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I CELEBRATE MYSELF: GOD IS NOW WHERE, LIFE IS NOW HERE
Chapter 2: Ringing bells in your heart
Question 1
Energy Enhancement Enlightened Texts Zen I Celebrate Myself
Friends, first, a few questions.
Question 1
The first question:
TO US, ARE THE WORDS `GOD' AND `NO-MIND' SYNONYMOUS?
No, not at all. God can never be synonymous with no-mind. God is always there, far away. God has been always referred to by the word `that' -- invisible, just a fiction. No-mind has been always referred to as this.
No-mind is your reality, your ultimate nature; God was a mind-created lie. No-mind is your truth, your splendor, your very universe. They cannot be synonymous.
God does not exist; no-mind exists.
God is only a belief; no-mind is an experience.
God has been the cause of all your mental
sickness.
No-mind is pure health, wholeness.
The moment you utter the word `God' you immediately start thinking of him as a person, as a creator. No-mind is not a person; on the contrary, your very personality disappears, only then does no-mind start blossoming. No-mind is not a creator. It has always been here, and will remain always here; it is always now. No-mind is your eternity, your very source of life.
God was just an excuse to exploit humanity and to keep humanity in a very subtle and invisible bondage. God has been your prison; no-mind is your freedom. God has been in the hands of the priests, and the priests are doing the ugliest job in the world, because their whole business depends on a lie.
No-mind has no priests, it is simply there inside you. And once you experience it, suddenly you become aware that no-mind is not your property, it is not your monopoly. The first experience appears to be that it is your no-mind, but soon you become aware that the no-mind contains the whole universe, it contains the whole existence.
God has always been an outsider. You cannot create anything if you are not an outsider. The Hindus refer to God as a potter, but the potter has to be outside the pot, only then can he create it. If he is inside the pot, the pot is already created. What is he doing inside the pot? The potter has to be outside, only then can he create the pot. All religions have the same idea in different symbols -- but God is an outsider.
If there is a God you are only creatures, created people. Without God you are buddhas, uncreated people. God is the heaviest burden that man has been carrying, and because of that there is no progress, there is no evolution. The heavy burden, the chains, go on pulling you backwards. They don't allow you to move faster to the higher peaks of evolution.
God has to be completely demolished from your minds. It is an absolute necessity and urgency. Once you drop God you will be surprised how many other lies have simply disappeared. He is the source, the foundation of all lies. Just watch God disappearing and you will see heaven has disappeared, hell has disappeared, fear has disappeared, dread, greed ... they are simply gone. God was the source. For the first time you can breathe at ease.
God was judgmental; no-mind has no judgment. God was continuously condemning you; no-mind is a blissful, ecstatic state. God is just programmed into your mind.
In the Soviet Union they program differently. They program no-God, but both are programs. The atheist does not know that there is no God, nor does the theist know that there is a God. Both are belief systems contrary to each other. But that does not mean that one is right and the other is wrong. Both cannot be right, but both can be wrong -- and both are wrong.
An authentic man will not accept any belief system either of atheist or of theist. He will explore on his own what the truth is; he will not like secondhand knowledge. You never think about it, but you would not like to wear somebody else's shoes. You would not like to wear somebody else's secondhand clothes. But your whole mind is secondhand, and not only secondhand, in fact, your mind has been going from hand to hand to hand for millions of years. Living with this mind is not living at all.
Your mind is borrowed -- your life cannot be sincere and honest. Your mind is borrowed -- your morality cannot be truthful, it will only be hypocrisy. Out of a borrowed mind, how can you manage any truthfulness, any sincerity, any authenticity, any originality? God is the oldest lie, and no-mind is a fresh original experience.
God is no where; no-mind is now here.
No-mind is equivalent to life, is equivalent to existence. God is against life, God is against existence.
Can't you see all the religions are against life? They don't want you to live. Anything that makes you joyous, anything that makes you really alive -- they start crushing it, condemning it as a sin.
No-mind simply allows you to be natural. It gives you an opportunity to be natural, to be relaxed, to be at ease -- no guilt, no inhibition, no suppression. Nature is accepted in its totality, it becomes your very heart, your very being.
There is no morality from outside. That outside God was creating all things from outside, imposing on you. And everybody around the world is carrying mountains of loads of beliefs, moralities, commandments. They are all inventions of the mind.
No-mind is not an invention of the mind, it is a discovery. You don't have to invent it, it is already here. You just have to be here also -- and the meeting, and the transformation. And out of that meeting and transformation arises a totally new kind of morality, a new kind of spontaneity, a new kind of natural grace, a new love for existence, a new reverence for all that is here, for all that surrounds you.
But everything that comes from your very innermost being is being prevented by your God, by your priests, by your scriptures. They are your enemies. You have to take it very clearly. Unless you understand who are the obstacles, you will never reach to no-mind.
God is the biggest obstacle to no-mind.
Because of God, the God-oriented religions could not manage any kind of meditation, because meditation goes inwards, and God is outside. And because God is outside, all the God-oriented religions have invented prayers.
Prayers are for the outside God, and nobody has seen that God. A few people have pretended -- either they were lying or they were hallucinating, but nobody has seen God. It is one of the most unproved hypotheses. Don't carry with you unproved hypotheses; they become very burdensome. As time passes they go on gathering more weight. The weight becomes so heavy that you stop growing. There is no space left for you to grow. All kinds of rubbish, furniture, rotten ... surrounds you. You don't have any space to move.
If God is there you don't have any empty space, you don't have any empty sky. You don't have any possibility to evolve -- there is no space. Where are you going to evolve? God is filling every place. That's why religions insist that he is omnipresent. If he is omnipresent, then there is no space left for you. If he is all over, then wherever you go you will be struggling against God.
No-mind is a pure space. It simply gives you an opening which goes on widening as your experience becomes ripe. Finally, you find there is only pure space all around you, infinite and eternal -- and you can open your wings. It is your home -- you can fly as high as you want. There is no weight dragging you downwards, dragging you backwards. The experience of weightlessness is synonymous with no-mind.
A strange Sufi story is ....
A Sufi mystic was staying in a disciple's home. But he used to pray to God so loudly that the neighbors started complaining. In the middle of the night he would start shouting so loudly -- you have to shout loudly if you want to reach to an invisible God. You don't know where he is. Nobody knows his telephone number, nobody knows his address. Blindly, you are just raising your hands towards the sky, which never answers because there is nobody to answer.
Looked at scientifically, people who are praying to God are absolutely insane, neurotics, because they are praying to somebody who is not there, and they are talking to somebody who has never been there. No answer ever comes.
That Sufi used to shout loudly. Finally, the disciple decided that it was better to keep him in the basement at night. So they arranged a bed in the basement of the house, so he could pray as loudly as he desired and nobody would be disturbed.
But in the middle of the night the whole neighborhood gathered, and they said, "Why have you put him on the roof of your house?"
He said, "Roof? We have put him in the basement."
But they went up to the roof and he was there praying to God so loudly. And when you are praying from the roof, naturally your sound goes on waking all the neighbors.
The disciple asked, "How did you manage to go to the roof?"
The mystic said, "I had to, because from the basement God will not hear me."
Mohammedans have great pillars around their mosque, high pillars they call minarets. And the priest goes to the high pillars, because if you pray from the high pillars there is a possibility God may hear you.
Hindus have in their temples -- Tibetans also have them in their temples -- different kinds of bells, gongs. Did you know their purpose is to attract the attention of God? So you give a good beat on the gong and God will listen to you. Then after giving the beat on the gong, or the drums, or the bells, you can pray.
In the Hindu temple the bell is where you enter. And the bigger the temple, the bigger the bell. The richer the temples, the bigger and bigger the bells ... deafening sound. First you have to ring the bell to wake up God for him to listen to you. But you don't know where he is. Your gong, your bells are just resounding in the empty sky. There is nobody to be wakened.
No-mind is a reality that you can experience, but for that no prayer is needed. You don't have to look outside of you. You have to close your eyes, and you have to look inwards without any idea of what you are going to find. If you have any idea that this is what you are going to find, then most probably you will imagine, and you will think you have found it.
Go inwards without any prejudice, because all prejudices are part of the mind. Your Jesus, your Krishna, your Rama -- all are part of your mind. If you carry any prejudice with you, you remain confined to the mind. If you want to transcend the mind and reach to the no-mind, which is the ultimate consciousness, pure consciousness, the very essence of existence ... But for that, prayer is not of help, nor are temples of any help, nor are scriptures of any help.
No philosophy is needed, no system of beliefs is needed, no theology is needed. All that you need is to unload yourself of everything that has been forced upon you.
Unload yourself.
Unburden yourself.
Drop everything that has been given to you by your parents, by your teachers, by your priests, by your leaders.
Drop everything that has come from outside.
Throw it out!
And suddenly you will find your mind is giving way into no-mind. You have only to drop the rubbish -- and God is part of the rubbish, the heaviest part.
So there is no possibility of God and no-mind being synonymous.
Here, we are searching without any belief, without any hypothesis. We are simply going into our subjectivity, into our interiority.
As far as I am concerned, this is the only temple: your body. As far as I am concerned, your subjectivity -- silent, peaceful, just an empty space -- is the very source you have come from, and is the very goal you are going towards.
When the source and the goal meet, you are enlightened -- the whole circle, the whole pilgrimage is complete. You have left the source as ignorant, you have come back to the source again as innocent. You have again become a child.
One birth is given by your parents, another birth you have to manage by yourself. The second birth is the birth which matters. The first birth is going to end up in death. The second birth is the beginning of eternity: no death, no end, no beginning.
No-mind is the whole universe, and it is not possible to find this no-mind by worshipping, by prayer, by believing. This mind needs you to be completely cured from all past-oriented ideologies, from all organized religions, from all scriptures, from all that has been forced upon you. It is phony, it is plastic.
Real roses come on the bush from its interiority. You can hang plastic roses on the bush, but they will not be fragrant, and they will not be alive. And because they are not alive they are not going to die. They will just hang there. They are already dead; they are man-manufactured flowers.
God is a man-manufactured idea.
No-mind is not your idea. No-mind is not manufactured by man. No-mind is a gift of existence. You can only be grateful, you can only be in deep gratitude when you find no-mind. You will not find even a single word to say to existence. Even saying "thank you" will look very superficial.
In the West it is very formal, you even say "thank you" to your mother, you thank your father -- not that you really mean it, it is just part of formality.
In the East it is totally different. I have never thanked my father, I have never thanked my mother. It is so superficial, it is so formal. When you love someone you cannot utter the words `thank you'. It will destroy the whole beauty of the experience.
So when you come to no-mind, you are utterly dumb.
Kabir has made a statement. He says the experience of no-mind is gunge keri sarkara -- as if the dumb man has tasted the sugar. He cannot speak. He knows taste, but he is dumb; he cannot speak.
The experience of no-mind is inexpressible. You can have it, you can dance in celebration but you cannot say anything about it. Your dance certainly will shine with a new joy, with a new ecstasy, with a new drunkenness. Your dance will show a new radiation, a new aura around you. Your eyes will be shining. For the first time they have seen something worth seeing. Your whole being will be throbbing with joy, because you have come back to the original source.
Let gods die. Don't carry on them. People are carrying dead gods, and when somebody is dead and you go on carrying him, you start stinking. All religious people stink because they are carrying a dead body.
There is a beautiful Hindu mythology ....
Shiva, one of the gods of the Hindus, one of the three gods, the trinity of Hinduism ... Shiva's wife dies, but he won't accept the death of his wife. His mind was constantly telling him, "If you go around the country there may be somebody who can resurrect her."
He used to live in the Himalayas, so he came down with the dead body of Parvati, his wife. The very word parvati means daughter of the mountains ... a beautiful woman, but dead. He carried the corpse around the country, asking everybody, "Is there any physician, any man of miracles?"
The body was deteriorating, and soon it started falling into pieces. The legs dropped in one place, the hands dropped into another place ... Hindus have twelve holy places. Those twelve holy places in the country are the twelve places where Parvati's parts dropped. But even though parts were dropping, Shiva continued around the country until he found that the last part had dropped. It must have taken him years.
But your carrying a dead God is a longer pilgrimage -- millions of years. And you go on believing that someday, somewhere, God will materialize. Meanwhile you go on carrying the corpse. The corpse is destroying you also, because it is rotten, and it is making a rotten humanity.
God is a sickness; you have simply to drop it. But the only good thing is that you are carrying the sickness, so you can drop it. It is your belief, so you can throw it out! It is not something that is a part of you, it is something that you are holding unnecessarily. It is not holding you! This is the only beautiful thing about it -- that you can drop God.
One day I dropped God, and since then I have felt so weightless, so blissful. I used to carry the dead body myself, but I realized that the body was dead -- no breathing, no heartbeat -- it was up to me whether to carry it or drop it. And as I dropped it, for the first time I felt myself as an individual. The dead body was overwhelming me, it was covering me from all the sides. It had become my personality.
For a moment I felt naked, because the personality had dropped, the masks had dropped. But soon I knew that this nudity, this nakedness was natural. Everybody is nude behind the clothes. The moment you drop your clothes ... Have you ever felt a certain freedom just on the seabeach as you drop your clothes? You suddenly feel the sun with your body, the wind blowing on your body, and a tremendous sense of freedom -- just by dropping clothes, which are not of much weight.
God is very heavy. It goes on becoming heavier and heavier as time passes. A moment comes when it is heavier than you -- you are crushed under the mountainous load. Unless one is free from God, one knows not what freedom is.
So God cannot be synonymous with no-mind.
No-mind is really the antidote to the disease called God.
No-mind is your freedom.
All chains dropped, all thoughts dropped, all feelings dropped ... suddenly you find only the purest essence has remained. All that was covering it, layer upon layer, has been dropped. This dropping I call meditation.
Finally only a witness, a sakshi, remains -- just a pure awareness. This is ultimate freedom, and the authentic religion is for ultimate freedom and ultimate liberation.
God-oriented religions cannot even give you a sense of freedom, or a direction for freedom. Their whole effort is to direct your mind towards God. Fill your mind with God, repeat his name again and again so it becomes ingrained in your mind. The more ingrained it becomes, the more difficult it will be to leave it. The sooner you leave God, the better. And you will have to leave one day, so why not now! One cannot live a lie forever. Only truth can be lived forever.
You have to believe only in lies, you don't have to believe in the truth. Truth has to be discovered. I teach you purely the attitude of an agnostic -- one who does not believe, who does not disbelieve, but who is a seeker, a searcher, an explorer.
Certainly the first thing to be explored is your own inner being. That is the closest life throbbing, everything else is a little far away. The man of intelligence first will look inside his own house before he goes searching on the moon and on Mars. First he will look inside to see what is there. And those who have gone inside have never come empty handed. They have come with so much bliss, so much ecstasy, with such an abundance that they start sharing, because as they share they come to understand the inner economics.
The more you share the more you have. If you don't share, you won't have even that which you had. Jesus says, "Those who have shall be given more, and those who have not, even whatsoever they have will be taken away." I cannot agree with him. I say unto you, the more you give, the more you will have; the less you give, the less you will have. If you don't give at all, you won't have anything left.
Sharing is the only compassion.
Sharing is the only service.
Sharing is the only way the awakened one lives. That is real character. That is authentic morality. That is true religiousness.
You don't have a God, but you become godly. Hence I say, the moment you drop God you are moving in the right direction of becoming godly. You will be divine in your ecstasies, in your silent spaces of the being. You will be divine. But you will be divine because you will be participating in the divine existence. Everything is sacred to the man who has come to know himself, who has discovered his hidden secret of life. Everything becomes sacred.
A story is told about the mystic Nanak ....
He went to Kaaba, the holy place of the Mohammedans. It is a beautiful story.
He reached Kaaba by the evening, but his fame had already reached, so people were waiting for him. They received him, welcomed him, but he was very tired. So he said, "I would like to go to sleep, I have been walking miles and miles."
So they prepared a bed under a tree, but he turned the bed. Mohammedans don't sleep with their legs towards Kaaba, but he turned the bed so that his legs were towards Kaaba, and his head was on the opposite side.
When the head priest of Kaaba heard about it, he came running. He said, "We thought you were a great mystic, but you don't even seem to be religious. You don't understand that you are hurting our feelings. You are keeping your feet towards the most divine and the most holy land! You should turn your feet."
Nanak laughed. He said, "As far as I am concerned, wherever I turn my feet I find they are towards the holy land, because to me the whole existence is holy. Now if you think there is some place which is unholy, please turn my legs. I am willing!"
There was a silence. The priest could not say that there was some place that was unholy. But this could not be tolerated either, that this man continued to keep his feet towards Kaaba.
I think up to this point it is factual. Beyond this point it becomes more and more symbolic. But even that is significant ....
Finally, the priest decided to turn his legs and turn his head towards Kaaba. But they were utterly disappointed, surprised. They could not believe their eyes. Wherever they moved Nanak's legs, Kaaba moved.
This must be symbolic, but it is significant. It is poetry, but it gives you the feeling that if everything is holy and sacred it does not matter where you keep your legs it will always be towards the sacred land. The whole existence is sacred for a mystic. Nanak showed his understanding very clearly. Only a man of no-mind can do that.
A man of no-mind knows that everywhere life is throbbing -- in the trees, in the rivers, in the mountains ... Even the Himalayas are still growing. It is the youngest mountain in the whole world, but really powerful because it has got the highest peaks in the world and they are still growing -- one foot per year. But that means it is alive, it is not a dead mountain. It is reaching towards the stars, perhaps very slowly because it is not a small mountain. And for mountains, even to rise one foot in one year is quite fast. Looking at eternity, if the Himalayas go on growing in this way, soon they will be touching stars; it won't be long.
When you see life everywhere, in the stones -- perhaps fast asleep so that you cannot feel it, perhaps a different dimension -- in the trees, so that you cannot understand it ... But everything is so abundantly alive, all that you need is space and perceptivity of no-mind.
God is your blindness. No-mind is going to give you fresh eyes to look again at the universe.
Next: Chapter 2: Ringing bells in your heart, Question 2
Energy Enhancement Enlightened Texts Zen I Celebrate Myself
| 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 |
