God's Got a Thing About you.doc

God's Got a Thing About youTalks given from 1/9/78 to 30/9/78Darshan Diary30 ChaptersYear published: 1984God's Got a Thing About youChapter #1Chapter title: None1 September 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu AuditoriumArchive code: 7809015ShortTitle: ATHING01Audio: NoVideo: NoDeva means divine, aikanta means aloneness. Self-knowledge is possible only in deep aloneness. Ordinarily whatever we know about ourselves is the opinion of others. They say "You are good" and we think we are good. They say "You are beautiful" and we think we are beautiful. They say you are bad or ugly. whatsoever people say about us we go on collecting. That becomes our self-identity. It is utterly false because nobody else can know you, can know who you are, except you yourself. Whatsoever they know are only aspects, and those aspects are very superficial. Whatsoever they know are only momentary moods; they cannot penetrate your center. Not even your lover can penetrate to the very core of your being. There you are utterly alone, and only there will you come to know who you are.People live their whole lives believing in what others say, dependent on others. That's why people are very afraid of others' opinions. If they think you are bad, you become bad. If they condemn you, you start condemning yourself. If they say that you are a sinner you start feeling guilty. Because you have to depend on their opinions you have to continuously conform to their ideas; otherwise they will change their opinions. This creates a slavery, a very subtle slavery. If you want to be known as good, worthy, beautiful, intelligent, then you have to concede, you have to compromise continuously with people on whom you are dependent.And another problem arises. Because there are so many people, they go on feeding your mind with different types of opinions - conflicting opinions too: one opinion contradicting another opinion. Hence a great confusion exists inside you. One person says you are very intelligent, another person says you are stupid - now how to decide? So you are divided. You become suspicious about yourself, about who you are. a wavering. And the complexity is very great because there are thousands of people around you. You come in contact with so many people and everybody is feeding his idea into your mind. And nobody knows you, not even you yourself know, so all this collection becomes jumbled up inside. This is a maddening situation.You have many voices inside you. Whenever you ask who you are, many answers will come. Some answers will be your mother's, some will be your father's, some will be the teacher's, and so on and so forth. And it is impossible to decide which one is the right answer. How to decide? What is the criterion? This is where man is lost. this is self-ignorance. But because you depend on others you are afraid to go into aloneness, because the moment you start going into aloneness you start becoming very afraid of losing yourself. You don't have it in the first place, but whatever self you have created out of others' opinions will have to be left behind. Hence, it is very scary to go in. The deeper you go, the less you know who you are.So in fact you are moving towards self-knowledge, but before it happens you will have to drop all ideas about the self. There will be a gap, there will be a kind of nothingness. You will become a non-entity. You will be utterly lost, because all that you know is no more relevant, and that which is relevant you don't know yet. This is called "the dark night of the soul" by the Christian mystics.It has to be passed, and once you have passed it. there is the dawn. The sun rises and one comes to know oneself for the first time. The first ray of the sun and all is fulfilled. The first songs of the birds in the morning and all is attained.Be here as long as you can. Much is going to happen. You are already on the way and things have already been happening; much more is going to happen. You have come in the right time.Just be here as totally as possible. You have come home. - * -Deva means divine, paresha means the beyond - the divine that is beyond, the divine that is transcendental.We can have it but we cannot understand it. Understanding is impossible. The instrument for understanding is very tiny and the reality is vast. Thought cannot contain truth, but the heart can feel it. Love can know it, but not knowledge. And the whole problem for a spiritual seeker is how to drop knowledge and how to become more loving. It is very difficult to drop knowledge. It is very difficult because we have been, from the very beginning, conditioned by knowledge. In the very milk of our mothers we have been fed with knowledge. This whole society depends on knowledge, not on love - the schools, the colleges, the universities. And the misery is that even the churches, the temples, they also depend on knowledge. And knowledge is all garbage; it is not for the true seeker.For the true seeker, the beginning is renouncing all knowledge and disappearing into the heart, moving from the head towards the heart. That brings transformation. The head is within you but the heart is not within you. The head is within you but you are within the heart; the heart is bigger than you.When I am talking about the heart I am not talking about the physiological part called the heart. When I say "the heart" I mean God. That's why Jesus says: God is love. We are surrounded by the heart, the divine heart. Once we get down from the head trip, suddenly it is all ours. All the doors open and existence starts revealing its mysteries.That is the meaning of the word "revelation." Knowledge is not possible - revelation is possible. Knowledge is man's effort to know, and revelation is God's will. Man can only remain available, that's all, and whenever one is ready, God reveals himself. The first step towards readiness is to drop all knowledge, even the so-called spiritual knowledge, because whatsoever we have learned from others is not going to help. It will become a barrier. You will have to go to God naked, like a small child. innocent, ignorant.The state of not-knowing is the state of the real seeker. When you can say deeply, profoundly, "I don't know," then God is closest to you. That's what Socrates means when he says, "To know that I don't know is the beginning of knowledge."This is the meaning of your name, Deva Paresha: God is beyond all knowing but is perfectly within loving. So change your gestalt from knowing to loving. Think less, feel more, and God is not far away, he is very close by. He is already searching for you, he is already groping for you. It is not a one-way affair - not that man is seeking God and that God is hiding - God too is seeking man. In fact, man is hiding; sometimes behind money, sometimes behind knowledge, sometimes behind power politics, and he has found a thousand and one ways to hide himself.Be here. much is going to happen! Remain courageous, because when things start happening, fear arises. - * -This will be the name for the center: Sadhana.It is a very significant word and very difficult to translate. No single word in English exists which can be equivalent to it, but the meaning can be understood. It means seeking, searching - but not only intellectually: existentially. One can seek only through the mind; that is philosophy. One can think about truth and God and great things sitting in one's armchair; that is speculation, that is not sadhana.When one not only thinks but lives and transforms one's life also in order to seek, in order to search; drops everything in one's life which becomes a hindrance in the search and chooses only that which is a help - when the search becomes one's whole life, one's only life, one's only love, one lives for it and one is ready to die for it - then it is sadhana. So it is not just inquiry. It is not just intellectual speculation; it is not philosophizing only. It is philosophizing through the being, and the difference is great.For example: David Hume is a great philosopher but only a philosopher. He has the same kind of intelligence as Buddha, the same penetrating genius, but no attainment. He just goes on thinking and thinking, goes on sharpening his intellect. But if you look into his life it is as ordinary as anybody's. You will not find that sharpness in his life too. If he argues, you will find he is sharp, he is a sword; it is very difficult to win an argument with him. But if you don't argue with him then he is just ordinary. If you don't know what he thinks you will not feel the presence of the person in any other way.But when a Buddha passes by. he has not uttered a single word and suddenly you feel something of tremendous power; some silence starts enveloping you. If he looks at you, you know he has looked deep down into your heart. If he touches you, you know he has touched your whole being: you start vibrating in a new way. He is not just a philosopher: he has lived his philosophy. The search has not been only of the intellect: it has been existential. Whatsoever he has thought, he has practiced. And whatsoever he has found through practice as true he has declared to the world, otherwise not.Something may look very logical and true in thought, and may not be so in reality; the reality may be just the opposite. Reality has no obligation to follow logic - it has its own ways. One has to put aside all logic and look into reality. When reality is the only criterion. For example, if I speak about meditation. A philosopher can also say something about meditation, about what it is.Once it happened: A Jaina nun wrote a beautiful book on meditation, a really beautiful book on meditation. When I passed through the book I was surprised. I was surprised because there were a few faults in it which are possible only if the person has never meditated. Just a few - three, four faults - not much in a book of four hundred pages. Otherwise, it appeared as if the person who had written it knew what meditation was experientially, not just intellectually; but those four faults were enough. Then I forgot about the book.While I was traveling in Rajasthan, in one town the nun came to see me. I had completely forgotten about the book and the name of the nun; and she asked me how to meditate. Looking at her face I remembered that I had seen a picture somewhere, and then the memory came, and I asked her, "Have you written a certain book on meditation?" She said, "Yes, I have." I said, "How could you write that book if you have come to ask me how to meditate?"She said, "I have been studying meditation. I have studied all the books that are available on meditation, your books too, and that was a kind of thesis. I have accumulated material from every source; whatsoever looked beautiful, I chose it and I made a consistent whole of it. But as far as I'm concerned, I don't know what meditation is because I cannot get rid of thoughts."This is not sadhana - this is philosophy. Sadhana means: whatsoever you think is right, you try to practice it. Unless your practice proves it, you will withhold the conclusion; you will not say whether it is right or wrong. When you have practiced it and when you have experienced it and tested it, then you will declare whether it is right or wrong; because the criterion is experience.So sadhana is more like science than like philosophy. Just as science experiments in the outside world, sadhana experiments in the inside world. Sadhana is the inner science of the soul. One becomes one's own lab. One changes one's whole life into experimentation. Great risk is there, because one never knows what is going to happen. But only those who are ready to risk are ever able to attain anything in life; they are the fortunate ones who can risk.So help people to risk, to search, to seek, to experiment. - * -A sannyasin says that when he came five weeks ago he wanted to meditate. but his thoughts always go to his home, to the things he hasn't finished. Now he wants to go back to finish his things and then come back here.Good. Go and finish things and come back. That will be very good; then it will be easier to drop the thoughts. It is always good to finish things. People go on accumulating incomplete experiences. Anything incomplete hangs around you and tries to attract your attention; that's why it has been difficult for you.If a person lives every day, moment to moment, finishing things, never accumulates piles of incomplete experiences, never accumulates files, letters which have not been answered, problems which have not been solved. Then they stand in a queue and they all hanker for attention. They say, "Complete us!"It is always good to finish things and it is good to finish them every day. Never postpone, never say, "Tomorrow," because tomorrow you will not be free. When you say to a thought, "I will do it tomorrow," then tomorrow that thought will come like hammering and will say, "Now, you had promised - fulfill it." And you have been promising your whole life, so a crowd is waiting.To live rightly means to live every moment so deeply, each thing without postponing it, so that either it is finished or you come to the understanding that this is not a thing to be finished, it cannot be finished - then too it is finished. You need not give any moment to it again. There are things which can be finished and there are things which cannot be finished, but to see it is of great help. Something cannot be finished, something is humanly impossible to finish. Then too it is finished; you put a full stop to it. There is no need to open the file again. Either you answer the letter or you throw it in the wastepaper basket, but don't go on accumulating.I have heard that Albert Einstein had the habit of accumulating letters. For months together he would accumulate them. Just on his table above his head they would all be hanging, and people would ask, "Why do you go on accumulating them?" He would say, "Tomorrow, tomorrow." Then one day he said, "I answer a few and the remaining ones I have to throw, because the time has past - now the answer is not needed. My not answering them has already answered them."But then why go on accumulating? If you don't want to answer something throw it right now! They are hanging there - they will be heavy on you, they will continuously attract your attention, and the load will go on becoming bigger and bigger. So learn one thing: always finish things. The man who can finish everything by the time he goes to bed, who can say goodbye to the day that has passed and is ready to fall into sleep with nothing hanging around, is the most blessed man in the world. The next morning he will be waking up fresh, will open his eyes, look at the world. if there is so