TRUTH is not veiled

TRUTH IS not veiled. It is not hidden. It is always just in front of your eyes. If you miss it, it is not because of it, but because your eyes are closed. The veil is not on the face of truth: the veil is on you. And not only one – many, millions of veils.

If truth were hidden, then one prophet, one wise man, or one sage, would have been enough. Once uncovered, everybody would have known it. It would have been just like it is in a scientific discovery – you need not discover it again and again. Albert Einstein discovers something. It becomes a common property. Then every schoolchild knows about it. It need not be discovered again. Once discovered, it is discovered.

But what happens? Buddha discovers, Jesus discovers, Mohammed discovers again. You will have to discover it again. What is the matter? The matter is this: that the veil is not on the truth – otherwise, one man would have unveiled it and everybody would have realized it – the veil is on you. So everybody has to unveil himself, and truth has to be discovered again and again by each and every one of you. It can never become a common property. It can never become a collective truth. It will remain individual.

GOD CAN ONLY BE KNOWN if...

GOD CAN ONLY BE KNOWN if you have known yourself. And where are you? You are not in your head, you are in your heart. The head can fall into a coma, you will still be alive. There are people who fall into comas and remain in comas for years.

Once you are in a coma you will be utterly unconscious. The mind will not be functioning any more, you will almost be vegetating. But you are still alive, because the heart is still beating. Once the heart stops then all stops.

So your life is somehow rooted in the heart, not in the head. The heart seems to be the contact point between you and the eternal. It is through the heart that you are plugged in with the eternal. And one has to know one’s heart: that is self-knowledge, that is the meaning of ”Know thyself.” Because it is only by knowing your heart that you will know the contact with the universe. Entering into your heart, you will become able to enter into the ultimate.

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.

We are searching for god with a telescope

We go on missing god because we go on looking far away. We are searching for god with a telescope, hence we go on missing. A telescope is good to see things which are far away, but if you start looking for things through the telescope which are not far away, which are very close by, you will miss them... and god is the closest!

Even to look at god with open eyes is to miss, because open eyes look far away... even an inch away is far away. That is why in deep prayer or in deep meditation eyes are bound to close themselves. God can be seen only with closed eyes: he is so close by – even open eyes will take you far away.

He is just in the heart beat. This is the secret: don’t look far away, don’t go after the distant, search in the close-by, look within! And god has always been there – it is a miracle that we miss him! To find god is a simple thing – to miss him is a miracle. To find god is very easy – to miss him is a very complex phenomenon. It is simply incredible how we go on missing him, because we live in him, we are from him, we breathe in him, and when we die we go back to him. We are just like fish and he is just like the ocean – but it is said that the fish goes on missing the ocean. It is so close. How can you see it?

The fish comes to know about the ocean only when she is caught and thrown out of the ocean, taken out of the ocean. Then she recognises, then only does she become aware of what she has lost. We can take a fish out of the ocean – how can we take a man out of god ? There is no way because there is no shore to him – god is a shoreless ocean. There is no place outside him so we can never fall out of him. To understand this is to understand the greatest secret.

Just a simple, loving heart is needed. It is not a question of great intellectual understanding, no! – just a feeling heart is needed. God is known through feeling: He is not an intellectual work – He is intuitive.

So start looking within-wards.

GOD certainly is not a hypothesis

GOD certainly is not a hypothesis.
A hypothesis can only be part of an objective science. You can experiment upon it, you can dissect it, analyze it.
That’s what Karl Marx has argued: ”unless God is proved in a scientific lab, I am not going to accept him.” What Karl Marx is saying is that, ”I can accept God as a hypothesis, but a hypothesis is not a truth. It has yet to be proved, and the proof has to be scientific.”
But if God is put into a scientific lab, in a test tube, and dissected, analyzed, and we know all the constituents that make God, will it be the God who created the world? And if Marx is going to accept God only then, that means God has to be reduced into a thing.
Then what would be the difficulty in manufacturing God? Once you have analyzed all the constituents of God, all the chemicals, then there is no problem. Get your discovery patented, and start manufacturing God. But that manufactured God will not be the God you are asking about.
God is not a hypothesis, cannot be a hypothesis, because the very word hypothesis takes the ground from beneath His feet. God is not to be proved. If science has to prove God then the scientist becomes higher than God. The poor God will be just like a white rat. So you play around and make boxes, and God moves from one box to another, and you find out how much intelligence God has.

Create your face

Unless you create your face you will not find any face. You come faceless into the world. Unless you create your soul you don’t have any. You can have only that which you create.
Don’t take it for granted. That has been one of the causes of greatest miseries to humanity, that people think they have souls. How can you have if you have not created it in the first place? You can have only that which you create. You can possess only that which you have created.
Religion should be that creativity – creating a soul, creating a face, creating a being out of nothingness. Then there is joy, then there is great exaltation. Then life has zest, juice, flow, thrill.
Then life pulsates, is adventure; is not monotony, is not a nightmare. Then trees start growing in your desert, birds start singing in your wasteland, flowers come, clouds come, and the emptiness is no more empty; it is full of life.
Let me repeat: the meaning has to be created.

Life is always in the now

Life is always in the now. There is no other moment to it. Only one moment exists – this moment – all else is just a projection of the mind. Only today is, and only today remains. Tomorrow never comes, it cannot come because it doesn’t belong to reality. Only today comes, goes on coming, because today belongs to reality.
Tomorrow is your dream. And you need a dream because you are not rooted in reality. This has to be understood.
Why are dreams needed? When reality is available, why do you dream?
If you are tense you will need dreams, because they help you to relax. If you are not HERE, you will need a dream of being THERE, because you have to be somewhere. If you cannot be here then you will feel suspended in the sky, uprooted, unanchored, just hanging in the middle. That will give you a very restless, uncomfortable feeling. So... a dream: ”I may not be here, but I am going to be there.” The dream helps you to rest and relax.
If you cannot be now, then you create a future. The future is needed. The future gives you a consoling sleep, it relaxes you. Millions of things are there which you cannot fulfill right now, and if there is no future you will be too much burdened by unfulfilled desires. A future is needed so you can at least say to yourself: ”If things are not as they should be, there is tomorrow. Don’t get panicky, things will be better tomorrow.” You can hope, because there is time.

Life is a Gift

The greatest secret of life is – and remember it always – that life is a gift. You have not deserved it in the first place. It is not your right. It has been given to you, you have not earned it. Once you understand this, many things will become clear.
If life is a gift then all that belongs to life is going to be a gift. Happiness, love, meditation – all that is beautiful is going to be a gift from the holy, from the whole. You cannot deserve it in any way and you cannot force existence to make you happy, or to make you loving, or to make you meditative.
This is one of the most basic things to remember always: you have not deserved life, and life is there! Absolutely undeserved, you are alive, with tremendous energy – alive!
How does it happen? And if life can happen without deserving it, without any right to it, why not happiness? why not love? why not ecstasy? They can all happen, but you have to understand the law. The law is: don’t try directly. Happiness cannot be pursued. It can be persuaded. Persuasion is indirect. It is not an attack. You move, but not directly, because when you are direct you are aggressive. Nothing is as direct as violence. And nothing is as violent as directness.
Life moves in circles, not direct. The Earth moves around the sun. The sun moves around some greater sun. Galaxies move, the whole universe moves, in rounds. Seasons move in a round. Childhood, youth, old age, move in a round. The whole of life is circular, it never goes direct. It is not like an arrow that goes direct to the target. An arrow is man’s invention. In life there is nothing like an arrow. An arrow is man’s violent mind. An arrow chooses the very shortest cut between two points. The arrow is in a great hurry, seems to be too time-conscious. But God is not in a hurry.

How can you reduce the unknown to knowledge?

The unknown cannot be taught, the unknown has to be learned. And even when you have learned it, it remains unknown – that’s the beauty of it. It never becomes the known. God never becomes knowledge. On the contrary, the more you know, the more he becomes mysterious. The more you penetrate him, the more he is elusive. As you come nearer to the center you start feeling lost – all certainty gone, all clinging disappeared. In fact YOU are disappearing.
And when you have really reached the center, God is there in his absolute grandeur. But you are not there; the seeker has disappeared, the knower has disappeared. And when there is no knower, how can you reduce the unknown to knowledge? The unknown becomes knowledge through the knower. If the knower has disappeared, there is no possibility of knowledge. The abyss remains, the mystery remains. But, in a very paradoxical way, the mystery is also revealed to you. You know it, you feel it, because you are...

The search depends on the seeker.

The search depends on the seeker. Masters can only show the way. The search depends on the seeker – what quality of being, what quality of inquiry the seeker brings to the search. Everything will depend on it, on why he is in search, what the reason is, because the reason of the search will become the cause of his growth. If the reason is wrong, from the very beginning he has taken a wrong step, and the right end cannot follow a wrong beginning. The first step is the last step also, because the first step implies in it, has in it already, the last step as a potentiality.
The seed is the tree because the seed will become the tree. The end will come out of the growth of the seeker, and if from the very beginning a wrong reason exists to seek and search, then everything is going to be in vain.

Truth cannot be taught...

Truth cannot be taught... but it can be learned. And between these two sentences is the key of all understanding. So let me repeat: truth cannot be taught, but it can be learned – because truth is not a teaching, not a doctrine, not a theory, a philosophy, or something like that. Truth is existence.
Truth is BEING. Nothing can be said about it.
It can be encountered directly, but not through about. There is no VIA MEDIA.
Truth is here and now. Only truth is. Nothing else exists. So the moment you raise a question about it the mind has already moved away. You are somewhere else, not here and now.
Truth cannot be taught because words cannot convey it. Words are impotent. Truth is vast, tremendously vast, infinite. Words are very very narrow. You cannot force truth into words, it is impossible. And how is one going to teach without words?

The existential remains existential.

The existential remains existential. There is no existence coming out of nonexistence, and existence cannot go into nonexistence. You can ask the physicists. They have not yet been able to destroy a single atom. You cannot destroy anything – and you cannot create anything either. You cannot destroy a grain of sand. Science has progressed so far, so much, but we are incapable of creating a single grain of sand or of destroying a single grain of sand. You can grind it, you can change the form, but it will remain in another form. Only the form changes; life goes on.

God is

Because only God is. In fact to say ”God is” is a repetition because God is never ”is not.” God is the very isness of existence. We can say ”the house is” because once the house was not and once again the house will not be. To call the house ”is” is okay because the ”is not” is possible. We can say ”the man is” but we cannot say ”God is,” because only he is, always has been, always will be. God is the very isness.

This is what is called wisdom

This is what is called wisdom. Knowledge is not wisdom. To know ”I don’t know anything” is wisdom. That is the meaning of the oracle of Delphi’s declaration.
Somebody asked, ”Who is the greatest wise man of the world?” and the oracle said, ”Socrates.”
The person went to Socrates and told him,” Have you heard it or not? The oracle of the temple has said that you are the wisest man in the world.”
Socrates is reported to have laughed and said, ”You go back. There must have been some mistake because just today, this morning, it has happened to me that I don’t know anything. How can it be?
If you had come yesterday I would have believed you, because I used to think that I know, but not now. This morning – this very morning – something tremendous has happened to me: all knowledge has appeared as futile. I am awakened. The sleep of knowledge is no longer there; I am no longer dreaming. And now I know only one thing for certain: that I don’t know anything.
”You go back and tell the oracle that something must have gone wrong. The oracle has always been right and true, I know, but this time the oracle has committed an error. You go and put things right. And it is me, Socrates himself, saying that I am the most ignorant man of the world. How can the oracle say I am the most wise? No, it is not possible.”
The man was puzzled, he could not believe it, but he went to the oracle and said, ”There must have been some mistake, sir, because Socrates denies it. He says, ’I know only one thing: that I don’t know anything.’”
And the oracle said, ”That’s why we have declared that he is the greatest wise man of the world. That’s why! Precisely that’s why we have declared it! Go and tell him. If you had asked yesterday, we would not have said so. He was as foolish as anybody else. Now he is not a fool at all – he is not fooled by knowledge. He has awakened.”
Knowing that you don’t know, you really become a knower. That is wisdom. Wisdom is not knowledge. Wisdom is awareness.

Truth is not known in the ordinary sense

THE TRUTH IS KNOWN AND YET NOT KNOWN – known in a sense and not known in another – known because we are part of it, but not known because we are not separate from it. To know something, the knower has to be separate; and yet again, to know something really, how can you know it if you are separate? This is the basic problem that faces the seeker of truth. We are one with it, there is no space between us and the truth, so we cannot become the knower. We cannot separate the known from the knower – there is no way to separate – and knowledge exists only when the knower and known are separate.
Knowledge is a bridge between the object and the subject. If they are not separate, the bridge cannot exist. So the first thing to be remembered: truth is not known in the ordinary sense, cannot be known in the ordinary sense.

This is pure rationalism.

Socrates was dying, and somebody asked, ”Are you not afraid, Socrates?” He said, ”Why should I be afraid, because I don’t know what is going to happen? First thing, maybe atheists are right.”
Listen.
He says, ”Maybe, perhaps, atheists are right and I will simply disappear. Then there is nobody left, so why fear? For whom to fear? There cannot be any anguish for me, because I will not be there. If atheists are right, then I will not be, and when I am not, fear cannot exist. I will not be tortured. Or maybe theists are right and I may continue, and if I continue, then why fear? I will be there. So I will see what happens, but I have not died yet. Wait, let me die. Only then will I know whether I survive or not.”
This is pure rationalism. A rationalist cannot assert such things, that ”I don’t believe in a soul.”

RATIONALIST AND ATHEIST?

A person cannot be both together – a rationalist and an atheist. It is impossible. Either you can be a rationalist or you can be an atheist. A rationalist cannot believe in anything. A rationalist cannot have any belief – in God or in no God. A rationalist suspends all belief. A rationalist can only be an agnostic; he can only say, ”I do not know.”
The moment you say ”I know,” you are no longer a rationalist. The moment you say ”I know that God does not exist,” you are as irrational as the person who says God exists. You have lost track.
How can you say God is not?
The whole existence has not yet been measured. There are depths upon depths, there is much still unknown. A little is known. Far more remains unknown and unknowable. How can you say dogmatically that God is not?
A rationalist will avoid all temptation of dogmatism. He will say, ”I do not know.” Socrates was a rationalist, but he was not an atheist.
Atheism means you are against theism; you have chosen a belief. To believe in God is a belief; to believe in no God is a belief again. You remain a believer.
To be a rationalist is very difficult, arduous, because man wants to cling to some belief.

Where is God?

People come to me and they say, ”Where is God? We cannot see him.” I look at them and I inquire, ”Do you really want to seek him, REALLY? Close your eyes,” I say to them, ”and look into your heart. Are you really in passionate love with God? You really want to see him?” And they say, ”Not really.” Then how do you suppose to know him?
God – I have seen so many people’s hearts – is the last item on their list. There are other things to do first. When all is done, then comes God. He is always the last in the queue. And, of course, the queue is never going to end. God will never be the first this way, because in the world nothing ever is completed. You do one thing; a thousand and one things arise out of it and you go on getting more and more entangled in the world and the queue becomes bigger and bigger and God is forced farther back, farther back. And then you want to see him. No, it is not possible.

Words

Sartre has called his autobiography 'Words'. We live in words. That is, we don't live. In the end there is only a series of accumulated words and nothing else. Words are like photographs. You see something that is alive and you take a picture of it. The picture is dead. Then you make an album of dead pictures. Only verbal pictures are there, only memories. Nothing has been lived; everything has just been verbalized.

The Oracle at Delphi declared

The Oracle at Delphi declared Socrates the most wise man on the earth. A few people rushed to Socrates and they told him, "Be pleased, rejoice: the Oracle at Delphi has declared you the wisest man in the world."Socrates said, "That is all nonsense. I know only one thing: that I know nothing."The people were puzzled and confused. They went back to the temple, they told the Oracle, "You say that Socrates is the wisest man in the world, but he himself denies it. On the contrary, he says he is utterly ignorant. He says he knows only one thing: that he knows nothing."The Oracle laughed and said, "That's why I have declared him the wisest man in the world, the greatest wise man in the world. That's why -- precisely because he knows that he is ignorant."

The magistrates gave Socrates three alternatives

Socrates said, "I cannot stop teaching the truth because that is my very life. What will I do? To go on living if I cannot teach... then death is far better. I am dying for the truth, but I cannot live without truth. I cannot leave Athens because Athens is the most cultured part of the world. And if in Athens I am poisoned, I cannot hope that anywhere else I am going to survive. It is better that I should be killed here, and the blame should remain on the heads of the people of Athens, whom I have been teaching my whole life, and who still could not understand. Rather than moving to a new place and being killed by people who don't understand me..."

Socrates Still Feels Whole