Death: The Climax of Life

The first question:

Question 1:

A dead person is totally relaxed. He cannot be tense. A dead person cannot be tense - or can he?

He is relaxed because there is no ego to be tense. Only the ego can be tense. When in the fourth step I say be dead, it means to be so relaxed that you are just like a dead man. You are not to try to be frozen and dead. If you try, then you will get the reverse result. Do not try to be frozen; do not make any effort to be dead. Simply relax and be dead.

These are two different things. If you try to be dead, then your whole body will become tense. And when you are tense, you cannot be dead, you cannot relax. Simply relax the body as if it is no more, as if it has gone dead. Do not make any effort to make it dead. Simply relax, and feel that it has gone dead and you have nothing to do about it.

I have been telling you that even if you feel a sneeze coming, do not sneeze, do not cough. But if you feel an irritation in the throat, what will you do? If you try to prevent it, it will become more penetrating. If you try to block it, it will become more forcible because this is a sort of suppression.

Then you will have to cough. If you feel a sneeze coming, what will you do? If you hold it, it will become more forcible, it will come out with a greater force.

But there is a way: if you feel that your throat is irritated and you want to cough, relax the throat. Do not prevent it. Simply relax the throat; be indifferent to the irritation. Relax the throat. Do not make it tense because tension will create more irritation. Relax the throat and be indifferent; feel as if you are not concerned. Within seconds the irritation will go. If you feel that a sneeze is coming, just be indifferent to it; do not do anything about it. Relax the part where you feel that the sneeze is hitting, and be indifferent.

In that indifference, out of one hundred times, ninety-nine times the sneeze will disappear. Out of a hundred times, there is only one possibility that the sneeze will come - but that too will not disturb you because you are so indifferent that even if it happens you will feel that it is happening to someone else. You will be so unconcerned that even if it comes it makes no difference. You will remain unperturbed within.

And I am not saying to you not to sneeze because others will be disturbed - no! And I am not saying not to cough because others will be disturbed. That is not the point. You will become disturbed. You will lose the whole point of the effort; the whole endeavor will be lost.

In the morning meditation, relax. After the third step, relax. One thing more which you should remember: when I say "Stop!" in the morning meditation, or when the music stops, do not make your body comfortable. Do not try to take a posture; do not lie down. Leave the body as it is. Stop then and there, even if it is inconvenient and uncomfortable.

You were jumping and the posture is uncomfortable: remain frozen in that posture, do not change it. The moment you hear that the music has stopped, you stop. Become dead. You can make your body comfortable, you can lie down, but this gap will have already disturbed the energy; this gap will have already changed the direction.

In the three steps you have created a vital force, a floodlike force. Now, just by making your body comfortable, you will have forgotten it and your attention will have become diverted. Do not do that.

When I say, "Stop!" stop immediately, then and there. And do not try to deceive. Do not say to yourself, "No one is looking at me, so why not make the body a little more comfortable? It is no one's concern." Then you are deceiving yourself.

One thing more. In the second step, when you are expressing all the suppressed emotions, when you are going completely mad in catharsis, do one thing emphatically: contract your facial muscles and relax. Contract and relax. Your body is not as tense as your face is because your face is the focal point of all suppression. And your face is the most expressive; that is why the face becomes the most suppressive. It is through your face that you express or suppress. In the second step, go on expressing through the whole body, but remember also to make the face tense and relaxed, tense and relaxed. In that way, much suppressed emotion will be released more easily.

Relaxation is not something to be done, really; you cannot DO it. No one can do it because relaxation is against doing. You can simply stop doing and relaxation happens. So when I say "Stop!" when the music stops, stop completely as you are; do not do anything. You simply stop, stop all doing - not even a single movement. Then a very deep silence will happen to you and you will feel the difference.

You have been making yourself comfortable; from now on do not make your body comfortable.

In the afternoon meditation also, after KIRTAN, when the music stops, you stop - AS YOU ARE.

Suddenly all the activity stops, and the whole energy moves only inwards; there is no opportunity for it to be diverted anywhere. And the same applies for the evening meditation which we will do just now. When I say, "Stop!" stop completely as you are. And when again the music starts and you begin to express your ecstasy, only then begin moving again. For the gap in between, remain in nondoing and the relaxation will happen.

The second question:

Question 2:

It is not! It is not hard to attain. It is very easy. But because it is so easy, it has become hard. The ego is always interested in whatsoever is hard to attain because then the ego feels a challenge. The ego is not interested in doing whatsoever is easy; that is the problem. The ego is not interested in doing meditation; that is the only reason why it appears to be so hard.

It is so easy - but so easy that there is no challenge in it. No ambition can be fulfilled through it; you cannot attain to any worldly power through it; you cannot attain to any worldly prestige through it. Really, you do not attain anything in the world which is visible. Rather, on the contrary, you go on losing and finally you lose yourself. It is hard because you are not ready to lose yourself; it is easy if you are ready to lose yourself. In a single moment it can happen. Otherwise you will take lives and lives and lives and it will not happen.

The question is not of time; the question is deeper. The question is whether you are ready to lose yourself. But you can ask, "Why is it so hard to lose? Why are people not ready to lose more easily?"

There is a reason, and the reason is that losing oneself appears to be deathlike and no one wants to die. Everyone wants to live - to live more. Everyone wants to avoid death.

Of course, no one can avoid it. No one ever succeeds in avoiding it. Death occurs. Death is the only certainty. All else is uncertain in life. Only death is certain. Death will happen whether you are trying to avoid it or not. You cannot escape it. In a sense it had already happened the moment you were born. Half of it has already happened and the other half will follow. And these two halves cannot be divided.

Buddha says again and again, "Once born, you will have to die" - because you have entered death with your birth, it is an entry. You are already dead in a way. You have already started to die. The moment you are born, you have started to die. Your death process has started.

But we are afraid to die and we cling to life. Why do we cling to life and why are we afraid of death?

You may not have thought about it. The reason why we cling so much to life and why we are afraid of death is just inconceivable. We cling to life so much because we do not know how to live. We cling to life so much because really we are not alive. And time is passing and death is coming nearer and nearer. And we are afraid that death is coming near and we have not lived yet.

This is the fear: death will come and we have not lived yet. We are just preparing to live. Nothing is ready; life has not happened. We have not known the ecstasy which life is; we have not known the bliss life is; we have not known anything. We have just been breathing in and out. We have been just existing. Life has been just a hope and death is coming near. And if life has not yet happened and death happens before it, of course, obviously, we will be afraid because we would not like to die.

Only those persons who have lived, really lived, are ready, welcoming, receptive, thankful to death.

Then death is not the enemy. Then death becomes the fulfillment. If you have really lived and known what life is, then death is not the end of life. It is the fulfillment, it is the peak, it is the climax, it is the last thing that life can offer to you - and the best.

Life offers only two things: one is love, another is death - and both are dangerous because in both you will have to die. In love you will have to dissolve yourself. In death also you will have to dissolve yourself. And you are so afraid of death, of losing yourself, that deep down you have become afraid - afraid of love also. You go on talking about love, but no one is ready to love because love is deathlike. Love and death, those are natural phenomena.

If man simply lives naturally, love will happen and death will also happen and both will be peaks. Love is dying into the other person and death is dying into the universe. But love is not ultimate death; you will come out of it. You will come out of the other person again, there will be a resurrection. And death is also not ultimate because you will be reborn. You will come out of the universe again and you will enter a body and you will become embodied.

Meditation is ultimate death: it goes beyond love and beyond death both. You cannot come out of it; that is why it is the most dangerous thing. Even in death there is the possibility you will be reborn, that you will come out of it. You will dissolve and you will again integrate, you will again evolve. So death will just be a passage of change but meditation is final death - ultimate, absolute death. You cannot come out of it; hence, the fear. And because of the fear it looks so hard; otherwise it is as easy as anything can be. But love is difficult, so meditation will be difficult. Death is difficult, so meditation will be difficult.

To me, therefore, love is very significant: if you can love, you can meditate easily. But the whole society is against love, the whole culture is against love. They take every precaution so that love should not happen. They have created marriage so that love should not happen. Through marriage they have tried to close the very door. Before you get involved in love - a death process - they have protected you. They have created all types of teachings, all types of nonsense in your mind, to make love immoral.

And, basically, you are also afraid because in love you will have to lose your identity. You want to remain yourself so you go on protecting yourself. Even if you move in love, you move in a very protected way, very carefully. You remain an individual even in love. You remain an ego. So two egos meet but the meeting is only going to be an appearance. They can come near but the meeting never happens. They never dissolve into each other; they never lose themselves into each other.

If you can love, meditation will be very easy. The world will be more religious if love is accepted, helped along, and love becomes a natural milieu around you. Then meditation will be very easy because you will know a taste through love of what it means to be dissolved, even if only for a single moment. Then you can dare to be dissolved for longer moments.

And if you can love, you will not be afraid of death. Lovers are never afraid of death. And if a person is afraid of death, you can be certain that he has not loved and he has not been loved. The fear of love shows that the life has been without love. Lovers are ready to die very easily. They can die for each other. They do not care much about so-called life because they have known a higher quality of life; they have known a higher life. They do not care about this life very much.

But look at persons who have never loved. They will always be afraid of death. Look at misers: they will always be afraid of death. And misers are those persons who have not loved anyone because if you can love a person you will never love money. Money is a substitute. When you cannot love an individual, when you cannot love a live person, you love dead money.

Misers, those who go on clinging to their possessions, are not even acquainted with what love is.

Their whole love has gone to dead money. And why has it gone? There are deeper connections. A person who is too much attached to money will be afraid of death. Really, a person who is afraid of death will love money too much because money seems to be a protection against death. If you have money you feel protected. If you do not have any money you feel unprotected. Death can occur and you cannot do anything. With money you feel that you can do something. Money will be helpful.

A person who loves will not love money because a person who loves will not be afraid of death.

And if a person is not afraid of death, there cannot be any clinging, attachment, mad obsession with money. It is impossible.

If you can love, then you will accept death very easily. It will be a deep relaxation, a long sleep, a beautiful dissolution into the existence. And if you can be receptive to death, then meditation can be as easy as anything. The problem arises because love is not there. When death has become a fear, then meditation will be difficult because it is both love plus death. It is death as far as your ego is concerned; it is love as far as the divine existence is concerned.

I define meditation in a mathematical formula: meditation is equal to love plus death - love to the existence, to the total, and death to the ego. They are both two aspects of the same coin because you can love the total only if you are ready to lose the individual. If you are ready to die, only then can you be reborn as the existence, as the Brahman.

Jesus says, "Only if you lose can you survive. And those who try to survive will be lost." It is hard because you have not loved; it is hard because you have not lived. It is not hard by itself. Meditation by itself is very easy - a spontaneous phenomenon. If a human being evolves naturally, falls into love, knows what love is, knows what type of death and what type of life love is, comes out of it, knows the taste of moving into and being in death, then he will love death - not as being against life.

Death changes the quality then. Then it becomes the last point in life, the highest peak, the climax of life. Then meditation is very easy.

Those of you who are ready to lose can understand it; it is very easy. Those of you who are not ready to lose cannot understand it. One friend came to me today. He said, "Whatsoever you say appears to be absolutely true. I am totally satisfied; my mind is in agreement with you. But do not tell me to do this meditation. Is it not possible," the friend asked, "that just by total agreement with your thoughts I can achieve enlightenment? Is it necessary to move in this meditation?"

What is the fear? You can agree with me intellectually, but you are not losing yourself. And, really, if you go deep and penetrate more, you will find the whole process to be just the reverse. You agree with me intellectually because you have always been feeling that whatsoever I am saying is true.

Really, you are not agreeing with me; I am agreeing with you. You feel me agreeable, so your ego is fulfilled. "Right!" you say inside your mind, "this is what I have been thinking always. You are right, because this has been my idea." You feel fulfilled, satisfied. Your ego is strengthened. This is not going to lead you to enlightenment. Rather, it may lead you to deeper ignorance - because the ego....

What is the fear? Moving in meditation, the fear is that you will have to lose the ego; you will have to lose your identity. And this is a mad sort of meditation. If I say to you just sit in a Buddhalike posture and close your eyes, you can sit easily because you are not afraid. You can sit easily because nothing is expected, really. But in this mad, chaotic meditation in which you have to lose yourself, your identity, your image, you become just crazy. You feel you are losing control, and sooner or later the group mind takes possession of you.

Then you are dancing, but you know very well, deeply, that YOU are not dancing. The whole group is dancing, and you have just become a part of it. You cannot stop it, really. A moment comes when you cannot stop it; you are no more in possession. Something greater than you has taken the grip, something greater than you has taken control: that is the fear.

If you sit in a SIDDHASAN - in a Buddhalike posture, you are in control. But this meditation is throwing you out of control. Really, it is pulling the ground from beneath your feet. You are being pushed into an abyss, into a whirlwind where you are no more. Something deeper, something greater, something more powerful, has taken possession. Now it is not that you are dancing, something else is dancing; you are just a part of that greater dance. This gives you fear. This makes everything difficult.

So I will tell you: be ready to lose and it will be easy. Resist, and it is difficult and hard. Resistance makes it hard; let-go makes it easy.

And the same friend has asked something more. He says, "It seems to me that it is part of nature's intention to make it very difficult and to require man to go through ages of development before he reaches it. Isn't there a divine purpose behind why it takes him so long to reach?"

Man's mind is very cunning. You can go on throwing responsibility on someone else: "It is nature's way to make it hard." YOU are making it hard; it is not nature's way. Nature's way is always simple and easy. Nature means natural, spontaneous, easy. In nature nothing is hard. Only man complicates things, makes them hard and difficult. Nature is very easy-flowing. But you can deceive. You can say it is nature's way that meditation is difficult: then you are relieved. Then it is not on your part and you cannot do anything. It is nature's way so what can you do?

You can just wait, or you can go on doing whatsoever you are doing; you need not meditate. You have thrown all responsibility on nature. But if this is really true, then meditation will happen. If you can really throw all responsibility on nature - remember, ALL - then meditation will happen; then there is no need to do anything. Feel miserable and know that it is nature's way. When you feel pain, do not ask for remedies; know this is nature's way. If you can do this totally, there will be no need for meditation; meditation will have already happened.

But you are cunning. Only with meditation will you say that this is nature's way and with nothing else.

With everything else you will struggle, you will make effort. If you are poor you will make every effort to become rich, and you will not say that it is nature's way. You will not say, "When I become really capable, nature will make me rich." You will not wait for nature.

If you are really honest, then leave EVERYTHING to nature. You need not meditate then, because this itself, this leaving everything to nature, has become the deepest meditation possible. But if you are not honest, then you can deceive so that whatsoever you want to do you will do, and whatsoever you do not want to do you will throw on nature's shoulders.

Beware of this trick. YOU are doing it. I am ready: if you are totally throwing it to nature, then for you nothing is needed. But if you are not ready to throw it totally, then be kind to yourself: do not throw meditation. Do not say that nature has some inner work and so nature makes it hard. Nature is not making it hard.

The same friend says, "Isn't there a divine purpose behind why it takes so long to reach?"

Not only are you throwing it on nature: you can make it look very good and divine - as if there is some divine purpose behind it and that is why you are not reaching the goal; that is why you are not attaining to meditation; that is why samadhi is so difficult. No! YOU are creating barriers for the divine purpose. And in a way, there can be no divine purpose because existence is purposeless. It is a play.

Purpose is human: you have purpose. But the existence cannot have any purpose. There is no sense in having any purpose. Existence is flowing - overflowing with its own energy. It is a festivity, not a purpose. It is a constant celebration. The existence is enjoying itself in so many forms. There is no purpose, and existence is not worried if you are not reaching to ecstasy. It is only your worry.

If you are not reaching, YOU will suffer. Existence is not suffering because of your not reaching and existence will not force you to move into ecstasy. It is up to you.

Existence is a deep freedom. If you want to be in suffering, be in suffering. If you want to be in bliss, be in bliss. It is your own choice. But it is too much for our minds to think that everything is our choice because then we become responsible. If you come to think that you are the cause of your suffering, then you will feel very bad. It always feels better to make someone else the cause of your suffering.

But, remember, if someone else is the cause of your suffering, you can never become free. Then there is no liberation. But if you are the cause of your suffering, then liberation is within your hands; you can do something and change it.

I tell you, you are the cause of your heaven and of your hell. If you are in hell, you have chosen it to be so. And the moment you decide, you can come out of it. No one is going to prevent you; no one will say to you, "Do not go." The gates are not closed against you. Really, there are no gates, and no devil is standing at the door. You need not even have a passport to move out. It is simply your decision to be there.

You are in suffering because you have decided to be in suffering; you can come out of it the moment you decide to come out. You can be in bliss if you decide to be in bliss. Your decision is your being.

You choose whatsoever you are. You have chosen it to be so; that is why it is so. Do not go on throwing responsibilities on something else - on nature, on God, on faith, on destiny. Do not go on throwing them.

But if you really feel that you cannot do anything, that you are helpless, then I say throw the TOTAL responsibility. These are two ways. Throw the total responsibility; then you have nothing to do and everything will happen, because the moment you throw the total responsibility, the ego is also thrown, the ego cannot exist. If you give total responsibility to nature or to the divine force or to x y z, your ego is no more there. And when the ego is not, the thing happens. Or, if you cannot throw total responsibility, if you cannot surrender totally, if you cannot feel that you are totally helpless - remember the word total - then you will have to do something to dissolve the ego; then effort will be needed. Do either this or that but do not move in between. And do not try to travel in two boats. You will be in difficulty; you will never reach anywhere.

This is my observation: if I say to people, "Leave everything to God," they say, "How can I leave?

How can I surrender? I do not know what God is. Unless I know, how can I leave everything to him?" They say, "It is difficult." They say, "Please show us some way so that we can do something." If I say to them, "Do this or that, follow this method and you will achieve," immediately they bring some objection. They say, "Man is helpless. What can we do? We are so helpless - just puppets in the hands of a destiny which is unknown."

If I say to them, "Leave everything to destiny," they say it is impossible. If I say, "Do something," they say it is impossible. The mind is cunning and always tries to escape. Be alert about it; only then can something happen to you. Otherwise you can go on just wavering your whole life and nothing will happen.

You have wasted so many lives before. You are not here for the first time listening to something about meditation; you have listened to it many times. It is not only that you are clever with me; you have been clever many times before. You have listened to Buddha, you have listened to Jesus, you have listened to Krishna. You were there - with different faces, of course, but you were there. You are very old, ancient ones, but your cunning is so deep that Buddhas fail; Christs come and go and you remain unperturbed. No one can push you off your road. You continue; you bypass all.

So while talking to you or while leading you into meditative states, I never think that you are new ones. You have done many things before but never with your full heart. And unless you are totally in anything, nothing can happen. Be either totally with destiny, with the divine force, and then you are no more; or be totally with a technique, with a method, so that the ego can be destroyed by and by, slowly. Method is a slow thing; surrender is total and final. Surrender is possible in a single moment; method will take time. I am giving you method because I know that you cannot surrender.

The third question:

Question 3:

The first thing to be understood about surrender is that you cannot ask how, because how brings the method, how brings the technique. Surrender is enough unto itself; it needs no technique. Asking how to surrender is asking how to love. And if you ask how to love, one thing is certain: love is not for you because how can one ask how to love? And if someone is trained, whatsoever he comes to know about love will be false. Training will make everything false.

It happened once that one young man used to come to me to learn how to love and I used to tell him, "Go and do this and say this to the girl." And he would go and he would come and report back to me what had happened. But he was always a failure. He tried and tried with many girls and he was always a failure because something would always go wrong. He was ready and I would train him for something but life never happens in that way. The girl would say something different and he was not ready to answer. Then he would be in difficulty. He would come back and he would say, "You told me to answer this but she never asked."

So I told that young man, "It is going to be very difficult unless I train you both. But then it will just become a drama."

You cannot learn surrender. If you can do it, you can do it and there is nothing more to it. If you cannot do it, leave it completely; then follow some method. Method doesn't need any surrender; method is a substitute. Because you cannot surrender you have to do something, and by doing something the same phenomenon will happen in a long process that can happen immediately in surrender.

Surrender means you are feeling that you are not capable of doing anything, so you surrender. It is a total helplessness. You say, "I do not know." You say, "I am not capable of doing anything, so I surrender. Now lead me wheresoever you would like to lead." And remember that this is going to be total. You cannot ask after following two or three steps, "Where are you leading me?" You cannot say, "You are leading me to some wrong path," because you have surrendered. Now you are no more.

Surrender has its own beauty but very rare souls, very strong souls, can surrender. Remember, ordinarily it is the feeling that weaklings surrender. This is absolutely wrong. To surrender you need to be such a strong person, very strong, because it is going to be such a total decision. And you cannot move backwards. You cannot take it back; you cannot say, "Now I take my surrender back."

It is unconditional. Surrender cannot be conditional; you cannot say, "If this happens, only then I will follow you." If I move to the very hell, you will follow me because it has been unconditional. You have given up your own decisions, now you are not going to decide.

Surrender needs strong, absolutely strong souls. If the master says, "This is day," and you see it is night - but you have surrendered, you do not see now from your own eyes, you see from the master's eyes - he says, "This is day," you say, "Yes sir, this is day." You do not allow your ego to come in; you do not allow your intellect to come in. You put aside everything. If you can do this - there is no how to it, remember - it happens.

Surrender is not a doing; doing is contradictory. You cannot do it. Doing is contradictory to surrender.

Surrender is a happening. You can ask, "How does it happen?" Do not ask me how it is done. You can ask me, "How does it happen?" It happens when you have tried and tried and failed and failed; when you have tried every path and it has led nowhere; when you have tried your intellect in every way and it has always led to some cul-de-sac; when you have tried to do whatsoever you can do and nothing has happened - so you have come to a conclusion that you are not enough, that you are helpless. When you have come to conclude this, that you are helpless, in this helplessness surrender happens. Then you can surrender.

So the first thing: surrender has no 'how' about it - no. It has no technique. It IS the technique itself; it has no other technique. If you can do it, you can do it. If you cannot do, forget it: it is not for you. But do not be worried, do not feel hopeless, because there are techniques - you can try them.

And if you try techniques, there are two possibilities: either you will fail or you will succeed. If you succeed, there will be no need to surrender; or you will fail, and then it will help to surrender.

Buddha tried for six years. He tried every method. One of his contemporaries, Mahavira, was also trying - in the same days, in the same time, in the same part of the world, in Bihar. These two greatest souls were working for their enlightenment in the same period. Mahavira was working on certain techniques for twelve years. Buddha was also working on similar techniques for six years.

After six years Buddha came to conclude that no technique can be helpful. Everything failed, so he surrendered. He surrendered to the universe. He said, "Now I have nowhere to go. Now I have nothing to achieve. Now I lose my search. Whatsoever happens, now I am not interested in the future in any way. I am neither for life nor against."

He was in such a total frustration that you cannot even say that he was hopeless because you can be hopeless only when a certain hope is still hidden. You can feel hopeless because you still go on hoping. He was not even hopeless. Hope was gone, even hopelessness was gone. He was simply without hope. The future was no more there; he was a total failure. Buddha was a total failure after six years and in that total failure surrender happened. He relaxed under the bodhi tree that night without any desires - not even for nirvana, samadhi, ecstasy, God. He had no desire at all.

Desire shows that you are still not totally a failure: you still desire, you still hope, you still feel something is possible. But Buddha came to conclude that nothing is possible. He relaxed under that bodhi tree because now he could not be tense. When you are really a failure, how can you be tense? A man who is successful can be tense, a man who is trying to succeed can be tense, a man who has failed but who still hopes can be tense. But a man who has failed so totally that now there is no hope, who doesn't even feel frustrated or hopeless but who has simply left the whole game, he cannot be tense. There was no worry. How can worry exist? There was no ego; ego exists only when you are trying to succeed.

Suddenly that morning when he awoke from the night there was no dream, no desire, no idea of the tomorrow. And in the morning when he opened his eyes, his eyes were totally vacant. There were no clouds of desire and dreams. He saw the last star setting and as the star disappeared, he disappeared. And when there was no star on the horizon he was also not there. It is said that he laughed. He laughed within himself because he had tried so much and nothing had happened, and now he was not trying at all and everything had happened. He was in ecstasy. He was in such ecstasy that he is said to have said, "The nirvana has happened, the enlightenment has happened - and such an enlightenment was never known before!"

Then he tried to preach effortlessness, but no one would listen to him. How can you believe that without effort everything can happen? And it had not happened without effort really. Effort had been there. Through effort the failure had happened and through failure this ultimate state of consciousness.

Mahavira succeeded - the other seeker in the same part of the world. He was doing certain techniques and he succeeded. Through techniques he succeeded in dissolving his ego. That is why Jainas and Buddhists are bonafide enemies. They cannot come to any reconciliation, they cannot come to any compromise, because they are so absolutely opposite. Mahavira succeeded through technique, so the whole teaching of Mahavira is of method. Buddha succeeded through failure, so his whole teaching is of effortlessness: "Do not do anything."

These are the two dimensions. Both are good, but my suggestion is to first try to follow technique. If you succeed, it is okay. If you fail, then surrender will be possible. Then it too is okay. I am for both; that is why I look contradictory.

One young man reached me today and he said, "You are so contradictory that it is impossible to follow you. And you contradict yourself so much that you just confuse me." So I told him not to listen to me - to just close his eyes and not listen to me. "Just meditate. Because if you feel that whatsoever I say is contradictory... and you will feel! Your intellect will feel. It IS contradictory.

Unless you come to know that all the contradictory ways can lead to the same point, you will not be able to feel the inner consistency in the contradictions. They are contradictory and they are not.

They are because what Buddha says is consistent, and what Mahavira says is consistent, but I am saying both things simultaneously. It has never been done really, so it looks contradictory. But you need not think about it; you just follow one thing.

If you can surrender, surrender; do not ask how. If you ask how then you are not meant to surrender yet. You are asking for a method, so then follow method. Either you will succeed or you will fail: both are good. Through both you will reach.