Mysticism, the forgotten language

Question 1:

Existence is always a mystery.

People fall in love; they cannot answer why, how they have found each other. And when they fall in love there is an absolute feeling that they are made for each other - but how did they manage to find each other in such a big world?

Somebody is a born poet, somebody is a born painter. They cannot explain how they became poets, how they became painters, how they managed so that poetic visions happen to them. It simply happens; there is no 'how' to it.

But our mind is a machine, it is not a mystery. And the mind always wants to know the how, the why.

And because of this persistent inquiry about how and why, it goes on missing all that is beyond the boundaries of machines.

Life is beyond the boundaries of machines.

Why are you alive? Do you have any answer? Why in the first place are you born? How did you manage to be born? You have to simply accept the mystery of all that is alive - either consciously or unconsciously.

Unconsciously you have been accepting many things: your birth, your life, your love, your death, the roses, the stars, the ocean, the rivers, the sun, the moon - but you have been accepting them unconsciously. If you accept them consciously, you become a mystic. Then it is not a question that you are ignorant and that's why you don't know. It is not ignorance, it is the very unknowability of existence.

I don't know how I have found you.

Neither is there any need... it is enough that I have found you.

Just remember not to get lost.

Question 2:

Mysticism is one of the forgotten languages. It has to be revived, because in forgetting the language of the mystics, life has lost all color, all joy, all music.

Turgenev has a beautiful story: In a village a man comes to a sage and says to him, "Please help me.

My whole village, and the surrounding villages too, think that I am an idiot. Whatever I say, however reasonable or rational it may be, they make a laughingstock of me. It has become a nightmare to me.

If I remain silent, they condemn my silence saying, 'What else can he do? He is such an idiot, he cannot say anything.' If I say anything, everybody is there to laugh. My life has become so miserable that I feel to commit suicide. I heard that a great sage is passing by and I thought perhaps you can help me."

The sage said, "It is a very simple matter. Just do one thing: from tomorrow morning, whenever anybody says anything, immediately criticize it. Somebody says, 'Look, what a beautiful sunrise.'

You say, 'What beauty is in it? Who says? And what is the proof, and what do you mean by beauty?

Define what beauty is. On what authority are you calling the sunrise beautiful? It is not.'

"Somebody says, 'Look, a beautiful woman is passing' - condemn. Just remember one thing: don't assert anything on your own part. Only criticize, and particularly those things which cannot be proved - beauty, love, truth, God - things which everybody is talking about but nobody can prove, nobody can even define. And I will be coming back after one month. Then meet me."

After one month the man was totally changed. He had gone through a transformation. He was not looking sad. He was looking radiant, full of authority - as if suddenly he had roots, had become grounded.

The sage laughed and he said, "So it worked?"

He said, "It worked tremendously. Now they all think I am the wisest man, just in one month. And they are making apologies that they used to think me an idiot; they are feeling very sorry for it. And I have not done anything other than what you suggested to me. I have not missed a single chance:

anything, and I will pose a question and they cannot answer it. They feel embarrassed. Wherever I go people fall silent, they don't talk, because even to say a word is dangerous. But they have started worshipping me, touching my feet; I have become a sage. You have done a miracle."

The sage said, "I have not done a miracle. This is a simple phenomenon: whatsoever is valuable in life is unexplainable, indefinable, and whatsoever is definable is worthless."

One of the greatest thinkers of this age, G.E. Moore, has written a book, PRINCIPIA ETHICA, and he deals only with one question in the whole book. The question is: What is good? - and it is the most fundamental question. You are talking about morality, you are talking about character, you are talking about goodness, badness, virtue, sin - they all basically need a clear-cut definition of what good is. In two hundred and fifty pages of very arduous, logical reasoning, approaching the question from every possible angle, he comes to the conclusion that good is indefinable. It took him two hundred and fifty pages - one of the best minds of our century - to figure out that good is indefinable. You can feel it, you can be it, you can live it, you can taste it, you can experience it, but you cannot explain it. As far as definitions are concerned, it is beyond definition.

There are thousands of books written by great philosophers in an effort to define beauty. The effort is as old as man himself, because even the first man must have felt beauty. It is impossible to conceive that the first man did not feel that the roses are beautiful, that the lotus flower is beautiful, that the starry night is beautiful, that the full moon is beautiful, that silent eyes are beautiful, that the face of a buddha is beautiful. It is impossible to conceive that the first man was not aware of beauty. But thousands of years, thousands of efforts of aestheticians, philosophers, poets, painters - all have failed to define a simple phenomenon which everybody experiences. It is not something that only very unqiue individuals experience; it is experienced by everybody in some way or other... such a vast and common experience.

But then the question arises - what is it? When you try to pinpoint it, suddenly it disappears. You know it, but you cannot say.

A beautiful incident in Rabindranath Tagore's life....

He used to on his houseboat go deep into the rivers in the lonely silences of the forest. One full moon night, he was on his houseboat reading a book on beauty by a great philosopher... and they all start with great enthusiasm, as if they are going to define. And as you go deeper into the book the enthusiasm starts disappearing and you can start feeling their embarrassment that they have taken on a task which is intrinsically impossible. And as he closed the book, coming to the conclusion that beauty is indefinable.... He was reading the book in the candlelight, and because of the candlelight, the light of the moon had not entered through the windows of his cabin. He blew out the candle, he was going to bed, and suddenly from everywhere the moonlight came in, dancing.

He said, "My God, what a fool I am. Beauty is standing at the door, almost knocking! I am blinded by a small candle, and I am so much absorbed in reading the book - which is nothing but empty words, which leads nowhere but into the desert of indefinability."

He opened all the windows, all the doors, and came out on the deck of the boat. He had seen many beautiful nights, many beautiful full moons, but he had never seen such beauty, such silence. On the river, it was all silver of the moon. He remained silent, almost moonstruck.

In many languages the word 'moonstruck' means madman. And certainly if you open your heart to the moon, it is maddening; it is so immensely beautiful that your mind stops its chattering - you fall into a silence which we call meditation.

He wrote in his diary that night, "The beauty can be seen, can be felt, can be experienced; it can drive you mad, but you cannot define it. And I decide from today not to read any book which is an effort to define beauty, because no book can do it."

Mysticism is simply to bring into your life all those dimensions which are indefinable, and make you courageous enough to accept them, knowing perfectly well that definition is not possible, that reason is impotent.

Just because idiots have been asking questions - How?... Why? - slowly slowly the whole of humanity has dropped all those things about which they cannot give explanations. Life has become very mundane, profane; it has lost its sacredness, its divinity. It has lost its god.

To me, god is not a person. God is simply a symbol, symbolizing all those values which are indefinable - available to experience, but not available to reason; available to the heart, but not available to the mind.

This adventure of creating a university of mysticism is to bring all those values back to humanity.

This is not going to be an ordinary university. It is not going to teach all those subjects which are available to reason. It is going to help you to open yourself to all that which cannot be taught. It will not have teachers, it will only have openers, masters. It will not be situated in a certain place, it will have schools all over the world - I'm calling them mystery schools. All those mystery schools together will be the university of mysticism.

In true spirit it will be universal. A university has to be universal.

And its function is totally different: it is not going to teach you chemistry and physics, science and commerce and arts - all that is done already by thousands of universities, and it is all worthless.

This I can say because I have been a student in the universities, a professor in the universities; on my own authority I can say that they are engaged in mundane things. They create engineers, they create doctors, they create technicians. They are all needed. But they don't create poets; they kill the poets. They don't create mystics. They destroy the very roots on which a mystic can grow.

The university of mysticism will be concerned only with the supra-rational, that which is beyond the mind. And there is so much beyond the mind that if it is not made available to you, your situation is such as it happened in the second world war....

A small airplane was left in the jungles of Burma when Japan was defeated; the Japanese left it there. The aboriginals who lived in the forest found it. They were really very curious, excited - what is it? But seeing the wheels... they figured out that it is a kind of bullock cart, but some idiotic people have made it because this is not the way bullock carts are made. They started using that airplane, small airplane, as a bullock cart. Just by chance a man, a hunter, saw them; he could not believe his eyes - an airplane being used as a bullock cart!

He asked them, "Have you made it?"

They said, "No, we are not such idiots, why should we make it? We have found it. But we are enjoying it."

The hunter was from a nearby village where he had seen buses, cars. He said, "It seems to be a kind of car. It is not a bullock cart. You just wait; I will bring one of my friends who knows something about buses." He used to work for a bus transport service. So they brought some petrol, and it did work like a small bus.

And the people thought it was hilarious. They said, "So we were wrong, it is not a bullock cart; it is a bus. Great idea!" They enjoyed it.

And then the mechanic who had come said, "I don't know much about airplanes, but as far as I can see it is not a bus. I have seen airplanes only in the air. My village is small. Buses come up to my village and I have worked on the buses so I can help with this airplane - but this is an airplane because you can see the wings. I know a man in the city - I will find him and I will bring him - who knows about airplanes."

And the man from the city came and he said, "What nonsense is this? You are using a beautiful airplane as a bus, and that too in the jungle where there is no road, nothing. You are just dragging it through muddy roads. It can fly."

The aboriginals said, "It can fly? Is it a bird?"

He said, "It is a bird - have you not seen steel birds flying?"

They said, "We have seen, but we have never seen them on the earth."

The man managed... he took a few aboriginals with him and the airplane functioned as it was supposed to function - it started flying. And the whole village was dancing, beating their drums, singing, "This is great! A bullock cart flying!"

Man is not just a mundane physical, material phenomenon. He is not just a bullock cart, but that's how we are using him. We are all using ourselves as bullock carts. We can be buses - Suraj Prakash can help, he knows transport! - but we are not buses either.

We are airplanes. I can help you to fly.

Man can exist on many levels. There are levels and levels above.

Mysticism simply means....

You are not using your potential in its totality; you are using it only partially, a very small part, a fragment. And if you are not using your potential in its totality, you will never feel fulfilled. That is the misery, that is the cause of anguish.

You are born to be mystics. Unless you are a mystic, unless you have come to know existence as a mystery - beyond words, beyond reason, beyond logic, beyond mind - you have not taken the challenge of life, you have been a coward. You have wings, but you have forgotten it.

The University of Mysticism is to remind man about the wings that he has. He can fly, and the whole sky is his.

Question 3:

Gunakar, love has three stages.

First you have to learn to love yourself, because only if you love yourself can you love the other. You have to love yourself so much that love starts overflowing. Perhaps that is where you are; you need the other. That is the second stage of love.

Loving the other is a difficult job. Loving oneself is simple. Because the other need not fit with you, need not fulfill your expectations; the other may start power trips, ego trips, all kinds of numbers.

And you will need love enough not to be dominated, not to be destroyed by the other; otherwise, the other always destroys it.

Jean-Paul Sartre is not absolutely wrong when he says the other is hell. Alone you can be silent, peaceful. With the other everything becomes difficult, everything becomes a conflict. The very presence of the other makes demands on you. You have to be very compassionate, very kind, not to get caught into an intimate enmity; otherwise the other is going to become a hell to you.

It is not just a coincidence that all the religions of the world have been teaching celibacy - it is just to avoid the other. Religions have been teaching you to renounce the husband, the wife, the children.

Renounce the other; move to the mountains, to the monasteries, be alone. Their anti-life attitude is really an anti-other attitude. They have burned their fingers - but what they are doing is a reaction, it is not an understanding.

You have to be so loving that your love transforms the other, to such an extent that you can say the other is not hell. You have to be very articulate, very understanding. It is one of the greatest experiments in life. There is no other experiment which is bigger. You have to love in such a way that slowly, slowly it changes the other person, and the other person starts dropping the effort to dominate, the effort to manipulate. It all depends on your love.

In each case you should remember that you have taken the step. It is your experiment, and you have to be grateful to the other that he is participating in your experiment. If you want your experiment to be successful, then you have to go on loving in spite of the other, not bothering about small things.

Only when you can love the other person to such an extent that it becomes a transformation in him or in her does the third stage of love arrive. Then it is not a question of two persons loving each other; then it is love which engulfs two persons and the two persons become, in a certain deeper sense, one whole.

In India we have the statue of Aradhanishwar, half man, half woman. That is the third stage of love:

when the man and the woman are no more two persons, they have become half and half into one whole. This third stage of love is, automatically, meditation. One who can reach this stage need not do anything else for meditation; this will be his mysticism. This was the whole approach of tantra, to reach to the third stage of love; then no other religion, no other methods are needed. Love itself becomes your god, your ultimate experience.

But the second stage is really difficult; otherwise, for thousands of years people would not have escaped into monasteries. What was the fear? Why were they trying to hide in monasteries?

In Athos, in Europe there is a monastery which has existed for one thousand years. There are three thousand monks in the monastery even today. In Athos a man only enters; then coming out is out of the question. He comes out only when he is dead. And no woman has been allowed into the monastery in one thousand years, not even a six-month-old baby. People must be scared, must be living in great fear. Behind the great walls of the monastery, they have already entered their graves.

Only the graveyard is outside the monastery, so when they die then they can be brought out.

And in these monasteries they have been doing all kinds of austerities and they have been suffering all kinds of things imposed by themselves. Certainly the second stage of love must be a greater torture; otherwise why should these people choose this? And these are intelligent people, more intelligent people than average.

I have heard about a Trappist monastery. In that monastery, talking was not allowed. Every monk was given an opportunity, if he had something to say to the abbot, once in seven years' time.

One monk entered, renouncing his wife. Seven years passed. Those seven years were such a torture - because the cell that was given to him was too small, and the glass of the window was broken so whenever it was raining, the water was coming in. Day and night he was shivering; he could not ask for more clothes or blankets because speaking was not allowed. For seven years, he had to wait.

Seven years he waited, and as the seven years were completed he rushed to the abbot and he said, "This is strange. My window is broken and water has been coming in continually. I was not expecting that I would be alive after seven years; somehow by God's grace I am alive. Please fix the window."

The abbot was very angry. He said, "It will be done, but remember a monk is not supposed to complain. That is not the attitude of a monk."

The poor fellow went back in his cell. They repaired the window, but in the seven years' time that the water had been coming in, his mattress had become a mess. Now he remembered but it was too late - what to do with this mattress? Now he has to sleep on this mattress for seven years again. But he has accepted the austerities of being a monk. He remained - although he was not silent, he was completely full of anger and wanted to kill the abbot - "do something!" But it was not appropriate....

Again seven years passed, and the monk rushed... and the abbot said, "I know, there must be some complaint again."

He said, "What to do? Complaint or no complaint, but that mattress is rotten. Seven years of water on that mattress... You just come and have a look."

He said, "There is no need. You just go, the mattress will be changed."

The old mattress was taken out, and the new mattress was brought in. It was too big. Again the glass was broken; while they were bringing the mattress in, the glass was broken. He said, "My God, again seven years... the whole life is wasted." Again the water started coming....

After seven years, when he went to the abbot, the abbot said, "No more complaints - you just get out of the monastery. I have not heard anything from you in twenty-one years except complaints, complaints, complaints - and this is not the way of the monk."

But he said, "At least listen to my story."

The abbot said, "You just get out. You are not worthy to be a monk, just go to your wife."

He said, "My God, again to my wife... after twenty-one years she must be waiting to kill me! It is better that I go to my cell; anyway, in twenty-one years I have become accustomed. But to go back to the wife again...."

The second step is really difficult, and because of the difficulty all religions have chosen to escape from life. But escaping from life is not the answer, it is simply cowardice.

Life has to be changed through understanding. And if you love, love has an alchemy of its own.

If love cannot change the other person, it only means you don't know what love is; you must be misunderstanding something else for love, because love is absolutely capable of changing people.

In fact, it is the only way to change.

And when Jean-Paul Sartre says, "The other is hell," it is Christianity that is speaking through him, it is not he. He is unconscious; he is not aware that what he is saying represents two thousand years of Christianity condemning the other. And then, when you come to the other, you don't have love - naturally you are incapable of changing and the other is incapable of changing you.

There is no place where love is being taught. There is no place where love is being nourished. That is one of the functions of the mystery school: to make your love pure, pure of ego and power and domination - just a sheer gift of joy, a delight in the being of the other person, just a sharing of all that you have, holding nothing back.

Love is the greatest magic.

Gunakar, don't be afraid of the other; let the other enter your life. I don't teach escapism. I teach you to go into the world, to transform the world, because only in that transformation will you be transformed. By escaping to the hills and to the monasteries you will miss transformation yourself.

You will shrink, you will not expand. And if you cannot love a single person, how are you going to love the whole universe? And that's what prayer is - loving the whole universe.

People feel that it is easier to love the whole universe, because there seems to be no problem - the universe, the trees, the stars, the moon, the sun... they don't create any problem.

Gautam Buddha used to say to his disciples after each meditation in the morning, "The last thing before you get up from the meditation is to shower the whole world with the blessing that you have experienced in meditation. Don't keep anything for yourself."

One man approached Buddha and he said, "I can do it; just one small exception - and I hope you will not object to it, it is such a small thing."

Buddha said, "What is that?"

He said, "I can share my love, my joy with the whole universe - but not with my neighbor; that is impossible. That I cannot do."

Buddha said, "Then for you, forget about the whole universe. For you, this is the rule: after each meditation you shower all your joy and all your peace and silence on the neighbor."

The man said, "My God, what are you doing?"

He said, "I know what I am doing - because the neighbor is the problem."

Even Jesus... in one statement he says, "Love thy neighbor as thyself" exactly as he says "Love thy enemy as thyself."

I was talking to one of the Christian theologians and I said, "Perhaps both these persons, the neighbor and the enemy, are the same - because where are you going to get the enemy? He is unnecessarily repeating the same thing; it was enough just to say 'Love thy neighbor as thyself.'

That was enough, because the neighbor is the enemy. Where else are you going to get the enemy?"

It is easier to share your love with the whole universe.

No, first share your love with one individual, because he will give you real trouble. And unless you have passed that examination, you are not in a position to share your love with the universe. Then the universe is an empty word. Start by finding the person, the more difficult the better.

It is a kind of asceticism, just a new way of being an ascetic - finding a woman is far more difficult than going to the Himalayas and distorting your body and doing yoga exercises. That is nothing; even circus people are doing far better, but they don't arrive to any superconsciousness. Just one woman, a real difficult woman, and she will open the doors to the whole universe.

Gunakar, it took eight years for you to love yourself; now, don't go on that way so slowly. The second part is the longest, but if you are determined.... And Gunakar is a German. If he decides, he will do it.

The other creates trouble because your love is not enough. If your love is overflowing, the other will be showered by it, cleansed by it. And instead of creating trouble for you, the other can become a tremendous help, a complementary part in the organic unity of your being, and can lead you to the third stage.

It all depends on how much you can love.

And I don't think that one should be miserly about love. It costs nothing. And it is not a quantity, that you have loved one kilo, so now there is one kilo less. It is not a quantity.

The more you love, the more you have it.

The more you give, the more the universe goes on pouring into you from all sides. There are hidden springs, just as in a well.

It happened once that there were no rains for four years continuously, and of course the king closed his well to save the water. He himself started drinking from the public well because the palace was using too much water. And if the rains were not going to come for one year more, the public well would be dry, but then, at least the king and his family could survive. And the rains did not come.

Then he opened his well, but strange... the water had disappeared. Every well is connected with hidden springs. When you take water out of the well, more water comes from those springs. When the water was not taken from the well, the springs started a reverse journey. They started taking water to the public well - and because they are underground you don't see them.

Love has an underground way of filling you, invisible.

The only way to know is just give it and see - you are always full. Don't give it, and one day you will find your well is dry.

Question 4:

There is no need to know me.

The need is to know yourself.

Your very desire is basically wrong; hence, the gulf. You cannot know me, and there is no need either. That is my work and I have done it. Now you do your homework. The day you know yourself, there will be no gulf between me and you. Knowing yourself, you will know me and you will know everyone else too.

The whole secret is within you, but you are looking the wrong way - outside. Trying to know me means you are still looking outside.

Please close your eyes and look inside.

Your whole energy has to settle within yourself, in your very center. In that very settlement arises the knowing, the light, the flame.

And it is not that you know only yourself; you know the whole universe - because we are made of the same stuff, the same universal consciousness.

Question 5:

Latifa, this is a perfectly good arrangement!

I am your master; you cannot be bitchy with me.

And he is your boyfriend - if you are not bitchy with him, what are you going to be with him? He will miss - boyfriends need it. Unless they have found a good bitch, they are passing into great trouble.

This is perfectly right.

That's why I always want my sannyasins to have their boyfriends, their girlfriends - so that I am left in peace!