The flower opens by itself. The only soil needed is authentic, real spontaneous silence. With a cultivated silence, the flower will never open. With a cultivated silence, you will simply become dull. Your being will be less alive, that’s all. With less life you will be in less trouble. That’s okay, but remember: that trouble is a training. You should not try to have fewer troubles. Be with your troubles, be in your troubles and move through them. Don’t leave them, don’t escape from them. A moment will come when you have gone beyond them, but that moment always comes from passing through them. Pass through the storm and allow a real silence to come. Then your being will flower, not till then.

It shall grow, it will shoot up, it will make branches and leaves and form buds, while the storm continues, while the battle lasts. But not till the whole personality of the man is dissolved and melted…not until the whole nature has yielded and has become subject unto its higher self can the bloom open.

Don’t think that the storm is your enemy. It is not. That storm is your greatest friend, because without it – no silence; without it – no flowering; without it – no liberation. So never think in terms of enmity. Nothing is an enemy to you: the whole of existence is friendly. Even that which appears to be against you, even that is not your enemy. Jesus says: “Love your enemies.” These arethe real enemies that you have to love – not your neighbor nor the enemy of your country, they are not your real enemies. These are your real enemies: the storm, evil, the world, sexuality, anger, passion, hatred. These are the real enemies.

Jesus says: “Love thy enemies as thyself.” Why? Christianity could never understand it. Jesus’ teaching has been completely lost; whatsoever exists in the name of Christianity doesn’t belong to Jesus Christ. It belongs to St. Paul. He is the real founder of the so-called Christianity that exists on earth.

Jesus is very esoteric. When he says “Love thy enemies as thyself,” he means that you will pass through the polar opposite, through the enemy. Experience it in its totality so that you can transcend it. Any experience that is total becomes transcendental. Any experience, I say. Experience with your totality and you have gone beyond it. It will never cling to you; you have moved away, above it. You have passed through it, you have learned everything about it.

Knowing is revolutionary. It creates a mutation, it transforms you.

While the storm lasts… Don’t think that the storm is your enemy, because meanwhile, underground, hidden in darkness, the flower will grow.

…it will shoot up, it will make branches and leaves and form buds, while the storm continues, while the battle lasts. But not till the whole personality of the man is dissolved and melted…not until the whole nature has yielded and become subject unto its higher self, can the bloom open.

When the storm has gone, the bloom will open. But it was getting ready while the storm was there. Through the storm, it was getting ready to bloom. It was gathering energy, life, vitality. It was getting ready to burst forth. The storm is the soil, without it the flower cannot bloom.