”TANTRA SAYS DO NOT STRUGGLE OR SWIM, BUT LET GO AND FLOAT IN THE RIVER
OF LIFE. BUT EXPERIENCE SHOWS THAT THE MODERN CITY LIFE OF SPEED AND
HEAVY TECHNOLOGY CREATES CONSTANT TENSIONS AND EXERTIONS PHYSICALLY AND MENTALLY. WHAT WILL BE TANTRA’S ATTITUDE ABOUT IT? IS IT NOT GOOD TO AVOID UNNECESSARY EXERTIONS?”

Life has always been so, modern or primitive. Tensions are there , anxieties are there. Objects change, but man remains the same. Two thousand years back you were driving a bullock cart; now you are driving a car – but the driver remains the same. The bullock cart has changed – things are different now, you are driving a car – but the driver remains the same. He was anxious about his cart, tense about his cart; now you are tense and anxious about your car. Objects change, but the mind remains the same.
So don’t think that because of the modern life you are so much in anxiety. It is because of you, not because of modern life, and you will be in anxiety anywhere, in any type of civilization. Go to a village for a few days – two or three days – and you will feel good for a while because even diseases need readjustment. But within three days you will be adjusted to the village, and then anxieties will start coming, disturbances will be felt again. Now the causes will not be the same, but you are the same.
Sometimes it happens that you may be disturbed because of city traffic and noise, and you may be saying that you cannot sleep at night because there is so much traffic and noise. Then go to a village, and you will not be able to sleep because there is no traffic and no noise. You will have to come back because the village looks dead, dull – because there is no life. People go on reporting such feelings to me. I told one friend to go to Kashmir, to Pahalgam. He came back and said that life is dull there, that there is no life. You can enjoy for one or two days valleys and hills, and then one gets bored. He had been telling me here that city life was getting on his nerves, and now he said that those hills were getting boring and he began longing to come back
home. You are the problem; Kashmir will not be of any help. It is not Bombay that disturbs you or London
or New York; it is YOU! And it is not that London has created you: you have created London. It is not
the traffic and the noise and the mad rush: you have created this – you and others like you. Look! The cause is within you. It is not that you are tense because of noise. The noise is there because you are tense, and you cannot live without it. That is why it is there. You need it, you cannot live without it. And in villages people are suffering. They want to come to Bombay or to New York or to London, and the moment they get the opportunity they run. And I have been listening to people who go on talking about the beautiful village life, but they never go to live there. They NEVER go to live there, they simply talk about it.
Who prevents you? Why not go? Go to the forest – who prevents you? You will not like it, you cannot like it. Right now you will like it for a few days because it is a change, and then? Then you will get bored. You will find it dull, and you will like to escape from there. This city life is created by your mad mind. You are not becoming mad because of these cities; these cities are built because of your mad mind. They are built for you and by you, and they exist for you. And unless this mad mind changes, these cities cannot disappear, they will have to remain. They are your by-product. Remember one thing: whenever you feel that something is wrong, first find out the cause in yourself. Don’t go anywhere. Out of a hundred times, ninety-nine times you will find the cause within yourself. And if you find the cause within you, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the hundredth cause will disappear by itself. You are the cause of whatsoever is happening to you. YOU are the cause, and the world is just a mirror. But it is consolatory always to find the cause somewhere else. Then you never feel guilt, you never feel self-condemned. You can always point out that here is the cause, and unless this cause changes, ”How can I change?” You can escape into it; this is a trick. So your mind always goes on projecting causes somewhere else. The wife is disturbed because of the husband; the mother
is disturbed because of the children; the children are disturbed because of the father. Everyone is disturbed because of someone else, and everyone always thinks that the cause exists outside.
Mulla Nasruddin was passing down a street. It was evening, and the darkness was descending. Suddenly he became aware that the street was empty with no traffic, and he became afraid. A group of people were coming toward him, and he was reading about DACOITS, robbers, murderers. So he created fear, he started trembling. He thought, he projected, that now these murderers and dacoits were coming, and they were bound to kill him, so how to escape them? He looked all around. There was a cemetery, so he jumped over the wall of the cemetery. There was a ready-made grave for someone, so he thought that it would be good to be dead in this grave. They will feel that he is dead, so there won’t be any need to murder him.
So Mulla lay down. The group was just a marriage procession, but they saw this man trembling and jumping. Then they became afraid and wondered what was the matter and who this man was. They thought, ”He seems to be up to some mischief. He is hiding there.” So the whole procession stopped, and they jumped over the wall. Mulla became more afraid. Now they came near and they asked, ”What are you doing here? Why are you here in this grave?” So Mulla said, ”You are asking a very difficult question. I am here because of you and you are here because of me.” And this is happening everywhere. You are disturbed because of someone else; he is disturbed because of you. And you are just creating everything around you, projecting, and then becoming afraid, scared, and making efforts to defend. And then there is misery and frustration and conflict and depression and fighting.
The whole thing is stupid, and it will remain unless you change your attitude. And always try first to find the cause within you. How can the traffic noise disturb you? How? If you are against it, it will disturb. If you have the attitude that it disturbs, it will disturb. But if you accept it, if you allow it to happen without any reaction, then you may even start enjoying it. It has its own melody, its own music. You have not heard it, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have its own music. Someday forget yourself and listen to the traffic noise. Just listen, and don’t bring in your attitudes that this is disturbing, that this is not good. Don’t bring in your attitudes, just listen to the melody! In the beginning it will look chaotic. That too is because of the mind. If you relax totally, sooner or later everything will fit into a harmonious whole and even the traffic noise will become music. You can enjoy it and you can dance to its tune. It depends on you. Nothing disturbs unless you think that it disturbs. For example I will tell you that many things have disturbed humanity because there was a certain concept that they disturb. When the concept changes the things remain the same, but they don’t disturb. For example, masturbation disturbed the whole world. Just half a century before, the whole world was disturbed by masturbation. Every teacher, every father, every mother was disturbed, and every child was disturbed. And still in the larger, ignorant world, the disturbance remains. And then physiologists and psychologists discovered that masturbation cannot disturb anyone; it is natural, and nothing is wrong with it. There is absolutely nothing wrong with it, but the old teaching was that if you become mad, it was because
of masturbation. Everything was forced down, reduced to masturbation. And more or less every child was doing it, every boy was doing it, so every boy was afraid. He was doing it, and he was afraid that now he was going to be mad, inferior, crazy, eccentric, ill, and his life would be wasted. But he couldn’t resist. He
had to do it, and these ideas entered into the mind and had effects. They affected him, and many went mad, many remained inferior, many remained stupid because of it, and it has no relationship at all. Modern science, modern research says that rather it is healthy. Medical science says that it is good because a boy at the age of thirteen or fourteen or a girl at the age of twelve or thirteen becomes sexually mature. If nature were allowed they would have to get married immediately. They are ready to reproduce, but civilization of necessity forces that they will have to remain unmarried for ten years at least or even more. But medicine says that fourteen to twenty, these six years, are the most sexually potent. A boy is never so potent again as he is then. The energy is bubbling up; the whole body is ready to burst into sex. But the society says no, the energy should not be allowed to move. However, the energy is moving and the child cannot do anything, and whatsoever he is going to do will have effects because of the philosophy around him. He will feel he is doing something wrong, he will feel guilt, and that guilt will follow like a shadow. And many diseases will happen because of the idea, not because of the act.
Medicine says that it is healthy because he is relieved of unnecessary energy. That unnecessary energy would create problems otherwise, so it is healthy. Now, particularly in America and England and other Western developed countries who know much more about physiology, masturbation is being propagated. Now there are films on how to masturbate to show to the children, and every teacher will be teaching sooner or later how to masturbate rightly. They say it is healthy, and now those who think it is healthy feel very healthy about it. I don’t think it is either – it is neither healthy nor unhealthy. The idea is the thing. If it is healthy and the concept is stretched, it will become healthy. Now in the West they say not only that  masturbation never affected anyone’s intelligence adversely, but that the better the intelligence, the more masturbation will be there. So a boy who is masturbating more will be of higher I.Q. than the boy who is not masturbating. And they have reasons for saying this, because even for a boy to discover masturbation is a sign of intelligence: he is finding out a way. The society has closed the door for marriage, and the nature is forcing the energy. The intelligent one will find a way and the non-intelligent one will just be blocked, he will not be able to find the
way. Now the studies show that those boys who masturbate are more intelligent. If this idea is spread, and it is bound to be there, sooner or later the whole world will be having this idea. Then masturbation will be healthy, and you will feel a well-being from it. Now every parent is afraid because the parent knows what he did when he was young. When his boy comes to the same age, he becomes afraid and he starts looking around at what the boy is doing. He is afraid, and if he catches the boy he will punish him. But the new knowledge says don’t punish the boy – no! Rather, teach him. If he is not masturbating, then go to the doctor and find out what is wrong. If this knowledge becomes well spread, then this will happen. But both are positions. BOTH are positions! And when some boy masturbates, he is very suggestive in that moment – because when sexual energy is being released, he becomes vulnerable, open, flexible, and his mind is silent. Any idea put in at that moment will have its effects – so if you tell him, ”You are going to be ill because of it,” he will feel ill. If you tell him, ”You are going to be healthy because of it,” he will become healthy. If you say to him, ”You will be stupid for your whole life if you do this,” he will remain a dunce. If you say, ”Now this is a good sign of intelligence,” he may develop a higher I.Q. You are simply suggesting something to him in a very vulnerable moment. Whatsoever you think starts happening. Buddha is reported to have said that every thought will become actual, so be aware. If you think that the traffic noise disturbs you, it will disturb you: you are ready for disturbance. If you think that a family life is a bondage, it will be a bondage for you: you are ready for this. If you think that poverty will help to make you liberated, it will help. Ultimately it is you who is creating a world around you, and whatsoever you think becomes the noosphere, the milieu, and you exist in it. Tantra says remember this causality, it is always within you. And if you know this, then you will not
cause anything. If you know this, you will not cause anything for yourself. And when someone is not causing anything, he is liberated. Then he is not in misery and not in bliss. Bliss is your creation and misery is also your creation. You can change your misery into bliss because it is your creation. The liberated one, the enlightened one, is really in neither because he has ceased to cause anything around him. He simply is! That is why Buddha never says that the enlightened one is blissful. Whenever someone asked him, ”Tell us something about someone who has gone beyond – whether he is in perfect bliss,” Buddha laughed and said, ”Don’t ask. I can say only this much, that he is not in misery. I cannot say anything more. He is not in misery; that is all I can say.”  Why so much insistence on the negative? Because Buddha knows. When you have come to know that you were the cause of your misery, then you know well that the bliss also was caused by you. Then one ceases to cause anything. That is what NIRVANA is: a cessation of causing anything around you. Then you are, simply – no misery, no bliss. If you can understand, only this is bliss. There is no misery and no bliss, because if there is bliss then misery is there; you are still causing something. And if you can cause bliss, then you can cause misery, and you will become bored of the bliss also. How much can you stand it – how much? Have you ever thought about it? Twenty-four hours in bliss: will you be able to stand it? You will become bored, and you will go on seeking teachers who can teach you how to become miserable again. If the world becomes blissful, I cannot conceive that there won’t be any teachers. There will be teachers, because then people will need misery. Someone will be needed to tell them how to become miserable again, just for a change. Then you can go back to your bliss, and you will feel it more – because only then can you feel it more, when you have missed it. Teachers will be there! Now they are teaching how to become blissful; then they will teach how to become miserable, how to have a taste of hell. A little change will be helpful, healthy. But you are the cause, and you will become enlightened the moment you have known that the world you are living in was caused by you. When you will not cause it, it will have disappeared. The traffic will go on, the noise will be there, and everything will be there as it is, but you will not be there
because you will have disappeared with the cause.


Source: Osho_Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Volume 2