Osho - Tantra is not a moral concept. It is neither moral nor immoral. It is Amoral

Osho - Before I take your questions some other points have to be clarified, because those points will help you understand more what tantra means. Tantra is not a moral concept. It is neither moral nor immoral. It is amoral. It is a science, and science is neither. Your moralities and concepts concerning moral behavior are irrelevant for tantra. Tantra is not concerned with how one should behave; it is not concerned with ideals. It is concerned basically with what is, with what you are. This distinction has to be understood deeply.

Morality is concerned with ideals – how you should be, what you should be. Therefore, morality is basically condemning. You are never the ideal so you are condemned. Every morality is guilt creating. You can never become the ideal; you are always lagging behind. The gap will always be there because the ideal is the impossible, and through morality it becomes more impossible. The ideal is there in the future, and you are here as you are, and you go on comparing. You are never the perfect man; something is always lacking. Then you feel guilt; you feel a self-condemnation.

One thing, tantra is against self-condemnation because condemnation can never transform you. Condemnation can only create hypocrisy. Then you try to pretend, to show, that you are what you are not. Hypocrisy means you are the real man, not the ideal man, but you pretend, you try to show, that you are the ideal man. Then you have a split within you; you have a false face. The unreal man is born, and tantra is basically a search for the real man, not for the unreal man.

Of necessity, every morality creates hypocrisy. It will do so inevitably. Hypocrisy will remain with morality. It is part of it – the shadow. This will look paradoxical because moralists are the men who condemn hypocrisy the most, and they are the creators of it. And hypocrisy cannot disappear from the earth unless morality disappears. They both will exist together; they are two aspects of the same coin. Morality gives you the ideal and you are not the ideal; that is why the ideal is given to you. Then you start feeling that you are wrong, and that this wrongness is natural. It is given to you. You are born with it, and you cannot immediately do anything about it. You cannot transform it; it is not so easy. You can only suppress it; that is easy.

But there are two things you can do. You can create a false face; you can pretend to be something you are not. That saves you. Then you can move more easily in the society – more conveniently. And inwardly you have to suppress the real because the unreal can be imposed only if the real is suppressed. So your reality goes on moving downward into the unconscious and your unreality becomes your conscious. Your unreal part becomes more dominant and the real recedes back. You are divided, and the more you try to pretend, the greater will be the gap.

The child is born as one, whole. That is why every child is so beautiful. The beauty is because of wholeness. The child has no gap, no split, no divisions, no fragments. The child is one. The real and unreal are not there. The child is simply real, authentic. You cannot say that the child is moral. The child is neither moral nor immoral. He is just unaware that there is anything moral or immoral. The moment he becomes aware, a split starts. Then the child begins behaving in unreal ways because to be real becomes more and more difficult.

This happens of necessity, remember, because the family has to regulate, the parents have to regulate. The child has to be civilized, educated, given manners, cultivated; otherwise it will be impossible for the child to move in the society. He has to be told, ”Do this; don’t do that.” And when we say, ”Do this,” the child’s reality may not be ready to do it. It may not be real; there may not be any real desire within the child to do it. And when we say, ”Don’t do this or don’t do that,” the child’s nature may like to do it.

We condemn the real and we enforce the unreal, because the unreal is going to be helpful in an unreal society and the unreal is going to be convenient. Where everyone is false, the real is not going to be convenient. A real child will be in a basic difficulty with the society because the whole society is unreal. This is a vicious circle. We are born in a society, and hitherto not a single society has existed on the earth which is real. And this is vicious! A child is born in a society, and a society is already there with its fixed rules, regulations, behaviors and moralities which the child has to learn.

When he will grow he will become false. Then children will be born to him, and he will help make them false, and this goes on and on. What to do? We cannot change the society. Or if we try to change the society, we will not be there when the society will be changed. It will take an eternity of time. What to do?

The individual can become aware of this basic split within: that the real has been suppressed and the unreal has been imposed. This is pain, this is suffering, this is hell. You cannot get any satisfaction through the unreal because through the unreal only unreal satisfactions are possible, and this is natural. Only through the real can real satisfactions happen. Through the real you can reach reality; through the real you can reach the truth. Through the unreal you can only reach more and more hallucinations, illusions, dreams, and through dreams you can deceive yourself, but you can never be satisfied.

For example, in a dream, if you feel thirsty, you may dream you are drinking water. This will be helpful and convenient for the sleep to continue. If this dream where you dream you are drinking water is not there, your sleep will be broken. A real thirst is there. It will break the sleep; the sleep will be disturbed. Dream is a help; it gives you the feeling that you are drinking water. But the water is false. Your thirst is simply deceived; it is not removed. You may continue to sleep, but the thirst is there suppressed.

This is happening not only in sleep: in your whole life this is happening. You are searching for things through the unreal personality which is not there, which is just a facade. If you do not get them, you will be in misery; if you get them, then too you will be in misery. If you do not get them the misery will be lesser-remember. If you get them, the misery will be deeper and more. Psychologists say that because of this unreal personality we basically never want to reach the goal – never want to reach – because if you reach the goal you will be totally frustrated. You live in hope; in hope you can continue. Hope is a dream. You never reach the goal, so you never come to realize that the goal is false.

A poor man struggling for riches is more happy in the struggle because in the struggle there is hope. And with the unreal personality only hope is happiness. If the poor man gets riches, he will become hopeless. Now frustration will be the natural consequence. Riches will be there, but no satisfaction. He will have achieved the goal, but nothing will have happened. His hopes are shattered. That is why the moment a society becomes affluent it becomes disturbed.

If America is so much disturbed today, it is because hopes are achieved, goals are achieved, and now you cannot deceive yourself any more. So if in America the younger generation is revolting against all the goals of the older generation, it is because of this: that they all proved nonsense. In India we cannot conceive of this. We cannot conceive of young people voluntarily going poor – going hippie. Voluntarily going poor? We cannot conceive of it. We still have hope. We are hoping for the future: that someday the country will become rich and then there will be heaven. Heaven is always in the hoping.

Because of this unreal personality, whatsoever you try, whatsoever you do, whatsoever you see, becomes unreal. Tantra says truth can happen to you only if you are again grounded in the real. But to be grounded in the real you have to be very courageous with yourself because the unreal is convenient and the unreal is so much cultivated and your mind is so much conditioned, that you will become afraid of the real.

Source - Osho Book "Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 1"

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