A Quest, Not a Questioning

Date Unknown

Question:

So many things will have to be taken into account. Firstly, to think of God as the creator is to divide reality into two: the creator and the created. There is no division, no duality like this. The creator is the creation! The world and God are not two things: the creation is the creator. It is not like a painter. A painter creates a painting. The moment the painting is created, there are two things: the painter and the painting. The creation is more like a dancer: the dance and the dancer are one.

When you think about God in terms of duality, God becomes a false God. There is no God who is separate, apart; sitting somewhere: presiding, engineering, administrating - beyond the world. The very world, the very being, is God.

The term 'God' is anthropocentric; it is our creation. We have personified what is really a process.

God is not a person but a process - constantly evolving, changing, constantly reaching beyond and beyond. God is a process. So to me God is the creative process not the creator.

Human beings have thought of God in human terms. It is natural. We have said that God created man in His own image. If horses could think they would deny this: they would say that God created horses in His own image. Because man has created the philosophy, he has made himself the center. Even God must be in our image. He must have created us in His own image. Man's ego has asserted these things. This is not knowledge, this is not knowing - this is simply an anthropocentric feeling.

Man feels himself to be the center. We have thought that the earth is the center of the universe and man is the center of creation. These conceptions are false imaginations, dreams of the human ego.

God has not created anybody in His own image because the whole is His image. The trees, the earth, the stars; the animals, men, women - everything that exists is His image, not just man.

Then too, we have divided the world into good and evil. The world is not so divided: good and evil are our evaluations. If man did not exist on the earth there would be neither good nor bad. Things would exist, things would be there, but there would be no evaluation. The evaluation is man's: it is our imposition, it is our projection.

We say that something is good or something is bad. But as far as creation (the creative process) is concerned, everything simply is. There is no good, there is no bad. The night is not bad, the day is not good. The darkness simply is, the light simply is. These are not two things distinct, apart and opposite - but rhythms of one thing. The darkness and the light are both waves of the same reality.

For God, darkness is not evil. But for us it is evil, because our fearful minds have always been afraid of darkness.

Nothing is bad. We say that life is good and death is bad, but how can that be? Death is the pinnacle of life, death is the peak of life, death is part and parcel of life. There can be no living process without the dying process. Death and life are not two things, but two poles of a single, unitary process.

We are afraid to die so we say that death is evil. "If God has created the world then there must be life and no death." But if that had been possible, it would have been the most boring existence.

If there was only life and more life, and no death, then we would pray to God to give us death, because there is a moment to live and a moment to die. There is a moment to come up, and there is a moment to go down. There is no peak without the abyss, but we want only the peak and not the abyss. That is not possible.

These are two aspects of one reality: the evil and the good. So do not impose your own feelings, your own evaluations, on the creative process. Rather, if you want to know the creator, the creative process, go beyond yourself, beyond these dualisms. Do not think in terms of duality. When you go deeply into something, when you go to its very depths, the evil changes into good and the good changes into evil. These are just two waves of the same reality, two different patterns of the same reality.

For example: if I become diseased, to me it is an evil. But to the germs that are the cause of my disease, it is life, and good. Who is to determine whether it is good or bad: me or the germs? If I become healthy the germs are bound to die so for those germs my health is an evil and for me the life of the germs is an evil.

But to God, the germs and I are the same. So there is no evil for Him, no good for Him. He lives in us. He dies in us. He is the darkness and He is the light. That is why He is the transcendental, the beyond. That is why He both is and is not.

Our minds always think in terms of dichotomies. They cannot think without dividing. Whenever we go to think about something, we dissect it, we divide it into two. That is the methodology of the mind. Mind cannot think in terms of Unity, in terms of synthesis. Mind thinks in terms of analysis so everything passing through the prism of the mind becomes divided.

Just like the light is one but through a prism it is divided into seven rays, so, too, the prism of the mind divides everything. That is why if you want to know and realize that which is undivided, you have to go beyond mind.

Do not use your mind as the instrument. It cannot lead you beyond duality. If you use The mind, there will be a creator and that which has been created. This division is false and because of this false division you create false problems and false theologies. You create problems and then you think about the solutions. Because the problems are false, the solutions are bound to be false.

All theologies are based on dualistic concepts. That is false. Religion is not theology! A theology can be Christian, a theology can be Hindu, a theology can be Buddhist, but religion itself is the realization of the whole. It is not divided into Christianity, Hinduism or Buddhism.

Theology is based on a false assumption: an assumption of duality. Then, problems arise. First you divide the existence, which creates problems. Then you go on solving the problems endlessly. But there is no solution. No theology has come to any conclusions; every theology has moved deeper and deeper into falsehoods.

That is why the new generation has come to a point of discarding all theologies: Christianity, Hinduism, Islam. The few generation has come to a breaking point where they want to discard all the falsehoods that theology has created. You have created the problems and you have created the solutions but you have not asked the basic thing: whether the problem is authentic or whether it has been created because of your mind; whether the problem is your creation or whether it is really a part of the reality.

In reality, there are no problems so there is no need of any answer. When you think, there are problems. When you do not think but you realize, there are no problems.

So religion is a process to go beyond thinking: to achieve a point in your mind where there is no thinking at all. You are, but without thoughts. You are in a state of mind which can be said to be a state of no-mind, a state of no mental processes.

A mind that is not thinking is a mind that is in meditation. That is the meaning of meditation.

To meditate means to go beyond your thinking process. The moment you transcend the thinking process, you come to a realization, you come to feel that which is Philosophy cannot exist without thinking and religion cannot exist with thinking. Philosophy thinks. Religion knows.

Thinking means a mind that does not know. A blind man can think about the light and go on thinking about it. But he cannot come to any conclusion because he cannot really Think about it. You can only think about something you have known, but when you have known it, there is nothing to think about. That is the dilemma, the predicament.

That is the basic puzzle. A person who knows never thinks because there is no need to think. What you know, you know. There is no need to think about it. Only a person who does not know who is ignorant, thinks. But how can you think about what you don't know?

A blind man goes on thinking about light, but he cannot really think about it. He cannot imagine it, he cannot dream about it, because he has not known it. Light is foreign to him. A blind man cannot even think about the darkness because, even to know darkness, eyes are needed. Without eyes you cannot know the darkness: a blind man knows neither the darkness nor the light.

Ordinarily we think that a blind man lives in darkness. No, their is no darkness for a blind man.

Darkness is as much a perception of the eyes as the light. You cannot say to a blind man that light is opposite to darkness because that, too, will be unintelligible to him. A blind man can know light only by becoming able to see. Thinking cannot become seeing.

In reference to this, one thing must be said. In India we have called philosophy darshan. Darshan means seeing. We have not called philosophy 'thinking'; we have called it 'seeing'. In Europe the term 'philosophy' carries another connotation. 'Philosophy' means love of knowing, love of thinking.

There is no parallel term in western languages for darshan.

A new term has been coined by Herman Hesse. The term is appealing. The new term is philosia:

the love of seeing. Sia means 'to see'. Philo means 'love.'

And sophy means 'thinking'. So philosophy means 'love of thinking'. We have no term in India for it.

We cannot translate the word 'philosophy' into any Indian language. Our term is darshan. It means seeing. Not thinking, bUt seeing.

Seeing comes not through the mind but at the moment the mind is annihilated, the moment the mind is not, the moment the mind ceases. Every type of seeing - either of science or of philosophy or of religion - is an outcome of the state of no-mind.

We have known the example of Archimedes. He was thinking and thinking, and came to no conclusion. Then he was lying in his bathtub. Suddenly something was seen. He ran out of his house naked. He had seen something and he ran into the street crying, "Eureka, eureka! I've found it, I've found it! I've achieved!"

If you ask an Einstein or a Picasso or a Hesse, they too will say that something has been seen.

Whether in poetry or in painting or in scientific discovery, something is seen. And the moment of seeing is not the moment of brooding, the moment of seeing is not the moment of logical thinking.

Logical thinking is held in abeyance. The logical mind is not working and suddenly something overpowers you. Something comes to you, or you go somewhere - somewhere beyond the human limits. Then you know; knowing is there.

So do not create dichotomies. First you create dichotomies, then you create problems, then you go on solving them. And then of course, as a logical consequence, theologies are created and there are theologians, teachers, professors, gurus, and the whole nonsense, the whole nuisance. So to me, there is no problem. The problem itself is false.

Question:

If God exists as a person then the question why becomes relevant. If God is a person then we can ask, "why have you created the word?" But God is not a person; God is a process. You cannot ask the process, "Why do you exist?"

Existence exists without any cause. Thinking in terms of causes leads nowhere. If you go beyond one cause then there is another cause. If you go beyond that, then another cause comes. And the why remains. Always, endlessly. You ask why and again you are confronted with another why.

If God is a person then the why becomes relevant. But God is not a person. You cannot ask Him - you are Him. You yourself are the cause.

The existence is uncaused. Otherwise you will have to invent ultimate causes. But that carries no meaning. If you say that there is an ultimate cause it means that beyond a certain point vou will not again ask what the cause is. Even a person who believes in God as the creator, who says, "God created the world," may invent whys and answers. But if you ask him, "Why is there a God?

Why does He exist?" then the religious man will say, "God is uncaused. He is the cause, so He is uncaused."

Existence itself is uncaused. At the beginning, there is no cause. So in the end, there can be no purpose. Only when here is a cause can there be a purpose.

There is no beginning because if there is a beginning, then there must be a cause. Existence is beginningless. And there is no end because the beginningless cannot come to an end. It is endless.

So there is neither a beginning nor an end to existence. It is eternal, uncaused, without any purpose.

For the human mind it is meaningless to say this because we think in terms of causes (from where?) and in terms of purposes (to what end?). Because of this limitation of the human mind, he cannot conceive of something that is beginningless, endless - uncaused, purposeless.

But how can there he any cause and how can there be any purpose? To be is enough, to have been is enough. being is enough.

You can think of it in another way, through another outlook. When you love someone, you do not ask what the cause of it is. If love is caused by something, it ceases to be love. Love flowers uncaused.

If a cause could be pointed out then the beauty of love would be lost, then there would be a scientific explanation for it.

You cannot ask what love is for. There is no purpose in love. If I love you, I cannot ask why. If I am loving you for some reason then it is not love Love is purposeless.

In love, we come closest to God. That is why Jesus said, "God is love." It is not that God is loving, no. That is not the meaning, God is love! In love, we come closest to the creative process, closest to God. Love is the peak from which we come to know what religion is.

Love is religious so a person who cannot love cannot pray. A person who cannot love cannot be religious. Only a loving mind can be religious because only a loving mind can think in terms of no purpose, no cause. Love is enough. It does not ask anything beyond itself. It is a fulfillment in itself; it is the end in itself. A single moment of love is eternity itself.

When we ask why, where, how, we are not asking religious questions. If you ask how, the question becomes scientific. The question how is the basis of science: how are things happening? And if you ask why, the question becomes philosophical.

Religion has no question. For religion, there is no questioning. There is a quest, but no questioning.

There is a quest to know what is. Neither why nor how, but what is.

Of course, to solve the question how is easier. We can go on solving and solving and there will be no end to it. Every solution will again create a problem. The how will again be encountered, so science will go on progressing. You cannot conceive of a day when scientists will come out of their laboratories and say, "Now, science has achieved!"

Philosophers will go on thinking and thinking why, and there will be as many answers as there are thinkers. If everybody on earth begins to think about it, there will be millions and millions of answers.

Everybody can say: because of this or that.

But religion does not ask. Religion is a quest, not a questioning It is a quest after what is - not after the beginning, not after the end. It is a quest for neither the cause nor the purpose, but for that which is - this very moment, here and now. The 'what' is the quest.

A scientific mind can go on searching without ever changing itself. A philosopher can go on inventing answers without changing an inch. But a religious man cannot even begin without changing. The moment he begins to ask what is, there is a change, a transformation - because he himself is part and parcel of what is.

You are neither part and parcel of the how nor of the why. You were not asked anything in the beginning nor have you been asked to plan for the end. You are somewhere in the middle - in the is. You are only concerned with what is here and now, this very moment.

So religion is concerned with the present - neither with the past nor with the future. And the present is the only existence, the present is the only time. The past is memory; the future is imagination.

The present is the only reality, the only existence.

Religion is concerned with the existential, the purposeless, the meaningless, the uncaused. Things are - and you can become one with them and can achieve a moment of bliss, a moment of pure existence, a moment of total consciousness. In India we have called this satchitananda - the moment of total existence, the moment of total consciousness, the moment of total bliss.

Once you have a glimpse of it, there will be no question, no problem. You will be at ease with the reality. Then you will be in a state of let-go with reality. You will flow with it, you will live with it. You will breathe it, vou will be one with it. You will be it.

Question:

You cannot pray, because there is no one to whom to pray. Your prayer is just addressed to the emptiness. But you can be in a prayerful mood - that is another thing. Prayer is not something to be done; prayer is something to be. A person can live prayerfully, that is something else. It is not something to do.

To be in a prayerful mood is to be in love, in love with the existence. To be in a prayerful mood is to be in gratitude to the existence. To be in prayerful mood means to not be an enemy to the world but a friend.

For me, prayer is not an address because there is no one to be addressed. Prayer is a state of mind. It is concerned with you not with God. You can be in love without a love object; the object is not the necessity. You can exist in love, you can walk in love, you can sleep in love. Everything that comes in contact with you receives your love. If no one comes in contact with you, still the perfume of love is there. A flower may be on a path where no one passes, but there is still a perfume. It is not addressed to anyone; it simply bubbles out of the flower. Like that, prayer is a bubbling of your love: your love to the whole, to all that is.

What we ordinarily call prayer is childish. We are father-obsessed in a way. We have imagined God as a father image, as a powerful father sitting somewhere on a throne. And in our fear, we are demanding and asking and persuading Him. Our prayers are demands. Our prayers are born out of our fears. They are addressed to an image that we have created out of fear.

A person who lives prayerfully does not pray, does not demand. He doesn't offer prayers to God. He has no need for an intermediary. He comes in contact with the existence himself.

So to me, even the word 'God' is not the right word. 'God' carries the meaning of a person. To say 'the existence' is much more accurate and exact the moment we call the existence 'God', the image of a great father comes into our minds. Then we begin to pray.

But out of fear there can be no love; out of fear there can be no prayer. When I fear you, I cannot love you. All the old theologies were based on the exploitation of human fear. We still call a religious person God-fearing. It is absolutely ugly to call a religious person God-fearing because a religious person is God-living.

And where fear is, love cannot be. These two cannot exist simultaneously. With fear, hate exists.

With fear, there is no possibility of love.

A loving mind is a prayerful mind. But there is neither a time to pray, nor a secluded corner to pray in, nor someone to be addressed. You are, and the existence is. To live with this existence in a loving relationship - with the trees, with the sky, with the stars, with human beings, with matter, with everything that is - to live with it lovingly is prayer.

Then you become prayerful. Then you never pray, but every moment prayer goes out of you, bubbles out of you. It becomes the perfume of your life, of your love. It is a flowering, not an address - something coming from within, not something going out. The basic arrow is not to someone; the basic arrow is from someone. From someone to the all.

Question:

If you think about what is, you will pervert i t. If you think about it, then you will impose your own conceptions on it.

'What is' can be revealed only when there is no conception, no thought, no theory in you; when your mind is totally vacant; when your mind has become an emptiness, a nothingness; when your mind is just a womb, a receiver. When nothing from your mind is imposed, when your mind is naked and empty, only then is 'what is' revealed because there is no one to pervert it - no one to imagine anything, no one to dream anything, no one to project anything.

One must approach reality completely vacant and empty, without any preconceived thoughts, without any prejudices, without any preconceptions of what is to be there. You must go into nowhere, you have to go into nothingness. Only then does your mind become just a receiver, a receptivity. And then, what is is revealed.

Even after that, when you have to assert it, express it, you will not be able to. You won't be able to express what has been known. Language is not adequate, words are not enough Something so vast, something so multidimensional, something so unimagined, something so unknown, has come over you that vou can be struck dumb. The greater the realization, the less the possibility of expressing it.

The truth has never been said. It has been known, it has been lived, but never said. No word, no scripture, has expressed it. They have tried, endeavoured, taken pains to express it, but it has remained unexpressed, unknown.

You can come to it only when you do not come with your scriptures; you can come to it only when you do not come with your theologies; you can come to it only when you do not come with your questions. A mute quest is required, not a verbal questioning.

And you can come to it at any moment. When you are under a tree - just sleeping, relaxing, doing nothing - you can come to it. Near a seashore - just sitting, doing nothing - and it can overwhelm you. Under the starry sky - just existing, just being; just present, not doing anything - it can penetrate you.

That is why there are glimpses of it in love. When you are in love, words cease, thinking ceases.

When you are in love, something becomes silent in you. Then there is no communication - and still there is a communication. You are silent, but communicating. In your silence, something comes to you and something goes out of you.

Religion points toward total silence. One must be silent to hear the creative process: one must be totally silent to know that-which-is. Every moment we are thinking and thinking. This thinking creates a barrier.

If you are listening to me and still thinking within yourself, then there will be no communication.

When I am answering you, if you are still creating new questions - comparing what I am saying, thinking about whether it is right or not - then we are poles apart. Then there is no communication.

Your thinking has come between us as a barrier, and that barrier cannot be crossed.

If you are just listening - and that is the miracle: to be just listening! - then even this communication that is happening right now between us can become a communication of what is. If you are just here - present, doing nothing then something from my eyes, from my hands, from the friends who have gathered here, from the whole situation that exists right here, can become an awakening and you can come into contact with what is.

And you ask, "What is death?" One cannot know before dying. How can one know? You can think about it, but that will not be death, that will not be real. One has to die to know death and one has to live to know life.

Do not think about death. While life is, live! Know life! And if you know it then you will know death also, because death is pinnacle: the peak of life, the completion of life. So do not ask what death is.

It will come, and you will go through it.

But it is possible to go through death and still not know it. We are passing through life and still we have not known it. We are asking, "What is death?" while we are alive. The reverse can also happen: when we are dying we may be asking, "What was life?" A dying person asks what was life and a living person asks what is death!

A living person can come to know life. Know it, be one with it. Absorb it, drink it completely - eat it! Then death comes. When yon have known the day, the night comes. When you have known the day's awakening, you will have to know the night's relaxation and sleep.

It is there. It is coming, it is hiding somewhere. It will come, but do not ask about it. Know what is here and now. Become a knower, a seer, so that when death comes, you will know it also.

A person who knows life, ultimately knows death also. And when he knows both, he knows that life is not against death nor is death against life. When he knows both, he knows that something unknown has come into being and that something unknown has left. Birth has been a door and death, too, has been a door, Something (the existence) has come in, and something has gone out. Nothing begins, nothing ends. There are births beyond birth and there will deaths beyond death. There will be births beyond death and there will be deaths beyond birth. The process is endless, the voyage is eternal.

Know what is, do not ask what will be. How can you know it? You can only think about it and create theories. Theories are important, meaningless. Feelings are potent, meaningful, so while you are alive, feel life. Then you will become capable of feeling death when you die.

It is as blissful to know death as to know life. It is as blissful to awaken in the morning as it is to go into deep sleep at night. Both are blissful. But you must know them while they are happening; you cannot know them beforehand. And if you ask someone, then what you know is second-hand - not a first hand knowledge, not a felt knowledge, not a realized knowledge, not a knowledge that has penetrated your ultimate being, that has come to you through your innermost core. The real knowledge always comes through seeing, through knowing firsthand.

First know life; do not ask what death is. Know life, and by knowing life you will come to know death also. What you are transcends both. You are neither life nor death. You have been living, you will be dying - your being transcends both.

Do not identify yourself with life. If you identify yourself with life then you will think of death as your enemy. Know life and then you know that you are beyond - unidentified, someone who has come to life. And you will know death too - as a door going back, returning to the source. Life comes, death comes, but the source remains beyond both.

Question:

As I have said, to me there is no such thing as Indian philosophy. And God cannot be represented by any idea; God is something beyond ideas. Every type of representation is a falsehood, a falsification.

Every type of symbol is a dead symbol whether it is Indian or Western, Christian or Hindu. These are theologies not religion. Theologies are nothing but man's mental creations.

Pilate asked the same question that you have asked when Christ was going to the cross. He asked, "What is truth?" A Christian will have an answer to the question, a Hindu will have an answer, a Buddhist, a Sikh - every body will have an answer. But Christ remained silent, he had no answer.

He remained silent; he did not answer the question. "What is truth?" because the moment you answer it, it becomes a falsehood. It cannot be asserted. It can be known inside, it can be lived, but it cannot be asserted. Words, languages, expressions, are so feeble and dead that the living truth cannot be communicated through them.

Christ remained silent. But his eyes were not silent, his heart was not silent, his whole being was not silent. His whole being was expressing the answer, but Pilate could not see it. He knew only what was happening in terms of verbal communication. He would have known the answer to the question only if Christ had answered him through theology, through some theory - some image, symbol, concept. Pilate turned away. Christ remained unknown to him.

What I am saying is this: that every type of symbology, myth, every type of theological system, is the creation of the cunning mind, of the mind which calculates, systematizes, makes wholeness out of theories. But it is dead. This is not religion; religion is something alive.

Somewhere Nietzsche has said that Christ was the first and last Christian. He was the last Christian because nowadays a Christian is simply a Christian through believing in a particular dogma. A Christian is a Christian through accepting a theology, not through knowing the truth. Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, Mohammedans - they are all under the weight of tradition, of words, of verbalizations and languages. But to me, religion has nothing to do with words, language, scriptures.

Nor is religion confined to any geography nor confined to any particular race. Religion is not confined to any savior, god, avatar or guru. Religion is available to everyone who asks for it, who is thirsty for it. Everywhere - in every age, in every time, in every race, in every part of the world - religion is as available as the air, as available as the existence. One only has to be one with the existence to know religion.

Question:

What I am saying is not modern. What I am saying is as much ancient as it is modern. What I am saying is the eternal truth. It has always been said, it has always been felt. Buddha felt the same, Christ felt the same, Krishna felt the same.

But language becomes old, assertions become old. The Gita has become old, the Bible has become old, Buddhist scriptures have become old. Every age has to coin new words, new expressions. The truth remains the same; religion is eternal. It is neither old nor new.

What I am saying is not modern. Only the way of expressing it is modern. All expressions become old. The modern, too, will become old. It has already become so. The moment we have talked about it, it has become part of the past; it has become old. The new always has to be invented. It is necessary because every age requires a new language to be understood, every age requires a new terminology to communicate its experiences.

But truth is timeless. It is neither old nor modern. And it is as much Hindu as it is Christian; it is as much Moslem as it is Buddhist. To me, Buddha, Mohammed, Christ when they come to know - know the same truth. But when they express it, their languages differ. That is natural. Buddha expresses in an Indian way, Christ expresses in Hebrew, Mohammed expresses in the Arabian way.

Only the language differs, but because of the difference in languages, sects are created.

Then there comes to be an Indian religion and a non-Indian religion. There are at least three hundred religions on earth and three hundred languages. It is so. But three hundred religions? - that's nonsense! Religion can only be one because nothing can be contradictory or opposite to the feeling of truth.

When I come to know it, I know the same truth. When you come to now, you will also know the same truth. But I will express it differently, you will express it differently. The difference is always in the expression, not in the experience. The experience is eternal. It is neither Hindu nor Christian.

These labels have become barriers to the universal: the one, the eternal; the endless, the beginningless. These expressions have become barriers, so every age has to discard the old prophets, the old traditions. Every age has to invent its own ground to stand upon, its own heart to feel, its own mind to know and experience.

Expressions differ. The expression might be modern, but the expressed, or the unexpressed, is still ancient. I am saying ancient, not old; eternal, not old - because truth can never become old. It is always the living, the new, the young. It is always life itself.