I know you can hear, there is no trouble about it; but you cannot listen.
Listening is totally different from hearing.
Listening means hearing without mind; listening means hearing without any interference of your thoughts; listening means hearing as if you are totally empty.
If you have even a small trembling of thinking inside, waves of subtle thoughts surrounding you, you will not be able to listen, although you will be able to hear.
And to listen to the music, the ancient music, the eternal music, one needs to be totally quiet, as if one is not.
When you are, you can hear; when you are not, you can listen.
December 3, 2011
Experience is all
The ego is like darkness, a false entity. It only appears to be there, it has no positive reality. When the light of love comes, darkness goes out. If you have the real center — what Gurdjieff calls crystallisation or what Hindus call ATMAN or what Sufis call ROOH, spirit — if you really have it then each love will make it more and more clear, more and more transparent, more and more available. Each love affair will be a step — and you will be moving higher in crystallisation.
So this is the first thing to be understood: don’t choose the ego, always choose love. When it is a question between the real and the unreal, choose the real, even if sometimes the real brings inconvenience. It does bring inconvenience. We have chosen the unreal because it is convenient — for no other reason have we chosen it. There is just one reason: it is convenient. You will have to go through inconvenience. That inconvenience is what I call TAPASHCHARYA, austerity, SADHANA. That’s what it means to be initiated into a path.
Always choose the real, howsoever bad and howsoever painful and howsoever destructive it looks. Even if it feels like death, choose it — and you will be benefitted by it. Never choose the comfortable the convenient, the bourgeois, other-wise you will live the life of a hostile — if you are fortunate — or the life of a phony if you are not so fortunate, or, if you are not fortunate at all, the life of a zombie.
As you grow older you become more ignorant because you become aware of areas of which you
don’t know anything. The child is the least ignorant – he’s innocent. He has not entered on the path of knowledge, or ignorance – which is the same path. As you grow older, you start accumulating knowledge to hide your ignorance. You borrow knowledge to hide it, to cover it up; but the covered ignorance does not make you wise – it simply shows your stupidity. Your so-called wise people are full of nothing but ignorance – covered with beautiful, borrowed knowledge.
The authentic wise man is one who gets rid of all ignorance, and never allows himself to be burdened by borrowed knowledge; he gathers knowledge through his own experience. Your questions are tremendously helpful to get rid of your ignorance.
Now you can start searching for existential experiences of love, peace, silence, beauty, joy – which are all part of your own being. You don’t have to go to any library, and you don’t have to go to somebody wiser. You have simply to go to your own innermost source from where your life arises, from the same source that your light will also arise.
Wisdom is moving into experience in utter let-go.
But the secret of life is: if you bring your unconscious into the light, those hidden secrets which are functioning like wounds, like burdens that are heavy on you, evaporate. You need not do anything else – all that you need is a loving heart to listen to you.
Everybody has their own idea of love. And only when you come to the state where all ideas about love have disappeared, where love is no more an idea but simply your being, then only will you know its freedom. Then love is God. Then love is the ultimate truth. Let your love move through the process of meditation. Watch it: watch the cunning ways of your mind, watch your power-politics. And nothing else except continuous watching and observing is going to help.
What kind of trust is this, that you say it has been betrayed? My understanding of trust is that it cannot be betrayed. By its very nature, by its very definition, trust cannot be betrayed. It is impossible to betray trust. If trust can be betrayed, then it is not trust. Think over it.
When you say something to your woman or your man, look at it: what is the unconscious motive? Why are you saying it? Is there some motive? Then what is it? Be conscious of that motive, bring it to consciousness -- because this is one of the secret keys for transforming your life: anything that becomes conscious disappears. Your motives remain unconscious, that's why you remain in their grip. Make them conscious, bring them to light, and they will disappear.
It is as if you pull up a tree and bring the roots to the sunlight: they will die, they can exist only in the darkness of the soil. Your motives also exist only in the darkness of your unconsciousness. So the only way to transform your love is to bring all the motivations from the unconscious into the conscious. Slowly slowly, those motives will die. And when love is unmotivated, then love is the greatest thing that can ever happen to anybody. Then love is something of the ultimate, of the beyond.
That is the meaning when Jesus says, "God is love." I say to you: Love is God. God can be forgotten, but don't forget love -- because it is the purification of love that will bring you to God. If you forget about God completely, nothing is lost. But don't forget love, because love is the bridge. Love is the process of alchemical change in your consciousness.
So this is the first thing to be understood: don’t choose the ego, always choose love. When it is a question between the real and the unreal, choose the real, even if sometimes the real brings inconvenience. It does bring inconvenience. We have chosen the unreal because it is convenient — for no other reason have we chosen it. There is just one reason: it is convenient. You will have to go through inconvenience. That inconvenience is what I call TAPASHCHARYA, austerity, SADHANA. That’s what it means to be initiated into a path.
Always choose the real, howsoever bad and howsoever painful and howsoever destructive it looks. Even if it feels like death, choose it — and you will be benefitted by it. Never choose the comfortable the convenient, the bourgeois, other-wise you will live the life of a hostile — if you are fortunate — or the life of a phony if you are not so fortunate, or, if you are not fortunate at all, the life of a zombie.
As you grow older you become more ignorant because you become aware of areas of which you
don’t know anything. The child is the least ignorant – he’s innocent. He has not entered on the path of knowledge, or ignorance – which is the same path. As you grow older, you start accumulating knowledge to hide your ignorance. You borrow knowledge to hide it, to cover it up; but the covered ignorance does not make you wise – it simply shows your stupidity. Your so-called wise people are full of nothing but ignorance – covered with beautiful, borrowed knowledge.
The authentic wise man is one who gets rid of all ignorance, and never allows himself to be burdened by borrowed knowledge; he gathers knowledge through his own experience. Your questions are tremendously helpful to get rid of your ignorance.
Now you can start searching for existential experiences of love, peace, silence, beauty, joy – which are all part of your own being. You don’t have to go to any library, and you don’t have to go to somebody wiser. You have simply to go to your own innermost source from where your life arises, from the same source that your light will also arise.
Wisdom is moving into experience in utter let-go.
But the secret of life is: if you bring your unconscious into the light, those hidden secrets which are functioning like wounds, like burdens that are heavy on you, evaporate. You need not do anything else – all that you need is a loving heart to listen to you.
Everybody has their own idea of love. And only when you come to the state where all ideas about love have disappeared, where love is no more an idea but simply your being, then only will you know its freedom. Then love is God. Then love is the ultimate truth. Let your love move through the process of meditation. Watch it: watch the cunning ways of your mind, watch your power-politics. And nothing else except continuous watching and observing is going to help.
What kind of trust is this, that you say it has been betrayed? My understanding of trust is that it cannot be betrayed. By its very nature, by its very definition, trust cannot be betrayed. It is impossible to betray trust. If trust can be betrayed, then it is not trust. Think over it.
When you say something to your woman or your man, look at it: what is the unconscious motive? Why are you saying it? Is there some motive? Then what is it? Be conscious of that motive, bring it to consciousness -- because this is one of the secret keys for transforming your life: anything that becomes conscious disappears. Your motives remain unconscious, that's why you remain in their grip. Make them conscious, bring them to light, and they will disappear.
It is as if you pull up a tree and bring the roots to the sunlight: they will die, they can exist only in the darkness of the soil. Your motives also exist only in the darkness of your unconsciousness. So the only way to transform your love is to bring all the motivations from the unconscious into the conscious. Slowly slowly, those motives will die. And when love is unmotivated, then love is the greatest thing that can ever happen to anybody. Then love is something of the ultimate, of the beyond.
That is the meaning when Jesus says, "God is love." I say to you: Love is God. God can be forgotten, but don't forget love -- because it is the purification of love that will bring you to God. If you forget about God completely, nothing is lost. But don't forget love, because love is the bridge. Love is the process of alchemical change in your consciousness.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)