Tantra says: First purify the body – purify it of all repressions. Allow the body energy to flow, remove the blocks. It is very difficult to come across a person who has no blocks, it is very difficult to come across a person whose body is not tight. Loosen this tightness; this tension is blocking your energy, the flow cannot be possible with this tension. Why is everybody so uptight? Why can’t you relax? Have you seen a cat sleeping, dozing in the afternoon? How simply and how beautifully the cat relaxes. Can’t you relax the same way? You toss and turn in your bed; you can’t relax. And the beauty of the cat’s relaxation is that it relaxes utterly and yet is perfectly alert. A slight movement in the room and it will open its eyes, it will jump and be ready. It is not that it is just asleep. The cat’s sleep is something to be learned; man has forgotten.
Tantra says: Learn from the cats – how they sleep, how they relax, how they live in a non-tense way. And the whole animal world lives in that non-tense way. Man has to learn this, because man has been conditioned wrongly, man has been programmed wrongly.
From the very childhood you have been programmed to be tight. You don’t breathe…out of fear. Out of fear of sexuality people don’t breathe, because when you breathe deeply, your breath goes exactly to the sex center and hits it, massages it from the inside, excites it. Because you have been taught that sex is dangerous, each child starts breathing in a shallow way, hung up just in the chest. He never goes beyond that because if he goes beyond it, suddenly there is excitement; sexuality is aroused and fear arises. The moment you breathe deeply, sex energy is released. Sex energy has to be released, it has to flow all over your being. Then your body will become orgasmic. But afraid to breathe, so afraid that almost half the lungs are full of carbon dioxide….
There are many, many thousands of holes in the lungs and ordinarily fifty percent are never cleaned, they always remain full of carbon dioxide. That’s why you are dull, that’s why you don’t look alert, that’s why awareness is difficult. It is not accidental that Yoga and Tantra both teach deep breathing, pranayama, to unload your lungs of the carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide is not for you; it has to be thrown out continuously. You have to breathe in new, fresh air; you have to breathe more oxygen. Oxygen will create your inner fire, oxygen will make you aflame. But oxygen will also inflame your sexuality. So only Tantra can allow you real deep breathing; even Yoga cannot allow you real deep breathing. Yoga also allows you to go up to the navel – not beyond that, not to cross the hara center, not to cross swadhishthan, because once you cross swadhishthan you jump into the muladhar.
Only Tantra allows you total being and total flow. Tantra gives you unconditional freedom; whatsoever you are and whatsoever you can be, Tantra puts no boundaries on you. It does not define you, it simply gives you total freedom. The understanding is that when you are totally free, then much is possible.
This has been my observation, that people who are sexually repressed become unintelligent. Only very, very sexually alive people are intelligent people. Now the idea that sex is sin must have damaged intelligence, must have damaged it very badly. When you are really flowing and your sexuality has no fight and conflict with you, when you cooperate with it, your mind will function at its optimum. You will be intelligent, alert, alive.
The body has to be befriended, says Tantra.