"But life says quite the contrary. Life says: If there is darkness it is because of light; if there is light it is because of darkness. We may not be able to see the other, but it is hidden just around the corner.

"There is silence because of sound. If there is no sound at all, can you be silent? How can you be silent? The opposite is needed as a background. Those who follow logic always go wrong because their life becomes lopsided. They think of light, then they start denying darkness; they think of life, then they start fighting death.

"That's why there exists no tradition in the world where it is said that God is both light and darkness. There is one tradition which says that God is light, he is not darkness. No darkness exists in God for these people who believe God is light. There is another tradition that says that God is darkness – but for them there is no light. Both are wrong, because both are logical, they deny the opposite. And life is so vast, it carries the opposite in itself. It is not denied, it is embraced.

"Once somebody said to Walt Whitman, one of the greatest poets ever born, 'Whitman, you go on contradicting yourself. One day you say one thing, another day you say just the opposite.'

"Walt Whitman laughed and said, 'I am vast. I contain all the contradictions.'

"Only small minds are consistent; the narrower the mind, the more consistent. When the mind is vast, everything is involved – light is there, darkness is there, God is there and the Devil also, in his total glory.

"If you understand this mysterious process of life which moves through the opposites, which is dialectical, in which the opposite helps, gives balance, gives tone, makes the background, then only can you understand Chuang Tzu – because the whole Taoist vision is based on the complementariness of the opposites.

"They use two words, yin and yang. They are opposites, male and female. Just think of a world which is totally male or a world which is totally female. It will be dead. The moment it is born it will be dead."