Sigmund Freud has said somewhere that man is born neurotic. This is a half-truth. Man is not born neurotic, but he is born in a neurotic humanity and the society around drives everyone neurotic sooner or later. Man is born natural, real, normal, but the moment the newborn becomes part of the society neurosis starts working.

As we are, we are neurotic, and the neurosis consists of a split -- a deep split. You are not one: you are two or even many. This has to be understood deeply; only then can we proceed in tantra. Your feeling and thinking have become two different things: this is the basic neurosis. Your thinking part and your feeling part have become two, and you are identified with the thinking part, not with the feeling part. And feeling is more real than thinking; feeling is more natural than thinking. You have come with a feeling heart, but thinking is cultivated; it is given by society. And your feeling has become a suppressed thing. Even when you say that you feel, you only think that you feel. The feeling has become dead, and this has happened for certain reasons.

When a child is born, he is a feeling being: he feels things. He is not a thinking being yet. He is natural, just like anything natural in nature -- just like a tree or like an animal. But we start molding him, cultivating. He has to suppress his feelings because without suppressing his feelings he is always in trouble. When he wants to cry he cannot cry because his parents will not approve of it. He will be condemned. He will not be appreciated, he will not be loved. He is not accepted as he is. He must behave: he must behave according to a particular ideology, ideals. Only then will he be loved.

Love is not for him as he is. He can be loved only if he follows certain rules. Those rules are imposed; they are not natural. The natural being begins to become suppressed, and the unnatural, the unreal, is imposed over it. This unreal is your mind, and a moment comes when the split is so great that you cannot bridge it. You go on forgetting completely what your real nature was -- or is. You are a false face; the original face is lost. And you are also afraid to feel the original, because the moment you feel it the whole society will be against you. So you yourself are against your real nature.

This creates a very neurotic state. You do not know what you want; you do not know what are your real, authentic needs. And then you go on after non-authentic needs because only the feeling heart can give you the sense, the direction, of what are your real needs. When they are suppressed you create symbolic needs. For example, you may go on eating more and more, stuffing yourself with food, and you may never feel that you are filled. The need is for love; it is not for food. But food and love are deeply related, so when the need for love is not felt, or is suppressed, a false need for food is created and you can go on eating. Because the need is false, it can never be fulfilled, and we live in false needs. That is why there is no fulfillment.

You want to be loved; that is a basic need -- natural. But it can be diverted into a false dimension. For example, the love need, the need to be loved, can be felt as a false need if you try to divert the attention of others to yourself. You want that others should pay attention to you, so you may become a political leader. Great crowds may pay attention to you, but the real basic need is to be loved. And even if the whole world is paying attention to you, that basic need cannot be fulfilled. That basic need can be fulfilled even by a single person loving you, paying attention to you because of love.

When you love someone, you pay attention to him. Attention and love are deeply related. If you suppress the need for love, then it becomes a symbolic need; then you need the attention of others. You may get it, but then too there will be no fulfillment. The need is false, disconnected from the natural, basic need. This division in the personality is neurosis.

Tantra is a very revolutionary concept -- the oldest and yet the newest. Tantra is one of the oldest traditions and yet non-traditional, even anti-traditional, because tantra says unless you are whole and one you are missing life altogether. You should not remain in a split state: you must become one. What to do to become one? You can go on thinking, but that is not going to help because thinking is the technique to divide. Thinking is analytical. It divides; it splits things. Feeling unites, synthesizes, makes things one. So you can go on thinking, reading, studying, contemplating. It is not going to help unless you fall back to the feeling center. But it is very difficult, because even when we think about the feeling center, WE THINK!

When you say to someone, "I love you," be aware of whether it is just a thought or whether it is a feeling. If it is just a thought, then you are missing something. A feeling is of the whole: your whole body, mind, everything you are, is involved. In thinking, only your head is involved, and that too not totally, but just a fragment of it. There is only a passing thought; it may not be there the next moment. Only a fragment is involved, and that creates much misery in life -- because with a fragmentary thought, you give promises which you cannot fulfill. You can say, "I love you and I will love you forever." However, the second part is a promise which you cannot fulfill because it is given by a fragmentary thought. Your whole being is not involved in it. And what will you do tomorrow when the fragment has gone and the thought is no more there? Now the promise will become a bondage.

Sartre said somewhere that every promise is going to be false. You cannot promise because you are not whole. Just a part of you promises, and when the part is no more there on the throne and another part has taken over, what are you going to do? Who will fulfill the promise? Hypocrisy is born because when you go on trying to fulfill, pretending that you are fulfilling, then everything becomes false. Tantra says fall down deep within to the feeling center. What to do and how to fall back? Now I will enter the sutras. These sutras, each sutra, is an effort to make you whole.

The first sutra:
"AT THE START OF SEXUAL UNION KEEP ATTENTIVE ON THE FIRE IN THE BEGINNING, AND SO CONTINUING, AVOID THE EMBERS IN THE END."

Sex can be a very deep fulfillment, and sex can throw you back to your wholeness, to your natural, real being, for many reasons. Those reasons have to be understood. One, sex is a total act. You are thrown off your mind, off balance. That is why there is so much fear of sex. You are identified with the mind, and sex is a no-mind act. You become headless; you do not have any head in the act. There is no reasoning, no mental process. And if there is any mental process, there is no real, authentic sex act. Then there is no orgasm, no fulfillment. Then the sex act itself becomes a local thing, something cerebral, and it has become so.

All over the world, so much hankering, so much lust for sex, is not because the world has become more sexual. It is because you cannot even enjoy sex as a total act. The world was more sexual before. That is why there was no such hankering for sex. This hankering shows that the real is missing and there is only the false. The whole modern mind has become sexual because the sex act itself is no more there. Even the sex act is transferred to the mind. It has become mental; you think about it.

Many people come to me: they say they go on thinking about sex; they enjoy thinking about it, reading, seeing pictures, pornography. They enjoy this, but when the actual moment for sex comes they suddenly feel they are not interested. They even feel they have become impotent. They feel vital energy when they are thinking. When they want to move into the actual act, they feel there is no energy, even no desire. They feel that the body has become dead.

What is happening to them? Even the sex act has become mental. They can only think about it; they cannot do it because doing will involve their whole being. And whenever there is any involvement of the whole, the head becomes uneasy because then it can no more be the master; it can no more be in control.

Tantra uses the sex act to make you whole, but then you have to move in it very meditatively. Then you have to move in it forgetting all that you have heard about sex, studied about sex, all that the society has told you: the church, your religion, the teachers. Forget everything and get involved in it in your totality. Forget to control! Control is the barrier. Rather, be possessed by it; do not control it. Move in it as if you have become mad. The "no-mind" state looks like madness. Become the body, become the animal, because the animal is whole. And as modern man is, only sex seems to be the easiest possibility to make you whole because sex is the deepest, the biological center within you. You are born out of it. Your every cell is a sex cell; your whole body is a sex-energy phenomenon.

This first sutra says, "AT THE START OF SEXUAL UNION KEEP ATTENTIVE ON THE FIRE IN THE BEGINNING, AND SO CONTINUING, AVOID THE EMBERS IN THE END." And this makes the whole difference. For you, the sex act is a release. So when you move in it you are in a hurry. You just want a release. Overflowing energy will be released; you will feel at ease. This at-easeness is just a sort of weakness. Overflowing energy creates tensions, excitement. You feel something has to be done. When the energy is released, you feel weak. You may take this weakness as relaxation. Because the excitement is no more, the overflowing energy is no more, you can relax. But this relaxation is a negative relaxation. If you can relax just by throwing energy, it is at a very great cost. And this relaxation can only be physical. It cannot go deeper and cannot become spiritual.

This first sutra says don't be in a hurry and do not hanker for the end: remain with the beginning. There are two parts to the sex act -- the beginning and the end. Remain with the beginning. The beginning part is more relaxed, warm. But do not be in a hurry to move to the end. Forget the end completely.

"At the start of sexual union, keep attentive on the fire in the beginning." While you are overflowing, do not think in terms of release: remain with this overflowing energy. Do not seek ejaculation: forget it completely. Be whole in this warm beginning. Remain with your beloved or your lover as if you have become one. Create a circle.

There are three possibilities. Two lovers meeting can create three figures -- geometrical figures. You may have even read about it or even seen an old alchemical picture in which a man and woman are standing naked within three geometrical figures. One figure is a square, another figure is a triangle and the third figure is a circle.

This is one of the old alchemical and tantric analyses of the sex act. Ordinarily, when you are in the sex act, there are four persons, not two, and this is a square: four angles are there because you yourself are divided in two -- into the thinking part and the feeling part. Your partner is also divided in two; you are four persons. Two persons are not meeting there, four persons are meeting. It is a crowd, and there can be no deep meeting really. There are four corners, and the meeting is just false. It looks like a meeting, but it is not. There can be no communion because your deeper part is hidden and your beloved's deeper part is also hidden. And only two heads are meeting, only two thinking processes are meeting -- not two feeling processes. They are hidden.

The second type of meeting can be like a triangle. You are two -- two angles of the base. For a sudden moment you become one, like the third angle of the triangle. For a sudden moment your two-ness is lost and you become one. This is better than a square meeting because at least for a single moment there is oneness. That oneness gives you health, vitality. You feel alive and young again.

But the third is the best and the third is the tantric meeting: you become a circle. There are no angles, and the meeting is not for a single moment. The meeting is really non-temporal; there is no time in it. And this can happen only if you are not seeking ejaculation. If you are seeking ejaculation, then it will become a triangle meeting -- because the moment there is ejaculation the contact point is lost.

Remain with the beginning; do not move to the end. How to remain in the beginning? Many things are to be remembered. First, don't take the sex act as a way of going anywhere. Don't take it as a means: it is the end in itself. There is no end to it; it is not a means. Secondly, do not think of the future; remain with the present. And if you cannot remain in the present in the beginning part of the sex act, then you can never remain in the present -- because the very nature of the act is such that you are thrown into the present.

Remain in the present. Enjoy the meeting of two bodies, two souls, and merge into each other, melt into each other. Forget that you are going anywhere. Remain in the moment going nowhere, and melt. Warmth, love, should be made a situation for two persons to melt into each other. That is why, if there is no love, the sex act is a hurried act. You are using the other; the other is just a means. And the other is using you. You are exploiting each other, not merging into each other. With love you can merge. This merging in the beginning will give many new insights.

If you are not in a hurry to finish the act, the act, by and by, becomes less and less sexual and more and more spiritual. Sex organs also melt into each other. A deep, silent communion happens between two body energies, and then you can remain for hours together. This togetherness moves deeper and deeper as time passes. But don't think. Remain with the moment deeply merged. It becomes an ecstasy, a samadhi, cosmic consciousness. And if you can know this, if you can feel and realize this, your sexual mind will become non-sexual. A very deep BRAHMACHARYA, CELIBACY, can be attained. Celibacy can be attained through it!

This looks paradoxical because we have been always thinking in terms that if a person has to remain celibate he must not look at the other sex, he must not meet the other sex. He must avoid, escape. A very false celibacy happens then: the mind goes on thinking about the other sex. And the more you escape from the other, the more you have to think, because this is a basic, deep need.

Tantra says do not try to escape; there is no escape possible. Rather, use nature itself to transcend. Don't fight: accept nature in order to transcend it. If this communion with your beloved or your lover is prolonged with no end in mind, then you can just remain in the beginning. Excitement is energy. You can lose it; you can come to a peak. Then the energy is lost and a depression will follow, a weakness will follow. You may take it as relaxation, but it is negative.

Tantra gives you a dimension of a higher relaxation which is positive. Both partners melting with each other give vital energy to each other. They become a circle, and their energy begins to move in a circle. They are giving life to each other, renewing life. No energy is lost. Rather, more energy is gained because through the contact with the opposite sex your every cell is challenged, excited. And if you can merge into that excitement without leading it to a peak, if you can remain in the beginning without becoming hot, just remaining warm, then those two "warmths" will meet and you can prolong the act for a very long time. With no ejaculation, with no throwing energy out, it becomes a meditation, and through it you become whole. Through it your split personality is no more split: it is bridged.

All neurosis is a "splitness." If you are bridged again, you become again a child -- innocent. And once you know this innocence you can go on behaving in your society as it requires. But now this behavior is just a drama, an acting. You are not involved in it. It is a requirement, so you do it. But you are not in it; you are just acting.

You will have to use unreal faces because you live in an unreal world; otherwise the world will crush you and kill you. We have killed many real faces. We crucified Jesus because he started behaving like a real man. The unreal society will not tolerate it. We poisoned Socrates because he started behaving like a real man. Behave as the society requires; do not create unnecessary troubles for yourself and others. But once you know your real being and the wholeness, the unreal society cannot drive you neurotic; it cannot make you mad.

"AT THE START OF SEXUAL UNION KEEP ATTENTIVE ON THE FIRE IN THE BEGINNING, AND SO CONTINUING, AVOID THE EMBERS IN THE END". IF ejaculation is there, energy is dissipated. Then there is no more fire. You are simply relieved of your energy without gaining anything.