Man is an animal, but not only an animal: he is more also. But that "more" cannot deny the animal, it has to absorb it. Man is more than an animal, but the animal cannot be denied. It has to be absorbed creatively. You cannot leave it aside, it is in your very roots; you have to use it creatively.
So the first thing to remember is not to be negative about your animal heritage. Once you start thinking in negative terms you will become destructive to yourself, because you are ninety-nine percent animal.
If you create a division, you are fighting a losing battle; you cannot win. The result of your fight will be quite the opposite, because ninety-nine percent is animal. Only one percent of the mind is conscious, and this one percent cannot win against the ninety-nine percent. It is going to be defeated. That is why there is so much frustration, because everyone is defeated by his own animal. You can never succeed. Of necessity you are going to be a failure, because that one percent cannot succeed against the ninety-nine percent. It cannot even be divided from the ninety-nine percent.
It is just like a flower: it cannot go against the roots, it cannot go against the whole tree. And while you are against your animal heritage, you are being fed by it. You are alive because of it. If your animal dies this moment, you will die immediately. Your mind exists as a flower; your animal heritage is the whole tree.
Do not be negative — that is suicidal. And if you are divided against yourself, you can never attain anything which is blissful.
You are creating a hell, and the hell is nowhere else but in a divided personality. In the split personality is the hell. And hell is not something geographical, hell is psychological — and heaven also. The personality which is a whole, one unit, with no inner division and conflict, is heaven.
So the first thing I would like to say is, do not be negative. Do not divide yourself, do not go against yourself, do not become two. The animal that is there is not something bad.
The animal in you is a great potential. That is your past and also your future, because much is hidden in it. Uncover it, develop it, allow it to grow and go beyond it, but do not fight with it. That is one of the basic teachings of tantra.
Other traditions are divisive. They divide you, they create a fight within you. Tantra is not divisive, it doesn't believe in fight. Tantra is absolutely positive; it doesn't believe in saying no. Tantra believes in saying yes — yes to the whole of life. And through `yes' the transformation happens, and through `no' there is only disturbance — no transformation is possible. Against whom are you fighting? Against yourself? How can you win? And the major part of you is from the animal, so the major part will win. So those who fight, they are creating their own defeats. If you want to be defeated, fight. If you want to win, do not fight.
Victory needs knowledge, not fight. Fight is a subtle violence. And this is strange, but this has happened: those who talk about nonviolence to others are very much violent against themselves. There are teachings and traditions which say, "Do not be violent to anyone," but those same teachings are very much violent as far as you are inwardly concerned. They teach you to be violent with yourself, but not to be violent with others.
All types of asceticism, renunciation, negative attitudes, life-denying philosophies, are based on maintaining a violent attitude toward yourself. They tell you to be violent with yourself.
Tantra is absolutely nonviolent. It says, if you cannot be nonviolent with yourself, you cannot be nonviolent with anyone else — that is impossible. A person who is violent to himself will be violent to everyone; in his nonviolence also he will be just hiding his violence. Aggression can be turned against yourself, but that aggressive attitude is destructive.
But that doesn't mean to remain the animal which you are. The moment you accept your heritage, the moment you accept your past, the future becomes an opening. Through acceptance is the opening. The animal is the past; it need not be the future. There is no need to go against the past — and you cannot go. Use it creatively.
What can be done to use it creatively? The first thing is to be profoundly aware of its existence. Those who fight are not aware of it. Because they are afraid, they push the animal behind, they push the animal into the unconscious. Really, there need not be any unconscious, but because of suppression the unconscious is created. You feel many things within which you condemn without understanding them.
A man who understands condemns nothing; there is no need. He can even use poison as a medicine because he knows. Everything can be used creatively. Because you do not know, in ignorance poison is poison. With wisdom it can become the elixir.
The person who is fighting against his sex, anger, greed, against the animal, what will he do? He will suppress. Fighting is suppression. He will push down anger, sex, greed, hatred, jealousy. He will push everything down somewhere underground, and he will create a false structure above ground. The structure will be false because the energies have not been transformed which can make it real. The structure is phony; underground, the real energies have been repressed. Those real energies will always remain there working, any moment they can explode. You are just sitting on a volcano, and every moment that volcano is trying to erupt. If it does, your structure will be shaken.
Whatsoever you have built in the name of religion, morality, culture, is a phony structure that is above ground — just a false facade. Underground the real man is hiding. So your animal is not very far away; your facade is just skin-deep. Someone insults you, and the gentleman disappears and the animal comes out. The gentleman is just skin-deep; the volcano is just near. Any moment it can be brought out, and when it comes out, your intelligence, your morality, your religion, your so-called being above animal things, simply disappear. When the real asserts, the false disappears. Only when the real goes back underground does the false come again.
When you are angry, where is your mind, where is your consciousness, where is your morality? Where are your vows that you have taken so many times — that "Now I am not going to be angry again?" When anger comes they all simply disappear. When anger has moved again to its cave, its underground cave, you start repenting. Those phony fellows have gathered again. They start talking, condemning, and planning for the future, and again in the future the same will happen; when anger will come the shadows will disappear.
Your consciousness right now is just a shadow. It is not a real thing; it has no substance in it. You can take a vow of BRAMACHARYA, of celibacy — it makes no difference to your sex instinct. The sex instinct simply goes underground, and when it comes up, your vows of brahmacharya, of celibacy, will prove to be made of just very dream-like stuff. They cannot face the real thing.
So these are the two attitudes. You can either suppress sex — then you will never go beyond it — or you can use your sex energy in a creative way. Not saying no to it, but giving it a deep yes; not forcing it to go underground, but creating a structure above ground with it. Then you will be a real man. It will be difficult, obviously; that is why we choose the easier path. It is easier to have a false structure, because nothing is needed. Only one thing is needed: to deceive yourself, that is all. If you can deceive yourself, you can create a false structure very easily. Nothing will change really, but you will go on thinking that everything has changed.
This is easy, to create an illusion. To create a reality is a difficult task, it is arduous. But it is worthwhile, because once you have created something with real energies, your structure cannot be shattered. If sex is above ground, then you can create something out of it — for example, love. If sex is transformed, it becomes love; if it is suppressed, it becomes hatred.
You become afraid of love if you suppress sex. A person who has suppressed sex will always be afraid of love, because the moment love comes sex will follow. Love is of the soul and sex is of the body, so love cannot be allowed to happen because then sex will follow. It will be just somewhere near, by the corner. So a person who has suppressed sex cannot be loving. He may show it, he may pretend that he is very loving, but he cannot be because he is so afraid. He cannot touch you with a loving hand because the fear is there. The loving hand can any moment turn out to be a sexual touch, so he will be afraid; he will not allow you to touch him.
He may create many justifications for it but the real thing is fear — fear of the instinct which he has repressed. And he will be filled with hatred, because any energy that is repressed reverses itself and goes to its original nature.
Sex moves easily toward love; that is a natural flow. If you prevent it, if you create hindrances to its path, it will become hatred. So your so-called saints and so-called moral teachers, if you look deep into them you will find them filled with hatred. And that is bound to be, it is natural. Sex is hidden there, any moment it can erupt. They are sitting on a dangerous volcano. If you push down energies, you are just postponing a task, and the more it is postponed, the more difficult it will be.
Tantra says, create your life with real energies — and real energies are all animal energies. But when I say animal, there is no condemnation in it. The word `animal' for me is not condemnatory, as it is for you. The animal is beautiful in itself, the animal in itself is nothing to be condemned. The animal within you is pure energy, moving according to natural laws.
It has been asked, "What should we do consciously? Should we not channel? Should we not control?" No! Your consciousness is not to control, your consciousness is not to channel. Your consciousness can do only one thing: your consciousness is to understand, and understanding in itself becomes the transformation.
Tantra will say, understand sex, do not try to channel it. If you do not understand it, every effort is bound to be a failure, and harmful. So do not do anything. First understand it, and through understanding the path will be revealed. You are not to force your energies on that path. Through understanding you come to know the law, just like in science. What are you doing in science? You come to understand a law; a natural mystery is revealed. Once the natural mystery is revealed, you can use the energy creatively.
Without your knowing the inherent law, all efforts are doomed. So tantra says, understand the animal, because in the animal is hidden the potential for your future. Really, it can be said that in the animal God is hidden. The animal is your past, God is your future — but the future is hidden in your past, in seed form. Understand whatsoever your natural forces are. Accept them, understand them. Your mind is not to be there mastering; it is not there to control them and fight with them, it is there to understand them.
Really, if you understand them, you are using your mind rightly. Understand sex, understand anger, understand greed. Be alert; try to find out their ways — how they work, what are their functions. And be constantly aware of the very movement of these animal instincts within. If you can be conscious of these animal instincts, there will be no division, you will not have an unconscious mind. If you can move with these instincts deep within, you will have only a conscious mind; there will be no unconscious.
The unconscious is there because of repression. You have closed the major part of your being to consciousness because you are afraid. You cannot look at your own reality. You are so afraid that you have already moved out of the house — you just live on the verandah. You never go in because the fear is there: if you come face to face with yourself, all your imagination, all your illusions about yourself will fall down.
OSHO
