Sexuality is possible without any understanding, without any meditation. Love is possible only with understanding. Compassion is possible only with understanding and meditation, understanding and awareness.
Love is born in sexuality but sexuality is not love. The lotus is born in the mud, but the lotus is not just mud. And if mud remains mud of course there are bound to be tears on the cheeks.
Love can exist only after meditation, not before it. That is a simple existential law. Before meditation – only lust, only sexuality. Before meditation you are an animal and not really a human being. With meditation a transformation comes: you become human, and out of your humanness, love flows.
If you wait for your natural soul mate to meet with you, it will be just like waiting for lightning with which to read your Bible. And you will not be able to read much either. For a moment it is there, and by the time you have opened the Bible it is gone.
Tantra is the science of transforming ordinary lovers into soul mates. And that is the grandeur of Tantra. It can transform the whole earth; it can transform each couple into soul mates.
The whole play of existence is so beautiful that laughter can be the only response to it. Only laughter can be the real prayer, gratitude.
Death is the most misunderstood phenomenon. People have thought of death as the end of life. That is the first, basic misunderstanding.
There is nothing ugly about death; but man, out of his fear, has made even the word, death ugly and unutterable. People don’t like to talk about it. They won’t even listen to the word death.
Those who have known death from inside lose all fear of death.
If you understand, if you see, if you can feel and experience that you are not separate from existence, that you are one with it, all fear of death disappears because there is nobody to die inside you. In the first place there is nobody at all, existence lives through you.
And remember, that is the criterion. If a person can enjoy and celebrate his death, that shows he has lived rightly; there is no other criterion. Your death will prove how you have lived.
Hence the tension, the anxiety, the anguish of humanity. The more you fight with death, the more anxiety-ridden you will become, you are bound to become. That’s a natural consequence of it.
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.
To me, man means awareness of death. I am not saying become afraid of death; that is not awareness. Just be aware of the fact that death is coming nearer and nearer and you have to be prepared for it...
So the first thing: become aware of death. Think about it, look at it, contemplate it. Do not be afraid, do not escape the fact. It is there and you cannot escape it! It has come into existence with you.
In life you may be poor or rich, but death is the great equalizer. The greatest communism is in death. Howsoever you live, it makes no difference; death happens equally. In life, equality is impossible; in death, inequality is impossible. Become aware of it, contemplate it.
Life is not a tragedy, it is a comedy. To be alive means to have a sense of humor.
You can come to know the truth only when you are in love. But love never argues. There is no argument in love, because there is no aggression.
If you love, love totally; if you hate, hate totally. Don’t be fragmentary; suffer the consequences. Because of consequences you try to deceive.
Surrender is just like love. That’s why I say only lovers can become sannyasins – because they know a little of how to surrender. Love is the first step towards the divine, surrender is the last. And two steps is the whole journey.