Many of us dream to meet their soulmate, that partner with which we can feel complete and content, and this very often makes us go astray in romantic dreams and expectations that always prelude disappointment.
Tantra says we are already complete, that each one of us is both a man and a woman and that the partners we meet are only mirrors in which we learn to recognize and love our inner man or woman. But what does it mean exactly that the other is a mirror? And how does this mirror work?
Through the story of Narcissus, Osho explains how our partners work as mirrors and especially what happens when our inner man and our inner woman meet…
“When you fall in love with a woman or with a man, you have fallen in love with a mirror.
Sooner or later you will be frustrated.
You must have heard the story of Narcissus. He looked in a silent pool and he saw his own reflection, and he fell in love with it – and he became so mad. Whenever he entered the pool, the reflection would disappear. He would search and search and he would not find anybody. He would come to the bank, sit silently, ripples would disappear and the pool would become silent again; and there again, the object of his love, infatuation. Again he would jump.
He went mad, and he died on the bank. In his memory we have the plant narcissus. It grows just by the side of a pond and goes on looking in. You will find the narcissus plant always leaning and looking in the pond. We call it narcissus in memory of that old story. Still the plant goes on looking into its own reflection.
Of course, when you see a beautiful woman from far away, the reflection is perfect. You come closer, you jump into the pool. Everything is disturbed and you don’t find anything. And you are worried, very worried. Everything was going so well. What happened? Now you have disturbed the placid surface of the pool. And the same has happened to the woman. She had fallen in love with you because her own inner man somehow coincided. Only a few aspects can coincide.
And it is good that no outer woman can fulfill you totally, otherwise you will never go withinward. It is good and a blessing that no outer man can ever satisfy you totally. It can only give glimpses of satisfaction, a taste, but you become more and more hungry. This is good. That may be the whole purpose of it, so one day you are thrown back into your own self and one day you start looking.
One part of your mind functions as reason, intellect, logic, philosophy, science, the left-side brain. The right-side brain functions as intuition, poetry, imagination, reverie, religion. And both are separate, just bridged by a very small bridge. Sometimes it happens that the bridge can be broken by some accident; then the person becomes split; then he is two persons.
The Unio Mystica
In the Unio Mystica, the bridge becomes broader and broader and broader, and a moment comes when the right is no longer the right and the left is no longer the left: they have come into a deep embrace; they have become one. This is the inner intercourse the tantricas talk about: the inner woman has fallen in love with the inner man. And then there is a tremendous grace. Such a man is no longer a man; such a woman is no longer a woman. The transcendence has happened. This man becomes mysterious, this woman becomes mysterious, who has come to the inner meeting, to the inner union.
At the sixth chakra, Anja chakra, one has to come to a tremendous meeting of the man and the woman. You are also divided inside into two: man and woman. If you cannot meet with the outer woman, it will be very difficult for you to make space for the inner woman. If you cannot love the other on the outside, it will be impossible for you to create a loving space for the other inside you. A man is not only aman; he is a man-woman, fifty-fifty percent he is, and so is a woman, and the ultimate inner meeting, the union, the inner alchemy, it’s possible only if you have learned the ways in the outside world.
The more you understand the woman and the man outside you, the more you will have an understanding of the inner polarity. And one day, at the sixth centre of your being, what yoga calls Ajna chakra, which I called “superconsciousness”, there you will feel that you’re your understanding of the woman and the man helps you tremendously. There, intuition and logic meet, imagination and will meet, initiative and reception meet. You will find it easy. You have learned the ways from the outside world, now you can use them for your inner alchemy.”
Osho, Ecstasy, The forgotten language
