Love Needs No Time

TRUTH CAN BE APPROACHED IN TWO WAYS: ONE IS LOGIC, ANOTHER IS LOVE. And both are diametrically opposite to each other They speak different languages. They are untranslatable Logic cannot make itself comprehensible to love, and vice versa Love looks illogical to logic, irrational, a little bit mad. Logic looks irrelevant to love, because it goes round and round but never penetrates the reality. Love thinks about logic as a futile exercise, a gymnastics of the mind, a game - but to no purpose because it leads nowhere. It is non-conclusive.

It is just chasing your own tail. You can go on chasing for ever and ever, you can become very much obsessed by it, but ultimately your hands remain empty. You have not arrived.

Love and logic have to be understood. If you don't understand them rightly, their methods, their approaches, their visions, you will remain confused.

Logic is very convincing - and there is the danger of it. It is convincing and yet non-conclusive. It gives an appearance, it pretends. It is knowledge, information, but never wisdom. And only wisdom liberates.

Love cannot convince you. It is unconvincing, because it is vague, it is cloudy, it is a mystery. It is not a syllogism. It cannot appeal to your mind - but it can satisfy your being. It can quench your thirst. It can give you all that you need. It can nourish. This is the problem.

The nourishing love is illogical, and the pseudo food of logic is very convincing. And these are the two things which make philosophy and religion separate. It is here that philosophy and religion part ways.

You will be surprised to know that the word 'Sufism' comes from the same root as 'philosophy'. Both come from the same root, from SUF, Sufism, SOPHIA, philosophy. But the meaning is not only different but diametrically opposite. Sufism is not a philosophy, and philosophy has nothing of the beauty of Sufism in it. What happened? We have to understand man's inner structure.

Mind is divided into two hemispheres. One hemisphere thinks, is logical. The other hemisphere loves, intuits, is not logical. One hemisphere proceeds methodologically. The other hemisphere jumps... without any methodology. It takes quantum leaps. One hemisphere is always a continuous track. The other is a discontinuity.

Your left-side brain is logical - prose, male, aggressive, violent, ambitious. Your right-side brain is feminine - non-ambitious, poetic, aesthetic. Your right hand is connected with the left hemisphere, and your left hand is collected with the right hemisphere. That's why the right hand has become so important.

The right hand has become so important because we have made logic the king. The left hand is neglected, ignored, is thought to be lower, in the East is thought to be almost untouchable. Why?

The question is not of the hands - deep down the question is about the division of your brain.

The right hand seems to be right, and the left hand seems to be wrong. This is an ugly state of affairs.

The left hand has much to contribute. And without its contribution life becomes a drag, a drudgery, because without poetry there can be no joy, and without intuitiveness there can be no celebration.

And without the sensitivity for beauty, life becomes meaningless. Maybe it can become a successful business, but it remains deep down existentially a failure. And unless you succeed existentially, you have failed, utterly failed. And it is very unfortunate that very few succeed existentially. Those who succeed, they are the Sufis, they are the Buddhas.

To succeed existentially means to live moment-to-moment in utter joy. Logic cannot allow you. Joy itself appears to logic as illogical. Misery seems to be more logical. All the logicians are agreed upon the fact that life is a misery. It is a pain in the neck, it is anguish, it is despair. All the logicians are agreed upon it that the only fundamental question to be faced by man is suicide.

Those who can dance and sing and celebrate and jubilate look mad. Jesus looks mad! Rumi looks mad. Me era looks mad. These are the Sufis, these are the lovers. They have a totally different vision of life.

Just as the human mind is divided into two, love and logic, exactly the same way the whole earth has become divided into two: the East and the West. The West has chosen the path of logic and the East has chosen the path of love.

The earliest reference of a Western philosopher to Indian philosophy is that of Megasthenes, the Ambassador of Seleucus Nicator at the court of Chandragupta, who reported in the third century B.C. that he had visited 'gymnosophists' in India - the naked wise men of India. He calls them 'gymnosophists' - he is talking about the Jains. They are not sophists at all.

A sophist is exactly against the Sufi. A sophist is one who exults in argumentation, who loves to argue, whose whole life is devoted to reasoning. His whole life is dedicated to only one thing: how to conquer the opponent. By right means or wrong means is irrelevant - the question is: how to defeat the opponent.

The sophist has no trust in truth. The sophist is not a seeker of truth. The sophist is one who goes on trying to prove himself right. The sophist does not believe that there is anything like truth. His definition of truth is 'that which can be logically proved' - then it is true. If it cannot be logically proved, then it is untrue.

Megasthenes is basically the Western mind. He must have seen Jains. And it was very close; Mahavir had died only three hundred years before - Jainism was still alive. Buddha had lived only a few years before - still there was some fragrance of Buddha and Mahavir in the country. Still people were full of the joy that Mahavir and Buddha had exploded in the world. The light had not disappeared completely. But Megasthenes missed.

The Western mind thinks in logic, in terms of logic. He calls them 'gymnosophists'. They are not sophists at all - they are Sufis.

A Sufi is one who is not trying to prove his opinion to be true, who is always ready to surrender his opinion for truth. From whatever source the truth comes he is ready to surrender. The sophist is one who, even if he sees that the other is holding a true opinion, will go on fighting, will try to prove that he is right.

The sophist tries to prove that "I am right." And the Sufi tries to discover WHAT IS RIGHT. Their orientation is different. But I can understand Megasthenes, why he calls Jains sophists. The Western mind has always looked at things from the very beginning.... The earth has become divided just like the brain is divided.

Clement of Alexandria, a Christian Gnostic of the second century, suggests in his writings that the Greek philosophy was an importation from India. There is every possibility that what Clement of Alexandria says IS right, but the nature of philosophy changed. When it moved from the East to the West, the color, the meaning, the texture, the taste - everything changed. It is almost impossible now to think that the Greek philosophy was originally a branch of Indian philosophy. The change has become so big - they seem unbridgeable.

Clement seems to be right, that it was imported from India. There are historical proofs. Clement himself says that Pythagoras, one of the greatest mystics of Greece, visited India, studied under Brahmin sages - not only that - was also initiated into Buddhist mysteries as a disciple. There are enough proofs in Pythagoras' teachings that something of the Buddha is present in him.

But the moment things go from the East to the West, they change their color. The context changes.

The whole noe-sphere is different. When love has to be understood logically, something goes wrong.

The spirit is lost - only a corpse remains in your hands.

Because of this difference between Sufism and sophistry you will also note that in the East personalities have never been important. Indian philosophy is not tied to personalities. Little is known about the lives of the philosophers. The philosopher in the East has been a discoverer, not a formulator, of truth. Truth is as ancient as existence itself. Nobody can claim that one has discovered it. It has been discovered many times - the most one can say is that "I have rediscovered it." And one of the conditions to rediscover is that you should disappear. There should not be the claimer, the I.

The West has its Platonism, Hegelianism, Kantism. In India there is no parallel. You cannot come across anything like 'Patanjalism', 'Shankaraism' - no, not at all. The Philosophy is not rooted in the ego of the individual. The individual disappears. Truth comes, floods one's being.... But the logical mind cannot take that much of a risk. It always remains in control. It possesses the truth.

And truth by its very nature cannot be possessed. So whatsoever the logical mind possesses is not truth but an OPINION about truth. It is not the real thing. It is just a carbon copy of it, a reflection.

In small things the differences have become great. For example: the Western concept of zero, the mathematical zero, has reached the West from India. Zero is an Indian discovery. But the meaning has changed. In the Western mind the zero means nought. In Buddhism zero - SHUNYA - does not mean simply a mathematical nought: it means the existential state of no-self. It means selflessness.

It means empty of oneself.

And in Hinduism the zero - BINDU - is a solid dot symbolizing a fertile seed. It is the productive point of potentiality, the matrix of the negative and the positive. Once, Ramana Maharshi, when asked to sign an autograph book, made only a dot in the center of the page with the remark, "In the BINDu all is contained. I too am included in it - so there is no need to sign separately."

Now the same concept, zero, in the West becomes just a mathematical, logical concept. In Buddhism it is existential selflessness. In Hinduism - the SAME concept - it is a solid matrix of all that is possible.

Remember it, that how you look at things makes much dif-ference. Whether you look with full loving eyes....

It is said about a great Hassidic mystic, the Baal Shem, that ordinarily he would not use specs, but whenever he talked to a philosopher, a logician, he would immediately put his specs on his eyes. It was strange; people were watching it.

A disciple one day asked, "What is the matter? Ordinarily you never put specs on. We disciples go on discussing with you a thousand and one things, but whenever a logician comes, you always put specs on your eyes."

And he laughed. And what he said is very significant. He said, "To you I need not look as separate.

To you I can remain in my state; I need not descend from there. My eyes have lost all distinctions.

You and the tree and the rock are all one. When I am talking to a disciple, there is no need to make any distinction. I am talking to the disciple and to the tree and to the rock, and to the stars and to the sky... all is one. Because I talk from the standpoint of love. I flood you with my love, and I become flooded with your love. But when a logician comes, I have to descend. I have to put specs on my eyes so I become blind, so I lose that enormous vision. My eyes become narrowed, because the logician insists on distinctions; things should be debarked and defined. Love knows no definition, no demarcation."

Bawl Shem is right. This is my experience too. Talking to a sannyasin, being with a sannyasin, is a totally different phenomenon. But talking to somebody who has come with great knowledge in his mind, who is ready to fight, to argue, who is hankering for some opportunity and excuse to collide, is a totally different experience. It is ugly. There is no communion. There is no meeting of the hearts.

Love opens a different door to reality. Logic also opens a door. The door of logic becomes science; the door of love becomes religion. That's why Western philosophy is disappearing. The reason why Western philosophy slowly slowly is reduced to science? - because science has taken over.

Western philosophy has no purpose left. At the most it can remain in the shadow of science as a servant. It is no more the master. And nobody else is responsible - it itself is responsible for it. That was its insistence: logic, fact.... Now science is more logical and more factual, so philosophy seems only a kind of primitive science, a rudimentary science. And, of course, when more sophisticated science has come, what is the point of philosophy?

So, in the West, philosophers are at a loss: now what to do? Their whole job is gone. Departments of the great Western universities are becoming more and more empty; students no longer turn up.

There is nothing there! And philosophers, at the most, have become just logical analysts; linguistic analysis has become their whole work. Now they don't ask whether God exists or not - their question is: What do you mean when you use the word 'God'? Their question is about the word 'God', not about God himself - what do you mean when you use the word 'God'? The meaning of the word....

Not much philosophy is left. It is disappearing, it is a dying subject. Science has taken over.

Philosophy, if it enters from the door of logic, is bound to disappear sooner or later into science, because what philosophy does, science can do better. Philosophy can live only if it enters through the door of love. Then nobody can take its temple. Then it is real SOPHIA - real wisdom.

A FEW THINGS BEFORE WE ENTER INTO THIS SMALL PARABLE. If you look through love, it is not that the reality changes - reality is the same. Whether you look from logic or from love, the reality remains the same - but you are different. And when you are different, of course, you see different things. When somebody looks with the vision of a poet at the full moon, it is a totally different experience - uplifting, elevating, ecstatic. When somebody looks at the moon with the eyes of an astronomer, there is no uplifting, there is no prayer felt. The heart doesn't beat faster. You don't feel any ecstasy. You don't become warmed up. You don't feel connected. It is the SAME moon! but you are blind, closed....

I had a professor when I was a student at university. He was a world-famous chemist, and his idea was this: that chemistry is the only real science. And one day will come when all other sciences will disappear, because chemistry can explain EVERYTHING. It can explain life, it can explain love, it can explain poetry - because reduced to facts, all is chemical. Existence is chemical.

One day I was following him - he was unaware - he had gone for a walk. It was a full-moon night.

He was holding his wife's hand, and I followed him. I didn't allow him to know that I was there. It was a full-moon night, and he forgot that he is a chemistry professor and a great chemist, and he kissed the wife... and I said "Stop!" He was shocked. And when he saw me he said, "What do you mean by 'stop'? It is my wife."

"That is not the point," I said. "But what are you doing? - this is just chemistry. And a man of your understanding kissing a woman? Just a small chemical transfer from here to there? Just a few germs from her lips to your lips, from your lips to her lips? What are you doing? Are you affected by the moon? Have you become a lunatic or something? And why are you holding her hand? How can you explain it chemically?"

But there are people who are trying to explain things chemically, physically, electrically. They only destroy life's mystery.

I told the professor, "Whenever you kiss your wife, remember me, and remember your philosophy."

After three, four weeks, I saw him again and I said, "How are things going?"

And he said, "You have disturbed me VERY much - because it really happens. When I kiss my wife, I remember you.... "

Life is not reducible to chemistry, is not reducible to logical syllogism. Life is far bigger. Its mystery is infinite. Only love CAN understand it. Only love has that infinity to cope with it. Everything else is very finite. Only love can dare to move into the indefinable, to move into the subtle.

Love changes your vision so radically that many things disappear. One: in deep love, time disappears. And time is one of the barriers to knowing reality. When time disappears, things are transparent.

Have you not observed it: when you are miserable, time seems to be going very slow? When you are happy, time moves faster. When you are REALLY in ecstasy - samadhi - time disappears. In that timelessness you are present to reality, face to face. Only in that timelessness does the real encounter with reality happen. For the first time you see eye to eye.

Time depends upon the state of development of the individual. The more advanced a person is in his total human development, the less is his awareness of time. The perfected person has no consciousness of time. Time simply means that you are not in the present. Time means past and future. When time disappears, YOU ARE here now. And only then the contact with reality....

Logic functions in time: love functions in timelessness. Logic needs time: love needs no time. And only love can reveal to you the nature of eternity.

IN ECSTASY, ALL THAT IS PAST AND THAT IS FUTURE DRAWS NEAR TO THE PRESENT. TIME SHRINKS, THE LINE BETWEEN THE ETERNITIES DISAPPEARS, ONLY THE MOMENT LIVES, and the moment is eternity. IN ITS UNDIVIDED LIGHT APPEARS ALL THAT WAS AND ALL THAT WILL BE, SIMPLE AND COMPOSED. IT IS THERE AS A HEARTBEAT IS THERE, AND BECOMES PERCEPTIBLE LIKE IT.

Yes, exactly like that: IT IS THERE AS A HEARTBEAT IS THERE, AND BECOMES PERCEPTIBLE LIKE IT. God is a heartbeat - the heartbeat of the whole. God cannot be known through reasoning:

God can only be felt through the heart, because God is a heartbeat of the whole.

You will have to find a synchronicity with the heartbeat of God. You will have to fall in rhythm. You will have to attain to a kind of harmony. Hence, Sufis are so mad about music, singing, chanting, dancing. Not reasoning, but dancing - because only in dance do you start falling with the heartbeat of the whole. Only in dance does the moment of grace arrive when you are not and God is. Only in dance does the separation between the mind and the body disappear - and you are one whole, one piece, all together, no more fragmentary.

If you can dance deeply, so deeply that the dancer disappears in the dance, this is prayer. And once you have known what prayer is, then ALL is prayer. Then teaching, talking, listening, eating, sleeping... all are one. Then all is prayer. All action is one, and the infinite life enclosed in every action. This is what Hassids call AVODA - service through ecstasy. In all the deeds of the awakened one - speaking and looking and listening and going and remaining standing and Lying down - the boundless is clothed.

But the first experience comes either through singing or dancing or meditating. In short, the first experience always comes when time disappears.

Logic cannot allow time to disappear. It is a very illogical experience to let time go and to be without time. When you are without time, you are with God. Naturally, when time disappears, mind disappears. They are two aspects of the same coin.

Samadhi is the burning of all knowledge, of all mind. Not only of the knowledge but of the knower too. All disappears into the fire of samadhi... the knowledge, the known, the knower. It is an Armour of ecstasy. And only in this fire, that which is is known.

Repetition, the power which weakens and discolors so much in human life, is powerless before ecstasy, which catches fire again and again from precisely the most regular, most uniform events and yet always remains new, utterly new, radically new. Ecstasy overcame a mystic in reciting the scriptures each time that he reached the words: And God spoke....

It used to happen to Ramakrishna also. Just the mention of the name of God - Rama, Krishna, Allah - and he would fall into samadhi. He would disappear from the world of time into the world of timelessness.

Small things start having immense significance.

But all depends on a great change within you - you have to move from logic to love, from the head to the heart, from philosophy to SOPHIA.

This small story:

A SCHOLAR SAID TO A SUFI, "YOU SUFIS OFTEN SAY THAT OUR LOGICAL QUESTIONS ARE INCOMPREHENSIBLE TO YOU. CAN YOU GIVE ME AN EXAMPLE OF WHAT THEY SEEM LIKE TO YOU?"

FIRST, WHO IS A SCHOLAR? The scholar is one who has become interested in the non-essential.

The scholar is one who has lost track of the essential and has become distracted in the details of the non-essential. He works hard, he devotes his whole life, but to rubbish. If you look at his work, you will appreciate his sincerity. But if you look at the outcome, you will laugh at his stupidity.

People go ON working, year in, year out, their whole lives, for things which don't matter at all.

Once a great scholar came to me. His whole life he had devoted to a single purpose: whether Krishna is really a historical person or not. Now, how does it matter? Even if it is proved, to his heart's content, that he is historical, then what? That's exactly what I asked him.

I asked him, "You are nearing sixty. You have worked your whole life, almost thirty-five years you have been working - even if it is proved that Krishna is a historical person, what are you going to do?"

He was at a loss how to answer. He said, "I have never thought about it. In fact, nobody has asked me this question. Everybody has been appreciating me, my work."

He had looked into scriptures, into old inscriptions on stones, rocks, archaeology... and thousands and thousands of ways to prove it. Still he had not been able to prove it absolutely. But he said, "Nobody asked me. Everybody has been appreciating my work."

I told him, "Whether it is proved that Krishna existed historically OR that he never existed, it is not going to change your life in any way, so what is the point. Why are you wasting your life? If you feel that what Krishna has said is significant, live it. If you think it is insignificant, then even if he was historically there, it is useless to waste your time."

The East has never been scholarly. The West has brought that disease to the East also. Now thousands of people in the universities go on working in research... they go on and on writing things. And a man may work for years on Kabir and he has never meditated according to Kabir.

Look at the absurdity of it! And he is trying to understand Kabir. How can you understand Kabir unless you experience his ways of being?

A scholar is a man of great intelligence but gone astray. He has put his intelligence to a use which is useless. By the same effort, by the same endeavor, he himself could have become transformed. By the same effort, he himself may become a Kabir or a Krishna. And he was just working on whether Krishna was historical or not.

I told the old man, "The only way to prove whether he was historical is to create Krishna- consciousness in yourself. If you can create Krishna-consciousness in yourself, then it is proved that this is possible. If it is possible for you, why is it not possible for somebody else? If I can become a Buddha, that's the only way to prove that Buddha existed. To prove that Buddha existed, one has to exist as a Buddha - there is no other way." But then that is the way of the Sufi, not the way of the scholar.

A SCHOLAR SAID TO A SUFI...

The Sufi thinks only of the essential. He discards all that is non-essential. He looks only for the diamonds; he does not collect rubbish, he is not interested in junk.

THE SCHOLAR ASKED THE SUFI, "YOU SUFIS OFTEN SAY THAT OUR LOGICAL QUESTIONS ARE INCOMPREHENSIBLE TO YOU."

Logical questions ARE incomprehensible to the Sufi - because they are stupid questions! The logical person asks: Prove what prayer is. It is incomprehensible. It cannot be proved. He should ask: Teach how to pray. Then it is not a logical question, it is existential.

You cannot ask: Prove what love is. You can only ask: Help me so that I can love.

The logical question is incomprehensible to the Sufi, to the knower. One who knows looks at logical questions as childish curiosities. His vision is totally different.

I have heard, it is told, that the great mystic, Baal Shem, once remained standing on the threshold of a house of prayer and did not want to enter. He spoke in aversion: "I cannot enter there. The house is full to the brim of teaching and prayer." And when his companions were astonished - because it appeared to them that there could be no greater praise than this - he explained to them: "During the day the people speak words here without true devotion, without love and compassion, words that have no wings. Because the words are spoken without devotion and because they have no wings, they remain between the walls, they squat on the floor, they grow layer by layer like decaying leaves, until the decay has packed the house to overflowing and there is no longer room for me in there.

"The house is too full of teaching, and too full of prayer. People go on praying, and their hearts are not in those prayers. Those prayers are dead; they cannot fly; they have no wings - they cannot reach to God. So though it is a house of prayer, a temple, I cannot enter in it - it is too full of prayer and words. There is no space in it."

The scholar is like that - too full of words, decaying, layer upon layer. The scholar stinks of dead words. He has spoken great words, but with no love, with no devotion. Hence those words have no wings; they are like stones hanging around his neck. He is being drowned by his words, by his philosophies, by his doctrines, by his dogmas. And the scholar may even be a man of prayer, he may go to pray, but his prayer is also false. It is a ritual. It has no spontaneity.

I love one story by Tolstoy. I have told it many times, but I love it so much...

Once in Russia it became very well known: Three mystics appeared, and they were miraculous people. They lived beyond a lake in the mountains. Thousands of pilgrims started moving towards them, and whosoever came from there was touched, moved, came radiant, came vibrant, brought something of the invisible with him.

The whole country was aflame with the desire to go and see the mystics. Naturally, the arch priest became very much disturbed: "Who are these mystics?" And in Christianity, before a person can be called a saint, he has to be certified by the church. Now, this seems to be the most absurd thing in the whole world: a saint needs to be certified by the church. The English word 'saint' really comes from 'sanction', because it has been sanctioned that he is a saint.

"Without any sanction from the church, how have these people become saints?" The arch priest was angry - and jealous too.

He went to see those mystics. He had to go in a boat. When he reached there, he saw three simple people sitting under a tree - very simple villagers. They touched his feet; all the three saints touched his feet. He was very happy. And he said, "So you are the people! You have declared that you are saints?"

They said, "No, how can we declare? We don't know anything about sainthood. We are poor people, illiterate. People are creating rum ours about us - we don't know. We don't know a thing! We are very blessed that you came. Bless us!"

He said, "What prayer do you do? What scriptures do you read?"

They said, "We are absolutely illiterate. We cannot read. And nobody has ever taught us any prayer.

You teach us."

"But you must be praying," the priest asked.

They looked at each other, felt ashamed. One said to the other, "You tell him," and the other said to the third, "You tell him."

And the priest said, "But why are you looking so ashamed and guilty? What is your prayer? Tell me!"

And they had to tell, and they said, "We have made a prayer of our own. We are stupid people, forgive us. Don't be angry. We don't know any prayer, so we have constructed one. Our prayer is simple. We pray.... " In Christianity, God is a Trinity - God the Father and the Holy Ghost and the Son - so they said, "We say to God: You are three, we are three - have mercy on us. This is our prayer. But please don't be angry with us. We are really ignorant people."

Even the priest laughed. He said, "Never heard such a prayer. You fools! You drop it, you stop it!

and I will tell you the authorized prayer."

It is a long prayer... the ancient Russian Orthodox Church has a very long prayer. He repeated the whole prayer. They listened, but they said, "This is too long. We cannot remember it - you will have to tell it again."

And thrice they said, "Please, once more, otherwise we will forget."

So thrice he repeated; very happy he felt, and he went back into the boat. Just in the middle of the lake, he was very much puzzled - the boatman was very much puzzled - those three villagers were coming running on the water. And they said, "Wait! We have forgotten the prayer.... Please, once more."

Now the priest had to fall at their feet, and he said, "Excuse me, your prayer is right - it has been heard! I have prayed so long, but I cannot walk on water. Your prayer is perfectly right, you continue:

You are three, we are three - have mercy on us. And whatsoever you want to do, you DO, because your prayer has reached!"

Prayers have wings when they are of the heart. Words have wings when they are spontaneous, when they come from your natural being.

Scholars are poor people - stuffed with knowledge, but all knowledge is dead. A Sufi is one whose words have winos, whose prayers have been heard, because his prayers have arisen out of his heart. They are not logical constructions; they have nothing to do with the logical mind. They are feminine.

A SCHOLAR SAID TO A SUFI, "YOU SUFIS OFTEN SAY THAT OUR LOGICAL QUESTIONS ARE INCOMPREHENSIBLE TO YOU. CAN YOU GIVE ME AN EXAMPLE OF WHAT THEY SEEM LIKE TO YOU?"

THEY ARE INCOMPREHENSIBLE TO THE SUFIS, because logic is not their world, logic is not their game. It is a game! It has its rules. Let me tell you a few stories.

A rabbi, a priest, and a minister were playing poker. Suddenly, the police burst into the room.

"Sorry, gents, but gambling's illegal," said one of the officers, and he hustled the religious trio down to court.

"I'm sorry about this," said the judge, "but now that you're here there's only one thing to do. Since you're all men of the cloth, I think I can trust your word. So I'll ask you if you were gambling, and whatever you answer, I'll believe you. We'll start with you, Father."

"Your Honour, surely it is important to be certain that we define what we mean by gambling. In a narrow but entirely valid sense, what we describe as gambling is only truly so if there is a desire to win money, rather than merely to enjoy the suspense of the fall of cards. In addition, we might confine gambling to situations where the loss of money would be harmful, as..."

"Okay, Father," the judge interrupted. "I see that in the manner in which you define the word you were not gambling. Now how about you, Reverend?"

The minister said, "I entirely agree with my learned colleague."

"Fine," said the judge. "And now you, Rabbi. Were you gambling?"

The rabbi looked at his two friends, and then back at the judge, and asked, "With whom, Your Honour?"

Logic has its ways. It is a beautiful game. You can enjoy it. But those who are interested in reality are not interested in such games.

A poor tailor was beside himself. His wife was sick and perhaps dying. He called on the only doctor nearby.

"Please, save my wife, doctor! I'll pay anything!"

"But what if I can't cure her" asked the doctor.

"I'll pay whether you cure her or kill her, if only you'll come right away!"

So the doctor promptly visited the woman, but within a week, she died. Soon a bill arrived charging the tailor a tremendous fee. The tailor couldn't hope to pay, so he asked the doctor to appear with him before the local rabbi to arbitrate the case.

"He agreed to pay me for treating his wife," stated the physician, "whether I cured her or killed her."

The rabbi was thoughtful. "Well, did you cure her?"

"No," admitted the doctor.

"And did you kill her?"

"I certainly did not!" expostulated the physician.

"In that case," the rabbi said with finality, "you have no grounds on which to base a fee."

One can enjoy logic. One can enjoy logic-chopping too. But never be befooled - it cannot lead you to truth. You have to surrender ALL logicalness. That's why it is very incomprehensible to the Sufis. They have dropped all logicalness. They are mad people, drunk with the divine. So whenever somebody asks a logical question, they condemn it.

THE SUFI SAID, "HERE IS SUCH AN EXAMPLE. I WAS ONCE TRAVELING BY TRAIN AND WE WENT THROUGH SEVEN TUNNELS. OPPOSITE ME WAS SITTING A PEASANT WHO OBVIOUSLY HAD NEVER BEEN IN A TRAIN BEFORE.

"AFTER THE SEVENTH TUNNEL, THE PEASANT TAPPED ME ON THE KNEE AND SAID, 'THIS TRAIN IS TOO COMPLICATED. ON MY DONKEY I CAN GET TO MY VILLAGE IN ONLY ONE DAY. BUT BY TRAIN, WHICH SEEMS TO BE TRAVELLING FASTER THAN A DONKEY, WE HAVE NOT YET ARRIVED AT MY HOME, THOUGH THE SUN HAS RISEN AND SET SEVEN WHOLE TIMES.'"

THE SUFI IS SAYING: according to the peasant, his statement is logical. According to HIS experience it is logical. But to those who know that we have passed through seven tunnels it will be absurd.

The Sufi is saying: When a scholar talks logically, according to HIS experience, according to his learning, scholarship, it looks very logical. But to the man of understanding, who has passed through all the tunnels of the mind, and has come into the openness of the being, it looks absurd - just like this story.

It is incomprehensible to the Sufi, because his experience is of a totally DIFFERENT kind of reality.

And he is right! because he knows the world of the scholar. He knows both worlds. He has also lived in the world of the mind, in the world of time, in the world of thought and logic. He knows all about it perfectly. And then he moved beyond it. He is a witness to both; whatsoever he says has to be far more important than the assertions of the scholars.

Remember it. A man who has only slept and has never known what awakening is, to him dreams are true. Because in sleep everybody thinks dreams are true. But the man who has known both the dream and the awakening, to him dreams are untrue. Listen to the one who has known both. That has been the Eastern experience. We don't pay any attention to what the scholar says, because what he says is the experience of us all. It is nothing new! Maybe he is more articulate, maybe he is more clever, maybe he can bring more footnotes to his statements, he can quote scriptures - but what he says is qualitatively the same. Quantitatively he may be better, but there is no difference between him and other people.

But when a Buddha arises, a Sufi is born, a Christ-consciousness walks on the earth, it is qualitatively different.

And one thing to be remembered again and again: Buddha has lived in your world too; he has also dreamt like you. He has also been be fooled by the dreams like you. Now he has become awakened.

He knows both. Hence, whatsoever he says is far more true than the statements of those who have known only one kind of world.

Beware of being dragged into scholarship. Beware of your own logicalness. Beware of reason. It is reason that has made your life dry. It is reason that has destroyed all the juice of your being. It is reason that has become your suicide. Beware of it! Go beyond it... because only beyond it is the world of truth. Only beyond it is the kingdom of God. And unless you have known the kingdom of God, don't be contented - remain discontented.

This divine discontent makes one a disciple. And this divine discontent, sooner or later, becomes such a fire that it burns one's ego utterly. And when you are no more, the Sufi is born.

Scholarship is an addition to you. You remain the same. You become more and more informed. To be a Sufi, you have to pass through a death experience. It is not an addition to you: it is a new birth.

It is a rebirth.

Jesus says: Unless you are born again you will not enter into the kingdom of my God. And do you know to whom these words were said? They were said to a great scholar, Nicodemus. He was a famous professor of those days; he was far more knowledgeable than Jesus himself. Jesus was illiterate, a poor man's son, a carpenter's son. Nicodemus was rich, famous, a well-known scholar, respected. Why does Jesus say to him: Unless you are born again...? The scholar has to die, only then is the Sufi born. And to be a Sufi is to live in the kingdom of God.

Be discontented with all that you know. There is a knowing which is not knowledge. There is a wisdom which is not scholarship. But to attain to it you will have to empty yourself completely of all that you think is knowledge. Say goodbye to the scholar, say goodbye to the mind, and let the no-mind enter in you.

That no-mind is the door to the kingdom of God.