"But when you are near me – then I am not talking about surrender at all – just your nearness, my presence and your presence, falling in a synchronicity….

"There are two light bulbs here – separate, individual – but their light is meeting everywhere in the room; their light is filling the room as one. Presence is something like that. It is not material; if it was material there would be conflict. The lights of these two bulbs have not drawn a line between them: 'Up to here is my territory and don't dare to interfere with my territory.' They don't have a territory. You can have hundreds of lights and there will be no conflict, no quarrel, because light is a quality. There is no conflict.

"Anything material occupies a certain space; then nothing else can occupy the same space. If this chair is here, then no other chair can occupy the same space. But about light it is different – the space is the same. And there can be a hundred candles occupying the same space – not the candles, but the light; not your body but your presence.

"I am not talking about surrender, but you are experiencing it. It is no longer a destruction of your self-respect, no longer destructive of your individuality. It has nothing to do with obedience; it has nothing to do with any submission.

"The word surrender comes from the vocabulary associated with war. When two countries are fighting, the country which is losing finally has to surrender. It is not a beautiful word. Its associations are ugly. One becomes victorious, another is defeated and erased.

"Alexander the Great conquered the frontier land of India. The man who was fighting him was a man of immense insight and immense power – not physical. Alexander had a bigger army and more developed techniques of destruction.

"Poras – that was the name of the man who ruled on the boundary lines of India – he was really a brave man. His very name 'Poras' means a real man, an authentic man. And Alexander, for the first time, was afraid; although he had more armies…but he did not have that spiritual quality that Poras had, that meditativeness, that presence."