something so immense is to ask somebody, “Tell me what to do; tell me how to
hold the Earth in my hand; tell me how to hold the sea or the air in my fist.”
If you will observe, what you all want is to experience something through a
method. A method implies not only conformity, not only measuring achievement
but it also implies a system or a path to a fixed point, doesn’t it? You think that
the guru or those who say they have experienced truth have done it through a
particular system or method. To them truth is something fixed; it is there and all
you have to do is to practice. It is most illogical, irrational, without any meaning
whatsoever because, if you will observe in your life, there is nothing stable,
nothing permanent. You may want a permanent relationship with your wife, with
your children, with your neighbor, with your society, but you cannot have
anything permanent. Even your bank account isn’t permanent. No relationship is
permanent. Everything is in a flux, is in movement. Realizing this consciously or
unconsciously, we want something permanent, something that we can hold on to,
and that we call “truth,” “God,” or what you like.
So understand, see the fact, the truth, that reality has no resting place. It is like
an uncharted sea; you have to find a way in it—not your way or somebody else’s
way—you have to find it. When you have a path leading to reality, in that is
implied time. To reach from here to there you require time, many days to travel,
to cross the distance, and in that lag of time between here and there, there are
other factors coming in. Therefore you say, “Let us concentrate, think on one
thing, and reject everything else, subjugate everything else to one factor.” You
can observe how the mechanical process of systems brings about insensitivity,
suppression, resistance against what you are actually, and imposes on what you
are something that you think ought to be. So there is conflict. So your meditation
through a system is a process of endless conflict, battle. You want to control, you
want to suppress; you discipline, force yourself to sit quietly, to breathe rightly,
to do fantastic things hoping that you will eventually reach something of which
you know absolutely nothing. So a wise person rejects the whole idea, concept,
of systems altogether because they don’t lead anywhere.
You are also burdened with the idea that you can experience truth, that you
can achieve enlightenment, that you can find reality. Haven’t you heard your
gurus, the people who teach you how to meditate, say that they have
experienced? The other day someone came and said, “I have experienced reality.
I know what truth is.” That is one of the most stupid things you can ever say.
When someone says he knows, what does he know? When I say that I know, I
know something that is already over. I can only know something that’s gone,
that’s in the past; which means I live in the past. Please observe it for yourself.
Watch it in your own life and you will see this. When you say, “I know you,”
you know only the image that you have of that person, and that image is the past.
Anyone who says he knows what truth is doesn’t know. He knows that which is
dead, over, finished.
Many people say that they have experienced whatever extraordinary state it is
they experience. Have you ever examined that word experience? It means “to go
through.” When you go through something, it’s over; but if you don’t complete
the whole movement, then it is recorded in the mind and that becomes a memory.
michael s
(Michael S)
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