Chapter 7 Spiritual Integration & Transcendence

Others are merely a door. When you make love to a woman, you are actually making love to existence itself. Freud once said somewhere that humans are born insane, which is a "partial truth." Humans are not born insane, but if they are born into an insane society, the surrounding society will eventually drive everyone to insanity. Humans are born natural, real, and normal, but the moment a newborn becomes part of society, the neuroticism begins to operate.

In our current state, we are neurotic. Neurosis involves a split, a deep split. You are not a whole; you are split in two, or in many parts. This must be deeply understood; only then can we enter into Tantra. Your feelings and thoughts have become two different things. This is the basic neurosis; the part of you that thinks and the part that feels have split in two. You identify with the part that thinks, but not with the part that feels. Yet, feeling is more real and more natural than thought. You are born with a heart that feels, while thought is cultivated later; it is given by society. Your feelings have become a repressed thing. Even when you say you are feeling, you are only thinking that you are feeling. Your feelings are dead. There are several reasons for this situation.

When a child is born, he is a sentient being, capable of feeling things, but not yet a thinking being. He is natural, just like anything else in nature, like a tree or an animal. But as we begin to shape and nurture him, he must suppress his feelings, because if he doesn't, he will have trouble. When he wants to cry, he cannot cry, because his parents don't allow him to cry; he will be condemned. If he likes to cry, he will not be cherished or loved. He is not accepted as he is naturally; he must behave well, according to a specific ideology or ideal. Only in this way can he be loved.

You want to be loved, that's a basic need, that's natural, but it can be transformed into a false one. For example, if you try to attract attention, then this need for love or to be loved might feel like a false need. You want others to notice you so you can become a political leader, and many people might pay attention to you, but the real basic need is to be loved. Even if the whole world pays attention to you, that basic need cannot be met. In fact, that basic need can be met simply through one person's love, simply through one person's loving care.

When you love someone, you pay attention to them. Attention and love are closely linked. If you suppress the need for love, it becomes a symbolic need, and you crave attention from others. You might get attention, but it won't satisfy you. That need is false; it has detached itself from natural, basic needs. This kind of personality split is neurosis. Sexual behavior can have a psychological dimension; it can throw you back to your whole state, back to your natural, authentic existence. Sex is a complete act; you are thrown out of your mind, you are thrown into imbalance, hence the many fears people have about sex. You identify with your mind, but sex is an act without mind (without heart). You become mindless; in that act, you have no mind, no psychological process. If there is any psychological process, then it is not a real, genuine sexual act; then there is no orgasm, no satisfaction. Then sexual behavior itself becomes a partial thing, a thing of the mind; it "has" become that.