It is like music which has no silence in it, then it is just noise, nauseating; it will make you sick. Great music is a synthesis between sound and silence. And the greater the synthesis, the deeper the music goes. The sound creates silence, and the silence creates receptivity to receive sound, and so on and so forth. Sound creates more love for music, more capacity to become silent.

Listening to great music you will always feel prayerful; something whole integrates in you. You become centered, rooted. The earth and the sky meet, they are no longer separate. The body and the soul meet and merge, they lose their definitions.

And that is the great moment, the moment of the mystic union.

You say, “The other day, soon after I arrived, the battle began between sex and silence.”

This is an ancient battle, and foolish, utterly foolish. Please beware, don’t create any battle between sex and silence. If you create a battle, your sex will be ugly, sick; your silence will be dull and dead. Let sex and silence meet and merge.

In fact, the greatest moments of silence are those which are followed by love, great love, peaks of love. And the peaks of love are always followed by great moments of silence and aloneness. Meditation leads into love, love leads into meditation. They are partners. It is impossible to divide them.

So it is not a question of creating a synthesis – it is impossible to divide them – it is a question of understanding, seeing that they are indivisible.

You say, “…the battle immediately began between sex and silence, relationship and aloneness. I felt at the time that a synthesis was impossible.”

Synthesis is impossible because they are one. You need not synthesize them. Your synthesis will be just hocus-pocus; your synthesis will be basically wrong, because where no synthesis is needed you will be imposing a false synthesis.

The synthesis is already there; it is already the case. They are one: two aspects of the same coin. You need not synthesize them; they have never existed separately. And man has tried, and tried hard, but has always failed.

Religion has not yet become the noosphere of the earth; religion has not yet become a very vital, tidal force in the world. And what is the reason? – this division. Either you have to be worldly or you have to be otherworldly. Choose! And the moment you choose, you miss something. Whichever you choose, you are going to be a loser.

I say don’t choose. I say live both in their togetherness. Of course, it needs art to live both. It is simple to choose and be attached to one. Any idiot can do it – in fact, only idiots do it. A few idiots have chosen to be worldly and a few other idiots have chosen to be otherworldly. The man of intelligence would like both.