12

< Previous | Contents | Next >

‌CHAPTER 12

12 October 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Veet means beyond, gyan means knowledge – beyond knowledge. God is beyond knowledge, it is intrinsically unknowable. The very effort to know it is a barrier in knowing it, because we can know something only if we are separate from it. Knowledge requires a division, the division between the object and the subject. Knowledge requires a kind of distance between the knower and the known, and that is not possible with god. God alone is. He is the knower and he is the known. The observer and the observed are one, so there is no possibility to create this division which is an absolute requirement for knowledge to happen. Hence god is beyond knowledge, truth is beyond knowledge, but god is not beyond love.

Love can happen. Love does not require you to be two. In fact, just the opposite is the requirement of love. Knowledge needs you to be distant, separate; love needs you to be one – dissolving, merging, melting into each other. When somebody falls in love he starts losing his identity. The deeper the love is, the more one is lost. When two lovers are really in intimacy they are not two. In a miraculous way the two have disappeared into oneness. Yes, it happens only for a few moments but those moments are of great orgasmic joy; they are the first glimpse of samadhi, ecstasy, satori. But love happens only when two lose their two-ness and become one. So god can be loved but cannot be known. God is within love but beyond knowledge. That’s what the meaning is when Jesus says ‘God is love’: god is not knowledge.

And people have been trying to know god, hence the world has become god-less, because we have been trying to do something impossible, something which is not allowed by the nature of things themselves. So the more we have tried to know god, the more we have become convinced that there is no god. If we make it an absolute condition that for god to exist first we have to know him, then god will not be available for us.

The philosophical activity cannot make god available to you. The theological approach is utterly meaningless, irrelevant. The only true approach towards god is that of poetry, art, painting, love.

The true religion is always the religion of aesthetics, not of ethics, not of theology. My vision is that poetry comes closest to god, music too – it comes even closer – dance too. And when two lovers are in deep embrace, utterly lost in each other, drunk with each other, are no more functioning as separate entities, breathing together, their hearts breathing in a rhythm, then god is the closest.

The real temples of god will be temples of love. Knowledge is all rubbish. And the true seeker has to gather courage to drop knowledge. By dropping knowledge the mind is dropped, and when there is no mind there is no ego, and when there is no ego, you have fallen into the oceanic unity. That oceanic experience is god, or you can call it truth or whatsoever you wish – names don’t matter.

Veet means beyond, dhamma means religion. Religions are the barriers – they have not been bridges between man and truth. They have been pretending that they are the bridges but they are not. Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, they have all functioned against god. They are basically political. In the name of religion, politics has been imposed on man. The mask is of religion, but behind the mask is nothing but pure politics, power politics.

The true religious person cannot be a Christian and cannot be a Hindu and cannot be a Mohammedan. The true religious person can only be religious, prayerful, loving, alert, rejoicing in this beautiful gift of god, this existence. But he will not have anything to do with the church and the temple and the mosque, because in the church there is only an ideology, in the temple only a man-made statue, and the mosque is nothing but a creation of man’s mind. These are shadows, symbols, and to worship a symbol is stupid.

It is as if you walk in the sun and the shadow follows you; but you are not the shadow, the shadow is not you. These so-called religions are nothing but shadows, long shadows. When a Buddha walks on the earth a long shadow falls. Buddha disappears but we go on clinging to the shadow. These are footprints. When a Jesus appears a long shadow falls on humanity and for centuries people will go on worshipping the shadow; that shadow is the church. But once Jesus is gone there is nothing... just a painted picture of Jesus. It has no significance at all and worshipping it is utterly stupid. And god is available; as he was available to Jesus he is available to you. But you become too attached to Jesus and his shadow and that very attachment becomes a barrier between you and god.

God is alive in the trees as much as he was when Jesus walked on the earth. He is still meditating in the mountains as he was when Buddha walked on the earth. The world is as god-full as ever! It can’t be otherwise.

One has to discard temples, mosques, churches, priests. One has to come into direct contact with god. Shadows have to be renounced, and only when you renounce shadows are you capable of knowing the reality, otherwise one gets lost in shadows.

This may seem paradoxical when I say that the truly religious person is not religious at all in the ordinary sense of the word. And the religious person in the ordinary sense of the word is not religious at all. One has to be very careful, watchful, because there are many false coins in currency, and the false has to be understood as false, only then can the true be understood as true. Unless you cease clinging to the false you will not be able to receive the truth. So be religious but don’t be Christian and don’t be Hindu and don’t be Mohammedan. No ideology is going to help.

Prem means love, tosha means contentment. Man lives in discontentment because man lives without love. If one loves, suddenly contentment explodes, because the moment of love knows no future, knows no past. The moment of love is enough unto itself. Only people who have missed love in their life think of the past and of the future, because they have not been able to live in the present.

Love is the way to live in the present. You cannot love yesterday and you cannot love tomorrow. You can only love now. Love knows only one time, and that is now; love knows only one space; that is here. That’s why in love the mind disappears, because the mind is nothing but the accumulation of memories and the projection of the imagination. The mind is the past plus the future; the mind has no contact with the present. Love is not part of mind. That is the meaning when we say that love comes from the heart and not from the mind. And contentment follows love like a shadow. Wherever you see contentment, know that there is somebody who has known love. Wherever you see discontentment, know well that the man has missed, the person has missed love.

Love nourishes the soul, fulfils the deepest desire in our being, because it gives us the feeling that we are needed. The greatest need is to be needed, and immediately, the moment you feel you are needed, you become meaningful. Your life has purpose, your life has significance, and only out of that experience of significance can one be thankful to god.

Deva means divine, prashanto means silence, stillness. There is a silence which cannot be produced by us. It comes. At the most we can be a host to it.

There is no way to manipulate it – it comes from the beyond. If we are receptive it starts happening more and more. No doing is required on our part, because whatsoever we do, we do out of our confused mind; it carries all that we have in our mind. It can’t be something really deep, because the mind itself is very shallow.

Seeing this, understanding it, a new approach arises – the approach of let-go. And the great secret of spiritual science is allowing something to happen without doing it. It needs really great understanding and awareness to allow things to happen. The mind is constantly tempted to interfere. It brings its desires in, it wants things to be according to it; and that is the whole problem. We are tiny parts of this vast existence To have some idea of one’s own is to be idiotic. That is exactly the meaning of the word ‘idiot’, literally: to have some idea of one’s own.

It is like a wave in the ocean trying to do something on its own. It is just part of an immense ocean. It is neither independent nor dependent, because it is not separate at all. The wave exists not – it is only a manifestation of the ocean. So are we, and if we understand it then all anxiety disappears. Then there is nowhere to go, there is no goal to be attained and there is no possibility to fail or be frustrated. A great relaxation comes... this is the meaning of surrendering, of trusting. Then life takes a totally new colour. It has not that tension that ordinarily is always there. One lives relaxedly, calm and quiet, at home.

There is a silence that is waiting to descend in you. Sometimes just sit under a tree and let it happen. Watch a sailboat on the lake and let it happen. See the full moon and let it happen. Lie down on the earth, be merged in the earth and let it happen. Just float in the river and let it happen. And all these things become meditations.

This is my message to you for this, your birthdaySannyas is a new birth, and my message is to

let things happen – don’t try to do.

Deva means divine, vardan means blessing. Life is not a punishment but a blessing. It is not that you are suffering because Adam committed some sin. It is a reward. And it is not because in your past lives you have been committing so many wrong things that you are suffering and life has been given to you as a suffering – that is utter nonsense. Life is a gift! And I call it a gift because we don’t deserve it. Very rarely do people deserve; those are the people who become Buddhas. Others are not even conscious of what has been given to them. The greatest miracle has happened in you – you are alive, but you have not even thanked god for it. Rather, on the contrary, people go on complaining; they have a thousand and one complaints, and not even a single thank-you arises in their heart. And a man who has forgotten the language of gratitude is not a man at all.not worth

the name.

From this moment start thinking of everything as a gift, and you will be surprised at how many beauties you have been missing and how many blessings were knocking on your door, but you never opened your door. Only in gratitude does one become open.

To me gratitude is the greatest religious virtue. To feel grateful makes one religious. And there is so much to feel grateful for! Each moment is so precious – this moment too. Just see the silence in you, the joy arising in you, the tears of joyAnd to feel all this is to be in prayer.

[A sannyasin, who has ‘psychic’ experiences, says: I’m in very much turmoil and that’s why I’m leaving. I plan to go away for about six to eight weeks.]

The responsibility is yours...

You start enjoying foolish things and you go into a kind of cooperation with them. You think they are something very valuable, spiritual experiences – they are not. It is just a game of the mind. You start hearing inner voices – they are nothing but your own thoughts. But the mind is very cunning. It says ‘These are spiritual guides speaking’ and one feels very egoistic, gratified. When people ask me, if I say that this is all holy cow dung, they feel hurt. They want to hear from me also ‘Yes, you are going through great spiritual experiences’, and I know this is all meaningless.

You have to stop cooperating with all this. This is just neurosis, nothing else. Every mind has these things, but if you cooperate, they start growing, then there is chaos. And then they go on telling you things. It is your mind but you think that some spiritual guidance is coming to you. So if you follow that guidance you will do some stupid things; if you don’t you will feel guilty that you are not following these spiritual masters. And there is nothing except your mind.

But this is not only your problem – this is the problem of all spiritual seekers. Sooner or later this problem arises: the mind starts playing tricks. Somebody will see lights, somebody will start hearing sounds, somebody will start experiencing something else, and the ego says ‘This is something great – it is only happening to you. It is rare. You are special, that’s why it is happening to you’ and you start cooperating.

My suggestion is: simply disconnect yourself from all this. Go to the Himalayas – it is good, rest there – but disconnect. Whenever anything like this arises just have a good laugh!

And don’t pay much attention to it – just neglect it! One has to become utterly empty. The only spiritual experience worth calling spiritual is the experience of nothingness, of emptiness... what sufis call ‘fana’, the disappearance of the ego. That is the only spiritual experience – all else is just mind games. And the mind can create many things. The mind can start hallucinating; it can see visions, Christ and Buddha... The mind has the capacity to dream – even with open eyes it can dream. When you see Jesus standing in front of you, how not to believe? And there is no Jesus standing before you – it is your projection.

That’s why Zen masters say ‘If you meet the Buddha on the way, kill him!’ They are right... absolutely right. It looks sacrilegious, very disrespectful to say that if you meet Buddha on the way, kill him... but it is very true. You will meet the Buddha on the way or Jesus or Mohammed – that is not the point. You will come across anything that you had been conditioned for in your childhood. Great spiritual masters and Tibetan lamas will appear and you will see that something great is happening. And you will find foolish people appreciating you. They will say ‘Yes... Your status is going higher and higher every day, you are reaching higher stations.’ Don’t listen to these people.

My work is hard because I cannot support any illusions of your mind, I cannot support any hallucinations. I have to cut all kinds of hallucinations. It looks cruel, brutal... so when you asked meLast year also you had started hearing these voices, and then you were found walking naked

on the road...

In that unconsciousness you go on hearing these voices. Now these voices are telling you ‘Go to the Himalayas...’ You are not going on your own. You are thinking that you are following some spiritual guidance. That’s why I had not said anything, because I know you will say ‘No, I was not unconscious, I was not naked.’ Right now you are very conscious and you are going to the Himalayas.…

You have to disconnect yourself from these voices and these guides. You will have to decide between me and these guides. Either you have to listen to me or you listen to your guides. You decide either way; otherwise this will be a sheer wastage of time...

Just go to the Himalayas and rest and be with the mountains and trees and enjoy and forget all this spirituality. Let those Tibetans do whatsoever they want to do; you need not bother about it.

And next time when you come back you have to decide – you disconnect with all this forever. It will come again and again but you ignore it. Simply become closed to all these voices, otherwise they will drive you neurotic. And it is still time: they can be stopped. Soon, if you go on helping them, it will be difficult to stop; it will become something beyond you.

[A sannyasin says: I don’t find a connection to the meaning of my name.]

In reality, all names are utilitarian. You don’t have any meaning. Nobody has any meaning. We come nameless and we go nameless. The name is just a utility.

If [someone] wants to call you she has to call some name, otherwise how will she find you? So it is good.don’t pay much attention to it.

Remember that you are nameless.

You will never find any relationship between you and your name; there is none! You can be called ‘a’, you can be called ‘b’, you can be called ‘c’... it will not make any difference to you; you will remain the same, called by ‘a’, called by ‘b’, you will remain the same. A rose is a rose is a rose... you can call it by any name. You don’t have any name.

You have to find some relevance with me, not with the name. And that is happening. And I am happy – it is happening every day: you are coming closer and closer.

< Previous | Contents | Next >