Use reason to its optimum but then ....

Use reason, but it takes you only to the door. It cannot take you inside the temple, it takes you up to the door. Use reason, but don’t be caught by it, don’t be stuck with it.

When you use your reason to its optimum – you would see that it comes to a certain extent, it takes you to a certain point, and then it is stuck, then it is exhausted. And reality goes on spreading beyond it, so reality is bigger than reason.

Use reason as far as it can take you, but then don’t remain there. Go beyond it.

Use reasoning but always remember there is something beyond it. Never forget the beyond.

Use reason, reach the door, remember that the real is still to happen. Wait. Wait in tremendous openness, remain vulnerable. Don’t become closed, don’t start making a conclusion. A conclusion means you are becoming closed. If reason can give you a conclusion, this way or that, for or against God, you are finished; then there is no beyond.

See the point that reason is inconclusive, and remain non-conclusive and wait. You have come to the door, now his presence will take you in.

But now you can understand how it happened. When you come to the extreme point of your reason, and if you are still available, not closed – if you have not concluded, this way or that way, if you have not yet become a theist or an atheist, if you still have the awareness that reason remains inconclusive – then you will be taken in by his presence. He will appear as a master and will take you in. And then it can happen in a single moment. When one is standing on the boundary, then in a single moment one can enter into the unknowable.

Reason and the Heart

Reason cannot find him. Reason is not the only door in your being, there are deeper doors in your being. Are you not aware of the heart? Can’t you feel the beat of the heart? Have you not seen anything happening through the heart? When you look at a lotus flower and you feel the beauty, is it reason? Can reason prove that the flower is beautiful?

Reason has not even been able to define what beauty is. For the rational mind there is no beauty. But you know that beauty exists, and when you see it you are overwhelmed by it. The rational mind says there is no beauty, this is just an illusion, a projection, a dream.

The full-moon night: is it just an illusion? The hypnotic splendour of it: is it just a projection of your mind? It can’t be so, because even the ocean, which has no mind, is affected. It can’t be so. When the sun rises even birds are affected – it can’t be just the mind and its projection.

Beauty exists. But reason has no way to approach it, it is felt from the heart. Have you not felt beauty? Love exists: that too is not through reason, that too is felt from the heart. When you fall in love can you justify it rationally? Can you say what love is? Nobody has yet been able to.

The experience of beauty, the experience of good, the experience of love, the experience of truth. All these experiences happen: don’t try to reach them through reason, they happen through the heart. All these experiences come through the heart.

God is not a person somewhere sitting high in heaven, He is truth, He is good, He is beauty.

These are the experiences that stir your heart. And God is the ultimate experience through the heart. Knowing the real through the heart is the meaning of experiencing God. Knowing the real through the mind is the experience of matter. The reality is one.

Never fall into the fallacy of thinking that there are two realities – matter and consciousness, God and the world. No. The reality is one; that which is, is one. But that one can be approached in two ways. You have two approaches possible. You can reach it through the head: then it is matter, then the interpretation of reality comes in materialistic terms. Or you can reach it through the heart, and then it is God.

These are our interpretations. And certainly the interpretation that comes from the heart is higher, is deeper, is more profound. And it transforms your life: it transports you into another dimension of bliss, of benediction.

Logic, The Known, The Unknown, and The ...

Logic cannot conclude about the unknowable. Logic moves into the world of the known; logic cannot take a quantum leap into the unknown.

Have you not observed it? Your mind can think only about the known. How will you think about the unknown? If it is unknown, there is no way to think about it. Thinking is based on the known. That’s why thinking is repetitive, it moves in a circle. Yes, it can go on refining the known – it can go on refining it more and more, it can go on polishing the known – but it can never come to know the unknown.

At the most, it can guess about the unknown. But guesswork is guesswork; it can never become a certainty. It will never give you faith, it can’t become trust, because deep down you know it is a guess: it may be so, it may not be so. It cannot become a rock on which the temple of life can be raised. No, it remains doubtful.

Every guess is rooted in doubt: perhaps it is so, perhaps it is not so. And there are three layers of existence. One is the known: a very small, lighted part; a lighted spot, very small, that we have come to know. Then surrounding it is the infinite unknown, a great night of darkness. But about the unknown we can have a few guesses, we can infer, because the known and the unknown are not qualitatively different. That which is known today was unknown yesterday, and that which is unknown today may become known tomorrow. So the known and the unknown correlate; they are of the same family.

Science lives in these two worlds, the known and the unknown. You base your reasoning, your guess, your inference, on the known, so you can deduct something of the unknown and you can reach into the darkness and make a little more territory lighted.

But there is something else, the third realm: the unknowable. Logic can function perfectly in the known; it functions only partially in the unknown as guessing; it cannot function in the unknowable at all. The unknowable is beyond logic, beyond reasoning, beyond knowledge, beyond the mind. And that unknowable is God.

Remember, God is not unknown. If God is unknown, then science one day will know him. God is unknowable. yes, God can be experienced and lived but cannot be known, cannot be reduced to knowledge, cannot be reduced to a hypothesis, cannot be reduced to a formula like H2O.

God remains a mystery. Even to those who have experienced him, God remains a mystery.

In fact the deeper you go into him, the deeper becomes the mystery. The more you penetrate into him, the more and more you disappear. One day, God is not known; on the contrary, the knower disappears. Just like a dewdrop slipping into the ocean, the knower dissolves.

In the world of science the unknown is constantly transformed into the known. And it is hoped that one day the unknown will disappear completely and all will be known.

In the world of religion it is just a totally different story, diametrically opposite. The unknown does not disappear, but the knower disappears. And one day ALL becomes unknowable, and the known also becomes unknowable. Then the mystery is total and absolute.

Reason and Beyond

Reason is perfectly capable of knowing the superficial, but it cannot dive deep into the depths. It knows only how to swim on the surface. Reason is perfectly good as far as the journey OUTWARDS is concerned, but it is utterly impotent as far as the journey inwards is concerned.Reason is good and adequate if you want to know about matter. But it is utterly incapable if you want to know anything about consciousness. Reason can measure, but consciousness is immeasurable.Reason can weigh, but consciousness has no weight. Reason can see, but consciousness is invisible. Reason has the five senses as its servants, but consciousness is BEHIND the five senses. You cannot touch it, you cannot smell it, you cannot taste it, you cannot hear it, you cannot see it: it is BEHIND the five senses. You cannot touch it, you cannot smell it, you cannot taste it, you cannot hear it, you cannot see it: it is behind these five windows of the senses which open towards the outside.You can see the sunlight, but you cannot see your inner light with your eyes. You can hear the birds singing, but you cannot hear your own heart singing.Reason is capable of measuring. That’s how the word ‘matter’ came into existence. ‘Matter’ means that which can be measured; ‘measurable’ is the meaning of the word ‘matter’. Reason measures, so whatsoever can be caught in the trap of reason is matter.But there are things which are immeasurable. How to measure love? How to measure consciousness? The immeasurable is there. But if you insist that you will use only reason to know it, then you will remain ignorant of the immeasurable. Then you will remain ignorant of God.