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LIFE IS A PARADOX

EXISTENCE is paradoxical. Paradox is its very core. It exists through opposites, it is a balance in the opposites. And one who learns how to balance becomes capable of knowing what life is, what existence is, what God is. The secret key is balance.

Read on…

Life is a paradox; paradox in its nature. It is not strange. But you are so much addicted to logic that whenever life reveals itself to you, it looks strange. Logic has been continuously taught to you -- that contradictory things cannot exist together. Logic has been teaching you that either it is day or it is night; either it is life or it is death, either it is happiness or it is unhappiness. The whole mechanism of logic is of 'either-or'.

And life is both together. Life is all together. Whenever you reach to the deepest sadness, suddenly you will see it is turning into happiness. Or, you reach to the deepest happiness and you will see that it is turning into sadness. At the centre they meet; only on the periphery are they separate.

It is just as if you make a circle, and from the centre you can draw many lines towards the periphery. On the periphery, the circumference, the lines are very far away. Move towards the centre and by and by they come closer and closer, and exactly on the centre they become one point.

All paradoxes meet within you; all paradoxes meet in existence. Only on the periphery of the mind are they separate. Deep in you, life and death are both one. Deep in you, happiness and unhappiness are both one. Deep in you, God and the devil are both you. Deep in you, this world and the other are both one, this shore and the other shore are both one.

But whenever you come for the first time to that point of realization, it looks strange, unfamiliar. But I tell you, if you are really happy, tears will come. It is impossible if the happiness has gone really deep -- it cannot be without tears. Of course, the quality of those tears is absolutely different. It is not of sadness; it is of overflow.

And remember, if you have not known sadness together with happiness you have not known anything yet. Then your happiness is superficial; your sadness is also superficial. Then you have been living on the surface; then you have known only the waves; you have not known the depth of the ocean that you are.

Life is contradictory, paradoxical. It has to be so, because only then can it be so rich. If your happiness cannot cry and weep, it will be shallow, it cannot be rich. And if your tears cannot laugh, and if your sadness cannot dance, then it is superficial. In the depth, the sadness becomes a song -- a tremendous beauty of silence surrounds you, and a song is born out of the depth.

If you look into it, you will find you are not sad. The sadness is there, the happiness is there, and you are neither. This is the innermost triangle of existence; this is the point of transcendence where opposites meet. You immediately transcend. You become the third, immediately. When you see happiness and sadness meeting, suddenly you are separate from both; all identity is broken. Then you know you are a witness. Now it is for you to be identified -- either, if you want, you can be identified with sadness or you can be identified with happiness. When you are identified with happiness, sadness is suppressed; when you are identified with sadness, happiness is suppressed -- but both are two aspects of the same coin; and you are the master. The coin is in your hand; you are not the coin at all.

When opposites meet, you transcend. So don't be worried about the strange experience. Allow it! Because if you become worried, you will stop allowing it -- because you will start feeling it is something like madness. You have known only mad people who can both smile and cry together. The East knows better. In the West, if you cry and laugh together immediately you will be taken to the psychiatrist. Something has gone wrong. You are contradictory. You are mad. In the East we know better.

Madmen and mystics have something in common: the mystic has transcended beyond the duality, and the madman has fallen below it; but they are both out of the duality; they have a similarity. A mystic can laugh and weep, and sometimes there have been rare mystics: for example, Gurdjieff, He could weep from one eye and laugh from another. He could deceive people -- one sitting on the left side, the other on the right. And when they would both go out they would both report different things about him. And they would both start quarrelling and saying, "You are wrong. That man was very sad; I have even seen a tear drop from his eye."

And the other would contradict. He would say, "You must have gone mad, because I have seen his eyes so sparkling with happiness." Only later on, people became aware that he was playing games.

A mystic has transcended. He has become the master through his transcendence. A madman has fallen below. But both have one thing in common -- the madman has something of the mystic, and the mystic has something of the madman. So sometimes in the West, mystics have been forced to live in madhouses; and sometimes in the East, madmen have been worshipped as mystics.

The boundaries are a little blurred. But don't be afraid. The fear comes because you see something like madness inside; you become afraid. Don't be afraid -- otherwise what am I here for? Don't be afraid. Whenever something like this happens and you get scared, remember me, and go on and on. Never escape from the innermost core; because if you once escape from it, that will become a block. Then again and again you will go to the same point, and the fear will grip you and you will fall back.

Don't create such blocks. Go on and on. That is the meaning of sannyas: so you can trust me when the need arises. When you feel too much alone, and when you feel paradoxical things happening in you -- where life looks like death and you are scared -- you can lean on my shoulder, you can remember me. You can gather courage and you can go on. Once you go on, you know that it was nothing. That phase has passed; but that you will know only when you have gone on and on and on.

Spiritual growth has many hazards, many danger points. If you escape from those points once, you become afraid forever. So trust me, and trust yourself, and go on. There is nothing to fear, because the closer you are coming to yourself, the closer you are coming to real sanity. The further away you are from your centre, the further away you are from sanity. The world may call you sane, but you know that you are not.

Come Follow to You, Vol-3
# 6