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Main Index
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reality. Tantra has a third standpoint, and I think that that standpoint is ultimately going to win. Tantra says mind and matter are both forms of something which we can call `X'. Neither matter nor mind is substantial but a third entity, which exists in both but which is not confined to either, is the real -- these two are the manifestations. Matter and mind are not realities, but forms of a third reality, a basic reality, which remains hidden. Whenever it manifests itself, it manifests itself either as matter or as mind.
So the whole conflict between mind and matter, and their followers, is baseless, because the ultimate substratum that physics has now come to know is really neither like matter nor like mind. The division has disappeared, the duality has disappeared. The behavior of the basic substance is very vague: sometimes it behaves like matter, and sometimes it behaves like mind. You may be surprised to know that physics cannot say anything about individual atoms -- they are unpredictable, just like any human being. Nothing can be said about the individual atom and how it is going to behave. It appears that it has a certain independence; no causality can predict how it is going to behave. We can predict mass behavior, but we cannot predict the behavior of an individual atom. Sometimes it behaves in cause-effect terms, like matter, and sometimes it behaves like mind, as if it has a will of its own, as if it has a choice.
With Tantra, this idea of physics fits very well. But why does Tantra say that the basic reality is the third, the unknown, the `X'? Not because Tantra is interested in propounding any theory about reality, no. It is proposed just as a help for SADHANA, just as a help for spiritual growth. If it is so -- that the reality is the third, and mind and matter are just two manifestations -- then you can enter the reality through two doors: either from matter or from mind. If you try to enter from matter, then there are certain techniques to use. Hatha Yoga is a technique to enter the reality through matter, through the body. You have to do something with the body, you have to transform the body, you have to crystalize certain chemical
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