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The bridge is possible, and the bridge is possible only because they are diametrically opposite. The gap exists, so the gap can be bridged.

Opposites can meet, and they can meet only because they are opposites. Opposites attract each other. That’s how the whole life moves, has dynamism. It is dialectical. It is through polar opposites: man/woman, yin/yang, matter/mind, the earth and the sky, this and that. There is a constant bridging, but the bridging is possible only because they are opposites. If they are not opposites there is no need for any bridge.

So the first thing to be understood: science and religion are diametrically opposite, but to bridge them is possible. That bridge will not make them the same. In fact, that bridge will make their diametrical opposition louder, clearer. Religion can have a scientific flavor, it can be systematic, but it never becomes science, it remains mysticism. It takes the garb of a science, the methodology, the terminology of a science, but it remains mysticism, it remains poetry.

You can translate poetry into prose; the prose can be translated into poetry. Just by translating prose into poetry you will not make it poetry, it will remain prose. And just by translating poetry into prose, it will not become prose, it will remain poetry. Buddha speaks in prose, but what he speaks is poetic. I am not a poet. I speak prose, but what I speak is poetic, its soul is poetic. And it remains poetic.

Religion can use scientific systematization – that’s what Tantra and Yoga have done. Science can also use mysticism as a method to inquire into reality, and all the great scientists have used it. But still it remains science; its basic trust is in reason. Religion’s basic trust is not in reason. On the periphery, religion can become scientific, but at the core it remains irrational. And science, on the periphery, can become very, very poetic, but at the core it remains rational.

Albert Einstein, or other great scientists, great explorers, are very much like mystics. Their search into reality is almost the same as the search of William Blake into reality. Einstein’s eyes are full of mysticism, but deep down his trust is in reason. Even if he stumbles upon something through his poetic feelings, through his intuition, he will immediately translate it into reason. He will trust it only when it becomes rational. And just the opposite is the case with a mystic: even if he comes to know something about reality which is very rational, he will transform it into the irrational; he will turn and change it into poetry.

They are opposites, but they can be bridged, and they are always bridged wherever you can find a contradictory person. But then that man is going to be contradictory: he will speak two languages together and he will speak in contradictions, in paradoxes. All the great scientists are paradoxical, and all the great mystics also. A master, whether of science or of religion, is bound to be paradoxical. He cannot be one-dimensional, he has to be in tune with both the realities – but then he becomes very, very difficult to understand.

That is your problem with me: I talk about the irrational, but I talk rationally about the irrational. I am all for the illogical, but my approach? – I slowly, slowly persuade you toward the illogical through logic. I argue for it. My argument for the illogical is bound to be logical, because no argument can be illogical in itself, it has to be logical.

The other day I mentioned that in old scriptures it has been said that each temple should have at least one maithun figure on the threshold of the temple, at least one. If it can have many, good. A master is a threshold, a door, an opening. His feet are rooted in the earth and his hands are reaching toward the sky: the master is the bridge between the rational and the irrational. The master is the bridge between religion and science, between love and logic. A master is a threshold; hence he can convince you, he can use all logical argumentation, and yet his goal remains illogical. Once you are convinced, he throws you into the mysterious. It is a quantum leap.

I would like to say something more about that ancient tradition. Mediaeval architects’ manuals, all the manuals in India, make it a rule that all temples must bear maithun sculptures on their doorways. Maithun is a Sanskrit word – very pregnant. It does not mean ordinary intercourse, it does not mean an ordinary couple in love, it means unio mystica, it means two persons so deeply dissolved into each other that they are no longer two. It is not just a couple making love; it is love, and the couple has disappeared into it. It is a state of being lost into each other, of oneness.

Other architects’ manuals say that the temple has to be a meeting of the sky and the earth. The earth is visible, logical, material. The sky is vague, nebulous, undefined. The temple has to be a place where the defined meets the undefined. The temple has to be a place where the known meets with the unknown.

Man is logic; man represents logic, mathematics, systematization, science. Woman is illogic, intuition, feeling, emotion, poetry – vague, undefined and indefinable. The maithun figure represents this meeting of logic and illogic, of mind and heart, of body and soul, of all the pairs of opposites of yin and yang. And when yin and yang meet and merge and become one, a temple is created. Love is the temple. Orgasm – that state of orgasmic flow where you don’t know who you are, man or woman, where you don’t know any identity, all identity is lost, when you are in an utter state of forgetfulness and remembrance, forgetfulness of all that you had known about yourself and remembrance of all that you really are, forgetfulness as an ego and remembrance as a whole – that is the meaning of maithun.

Maithun means lovers in a deep state of oneness, in a state of inner marriage, not just the outer marriage. You will be surprised to know that only man can come to that inner marriage, animals can’t. Have you ever seen animals making love? You will never find any ecstasy on their faces, in their eyes, never. Lovemaking is done as a matter of fact, as a biological phenomenon. They do it almost as a drag.

Biologists, physiologists, have agreed upon the fact that the female, except in human beings, has not known orgasm at all; no animal female knows orgasm. It is man’s privilege to know orgasm. Orgasm means the inner marriage, even in man. Ninety percent of women in the past have not known orgasm: that means they never knew anything about the inner marriage. Their love remained biological. They were used by nature to reproduce, but there was no meditativeness in it.

My own observation is this: because of this phenomenon, all the old religions were against sex because sex represented the animal. But they were not aware that man can transcend sex, and the transcendence can happen only through sex –that man can attain to something inner through the outer. That which is not possible for animals is possible for man. Man can move in an orgasmic state, in an ecstasy where sex becomes irrelevant, is left behind. Bodies become irrelevant, minds become irrelevant. One plunges into the very depth of being – for a single moment, of course, but God becomes available.

Maithun means: love so deep, so tremendously deep, that a glimpse of God becomes available. Maithun means a couple which is no longer a couple, a state of being: a couple from the outside, but from the inside there is only one – it exists all alone. For a moment the duality is surpassed, for a moment the harmony attained, the accord has happened; hence orgasm is so relaxing. And Wilhelm Reich is right: if man can become capable of orgasmic joy, then madness, all kinds of neurosis, psychosis, will disappear from the earth. That is the experience of Tantra, too. But to put a maithun figure on the threshold of a temple took great courage. The very step was of deep revolution. Those people must have been courageous; they declared something by it. They were saying: It is only through love that the polar opposites can be bridged.

A master is love. A master is in a state of orgasm – continuously. He is oneness. His duality is gone: he knows that only one exists. In that state, opposites can be bridged. The couple entwined in deep love stands there on the threshold of the temple in a great ecstasy of oneness – lost, merged, one with something deeper and higher than both.

You have to fall in love with a master. The master is a threshold to God. You have to learn how to merge with the master, how to become one with the master. Only through that will you know the bridging.

They stand there possessed by the God called Love. And that’s exactly the relationship between a disciple and a master: possessed by deep, immense love. It is non-sexual, it is non-physical – but it is the same that is attained by two lovers. It is the same, the peak is the same. Two lovers move through physiology, through biology; they go through a long way to reach the peak. A disciple and a master reach to that peak immediately. They don’t go round and about; they don’t pass through the body or the mind. That is the meaning of surrender, or shraddha, or trust. Their love opens the doors of a new perception, a new way of looking at reality. That new way of looking at reality bridges the polar opposites. They are passing from the ordinary to the extraordinary, from prose to poetry, from logic to love, from separation to unity, from the ego to the state of egolessness.

Have you not seen it happen? Deep in love, the ego disappears, you cannot find it. Hence I insist: while making love, remember always to look within at least once when you are reaching to the peak. Look in: is there any ego? And that experience can become a satori. Ordinarily you don’t look within. You become so engrossed with the fun of love, with the joy of love, that you forget meditation. If you can remember in that moment when you are dissolving, if you can remember to have a look within, you will never be the same man again. Coming out of love, you will emerge a totally new man. A new being is born. You will have new ways of perception and new ways of seeing reality. Once you have seen that the ego does not exist you cannot gather that ego again. And even if you gather it, you will know it is false, it is pseudo. Now that understanding has penetrated deep into you.

Lovers move from time to timelessness. Observe: when the peak happens, time disappears. For one moment, time stops, the whole world stops, all movement stops. That stopping of all movement and time is what we mean by peak, the climax, the orgasm. Time can stop with a master too. And it stops! – it stops every day here for many people. For moments, you are just in tune with me. You are no longer there, I am no more here. We have both disappeared. Something exists which is beyond both. You have entered the temple; you have bridged the polar opposite.

Reality cannot really be divided; it cannot be divided into logic and love, into time and eternity, into body and soul, into God and matter – it cannot be divided. Although the polar opposites exist, they are not enemies, they are complementaries. They support each other: without the one, the other will not be possible. Can you think of poetry if there is no logic left? Or can you think of logic if no love is left? They look opposite, yet deep down somewhere they support, they feed each other, they strengthen each other.

So, bridging is possible, but it always happens through love. It always happens through a threshold. I call the master the threshold.

In a moment of love or trust, you are just here and now – the eternal now, the absolute here. You are on the doorway. Remember, doorways are openings. Porphyrus (*) wrote: “A threshold is a sacred thing.” A threshold is that which joins the opposites. What is a temple really? – a threshold. It joins the world with the beyond; it joins the marketplace with meditation. That’s why the temple exists in the marketplace; it has to exist there.

(*) a prominent philosopher of late antiquity

That’s why I insist: Don’t renounce the world. Be there! And remaining there, search for the other and you will find it. It is hidden somewhere there in the marketplace. If you listen attentively to the market noise, you will be surprised. There is hidden music in it, great music in it. Just drop liking and disliking. Listen attentively, be in rapport with it. And everywhere in the known you will find the unknown, in the visible the invisible.

Porphyrus is right when he says a threshold is a sacred thing. A threshold is the boundary between this and that, between two worlds: ordinary, profane space and the sacred world beyond. The threshold is the point where we pass from one mode of being to another, from one level of consciousness to another, from one reality to another kind of reality, from one life to another kind of life. To enter into a temple is symbolic of entering into one’s own depths, or heights.

Existentially they mean the same thing. You can call it depth or you can call it height – they mean the same thing. It is the vertical dimension. There are two dimensions: the horizontal and the vertical. The threshold joins these two dimensions. The ordinary profane life is horizontal; the religious life is vertical. Let me remind you about the Christian cross: it is simply a representation of these two dimensions, the horizontal and the vertical. The cross is a beautiful symbol; the cross is a threshold. The cross is a bridge where the horizontal and the vertical meet, where the ordinary and the extraordinary meet.

And obviously, the most natural metaphor for opening and opener can only be the state of lovemaking. Another ancient text says: “Where cows have sported with bulls, accompanied by their young ones, or where beautiful women have dallied with their lovers, that place is an appropriate place for a temple.” A strange statement. Listen again. You will be shocked, particularly Hindus and Christians and Buddhists will be shocked. But this comes from an old Eastern text. It says: “Where cows have sported with bulls, accompanied by their young ones, or where beautiful women have dallied with their lovers, that place is an appropriate site for a temple.” Strange, but tremendously significant. That’s how it should be. A temple has to be a meeting, a bridging.

You ask: [“You said yesterday that science and religion are diametrically opposite.”]

Yes, they are diametrically opposite, hence they are attracted toward each other as man and woman. They can fall in love. They are complementaries too. All opposites are complementaries too.

[“In the West there are many schools teaching scientific mysticism, and the paths of Tantra and Yoga are also very systematic.”]

True. There is a way to teach scientific mysticism, but mysticism is always going beyond science. That’s what I am doing here! I am teaching you logical illogicalness, scientific mysticism, worldly religiousness.

Remember, whenever there is really something happening, there will be the paradox, because the bridge will be needed. But still, mysticism is mysticism. Science can be used as a device, but mysticism never becomes scientific. The ultimate flight remains unscientific, transcendental. And Tantra and Yoga are very systematic – but just on the way they are systematic. Once you have followed them long enough, they push you into the chaos, they push you into the chaos of existence where all systems have to be abandoned – because all systems are tiny, because all systems are small prisons made by the mind.

A prison is very systematic. Have you not seen it? Have you ever gone to a prison? Just go to see, it’s the most systematic thing in the world. Your house is not as systematic as the prison; everything is systematic, everything follows certain rules, and absolutely. People get up early in the morning at exactly a certain hour, they take their breakfasts, they take their baths, they move almost like robots. Everything is systematic. In fact, when everything is too systematic you are imprisoned, freedom is crushed. Freedom needs chaos.

A strange thing has been observed by psychologists. The strange thing is that in the army people are taught to be very systematic and their goal is to create war, their goal is to create chaos, their goal is death, to kill and to be killed. Their goal is to destroy; their goal is Hiroshima, Nagasaki. But army people are absolutely systematic. The army lives in order to create disorder. Just see the complementariness: the army lives in order to create disorder.

And have you seen another polarity? Artists create order out of disorder, but they live very sloppy, lazy lives, very disorderly lives. If you see how an artist lives, you will start thinking of committing suicide. Just lousy! No system at all. You can go and see Chaitanya Hari – when he goes to sleep, when he gets up – there is no order. And he creates beautiful music, he creates order. Artists create order; hence they have to complement it by disorder in their lives. And army people create disorder; hence they have to complement it by order in their lives. Things move in balance.

Buddhas talk very logically because their goal is illogic. And you can see modern physicists talking very illogically: the theory of relativity is illogical, the theory of uncertainty is illogical, non-Euclidean geometry is illogical, higher mathematics is illogical. They talk very illogically and they create logic, their goal is logic. They are moving toward order.

You will always find this balance happening. Life cannot be one-sided, otherwise it disappears. It needs day and night, summer and winter, birth and death; it needs love and hate.

So I say that science and religion are diametrically opposite, but I am not saying that bridging is not possible. Bridging always happens, is continually happening. It happens from the side of science and it happens from the side of religion. And when it happens, you have a great master, a Buddha or an Einstein. Whenever it happens you have the super phenomenon.