Energy cannot be suppressed: it can only be transformed

”IF AN EMOTIONAL DESIRE OR MOOD BECOMES EXHILARATING FOR US, AND IF WE

DO NOT EXPRESS IT OUTWARDLY, DOES THIS ENERGY NECESSARILY GO BACK TO THE

SOURCE AND MAKE THE PERSON FRESH AND ENERGETIC?”

Not necessarily! But if you are aware, then it is so, necessarily. Any energy, any energy, needs roots to move, and no energy can be destroyed. Energy is indestructible. It can only change into different forms; it can never become nothing. So when you try to suppress any energy, you are doing absolute nonsense with yourself. Energy cannot be suppressed: it can only be transformed.

A suppressed energy will become a cancer. If you feel anger, two ordinary routes are available: either express it or suppress it. If you express it, then it becomes a chain, because then you create anger in the other person and he will express it – and there is no end to it. Then you will express it, and it can continue for years. It continues! That is how everyone is living. It goes on and on. Those who know deeply, they say that for lives also, for lives together, it goes on and on. You have been angry with a person in your past life, and still in this life you are repeating the same pattern with the same person. You are not aware, you are blissfully unaware. So it is good if you think something new is happening. Ninety-nine percent of the time nothing new is happening; old patterns are just being repeated again and again.

Sometimes you suddenly see a stranger, and you become angry. He has not done anything – you have not even met him before – but you feel depressed or angry or violent, or you want just to escape from this person. You feel bad. Why? It is some old pattern. Energy never dies, it remains, so if you express it, you are falling into an eternal chain. Someday you will have to come out of it. And the whole thing is useless, it is just wastage. Don’t start the chain. Then the other ordinary alternative is to suppress it, and when you suppress it you are creating a wound within yourself. That will be a suffering. That will create problems. And the anger will go on being suppressed, and you will become a volcano of anger. So it may be that you are not now expressing your anger, but now your whole personality will become angry. There will be no eruptions, no one will see you beating someone and being violent, but now your whole personality will become angry because so much anger within poisons you. Now whatsoever you do the angry part is there. Even while you are loving someone, the angry part is there – in everything. If you are eating your food, the angry part will be there. You will be violent with your food, you will not be loving. If you are opening a door, the angry part will be there. You will be

violent with the door. 

One day in the morning, Mulla Nasruddin was passing down a street shouting oaths and saying very angrily, ”The devil will take possession of your spirit and beets will grow in your belly” – and so it went on and on.One man looked at him and said, ”Mulla, whom are you cursing so much so early in the morning?” Mulla said, ”Who? I don’t know. But don’t worry, someone will turn up sooner or later.” If you are filled with anger, this happens: you are just waiting, and sooner or later someone will turn up. Inside you are bubbling with fire, just waiting for some objects, some medium, someone who should help you to unburden yourself. Then your whole personality becomes angry or violent or sexual. You can suppress sex, and then the suppressed sex becomes your whole personality. Then

wherever you look you will see sex, in whatsoever you touch you will see sex, whatsoever you do will be a sexual act. You can suppress sex very easily; it is not difficult. But then sex will spread all over you. Your every fiber, every cell will become sexual.

Look at the celibates. Their minds become totally sexual; they dream about sex, they fight with sex; constantly they fantasize about sex. They are obsessed. That which could have been natural has become perverted. If you express it you create a chain, if you suppress you create a wound, and both are not good. So tantra says that whatsoever you do – for example, if you are angry, when you feel that anger is coming – be uninterruptedly aware. Don’t suppress it and don’t express it. Do a third thing, take the third alternative: be suddenly aware that anger is coming. This awareness changes the energy that is moving as anger into a different energy. The very energy that is known as anger becomes compassion. Through alertness there is the transmutation.The same energy which is known as sex becomes BRAHMACHARYA, spirituality, through awareness. Alertness is the alchemy. Through it everything changes. Try it, and you will come to know. When you bring alertness, awareness, to any mood, any feeling, any energy, it changes its nature and quality. It is never the same again, and a new route opens. It is not going back again to the same place where it was, from where it came; it is not moving outwards The horizontal

movement has stopped. With alertness it becomes vertical, it moves upwards. That is a different dimension. A bullock cart moves horizontally; an airplane moves vertically – upwards. I would like to tell you one parable. One fakir, a Sufi, used to say that someone was presented an airplane, a very small aircraft, by a friend, who was a great king. But the man was poor. He had heard about airplanes, but he had never seen one. He knew only bullock carts, so he thought that this was a new device – a new type of bullock cart. He used his two bullocks to bring the airplane home, and then he used the airplane as a bullock cart. He was very happy. Of course, the small aircraft worked as a bullock cart. But then, by and by, just from being curious he started studying it. Then he came to understand that bullocks were not needed. It had a motor and it was able to go by itself, so he fueled it and used it as a motor car. But then by and by, he became aware of the wings, and he thought ”Why are they there?” And it seemed to him that the man who had devised this machine must have been very intelligent, a genius; thus, he could not have added something unnecessarily. The wings showed that the machine could fly also. So he tried. Then the airplane came to its own; it became vertical.You are using the mind that you have as a bullock cart. The same mind can become a motor car; then bullocks will not be needed. It has an inbuilt mechanism, but then too it will be moving horizontally. However, the same mind has wings. You have not observed, that is why you don’t know

that it has wings. It can fly! It can move upwards! And once it moves upwards, once your energies start moving upwards, the whole world is different. Your old questions simply fall down and your old problems are no more there, because you are now moving vertically.

All those problems were there because you were moving horizontally. The problems of a bullock cart are not problems for an airplane. The road was not good, so there was a problem. The road was blocked, so there was a problem. Now this is not a problem because the road is not used at all. Whether blocked or not, whether good or not, it is irrelevant. Moral teachings are bullock-cart teachings; tantra’s teaching is vertical. That’s why all those problems are irrelevant for tantra. The energy that you know as anger, sex, greed or whatsoever, is moving horizontally. Once you bring your alertness to it, you have brought a new dimension. Just by being alert, you move upwards.

Why? Observe the fact: when you are alert, you are always above the fact. Become alert about anything, and you are always above the fact. The fact is somewhere below, down, and you are looking from above, from a peak. Whenever you have witnessed something you have moved upwards, and the thing has remained below. If this attention is really authentic and you can be uninterruptedly aware, then the energy that was moving horizontally as anger, as sex, will move into this new dimension. It will come near to you, to the witness. Then you have started flying. And for lives and lives you have been using the device which is meant for flying as a bullock cart, unnecessarily creating problems because you were just not knowing what is possible for you.

Osho, Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 2