If you are really vulnerable, nothing is negative for you - because the negative is your interpretation. Nothing is harmful to you - because the harmful is your
interpretation. If you are really open, then nothing can harm you, nothing can be felt as harmful. You feel something is negative and something is harmful because you
resist, because you are against it, because there is no acceptance of it. This has to be deeply understood.
The enemy exists there because you are protecting yourself against him. The enemy is there because you are not open. If you are open, then the whole existence is friendly;
it cannot be otherwise. Really, you will not even feel it as friendly - it is simply friendly. There is no feeling even that it is friendly, because that feeling can exist
only with the contrary feeling of enmity.
Let me put it in this way: if you are vulnerable, it means you are ready to live in insecurity. Deep down it means you are ready even to die. You will not resist, you will
not oppose, you will not stand in the way. If death comes, there will be no resistance. You will simply allow it to happen. You accept existence in its totality. Then how
can you feel it as death?
If you deny, then you can feel it as the enemy. If you don't deny, how can you feel it as the enemy? The enemy is created by your denial. The death cannot harm you,
because the harm is your interpretation. Now no one can harm you; it has become impossible.
This is the secret of Taoist teaching. Lao Tzu's basic teaching is this: if you accept, the whole existence is with you. It cannot be otherwise. If you deny, you create
the enemy. The more you deny, the more you defend, the more you protect, the more enemies are created. The enemies are your creation. They are not there outside; they
exist in your interpretation.
Once you can understand this, then this question can never arise. You cannot say, 'I am meditative, I am vulnerable, open. So now how am I to defend myself against
negative vibrations around me?' Nothing can be negative now. What does the negative mean? The negative means that which you want to deny, that which you don't want to
accept, that which you think is harmful. Then you are not open, then you are not in a meditative state.
This question arises only intellectually, this is not a felt question. You have not tasted meditation, you have not known it. You are simply thinking, and that thinking
is just a supposition. You suppose, 'If I meditate and become open, then I will be in insecurity. The negative vibrations will enter in me and they will be harmful. Then
how am I to defend myself? This is a supposed question. Don't bring supposed questions to me. They are futile, irrelevant.
Meditate, become open, and then you will never bring this question to me, because in the very opening, the negative will have disappeared. Then nothing is negative. And
if you think that something is negative, you cannot become open. The very fear of the negative will create the closure. You will be closed; you cannot open. The very fear
that something can harm you... how can you become vulnerable? That's why I emphasize the fact that unless the fear of death disappears from you, you cannot become vulnerable, you cannot be open. You will remain closed in your own mind, in your own imprisonment.
But you can go on supposing things, and whatsoever you suppose will be wrong, because the mind cannot know anything about meditation, it cannot penetrate that realm. When
it ceases completely, meditation happens. So you cannot suppose anything, you cannot think about it. Either you know it, or you don't know it - you cannot think about
it.
Be open - and in the very opening of yourself, all that is negative in existence disappears. Even death is not negative then. Nothing is negative. Your fear creates the
negativity. Deep down you are afraid; because of that fear you create safety measures. Against those safety measures the enemy exists.
Look at this fact - that you create the enemy. Existence is not inimical to you. How can it be? You belong to it, you are just a part of it, an organic part. How can
existence be inimical to you? You are existence. You are not separate; there is no gap between you and the existence.
Whenever you feel that the negative, the death, the enemy, the hate, is there, and if you are open, unguarded, existence will destroy you, you feel that you have to
defend yourself. And not only defend - because the best way to defend is to be aggressive, to offend. You cannot be simply defensive. When you feel that you have to
defend yourself, you become offensive, because to offend, to be aggressive, is the best way to defend yourself.
The fear creates the enemy, and then the enemy creates defence, and then defence creates offence. You become violent. You are constantly on guard. You are against
everybody. This point has to be understood: that if you are in fear, you are against everybody. Degrees may differ, but then your enemy and your friend are both your
enemy. The friend is a little less, that's all. Then your husband or your wife is also your enemy. You have made an arrangement, that's all. You have become adjusted.
Or it may be that you both have a common and a greater enemy, and against that common and greater enemy you both have become joined, you both have become one party,
but the enmity is there.
If you are closed, the whole existence is inimical to you. Not that it is so. It appears to you that it is inimical. When you are open, the whole existence has become
your friend. Now, when you are closed, even the friend is the enemy. It cannot be otherwise. Deep down you are afraid of your friend also.
Somewhere, Henry Thoreau or someone else has written that he prayed to God, 'I will take care of my enemies, but you take care of me from my friends. I will fight with
my enemies, but protect me from my friends.'
Just on the surface is friendship; deep down is enmity. Your friendship may be just a facade to hide the enemy. If you are closed you can create only the enemy, because
when you are open only then is the friend revealed. When you are open totally to someone, the friendship has happened. It cannot happen in any other way.
How can you love when you are closed? You live in your prison, I live in my prison, and whenever we meet, only the prison walls touch each other and we are hiding behind.
We move in our capsules: the capsules touch each other, the bodies touch each other, but deep down we remain isolated.
Even while making love, when your bodies have entered into each other, you have not entered. Only bodies are meeting; you remain still in your capsule, in your cell. You
are just deceiving yourselves that there is communion. Even in sex, which is the deepest relationship, communion is not. It cannot happen because you are closed. Love has
become an impossibility. And this is the reason - you are afraid.
So don't ask such questions; don't bring false questions. If you have known openness, you cannot feel that something can be harmful to you. Now nothing is harmful. That's
why I say even death is a blessing. Your approach has become different. Now wherever you look, you look with an open heart - that open heartedness changes the quality of
everything. And you cannot feel that something is going to be harmful; you cannot ask how to defend - there is no need. The need arises because you are closed.
But you can go on supposing questions. People come to me and they say, 'Okay, if we have realized God, then what?' They start with the question - if? There are no 'ifs'.
In existence you cannot raise such questions. They are absurd, stupid, because you don't know what you are saying. 'If I have realized God, then what?'
That 'then what?' never arises, because with the realization, you are no more, only the God is. And with the realization, there is no future, only the present is. And
with
the realization, there is no worry, because you have become one with existence. So the question 'then what?' never arises. This question arises because of the mind
which
is in constant worry, constant struggle, constantly thinking for the future.