Chapter title: None

‌Chapter title: None‌

29 June 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

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Archive code: 8006295 ShortTitle: IMPRIS29 Audio:

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[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

The moment we use the word 'god' we create a fictitious person, who does not exist. Godliness is a truth, god is a fiction, Godliness is a quality, not a person but a presence. You cannot see godliness but you can feel it, you can experience it, you can have a taste of it. It is like fragrance, not like a flower. The flower is visible, the fragrance is invisible. You can possess the flower; you cannot catch hold of the fragrance.

All that you need to experience fragrance is a deep sensitivity. Godliness is the fragrance that surrounds the whole existence. The moment we say god, suddenly it seems god has an address. He must be somewhere: above in the sky, in heaven

-- but somewhere. It is not accidental that the moment people pray they start looking towards the sky, It is an old habit, an old idea, a conditioning that god is

there above the clouds.

Immediately the idea of god as a person is limited, defined. And then people start thinking about his personality: how he looks, what his preferences are, what he likes, what he dislikes, how we can pray to him, what language he understands. Hindus think he understands only Sanskrit, hence they call it the divine language. Jews think he understands only Hebrew. Mohammedans think he understands only Arabic, otherwise why should he have given his most precious treasure to the world in the Arabic language? Why had he chosen Mohammed to be his prophet?

These are natural, logical consequences of thinking of god as a person. One starts thinking of him as a white man or as a black man; and of course there are women liberationists who think he is not a he at all but a she, There is a great controversy: why should go be called a he? It smells of male-chauvinism. He should be called she.

Negroes will think of him as a Negro, Hindus will think of him as a Hindu and the Chinese will create his figure in a Chinese way. The Chinese god cannot have a very thick beard and thick moustache --

impossible: just a few hairs, that will do. And all the countries have the idea of god as an old man for the simple reason that for millions of years we have thought that old people are wise. God has to be old to be wise. All this nonsense comes with one idea: that god is a person. Once that idea is dropped, this whole rubbish disappears.

Godliness is my emphasis; and my message to my sannyasins is: never think of god as a person but only as a presence. And the presence can he neither Hindu nor Christian nor Mohammedan. The presence will not have any address and the presence cannot be masculine or feminine. The presence surrounds the whole existence like an aura; the whole existence is full of it. Each grass leaf, each star, each person -- knowingly or unknowingly... Those who know become the Buddhas. Those who don't know also have the same quality in their being, it is just that they are unaware of their treasure. It is within and without.

Godliness cannot be estimated, cannot be measured; it is immeasurable. The English word 'matter'

literally means that which can be measured. God is not matter but consciousness,

He cannot be measured, There is no way to weigh him, no possibility of ever drawing a map of godliness. It is a mystery and it is always going to remain a mystery. You cannot possess its you can disappear into it. You can become part of it but you cannot be the owner. And man's mind always likes things which it can measure, define, possess, because then the mind becomes the owner.

God or godliness is the only experience where you have to drop the very idea of ownership, of possessiveness. You have to disappear, you have to melt and merge into the ocean.

Whatsoever we say about god remains inadequate. Nothing can ever be adequate. Words are too small and he is vast; it is impossible to confine him in a small word. That would be like holding the whole sky in 1/08/07

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You cannot purchase god, it is not a commodity. And priests have been selling god, they have made it a commodity, You can purchase everything: a ticket for heaven, a special place in paradise -- you just have to pay the right amount.

There is a small Mohammedan community in this country; the chief of the community lives in Surat.

When I visited Surat, a few of his followers came to me. They were angry young men, and they said 'So much nonsense is going on here in the name of religion that you have to say something about it.' I said

'What is the matter?' They said 'In our small sect you have to pay a certain price and then the arch-priest writes a letter to god, recommending that you should be given such and such a place, And when the person dies the letter is put into his pocket and he is buried in the ground. People collect money for their whole life just to have some special place in paradise.'

But people are gullible. Now such nonsense continues, even in the twentieth

century. And it is not only with one small sect, it is with all religions.

God is not something that you can purchase or sell. It does not belong to the marketplace at all, it belongs to your inner world. And you have it already so there is no need to purchase it -- it is already the case.

Although it is beyond words, although we cannot say anything about god, still, when you experience something of godliness great praise arises in your heart, great gratitude -- that is the essence of prayer.

Knowing perfectly well nothing can be said, still one has to express one's gratitude, one has to express it in some way or other. You can dance, you can sing, or you can be silent. That may be your way of saying it: just silent, in awe and wonder.

But whenever the experience happens it is such a gift, it is beyond our comprehension. We cannot believe it when it happens for the first time. It is so incredible: we cannot feel that we are worthy of it, that we have earned it, that we deserve it at all. One bows down and one mumbles something or other. All our prayers are just mumbling: significant as far as our heart is concerned, but inadequate as far as godliness is concerned.

Meditation is a state of awareness, watchfulness, consciousness, Ordinarily we are living as if we are sleepwalkers, somanabulists. Just the very minimum of awareness exists, enough for the day-to-day work, but not enough to know the truth of existence. It is the bare minimum. We are like an iceberg: just one-tenth of it shows above the water, nine-tenths below the water, Exactly the same is our situation, it is exactly the same proportion: only one-tenth of our consciousness is available, nine-tenths is just underground; it has yet to be discovered. It is our own inner territory which has remained unexplored.

We have explored the whole earth; we have gone to the very ends of the earth, we have reached the North Pole and the South Pole. Now we have reached the moon. Soon we will be reaching some other planets and then the stars -- plans are already on the way, scientists are already working on it. And the darkest continent, which remains unexplored and which is the most precious, is still within our being.

Compared to it everything else is futile, utterly meaningless. If we are not capable of knowing ourselves, whatsoever we know is not going to help us. But

if we know ourselves, even if we don't know anything else, that self-knowing will be enough to give us a beautiful life, a blissful life, a peaceful life, a life with significance, meaning, poetry, celebration.

Meditation is the art of slowly slowly making your whole being conscious, so not just the tip of the iceberg is available to you, but the whole being becomes available to you, There remains no dark corner in you. It is the greatest work and the greatest adventure in life.

Only the courageous one can go inside, because he will be travelling all alone -- without any maps, without any guide, with every possibility of getting lo st, not exactly knowing where he is and where he is going and whether he will be able to reach his own centre ever or not. Nothing is guaranteed, nothing can be predicted. The inward pilgrim is always in for a surprise. At each step there is a surprise. He has never thought of the things which become available to him, and many times he goes astray, many times he moves away from himself.

There are many pitfalls in the inner world too. It is not so easy; it is not straight, it is very zigzag. It passes through a jungle where there is every possibility of losing your way. And many times you will lose it, many times you will think you have arrived and you will find sooner or later that that was an illusion.

Many times beautiful experiences will happen and will deceive you, the experiences are so beautiful that one tends to believe in them.

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The inner world is full of many beauties, and there is no way to know whether you have come to the very end yet or not, whether there is yet something to be discovered. And the distractions are great, attractions are great.

For example, as you start moving inwards many psychic forces become available to you. You can perform many things which will look like miracles to others and will be very ego-fulfilling, One tends to forget all about the inner journey; one

starts using those miracles to prove oneself special, somebody, not ordinary -- extraordinary. For example, you can read other peoples' thoughts, and once you start doing that you will forget about the inner journey.

Once, a man who had been living in the Himalayas for thirty years, was brought to me. He thought he had become very efficient at meditating; he was simply concentrating. But he became capable of many things.

One of them was he could read anybody's ideas. You would enter his room and he would ask: 'So, your name is Hardy? You come from such-and-such a place? Your father's name is this? You are educated or not educated, married or not married, you have so many children or you don't?' And if something was going on in your head he would immediately start answering it before you had even articulated your questions. You would just write them down on paper and keep the paper in your pocket and he would read it from the outside, He would not open the envelope, it would be a closed envelope. but he would read the content exactly.

Of course he became very famous; he was thought to be a great siddha, one who has arrived. Somebody brought him to me and he said 'I would like to read your thoughts,' I said 'Okay. You are welcome.' I said,

'Read my thoughts if you can.' So he sat there and I sat there... After a few minutes he said 'But you don't think at all.' He said 'This is the first time in my life -- I am trying hard out I cannot catch hold of anything.

How do you manage it?' he asked me.

I said 'This is meditation. What you have been thinking is meditation is not. Reading other peoples, thoughts is of no use -- their thoughts are stupid in the first place. They want to get rid of them and you are wasting your life in reading their thoughts! Why are you wasting your life? -- you should get rid of your own thoughts! What did you do for thirty years in the Himalayas?' He said, 'I was trying to meditate.'

I said, 'Forget all about it, Meditation means a state of no-thought. A man of meditation would not bother to read anybody's thought. Why should he? Why should he go into such bullshit, for what? He is finished with all that nonsense.' I said, 'Start meditating now. All that you have done is concentration, and through concentration this is possible. Telepathy is possible, clairvoyance is possible and

many other things which look like miracles and on which the ego immediately jumps, becomes possible. These are the pitfalls for the inner pilgrim. One has to be very aware and very courageous to avoid them because the temptation is there.

People start seeing lights inside and they become very thrilled, as if something great is happening. Even if you see light inside it is nothing much. You are not that light, you are the seer, and the seer has to be seen

-- nothing else is going to help. And meditation is the art of seeing the seer, not the light. Light is an object; whether you see the outside light or the inside light, it makes no difference, Then there are people who start smelling beautiful perfume inside and they think this is spiritual. It is nothing! And there are people who will start hearing music inside -- that too is nothing.

These are all-subtle games of the mind which can trap you, hence great courage is needed to remain untempted.

Momentary courage won't do. Everybody, once in a while, is courageous, but the question is of enduring courage, It should become something constant, you should never fall below it, otherwise whatsoever you gain will be lost in a single moment. Great patience, great endurance...

When courage is enduring the ultimate outcome is that you become brave. a person is brave when he is unashakable, when there is no wavering at all, when all wavering has ceased -- so much so that he is not even aware of his bravery, because to remain aware means the opposite will be there. The courageous person remains aware of his cowardliness. Without cowardliness he will not know his courage; it is in contrast with cowardliness that he feels courageous. The enduring person remains aware that there are still possibilities of cowardliness and he has to be watchful, alert, on guard, otherwise he can fall into the trap and lose. But the brave person is one whose courage has become his nature, very nature. He need not be on guard, he is simply brave. Others will know about his bravery, he himself will not know about it at all. It has entered into his bones, blood, into his very marrow. that is the highest state of courage.

All these three qualities are needed for the inner pilgrimage. These are the essential ingredients which 1/08/07

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make one ready to go in. Because people are missing in these qualities they go on moving towards small things, toys: money, power, prestige. their life remains childish -- they never mature, they never grow.

The Imprisoned Splendor

Chapter #29

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