A man who lives through techniques may think he is using all his energies, but he has not asked for existence’s help. A man who is simply meditating with a technique is a poor man. A Hasid is tremendously rich because he is really using all his energies. A Hasid is open; a technique-oriented mind is a closed mind. It goes on planning everything. If your plans are fulfilled then too you will not be happy, because they are your plans. They are as small as you are. Even if you succeed you will be a failure; even in your success you will have the taste of frustration. Because what will you get? Or, if you fail, you will of course be frustrated. When you fail you are frustrated, but when you succeed then you are frustrated too.

Open yourself to the divine. You live naturally; not trying to improve, not living through ideals, not living through moral disciplines – just living a natural life. Nature should be your only discipline, and whatsoever is natural is good because that’s how existence wills it to be, wants it to be. If you can accept your life with such gratefulness, that this is how existence wants it to be…. If he has given sex to you, he has given sex to you – he knows better. You need not try to enforce any celibacy on yourself. An enforced celibacy is ugly, more ugly than a natural sex. And if you accept natural sex you will find that beyond a certain point natural sex becomes natural celibacy. Then brahmacharya arises. Then you start living in a totally different way.

But it comes floating with the river of life.

Do you see? A river descends from the mountains, moves thousands of miles, then one day disappears into the ocean. If the river were a great thinker, and it started thinking, “This is going downwards. I should not do that. My abode is on the mountains. A river is first just the snow peaks of the Himalayas – there is my abode. And I am falling. This is sin. Falling down in a glacier, moving towards the earth, from the height of the heaven….” If rivers were thinkers they would go crazy, because this is going down, descending into hell. But rivers are not thinkers, they are very fortunate. They accept it. It was existence’s will to be on the hilltop, it is his will now to explore the depths.

And a person who really wants to know the height has also to know the depth, otherwise he will not be able to know. Depth is the other part of the height. The higher the peak of the mountain, the deeper the valley. If you want to know the tree, you have to know the roots also. The tree goes upwards and the roots go downwards. And the tree exists between this: the upward movement and the downward movement. This is the tension that gives life to the tree.

The river moves, trusting, not knowing where she is going – she has never gone before and she has no road map available, no guide to guide. But she goes trusting: if this is how it is happening it must be good. She goes singing and dancing. And then one day every river – whether it runs towards the East or whether it runs towards the West or the South or the North, it makes no difference – every river finally, eventually, reaches the ultimate, disappears into the ocean. In the ocean she has attained the final depth.

Now the journey is complete. She has known the peaks of the Himalayas, now she has known the depth of the ocean. Now the experience is total; now the circle is complete. Now the river can disappear into nirvana; now the river can disappear into moksha. This is what liberation is.