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THE PATH OF LOVE
Chapter 4: Religion Is Individual Flowering
Question 1
Energy Enhancement Enlightened Texts Kabir The Path of Love
The first question:
Question 1
WHY DO YOU REFER TO GOD AS `HE'? THE IS-NESS, THE LIFE ENERGY, THE TOTALITY, THE UNKNOWABLE... WELL, WOULDN'T IT BE CLEARER TO CALL GOD `IT'? WHAT BUGS ME ABOUT THE `HE' IS THAT `HE' IMPLIES A PERSONALITY, A WILL, A JUDGMENTAL AUTHORITY, AND MY ABILITY TO LOVE IS CRIPPLED ENOUGH WITHOUT THAT OBSTACLE. WELL, I SEE NOW THAT THE QUESTION IS AN ENTRY TO MY PROBLEM: HOW CAN I TRUST OR COME TO LOVE YOUR AUTHORITY?
GOD IS NOT EXPRESSIBLE in any word whatever. Call Him `he', and the word falls short; call him `she' and the word falls short; call him `it', and the word falls short, very short. If `he' reminds you of a personality, `it' will remind you of a thing. If `he' reminds you of the male, `she' will remind you of the female -- because all words are created by human beings for human use, and God is not a human creation. So whatsoever you call Him is going to be only symbolic.
Choose any symbol you like: if you feel like calling Him `it' call Him `it'. But remember, `it' has its own limitations, `It' is used for things, for dead things; and `it' has another limitation: it is very neutral. `It' is not responsive; if you say something to `it', there will be no response, and love needs response. You can talk to a wall, but there will be no response; it will be a monologue. God is called `He' so that your prater can become a dialogue. Otherwise it will be a monologue -- and mad: the `it' cannot answer it, the `it' cannot be responsive, the `it' cannot care about you. The `it' is neutral. Whether you pray or not makes no difference; whether you worship or not makes no difference; whether you are or not makes no difference -- the `it' will be very stoney. If `he' is creating trouble, `it' will create more trouble, mind you. How can you love the `it'? You can possess the `it', you can use the `it' -- but how can you love `it'?
In that way, `he' seems to be the best, for many reasons. Let me explain it to you. First, it gives a personality to God: God becomes a person -- alive, with a beating heart, breathing, pulsating. You can call Him, and you can trust that there will be a response. You can look at Him, you can feel Him, and you can trust that He will also feel for you. The personality helps you to commune, to pray, to relate. If God has no personality it will be so beyond you, it will be inconceivable. You are a person, you need a God who is a person too -- because you can relate only to a person. Unless you have become an impersonal being, you cannot relate to an impersonal being. Religions have existed, particularly in the east -- Buddhism, Jainism, -- which don't talk about God at all. But then they cannot talk about prayer, and they cannot talk about love. The moment they drop the idea of God, of a personal God, of a creator, of somebody there who can look at you, hold you hand, embrace you; the moment they drop the idea of a personal God, they have to drop the idea of prayer as a corollary, as a necessary corollary. Worship has to be dropped, prayer has to be dropped, singing, dancing, have to be dropped -- because for whom do you sing, and for whom do you dance? There is nobody, only stoney eyes all around.
And existence is so vast.... You say, "Why not say is-ness?" How will you relate with is-ness? It will be so vast; you will not be able to embrace it.
With the `he', God becomes as small as you are. You can hold His hand. The hand of is-ness? -- it is not possible. With `he' He becomes warm; is-ness is cold, existence is cold. You will freeze! Jainism, Buddhism, dropped the idea of God because of these problems -- philosophical, philological; problems that arise out of language and grammar and logic. They dropped the idea, the very idea. But then prayer disappeared, and Jainism became poor for that..Meditation remained... a very lonely effort.
Have you watched it? -- you can meditate alone, you can pray together. Prayer is a communion. Christians, Mohammedans, Jews -- they know what prayer is. Jainism and Buddhism completely lost track of prayers. And prayer has a beauty of its own. A meditator seems to be closed in himself, he has no opening. He is thrown to himself in a deep aloneness. Silent he can become, but ecstatic he cannot become.
Ecstasy happens only when there are two, love happens only when there are two. When you are alone, you can be silent, still, but you cannot be throbbing with joy, you cannot dance. The Sufi dances because he calls God; he can invoke God in a personal way.Jainism and Buddhism became very poor. And when Buddhism spread outside of India, it started talking about Buddha as a God -- and through Buddha, again prayer entered. In Jainism prayer never entered, and Jainism could never spread. It remained a very tiny sect, dead. It is inhuman.
Is-ness, existence, totality -- big words, but dead. They don't pulsate. How do you relate with totality, tell me? How will you call totality? How will you connect yourself with totality? You will be too tiny, and the vastness of totality is so big, you will be lost.
No, God has to be conceived in a human way. To call Him `he' is very human. Yes, by and by, when you approach Him, you learn Him, you imbibe Him, one day there will be no need to call Him `he'. You can drop that. Once the contact is made, once your boundaries and His boundaries are no more separate, when your boundaries and His boundaries have blended into one existence, then there will be no need. You can simply bow down without even using a single word. You can simply sit in silence and prayer will be there. You will be praying without any prayer. But that is a later development. In the beginning, you will be at a loss if you don't call Him by any personal name, if you don't make Him personal.
Now, there are two possibilities: either you call Him `he', or you call Him `she' -- booth have been used.Sufis call Him `she': the beloved, the feminine. Christians, Jews, call Him `he', it means you need not go in search for Him; He will come, He's the male. And that is the beauty of it: the woman can wait, and the lover will come.
Jews say: You are not only in search of God, God is searching for you. That's the beauty of the pronoun `he'. These are symbolic, significant, can be of tremendous value. Jews say: He is searching for you; you can wait like a woman, you can become a tremendous awaiting, just an awaiting, just an opening, ready to receive the guest. And the guest is coming, because the male comes in search of female.
Sufis call Him `she'; then the whole journey changes: then you have to seek Him, then you have to find Him. Of course, the journey becomes more difficult. If you have to seek God, it seems almost impossible that you will succeed. Where will you seek Him? -- the address is not known. Even if He comes by you will not be able to recognize Him, He will be such a stranger. You have never recognized Him, so how will you re-recognize Him, He will be such a stranger.You have never seen him before, so how are you going to decide, `Yes, here is God'? It is going to be difficult. And where will you go? -- to Kasi, to Mathura, to Mecca, to Jerusalem? Where will you go? To the Himalayas? Where will you go? How will you move? What will be your direction? From the very beginning there will be confusion.
It is better to wait than to go in search of Him. It is better to wait, and trust, and pray, and let Him come to you. That is the meaning of calling Him `he' -- that He can come. You become the feminine, then He becomes the male -- and the play starts. If you become the male, of course then it is you responsibility to seek Him. the Sufi goes to God; for the Jew, God comes to him; for the Hassid, God come to him.
Now it is for you to decide. I am not saying to call Him `he'; it is for you to decide. It appears to me that `he' is more economical more clever, but if you belong to the women's lib movement you can call Him `she'. But then you have to understand the implications of it. It is not only a question of grammar; not only a question of philology, language. It is taking a certain attitude. By calling Him `he', you declare yourself a woman: with that, it is a totally different endeavor. By calling Him `she', you call yourself a man. Man is aggressive. If you call Him `she' you will become aggressive, you will start conquering God. Then god will have to surrender to you. How can you surrender to God? then you will be too much in you male-aggressive mind.
But if you call Him `he', you have to surrender to Him. He has to come and defeat you, and make you victorious in your defeat. He has to come and overpower you, and flood you, and destroy you, annihilate you -- and recreate you.
My feeling is still this: call Him `he'. You will be benefitted, you will be blessed.
And the second question is also there in the first question:
`WELL I SEE NOW THAT THE QUESTION IS AN ENTRY INTO MY PROBLEM: HOW CAN I TRUST OR COME TO LOVE YOUR AUTHORITY?'
I have no authority. You need not trust my authority. I'm just a person, a presence; I am not an authority. I am not proving anything to you, I am not arguing for something, I am not advocating any theory or philosophy, I am not trying to convince you about anything whatsoever.
I have no authority because I don't belong to any tradition. Only traditions can have authority. A Hindu has authority -- from the VEDAS, UPANISHADS, GITA; the Mohammedan has authority from the KORAN; the Christian has authority from the BIBLE, from the Pope. Authority comes from tradition; I am non-traditional I am not claiming any tradition. I cannot say that whatsoever I am saying is right because the VEDAS also say it. I cannot quote. I cannot say that whatsoever I am saying is right, HAS to be right, because Jesus also says the same, Mohammed also says the same.
No, I am not taking any support from anybody else: whatsoever I am saying, I am saying. I know it that way. I have no other authority than myself. I am a presence, a person. You need not trust my authority, I am not an expert.... I am a rebel; how can I have any authority? My own experience is all that I have. You can look into me, you can look into my eyes, you can feel me, you can drink me, and that will decide.
And this is not going to be a relationship between an authoritative person and one who has no authority. This is not going to he a relationship between the knower and the ignorant; this is not going to be a relationship between a teacher and a student. No, the professor in the university has the authority, and the student has to learn from him. He knows what is right and he knows what is wrong, and the student simply has to yield to him.
I am not in any way authoritative. I am here: I am a declaration, a revelation. You listen to me, you imbibe me, you drink me. If the very taste decides something, it's okay; if it doesn't decide, then I am not for you, you are not for me. Then say good-bye to me. Then there is no need to hang around here; it will be futile. It is a love-affair. When you love a person you don't ask for the authority. Love is mad, it is crazy.
I am here only for those courageous people who can be crazy with me. I exist for the eccentrics. I exist only for the very chosen few, the eccentrics: those who are ready to go with me into the dark; who are ready to go with me and risk. And I am not promising you anything.
I cannot promise, in the very nature of things. Truth cannot be promised, you have to feel it. Remember, authority appeals to the head, to the reason. I don't appeal to the reason, my appeal is to the heart. The heart does not bother about authority. When you fall in love with a woman, do you ask for authority? Has she any authority from Cleopatra that she is beautiful? Do you ask for certificates? -- has she been certified by experts that she is really a beauty? Do you take her to the doctor to examine her, to the aesthetic philosopher to decide whether she is really a beauty? No, even if the whole world says that she is beautiful, you say, `I don't care. I love her, and I know that she is beautiful.' She is beautiful because you love, not otherwise. You don't love her because she is beautiful; she becomes beautiful because you love her.
I become an authority of you love me, not otherwise. If you are asking for the authority, then you will never love me. Then it is better that we take leave of each other-the sooner the better. I am not going to produce any authority; I have none. You have to look into the person himself. You have to look into me, any presence, you have to feel it intimately.
That's why I say that courage is needed, and only the courageous can love. Love is the greatest courage in the world -- because it cannot depend on anything else, it has to depend just on a hunch, it has to depend on intuition; it cannot depend on intellect. There is no proof. Love asks for no other proof, and love cannot produce any proof.
Jews had to reject Jesus. Why? -- because he could not produce the authority. `But what authority?' they were asking again and again -- `But what authority do you speak? Who has given you the authority to speak?' Who can give authority to Jesus? And whatsoever he said was absurd. He said, `Authority? Before Abraham was, I am.' Now, Abraham is the most respected prophet of the Jews. And Jesus says: Before Abraham was, I am. Even Abraham cannot make me authoritative. I am not following Abraham, I have preceded him.
Now this is absurd, because the time gap is so vast; Abraham was thousands of years before. And Jesus says: Before Abraham was, EVER was, I am. My existence precedes Abraham's. Who can give me authority? And he is right, because the source that he has touched in himself it internal. The source he has touched in himself needs no authority to prove it. On the contrary: Jesus becomes the proof that Abraham was right. This is preposterous.
That's what I am saying: I am the proof that Krishna was right; I am the proof that Buddha was right; I am the proof that Jesus was right, not otherwise.
So I have no authority. I am here -- take it or leave it.
Next: Chapter 4: Religion Is Individual Flowering, Question 2
Energy Enhancement Enlightened Texts Kabir The Path of Love
| ENERGY
|
GAIN ENERGY APPRENTICE
LEVEL1
|
THE ENERGY BLOCKAGE REMOVAL
PROCESS
|
THE KARMA CLEARING
PROCESS APPRENTICE LEVEL3
|
MASTERY
OF RELATIONSHIPS TANTRA APPRENTICE LEVEL4
|
|
ENERGY ENHANCEMENT TESTIMONIALS EE LEVEL1 EE LEVEL2 EE LEVEL3 EE LEVEL4 EE FAQS |
