Go beyond bondage and freedom
This is a very deep technique, one of the deepest, and only very rare minds have tried it, a very difficult thing – difficult to comprehend, not difficult to experience. But first comprehension is needed. The world and NIRVANA, heaven and hell, bondage and liberation are not two things, they are one. It is difficult because we can only conceive of something easily if it is in terms of polar opposites. So don’t become obsessed with the opposite. ”These words are only for those terrified with the universe.”
Don’t try to go against anything because you will move to something which belongs to it. It looks opposite, but it is not. Don’t move from sex to Brahmacharya, if then your Brahmacharya will be nothing but sexuality. Don’t move from greed to no-greed because that no-greed will again be a subtle greed. That is why if a tradition teaches to be non- greedy, it gives you some profit motive in it.
Bondage binds, and liberation also, Bondage is a slavery, and liberation is also and unless you are freed from both you are not freed. They are not opposite, they are relative. They are just like hot and cold, not opposite. What is hot and what is cold? They are just degrees of the same phenomenon – degrees of temperature – but the phenomenon is the same, and they are relative. So you cannot desire liberation. Desire is bondage, so you cannot desire liberation. When desire ceases, liberation is. What is freedom? You say, ”Not bondage.” And what is bondage? You say, ”Not freedom.” You can define them by each other. Look at a person who is trying to go beyond bondage. He leaves his home, family, riches, society, things of the world, he leaves just to get out of bondage, out of the fetters of the world. Then he creates new fetters for himself. Those fetters are negative.
Whatsoever you see in this universe is a reflection. If it looks like bondage, it means it is your reflection. If it looks like liberation, again it is your reflection. The sun rises, and there are many ponds – dirty and pure, big and small, beautiful and ugly – and one sun reflects in many ponds. One who goes on counting the reflections will think that there are many, many suns. One who looks not into the reflections but to the reality will see one. The world, as you look at it, reflects you.