The spiritual science of Tantra was born thousand of years ago in India, but it has never been so popular as it is now, specially in the West. There are more Tantra teachers there than in India. In India, it is still thought to be something immoral, hence avoidable. But in the West, it continues to be gaining popularity, though they do not have any such Tantra temples as we have in Khajuraho.

Tantra is a unique alchemical science of transformation of the human energy of a practitioner — from a lower level to a higher level, just as in some mysterious process a piece of coal becomes a real diamond. Tantra has nothing to do with any superstition or with worshipping a God. It neither jantar mantar (magic), as has been misunderstood in India, nor is it indulging in sex as has been widely misunderstood in the West. Both in the East and the West, people have been misguided about Tantra. In the East, people have believed that they will gain some magical powers by practising Tantra and become rich. While in the West, many practitioners have brought it down to the level of kamasutra. In each case, it is the human greed that has been creating illusions in the minds of millions of people.

Tantra is really a deep science, which has its origin in the Vigyan Bhairav Tantra of Shiva and the Buddha’s disciples such as Sri Kirti and Saraha. Osho had reintroduced Tantra with proper perspective by giving his talks on Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, which is the compilation of Shiva’s sutras and the royal song of Saraha who comes from the glorious lineage of the Buddha.

Osho had said: Saraha was born about two centuries after Buddha. He was in the direct line of a different branch. One branch moves from Mahakashyap to Bodhidharma and Zen was born. Another branch moves from Buddha to his son Rahul Bhadra to Sri Kirti to Saraha to Nargarjuna — that is, the Tantra branch. It is still bearing fruit in Tibet. Tantra converted Tibet, and Saraha is the founder of Tantra just as Bodhidharma is the founder of Zen.

Here are a couple of lines from the songs of Saraha, which signify the basic understanding of Tantra: “Bees know that in flowers, honey can be found. That samsara and nirvana are not two. How will the deluded ever understand?”

Tantra has a holistic approach towards life — it does not divide and does not teach to live a fragmented life. All is divine — body-mind-soul — from the physical to the non-physical, from the mundane to the spiritual, from sex to superconsciousness.

The modern medicine to cure such diseases also produces some strange side-effects of its own.

These days the whole world seems to have become too much health-conscious. Or, one can say that we are suffering from so many diseases that most of us have become very afraid of losing our life to them. Hence, out of fear of such dreadful diseases, we are becoming increasingly health-conscious. The innumerable findings by researchers make us suspect that our fruits and vegetables are losing their natural qualities due to of all kinds of chemicals entering the soil. The fruits and vegetables have always been considered to be health-givers but now the presence of poison in them may be giving us new kinds of diseases.

The modern medicine to cure such diseases also produces some strange side-effects of its own. This whole situation is urging man to return to an organic natural life. And that too is not so easy.

In the earlier times, before chemical methods were used in agriculture, the organic food was the norm, and was cheaper to buy, but now the organic food is so much costlier because of its scarcity. We have to pay a heavy price to eat pure food for our perfect health and natural life. The perfect health also depends on the good quality of air to breathe, and we are devoid of it in most parts of India. As per an UN report, the trees per head in various countries are Canada 8,953, Russia 4,461, US 716, China 102 and India only 28.

India’s population explosion is the main reason for this scarcity. We can teach yoga to the whole world and become jagatgurus, but we ourselves are not going to be healthy. We can do our vipassana and watch our breath consciously, but there is very little pure air to breathe. And to have a real healthy life, we must breathe pure air. That is the first thing to remember.

Osho tells us: Breathing is the mechanism of life, and life is deeply related with breathing. That is why in India we call it prana. We have given one word for both — prana means the vitality, the aliveness. Your life is your breath. Your breath is a bridge between you and your body. Constantly, breath makes a bridge to your body, connecting you, relating you to your body. Not only is the breath a bridge to your body, it is also a bridge between you and the universe. The body is just the universe which has come to you, which is nearer to you. Your body is part of the universe. Everything in the body is part of the universe — every particle, every cell. It is the nearest approach to the universe. Health and meditation are also deeply connected through our breath. To live a healthy and peaceful life, we need to have pure air for prana energy and to meditate, we need to breathe consciously. A child breathes in unconsciousness. A sage breathes consciously. He becomes a child again, a rebirth happens to him. Now he breathes and he is aware also. This is the way of real yoga: The natural communion with the universal energy.

The practitioners of Osho’s meditation have been experimenting with these methods in all sorts of life situations, and places.

Living the fast-paced urban life gets on everybody’s nerves. An increasing number of young people are under tremendous stress and distress, which create numerous physical and mental problems. Stress has been linked to hypertension, heart attacks, diabetes, asthma, chronic pain, allergies, headaches, backaches, skin disorders, cancer and immune system weakness. Some people escape stress by drinking alcohol or consuming drugs, but there are others who do not see any relief from it. As a result, many people are turning to meditation to deal with stress in their lives.

Osho has devised over 200 methods of meditation to help people regain health from the physical level to the spiritual level — from our body-mind roots to our spiritual flowering. The practitioners of Osho’s meditation have been experimenting with these methods in all sorts of life situations, and places. This practice has shown positive results everywhere. These methods are active and passive as well. The passive method, the process of letting go, also work wonders.

There has always been an idea prevalent in the world that we have to focus all the time while doing anything. This notion also has been creating stress and tension and reducing productivity. No, what is really needed is to have intervals between focusing — this rejuvenates the energy and brain cells and the spirit. Srini Pillay, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School says: “What people don’t realise is that in order to complete their tasks they need to use both the focus and unfocus circuits in their brain.” Pillay, who has written a book on the subject called Tinker, Dabble, DoodleTry: Unlock the Power of the Unfocused Mind, believes this counter-intuitive link between downtime and productivity may be due to the way our brains operate. When our brains toggle between being focused and unfocused on a task, they tend to be more efficient. This was reported by the BBC: In order to make the most of our focus and energy, we also need to embrace downtime, or just be lazy.”

This is what is meant by meditation — the ability to move from doing to being. According to Osho, this is Zazen. Zazen means to sit, and just sit, nothing else. There is no doing on the part of the body, no doing on the part of the mind. It’s a state of non-doing. That does not mean that you are fast asleep because sleep is a doing. That does not mean that you are dead because if you are dead you cannot just sit. That simply means that you are tremendously alive, intensely alive, a fire of being, but not moving anywhere — a reservoir of energy in a deep awaiting.

Osho concludes: “When Jesus said, ‘Sit ye here,’ he said to them, “You simply sit, don’t do anything. Just remain alert, silent — a silent pool with no ripples of thought, just sitting.” Be in Zazen.