When joy arises, become it

On joyously seeing a long-absent friend, permeate this joy.

This meditation does not require a partner, it can be done alone. You won't need privacy. It will not be obvious that you are meditating. Do the technique anywhere suitable.

Once you know this, even the partner is not needed. You can simply remember the act and enter into it. But first you must have the feeling. If you know the feeling, you can enter into the act without the partner. This is a little difficult, but it happens. And unless it happens, you go on being dependent, a dependency is created. For so many reasons it happens. If you have had the feeling, if you have known the moment when you were not there but only a vibrating energy had become one and there was a circle with the partner, in that moment there was no partner. In that moment only you are, and for the partner you are not: only he or she is. That oneness is centered within you; the partner is no more there. And it is easier for women to have this feeling because they are always making love with closed eyes.

During this technique, it is good if you have your eyes closed. Then only an inner feeling of a circle, only an inner feeling of oneness, is there. Then just remember it. Close your eyes; lie down as if you are with your partner. Just remember and start feeling it. Your body will begin to shake and vibrate. Allow it! Forget completely that the other is not there. Move as if the other is present. Only in the beginning is it "as if." Once you know, then it is not "as if," then the other is there.

Move as if you are actually going into the love act. Do whatsoever you would have done with your partner. Scream, move, shake. Soon the circle will be there, and this circle is miraculous. Soon you will feel that the circle is created, but now this circle is not created with a man and woman. If you are man, then the whole universe has become woman; if you are woman, then the whole universe has become man. Now you are in a deep communion with the existence itself, and the door, the other, is no more there.

The other is simply a door. While making love to a woman, you are really making love to existence itself. The woman is just a door, the man is just a door. The other is just a door for the whole, but you are in such a hurry you never feel it. If you remain in communion, in deep embrace for hours together, you will forget the other and the other will just become an extension of the whole. Once this technique is known you can use it alone, and when you can use it alone it gives you a new freedom -- freedom from the other.

It really happens that the whole existence becomes the other -- your beloved, your lover -- and then this technique can be used continuously, and one can remain in constant communion with the existence. And then you can do it in other dimensions also. Walking in the morning, you can do it. Then you are in communion with the air, with the rising sun and the stars and the trees. Staring at the stars in the night, you can do it. Looking at the moon, you can do it. You can be in the sex act with the whole universe once you know how it happens.

But it is good to start with human beings because they are nearest to you -- the nearest part of the universe. But they are dispensable. You can take a jump and forget the door completely -- " even remembering union, the transformation " -- and you WILL be transformed, you will become new.

Tantra uses sex as a vehicle. It is energy; it can be used as a vehicle. It can transform you, and it can give you transcendental states. But as we are using sex, it looks difficult for us -- because we are using it in a very wrong way, and the wrong way is not natural. Even animals are better than us: they are using it in a natural way. Our ways are perverted. Constant hammering on the human mind that sex is sin has created a deep barrier within you. You never allow yourself a total let-go. Something is always standing aloof condemning, even for the new generation. They may say they are not burdened, obsessed, that sex is not a taboo for them, but you cannot unburden your unconscious so easily. It has been built over centuries and centuries; the whole human past is there. So while you may not be condemning it as sin consciously, the unconscious is there constantly condemning it. You are never totally in it. Something is always left out. That left-out part creates the split.

Tantra says move in it totally. Just forget yourself, your civilization, your religion, your culture, your ideology. Forget everything. Just move in the sex act: move in it totally; do not leave anything out. Become absolutely non-thinking. Only then does the awareness happen that you have become one with someone. And this feeling of oneness can then be detached from the partner and it can be used with the whole universe. You can be in a sex act with a tree, with the moon, with anything. Once, you know how to create this circle, it can be created with anything -- even without anything.

You can create this circle within yourself because man is both man and woman, and woman is both woman and man. You are both because you were created by two, You were created by man and woman both, so half of you remains the other. You can forget everything completely, and the circle can be created within you. Once the circle is created within you -- your man is meeting your woman, the inner woman is meeting the inner man -- you are in an embrace within yourself. And only when this circle is created is real celibacy attained. Otherwise all celibacies are just perversions, and then they create their own problems. When this circle is created inside, you are freed.

This is what tantra says: "Sex is the deepest bondage, yet it can be used as a vehicle for the highest freedom." Tantra says poison can be used as medicine, but wisdom is needed. So do not condemn anything. Rather, use it. And do not be against anything. Find out ways how it can be used and transformed. Tantra is a deep, total acceptance of life. It is the only approach of its kind. All over the world, in all the centuries that have gone by, tantra is unique. It says don't throw anything and don't be against anything and don't create any conflict, because with any conflict you will be destructive with yourself.

All the religions are against sex, afraid of it, because it is such a great energy. Once you are in it you are no more, and then the current will take you anywhere. That is why the fear. So create a barrier in which you and the current become two, and do not allow this vital energy to have any possession over you: be the master of it.

Only tantra says that this mastery is going to be false, diseased, pathological, because you cannot really be divided with this current. You are it! So all divisions will be false, arbitrary, and basically, no division is possible because you are the current -- a part and parcel of it, just a wave in it. You can become frozen and you can separate yourself from the current, but that frozenness will be deadness. And humanity has become dead. No one is reallyEnter this joy and become one with it -- any joy, any happiness. This is just an example: "On joyously seeing a long absent friend..." Suddenly you see a friend you have not seen for many, many days or many, many years. A sudden joy grips you. But your attention will be on the friend, not on your joy. Then you are missing something, and this joy will be momentary. Your attention is focused on the friend: you will start talking, remembering things, and you will miss this joy and this joy will go.

When you see a friend and suddenly feel a joy arising in your heart, concentrate on this joy. Feel it and become it, and meet the friend while being aware and filled with your joy. Let the friend be just on the periphery, and you remain centered in your feeling of happiness.

This can be done in many other situations. The sun is rising, and suddenly you feel something rising within you. Then forget the sun; let it remain on the periphery. You be centered in your own feeling of rising energy. The moment you look at it, it will spread. It will become your whole body, your whole being. And do not just be an observer of it; merge into it. There are very few moments when you feel joy, happiness, bliss, but you go on missing them because you become object-centered.

Whenever there is joy, you feel that it is coming from without. You have met a friend: of course, it appears that the joy is coming from your friend, from seeing him. That is not the actual case. The joy is always within you. The friend has just become a situation. The friend has helped it to come out, has helped you to see that it is there. And this is not only with joy, but with everything: with anger, with sadness, with misery, with happiness, with everything, it is so. Others are only situations in which things that are hidden in you are expressed. They are not causes; they are not causing something in you. Whatsoever is happening, is happening to you. It has always been there; it is only that meeting with this friend has become a situation in which whatsoever was hidden has come out in the open -- has come out. From the hidden sources it has become apparent, manifest. Whenever this happens remain centered in the inner feeling, and then you will have a different attitude about everything in life.

Even with negative emotions, do this. When you are angry, do not be centered on the person who has aroused it. Let him be on the periphery. You just become anger. Feel anger in its totality; allow it to happen within. Don't rationalize; don't say that this man has created it. Do not condemn the man. He has just become the situation. And feel grateful towards him that he has helped something which was hidden to come into the open. He has hit you somewhere, and a wound was there hidden. Now you know it, so become the wound.

With negative or positive, with any emotion, use this, and there will be a great change in you. If the emotion is negative, you will be freed of it by being aware that it is within you. If the emotion is positive, you will become the emotion itself. If it is joy, you will become joy. If it is anger, the anger will dissolve.

And this is the difference between negative and positive emotions: if you become aware of a certain emotion, and by your becoming aware the emotion dissolves, it is negative. If by your becoming aware of a certain emotion you then become the emotion, if the emotion then spreads and becomes your being, it is positive. Awareness works differently in both cases. If it is a poisonous emotion, you are relieved of it through awareness. If it is good, blissful, ecstatic, you become one with it. Awareness deepens it.

So to me this is the criterion: if something is deepened by your awareness, it is something good. If something is dissolved through awareness, it is something bad. That which cannot remain in awareness is sin and that which grows in awareness is virtue. Virtue and sin are not social concepts, they are inner realizations.

Use your awareness. It is just as if there is darkness and you bring in light: the darkness will be no more there. Just by bringing light in, the darkness is no more there, because, really, it was not. It was negative, just an absence of light. But many things will become manifest which are there. Just by bringing in light, these shelves, these books, these walls, will not disappear. In darkness they were not; you could not see them. If you bring light in, darkness will be no more there, but that which is real will be revealed. Through awareness all that is negative like darkness will dissolve -- hatred, anger, sadness, violence. Then love, joy, ecstasy, will, for the first time, become revealed to you. So, "on joyously seeing a long absent friend, permeate this joy."

alive; you are just dead weights floating in the stream. Melt!

Tantra says try to melt. Do not become like icebergs: melt and become one with the river. Becoming one with the river, feeling one with the river, merging in the river, be aware and there will be transformation. There IS transformation. Transformation is not through conflict; it is through awareness. These three techniques are very, very scientific, but then sex becomes something other than what you know. Then it is not a temporary relief; then it is not throwing energy out. Then there is no end to it. It becomes a meditative circle.