Animus and Anima at The Turiya Files

THE SECRET OF THE MAGIC OF LIFE CONSISTS IN USING ACTION IN ORDER TO ATTAIN NON-ACTION.

These are potential words. What is the secret of making these two eyes one? How to make the male and the female one in you? How to let your woman and man dissolve into each other so that you are no more a duality, so that you are no more a house divided against itself, so that there is no longer any conflict and tension, so that all is one? In that oneness is bliss because all tension disappears, all conflict disappears, all anxiety disappears. How to become that One?

THE SECRET OF THE MAGIC OF LIFE CONSISTS IN USING ACTION IN ORDER TO ATTAIN NON-ACTION.

Man represents action, woman represents non-action. You have to use action to attain non-action.

You have to make effort to become effortless. You have to go and put in all your energies, you have to become so active that nothing is left behind. All energy becomes involved into that creativity, and then, suddenly, when all energy is involved, there happens a transformation. Just as at a hundred degrees water evaporates, action, when it becomes total, evaporates, and non-action is left behind.

First you have to learn how to dance, and you have to put all your energies into dancing. And one day that strange experience happens when suddenly the dancer disappears in the dance, and the dance happens without any effort. Then it is inaction. first you have to learn action to go into inaction. That's what meditation is all about.

People come and ask me why I teach active meditations - because that is the only way to find inaction. Dance to the uttermost, dance in a frenzy, dance madly, and if your whole energy is involved in it, a moment comes when suddenly you see the dance is happening on its own - there is no effort in it. It is action without action.

THE GOLDEN FLOWER IS THE LIGHT. ONE USES THE GOLDEN FLOWER AS A SYMBOL. THE PHRASE 'THE LEAD OF THE WATER-REGION HAS BUT ONE TASTE' REFERS TO IT.

The Golden Flower is a symbol, the symbol of when your energies are no more dual and have become one. Great light is released, and the light is golden: it is as if a flower of golden light has opened in you. And it is not just a symbol - it is a symbol but it is almost literally true. It happens exactly like that. Right now you exist as a darkness, as a dark night. Then you exist as a sunrise.

You cannot see the sun anywhere but the light is there. There is no source to it - it is a sourceless light. But once you have known that golden light in you, you have become an immortal. Then there is no death because the light never dies.

The whole of life, the whole existence consists of nothing but light. All are forms of light. You can ask modern physics too, and modern physics is in perfect agreement with Tao that all is light; forms go on changing, but the light continues. Light is eternal.

Many scriptures of the world begin with the word 'light'. 'In the beginning... God said, Let there be light...' That is the beginning. If there was ever a beginning, it could not have been otherwise, it had to have been with light. But there has never been a beginning. This is just a parable. Light has existed always.

The Koran says God is light. One of the names of God given by the Sufis is NUR. NUR means light.

And the taste is the same - whether it happens in me or it happens in you the taste is the same. The taste of Buddhahood is the same. Buddha has said, 'The taste of Buddhahood is like the ocean. You can taste it from the north or from the south, or from this part or from that part, from the shore or from the middle, but the taste of the ocean is the same. So is the taste of Buddhahood.'

The moment a person attains to this eternal light, his life has a single flavour. That flavour is contained by absolute awareness. His unconscious has disappeared. There is no longer any dark part in his being.

Now if a Freudian looks into such a man, he will find only consciousness, ONLY consciousness; he will not find the unconscious. If a Freudian looks in you, only one part is conscious. Against this one part there are nine parts which are unconscious - only one-tenth of your mind is conscious. A Buddha is one hundred percent consciousness.

THE WORK ON THE CIRCULATION OF THE LIGHT DEPENDS ENTIRELY ON THE BACKWARD-FLOWING MOVEMENT, SO THAT THE THOUGHTS ARE GATHERED TOGETHER. THE HEAVENLY HEART LIES BETWEEN SUN AND MOON.

Again remember, the sun represents the male energy, the moon represents the feminine energy. And the heart lies between the two. The heart is neither male nor female. And that is the beauty of the heart: the heart is divine, neither male nor female. And it lies exactly between the two.

If you are leaning too much towards the male energy you are too active and you don't know how to be passive. That's what has happened in the West. The West is sun-oriented - too much activity. People are driving themselves mad with their activity. Too much speed - everything has to be done immediately, no patience - no waiting. They have forgotten how to be passive, how to be patient, how to wait for things. They have lost all capacity to be inactive. They don't know how to go on a holiday. Even if they go on a holiday they are more active than ever. More people have heart attacks on Sunday in the West than on any other day, because it is a holiday. And people are too occupied.

The whole working week they think they will rest when the holiday comes, and when the holiday comes, they have a thousand and one things to do. Not that they have to do them, that they are needed, no, not at all; but they cannot live in rest. They cannot just lie down on the lawn and be with the earth. They cannot just sit silently under a tree and do no-thing. No, they will start doing a thousand and one things around the house. They will fix this and unfix that, they will open their car engines and start doing things to it. They will do something. But they will remain active.

Their whole life people think that when they are retired then they will enjoy. But they cannot enjoy, they cannot rest. People die very fast once they become retired. Psychologists say they die ten years earlier because they don't know what else to do. Death seems the only way to get rid of a life which has become meaningless, which has always been meaningless, which has been just a rush.

People are rushing not knowing where they are going. All that they know is they have to go fast and faster and faster without ever being worried 'Where exactly are you going? You may be running in a circle.' That is exactly what is happening: people are running in a circle.

The East has become too passive, too fatalistic: 'Nothing has to be done. Simply wait, God will do it.' This is another kind of foolishness and stupidity. The East is poor, lazy, lousy, and people are not worried by anything. The misery all around, the poverty, the beggars, the illness - nobody is worried. Everything is accepted. 'What can you do? It is God's will. We have to accept. We have just to wait. When things get too much, God will come. What else can we do?' This is the feminine mind.

THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER says you have to be exactly in the middle, neither male nor female, no leaning to any extreme. Then there is balance. Then one is active and yet remains inactive deep inside. Then one is inactive and yet remains active on the outside. On the outside be sun-oriented, on the inside be moon-oriented. Let sun and moon meet in you, and you be just exactly in the middle. And in the middle is transcendence.

THE WORK ON THE CIRCULATION OF THE LIGHT DEPENDS ENTIRELY ON THE BACKWARD- FLOWING MOVEMENT, SO THAT THE THOUGHTS ARE GATHERED TOGETHER.

Man is a centre and also a circumference. If you move towards the circumference, then you will have many thoughts. The circumference consists of the many. The centre is one. If you move towards the centre, thoughts start disappearing. At the very core all thoughts disappear; there is only awareness.

That's what this secret treatise says:... SO THAT THE THOUGHTS ARE GATHERED TOGETHER.

The light has to move inwards. When you look at a tree your eyes are throwing their light on the tree - the light is moving outward. When you close your eyes, the light starts turning inward - METANOIA, repent, return. And when the light falls on your own being, there is self-knowledge, self-knowing. And that self-knowing brings you freedom - freedom from all entanglements, freedom from all attachments, freedom from death, freedom from body. It creates the soul in you.

That's what Gurdjieff used to say to his disciples: that you are not born with a soul, you have to create it by METANOIA.

THE BOOK OF THE YELLOW CASTLE SAYS: 'IN THE SQUARE INCH FIELD OF THE SQUARE FOOT HOUSE, LIFE CAN BE REGULATED.'

IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SQUARE INCH DWELLS THE SPLENDOR. IN THE PURPLE HALL OF THE CITY OF JADE DWELLS THE GOD OF UTMOST EMPTINESS AND LIFE.

Just see the contradiction: emptiness and life. Life is male, emptiness is female. Life and emptiness - both are two aspects of the inner God. When you have not chosen either in pre-ference to the other, when you have not chosen at all - you have been just a watcher - you become that God whose one aspect is life and whose other aspect is death, whose one aspect is perfection and whose other aspect is nothingness.

THEREFORE WHEN THE LIGHT CIRCULATES, THE ENERGIES OF THE WHOLE BODY APPEAR BEFORE ITS THRONE...

And when the light moves inwards and circulates inside your being, because there is no outlet left.... That's what meditation is. That's what Buddha is doing under the Bodhi Tree.

You sit silently, you close all the doors, and the light circulates within. Then for the first time you become aware of the body and all that the body contains - all its mysteries. This small body contains all the mysteries of the universe. It is a miniature cosmos.

THEREFORE WHEN THE LIGHT CIRCULATES, THE ENERGIES OF THE WHOLE BODY APPEAR BEFORE ITS THRONE, AS, WHEN A HOLY KING HAS ESTABLISHED THE CAPITAL AND HAS LAID DOWN THE FUNDAMENTAL RULES OF ORDER, ALL THE STATES APPROACH WITH TRIBUTE; OR AS, WHEN THE MASTER IS QUIET AND CALM, MEN-SERVANTS AND MAIDS OBEY HIS ORDERS OF THEIR OWN ACCORD, AND EACH DOES HIS WORK.

And when this light is there moving inside you, the body becomes a servant. The senses become obedient servants. You need not try to control them - they follow you of their own accord. This is the beauty of Tao: it never enforces anything, it does not want to cultivate any character. It says: Simply become full of light and all else will follow.

THEREFORE YOU ONLY HAVE TO MAKE THE LIGHT CIRCULATE: THAT IS THE DEEPEST AND MOST WONDERFUL SECRET. THE LIGHT IS EASY TO MOVE, BUT DIFFICULT TO FIX. IF IT IS MADE TO CIRCULATE LONG ENOUGH, THEN IT CRYSTALLIZES ITSELF. IT IS THE CONDITION OF WHICH IT IS SAID: 'SILENTLY THOU FLIEST UPWARD IN THE MORNING.'

A very significant thing is being said in this sutra: The light is easy to move, it is difficult to fix it. So don't try to fix it. That's where Yoga tries to do something which cannot be done easily. Hence, the difficulty, the arduousness of Yoga - Yoga tries to fix the light. It also tries to fix the light between the two eyes - just exactly between the two eyebrows at the third-eye centre. Yoga tries to fix it. That is the difference between Tao and Yoga: Yoga wants to fix it. 'Concentrate on the third eye' - in a nutshell, that is the whole philosophy of Yoga. 'If you can concentrate your whole consciousness on the third eye you will be transformed, your two eyes will become one and you will be full of light.'

And just beyond the third eye - the third eye is the sixth centre in the Yoga map of consciousness - beyond the sixth is the seventh. The seventh is called 'the one-thousand-petalled lotus'. If the light is concentrated at the third eye, when it becomes too much, it will give a push to the seventh centre. It will start rising like water in a reservoir. And the push to the seventh centre will open the bud that has remained a bud for centuries, for millions of lives.

Tao works from a different standpoint. Tao says: To fix the light is very difficult. Don't become concerned with fixing it. The easy way is to circulate it. Mind always finds circulation easy. It is mind's nature to move. Mind always finds it difficult to concentrate, so why not use mind's capacity?

Tao is a spontaneous science. Don't cultivate, don't force, don't create unnecessary troubles for yourself. Use the natural capacity of the mind: that it moves, that it likes movement, that it is a wanderer. Use it. Let light circulate - we will come to know how to circulate it later on - find paths, and let it circulate.

Through its circulation Taoists came to discover the seven hundred points of acupuncture.

Circulating it all over the body, they became aware that there are seven hundred points where light becomes very very aflame. And they counted them exactly. Now science corroborates it: there are exactly seven hundred points. Now even machines have been invented which can just picture your seven hundred points and where the light is missing in your points, where the energy is not moving in the right meridians. How did the Taoists come to know about it? They had no machines, no technology. Their only technique was to go in and circulate the light.

We will come to know about the actual method - how to circulate it. This is just to make a background so you understand what exactly their approach is. They say if you circulate the light and go on circulating it, at a certain point it crystallizes on its own. You need not worry about fixing it. Circulating, circulating, circulating, one moment, suddenly, you find all has stopped, and the thing has happened that Yoga tries to MAKE happen. In Tao it is a happening. In Yoga it is a hard, long journey of effort. Yoga is male-oriented.

Tao is not female-oriented. Tao is both - a synthesis. Circulation is masculine energy, and fixation is feminine energy. Reach to the non-active, reach to the passive through action. Through effort attain to effortlessness.

IN CARRYING OUT THIS FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE YOU NEED TO SEEK FOR NO OTHER METHODS, BUT MUST ONLY CONCENTRATE YOUR THOUGHTS ON IT. BY COLLECTING THE THOUGHTS ONE CAN FLY AND WILL BE BORN IN HEAVEN.

It is the secret of all immortality. This is what the Western alchemists used to call 'the philosopher's stone', what in India is called AMRIT, elixir, nectar. This is an alchemical treatise, it gives you the secrets for transforming your chemistry into alchemy, for transforming the baser metal into gold.

Right now you are only a baser metal. But you contain the secrets. If those secrets are worked out, you are transformed into gold. The gold is immortal.

THE GOLDEN FLOWER IS THE ELIXIR OF LIFE. ALTHOUGH IT WORKS VERY ACCURATELY, IT IS YET SO FLUID THAT IT NEEDS EXTREME INTELLIGENCE AND CLARITY, AND THE MOST COMPLETE ABSORPTION AND TRANQUILLITY. PEOPLE WITHOUT THIS HIGHEST DEGREE OF INTELLIGENCE AND UNDERSTANDING DO NOT FIND THE WAY; PEOPLE WITHOUT THIS UTMOST CAPACITY FOR ABSORPTION AND TRANQUILLITY CANNOT KEEP FAST HOLD OF IT.

First, one needs intelligence and clarity. Don't be worried about it. Don't start thinking that if you are not intelligent then what? Everybody is born intelligent. Intelligence is an intrinsic quality - just as everybody is born breathing, everybody is born intelligent.

The idea that a few people are intelligent and a few are not is utterly wrong - and has been dehumanizing many many people - is very insulting, degrading. All are born intelligent, although their intelligences may differ in their expressions. One is intelligent in music, another is intelligent in mathematics, but if you make mathematics the criterion then the musician looks unintelligent. If you put them both into one examination where mathematics is the criterion, the musician fails. Change the criterion, let music be the criterion, and put them both into the examination where music will decide, then the mathematician looks stupid.

We have chosen certain criteria; that's why many people have been condemned as stupid - they are not. I have never come across a single person who is stupid - it does not happen - but his intelligence may be a different kind of intelligence. Poetry needs a different kind of intelligence than being in business. A poet cannot be a businessman, and the businessman will find it very difficult to be a poet. One kind of intelligence is needed in being a politician, another kind of intel-ligence is needed in being a painter. And there are millions of possibilities.

Remember: everyone is born intelligent, so that is not debarring anybody. You just have to find your intelligence - where it is. And once you have found your intelligence you will be clear. People are living with unclarity because they are living with wrong ideas about themselves. Somebody has told you - a schoolmaster, a headmaster, a university - that you are not intelligent. But their criterion is only a chosen criterion; their criterion is not applicable to all. The universities are not yet universal. They don't allow every kind of intelligence, they don't accept all manifestations of intelligence.

Once you have accepted your intelligence and you start respecting it, you will become clear; there will be no problem.

The poet feels stupid because he cannot be a good businessman. Now this creates confusion. He becomes inferior in his own eyes, disrespectful, condemning. He tries to succeed in business but he cannot. This creates great smoke around him. If he simply understands that he is a poet and he is not meant to be a businessman, and to succeed as a businessman will be a suicide to him, he has to succeed as a poet... That is his intelligence, and his intelligence has to flower in his own way. He has not to imitate anybody else. Maybe the society will not pay for it, because poetry is not needed as much as bombs are needed. Love is not needed as much as hatred is needed.

That's why in the films, on the radio, on the television, murder is allowed; it is not called obscene. But love-making is not allowed; it is called obscene. This society lives through hate not through love. If somebody is murdering, it is perfectly okay. If somebody puts a dagger into your heart and the blood rushes like a fountain, it is perfectly okay. But if somebody hugs you, kisses you, loves you, the society is afraid.

This is strange that love is obscene and murder is not, that lovers are condemned and soldiers rewarded, that war is right and love is wrong. If you accept your intelligence, if you accept yourself, you will become clear, absolutely clear; all clouds will disappear.

And the second thing: you need absorption and tranquillity. Intelligence and clarity are part of the male mind. Absorption and tranquillity are part of the feminine mind. Only a woman can absorb, that's why she becomes pregnant - she has the womb .

These two things are needed together. If you are not intelligent you will not be able to understand what is being said to you, you will not understand what the Master is imparting to you. And if you are not feminine, you will not be able to absorb it, you will not be able to become pregnant with it. And both are needed. You have to be intelligent, utterly intelligent to see the point. And you have to be utterly absorptive to keep it in you, so that it becomes part of you.

This is just a background. Slowly slowly we will go into the techniques of how to circulate the light. Listen attentively, intelligently. Absorb it. It can be one of the greatest experiences of your life.

The Secret of Secrets, Vol 1.
Talks on the Secret of the Golden Flower
Chapter 1 - ANIMUS AND ANIMA