When faced with a conflict of choices between two opposites, choose both; this way, you will become a bi-polar magnet or as the Hindi proverb says, you will end up with a laddoo in both hands. The truth is that there are no conflicting forces in the universe. All is complementary. Quantum physics also proves this: a force is both a photon particle and a light wave; an atomic particle is in two places at the same time.

I often trick my audience. In the middle of a lecture, I ask, ‘What is the time?’ Someone in the gathering tells me the time. I then prompt the same person to ask me what the time is. In answer, I ask, ‘Where?’

Right now, is it night or is it day? The answer is both. Here it is day, in America it is night, and vice versa.

A philosopher [or guru] is a planetary citizen. Such a person cannot be partial to one hemisphere, either of the earth or of the brain. That is how you have it both ways.

As a young seeker, I would go to my master with a question: “Maharajji, should I do such and such thing this way or that way?” He would look at me and reply in a deep voice coming straight from the heart, “Yes!” That was often his only answer.

I had to contemplate deeply and resolve the apparent contradictions by adopting a common path in which the positive elements of both choices would be included. That is how you have it both ways.

Yoga masters—genuine masters, not those declared as masters by PR companies—often present their disciples with contradictory choices in daily, practical life. The disciple has to develop the spiritual skill to resolve apparent contradictions, and reach a samadhana, a resolving or bringing together of apparent conflicting factors and parts, and arriving at a holistic reality.

May your questions not be answered; may they be resolved.

In other words,

Find the positive concealed in the negative.

Free the mind of the habit of being in conflict, by learning to resolve conflicts.

Decondition the mind of its conditioning, so that habit patterns are broken and free it from running in set grooves.

Develop fresh positive insights into relationships, communication and events as well as philosophical realities and truths.

Liberate the mind and consciousness of what Vedanta calls upadhis.

Between two opposites there is always a third option lurking—between the thesis and antithesis, you can find a synthesis.