Tantra: an acceptance of the peaks and the valleys

The first question:

Question 1:

Man is an animal, but not only an animal: he is more also. But that "more" cannot deny the animal, it has to absorb it. Man is more than an animal, but the animal cannot be denied. It has to be absorbed creatively. You cannot leave it aside, it is in your very roots; you have to use it creatively. So the first thing to remember is not to be negative about your animal heritage. Once you start thinking in negative terms you will become destructive to yourself, because you are ninety-nine percent animal.

If you create a division, you are fighting a losing battle; you cannot win. The result of your fight will be quite the opposite, because ninety-nine percent is animal. Only one percent of the mind is conscious, and this one percent cannot win against the ninety-nine percent. It is going to be defeated. That is why there is so much frustration, because everyone is defeated by his own animal.

You can never succeed. Of necessity you are going to be a failure, because that one percent cannot succeed against the ninety-nine percent. It cannot even be divided from the ninety-nine percent.

It is just like a flower: it cannot go against the roots, it cannot go against the whole tree. And while you are against your animal heritage, you are being fed by it. You are alive because of it. If your animal dies this moment, you will die immediately. Your mind exists as a flower; your animal heritage is the whole tree. Do not be negative - that is suicidal. And if you are divided against yourself, you can never attain anything which is blissful.

You are creating a hell, and the hell is nowhere else but in a divided personality. In the split personality is the hell. And hell is not something geographical, hell is psychological - and heaven also. The personality which is a whole, one unit, with no inner division and conflict, is heaven.

So the first thing I would like to say is, do not be negative. Do not divide yourself, do not go against yourself, do not become two. The animal that is there is not something bad. The animal in you is a great potential. That is your past and also your future, because much is hidden in it. Uncover it, develop it, allow it to grow and go beyond it, but do not fight with it. That is one of the basic teachings of tantra.

Other traditions are divisive. They divide you, they create a fight within you. Tantra is not divisive, it doesn't believe in fight. Tantra is absolutely positive; it doesn't believe in saying no. Tantra believes in saying yes - yes to the whole of life. And through 'yes' the transformation happens, and through 'no' there is only disturbance - no transformation is possible. Against whom are you fighting? Against yourself? How can you win? And the major part of you is from the animal, so the major part will win.

So those who fight, they are creating their own defeats. If you want to be defeated, fight. If you want to win, do not fight.

Victory needs knowledge, not fight. Fight is a subtle violence. And this is strange, but this has happened: those who talk about nonviolence to others are very much violent against themselves.

There are teachings and traditions which say, "Do not be violent to anyone," but those same teachings are very much violent as far as you are inwardly concerned. They teach you to be violent with yourself, but not to be violent with others.

All types of asceticism, renunciation, negative attitudes, life-denying philosophies, are based on maintaining a violent attitude toward yourself. They tell you to be violent with yourself.

Tantra is absolutely nonviolent. It says, if you cannot be nonviolent with yourself, you cannot be nonviolent with anyone else - that is impossible. A person who is violent to himself will be violent to everyone; in his nonviolence also he will be just hiding his violence. Aggression can be turned against yourself, but that aggressive attitude is destructive.

But that doesn't mean to remain the animal which you are. The moment you accept your heritage, the moment you accept your past, the future becomes an opening. Through acceptance is the opening. The animal is the past; it need not be the future. There is no need to go against the past - and you cannot go. Use it creatively.

What can be done to use it creatively? The first thing is to be profoundly aware of its existence.

Those who fight are not aware of it. Because they are afraid, they push the animal behind, they push the animal into the unconscious. Really, there need not be any unconscious, but because of suppression the unconscious is created. You feel many things within which you condemn without understanding them. A man who understands condemns nothing; there is no need. He can even use poison as a medicine because he knows. Everything can be used creatively. Because you do not know, in ignorance poison is poison. With wisdom it can become the elixir.

The person who is fighting against his sex, anger, greed, against the animal, what will he do? He will suppress. Fighting is suppression. He will push down anger, sex, greed, hatred, jealousy. He will push everything down somewhere underground, and he will create a false structure above ground.

The structure will be false because the energies have not been transformed which can make it real.

The structure is phony; underground, the real energies have been repressed. Those real energies will always remain there working, any moment they can explode. You are just sitting on a volcano, and every moment that volcano is trying to erupt. If it does, your structure will be shaken.

Whatsoever you have built in the name of religion, morality, culture, is a phony structure that is above ground - just a false facade. Underground the real man is hiding. So your animal is not very far away; your facade is just skin-deep. Someone insults you, and the gentleman disappears and the animal comes out. The gentleman is just skin-deep; the volcano is just near. Any moment it can be brought out, and when it comes out, your intelligence, your morality, your religion, your so-called being above animal things, simply disappear. When the real asserts, the false disappears. Only when the real goes back underground does the false come again.

When you are angry, where is your mind, where is your consciousness, where is your morality?

Where are your vows that you have taken so many times - that "Now I am not going to be angry again?" When anger comes they all simply disappear. When anger has moved again to its cave, its underground cave, you start repenting. Those phony fellows have gathered again. They start talking, condemning, and planning for the future, and again in the future the same will happen; when anger will come the shadows will disappear.

Your consciousness right now is just a shadow. It is not a real thing; it has no substance in it. You can take a vow of BRAMACHARYA, of celibacy - it makes no difference to your sex instinct. The sex instinct simply goes underground, and when it comes up, your vows of brahmacharya, of celibacy, will prove to be made of just very dream-like stuff. They cannot face the real thing.

So these are the two attitudes. You can either suppress sex - then you will never go beyond it - or you can use your sex energy in a creative way. Not saying no to it, but giving it a deep yes; not forcing it to go underground, but creating a structure above ground with it. Then you will be a real man. It will be difficult, obviously; that is why we choose the easier path. It is easier to have a false structure, because nothing is needed. Only one thing is needed: to deceive yourself, that is all. If you can deceive yourself, you can create a false structure very easily. Nothing will change really, but you will go on thinking that everything has changed.

This is easy, to create an illusion. To create a reality is a difficult task, it is arduous. But it is worthwhile, because once you have created something with real energies, your structure cannot be shattered. If sex is above ground, then you can create something out of it - for example, love. If sex is transformed, it becomes love; if it is suppressed, it becomes hatred.

You become afraid of love if you suppress sex. A person who has suppressed sex will always be afraid of love, because the moment love comes sex will follow. Love is of the soul and sex is of the body, so love cannot be allowed to happen because then sex will follow. It will be just somewhere near, by the corner. So a person who has suppressed sex cannot be loving. He may show it, he may pretend that he is very loving, but he cannot be because he is so afraid. He cannot touch you with a loving hand because the fear is there. The loving hand can any moment turn out to be a sexual touch, so he will be afraid; he will not allow you to touch him.

He may create many justifications for it but the real thing is fear - fear of the instinct which he has repressed. And he will be filled with hatred, because any energy that is repressed reverses itself and goes to its original nature.

Sex moves easily toward love; that is a natural flow. If you prevent it, if you create hindrances to its path, it will become hatred. So your so-called saints and so-called moral teachers, if you look deep into them you will find them filled with hatred. And that is bound to be, it is natural. Sex is hidden there, any moment it can erupt. They are sitting on a dangerous volcano. If you push down energies, you are just postponing a task, and the more it is postponed, the more difficult it will be.

Tantra says, create your life with real energies - and real energies are all animal energies. But when I say animal, there is no condemnation in it. The word 'animal' for me is not condemnatory, as it is for you. The animal is beautiful in itself, the animal in itself is nothing to be condemned. The animal within you is pure energy, moving according to natural laws.

It has been asked, "What should we do consciously? Should we not channel? Should we not control?" No! Your consciousness is not to control, your consciousness is not to channel. Your consciousness can do only one thing: your consciousness is to understand, and understanding in itself becomes the transformation.

Tantra will say, understand sex, do not try to channel it. If you do not understand it, every effort is bound to be a failure, and harmful. So do not do anything. First understand it, and through understanding the path will be revealed. You are not to force your energies on that path. Through understanding you come to know the law, just like in science. What are you doing in science? You come to understand a law; a natural mystery is revealed. Once the natural mystery is revealed, you can use the energy creatively.

Without your knowing the inherent law, all efforts are doomed. So tantra says, understand the animal, because in the animal is hidden the potential for your future. Really, it can be said that in the animal God is hidden. The animal is your past, God is your future - but the future is hidden in your past, in seed form. Understand whatsoever your natural forces are. Accept them, understand them.

Your mind is not to be there mastering; it is not there to control them and fight with them, it is there to understand them.

Really, if you understand them, you are using your mind rightly. Understand sex, understand anger, understand greed. Be alert; try to find out their ways - how they work, what are their functions. And be constantly aware of the very movement of these animal instincts within. If you can be conscious of these animal instincts, there will be no division, you will not have an unconscious mind. If you can move with these instincts deep within, you will have only a conscious mind; there will be no unconscious.

The unconscious is there because of repression. You have closed the major part of your being to consciousness because you are afraid. You cannot look at your own reality. You are so afraid that you have already moved out of the house - you just live on the verandah. You never go in because the fear is there: if you come face to face with yourself, all your imagination, all your illusions about yourself will fall down.

You think yourself to be a saint, you think yourself to be a religious person, you think yourself to be this and that. If you face your reality, all these illusions will evaporate. And everyone has created an image of himself. That image is false, but we cling to the image and this clinging becomes the barrier toward moving within.

So the first thing is to accept the animal. It is there, and nothing is wrong about it. It is your past, and you cannot deny your past, you can only use it. If you are wise, you will use it and create a better future out of it. If you are foolish you will fight with it, and through fight the future will be destroyed. Fight with a seed, and you will destroy it. Use it, give it soil, help it, protect it so that the seed becomes a tree, an alive tree, and the future blossoms through it.

The animal is your seed. Do not fight with it. Tantra has no condemnation against it, simply love for it, because the whole future is hidden in it. Know it well, and then you can use it and you can thank it.

I have heard that when St. Francis died, when he was just on his deathbed, suddenly he opened his eyes and thanked his body before going to his death. Before moving to the other world, he thanked his body. He said, "Much was hidden in you, and you helped me so much. And I was so ignorant, and there were times when I even fought with you. There were times I even thought about you in inimical terms. But you were always a friend, and it is because of you I could move to such a state of consciousness."

This thanksgiving to the body is beautiful. But St. Francis could understand it only in the end. Tantra says, try to understand in the beginning. If you only thank your body when you are dying, it will be of no use.

Your body is a treasury of hidden forces, of mysterious possibilities. Tantra says that in your body is the whole cosmos in miniature: it is just a miniature of the whole cosmos. Do not fight with it.

What is your sex if the body is a miniature? If really this is so, that your body is the whole cosmos in miniature, what is sex? That which is creation in the cosmos is sex in you. Throughout the whole cosmos, creation is going on every moment - that is sex in you. And if there is so much force in it, it is because you are needed to be a creator.

If sex is so powerful, it only means for tantra that you cannot be allowed to be non-creative; you must create. If you cannot create something greater, then at least create life. If you cannot create anything better than you, then at least create someone who will replace you when you die. Sex is so forceful because the cosmos cannot allow you to be non-creative, and you are fighting with it. Use it.

There is no need to use sex only in reproduction. In every creation sex is used. That is why a great poet, a great painter, may not feel so much of an urge for sex. But the reason is not that he is a saint. The reason is simply, that he is creating something greater and the need is fulfilled.

A great musician is creating music. No father can feel so much fulfilled as a musician feels when great music is created, and no son can give so much happiness to any parent as a great piece of music can give to the musician, or great poetry can give to the poet. Because he is creating on higher realms, nature relieves him of lower creation: the energy has moved higher. Tantra says, do not fight with the energy, allow the energy to move higher. And there are many realms of higher movement and many dimensions.

Buddha is neither a painter nor a musician nor a poet, but he has gone beyond sex. What has happened to him? The highest creation is the creation of oneself. The highest creation is the creation of total consciousness within, creation of a whole within, oneness. That is the peak, the Himalayan peak. Buddha is at that peak, he has created himself. When you move in sex, you create your body; the replica is created. When you move higher, you create spirit, you create soul. Or if you will allow me the expression, you create God.

You have heard that God created the world, but I say to you that you have the potentiality to create God - and unless you create him you will never be fulfilled. So do not think that God is in the beginning. Rather, it will be better to think that God is in the end. God is not the cause of the world, but the teleology, the very end, the very peak. If you flower in your totality, you will become a god.

That is why we call Buddha a god - and he never believed in God. This is very paradoxical. He never believed in God; he is one of the deepest atheistic minds ever born. He says there is no God, but we called Buddha himself divine.

H. G. Wells has written that Gautam Buddha was the most godless man and the most god-like. What happened to this Gautam? He created, he gave birth to the highest peak, the highest possibility.

The ultimate had happened in him; then he was no longer creating anything - there was no need.

It would have been futile for Buddha to write poetry, it would have been futile for him to paint. It would have been childish. He created the ultimate; he gave himself a new birth. The old was used completely to give birth to the new. And because it is an ultimate phenomenon, the whole past had been used. The past disappeared, the animal was no more, because when the tree is born the seed disappears. The seed cannot be there.

Jesus says, unless a seed of corn falls to the ground and dies, nothing can happen. Once the seed falls to the ground and dies, the new life bubbles up through it. The death is only a death of the seed, of the past. But there can be no death without giving birth to the new; something new will come out of it.

Tantra says, do not try to control. Who are you to control, and how will you be able to control? Your control will be just illusory. Try to understand. Try to understand the inner nature, the phenomenon, the dynamics of the energies, and that understanding will automatically change you. Change is not an effort. If change is an effort, then it cannot create bliss.

Bliss never happens through effort. Effort is always tension-creating; it gives anguish. Effort is always ugly because you are forcing something. Understanding is not an effort; it is beautiful, it is a spontaneous happening. Do not control. If you try, you will be a failure, and you will destroy yourself. Understand! Let understanding be the only law, the only SADHANA - spiritual practice.

Leave everything to understanding. If understanding cannot do anything then it cannot be done, so forget it. All that can be done can be done through understanding.

So tantra says, accept things because acceptance will be needed to understand. You cannot understand anything if you deny. If I hate you, I cannot look into your eyes, I cannot see your face. I will turn about, I will escape from you, I will not look at you directly. When I love you, only then can I look into your eyes. When I love you deeply, only then can I see your face.

Only love sees a face; otherwise you never see faces. You move, you look, but that look is just casual, not deep. It touches, but it never penetrates. But when you love, then your whole energy becomes your eyes. Then the energy moves, touches deep, goes deep down into the other person, meets at his center of being. Then only can you see and know.

That is why in the old biblical language they have used the word 'know' for sex, for love - for deep love. It is not coincidental. In the Bible it is reported that "Adam knew his wife Eve, and then Cain was born." This use of 'know' for deep love, for sex, is strange but very meaningful, because when you know someone it means you have loved someone. There is no other way to know someone.

And it is not only with persons, it is so with energies also. If you want to know your inner being and the multi-dimensional phenomenon of energies, love! Do not hate the animal, love it. And you are not unrelated to it, you are part of it. The animal has pushed you to this point where you have become man - be grateful to it.

It is sheer ungratefulness when people go on condemning the animal in man. This is sheer ingratitude. The animal has pushed you to this point where you have become man, and the animal can push you to the point where you can become God. It is the animal that is pushing you. Understand it - its ways, how it works - and that understanding will become transformation.

So no control, no effort to become the boss - no! Why are you so afraid of your animal? Because your mind is really impotent; that is why you are so afraid. Why do you want to control it? If you are really the master, the animal will follow you. But you know well that the animal is the master and you have to follow him. That is why there is this whole effort to become the master.

You know very well that anything real that happens, happens through the animal, and anything bogus that happens, happens through the mind. This awareness creates fear. That is why you want to try to become the master, but a master is never born out of effort. Only slaves try to become masters. A master is simply a master.

I will tell you one story... It happened in the house of a great warrior. One night he suddenly became aware of a mouse. He was a great warrior, a great swordsman. He became very much angry because the mouse was sitting just in front of him and looking into his eyes. No one had ever dared so much as the mouse was daring. So he pulled out his sword, but the mouse would not run. Then he attacked the mouse, but suddenly the mouse jumped and the sword was broken in pieces; it fell on the floor.

Of course, the warrior became just mad. He tried and tried, and the more he tried, the more he was defeated. It is difficult to fight with a mouse, and once you have started fighting you have accepted defeat. The mouse became bold. With every failure of the warrior, the mouse became more bold.

He simply jumped on the warrior's bed. The warrior went out and asked his friends what to do. "This has never happened in my life," he said. "No one can dare so much as an ordinary mouse! But it seems miraculous - I am totally defeated." So the friends said, "It is nonsense to fight with a mouse.

It is better to bring in a cat."

But the rumor went out that the warrior had been defeated - and even the cats heard it, so no cat was ready to come. All the cats gathered. They elected a leader and said, "You go, because it is not an ordinary mouse - the warrior has been defeated. We are ordinary cats, and this is a great warrior. If he is defeated, where are we? So we will wait outside and let you go in."

The leader became afraid - leaders are always afraid. They are leaders because cowards are there, and those cowards choose them. They are leaders of the cowards. If there were no cowards, there would not be any leaders. Basically, they are chosen by cowards, so they are leaders of cowards.

The cat had to go, as every leader has to go - because the followers were pushing him. Now that the leader was chosen, nothing could be done, the cat had to go. She entered, afraid, trembling, nervous. The mouse was sitting on the bed. The cat had never seen such a mouse: he was just sitting on the bed. She started thinking what to do, what method to apply, and while she was thinking what to do, what method to apply, what technique - about old experiences and memories, about what to do with this situation - while she was thinking, the mouse suddenly attacked. The cat ran away, because this had never happened in the past! There is no mention in history of a mouse attacking a cat.

She came out and fell dead, so the warrior was advised by the neighborhood that "Now ordinary cats won't do. You go to the palace, bring the king's cat. Only a royal cat can do something. This is not an ordinary case." So the warrior had to go to the king and ask for the cat. The cat from the palace came. The warrior was very much afraid when the cat was coming with him because that cat looked just very ordinary. He was afraid that this was again going to be a failure, because the cat who had died was bigger, greater, a great leader, and this ordinary cat...? It seemed that the king was just joking - this cat won't do. But the warrior couldn't say anything to the king.

He came with that ordinary cat. The cat entered, killed the mouse and came out. All the cats were waiting. They gathered around and they said, "What is the trick? Our leader has died, the warrior has been defeated by the mouse, and you simply killed him. You came out with the dead mouse."

The cat said, "I am a cat and he is a mouse. There is no other technique. I am a cat - that is enough.

What is the use of any technique? Being a cat is enough. When I entered, it was enough that a cat should enter. I am a cat."

Really, this is a Zen story. If your mind were the master, there would be no need for effort. Every effort is just to deceive yourself: you are not the cat, and you are fighting with the mouse. Become a master! But how to become a master? Tantra says, understanding will make you a master, nothing else. Understanding is the secret of all mastery. If you know it well, you are the master. If you do not know, you will go on fighting. Then you will remain the slave, and the more you fight, the more you will be defeated. You are fighting with a mouse.

The second question:

Question 2:

This always remains a basic question: how to change something else, how to change negative sounds into positive ones. You cannot! If you are positive, then nothing is negative for you. If you are negative, then everything will be negative for you. You are the source of all that exists around you; you are the creator of your own world. And we are not living in one world, remember. There are as many worlds as there are minds. Each mind is living in its own world; it creates the world.

So if everything looks negative and everything looks destructive and everything looks inimical, against you, it is because you do not have the positive center in you. So do not think about how to change negative noises. If you feel negativity all around you, it simply shows you are negative within. The world is just a mirror, and you are reflected in it.

I was staying in a village rest house. It was a very poor village, but it was filled with many dogs. They all gathered in the night around the rest house; it must have been their usual habit. The rest house was a good place - big trees, shadows, and they must have been resting there every night. So I was staying there, and one minister of a particular state was staying there. The minister became very much disturbed because the dogs were barking, creating much nuisance. Half the night passed and the minister couldn't sleep, so he came to me.

He said, "Are you asleep?" I was fast asleep, so he came near to me, made me wake up and asked me, "Please tell me how you could fall into sleep amid such noises all around. At least twenty to thirty dogs are there, and they are fighting and barking and doing everything that dogs ordinarily do.

So what to do? I cannot sleep, and I am so tired after the whole day's journey. If I cannot sleep, it will be difficult for me. The next day I have to go again on a tour, and I will leave early in the morning.

Sleep doesn't seem to come, and I have tried all the methods I have learned and heard about - chanting a mantra, praying to God, etc. I have done everything, but nothing happens, so what to do now?"

So I told him, "Those dogs are not gathered here for you or to disturb you. They are not even aware that a minister is staying here; they do not read newspapers. They are completely ignorant. They are not here purposefully, they are not concerned with you. They are doing their work. Why are you getting disturbed?"

So he said, "Why should I not? How not to? With so much barking, how can I go into sleep?"

So I told him, "Do not fight with the barking. You are fighting - that is the problem, not the noise. The noise is not disturbing you, you are disturbing yourself because of the noise. You are against the noise, so you have a condition. You are saying, 'If the dogs stop barking, then I will sleep.' The dogs won't listen to you. You have a condition. You feel that if the condition is fulfilled, then you can sleep.

This condition is disturbing you. Accept dogs! Do not make a condition that 'If they stop barking, then I will sleep.' Just accept.

"Dogs are there and they are barking; do not resist, do not fight, do not try to forget those noises.

Accept them and listen to them, they are beautiful. The night is so silent, and they are barking so vitally - just listen. This will be the mantra, the right mantra: just listen to them."

So he said, "Okay! I do not believe that this will help, but as there is nothing else to do, I will try." He fell asleep, and the dogs were still barking. In the morning he said, "This is miraculous. I accepted them; I withdrew my condition. I listened. Those dogs became very musical, and their barking, their noise, was not disturbing. Rather, it became a sort of lullaby, and I fell into deep sleep because of it."

It depends on your mind. If you are positive, then everything becomes positive. If you are negative, then everything turns negative, everything turns sour. So please remember this -not only about noises, but about everything in life. If you feel that something negative exists around you, go and find the cause within. It is you. You must be expecting something, you must be desiring something, you must be making some conditions.

Existence cannot be forced to go according to you; it flows in its own way. If you can flow with it, you will be positive. If you fight with it, you will become negative and the whole cosmos around you will turn negative.

It is just like a person who is trying to float upstream: then the stream is negative. If you are trying to float upstream in a river, then the river will seem negative and you will feel that the river is fighting you, that the river is pushing you downwards. The river is trying to move you downstream, not upstream, so it will seem as if the river is fighting you. The river is completely unaware of you, blissfully unaware. And it is good; otherwise the river will have to go into a madhouse. The river is not fighting with you, you are fighting with the river. You are trying to float upstream.

I will tell you one anecdote... A great crowd gathered around Mulla Nasrudin's house, and they said, "What are you doing? Your wife has fallen into the stream and the river is in a flood. Go immediately; otherwise the stream will take your wife to the sea." The sea was just near. So Mulla came running to the bank, jumped into the stream, and started swimming upstream to find where his wife was.

The crowd screamed, "What are you doing, Nasrudin? Your wife couldn't have gone upstream. She has gone downstream." Mulla said, "Do not disturb me. I know my wife very well. If anyone else had fallen into the stream, he would have gone downstream. Not my wife, however. She must have gone upstream. I know my wife well, I have lived with her for forty years."

The mind is always trying to go upstream, to move upstream. Fighting with everything, you create a negative world around you. Obviously, this has to happen. The world is not against you, but because you are not with the world, you feel it is against you. Float downstream, and then the river will help you to float. Then your energy will not be needed. The river will become a boat, it will take you.

You will not lose any energy by floating downstream, because once you float downstream you have accepted the river, the current, the flow, the direction - everything. Then you have become positive to it. When you are positive, the river is positive to you.

You can make everything positive only by making yourself positive toward life. But we are not positive toward life. Why? Why are we not positive toward life? Why are we negative? Why this constant struggle? Why can we not have a total let-go with life? What is the fear?

You may not have observed: you are afraid of life - very much afraid of life. It may sound odd to say that you are afraid of life, because ordinarily you feel that you are afraid of death, not of life. This is the usual observation, that everyone is afraid of death. But I tell you, you are afraid of death only because you are afraid of life. One who is not afraid of life will not be afraid of death.

Why are we afraid of life? Three reasons. Firstly, your ego can exist only if it goes upstream. Floating downstream, your ego cannot exist. Your ego can exist only when it fights, when it says no! If it says yes, always yes, it cannot exist. The ego is the basic cause of saying no to everything.

Look at your ways, at how you behave and react. Look at how the no comes immediately to the mind, and how yes is very, very difficult - because with no you exist as an ego. With yes your identity is lost, you become a drop in the ocean. Yes has no ego in it; that is why it is so difficult to say yes - very difficult.

You understand me? If you are going upstream, you feel YOU are. If you just let go and you start floating with the stream wheresoever it leads, you do not feel that you are. Then you have become part of the stream. This ego, this thinking yourself to be isolated as an "I", creates the negativity around you. This ego creates the ripples of negativity.

Secondly, life is unknown, unpredictable, and your mind is very narrow: it wants to live in the known, in the predictable. Mind is always afraid of the unknown. There is a reason: it is because mind consists of the known. Whatsoever you have known, experienced, learned, mind consists of that.

The unknown is not part of the mind. The mind is always afraid of the unknown, the unknown will disturb the mind, so the mind is closed for the unknown. It lives in its routine, it lives in a pattern.

It moves in particular grooves, known grooves. It goes on moving, moving, just like a gramophone record. It is afraid to move into the unknown.

Life is always moving into the unknown, and you are afraid. You want life to go according to your mind, according to the known, but life cannot follow you. It always moves into the unknown. That is why we are afraid of life, and whenever we get any chance we try to kill life, we try to fix it. Life is a flux. We try to fix it because with the fixed, prediction is possible.

If I love someone, immediately my mind will start working on how to marry them, because marriage fixes things. Love is a flux, love cannot be predicted. No one knows where it will lead, or whether it will lead anywhere. No one knows! It is floating with the stream, and you do not know where the stream is going. It may not be there the next day, the next moment.

You cannot be certain of the next moment. But the mind wants certainty, and life is insecurity.

Because the mind wants certainty, the mind is against love. The mind is for marriage because marriage is a fixed thing. Now you have fixed things, so now the flux is broken. Now the water is not flowing - it has become ice. Now you have something dead; you can predict. Only dead things are predictable. The more something is alive, the more it is unpredictable. No one knows where life will move.

So we do not want life, we want dead things. That is why we go on possessing things. It is difficult to live with a person; it is easy to live with things. So we go on possessing things and things and things. It is difficult to live with a person. And if we have to live with a person, we will try to make a thing out of that person, we cannot allow the person.

A wife is a thing, a husband is a thing. They are not persons, they are fixed things. When the husband comes to the house, he knows that the wife will be there, waiting. He knows, he can predict. If he feels like loving, he can love - the wife will be available. The wife has become a thing. The wife cannot say, "No, today I am not in the mood to love." Wives are not supposed to say such things. Not in the mood? They are not supposed to have moods. They are fixed institutions - institutes. You can rely on the institute; you cannot rely on life. Thus, we turn persons into things.

Look at any relationship. In the beginning it is a relationship of "I" and "thou", but sooner or later it becomes a relationship of "I" and "it". The "thou" disappears, and then we go on expecting things.

We say, "Do this. This is the duty of a wife and that is the duty of a husband. Do this!" You will have to do it. It is a duty; it has to be done mechanically. You cannot say, "I cannot do it."

This fixedness is a fear of life. Life is a flux; nothing can be said about life. I love you this moment, but the next moment the love may disappear. The moment before it was not there; this moment it is there. And it is not because of me that it is there, it just happened. I couldn't have forced it to be here. It just happened, and that which has happened can unhappen at any moment, you cannot do anything. The next moment it may disappear; there is no certainty for the next moment.

But the mind wants certainty, so it turns love into marriage. The living thing becomes dead. Then you can possess it; then you can rely on it. The next day also there will be love. This is the absurdity of the whole thing: you have killed the thing in order to possess it, and then you can never enjoy it because it is no more, it is dead.

In order that you could possess the wife, she has been killed. The beloved has become a wife, and now you expect that the wife should behave like the beloved. That is absurd, the wife cannot behave like the beloved. The beloved was alive, the wife is dead. The beloved was a happening, the wife is an institution. And when the wife is not behaving like the beloved, then you go on saying, "Don't you love me? You loved me before." But this is not the same person. This is not even a person: this is a thing. First you killed her to possess her, and now you want aliveness out of her. Then the whole misery is created.

We are afraid of life because life is a flux. The mind wants certainty. If you really want to be alive, be ready to be insecure. There is no security and there is no way to create security! There is only one way, do not live; then you will be secure. So those who are dead, they are absolutely secure.

An alive person is insecure. Insecurity is the very central core of life, but the mind wants security.

Thirdly, in life, in existence, there is a basic duality. Existence exists as duality, and the mind wants to choose one part and deny the other. For example, you want to be happy, you want pleasure; you do not want pain. But the pain is part of pleasure, the other aspect of it. The coin is one. On one side is pleasure, on another side is pain. You want pleasure, but you do not know that the more you want pleasure, the more pain will follow; and the more you become sensitive to pleasure, the more you become sensitive to pain also.

So a person who wants pleasure should be ready to accept pain. This is just like valleys and hills.

You want peaks, hills, but you do not want valleys - so where will the valleys go? And without the valleys, how can there be peaks? Without valleys there can be no peaks. If you love peaks, love valleys also. They become part of the destiny.

The mind wants one thing and it denies the other, and the other is part of it. The mind says, "Life is good, death is bad." But death is one part, - the valley part, - and life is the peak part. Life cannot exist without death. Life exists BECAUSE of death. If death disappeared, life would disappear, but the mind says, "I want only life, I do not want death." Then the mind moves in a dream world which exists nowhere, and it starts fighting with everything, because in life everything is related to the opposite. If you do not want the opposite, a fight starts.

A person who understands this - that life is duality - accepts both. He accepts death, not as against life, but as part of it, as the valley part. He accepts night as the valley part of the day. One moment you feel blissful; the next moment you are sad. You do not want to accept the next moment - that is the valley part. And the higher the peak of bliss, the deeper will be the valley, because deeper valleys are only created by higher peaks. So the higher you move, the lower you will be falling. And this is just like waves rising high: then there is a valley part.

Understanding means being aware of this fact - not only being aware, but having a deep acceptance of the fact, because you cannot move away from the fact. You can create a fiction... and we have been creating fictions for centuries. We have put hell somewhere deep down and heaven high up somewhere. We have created an absolute division between them, which is nonsense, because hell is the valley part of heaven. It exists with heaven; it cannot exist apart.

This understanding will help you to be positive; then you will be able to accept everything. By positive I mean that you accept everything because you know that you cannot divide existence.

I take a breath in, and immediately I have to throw it out. I inhale and then exhale. If I were only to inhale and not to exhale, I would die; or if I were only to exhale and not to inhale, then too I would die, because inhaling and exhaling are part of one process, a circle. I can inhale only because I exhale. Both are together and they cannot be divided.

This is what a liberated man is - undivided. It happens if this understanding comes to him. I call a man liberated, enlightened, who accepts the very duality of existence.

Then he is positive.

Then whatsoever happens is accepted.

Then he has no expectations.

Then he makes no demands on existence.

Then he can float downstream.