I am a little homesick. I saw an old friend of mine yesterday, and he brought me all the West, all the remembrances…my patients, my life, my home and so on. Sometimes I am very very happy, and there are magic moments. Sometimes I would like to go, to be independent, to go on my way….

It is natural, and nothing to worry about.

Mind goes on changing from negative to positive, from positive to negative. Those two polarities are as basic to the mind as negative and positive poles to electricity. With one pole, electricity cannot exist – and mind also cannot exist.

In fact deep down, mind is subtle electricity; it is electrical. That’s why the computer can do its work, and sometimes will do it better than the human mind. Mind is just a biocomputer; it has those two polarities and goes on moving.

So the problem is not that sometimes you feel magic moments and sometimes you feel dark moments. The darkness of the dark moments will be proportionate to the magicalness of the magical moments. If you reach to a higher peak in positivity, then the lowest you will touch in your negativity. The higher the reach of the positive, the lower will be the depth of the negative. So the higher you will reach, the deeper abyss you will have to touch.

This has to be understood: if you try not to touch the lower rungs, then higher peaks will disappear. Then you move on plain ground. That’s what many people have managed to do; afraid of the depth, they have missed the peaks. One has to take risks. You have to pay for the peak and the price is to be paid by your depth, your low moments. But it is worth it. Even one moment at the peak, the magic moment, is worth a whole life in the darkest depths. If you can touch heaven for one moment, you can be ready to live for the whole of eternity in hell. And it is always proportionate, half-half, fifty-fifty. But if you become afraid of the lower depths, then by and by, indirectly you will become afraid of the peaks too – because they bring the lower.

Only a rich man knows what poverty is. A poor man cannot know because poverty has to be known in contrast – and he has no contrast, he cannot relate. A beggar does not know what it is to be a beggar. This looks paradoxical. Because he is a beggar, we think he must know what it is to be a beggar, but he does not know at all. Only when an emperor becomes a beggar does he know. A contrast gives you clarity.

Many people, many – almost ninety percent – have decided to live on the plain ground, safe, not taking any risks. They never fall to the depth, they never rise to any heights. Their life is a dull affair, a drab thing, monotonous – with no peaks, no valleys, no nights, no days. They just live in a gray world, without colors; the rainbow doesn’t exist for them. They live a gray life, and by and by they also become gray and mediocre.

Never settle for any mediocrity because that is a sin against life. Never ask that life should be without risk, and never ask for security, because that is asking for death. Live dangerously – because that is the only way to live.