The earth is not against the sky. Observe the trees – the tree can go higher in the sky only if it goes deeper in the earth. So is the rule, so is the law: a man who is deeply rooted in the earth can go deeply in God, not otherwise. A man who can laugh and enjoy and be merry can pray, his roots in the earth will give him enough nourishment to pray. He will be grateful – only then can he pray.

God is significant only when it comes out of your gratefulness. But how can you be grateful if you cannot even laugh? Churches have become graveyards.

So your question is relevant. You may be afraid that if you become enlightened your life will not be so spicy. I promise you, it will be more spicy. Right now you are only dreaming about joys. They are not really there, not really; just in your fantasy they exist.

I promise you real joys, real love, authenticity, and whenever a man is authentic he is not just wise. The just wise are not wise enough. The really wise man – I call him the “other-wise” – the really wise man has always enough courage to befool around a little bit, to fool around. Real wisdom has something of foolishness in it always, and so has the real fool something of wisdom in him. Because the real man is always a meeting of opposites: the meeting of the earth and the sky, the meeting of summer and winter, the meeting of day and night, the meeting of wisdom and foolishness.

Foolishness is also not all wrong. It has something beautiful in it – it has playfulness in it, it has non-seriousness in it, it is non-ambitious, it is innocent. So the really wise man has something of foolishness in him – it is always there, it makes his life spicy. The really silent man has a song to sing, hence Hakuin’s Song of Meditation.

You don’t join meditation and song together in your mind – song of meditation? Song of love is okay, but song of meditation? Solomon’s song is okay, but song of meditation? Meditation seems to be non-singing, meditation seems to be serious, meditation seems to be silent. And song? Song is not silent, song is expressive, jubilant, dancing. But the real meditation has always a song to sing, a dance to dance. It is spicy.

That’s why so many people are puzzled here, particularly religious people, because they are the least religious – they are very much puzzled here. Meditation and dance, sannyas and love, all go together. I am trying to create a meeting of the opposites, and whenever two opposites meet, there is great bliss. When two opposites meet, only then there is bliss. A man meets a woman and there is orgasm and there is joy. Life meets death and there is great ecstasy, if you know how to allow it. The dying moment is the greatest ecstatic moment – if you know how to allow it, if you know how to relax into it, how to surrender to it.

Here, love will meet with renunciation. Here, meditation will meet with prayer. Here, silence and sound will be together.