This causes an extremely neurotic state. You don't know what you want; you don't know what your real, authentic needs are. And you are constantly pursuing inauthentic needs, because only a feeling heart can give you the right feeling, put you on the track... what are your real needs? When these are suppressed, you create symbolic needs. You then start to eat more and more, stuff yourself with food, without ever getting the feeling that you are full. You actually need love; not food, but there is a deep bond between food and love. When you do not feel, or suppress, the need for love, a pseudo need for food comes in its place. Then you keep eating. Because the need is not real, it cannot be satisfied. Our life is made up of pseudo needs, which is why we never feel satisfied.
You want love; that is a basic need - a very natural one, but that need can be misled. You can recognize your need for love, your need to receive love, as a pseudo need, for example, when you try to draw the attention of others to yourself. You want others to pay attention to you. Then you may become a political leader - large crowds are paying attention to you - but your basic need is love, and even if the whole world pays attention to you, that basic need cannot be fulfilled. That basic need can be fulfilled if there is one person who loves you, who pays attention to you because he loves you.
When you love someone, you pay them attention. Attention and love are closely related. When you suppress your need for love, it turns into a symbolic need, then you need the other's attention. You may get that attention, but still it will not fulfill you. The need is not real, it is disconnected from the natural basic need. This split in personality is neurosis.
Tantra is an extremely revolutionary idea - the oldest and yet the very latest. Tantra is one of the oldest traditions and yet untraditional, even anti-traditional, because tantra says that if you are not whole and one, you will miss out on life completely. You shouldn't get stuck in that split state; you must become one.
What do you have to do to become one? You can keep thinking about it; that won't help, because thinking is the technique with which you separate things. Thinking is analytical. It divides, it splits things up. Feeling unites, brings synthesis, makes everything one. So you can keep thinking, reading, studying, contemplating. It will not help you as long as you do not fall back on your feeling center. But that is not easy, because even when we think about our feeling center, we think.
(To be continued)
