be converted there, either. Now he has missed his salvation.

The light has to circulate in the eyes. The eyes are the most lighted part of your being. Taoists say your eyes are parallel to the sun. If you don't have eyes you cannot see light, and only the similar can see the similar. Your eyes are condensed light, that's why you can see light through the eyes.

Your ears are condensed sound, that's why you can hear through the ears.

The anima in everybody, whether man or woman, has to be subjugated. Why? - because it is the form, it is the body, it is matter. The spirit has to be the master, the spirit has to rise above the body.

The spirit has to make the body follow it, not vice versa. So whether one is a man or a woman doesn't matter. The anima inside has to be made a follower of the animus because only the animus can search and seek, and if the woman is coming behind, the animus can go perfectly deeply into reality. If the poet knows that the woman is behind him, supporting him, his poetry can soar very high. If the man knows that the woman is always with him, he has great strength; he can go on any adventure. The moment he feels that the woman is not with him, his energy is out. Now he has only dreams; but they are impotent - they have no more energy, they cannot be realized.

The realizing factor is the woman. The dreaming factor is the man.

In the search for God, or truth, the man has to lead and the woman has to follow. Inside you the animus has to become the master, and the anima has to become the disciple - and, remember again, irrespective of whether you are man or woman.

Woman is stagnant. Man is dynamic. That's why you see women looking so restful and men looking so restless. Even when you were a child, just a small child, a baby, the difference was there. The boy baby is very restless, is trying to grab this, grab that, trying to reach somewhere; he is a nuisance.

And the girl baby is never a nuisance; she sits silently hugging her doll. She is also a doll. A tremendous restfulness... The principle of rest is woman and the principle of restlessness is man, hence the roundness and the beauty of woman and the constant feverish state of man.

But to grow you will need the restless principle in you, because growth means change. The woman is basically orthodox, the man is basically unconventional. The woman always supports the status quo, and the man is already ready to go for any stupid revolution. Anything changing, and he is for it. Whether it is changing for good or bad, that is not such an important thing - 'Change is good.'

The woman is always for the old, the established - whether it is good or bad is not the question - 'Because it has always been so, so it has to be so.'

Growth needs the principle of stasis in you to melt. The woman in you is frozen; it has to be melted so you can become a river. But the river also needs the support of the banks - which are static, remember. If the river has no banks it will never reach the ocean. And if the river is frozen it will never reach the ocean. So the river has to melt, become water, and still has to take the support of the banks, which are static. The perfect man is one who has used his dynamism as the river and who has used his stasis as the banks. This is the perfect balance. Then you have used your animus to grow, and you have used your anima to make your growth an established fact, not just a momentary phenomenon.

But ordinarily, men, women - everybody has become static. Even men are so orthodox. Christians, Hindus, Mohammedans, Jainas - even men are so orthodox. They have fallen victim to their anima, their animus has been subjugated. It has to be released.

That's my whole effort here: to release your animus from the grip of the anima. Once the animus is released from the grip of your anima, then we can use the anima too; but not before. Hence my insistence on dynamic methods of meditation. Only once in a while do I suggest that people go to Zazen, Vipassana - only when I see that their animus is flowing. Now they can use their anima.

Vipassana, Zazen are anima methods, feminine methods. Sufi dancing, Dynamic Meditation, Nataraj, they are animus methods. First you have to become a river, only then can your banks be used as supports.

The holy fruit is neither male nor female. The holy fruit matures only in wholeness. When your anima and animus are supporting each other like the two wings of a bird, then eros is released, logos is released, intuition is released. Then you start flying into the sky and yet you remain rooted in the earth.

For a tree to go high in the sky it will need deep roots in the earth. The earth is anima, the sky is animus. And the higher the tree goes into the sky, the deeper it has to go into the earth - in the same proportion.

God is one, but when he becomes creative, he divides himself into two: animus and anima. Without it there is no possibility of manifestation. Without it there will be no dialectics. God divides himself into thesis and antithesis, because only through thesis and antithesis - the challenge, the conflict, the struggle. And through the struggle, the friction, energy is created.

It is just like when you strike two stones and fire comes up. It is just like when you clap two hands and sound is created. Zen Masters say, 'Find the sound of one hand clapping.' What do they mean?

They mean go beyond the two so you can find the One. But that One is the unmanifest God. That One is the very source from which we have come. And we can reach the source only when our two-ness has disappeared.

Now this two-ness has to be used in such a way that the thesis and antithesis become synthesis.

That is the whole art of life, and that's what I am teaching you. My sannyasin has to be a synthesis of man and woman, of day and night, of world and renunciation, of matter and spirit, of earth and sky.

Hence the mystery of the woman. No man has ever been able to unravel the mystery. Only if one has gone beyond both, only if one has become a Buddha can one know the mystery of both man and woman. Otherwise no man has ever been able to plumb the depths of a woman; the woman remains mysterious, dark, a dark night. You cannot see clearly - you can at most grope. You can never be logically clear about the woman. She never follows logic, her path is very zig-zag. She jumps to conclusions directly without ever going through the process. The man goes step by step through the process; he is methodical.

The woman is a poet in the sense that she is intuitive. She may not create poetry - she is a poet without creating any poetry. Her life is her poetry. And it is as dark as poetry: mysterious, vague, ambiguous. Nothing is clear, nothing can ever be clear: the woman cannot be demystified. She remains always a question mark.

Man is clear like light. Hence man looks shallow, woman looks deep. Hence man seems to be completely on the surface. You can know about him; if you know about him you can predict him. But you can never predict a woman; she remains unpredictable, hence the darkness. These are metaphors.

And the woman, the principle of the feminine, keeps you tethered to the earth; it is gravitation.

The woman is more like death. Don't feel offended, this is just a description. If the words 'anima' and 'animus', 'man' and 'woman' create some trouble in you, you can replace them with x and Y.

But that is what THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER is doing. These are just metaphors. To make them anthropomorphic helps them to be understood more clearly.

Man is interested in life, woman is interested in security. Man is interested in love, woman is interested in safety. Man is interested in adventure, woman is interested in comfort, convenience.

Woman is death. By 'death' there is no condemnation meant or supposed, just that the quality of death is security. You are secure only when you are dead. You are secure only when you are not, then nothing can happen to you anymore.

But man wants to seek and search, to risk. That's why the husband goes on looking for other women, and the woman goes on watching the husband. She cannot conceive why he is still interested in other women - 'I am here!' But the male principle is always interested in something new, in the sensational, the new thrill. And sometimes it happens that his own wife may be a beauty, and he may start fooling around with an ugly woman. Nobody can see the point of it - what is happening.

'You have such a beautiful woman, and what are you doing?'

But you don't understand the male principle. The male principle is basically polygamous, and the feminine is monogamous. She wants to settle. She is more interested in marriage than in love. She is interested in love only to get married. And man gets married only because he is interested in love.

There is an ancient saying that the world would be immensely joyful if every man remained unmarried and every woman was married. But how can it be done? It is impossible.

But the alchemy consists in understanding these two principles in each of you, man or woman; and in transforming the anima, the dark part in you, into the light part; in helping the dark part to move, in helping the dark part help the light part and not to fight with it.

If your anima can help your animus that is real marriage, the inner marriage. Then you start becoming integrated, then your light is no more shallow, it has the depth of darkness. And your darkness is no more dark, it has the light of lightness. Then anima and animus melt into each other.

And when they melt utterly, the world has disappeared, you are again one. And to be one is to know God. To remain two is to remain in the world. And the secret, the experiment, has to happen within you, it has nothing to do with the outside world.

Inside you these two principles are constantly in fight. Call them life/death, darkness/light, man/woman, x/z - whatsoever you will - but these two principles are there, continuously in fight.

And that is your anguish, your misery, your hell. Let them become friends. Let your energy circulate in them, not against each other, let them come closer to each other. Let there be an inner ogasm, an inner intercourse between the woman and the man. That's what in Tantra is called YUGA-NADDHA, the meeting of the man and woman within you. That is real Tantra. The meeting of the man and woman on the outside is just an introduction.

Sudha leads the Tantra Group. That is just an introduction. The real Tantra has yet to begin. She is just preparing you. The real Tantra Group will soon start when I see that now you are ready to go in and meet THERE with your inner woman and inner man. When I see your outer interest is no longer so strong as to keep you out, is no longer so binding on you - the chain is broken - then the real Tantra Group will start. I am waiting for the new commune to happen, because the new Tantra Group will need a totally different kind of climate, a totally different kind of atmosphere. This is the greatest experiment that a man can go through. And this experiment releases in you cosmic ecstasy, total 0rgasm.

 

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