Maintaining one's innocence on the path to enlightenment

 

Being in that state of consciousness, which allows knowledge to flow through, without actually knowing, that ability is within every one of us. All intuitions that arise in you arise from an area which you don't know. You cannot call it an intuition if you have already known it. As our intelligence grows, we tend to become crooked. Maintaining innocence in spite of intelligence, is wisdom, is enlightenment.

If our innocence is maintained in spite of intelligence, it has great value, naturalness. You have heard from many books and many people that ego is bad, ego is an obstruction to spiritual growth, ego is an obstruction to knowledge. Ego is nothing but being unnatural. Naturalness is being at home, feeling one, and feeling close to everyone. Distance is ego. Ego means I don't consider you as a part of me sol keep distance.

When I have to show off to you or have to behave a certain way, there is no cordiality there, no love, no connection. Then the ego comes into play. Being like a child, feeling at home, making everybody one's own, dropping all defenses and boundaries, destroying all the walls in between, that is being natural. You can call it being crazy, a little bit crazy. People may think you are a little crazy. It doesn't matter. You feel light, wonderful within you. Your mind is saved.

At any cost you need to save your mind. Just meditating, doing some practices, all these will not help unless you really want to save your mind. Guard the mind from the dust which flies in from the world.

If a person who has a lot of responsibility says, "I do nothing" that has great value. Someone who is very lazy says, "I do nothing", and it has no value. If someone who IS doing all the time and has great responsibility can say, "I do nothing", then that person’s consciousness has taken a shift. An important person being a celebrity has no value.

So an ignorant person being innocent has no value. When intelligence and innocence go together, a beauty dawns - very profound, very essential.

Benefit of feeling helpless

 

Every parent is a door for a new soul to enter into the world. Nothing more than a door. Every artist is a door for some work of art to flow through them. All your virtues, all beauty, all that is truth spring from the same source - one source.

Love is something that is very fresh. It can’t be stale. You can't practice love. No practice can bring love in you. Love is spontaneous. It is the same with beauty. Beauty can't be practiced. You can't practice appreciation.

That is why I say "I don't know what I speak". Knowing, knowledgeability, limits. The highest knowledge is called the end of knowledge. Vedanta means the end of knowledge, truth. 

It is the same with truth as with beauty, truth cannot be practiced. It can be cognized, recognized, felt, experienced and lived moment to moment, moment to moment. Observing the unpredictability of life, the unpredictability of the world creates an awe in you, a sense of wonder in you.

Every person on this earth feels helpless, completely handicapped, at some time or other whether he is John F. Kennedy, Mahatma Gandhi or someone on the street. Everyone feels helplessness, feels that things are ruled by something other than what one can logically conceive. Whatever possible conclusions we make, we still feel things happen beyond that. 

When we feel helpless, we tend to become frustrated, cynical. This is the junction point. The feeling of helplessness can turn into prayer, or it can turn into frustration. Divinity can be perceived in the prayerfulness. In frustration we become more and more disheartened, dejected. Do you see that?

Prayer is not a practice, it is a happening. When from the very core of your heart, your mind, you feel helplessness that is prayer. When you are successful, you Know it. A sense of doership comes.

But when the feeling of helplessness arises, prayer can be very authentic. This authentic prayer can transform life, can bring such a force or power within us. I don't mean that we should all be miserable in order to pray. Gratefulness is very essential. 

When we recognise our helplessness, we need to put a distance between ourselves and what is happening, a distance from every action. I'm talking and yet I am watching myself talk. I'm sitting here, yet I'm not just sitting here. I have entered all the things here-the cushions, the carpet, the walls, the photograph. All over it is me, an expanded awareness living life from that area beyond calculations.

We measure and talk. We calculate, we prepare and we talk. But when we talk of something which we don't know, it is very adventurous. I have never read the Bible, but I can speak on the Bible. Nor have I ever read Buddha, but I can speak about Buddha.

Letting words flow through you when you speak

 

What is the difference between a question and wonder? For a question we seek an answer, in wonder we don’t seek an answer. A question is related to sorrow; wonder is related to joy.

No one ever asks, ‘Why am I happy?’ When we become miserable, we ask ‘Why has this misery come to me?’ No one ever questions why there is so much beauty in the world, in creation. But why there is dishonesty?’

This ‘Why’ comes from that area of our mind that seeks to know, that seeks knowledgeability. Knowledgeability is labeling things. I don’t know what I am speaking. What you know you speak from your intellect, you speak from your knowledge. But the purpose of knowledge is to make you aware of how ignorant you are. The more you know, the more unknown remains. So, in fact, the unknown grows. What we don’t know grows.

We are born in ignorance. When we mature and we go through the process of acquiring knowledge, we again become ignorant. But there is this difference – this second “I don’t know” becomes a beautiful “I don’t know”. It is wonder. “Why this creation?” “I don’t know” “What is happening?” “I don’t know”.

An ignorant person talks and he doesn't know what he says. So also an enlightened person talks and he doesn’t know what he says. If he knows and talks, it is coming from limitation. If he doesn’t know and talks, he allows the words to flow through. He's open. He remains available to that are of the self, the consciousness, from which the words will come. An enlightened person can speak on any subject which he doesn’t know. He can sit and talk, but only if he doesn’t start thinking about it.

If you ask an enlightened person to prepare a thesis, he would fail to do it. Kabir or St. Francis would be unable to write a thesis or to write a poem, but they could sit and let the poetry flow through.

What you have known and you speak is stale. It is not fresh. But when you speak something that you don’t know, it is something fresh, it is something new. It is the most creative thing.

Talking about what you know may be creative, but definitely less creative than when you talk about something that you don’t know. In that very moment that is being created, you allow yourself to be a doorway for the creative process to spring through you. We are all just doors.

Transforming gratitude into grace

 

A drop of water on a hot plate takes little time to disappear. It makes some noise and it evaporates. Gratitude in our life seems to disappear even faster.

We seem to forget how much we have grown, how much we have received. The mind seeks more and more. And in every wanting of more and more, it forgets the past very easily.

So gratitude rises in everybody but disappears very soon. Today we cannot say that no one is grateful. Everyone is grateful, but for the moment and then it is finished. Grace is that gratitude which can remain all the time.

If gratitude remains around the year like the evergreen, you call it grace. It is grace. It is like the snow in the Himalayas that stays throughout the year. It doesn’t just fall and disappear. Whatever falls on the highest peak stays. When there is gratitude, complaints disappear. When complaints arise, gratitude disappears, gratefulness disappears.

When there is a complaint in the mind, there is discontent, frustration, dejection, depression. All that follows. If you are not grateful, if there is no gratefulness, no gratitude, then you will start complaining.

You will find fault. Even if there is none, you will try to see it. You will find it. Your mind will do it for you. You won’t even need to try hard. Your mind can easily pick it up. So and so did not show all his teeth. It was less than a full smile.

This is the lower journey. Gratitude is the plateau, the middle. And as you rise above that, there is grace. When gratitude in you stays, that very gratitude flows out from you as grace. Wherever you see divine grace flowing, there you will find gratitude.

Opening yourself to love

 

There was a beggar who sat all his life on a particular spot. When he died, people said that he had spoiled the piece of land, that he made it dirty. “He has lived all his life here”, they said to each other. “Let us dig the mud from here and throw it out”.

When they started taking down his small hut and digging the mud out of the place where he lived, they found an enormous hole filled with wealth. The people laughed. They said, “This man lived in poverty all his life and he was sitting on this hole filled with wealth”.

“If he had dug down one foot right where he was, he could have been a millionaire”. Everybody pitied him. 

Bang on the door. Where you are, you are on the door step. Do not delay a moment. Bang on the door. All the wealth is within you.

Each one of us is the total sun, the full sun. We have come into this world, everyone of us, to contribute, to give light and love. But all of our life we remain unaware of our wealth, unaware of what we are. So don’t delay. Bang on the door with full force.

Just knocking will not help. Humanity has swung to the extreme today, so it is high time we get back to our selves with all speed. We have been shivering outside the door long enough. How are you to get back to your self, to get home without any delay? The intensity of your wanting to get back is the first thing. If you have been shivering in the cold, you won’t simply sit there and knock.

When you have recognized this truth, that you need to get through the door, the very first step, is passion to get to the center. When you close one door, another door opens. When you close your outside door, then your inner door opens.

When you keep thinking about outside people, situations, circumstances, you are lost completely in that. For a moment shut the outside door. Think only one thing, everybody is one - one person, one life. Then your outer door is closed. Don’t think of people in terms of personalities.

Don’t think this person is good, this person is bad and that person said this, the other one said that. Then you are lost. Your opinions about people are temporary, momentary. When we form opinions about people, we keep worrying our head about it. So we shut the door towards these things and our inner door opens and one day there is just love. More innocence, good and love.