MAN IS ENERGY, A DYNAMISM, A PROCESS, A VERY CREATIVE PROCESS with a thousand and one potentialities, with infinite alternatives open. Man is an opening, an evolution, and with all the possibilities that the existence has. Man is a miniature existence; a drop, of course, but a drop has all that the ocean has; a drop, of course, but a conscious drop. And the consciousness is oceanic; it knows no boundaries. But the man I am talking about is the essential man of the Bauls, ADHAR MANUSH. You can be that, but you are not that. You are the seed. You can open and blossom and release your fragrance to the winds, but you are not yet that. It has to be remembered. Gurdjieff used to say that man is not born with a soul; he has to create it through effort. A man is born only with an opportunity. It can be used, it can be wasted, so all depends on you. One has to become a creator of oneself. The parents have given you a body and a possibility, but the real birth has yet to happen. And for that real birth you will have to become your own mother, your own father. That real birth is an inner creativity. You have to move withinwards to find your own source of energy, and not only that, but to change the mechanical channels of that energy, to make conscious channels for it.

Ordinarily, energy flows downwards. That’s what Bauls call lust. When they call it lust they are not denouncing it, condemning it. It is just a fact, just as water flows downwards. It is natural for water to flow downwards, down the hill. But water can rise upwards; just a little heat is needed. The water has to be heated; it can evaporate. At a certain degree of heat, a hundred degrees, it starts rising towards the heavens. The same water that was always going downhill starts going uphill. A conversion has happened; just heat was needed. In the East this heat is known as TAP. The word TAP means heat; the word TAP means ‘heating yourself’…

Lust is the same energy as love; the difference is only of direction. Lust moves downwards, love has started the uphill task. Lust is like roots of a tree, love is like wings of a bird — but the energy is the same. All energy is the same. Energy as such is neutral. Unless you become conscious about it you cannot be creative. And the downhill movement is very destructive: you are simply dissipating yourself. You are not getting any integration through it

— what Gurdjieff used to call crystallization. Every moment you are poured with energy. Existence goes on pouring energy into you, through air, through water, through food, through the sunlight, through the moonlight, and a thousand and one other subtle influences. The universe goes on pouring its energy into you. What are you doing with that energy? Are you doing anything or simply wasting it? Are you creating something out of it? Are you getting a certain integrity, crystallization out of it? Or does it just come through one end and is lost through the other end?

There are many people who are just like a pipe: you pour one thing through one end, through the other end it goes out. Don’t be a pipe. When the energy is in you, do something with it so that something of it becomes a permanent part of you. Otherwise the whole life will be just a pipe: eating, defecating, drinking, urinating  — just a pipe. Subtle juices are created by your energy. That’s what sex is; a very subtle juice. Now what are you doing with it? Are you doing anything with it, or just wasting it? Lust is the lowest form of sex energy; love, the highest form. Unless your lust becomes love you will be missing your goal…

Man is unconscious. You go on doing things, not knowing why. You go on doing things you could not do if you were even a little conscious. What we are doing with our life is just sleeping through it. Consciousness has to be evolved. The more consciousness you have, the more energy starts flowing upwards on its own accord. Consciousness is the clue, the key, the master key. Lust becomes love through consciousness, so love cannot be an unconscious thing. When Bauls say that love is the door, they don’t mean the love that you call love. Your love is as unconscious as anything else. It is unconscious, that’s why we use the expression ‘falling in love’. Yes, it is a ‘falling in’.

The love Bauls are talking about is a rising in love, not falling in love. It is not a fall, it is a rise. So don’t misunderstand that your love is what Bauls are talking about. Your love is just a name for lust — a good name, a beautiful, nice name. And beware of nice words because they can be very deceptive. If you label lust as love, you will be deceived by your own labelling. LUST is when you are unconscious. You see a woman or a man and you fall in love, and you don’t know why; sometimes even against yourself, in spite of yourself.

People come and say to me, “What can we do? We are helpless; love has happened.” This love is not the love of the Baul; this is lust.

What a Baul calls lust is this: unconscious love is lust. Then it flows downwards. Then it moves through the sex center into the world again. Upwards lust is love, but then it is conscious. Consciousness is the staircase: step by step you become more and more conscious. Whatsoever you do, you do it with full consciousness — even walking, eating, going to bed, talking, listening — small things of life, but you do them with consciousness. And when you are in love, you are in love with full consciousness.

It is not against yourself. It is not that you are possessed, it is not that you are a victim, it is not that you are being pulled by somebody like a magnet. No, you are moving on your own. The Bauls’ love is very cool. It has the coolness of awareness. Your love is very hot; it has the fever of unconsciousness…

ONE small technique will be of tremendous help.

Whenever you feel sex desire arising, there are three possibilities: one, indulge in it — ordinary, everybody is doing that; second: repress it, force it down so it goes beyond your consciousness into the darkness of the unconscious, throw it into the basement of your life. That’s what your so-called extraordinary people are doing — MAHATMAS, saints, monks. But both are against nature.

Both are against the inner science of transformation. The third — a very rare minority ever tries it — is when the sex desire arises, close your eyes. It is a very valuable moment: desire arising is energy arising. It is like the sun rising in the morning. Close your eyes; this is the moment to be meditative. Move downwards to the sex center where you are feeling the thrill the vibration, the kick. Move there and just be a silent onlooker. Witness it, don’t condemn it. The moment you condemn you have gone far away from it. And don’t enjoy it, because the moment you enjoy you are unconscious. Just be alert, watchful, like a lamp burning in a dark night. You just take your consciousness there, unflickering, unwavering. You see what is happening at the sex center. What is this energy?

Don’t call it names because all words have become contaminated. Even if you say it is sex, immediately you have started condemning it. The very word has become condemnatory. Or, if you belong to the new generation, then the very word has become something sacred. But the word is always loaded with emotion. Any word which is loaded with emotion becomes a barrier on the path of awareness. You just don’t call it anything.

Just watch the fact that an energy is arising near the sex center. There is a thrill — watch it. And watching it, you will feel a totally new quality of energy. Watching it, you will see it is rising upwards. It is finding a path inside you. And the moment it starts rising upwards you will feel a coolness falling on you, a silence surrounding you, a grace, a beatitude, a benediction, a blessing all around you. It is no longer like a thorn, painful. It no longer hurts; it is very soothing, like a balm. And the more you remain aware, the higher it will go. If it can come up to the heart, which is not very difficult — difficult, but not very difficult…. If you remain alert you will see it has come to the heart. When it comes to the heart you will know for the first time what love is.

UP to now you have been carrying a counterfeit in the name of love. When the energy comes to the heart chakra, then it is transformed into love. Once it is transformed into love, once you have felt it, once it has penetrated you, your whole being will feel purified. You will feel virgin, you will feel so pure, so holy, that you cannot think that heaven is anywhere else. You will know it is within you, within your heart. And heaven will become a truth; it will not be theology then, it will become almost a geography. You will know exactly where it is, and God will no longer be a hypothesis. In that purity, in that silence, in that fulfillment of love you will see, God is — not as a theory, but as a self-evident truth; not as an argument, not as a proof, not as a conclusion, not as a syllogism, but simply it is there. There is no way to deny it. It is there so much that you can deny yourself, but you cannot deny God. You yourself look so faint before the reality of God that you can say, “I may not be, but He is.” That will be the first glimpse. Energy can rise still higher. When it comes to the center of the throat, it becomes prayer. People have been doing prayer, but they don’t know what prayer is — because prayer is the most subtle and refined form of love. If you have not moved through the heart center you cannot go to prayer; there is no way. One has to go via the heart…

That’s why Bauls say, “Even if lust has to be transcended, it is through lust.” If anger has to be transcended, it is through anger. They know the alchemy of how to change poison into nectar. They don’t say to throw it, it is poison. They say to transform it, nectar is hiding behind it. The poison is only just the shell. Find the inner content of it; love is hiding behind lust. Soul is hiding behind the body, God is hiding behind the world. Don’t throw it. It will be throwing something tremendously valuable. Maybe you are not yet aware of what value is there. You think it is just a stone. Become a jeweller. It is what Bauls call to become a RUSIK, a connoisseur. Know the taste of it, find out the ways, what it is. Become alert to the hidden reality, open the doors and go into it. It may be a Kohinoor; don’t throw it. If God has given you the stone, it must be a Kohinoor — otherwise why should He give it to you? Don’t think yourself wiser than Him. Let His wisdom be the supreme. You trust. If He has given you a stone it must be a Kohinoor, it must be a great diamond. It is His gift; it cannot be otherwise…

When lust is transformed and you enter into the city of love, you enter unattached. Remember, that is their definition of love. If love has attachment in it, it is lust, If love has no attachment in it, only then is it not lust.

When you are in lust you are not really thinking of the other, thinking of your beloved or lover. You are simply using the other for your own ends. And of course, attachment is bound to be there, because you would like to possess him, and you would like to possess him or her forever. Because tomorrow also you may need, the day after tomorrow also you may need. You need a lover and you want to possess him. LOVE is a gift. You give; you need not be worried about whether tomorrow he will be there to receive or not. Because a lover can give to the trees, to the rocks. A lover can give to the emptiness of the sky. A lover can simply flower and send his fragrance to the winds, even if nobody is there. Just think: Buddha sitting under his Bodhi tree, alone, full of love, overflowing…. Not that somebody is there to receive, but God is always there to receive, in so many forms, in so many ways.

Lust is greed, lust is attachment, lust is possessiveness. Love needs no possession, love knows no attachment, because love is not greed. Love is a gift. It is a sharing.

You have found something; your heart is full, your fruits are ripe. You hanker that somebody should come and share. It is unconditional; who shares does not matter. But you are so full of it that you would like to be unburdened — as when clouds are full of rainwater, they rain. Sometimes they rain in a forest, sometimes they rain on a hill, sometimes they rain in a desert, but they rain. The fact of where they rain is irrelevant. They are so full they have to rain. A lover is so full he becomes a cloud, full of love water; he has to rain. That raining is spontaneous.

Source:

This is an excerpt from the transcript of a public discourse by Osho in Buddha Hall, Shree Rajneesh Ashram, Pune. 

Discourse Series: The Beloved, Vol 2

Chapter #7

Chapter title: They Kill Lust With Lust

7 July 1976 am in Buddha Hall

References:

Osho has spoken on ‘love, prayer, transformation, awareness, sharing’ in many of His discourses. More on the subject can be referred to in the following books/discourses:

1. The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
2. The Divine Melody
3. Ecstasy – The Forgotten Language
4. From Bondage to Freedom
5. From Ignorance to Innocence
6. From Death to Deathlessness
7. The Razor’s Edge
8. Sufis: The People of the Path, Vol 1, 2
9. Zarathustra: A God That Can Dance
10. The Messiah, Vol 1, 2
11. Sermons in Stones
12. The Book of Wisdom
13. Beyond Psychology
14. The Path of the Mystic