Christianity, Vol. 1 Come Follow Yourself Chapter 4: Mirroring Christ, Question 1

Question 1

A SINGLE SESSION OF YOUR DYNAMIC MEDITATION HAS LEFT WITHIN ME A GREATER BLISS AND SENSE OF BEING THAN TWENTY YEARS OF HAVING HAD TO LISTEN TO THE STORIES OF THE NEW TESTAMENT AND TO PRAY TO AN ALMIGHTY AND DISTANT GOD WHO STAYED AN UNEXPERIENCEABLE GODOT TO ME. IS IT POSSIBLE THAT THE TEACHINGS OF JESUS JUST MIGHT NOT BE HELPFUL TO ALL SEEKERS -- YES, MIGHT EVEN BE POISONOUS TO THEM, OR TO SOME?

CHRISTIANITY AND CHRIST should never be confused. Christ is totally different from Christianity so whenever you want to understand Christ, go directly and immediately -- not via Rome; then you will never understand Christ. Christ or Krishna or Buddha cannot be organized: they are so vast that no organization can do justice to them. Only small things can be organized. Politics can be organized, not religion, Nazism can be organized, communism can be organized -- not Christ, not Krishna. The sheer vastness is such that the moment you try to force them into a pattern they are already dead.

It is as if you are trying to grasp the sky in your small hands -- with closed fists. With an open hand the sky may be touching, may be a little bit on your hand, but with a closed fist it has already escaped out of it.

Whatsoever you have been hearing about Jesus is not about Jesus, the real man; it is about the Jesus that Christians have invented, decorated to be sold in the market. The Christian Jesus is a commodity to be sold; Christ himself is a revolution. You will have to be transformed through him; he is the baptism of fire. You can be a Christian conveniently... but you can never be a REAL Christian conveniently. If you are REALLY following Jesus, there is bound to be trouble.

He himself ended on the cross; you cannot end on the throne, But if you follow Christianity there is no trouble. It is a very convenient way to adjust Christ to yourself rather than adjusting yourself to Christ. If you adjust YOURSELF TO CHRIST, there will be a transformation; if you adjust Christ TO YOURSELF, there can be none. Then Christ himself becomes part of the decoration of your imprisonment, part of your furniture -- your car, your house; a convenience at the most -- but you are not related to him. That's why twenty years look like they have been wasted.

The same will happen with me. You are fortunate that you are doing meditation with me. Once I am gone the meditation is going to be organized -- it is impossible to prevent it; it is the way things move. Then you will do it for twenty years -- or two hundred years -- and nothing will happen. It does not happen through the technique; technique is just dead. It happens through the love that you feel for me, that I have for you. The technique is just an excuse. It is not the most important thing; the most important thing is your love, your trust. In that trust, the technique works and functions, becomes alive, gets roots into your heart.

Sooner or later everything becomes organized: prayer, meditation, everything. Then the glory is lost. Then you can go on doing it -- you may become absolutely perfect, skilled; it may also give some sort of consolation -- but the mutation will be missing. You will remain the same, a continuity. It will not be a baptism: you will not die in it, and you will not be reborn.

That's why my insistence is on searching for an alive Master. Scriptures are there, once those rivers were flowing, but now they are frozen. They are lost in the desert land of churches, temples and organizations. The poetry no longer throbs in them: they are dead dogmas, arguments; the love has disappeared.

Remember this always: if you can find a living Master, forget all about scriptures. The living Master is the only scripture which is alive. Read his heart and allow your heart to be read by him. Be in a communion -- that is the only way.

Jesus worked the same way as you feel I am working, but twenty centuries have passed. The first disciples who came around him staked their lives: they left all that they had, they moved with this man, they risked everything. It was worth it. This man was a treasure of the unknown world. Nothing was too much. Whatsoever was asked they did. And they had the opportunity to walk with a god on this earth, to be in close affinity with divinity.

Others were saying, "This man is wrong," but those who were close to him knew that only this man is right -- and if this man is not right, then NOTHING can be right, then 'right' cannot exist. They crucified this man, but those who were close knew that you cannot crucify him. This man had already entered immortality, this man had already become part of their immortal souls. You can kill the body, but not the spirit.

They had lived, walked, breathed, into the being of this man. They were transformed. It is not a question of technique. They prayed with this man but the real thing was not prayer, the real thing was just to be in the presence of this man. This man had a presence.

Have you observed? -- very few people have what you call 'presence'. Rarely do you come across a person who has a presence -- something indefinable about him, something that you suddenly feel but cannot indicate, something that fills you but is ineffable, something very mysterious and unknown. You cannot deny it, you cannot prove it. It is not the body because anybody can have the body; it is not the mind because anybody can have the mind. Sometimes a very beautiful body may be there, tremendously beautiful, but the presence is not there; sometimes a genius mind is there, but the presence is not there; and sometimes you pass a beggar and you are filled, touched, stirred -- a presence.

Those who were in the presence of Jesus, those who were in his SATSANG -- those who lived close, those who lived in his milieu -- breathed HIM. If you allow me to say it, those who drank him and ate him, who allowed him to enter into their innermost shrine.... THAT transformed, not the prayer; prayer was just an excuse to be with him. Even without prayer it would have happened, but without prayer they might not have found an excuse to be with him.

You are here with me. I go on inventing meditations for you. They are just excuses so that you can be here a little longer, a little while more, so that you can linger around me -- because nobody knows when my presence will touch you. Nothing can be said about it; it cannot be manipulated. It happens when it happens; nothing can be done directly for it. Just be here. Even without meditations the thing will happen, but without meditations you won't have any excuse to be here.

I go on talking to you. Even without talk it can happen, it WILL happen, but if I don't talk, by and by you will disappear because you won't have an excuse. What are you doing here? I have to give you something to do so that you can be. I have to engage you and occupy you so that you don't feel restless. The thing is going to happen from some other dimension, but when you are occupied that dimension remains open. If you are not occupied, you become too restless.

All meditations and all prayers and all methods are toys invented for children to play with, but that is useful, very significant. Once you are occupied, your innermost shrine is open to me. You are not restless -- you are doing meditation -- and then I can do my work. It is not good to say that I do my work. Then it starts happening.

You are right, twenty years of Christian teaching, listening to The New Testament stories, may have been futile -- but not because those stories are futile. They are superb as far as stories go. The poetry of The New Testament, the poetry of the whole Bible, is something not of this world. There are great poets -- Shakespeare and Milton and Dante -- but nobody can surpass the Bible. The poetry is tremendously simple, but it has some quality which ordinary poetry cannot have. It has awe; that is, the religious quality.

Have you watched sometimes? You see a beautiful flower. You may appreciate it, it has an aesthetic quality. You appreciate it and you move ahead. You may see a beautiful face -- even the face of a Cleopatra: the lines, the proportion, the marble-like body -- but that too is aesthetic. And sometimes you come across a few things or a few beings that inspire not only aesthetic appreciation, but awe. What is awe?

Facing some thing or some being, thinking stops. Your mind cannot cope with it. You can cope with a Cleopatra, you can even cope with an Einstein -- howsoever abstruse, abstract, difficult, you can cope with it. Just a little more training of the mind may be needed. But when you come across a Jesus or a Buddha the mind falls flat, it bogs down. SOMETHING is too much for it. You cannot think about anything, you are as if in a deep shock -- and yet the shock is blissful. That is awe.

The Bible has awe in it -- the quality of putting your mind completely at a stop -- but that you will have to reach directly. The missionary, the priest, the bishop, they destroy because they start interpreting. They put their minds in it and their minds are mediocre. It is as if you are looking at a tremendously beautiful thing from the mind of a very stupid man. Or you are looking into a mirror that is broken, completely broken -- it has gathered rust, nothing can be mirrored perfectly -- and you look in the mirror and see the moon. Distorted. That is how it has been happening.

The Bible is one of the greatest events in the world -- very pure, purer than the Bhagavad Gita because the Bhagavad Gita is very refined. The people who created it were very cultured and educated, and of course whenever a thing becomes very refined it becomes ethereal, unearthly. The Bible is rooted in the earth.

All the prophets of the Bible are people of the earth. Even Jesus moves on the earth; he is the son of a carpenter, uneducated, not knowing anything about aesthetics, poetics -- nothing. If he speaks poetry, it is because he IS, not knowing it at all, a poet. His poetry is raw and wild.

Jesus has something of the peasant in him: the wisdom without knowledge. He is not a man of knowledge; no university would be willing to confer an honorary degree on him, no. He wouldn't fit in at Oxford or Cambridge; he would look very foolish in the gowns and clown-like caps. He would look very foolish; he wouldn't fit. He belongs to the earth, to the village, to ordinary, plain people.

Just the other night I was reading a small story, an Arabian story. A man died. He had seventeen camels and three sons and he left a will in which, when it was opened and read, it was said that one half of the camels should go to the first son, one third to the second and one ninth to the third.

The sons were nonplussed -- what to do? Seventeen camels: one half is to go to the first son -- is one to cut one camel in two? And that too won't solve much because then one third has to go to the second. That too won't solve much: one ninth has to go to the third. Almost all the camels would be killed.

Of course, they went to the man of the town who was most knowledgeable: the Mulla -- the pundit, the scholar, the mathematician. He thought hard, he tried hard, but he couldn't find any solution because mathematics is mathematics. He said, "I have never divided camels in my life, this whole thing seems to be foolish. But you will have to cut them. If the will is to be followed exactly then the camels have to be cut, they have to be divided."

The sons were not ready to cut the camels. So what to do? Then somebody suggested, "It is better that you go to someone who knows something about camels, not about mathematics." So they went to the sheikh of the town who was an old man, uneducated but wise through experience. They told him their problem.

The old man laughed. He said, "Don't be worried. It is simple." He loaned one of his own camels to them -- now there were eighteen camels -- and then he divided. Nine camels were given to the first and he was satisfied, perfectly satisfied. Six camels were given to the second, one third; he was also perfectly satisfied. And two camels were given to the third, one ninth; he was also satisfied. One camel was left. That was loaned. He took his camel back and said, "You can go."

Wisdom is practical, knowledge impractical. Knowledge is abstract, wisdom is earthly; knowledge is just words, wisdom is experience.

The Bible is very simple. Don't be deceived by its simplicity. In its simplicity it has the wisdom of the ages. It is very poetic; I have never come across anything more poetic than the Bible. One can simply go on relishing it, one can go on repeating the words of Jesus. They come from the heart and they go to the heart.

But don't go through a mediator. Those mediators are mediocres, they destroy the whole thing. I have looked through many commentaries on the Bible, but I have never come across a single intelligent commentary. They all destroy. I have never seen any single commentary from any theologian who has added anything to the Bible, who has in any way made its glory more manifest. They DIM it.

And that is bound to be so. Only a man of the quality of Jesus can reveal the truth of it, only a man of the quality of Jesus can enhance its beauty. People who live in the dark valleys and people who live on the sunny peaks of the Himalayas don't understand each other's language. When the man from the peak speaks and the man from the valley interprets, everything goes wrong.

Yes, you are right -- your twenty years may have been wasted. But it will be a total misunderstanding if you think that Jesus is not for you. Jesus is for all, that is not the question. But go direct: become more meditative, become more prayerful, and go direct. And forget all that has been told to you about the Bible; the Bible is enough.

If you want to understand the Upanishads, it may be difficult to understand them directly because they are very refined. The people who have been talking in the Upanishads were great philosophers; they need commentaries. But Jesus is I plain, his truth is plain. He is a very ordinary villager; no commentary is needed. He is his own light. And if you cannot understand Jesus, then who will you be able to understand? Throw all the foolish commentaries away. Go direct. Jesus is so simple, you can have a direct contact,

I am not commenting on Jesus, I am simply responding. I am not a commentator. To be a commentator is to do a very ugly job. Why should I comment on Jesus? He is plain, he is absolutely simple. Just like two plus two make four -- he is that simple. Just like in the morning the sun rises and everybody knows it is morning. He is so simple.

I am not commenting on him, I am responding. I read his words: something echoes in me. That is not a commentary. i My heart throbs with him, something parallel echoes in me, and I tell you what it is.

So don't take my words as commentaries. I am not trying to explain Jesus to you, there is no need. I am simply mirroring. I am telling you MY heart. What happens to me when I am listening to Jesus: I am telling you that.

Christianity

VOL. 1, COME FOLLOW YOURSELF

Chapter-4

Mirroring Christ