Sufism, Vol. 1 Sufis: The People Of The Path Chapter 8: A Certain Milieu, Question 2

The second question:

Question 2

CAN A DISCIPLE TRANSCEND FORM AND BE IN TUNE WITH THE ESSENCE OF THE CREATOR?

Why this hankering to transcend form? Form is also of the Creator, form is also God. In the form he also exists. Nothing is wrong with the form.

The problem arises only when you start thinking that the form is all. There is no need to transcend the form, there is only a need to understand it. Form is perfectly beautiful the body is perfectly beautiful -- but don't think that the body is all. There is something more, something more that is not visible to the eyes, something deep. It has to be there.

The body is the surface, the soul is its depth. These are not two things. God and the world are not two things... the world is the surface and God is the world's depth. And the depth cannot exist without the surface, remember, neither can the surface exist without the depth. They are together, they are absolutely together. They are one. It is only in language that the division arises; reality remains indivisible.

So first, don't hanker tor transcendence. I here is no need -- only understanding is necessary. Or, if you love the word 'transcendence', then you can remember: understanding is transcendence. But transcendence is not of the form, transcendence is of both the surface and the depth -- because the moment you see it is all one then you cannot define it as the surface and you cannot define it as the depth. Then all definitions are meaningless. Then you are facing the indefinable. You have transcended duality. But it comes through understanding.

The very idea of transcendence can create problems. You can start repressing, you can start condemning -- that's how condem-nation entered into human consciousness. And it has been the greatest calamity that man has ever suffered.

I have heard....

A guy went to his dentist. The dentist wanted to give him novocaine but he said, 'No, I want to transcend dental medication.'

He must be a transcendental meditation freak. He says, 'I want to transcend dental medication.' Why? Why this constant effort to go somewhere else, to be somewhere else, to be someone else? Why can't you relax into reality as it is? There is nowhere to go, nothing to transcend, and nothing to transcend to. God is herenow.

Just understand. Just open your eyes and see. See without any ideas. If you have this idea of transcending something, you are always looking with prejudiced eyes. You know that this is the form and you have to transcend the form. How can you love the form? This is the body and you have to love only the soul. And this is the world and you can love only God.

You will be getting into unnecessary anxiety. And the anxiety that you will create is such that you will never be able to solve it -- because the form is always there with the formless. The form is of the formless -- let me be contradictory or paradoxical, but it is so. The form is of the formless and the body is of the bodiless and matter is nothing but non-matter in a condensed form; It is the manifestation, matter is the manifestation, of the non-material. The word is nothing but the manifestation of silence.

Rather than trying to transcend, start thinking of relaxing into that which is. You will reach into the formless sooner -- and without any effort on your own. Just relax and be drowned by the form, and when you are drowned by the form you start entering into the formless. If you can love a woman or a man, your friend, your wife, your child, your father, your mother, if you can love anybody, soon you will see that the form is not there alone. The formless has started coming through the form.

When you touch the hand of somebody you love, it is not only a touch of the skin, something is touched which is beyond the skin, behind the skin. Some pulse, some vibe, simply jumps from one hand to another, something of the spiritual. Look into the eyes of somebody that you love and you are not looking only into the eyes -- something deeper opens, something abysmal opens. By and by the body starts disappearing. You are getting into the spiritual. But the body is the door.

It is exactly like a temple. You enter a temple... what do you mean by the word 'temple'? The door, the walls -- do you mean that? Of course, the door and the walls are not the temple, the temple is the emptiness inside. That's where you go. But those doors and those walls protect that emptiness, that shrine. If those walls and the doors disappear, there will be no shrine. Those walls are not against that emptiness; those walls support that emptiness, those walls protect that emptiness. So what is the temple? The walls, the doors, or the emptiness? No, you cannot divide that way, both are the temple. The wall and the doors are the outer form and the emptiness, the innermost emptiness, is the soul.

Exactly so is the case with man, with a flower, with a tree. God is there in every form and God is formless. Because God is formless the idea of how to transcend form arises. But the only way to transcend it is to descend into it. The only way to transcend it is to go into it so totally, so lovingly, that there is no condemnation.

Don't even call it the surface because even our words have become contaminated. The moment you say that this is just the surface you have already condemned it -- it is as if there is some-thing wrong with the surface.

You go for a walk on the beach, you see millions of waves in the ocean -- on the surface. Yes, this is the surface but can you take the surface away from the ocean? And can you enter the ocean without entering the surface? The depth and the surface are two polarities of one energy. And the ocean will not be much of an ocean if you take the surface away. Nothing will be left. You will go on taking the surface away, away, away, and nothing will be left -- because whenever something is there it will become the surface.

To see this non-duality is to see. Then one becomes alert, aware, for the first time.

Sufism

VOL. 1, SUFIS: THE PEOPLE OF THE PATH

Chapter-8

A Certain Milieu