There are two paths: one is the path of the warrior, the soldier; the other is the path of the king, the royal path. Yoga is the first; Tantra is the second. So first you will have to understand what is the path of a soldier, a warrior, only then will you be able to understand what Tilopa means by the royal path.

A soldier has to fight, inch by inch; a soldier has to be aggressive, a soldier has to be violent, the enemy has to be destroyed or conquered. Yoga tries to create a conflict within you. It gives you a clear cut distinction as to what is wrong and what is right, what is good and what is bad, what belongs to God and what belongs to the Devil. And almost all religions, except Tantra, follow the path of Yoga. They divide reality and they create an inner conflict – they proceed through conflict.

For example, you have hate in you: the path of the warrior is to destroy the hate within. You have anger and greed and sex, and millions of things. The path of the warrior is to destroy all that is wrong, negative, and develop all that is positive and right. Hate has to be destroyed and love evolved. Anger has to be completely destroyed and compassion created. Sex has to go and give place to brahmacharya, to pure celibacy. Yoga immediately cuts you with a sword into two parts: the right and wrong; the right has to win over the wrong.

What will you do? Anger is there. What will Yoga suggest to do? It suggests: create the habit of compassion, create the opposite, make it so habitual that you start functioning like a robot. Hence it is called the way of the soldier. All over the world, throughout history, the soldier has been trained in a robotlike existence; he has to create habits.

Habits function without consciousness; they don’t need any awareness, they can move without you. If you have habits – and everybody has habits, you can see it… A man takes out his packet of cigarettes from a pocket, watch him, he may not be at all aware what he is doing. Just robotlike he reaches into the pocket. If there is some inner restlessness, immediately his hand goes into his pocket; he brings out the cigarette, starts smoking. He may throw away the remaining part, the last part of the cigarette; he may have moved through all the gestures without even being aware of what he was doing.

We teach a robotlike existence to the soldier. The soldier has to do and follow, he has not to be aware. When he is commanded to turn to the right, he has to turn; he has not to think about it, about whether to turn or not because if he starts thinking then it is impossible, then wars cannot continue in the world. Thinking is not needed, nor is awareness needed. He should simply be this much aware, that he understands the order, that’s all. The minimum of awareness: here the order is given and there, immediately, like a mechanism, he starts following. It is not that he turns to the left when he is ordered to turn left; he listens and turns. He is not turning; he has cultivated the habit. It is just like putting the light off or on: the light is not going to think about it, whether to be on or off; you push the button and the light is on. You say “Left turn,” and the button is pushed and the man moves left.

William James has reported that once he was sitting in a coffeehouse and an old soldier – retired, retired for almost for twenty years – was passing by with a bucket of eggs. Suddenly William James played a joke. He called loudly, “Attention!” and the poor old man stood to attention. The eggs fell from his hands; they were destroyed.
He was very angry; he came running and said, “What type of joke is this?”
But William James said, “You need not follow it. Everybody is free to call ‘Attention!’ You are not forced to follow it. Who told you to follow it? You should have gone on your way.”
The man said, “That is not possible; it is automatic. Of course twenty years have passed since I was in the military, but the habit is deep rooted.”

Many years of training, and a conditioned reflex is created. This phrase conditioned reflex is good; Pavlov, a Russian psychologist, coined it. It says that you simply reflect: somebody throws something into your eye; you don’t think to blink or close it, your eye simply closes. A fly comes flying and you close your eye; you need not think, there is no need, it is a conditioned reflex – it simply happens. It is in your body-habit, it is in your blood, in your bones. It simply happens – nothing has to be done about it.

The soldier is trained to behave in a completely robotlike way. He has to exist in conditioned reflexes. The same is done by Yoga. You get angry, Yoga says, “Don’t get angry, rather cultivate the opposite: compassion.” By and by, your energy will start moving in the habit of compassion. If you persevere for a long time, anger will disappear completely, you will feel compassion. But you will be dead, not alive. You will be a robot, not a human being. You will have compassion not because you have compassion, but only because you have cultivated a habit.

You can cultivate a bad habit; you can cultivate a good habit. Somebody can cultivate smoking, somebody can cultivate non-smoking; somebody can cultivate nonvegetarian styles of food, somebody can cultivate vegetarian styles, but both are cultivating, and in the final judgment both are the same because both live through habits. This point has to be pondered very deeply because it is very easy to cultivate a good habit and it is very difficult to become good. And the substitute of a good habit is cheap; it can be done very easily.

Now, particularly in Russia, they are developing a therapy: conditioned reflex therapy. They say people cannot leave their habits. Somebody has been smoking for twenty years – how can you expect him to leave it? You may try to explain to him that it is bad, the doctors may say he could even be in a dangerous situation, cancer may be developing, but twenty years of a long habit – now it is engrained, now it has moved into the deepest core of his body, now it is in his metabolism. Even if he wants, even if he desires, even if he sincerely desires, it is difficult because it is not a question of sincere desire. Twenty years of continuous practice; it is almost impossible. So what to do?

In Russia they say there is no need to do anything, and no need to explain to him. They have developed a therapy: the man starts smoking and they give him an electric shock. The shock, the pain of it and the smoking become joined together, become associated. For seven days he is hospitalized and whenever he starts smoking, immediately, automatically, he gets an electric shock. After seven days the habit is broken. Even if you persuade him to smoke he will be trembling. The moment he takes a cigarette in his hand his whole body will tremble because of the idea of the shock.

They say now he will never smoke; they have broken the habit by a very sharp shock treatment. But he will not now become a buddha just because, through shock treatment, he does not have his old habit. All habits can be changed through shock treatment. Will he become a buddha, enlightened because he has no bad habits anymore? No, now he will not even be a human being – he will be a mechanism. He will be afraid of things, he will not be able to do them because you have given him new habits of fear.

That is the whole meaning of hell; all the religions have used it as a shock treatment. Hell is nowhere, nor is there any heaven. Both are tricks, old psychotherapeutic concepts. They have painted hell so horrible that a child can become afraid from the very childhood. The mention of the name of hell and fear arises and he trembles. This is just a trick to prevent bad habits. And heaven is also a trick to help good habits: so much pleasure, happiness, beauty, eternal life is promised in heaven if you follow good patterns. Whatsoever the society says is good you have to follow. Heaven is to help you toward positivity and hell is to prevent you from going in the negative direction.

Tantra is the only religion which has not used any such conditioned reflexes. Tantra says you have to flower into a perfectly awakened being, not a robotlike mechanism. So if you understand Tantra, habit is bad; there are no bad habits, there are no good habits. Habit is bad, and one should be awake so there are no habits. You simply live moment to moment with full awareness, not by habits.

If you can live without habits, that is the royal path. Why is it royal? A soldier has to follow, a king need not. The king is above, he gives orders; he receives no orders from anybody. A king never goes to fight; only soldiers go. A king is not a fighter. A king lives the most relaxed of all lives. This is just a metaphor: a soldier has to follow; a king simply lives loose and natural, there is nobody above him. Tantra says there is nobody above you to whom you have to follow, from whom you have to get your pattern of life, through whom you have to become imitators. There is nobody. You live a loose, natural and flowing life – the only thing is, just be aware. Through fighting you can cultivate good habits, but they will be habits, not natural. People say a habit is second nature, maybe – but remember the word second. It is not natural; it may look almost natural, but it is not.

What will be the difference between real compassion and a cultivated compassion? A real compassion is a response – the situation and the response. A real compassion is always fresh; something has happened and your heart flows toward it. A child has fallen and you run and help the child to stand back up, but this is a response. A false compassion, a cultivated compassion, is a reaction.

These two words are very, very meaningful: response and reaction. Response is alive to the situation; reaction is just an engrained habit. You simply go and help because in the past you have been training yourself to help somebody if he has fallen, but there is no heart in it. Somebody is drowning in the river: you run and help the person just because you have been taught to do so. You have cultivated the habit of helping, but you are not involved. You remain out of it, your heart is not there, you have not responded. You have not responded to this man, to this man drowning in this river; you have not responded to this moment, you have followed an ideology. To follow an ideology is good: help everybody, become a servant to people, have compassion. You have an ideology, and through the ideology you react. It is out of the past that the action comes, it is already dead.

When the situation creates the action and you respond with full awareness, only then something of beauty happens to you. If you react because of the ideology, old habit patterns, you will not gain anything out of it. At the most you can gain a little ego, which is not a gain at all. You may start bragging that you have saved a man who was drowning in the river. You may go to the marketplace and shout loudly, “Look, I have saved another human life!” You may gain a little more ego, that you have done something good. But it is not a gain; you have lost a great opportunity of being spontaneous, of being spontaneous in compassion.

If you had responded to the situation, then something would have flowered in you, a blossoming; you would have felt a certain silence, a stillness, a blessing. Whenever there is a response you feel a blossoming inside. Whenever there is a reaction you remain dead: corpselike you behave, robotlike you act. Reaction is ugly; response is beautiful. Reaction is always of the part; reaction is never of the whole. Response is always of the whole, your whole totality jumps into the river. You don’t think about it, the situation simply lets it happen.

If your life becomes a life of response and spontaneity, you will some day become a buddha. If your life becomes a life of reaction, dead habits, you may look like a buddha but you will not become a buddha. You will be a painted buddha: inside you will be just a corpse. Habit kills life. Habit is against life.

Every day in the morning you have made it a habit to get up early: you get up at five. In India I have seen many people – because in India, for centuries it has been taught that the brahmamuhurt, before the sun has risen, is the most auspicious moment, the holiest. It is, but you cannot make a habit out of it because the holy exists only in a living response. They get up at five, but you will never see on their faces the glory that comes if you get up early as a response. All life is awakening all around you; the whole earth is waiting for the sun, the stars are disappearing. Everything is becoming more conscious. The earth has slept, the trees have slept; the birds are ready to take to the wing. Everything is getting ready. A new day starts, a new celebration.

If it is a response, then you get up like a bird, humming, singing; you have a dance to your step. It is not a habit, it is not that you have to get up; it is not that because it is written in the scriptures and you are a devoted Hindu, you have to get up in the early morning. If you make a habit out of it you will not listen to the birds because birds are not written in the scriptures; you will not see the sun rising because that is not the point – you are following a dead discipline. You may even be angry; you may even be against it because last night you were late to bed and you are not feeling well enough to get up. It would have been better if you could have slept a little more. You were not ready; you were tired. Or last night was not good, and you have dreamed too much and your whole body feels lethargic; you would like to have a little more sleep. But no, the scriptures are against it and you have been taught from your very childhood…

In my childhood my grandfather was very much for the morning. He would drag me out of my sleep nearabout three in the morning – and since then I have not been able to get up early. He would drag me and I would curse him inside, but I couldn’t do anything and he would take me for a walk, and I was sleepy but I had to walk with him. He destroyed the whole beauty.

Later, whenever I had to go for a morning walk, I could not forgive him. I will always remember him. He destroyed… For years he was continuously dragging me – and he was doing something good, he thought that he was helping to create a lifestyle. This is not the way. I was sleepy and he was dragging me, and the path was beautiful and the morning was beautiful, but he destroyed all the beauty. He put me off. Only after many years could I regain it, and move in the morning without remembering him; otherwise his memory was with me. Even when he was dead he would follow me like a shadow in the morning.

If you make a habit, if you make it a forced thing, then the morning becomes ugly. Then it is better to go to sleep. But be spontaneous. Some days you may not be able to get up, nothing is wrong in it, you are not committing a sin. If you are feeling sleepy, sleep is beautiful – as beautiful as any morning and as beautiful as any sunrise because sleep belongs to the divine as much as to the sun. If you are feeling to rest the whole day, it is good!

This is what Tantra says: the royal way – behave like a king, not like a soldier. There is nobody on top of you to force you and order you; there should not really be a style of life. That is the royal way. You should live moment to moment, enjoying moment to moment – spontaneity should be the way. And why bother about tomorrow? This moment is enough. Live it! Live it in totality. Respond, but don’t react. “No habits” should be the formula.

I am not saying to live in chaos, but don’t live through habits. Maybe, just living spontaneously a way of life evolves in you, but it is not forced. If you enjoy the morning every day, and through enjoyment you get up early in the morning, not as a habit, and you get up every day… And you may get up early for your whole life, but it is not a habit. You are not forcing yourself to get up, it happens. It is beautiful; you enjoy it, you love it.

If it happens out of love it is not a style, it is not a habit, not a conditioning, not a cultivated, dead thing. The fewer habits, the more you will be alive. No habits – you will be perfectly alive. Habits surround you with a dead crust and you become enclosed in them, you become encapsulated. Like a seed, a hard shell surrounds you. Be flexible.

Yoga teaches you to cultivate the opposite of all that is bad. Fight with the evil and attend to good. There is violence – kill the violence within you and become nonviolent, cultivate nonviolence. Always do the opposite and force the opposite to become your pattern. This is the soldier’s way: a small teaching.

Tantra is the great teaching, the supreme. What does Tantra say? Tantra says: don’t create any conflict within yourself. Accept both, and through the acceptance of both, transcendence happens – not victory but transcendence. In Yoga there are victories, in Tantra there are none. In Tantra there is simply transcendence. Not that you become nonviolent against violence, you simply go beyond both, you simply become a third phenomenon: a witness.

I was sitting once in a butcher’s shop. He was a very good man and I used to go to visit him. It was evening and he was just going to close the shop when a man came and asked for a hen. Just a few minutes before he had told me that everything was sold that day, only one hen was left. So he was very happy; he went in, brought the hen out, threw it on the scale and said, “It will be five rupees.”
The man said, “It is good, but I am going to give a party and many friends are coming and this hen seems to be too small. I would like to have one a little bigger.”
Now I knew that he had no other hen left, this was the only one. The butcher brooded a little, took the hen back inside the room, stirred here and there a little, came back again, threw the hen on the scale, the same hen, and said, “This will be seven rupees.”
The man said, “Tell you what, I shall take both of them.”
Then the butcher was really in a fix.

And Tantra gives the same fix to the whole, to existence itself. Tantra says, “I will take both of them.” There are not two. Hate is nothing but another aspect of love. Anger is nothing but another aspect of compassion, and violence is nothing but another face of nonviolence. Tantra says, “Tell you what, I will take both of them. I accept both.” And suddenly through this acceptance there is transcendence because there are not two. Violence and nonviolence are not two. Anger and compassion are not two. Love and hate are not two.

That’s why you know, you observe, but you are so unconscious that you don’t recognize the fact. Your love changes into hate within a second. How is it possible if they are two? Not even a second is needed: this moment you love, and next moment you hate the same person. In the morning you love the person, by the afternoon you hate, in the evening you love again. This game of love and hate goes on. In fact, love and hate is not the right word. Love-hate, anger-compassion: they are one phenomenon; they are not two. That’s why love can become hate, hate can become love, anger can become compassion, and compassion can become anger.

Tantra says the division is brought about by your mind and then you start fighting. First you create the division; you condemn one aspect and you appreciate another. First you create the division, then you create the conflict and then you are in trouble. And you will be in trouble. A yogi is constantly in trouble because whatsoever he does the victory cannot be final, at the most temporary.

You can push down anger and act up compassion, but you know well that you have pushed it down into the unconscious and it is there. Any moment, a little unawareness and it will bubble up; it will surface. So, one constantly has to push it down. And this is such an ugly phenomenon, if one has to constantly push down negative things, then the whole life is wasted. When will you enjoy the divine? You have no space, no time. You are fighting with the anger and greed and sex and jealousy, and a thousand things. And those thousand enemies are there; you have to be constantly on watch, you can never relax. How can you be loose and natural? You will always be tense, strained, always ready to fight, always afraid.

Yogis even become afraid of sleep because in sleep they cannot be on watch. In sleep all that they have forced down, surfaces. They may have attained to celibacy while they are awake, but in dreams it becomes impossible: beautiful women come on floating inside, and the yogi cannot do anything. Those beautiful women are not coming from some heaven – it is written in Hindu stories that God sent them. Why should God be interested in you, a poor yogi not doing anybody any harm, simply sitting in the Himalayas with closed eyes, fighting with his own problems? Why should God be interested in him? And why should they send apsaras, beautiful women, to distract him from his path? Why? Nobody is there. There is no need for anybody to send anybody. The yogi is creating his own dreams.

Whatsoever you suppress surfaces in dreams. Those dreams are the part the yogi has denied. And your waking hours are as much yours as your dreams are yours. So whether you love a woman in your waking hours, or you love a woman in dream, there is no difference. There cannot be because it is not a question of a woman being there or not, it is a question of you. Whether you love a picture, a dream picture, or you love a real woman, there is in fact no difference, there cannot be because a real woman is also a picture inside. You never know the real woman, you only know the picture.

I am here. How do you know that I am really here? Maybe it is just a dream: you are dreaming me here. What will be the difference if you dream me here and you see me actually here? And how will you make out the difference? What is the criterion? Whether I am here or not makes no difference, you see me inside your mind. In both cases, dream or real, your eyes take in the rays and your mind interprets that somebody is there. You have never seen any actual person, you cannot.

That’s why Hindus say this is maya; this is an illusory world. Tilopa says, “Transient, ghostlike, phantomlike, dreamlike is this world.” Why? It is because there is no difference between dream and actuality. In both cases you are confined in your mind. You only see pictures, you have never seen any reality – you cannot because reality can only be seen when you become real. You are a ghostlike phenomenon, a shadow – how can you see the real? The shadow can see only the shadow. You can see reality only when the mind is dropped. Through the mind everything becomes unreal. The mind projects, creates, colors, interprets – everything becomes false; hence the emphasis, continuous emphasis how to be no-minds.

Tantra says don’t fight. If you fight you may continue fighting for many lives and nothing will happen out of it because in the first place you have missed – where you have seen two there was only one. And if the first step is missed, you cannot reach the goal. Your whole journey is going to be continuously a missing. The first step has to be taken absolutely rightly; otherwise you will never reach the goal. And what is the absolutely right thing? Tantra says it is to see the one in two, to see the one in many. Once you can see one in duality, already the transcendence has started. This is the royal path.

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