this is one of the basic problems

If you want to be a man on a rope, you have to balance, sometimes to the left, sometimes to the right. And really the balance is a science. Whenever you lean to the left you will immediately have to lean to the right because the left will create the possibility of falling. To counter-balance it you will have to lean to the right, and when you lean to the right the possibility comes that you can fall. So you will have to lean to the left. That is why you go on moving between love and hate, between friend and enemy, between this and that, like and dislike, attraction and repulsion. You are moving on a rope, continuously. If you don’t understand this your life will be a total misunderstanding. This is one of the basic problems of all people. They love, then they hate, and they cannot understand why they hate when they love also. This is how they balance — and this balancing gives you the ego, your personality. If you really want to be without the ego, choose either extreme. Move to the left, love, and don’t balance it by the right — you will fall from the rope. Or move to the right, hate, and hate totally, and don’t move to the left. You will fall from the rope. Mahavir says be detached from everything — that is hate. And Krishna says love. That is why Jains can never understand the message of Krishna. Impossible. And Hindus have not taken any note of Mahavir. They have not even mentioned his name in their scriptures. Not a single mention. They have not even taken note because he says be so unattached from everything that it becomes hatred. Krishna says love, and love so deeply that hate falls completely from the mind. Both are the same. They look contradictory to you. They are not. Either you lean to the left or to the right — it makes no difference, you will fall to the ground, you will not be on the rope. That is certain. That rope is the ego or the world, the SANSAR, and you are balancing yourself. Many people love but sooner or later they will balance and they will hate. And when they hate they get disturbed. They should not get disturbed because that is how they can be on the rope. But they cannot hate long. Again they will have to balance. In the morning you love, in the evening you hate, in the morning you love again. Unless you are ready to leave the ego the balancing will continue. It can continue infinitely — infinitely it can continue. The rope is endless. But once you get fed up with the whole game, you can drop from the rope.

and you will find

Responsibility is not addressed to the nation, to the family, to the religion, to the race.
Any responsibility addressed to something is no longer responsibility. Responsibility has to be choiceless. And your awareness can give you these two things together: choicelessness, responsibility.
That is the basic difference between Taoism and all your old religions: Freedom, spontaneity, responsibility, choicelessness — but these things are not finite, addressed to small things, these things are infinite, unaddressed. Each moment you have to be aware, and you will find what your responsibility is. There will be no choice.
The process is very simple.
Meditate, become more aware and then you will see: choices disappear, choicelessness arises.
And it is such a tremendous joy to have a choiceless spontaneity. It is such a freedom. Choice is such a burden.
Every choice brings misery.
There is nothing to be lost, everything to be gained.
And as you go deeper, all choices disappear. There is an immense freedom in choicelessness. And there is great illumination, light, in awareness.
Meditation is the method to create more awareness, more consciousness, and a responsibility — unaddressed. Whenever, wherever you feel it, go totally into it.
Just meditate, be aware.
Choices will disappear.
And a new kind of responsibility will arise which will not be imposed by the outside, which will be your own fragrance.
Enlightenment is catching.
How does laughter catch? Why suddenly do you all start laughing together? Enlightenment happens just the same way.
All bullshit is spiritual, and all spirituality is nothing but bullshit.

it is making your life really miserable

Nobody opens the cupboards in their unconscious where they have many skeletons, of many kinds.
You yourself have put them there and now you are afraid of them. But the reality is that they are dead; just open the doors, bring light, clean your closets, clean your mind of all the dead luggage that you are filled with — it is making your life really miserable, a hell.
And nobody except you is responsible. In the first place, you hide things which you should not. It is good to give them expression and release them. So first you hide them, and just remain a hypocrite — that you are never angry, that you are never hateful, that you are never this, never that; but all that goes on collecting inside. But those are all dead things. They don’t have any energy of their own, unless you give them energy. You have the source of energy. Whatever happens in your life needs your energy. If you cut the source of energy and… in other words that’s what is called identification; if you don’t identify with anything, it immediately becomes dead, it has no energy of its own.
And non-identification is the other side of watchfulness.
Love the beauty of watchfulness and its immense capacity to transform you. Simply watch whatever it is, and you will suddenly see that there is nothing but a dead skeleton, it cannot do anything to you. But you can give energy to it; you can project energy onto it. Then a skeleton which cannot do anything can even kill you, can give you a heart attack; just start escaping from it and you have given it reality, you have given it life.
Give life to things which are beautiful. Don’t give life to ugly things. You don’t have much time, much energy to waste. With such a small life, with such a small energy source, it is simply stupid to waste it in sadness, in anger, in hatred, in jealousy. Use it in love, use it in some creative act, use it in friendship, use it in meditation; do something with it which takes you higher. And the higher you go, the more energy sources become available to you. At the highest point of consciousness, you are almost a god. But that moment we don’t allow to happen to us. We go on falling downwards into the darker and darker and darker spaces where we ourselves become almost living dead. It is in your hands.
:yes:

TAO TE CHING

Not everyone has had (or even WANTS to have!) a ‘mystical experience.’ Many people consider such experiences either total ‘hogwash’ or a mere chemical imbalance in the brain (maybe due to something you had for supper!) But, for those who HAVE HAD (or wish to have) experiences such as ‘past life-recall,’ astral or flying dreams, clairvoyant flashes or premonitions, visits from ‘angels’ or other spirit-beings, there is a TAO or Path Between All Extremes that specializes in Mystical Science. That is Tao.
One of the most intriguing passages from TAO TE CHING says ‘In the Universe are Four Greats; and the King is one of those Four.’ This is not a ‘commercial’ for Monarchy as a form of government!, but a reference to the ‘Spirit-King’ or Divine Monarch reported by all of the world’s ancient mystical philosophies. Variously called Lord, King or Saviour, this ‘God-King’ is the central fulcrum around which all spiritualities revolve. Religions ‘worship’ him. Mystics recognize ‘him’ as at least PARTLY ‘psycho-mythic’ or built into our own personal makeup as beings… though we also recognize that there is probably more to ‘him’ than our own spiritual aspirations. Maitreya Buddha was predicted by Gautama Buddha as his future successor, who would provide a bridge between all of the spiritual philosophies of mankind and unify a spiritually divided species. ‘Maitreya’ is a Sanskrit word meaning ‘the Friendly Lord’. EVERY ‘divine King’ of every period of history… including the Kristos of western traditions can be viewed as psycho-mythic ‘Examples’ of “THE GOD-SELF” described by Jungian Psychoanalysis as an essential element of every human psyche. In the literature you can find this Inner God-King described as ‘Super-Ego,’ also… the term applied to ‘it’ or ‘him’ by Sigmund Freud. According to both Mysticism and Psychoanalysis, it is the task of the Enlightenment-bound to meet that ‘King’ or “Saviour” WITHIN YOURSELF and make Him (or ‘it’ or HER!) your permanent partner in self-growth. On a society-wide level, this psycho-mythic urge toward God-King contact is the underlying force that drives our Collective Consciousness upward through each new level of cultural advancement. According to the traditional lore of Buddhism, the end-product of this next phase of society’s advancement will be a God-King in every heart, and a Heaven of Satisfied Gods in every home.

if you are there — you will need remedies

That’s the point to be understood. If you can understand that you are not, then you have understood rightly. But if religion is not there, meditation is not there, and you remain there, then you have not understood at all. There is something like the ego. So if you have understood, drop the ego. Then there really is no religion. But if the ego remains then there is religion, there is Buddhism and there is Buddha.
These are all devices to help the ego to disappear — nothing else. These are all remedies for a certain illness. The remedy is not there if the illness is not there. The Prajnaparmitasutra is the assertion of the ultimate. It is not for you! It is simply the assertion of the ultimate truth — that there is nothing. But if there is something — if the ego is there, if you are there — then you will need remedies: The medicine exists only for the ill person. For the healthy person, the medicine is not. But if an ill person starts thinking that the medicine is not and throws the medicine and keeps the illness deep in the heart, he is fooling with himself.
It’s perfectly true. If you have understood, there is no problem.
You must have heard about a great Indian philosopher and saint, Vivekananda. When he came back from America, in Bengal there was a great famine. So he dropped all his religious work, went to the area to help people. A few scholars of that place came to see him, and they said to him, ‘Swamiji, we are surprised that you are getting involved in maya, in illusion. The world does not exist, so who is poor and who is hungry? This is all dream! And we have heard you teach many times that it is all a dream… nothing exists. So where is the famine and who is dying?’ Listening to this, Vivekananda started crying… tears started. Those people could not believe it. They started laughing. They said, ‘This is ridiculous! We were thinking that you were enlightened — and you are crying!’ Vivekananda took his staff — he was a very strong man — and went to the leader of the group and said, ‘If you really know that nobody is hungry then I am going to hit you with this staff.’ That man escaped! He started running, because Vivekananda was a really strong man; if he hit, he could even kill this man. The whole group of those great scholars all disappeared; there was nobody left.

great metaphysical questions

The man of awareness — the meditator — goes on dying every moment to the past so that he remains new, fresh, childlike. Yes, if the absurd becomes overwhelming, you will have your first insight into the gestalt of everything. But remember again, the insight will not be rational. You will not be able to explain it away. You will not be able to say anything about it. You will be able to see, but suddenly you will become dumb. Suddenly you will find language absolutely inadequate, words impotent; communication is not possible. Then only communion remains. When you know WITHOUT knowledge, the only way to convey the message is through silence, through love, through compassion, through being. You can hold the hand of your friend and something may transpire. You can embrace your friend and something may transpire. You can just look into the eyes of your friend and something may transpire. The absurd can only be expressed through absurd ways. You can dance or you can sing.
There is a beautiful story of a Baul mystic: A very rich man, a goldsmith, came to see the mystic and he asked about God: “Do you believe in God? Is there really a God? Does God exist?” The Baul mystic listened to all his queries smiling, and then he started dancing, playing on his EKTARA — a one-stringed instrument — he started dancing. The goldsmith said, “Are you mad or something? I am asking great metaphysical questions! Rather than answering me, you start dancing! Are you drunk?” And the mystic said, “That’s true, I am drunk — drunk with the divine! But please don’t misunderstand me, don’t feel offended. This is the only way I can answer your questions.” And he sang a song — a song of tremendous beauty and meaning and insight. He said, “I know that you are a goldsmith. I know that you can judge whether something is made of real gold or not. You have a touchstone on which it can be judged. But it will be absolutely useless if you come into the garden and start judging roses on your touchstone. For that you will need a totally different kind of approach. I know that you have studied much; you are very much interested in philosophical reasoning, argumentation. But all that reasoning is as absurd here as the touchstone of the goldsmith will be in the garden. I am singing, I am dancing, I am playing music. Feel it! There is no other way. I cannot logically answer your questions, hence my illogical act.”
:crazy: