Third Possibility

When you are not happy, you will be unhappy. You don’t know that there is a third possibility also. That third possibility opens only when negative has been dropped and then you drop the positive. For a moment there will be a halt. Energy cannot move anywhere, not knowing where to move. The negative door is closed, the positive has been closed. You will be for a moment… and that moment will look like eternity. It will look very, very long – non-ending.

For a moment you will be just in the middle, not knowing what to do, where to go. This moment will look like madness. You are neither positive nor negative, then who you are? What is your identity?

Your identity, name and form drop with the positive and negative. Suddenly you are nobody that you can recognize – just an energy phenomenon. And you cannot say how you are feeling. There is no feeling. If you can tolerate it, bear this moment, this is the greatest sacrifice, the greatest tapascharya, and the whole yoga prepares you for this moment. Otherwise the tendency will be to go somewhere, but don’t remain in this vacuum. Be positive, be negative, but don’t remain in this vacuum. You are nothing, as if you are disappearing. An abyss has opened, and you are falling into it.

At this moment a Master is needed who can say “Wait! Don’t be afraid; I am here.” This is just a lie, but you need it. Nobody is there. Not even a Master can be there because the Master also ends when your mind ends. Now you are absolutely alone, but to be alone is so fearsome, so scary, so deathlike, that somebody is needed to give you courage. Because it is only a one moment’s question and the lie helps.

And I tell you, all the Buddhas have been liars just because of compassion towards you. The Master says, “I am here. You don’t worry; you go ahead.” You gain confidence, you take the jump. Just a moment’s question, and everything hangs there. The whole existence hangs there; the crossing point, the boiling point. If you take the step, you are lost to the mind forever. There will be no positive, no negative again.

You can be scared. You can again go back and enter into the negative or in the positive which is cozy, comfortable, familiar. You were entering into the unknown: this is the problem. First, the problem is how to drop the negative – a ripe understanding is needed – and which is the easiest, and you have not done even that.

Then the problem is how to drop the positive which is so beautiful and gives you such happiness. But if you drop the negative, if you become that much ripe, you will have a second understanding, a second transformation, in which you will be able to see that if you don’t drop the positive, the negative will come back.

Then the positive loses its all positivity. It was positive only in comparison to the negative. Once the negative is thrown, even the positive becomes negative because now you can see all this happiness is momentary. And when this moment is lost, where will you be? The negative will enter again.

Before the negative enters, drop it. Hell always comes through heaven. Heaven is just the gate; hell is the real place. Through heaven and the promise of heaven you enter hell. Hell is the real place; heaven is just the gate. Sooner or later – how can you remain at the gate forever? – You have to enter. Where will you go from the positive?

Once negative is dropped, you can see that positive is just the other aspect of it – not really contrary, not opposite, but a conspiracy. They are both in conspiracy; they are together. When this understanding arises, the positive has become the negative, you can drop it.

In fact, to say you can drop it is not good. It also drops. It has also become negative. Then you know that in this life there is nothing like happiness. Happiness is a trick of unhappiness to come in too. It is just like the egg and the hen relationship. What is a hen? It is the way of the egg to come back. And what is an egg? It is a way of the hen to come back.

Positive and negative are not real opposites. They are like hen and egg, mother and child. They help each other and come from each other. But this understanding is possible only when negative has been dropped. Then you can drop the positive also. And then you can stay in that transitory moment, which is the greatest moment in existence. You will never feel another moment so long – as if years are passing, because the vacuum… You lose all bearing; the whole past is lost, suddenly empty, not knowing where you are, who you are, what is happening.

This is the moment of madness. If you try to return from this moment, you will remain always mad. Many people go mad through meditation. From this moment they fall back, and now there is nothing to fall back to because the positive/negative has been dropped. They no longer exist; the house is no more there. Once you leave the house it disappears. It depends on you; it is not a separate entity.

Mind is not a separate entity. It depends on you. Once you leave it, it is no more there. You cannot come back, fall back to it. That is the state of madness. You have not attained to the transcendence, and you come back and you look for the mind – it is no more there; the house has disappeared.

To be in this state is very, very painful. The real anguish for the first time happens. Hence, the Master – the need of the Master, who will not allow you to come back, who will force you to go ahead, because once you turn back it will take much effort to bring you again to that point. Maybe for many lives you may miss it because now there is no mind to understand even.

In Sufism this state is called the state of a mast – the state of a madman. This state is really difficult to understand because the man is and is not – both. He laughs and weeps together; he has lost all orientations. He does not know what is weeping and what is laughing. Is there any contradiction? He beats himself and enjoys, celebrates, beating himself. He does not know what he is doing, whether it is harmful or not harmful. He becomes completely dependent. He becomes like a small child; he has to be taken care of.

Without a Master, if somebody goes into meditation this can be the outcome. With a Master, the Master will be the barrier. He will be just standing behind you and he will not allow you to go back. He will become a rock. And finding no way to go back, you will have to take the jump. Nobody can take it for you. Nobody can be with you at that moment. But once you take this jump you have transcended all dualities. Negative, positive, both gone – and this is enlightenment.

I talk about the positive so that you can drop the negative. Once you drop the negative you are trapped. Then the positive has to be dropped. Each step leads to another in such a way that if you take the first step the second is bound to come. It is a chain. In fact, only the first has to be taken. Then all else follows. The first is the last, if you understand. The beginning is the end; the alpha is the omega.