The explosion is something which cannot be understood by the mind. Really, in the explosion the mind explodes. The mind is thrown out completely. The mind is no more. So the second thing to be understood is: you will not be able to understand the explosion. All that you understand will not be the explosion – because you will change it into something old, which is known. You may think it like any other explosion. No explosion is similar to the spiritual explosion – no material explosion. If a bomb explodes everything is disturbed. The old order is gone and there is chaos. But this chaos is caused by the old: it is a continuity. Nothing new has come into being.

This whole chaos, this whole disorder, is just a continuity with the old order. Nothing new has come into being: it is the old in a disordered way. No material explosion can even be symbolic – can be used metaphorically – for the spiritual explosion. The word comes from material happenings, and has a connotation that is quite misleading. “Spiritual explosion” does not mean that the old is disordered, that the old has become chaotic, that the old is destroyed. No, “spiritual explosion” means something new is created, something new has come into being.

A material explosion is destructive. The spiritual explosion is creative. But if we try to understand it by analogy, then we will never be able to understand. Something new – something quite new – comes into being. You cannot give it birth because you are the old. You cannot create it. You have just to vacate. You can only help it negatively – by your absence, by your not being. If you are absent then the explosion will take place. Your cooperation is needed only in a negative way. But to do something positively is easy – to do something negatively is very arduous.

To cooperate is easy. Not to cooperate is easy. But to cooperate negatively is very difficult. What is meant by cooperating negatively? – it means to not create hindrances. And we all go on creating hindrances for the new to come into being. We always emphasize the old. We always stick with the old. We are identified with the old. The old image is what is meant by “we.” Whenever we use “we,” whenever I say “I,” it is the total past. So how can “I” help the new? How can “I” help the future – “I” being the past? Whenever you say “I” it is the whole past in a single word. All that is dead now, all that must be buried now, stands behind this “I.” So this “I” will be the hindrance – the only obstacle, the only obstruction – for the new to come in.

So you cannot do anything positively with this old “I”– but negatively you can do something. That is, if you understand this: that you are the old. And if this understanding goes deep, penetrates you to your uttermost depth, if you become completely aware that you cannot help the new to come into being…. And unless the new comes in, there is no spirituality. Unless the new explodes you will not be reborn, you will not be in the dimension of the divine.

If this understanding goes deep in you, if you become aware of this phenomenon: that I am the only hindrance…. It is not that I am to be freed, rather, it is that I am to be freed from myself. It is not that I am to do something, rather, I must not do anything, so that the phenomenon can happen. But we continue to do something, something or other. We go on doing something. It comes out of me. It prolongs; it continues me. It projects me into the future. Then there can be no explosion.