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.