That’s how even a single man can become so powerful that the whole society, the whole history, cannot push him a single inch. That’s how a Buddha exists and a Jesus exists. You can kill a Jesus but you cannot push him. You can destroy his body, but you cannot push him a single inch. Not that he is adamant or stubborn, no. He is simply centered in his own being. He knows what is good for him, and he knows what is blissful for him. It has already happened; now you cannot allure him towards new goals, no salesmanship can allure him to any other goal. He has found his home. He can listen to you patiently but you cannot move him. He is centered.

This centering is the first thing towards being natural and loose; otherwise if you are natural and loose, anybody will take you anywhere. That’s why children are not allowed to be natural and loose, they are not mature enough to be centered. If they are natural and loose and running all around, their lives will be wasted. Hence, I say, society does a needful work: it protects them. The citadel becomes a cell-like character. They need it; they are very vulnerable, they may be destroyed by anybody. The multitude is there, they will not be able to find their way; they need character armor.

But if that character armor becomes your total life, then you are lost. You should not become the citadel, you should remain the master and you should remain capable of going out of it; otherwise it is not a protection, it becomes a prison. You should be capable of going out of your character. You should be capable of putting aside your principles. You should be capable, if the situation demands, to respond in an absolutely novel way. If this capacity is lost then you become rigid, then you cannot be loose. If this capacity is lost then you become unnatural, then you are not flexible.

Flexibility is youth, rigidness is old age – the more flexible, the more young; more rigid, more old. Death is absolute rigidity. Life is absolute looseness, flexibility.

This you have to remember and then try to understand Tilopa. His final words:

The supreme understanding transcends all this and that.
The supreme action embraces great resourcefulness
without attachment.
The supreme accomplishment is to realize immanence without hope.

Very, very significant words!

The supreme understanding transcends all this and that.

Knowledge is always either of this or of that. Understanding is neither. Knowledge is always of duality: a man is good, he knows what good is; another man is bad, he knows what bad is, but both are fragmentary, half. The good man is not whole because he does not know what bad is; his goodness is poor, it lacks the insight that badness gives. The bad man is also half, his badness is poor; it is not rich because he does not know what goodness is. And life is both together.