Will is power, energy. There is no such thing as willpower. Will is power, will is energy. But by will I mean the whole. Those who use the term willpower use it in a psychic sense. They use it to mean the power of concentration. I am not using the term in that sense. To me, will means the whole.

So only the whole is will. We are never will; we are just desires. Will is power, without desire. It is power with no movement or power with an inner movement. It is power without direction: directionless, dimensionless.

When we say, “God is power,” it does not mean that God is powerful. It means godpower – “God” is the energy of the whole, the power of the whole. So when I say willpower, it does not mean that will has power. Will is power; it is energy. You can only attain it when you have lost yourself.

While you are there, desire will be there. Your power will come from your desires. It will be created by concentration, by narrowing, by exclusion. Then you will have moments of powerlessness also. Your potency will exist in opposition to impotency, so it will come and go.

But when will comes, nothing goes. Everything is. Even passivity is powerful, even impotence becomes potency. That is why the word tao is better then the word will and better than the word dharma. Tao is both death and life, both darkness and light, both potency and impotency. Only then does power become absolute.

Willpower, as it is ordinarily used, only means that power that is created by conflict, created by concentration. This is not power. It is just creating a conflict within you, and making one part of your mind in control of the other parts. A subtle energy, a subtle force, is created. You can use it, but then moments of depression, of powerlessness, will follow.

When there is no direction that you have to move toward, when you have no desires, you are power, you are energy, you are life. Then you exist without any shadows, without being followed by the opposite. That is why it is said that the whole is shadowless. It is, but there is nothing opposite to it that casts a shadow on it.