And if the relationship between me and you is that of love, it does not matter whether I am appreciating Krishna or criticizing Krishna. What matters is that I am appreciating, I am criticizing. Nobody has appreciated Krishna the way I have appreciated, and nobody has criticized him either, the way I have criticized – because I am not looking only at one aspect. My effort is to give you life’s contradictions and make you aware that life is not a non-contradictory, consistent phenomenon. It is basically contradictory.

Wherever there is a height like Krishna, there are bound to be on both sides deep dark valleys. And it will be unjust and unfair only to talk about the heights, or only to talk about the valleys. Both these things have been done. Those who are enemies talk only about the valleys: Jainas have criticized Krishna and thrown him into the seventh hell. They have only looked at the valley part, the dark part; they have never looked at the sunlit peaks. And there are people – Shankaracharya Ramanujacharya, Nimbarka, and thousands of others who are followers of Krishna – who have only looked at the sunlit peaks, the heights. They have never bothered to see that the peak cannot exist without the valleys.

My whole approach is totally different from anybody else’s: I want to present Krishna, or Christ, or Mahavira, or Buddha, in their totality. I am neither their friend nor their enemy – I am just trying to make you understand that even the greatest amongst you have their darker parts.

So if you find a dark part within yourself, don’t condemn it. And even the people who had such dark valleys around them managed to reach to the highest peak of consciousness. So if you are surrounded by darkness, don’t be worried: the dawn is not far away. It is just in the womb of darkness that the dawn grows. And as the darkness becomes darker, the morning comes closer.

I am not concerned with Krishna, not concerned with Christ, I am concerned with you. And these are just my excuses to give you a deep understanding that life is a harmony between contradictions – that the lowest is not separate from the highest, that the saint is not separate from the sinner. That’s why I had to do both things: to appreciate and to criticize.

Whenever I was appreciating something that satisfied your ego, you felt you were melting with me, that you were in tune with me. And whenever I said something that went against your conditioning, immediately you were overwhelmed by doubt – “in spite of yourself.” What do you mean by it? Were you fighting with the doubt?

When you say, “At times I am overpowered by that…something that has remained unmelted, despite myself,” are you separate from it? You are it. You are your doubt, and you are your trust; you are your love, and you are your logic.