"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 robot-like 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 robot-like 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."