Questioner: I’m trying to equate this polarity. We have light and dark. We have hot and cold. Do we have an evil and not evil, if you will, or a good and bad?
Sadhguru: See, good and bad is not in terms of your belief, or your idea. Anything that sustains and enhances life, is what life should be looking for. See, don’t look at yourself as a person. Don’t look at yourself as a man. Don’t look at yourself as an American. Don’t look at yourself from any identity. You just look at yourself as a piece of life, which is the reality, isn’t it? You’re just a piece of life. So what is life looking for? Always seeking how to enhance it, isn’t it?
If somebody, because of his ideas or his nonsense, is going against this basic happening of life, and enhancement of life, we generally term it negative, or maybe we can call it bad, or evil. But it’s just a word. Fundamentally, you’re going against your own life. That is the negativity. So in that context, yes. But not as a morality. Because moralities keep changing from society to society it’s different, from generation to generation it’s different, isn’t it? Isn’t it so?
Questioner: Is there an opposite of love? Is there something opposed to love?
Sadhguru: Generally, we are thinking love, hate are two opposite things. But it is not essentially so. They’re just the flip side of the coin, you know. Two sides of the coin. So you can’t hate somebody, that you have nothing to do with. You’re in love with somebody, and it turns negative for some reason, that’s when real hate, isn’t it? So is hate opposite to love? In a way it is. But fundamentally, it is not. In a basic way it is not, on the surface it is.
Attachment is more against love, than hate
I would say attachment is more against love, than hate. You would always connect love and attachment. Love and attachment have nothing to do with each other. Hate and attachment, more connected. Because if it falls this way, it becomes love, if it falls that way, it becomes hate.
Attachment – see, the moment attachment enters your life, anxiety comes. Once anxiety comes, fear follows. Once fear comes, madness will follow. Now your child went to school, supposed to come back at 5 O’clock. 6, not come back, anxiety. 7, not come back, madness. 8, not come back, gone totally insane, isn’t it? So suddenly you cannot become mad. It is just that it’s always there, it just needs a situation to expose you, that’s all. It needs a little extreme situation to expose you. It’s always there with you.
The moment you enter the attachment, you have entered into madness
The moment you enter the attachment, you have entered into madness. But right now, you are always thinking love and attachment. The nature of love – if you want to use an analogy. Love is like a flower, you know. If you hold it in your hand, you have to walk carefully. You can’t do like this, it’ll just fall apart in your hands. You have to walk carefully with it. But attachment is not like that, it is concretised. It is like a plastic flower. Plastic is never flower. You may make it look like that, you may spray perfumes on it, but it’s not flower. Flower is that which flowers, isn’t it? Plastic is not flower.
So if you keep flowers in your house, you have to watch it ten times a day. It’s a nuisance actually. But it’s life. If you buy plastic flowers, five years guarantee. You don’t have to look at it, it’s always there. If your children are being very naughty, you can pull it out of the ways and whack them with it. Guests are coming, you can put it back. It just serves all purposes, multi-purpose. It’s guaranteed, it’s convenient, it’s cheaper. In every way it makes sense. But it’s not life, that’s the big difference. That is a phenomenal difference, isn’t it? It’s everything, but it’s not life.
Right now that’s what is happening to your logical minds. In the name of your ideas, in the name of your principles, in the name of your moralities, in the name of your belief systems – you have everything, but life is not enhanced. Life is hugely reduced. Everything else is there. What is the point? This whole thing is about life, isn’t it? Yes? This is not about your car. This is not about your bloody bank balance. This is not about your wife, your children, or anything. This is about life, isn’t it? All these damn things you brought into your life to enhance your life, isn’t it so? Yes?
Your relationships, your money, your property, your conveniences, your gadgets – you brought it into your life to enhance your life. They are of no consequence by themselves. So, when you go logically, after sometime you forget that it’s about life. All the other things you will have. You will have all the frills, no skirt! That’s a bad way to dress!
