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‌CHAPTER 1

1 May 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Khabira. It is a sufi name, a name of God. Literally it means: one who sees all, the cognizant one, the seer of all. And that is hidden in everybody – the witness. What we see may be true, may not be true, but the seer is always true. The seen may be, may not be. In the night you see a dream, in the morning you find it was not true, but the one who saw the dream is still true. In the morning, in the night, all the time he is true. You see a rope and you think, in the darkness of the evening, that it is a snake. But when you come close you know that it is false, it is not so. But the seer was not false. Even in seeing something hallucinatory, the seer remains true; the seer is never false.

‘Khabira’ means: the one who sees, the witness inside. Sufis have beautiful names for God; in all they have ninety-nine names for God. One wonders why not one hundred? It looks so incomplete. For a certain, subtle reason, the hundredth name has been kept silent. That is the true name of God which cannot be uttered. The tao that can be uttered is not the true tao and the God that can be spoken of is not the true God, because the word ‘God’ falsifies the reality of God. So the hundredth name is the true name – what Hindus call ‘satnam’, the true name – but it can’t be uttered. It will lose its beauty if it is uttered. It remains unuttered, at the deepest core of the heart. But ninety- nine names can be uttered just as a help to reach the hundredth. The hundredth name is almost a nothingness – what buddhas have called ‘nirvana’, nothingness.

So I call these the ninety-nine names of nothingness; one of them is ‘khabira’. Get into the idea of it and become more and more of a seer. Change the gestalt from the seen to the seer. Looking at the tree, remember the one who is looking; eating, remember the one who is eating; walking, remember the one who is walking. Rather than emphasising the outer, emphasise the inner, and slowly slowly it becomes clear who this seen is. That is our true reality and that is what God is.

Latifa. That too is a sufi name for God. It means: the subtle one. The gross one is visible, the subtle one is invisible. The gross is the outside, the subtle is the inside. The gross is objective, the subtle

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is subjective. And people go on searching for God in the gross. They say ‘We would like to see God.’ But only the gross can be seen; the subtle has to be felt. The gross can be seen with the eyes open, the subtle has to be seen with eyes closed. The gross is not there as an object. You cannot encounter it. God is inside you, as you. You cannot stand outside God and see Him; you can see Him only from the inside by being Him.

And these are the two ways to approach reality...

One way is that of science – the gross, the objective. The other way is of religion – the subtle, the subjective. If you see a flower,.you can look at it scientifically. You look at the chemistry of it, at the form of it and the substance that makes it. You dissect it and you come to know about the components of it. But something is missed in that very analysis. The beauty is missed, because beauty is not a component of the gross. And if you ask the scientist ‘Where is the beauty that was in the flower?’ he will say ‘That was not there, it was illusory. I have dissected it all and all, and these are the things that I have found. These chemicals were there, this matter was there, these atoms, these molecules were there. But there was no beauty. And this is all, this is the totality...’ But you know and the scientist knows in his own poetic moments, that there was beauty. When he gives the flower to his wife, he is not giving her something chemical. He is giving to her something aesthetic, something beautiful. But when he is a scientist, he denies it.

That beauty can be known only through a totally different way: not by looking there outside but by realising it inside. The real poet will go to the flower and slowly slowly will close his eyes and will start seeing it inside himself. He will become the flower; that is his way of knowing. And that is the way of love also. You can see a man from the outside, you can observe the measurement and the height and the weight and everything – the qualification and the country that he belongs to – but still you are missing. But if you fall in love with the man, then you will know something.

That is really the spirit of the man, the beauty of the man. But in love you will have to become one with the man.

‘Latifa’ means the subtle one. God is the subtle one. Don’t look for Him in gross ways. One has to develop indirect ways, aesthetic ways, poetic, loving ways. One has to learn how to trust, one has to learn how to dissolve, how to become one with things. Then one day, the benediction. Suddenly from nowhere God arises... not as a person standing outside, but as you, as a presence, there inside you at the very core of your being. God comes not as the circumference but as the

Jalal... another name for God. It means: the majestic one. All that is beautiful in existence, all that has splendour and majesty, is part of God. Whenever you see beauty it is divine. Wherever you see it, bow down to it. It is the manifestation of God. It may be in a flower, it may be in a human face, it may be in a star or anywhere, but wherever you feel the awe and the presence of the majestic, bow down! Make it a point, make it your meditation. And you will be surprised: the more you recognise beauty, the closer you start coming to God, the more you can see splendour hidden everywhere. And it is everywhere. In the stone it is lying there – one just needs to discover it. In the ugliest rock there is a splendour – the eyes are just needed to find it.

If one starts looking for it, one comes across it more and more. The ugly slowly slowly disappears, because nothing really can be ugly. Because all is God – how can there be ugliness ? The ugliness

exists because we have not understood. It is a misunderstanding, a misinterpretation; it needs more sympathy so that it can open its heart. See it in the lightning, in the clouds, in the rain, in the sounds, in the silence. Just be in search of the majestic and then you will not need to go to any church, to any temple, to any mosque, because then the whole existence becomes His temple. It is!

Rahima. It means mercy, kindness, compassion. It is a name of God. It means the compassionate one, the merciful one. And get in tune with the feeling of mercy. That will become the door to God for you. Everybody has to find his own door. Different people go through different doors. They arrive at the same goal, they reach the same reality, the same nothingness or the same God, but the approaches are different because personalities are different, types are different.

So mercy is going to be the key word for you. Feel more and more compassion. Flow into compassion... for no reason at all, because compassion can’t have any reason, it is its own joy. If you do it for some reason it is no more compassion. It has to be spontaneous, on the spot, with no idea, with no motive. Then it brings great joy.

[A sannyasin, leaving, says that if everything goes well, he will be back by fall.]

By fall ? Everything will go well – cross out that ‘if’! Never get hooked by ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’. Make life simple, and without ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ life is very simple. ‘Ifs’ and ‘buts’ create great complexity. Because we create our life through our thinking: if you say ‘if’ then there will be an ‘if’; you are projecting it. Don’t project hesitations. Just say ‘Everything will be well and I will be here by fall’... and everything will be well; there is no problem in it.

Man creates his own world by thinking about it continuously.

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