Tantra says this is your natural gift, and it has been given to you so that you can find the way that it is possible for you to be without thoughts, relaxed, and the same orgasmic experience will follow. It has nothing to do with the other. And once you know how to relax, how to drop the thoughts, how to stop time, how to stop mind, you discover your pure isness.

To me Tantra seems to be the only contribution that seekers after truth have given to the world. It has no perversion of any kind. It uses nature to experience something which is very simple, and then makes you aware that this simple experience can be experienced in your aloneness. And that very moment you transcend the dependence on the other, because certainly the other is always a trouble, a pain in the neck.

Jean-Paul Sartre says, “The other is hell.” It does not matter whether the other is man or woman – “The other is hell” because you have to depend for your only meaningful experience in life on the other.

Tantra gives you tremendous freedom from the other, and a great gratitude for the other; it is because of the other that you have become able to attain freedom from all dependence.

Tantra arose in India as a rebellion against Hinduism – because Hinduism was doing the same, on a greater scale, with more sophistication and philosophy, as Christianity did later on in a very crude and primitive way. Hinduism was teaching celibacy, and celibacy is bound to lead to perversions, particularly homosexuality. And homosexuality has brought the ultimate flowering in AIDS.

But one thing should be remembered: just like the Christian trinity, Hindus also have a trinity – Brahma, the creator god; Vishnu, the god who maintains the world; and Shiva, who will destroy the world. This is a cycle. Then Brahma creates the world again, and for millions of years Vishnu maintains it; then one day Shiva destroys it. So you will be surprised to know that in the whole of India there is only one temple devoted to Brahma. Who cares for him? His work is finished – he created the world.

All the temples are of Vishnu, or incarnations of Vishnu. All the incarnations of Hindu gods – Rama, Krishna, they are all incarnations of Vishnu. Naturally, it is simple business that Vishnu maintains the world and he is in power.

And there are temples of Shiva too, but not so many as the temples of Krishna and Rama and other manifestations of Vishnu.

Shiva is worshipped out of fear because he is going to destroy the world. If you worship him he can be a little favorable to you. He may destroy you in some sophisticated way – an electric chair, not a crude, ugly cross like the one on which Jesus was crucified; or giving you a disease, aids, which is far cruder a cross than the one Jesus was carrying and dying on.