Surrendering to a master

The first question:

Question 1:

Accepting the total life means the middle path. If you deny, you move to the opposite extreme.

Denial is extreme. If you deny anything, you deny it for something; then you move to one extreme.

If one denies sex, he will move to BRAHMACHARYA, celibacy - to the other extreme. If you deny brahmacharya, you will move to indulgence - to the other extreme. The moment you deny, you have accepted the extreme path.

Acceptance of totality is to be automatically in the middle. You are neither for something nor against something. You have not chosen, you are just floating in the stream. You are not moving toward a goal - you have no choice. You are in a let-go.

Tantra believes in a deep let-go. When you choose, your ego comes in. When you choose, your will comes in. When you choose, you are moving against the whole universe - you have your own choice. When you choose, you are not choosing the universal flow: you are standing aloof, isolated; you are like an island. You are trying to be yourself against the whole flux of life.

Non-choosing means you are not to decide where life goes. You allow the life to move, to take you with it, and you have no fixed goal. If you have a fixed goal, you are bound to choose. Life's goal is your goal. You are not moving against life; you have no ideas of your own against life. You leave yourself, you surrender yourself, to the life force itself. This is what tantra means by total acceptance.

And once you accept life in its totality things start happening, because this total acceptance frees you from your ego point. Your ego point is the problem, because of it you create problems. There are no problems in life itself; existence is problem-less. You are the problem and you are the creator of the problem, and you create problems out of everything. Even if you meet God, you will create problems out of him. Even if you reach paradise, you will create problems out of paradise - because you are the original source of the problems. You are not going to surrender. This non-surrendering ego is the source of all problems.

Tantra says that it is not a question of achieving something; it is not a question of achieving brahmacharya. If you achieve brahmacharya - celibacy - against sex, your brahmacharya will remain basically sexual. Two extremes, howsoever opposite, are parts of one whole - two aspects of one thing. If you choose one, you have chosen the other also. The other will be hidden now, repressed. What does repression mean? Choosing one extreme against the other, which is a basic part of it.

You choose brahmacharya against sex, but what is brahmacharya? It is just the reversal of sex energy, You have chosen brahmacharya, but you have also chosen sex with it. Now brahmacharya will be on the surface, and deep down there will be sex. You will be disturbed because your choice will create the disturbance. You can choose only one pole, and the other pole follows automatically.

And you are against the other pole, so now you will be disturbed.

Tantra says, do not choose: be choiceless. Once you understand this, the question will never arise of what is indulgence and what is repression. Then there is no repression and no indulgence. The question arises only because you are still choosing. There are people who come to me and they say, "We will accept life, but if we accept life when will brahmacharya happen?" They are ready to be in total acceptance, but the readiness is false, just superficial. Deep down they are still clinging to the extremes.

They want brahmacharya - celibacy. They have not achieved it by fighting with sex, so when they hear me they think, "As we have not been able to achieve it through fighting, now we should achieve it through acceptance." But the achieving mind, the motivated mind, the greedy mind, is there - and the goal is there, the choice is there.

If you have something to achieve, you cannot accept the totality; the acceptance is not total. Then you are also trying acceptance as a technique to achieve something. Acceptance means: now you leave that achieving mind, that motivated mind that is always for something, hankering for something - you leave it! You allow life to flow freely, just as the wind is flowing through the trees. You allow life to be free, to move freely through you; you have no resistance. Wherever it leads, you are ready to move. You have no goal. If you have any goal then you will have to resist life, then you will have to fight it.

If a tree has some goal, some leaning, some idea, then it cannot allow the wind to move freely through it. If it wants to go south, then the wind which is forcing it north will be the enemy.

If you have some goal, you cannot accept life as a friend. Your goal creates the enmity. If you expect something out of life, you are forcing yourself on life, you are not allowing life to happen to you.

Tantra says, things happen when you do not expect them, things happen when you do not force them, things happen when you are not hankering after them.

But this is a consequence, not a result. And be clearly aware of the difference between 'consequence' and 'result'. A result is consciously desired; a consequence is a by-product. For example, if I say to you that if you are playing happiness will be the consequence, any play, you will try it for a result. You go and you play, and you are waiting for the result of happiness. But I told you it will be the consequence, not the result.

Consequence means that if you are really in the play, happiness will happen. If you constantly think about happiness, then it is going to be a result; it will never happen. A result is a conscious effort; a consequence is just a by-product. If you are deep in play, you will be happy. But the very expectation, the conscious longing for happiness, will not allow you to be deep in play. The longing for the result will become the barrier and you will not be happy.

Happiness is not a result, it is a consequence. If I tell you that if you love you will be happy, happiness will be a consequence, not a result. If you think that because you want to be happy you must love, nothing will come out of it. The whole thing will be bogus because one cannot love for any result.

Love happens! There is no motivation behind it.

If there is motivation, it is not love. It may be anything else. If I am motivated and I think that because I long for happiness I will love you, this love will be false. And because it will be false, happiness will not result out of it. It will not come; that is impossible. But if I love you without any motivation, happiness follows like a shadow.

Tantra says, acceptance will be followed by transformation, but do not make acceptance a technique for transformation. It is not! Do not long for transformation - only then does transformation happen.

If you desire it, your very desire is the hindrance. Then there is no question of what indulgence is and what repression is.

This question comes to the mind only because you are not ready to accept the whole. Accept it! Let it be indulgence and accept it! If you accept it, you will be thrown to the middle. Or let it be repression and accept it! If there is acceptance, you will be thrown to the middle. Through acceptance you cannot remain with the extreme. 'Extreme' means denial of something - accepting something and denying something. 'Extreme' means being for something and against something. The moment you accept whatsoever is the case you will be thrown to the middle, you will not remain with the extreme.

So forget any intellectual understanding of what repression is and what indulgence is. It is nonsense and it will not lead you anywhere. Just accept, wherever you are. If you are in indulgence, accept it.

Why be afraid of it?

But there is a problem. If you are in indulgence, you can remain in indulgence only if you are simultaneously trying to transcend it. That gives a good feeling to the ego: you can feel good and you can postpone. You know this is not going to be forever. You feel, "Today I am indulgent, but tomorrow I will be beyond it." The tomorrow helps you to be in indulgence today. You know that "Today I am drinking alcohol or smoking, but this is not going to be for all my life. I know this is bad, and tomorrow I am going to leave it."

That hope for tomorrow helps you to indulge today, and that is a good trick. Those who want to indulge, they must have great ideals. Those ideals give you opportunity. Then you need not feel very guilty about whatsoever you are doing because in the future everything is going to be okay; this is just for the moment. This is a trick of the mind. So those who indulge, they always talk of non-indulgence. Those who indulge, they go to the masters, who are against it. And you can see a deep relationship...

If you are after riches, money, power, you will always worship someone who is against riches - the ascetic. One who has renounced will be your ideal. A rich society can worship and respect only one who has renounced riches. Look around and you will see. If you are indulging in sex, you must respect a person who has gone beyond it, who has become a brahmachari - a celibate. You will worship him. He is the ideal; he is your future. You are thinking that someday you are going to be like this man. You worship him.

And if one day some rumor comes to you that he is indulging in sex, the respect is gone, because you cannot respect yourself. You are so self-condemning of whatsoever you are that if you find that your master is just like you, the respect is gone. He must be just the opposite. Then he gives you hope. Then he can lead you to the opposite end. Then you can follow him.

So there is always a very deep relationship between the followers and the master. You will always see them on opposite poles: the follower will be just on the opposite pole, and he is a follower only because of this. If you are obsessed with food, then you can respect only a person who goes for long fasting. He is "the miracle." You hope someday to attain the same. He is your future. You can worship him and respect him. He is the image, but this image helps you to be whatsoever you are; it is not going to change you. The very effort to change, the very idea to change, is the hindrance.

This is the insight of tantra.

Tantra says, whatsoever you are, accept it. Do not create any ideals. They are dreams - and false.

Accept whatsoever is. Do not call it good or bad, do not try to justify it or rationalize it. Live in the moment and see that this is the case. Remain with the fact and accept it. This is difficult - very difficult, arduous. Why is it so difficult? Because then your ego is shattered. Then you know that you are a sexual animal. Then the high ideal of brahmacharya cannot help your ego at all. Then you know that you are ninety-nine percent an animal... and that one percent I leave you just not to shock you too much.

With the ideals of Mahavir, Buddha, Krishna, Christ, you feel you are ninety-nine percent divine and only one percent is lacking. So sooner or later, by the grace of God, you will attain it. You feel happy as you are. That will not help. That will not help at all! That can help only to postpone the real problem, the real crisis, and unless you face that crisis you will never be transformed. One has to pass through it; one has to suffer it. But only the facticity of life leads you toward the truth. Fictions will not help.

So remain with the fact. Whatsoever you are - animal or whatever - is okay. Sex is there, anger is there, greed is there: okay, so it is there. It is so, such is the case. The universe happens to you in this way; you have found yourself in this way. It is how life has made you; it is how life is forcing you, leading you to somewhere.

Relax and allow the life to lead you. What is the difficulty in relaxing? The difficulty is that if you relax, you cannot maintain the ego. Ego can be maintained only in resistance. When you say No, ego is strengthened. When you say Yes, ego simply disappears.

That is why it is so difficult to say Yes to anything. Even in ordinary things it is so difficult to say Yes. We want to say No. The ego, the "I", feels good only when it is fighting. If you are fighting with someone else, it is good, the ego feels good. If you are fighting with yourself the ego feels even more good, because to fight with someone else creates more problems around you. When you are fighting with yourself, there is no problem around you. When you are fighting with someone else, the society will create problems for you. When you are fighting with yourself, the whole society will worship you. It is good because you are not harming anyone.

And really, if you are someone who is harming yourself, if you are not allowed to harm yourself you will harm others. Otherwise where will that energy move? So society is always happy with those idiots who are harming themselves. The society feels good because the violence is redirected back; they will not do any harm.

That is why we call them SADHUS -the good ones. They are good ones because they can do much harm - they ARE doing it - but they are doing it to themselves. They are suicidal. A killer, a murderer, can become suicidal if he turns against himself, so the society feels good, unburdened of a murderer if he becomes suicidal. The society pays respect, appreciates him. But the person remains the same - he remains violent. Now he is violent with himself, or he remains greedy but he talks of non-greed.

But look! Try to understand the talk of non-greed. The base is always greed. They say that if you are non-greedy, only then will you achieve paradise. And what is to be gained in paradise? Everything that greed would like.

So be non-greedy to achieve paradise. If you are not a celibate, you will not go to heaven. And what are you going to achieve in heaven? All that you condemn here on earth. Then beautiful women are allowed, and there is no comparison - because anyone who is beautiful on earth will become ugly.

this is what the SHASTRAS, scriptures say. And the women that are in heaven never become old, they remain fixed at the age of sixteen. So be celibate here so that you can indulge there.

But what type of logic is this? The motivation remains the same. The motivation remains exactly the same! Only the objects change, the time sequence changes. You are postponing your desires for the future. This is a bargain.

Tantra says, try to understand this whole working of the mind, and then it is good not to fight, then it is good to flow as you are and accept it. We are afraid because if we accept, then how will we change? And tantra says, acceptance is transcendence. You have tried fighting and you have not changed. Look at your whole life, analyze it, and if you are honest you will find that you have not changed a single bit, not an inch. Move back toward your childhood. Analyze your whole life, and no matter what you may be talking and thinking, the exact, actual life has remained the same. And you have been fighting continuously. Nothing happens out of it.

So now try tantra. Tantra says, do not fight; no one ever changes with fight. Accept! Then there is no question of what is indulgence and what is repression, and what is brahmacharya and what is this and that. There is no question then! Whatsoever is, you accept it and flow with it. You dissolve your ego resistance, you relax into the existence and go wherever it leads. If the destiny of the existence is that you are meant to be an animal, then, says tantra, be an animal.

What will happen out of it and how does it happen? Tantra says, total transformation happens - because once you accept, the inner division dissolves, you become one. Then there are not two in you - the saint and the animal, the saint repressing the animal and the animal throwing the saint aside every moment. Then there is no two in you: you become one.

And this oneness gives energy. All your energy is wasted in inner fight and conflict. This acceptance makes you one. Now there is no animal who is to be condemned and no saint who is to be appreciated. You are whatsoever you are. You have accepted it, you have relaxed with it, so your energy becomes one. Then you are a whole and not divided against yourself.

This wholeness is an alchemical transformation. With this wholeness you have energy. Now you are not wasting your life. There is no inner conflict; you are at ease within. This energy which you gain through non-conflict becomes your awareness.

Energy can move in two dimensions. If it moves in fight, you are wasting it every day. If it accumulates and there is no fight, a moment comes just like when you go on heating water to a hundred degrees: then the water becomes something else, it evaporates. Then it is no more liquid, it becomes a gas. It will not become transformed at ninety-nine degrees. It will become transformed only at a hundred degrees.

The same happens inwards. You are wasting your energy every day, and the evaporating point never comes. It cannot come because energy is not accumulated at all. Once the inner fight is not there, energy goes on accumulating and you feel more and more strong.

But not the ego: the ego feels strong only when fighting. When there is no fight, the ego becomes impotent. YOU feel strong, and that "you" is a totally different thing. You cannot know about it unless you are whole. Ego exists with fragments, division. This "you," the self or what we call the ATMAN, exists only when there is no division, no inner fight. 'Atman' means the whole; 'Self' means the undivided energy.

Once this energy is undivided, it goes on accumulating. You are producing it every day, life energy is produced in you, but you are wasting it in fight. This same energy comes to a point where it becomes awareness - this is automatic. Tantra says, this is automatic. Once you know how to be whole, you will become more and more aware, and the day will come when your total energy will be transformed into awareness.

When the energy is transformed into awareness many things happen, because then the energy cannot move to sex. When it can move to a higher dimension, it will not move to a lower dimension.

Your energy goes on moving to the lower dimension because there is no higher for you. And you do not have the level of energy where it CAN move into the higher, so it moves into sex. It moves into sex and you become afraid of it, so you create the ideal of brahmacharya and you become divided.

Then you become less and less energetic. You are wasting energy!

This is a very potent experience - that when you are weak you feel more sexual. This looks absolutely absurd in biological terms, because biology will say that when you are more potent you will feel more sexual. But this is not the case. When you are weak, ill, you will feel more sexual.

When you are healthy and a subtle well-being is there, you will not feel so sexual.

And the quality of sex will also be different. When you are weak, the sexuality will be a sort of disease and a vicious circle will be created. Through sex you will become more weak, and the more weak you become the more sexual you will feel. And the sex will become cerebral; it will move into your head.

When you are healthy, when a well-being is there, when you feel blissful, relaxed, you are not so sexual. Then even if sex happens, it is not a disease. Rather, it is an overflowing. A totally different quality is there. When sex is an overflowing, it is just love expressing itself through bio-energy. It is creating a deep sharing, a deep contact through bio-energy. It is a part of love.

When you are weak and sex is not overflowing it is a violence against yourself, and when it is a violence against yourself it is never love. A weak person can have sex, but his sex is never love. It is more or less rape - and rape to both the parties; to himself also it is a rape. But then a vicious circle is created: the more weak he feels, the more sexual he feels.

But why does this happen? Biology has no explanation for it, but tantra has an explanation. Tantra says that sex is an antidote against death. Sex is an antidote against death! Sex means life for society. You may die, but life will continue. So whenever you feel weak, death is near, tantra says that then sex will become very important because you may die at any moment. Your energy layer has gone down. You may die at any moment, so indulge in sex so someone can live. Life should go on.

For tantra, old men are more sexual than young men. And this is a very deep insight. Young men are more sexually potent, but not so sexual; old men are less sexually potent, but more sexual. So if we can enter an old man's mind, then we can know what is happening.

As far as sex energy is concerned, it is less in old men, more in young men. But as far as sexuality is concerned - sexuality means thinking about sex - it is more in old men than in young men. Death is coming near and sex is the antidote of death, so now the weakening energy would like to produce someone. Life must continue. Life is not concerned with you, life is concerned with itself. This is a vicious circle.

And the same happens in the reverse order also. If you are overflowing with energy, sex becomes less and less important and love becomes more and more important. And then sex can happen just as a part of love, as a deep sharing. The deepest sharing can be of bio-energy because that is the life force. To whomsoever you love you want to give something. Giving is part of love; in love you give things. The greatest gift can be of the life energy of yourself. In love, sex becomes a deep gift of bio-energy, of life. You are giving a part of yourself.

Really, in every act of sex you are giving yourself totally. Then a different circle is created: the more you feel love, the more you become strong. The more you feel love, the more you share love, then the more strong you become because in love the ego is dissolved. In love you have to flow with life.

You need not flow with life in politics. Rather, you will be a fool if you flow with life in politics, because there you have to force yourself against life; only then can you rise in politics. If you are doing business you will be a fool if you flow with life. You will be nowhere, because you have to fight, you have to compete, you have to be violent. The more violent and the more mad, the more you will succeed there. It is a struggle.

Only in love is there no competition, no fight, no violence. You succeed in love only when you surrender. So love is the only anti-worldly thing in the world, the only non-worldly thing in the world.

And if you are in love you will become more a whole, undivided; more energy will be accumulated.

The more the energy, the less will be the sexuality. And a moment comes when the energy comes to a point where transformation happens, and energy becomes awareness. Sex disappears, and only a loving kindness, a compassion, remains.

Buddha has a glow of loving compassion; this is sex energy transformed. But you cannot achieve it through fight, because fight creates division and division makes you more sexual. This is the insight of tantra - absolutely different from whatsoever you may have been thinking about sex and brahmacharya. Only through tantra does a real brahmacharya, a real purity and innocence, happen.

But then it is not a result, it is a consequence. It follows total acceptance.

The second question:

Question 2:

Yes, there is a connection between surrender and sex, because sex is the first surrender, a biological surrender - which you can experience easily. What does surrender mean? It means to be open, unafraid, vulnerable. It means allowing the other to enter you. Biologically, naturally, sex is the basic experience where without any effort you allow someone to enter you, or someone to be so deeply close to you that you are not armored against him. You are not resisting, not holding yourself back, but you are flowing.. relaxed, not afraid, not thinking of the future, of the result, of the consequences, but just being in the moment. Even if death occurs you will accept it.

In deep love, lovers have always felt that this is the right moment to die. And if death occurs, then even death can be welcomed in this moment. They are open - even for death they are open. If you are open for life, you will be open for death. If you are closed for life, you will be closed for death.

Those who are afraid of death are basically afraid of life. They have not lived; that is why they are so afraid of death. And the fear is natural. If you have not lived at all you are bound to be afraid of death, because death will deprive you of the opportunity to live and you have not lived yet. So if death comes, then when will you live ?

One who has lived deeply is not afraid of death. He is fulfilled, and if death comes he can welcome it, accept it. Now whatsoever life can give, life HAS given. Whatsoever can be known in life, he has known it. Now he can move into death easily. He would like to move into death so that he can know something unknown, something new. In sex, in love, you are fearless. You are not fighting for something in the future; this very moment is paradise, this very moment is eternal.

But when I say this, I do not necessarily mean that you have experienced it through sex. If are afraid, resisting, then in sex you can have a biological release, a sexual release, but you will not attain to the ecstasy tantra talks about.

Wilhelm Reich says you have not known sex at all unless in sex you can attain a deep orgasm. It is not only a release of sex energy, your whole body must become relaxed. Then the sex experience is not localized at the sex center, but it spreads all over the body. Your every cell is bathed in it, and you have a peak - a peak in which you are not a body. If you cannot attain a peak in sex, a peak in which you are not a body, you have not known sex at all. That is why Wilhelm Reich says a very paradoxical thing: he says sex is spiritual.

This is what tantra says, and the meaning is that in deep sex you will not be a body at all; you will become just a spirit that is hovering. Your body will be left far behind; you will have forgotten it completely. It will be no more. You will not be part of the material world, you will have become immaterial. Only then is there orgasm. That is what tantra says about SAMBHOG - intercourse.

There comes a total relaxation, a feeling that now you are fulfilled, a feeling that there is no need to desire anything. Unless this feeling happens to you in sex - this feeling of desirelessness - you have not known sex at all. You may have produced children, but that is easy - and a different thing.

Only man can achieve this spirituality in sex; otherwise sex is just an animal instinct. But when teachers, monks condemn sex, you nod your head that they are right. When tantra says something it is difficult to believe in it because it is not your experience. That is why tantra couldn't become a universal message yet. But the future is good - because the more man will become wise and understanding, the more tantra will be felt and understood.

Only within these hundred years has psychology laid foundations for a world which will be tantric.

But you nod your head with someone who is condemning sex because you also have the same experience. You know that nothing happens in it, and after sex you feel depressed. That is why there is so much condemnation. Everytime you move into it you feel depressed, later on you repent.

Tantra, Wilhelm Reich, Freud and others who know, agree absolutely that if you achieve an orgasm in sex the glow will last for hours afterwards and you will feel absolutely different - without any worries, without any tensions. Euphoria will result, they say; ecstasy will be there. And that ecstasy happens only when there is really a let-go - when you are not holding yourself back, you are not fighting; you are just moving with the life energy.

Life energy has two layers, and it will be good to understand this. I was talking about breath, and I told you that breath was something like a link between your voluntary system and your non-voluntary system. In your body the major part is non-voluntary. The blood circulates, and you are not asked to do anything. You cannot do anything, it just goes on circulating. Only during these last three hundred years could man know that blood circulates. Before that it was thought that blood just filled the body - not that it was circulating, because you cannot feel its circulation. It goes on working without you, without your knowledge. It is non-voluntary.

You eat food; then the body starts working. Beyond your mouth you are not needed. The moment food goes beyond your mouth the body takes it; the non-voluntary system goes on working on it.

And it is good that it works this way. If it were left to you, you would create a mess. It is such a great work that if you had to do it you would not be able to do anything else. If you had taken a cup of tea, it would be enough to keep you engaged the whole day - to work it out, to transform it into blood.

And the work is so much.

The body works non-voluntarily, but there are a few things you can do voluntarily. I can move my hand, but I cannot move the blood that moves in the hand. I cannot do anything directly with the bone that moves in the hand. I cannot do anything with the system that works, but I can move my hand. I can move my body, but I cannot do whatsoever goes on within it, I cannot interfere. I can jump, I can run, I can sit, I can lie down, but inside I cannot do anything. Just on the surface I am allowed freedom.

Sex is a very mysterious phenomenon. You start it, but a moment comes when you are no more.

Sex is started as a voluntary thing, then there is a limit. If you cross that limit you cannot come back; if you do not cross that limit you CAN come back. So sex is both voluntary and non-voluntary. There is a limit up to which your mind will be needed. But if you do not lose your mind, your head, your reason, your consciousness, your religion, your philosophy, your way of life, if you do not lose your mind, then the boundary will not be crossed and you will be experiencing sex in the voluntary realm.

This is what is happening. Then after sex you will feel depressed, against it - and you will be thinking of renouncing life and taking a vow against sex. Of course, these vows will not go on for long. Within twenty-four hours you will be okay and ready to move again into sex. But it becomes a repetition and the whole thing seems futile. You accumulate energy, then you throw it - and nothing results out of it. And this is a long boredom, a drab thing. That is why monks and teachers who are against sex appeal to you: they are talking about something you can understand.

But you have not known the non-voluntary sex, - the deepest biological dimension. You have not touched it, and you always come back from the limit because that limit creates fear. Beyond that limit your ego will not be; beyond that limit you will not be. The sex energy will take hold of you, it will possess you. Then you will be doing something which you cannot control.

Unless you can move to this uncontrolled phenomenon, you cannot achieve orgasm. And once you know this uncontrolled life energy, you are no more in it. You have become just a wave in a great ocean, and things are just happening. You are not forcing them to happen.

Really, you are not active - you have become passive. In the beginning you are active, and then a moment comes when you become passive. And when you become passive, only then does orgasm happen. If you have known it then you can understand many things. Then you can understand religious surrender also. Then you can understand the surrender of a disciple to a master. Then you can understand the surrender of someone to the existence itself. But if you do not know any surrender it is difficult even to conceive of what it means.

So it is right: sex is deeply related with surrender. If you have known deep sex you will be more capable of surrendering, because you have known a deep pleasure that follows surrender, you have known a bliss that comes as a shadow of surrender. Then you can trust.

Sex is biological surrender. SAMADHI - cosmic consciousness - is existential surrender. Through sex you touch life. Through samadhi, ecstasy, you touch existence, you move even deeper than life; the basic existence is touched. Through sex you move from yourself to another person; in samadhi you move from yourself to the whole, to the cosmos.

Tantra is, if you will allow me, "cosmic sex"! It is a falling in love with the whole cosmos, it is a surrender toward the whole cosmos. And you have to be passive. To a limit you have to be active, but beyond that limit you are not needed; you are a hindrance then. Then leave it to the life force, leave it to the existence.

The second thing: if you go on thinking about surrender as negative and passive, nothing is wrong in it. It IS passive and negative, but the negativity and the passivity is nothing condemnable. In our minds, the moment we hear the word 'negative' some condemnation enters, the moment we hear 'passive' some condemnation enters - because for the ego both of these are deaths.

Nothing is wrong in being passive. Passivity is a way to be in deep contact with the universe. And you cannot be active with it - that is the difference between religion and science. Science is active with the universe, religion is passive with the universe. Science is just like the male mind - active, violent, forcing; religion is a feminine mind - open, passive, receptive. Receptivity is always passive.

And truth is not to be created, it is to be received.

You are not going to create the truth. The truth is already there! You have to receive it. You have to become the host and then the truth will become your guest. And a host has to be passive. You have to be like a womb to receive it, but your mind is trained for activity - to be active, to do something - and this is the realm where whatsoever you do will become a hindrance. Do not do - just be! This is what passivity means: do not do anything. Just be, and allow that which is already there to happen to you. You are not needed creatively, actively, to do something. You are needed just to receive. Be passive; do not interfere. Nothing is wrong with passivity.

Poetry happens when you are passive. Even the greatest discoveries of science have happened in passivity. But the attitude of science is active. Even the greatest things in science happen only when the scientist is passive, just waiting, not doing anything. And religion is basically passive.

What is Buddha doing when he is meditating? Our language, our terms, give a false impression.

When we say Buddha is meditating, it appears, because of the terms used, that he is doing something. But meditation means not doing. If you are doing something, nothing will happen.

But all doing is just like sex: in the beginning you have to be active; then a moment comes when activity ceases and you have to be passive. When I say "Buddha is meditating," I mean Buddha is no more. He is not doing anything, he is just passive - a host waiting, just waiting. And when you are waiting for the unknown, you cannot even expect anything. You do not really know what is going to happen, because if you know then the waiting becomes impure and the desire enters. You do not know anything!

All that you had known has ceased, all the known has dropped. The mind is not functioning, it is just simply awaiting, and then everything happens to you. The whole universe falls into you; the whole universe enters from all sides into you. All the barriers are withdrawn. You are not withholding yourself.

Nothing is wrong with passivity. Rather, your activity is the problem. But we are trained for activity because we are trained for violence, struggle, conflict. And it is good as far as it goes, because in the world you cannot be passive. In the world you have to be active, fighting, forcing your way. But that which is so helpful in the world is not helpful when you move toward a deeper existence. Then you have to reverse your steps. Be active if you are moving in politics, in society, for riches or for power. Be inactive if you are moving into God, into religion, into meditation. Passivity is the way there.

And nothing is wrong about the negative either - nothing is wrong! 'Negative' only means that something has to be dropped. For example, if I want to create space in this room, what am I going to do? What is the process to create space? What am I going to do? Can I bring space from outside and fill this room? I cannot bring space from outside. The space is already here - that is why it is a room - but it is filled with people or furniture or things, so I take the things and people out of it. Then the space is discovered, not brought. It was already here, but filled. So I do a negative process: I empty it.

Negativity means emptying yourself, not doing something positive, because that which you are trying to discover is already there. Just throw out the furniture. Thoughts are the furniture in the mind. Just throw them out and the mind becomes a space, and when the mind is a space it becomes your soul - your atman. But when it is filled with thoughts, desires, it is mind; vacant, empty, it is not mind.

Negation is a process of elimination. Eliminate things...

So do not be afraid of the words 'negative' and 'passive'. If you are afraid, you can never surrender.

Surrender IS passive and negative. It is not something you are doing; rather, you are leaving your doings, you are leaving the very notion that you can do. You cannot do - this is the basic feeling.

Only then is there surrender. It is negative because you are moving into the unknown, the known is left.

When you surrender to a master it is one of the miracles, because you do not know what is going to happen and what this man is going to do to you. And you can never be certain whether he is real or not. You cannot know to whom you are surrendering and where he is going to lead you. You will try to make certain, but the very effort means that you are not ready for surrender.

If you are absolutely certain before you surrender that this man is going to lead you somewhere - to a paradise - and then you surrender, it is not a surrender at all. You have not surrendered.

Surrender is always to the unknown. When everything is known, there is no surrender. You have already checked that this is going to happen, and that two and two are going to make four, then there is no surrender. You cannot say "I surrender" because the four is already made certain.

In uncertainty, in insecurity, is the surrender. So it is easy to surrender to God because really, there is no one to whom you are surrendering and you remain the master. It is difficult to surrender to a living master because then you are no longer a master. With God you can go on deceiving, because no one is going to ask you...

I was reading a Jewish anecdote. One old man was praying to God, and he said, "My neighbor 'A' is very poor, and last year I prayed to you but you have not done anything for him. My other neighbor 'B' is crippled, and I prayed last year also, but you have not done anything." And so on and so forth, he continued. He talked about all the neighbors, and then in the end he said, "Now I will pray again this year. If you forgive me, I can also forgive you."

But he was talking alone. Every talk with the divine is a monologue; the other is not there. So it is up to you; what you are doing is up to you, and you remain the master. That is why there is so much insistence in tantra to surrender to a living master, because then your ego is shattered. And that shattering is the base. That shattering is the base, and only then something can arise out of it.

But do not ask me what you can do to surrender. You cannot do anything. Or, you can do only one thing: be aware of what you can do by doing, what you have gained by doing - be aware! You have gained much: you have gained many miseries, anguishes, nightmares. You have gained! That is what you have gained through your own effort, this is what ego can gain. Be aware of it - of the misery that you have created - positively, actively, without surrendering. Whatsoever you have done to your life, be aware of it. That very awareness will help you one day to throw it all and to surrender.

And remember that you will be transformed not by surrender to a particular master, but by surrender itself.

So the master is irrelevant; he is not the point. People go on coming to me and they say, "I want to surrender, but to whom?" That is not the point, you are missing the point. It is not a question of to whom. Just the surrendering helps, not the person to whom you have surrendered. He may not be there or he may not be authentic or he may not be an enlightened one. He may just be a rogue; that is not the point. It is irrelevant! You have surrendered - that helps because now you are vulnerable, open. You have become feminine. The male ego is lost, and you have become a feminine womb.

The person you have surrendered to may be bogus or he may not be. That is not the point! You have surrendered; now something can happen to you. And many times it has happened that even with a false master disciples have become enlightened. You may be surprised, even with a false master disciples have become enlightened!

It is reported of Milarepa that he went to a master and he surrendered. Milarepa was a very faithful man, very trusting, so when the master said, "You will have to surrender to me, only then can I help,"

he said, "Okay, I surrender." But many persons were jealous. The old followers of that master were jealous of Milarepa because Milarepa was such a different type of man. He was a very magnetic force. They became afraid that if this man remained there he would become the chief disciple, the next master. So they said to their master, "This man seems to be false, so first check whether his surrender is real."

The master said, "How should we examine him?" They said, "Tell him to jump from this hill" - they were sitting on a hill. So the master said, "Milarepa, if you have really surrendered, jump from this hill." So he did not wait even to say yes, he jumped. The disciples thought he would be dead; then they went down. It took hours for them to go to the valley. He was just sitting under a tree meditating, and he was happy - as happy as he had never been.

So they gathered, and the disciples thought that it must be a coincidence. The master was also surprised... how could this happen? So he asked Milarepa privately, "What did you do? How did it happen?" He said, "When I surrendered, there was no question of MY doing. YOU have done something."

The master knew well that he had not done anything, so he tried again. One house was on fire, so he told Milarepa to go in and sit there and only to come out when the whole house had become ashes.

Milarepa went in. He stayed there for hours, then the house was just ashes. When they reached there he was just buried in the ashes - but as alive and as blissful as ever. Milarepa touched his master's feet and said, "You are doing miracles."

So the master said, "It is difficult to think that it is again a coincidence." But the followers said, "This is nothing but a coincidence. Try again. At least three trials are needed."

They were passing through a village and the master said, "Milarepa, the boat has not yet come and the ferryman has not kept his promise, so you go - walk on the water, go to the other bank and tell the ferryman to come." Milarepa walked, and then the master really thought it was a miracle. He walked and went to the other bank and brought the ferry.

The master said, "Milarepa, how are you doing it?" He said, "I just take your name and go on. It is your name, master, that helps me."

So the master thought, "If my name helps so much... " He tried to walk on the water also, but he drowned - and no one has ever heard about him again.

How did it happen? Surrender is the thing - not the master, not the thing to which you surrender. The statue, the temple, the tree, the stone - anything will do. If you surrender, you become vulnerable to the existence. Then the whole existence takes you into its arms.

This story may be just a parable, but the meaning is that when you surrender, the whole existence is for you. The fire, the hill, the river, the valley - nothing is against you because you are not against anything. The enmity is lost.

If you fall from a hill and your bones are broken, it is the bones of your ego. You were resisting; you didn't allow the valley to help you. You were helping yourself. You were thinking yourself more wise than the existence. Surrender means you come to realize that whatsoever you do will be stupid, foolish. And you have done many stupid things for many lives.

Leave it to the existence itself. YOU cannot do anything! You have to realize that you are helpless.

This realization that "I am helpless" helps the surrender to happen.