The Perfect Master, Vol 1 Talks on Sufi Stories

If you hear the same song again, then something must be wrong with you.

It happened:
A woman was singing, it was her birthday. She sang late in the night. Her voice was just horrible, but the neighbors were somehow tolerating it because it was only once in a year that her birthday used to come. So they had become tolerant about it. But that night she continued and continued... it was getting really late, two o'clock in the night. And a man just in front of her house could not sleep; tried in every way -- tried all the tricks. Tossed and turned and did TM... etc., but nothing helped. She was driving him crazy, so he opened his window and shouted at her, "Lady, now it is time. You stop! otherwise I will go mad."

The woman opened her door and said, "What are you talking about? It is almost one hour since I stopped!"

There are millions of people who never look at the sky. If suddenly one night all the stars disappear, they will not become aware of it. It may take a few days for them; when the news comes in the newspapers that "All the stars have simply disappeared from the world," then they will look at the sky. And then they will miss them, and they will make much fuss and they will say, "How unfortunate! And we had not seen the stars for many years and they were here."

You are bored because of your inner gramophone. I have none in site me. Each person is fresh, each moment is fresh. They a,Rex not repetitions -- they are all unique. And I remain thrilled, I remain ecstatic.

Your life, Veetgyan, must have become an empty ritual. You must be moving through things, dragging. Not even under-standing the meaning, why you are doing these things. You come home and you kiss your wife -- you have to, but there is no kiss, there is no kissing, there is no ecstasy in it. Just a dull phenomenon. And if you feel tired and bored, I can understand.

Life, slowly slowly, becomes so mechanical that it loses ALL meaning. All meaning oozes out of it. Then it is just a dull ritual. To live this way is to live irreligiously. That's my definition of religion: to live joyously, ecstatically, thrilled by each moment that knocks on your door, is to live religiously.

Religion is nothing but the Al chemical process in which all your insensitivity dissolves, and you become utterly sensitive, delicate, vulnerable. Then each moment is samadhi, is God. is enlightenment.

Chapter #9

Chapter title: Hail Great Scholar!

29 June 1978 am in Buddha Hall

ShortTitle: PERF109

Audio: Yes

Video: No

Length: 98 mins

NAWAB MOHAMMED KHAN, JAN-FISHAN, WAS OUT WALKING IN DELHI ONE DAY WHEN HE CAME UPON A NUMBER OF PEOPLE SEEMINGLY ENGAGED IN AN ALTERCATION.

Knowledge means the knower is separate from the known. We are not separate from existence -- we ARE it. It is our suchness -- how can we know it? The claim to know is the greatest conceit. The claim to know is the greatest ego there is. Hence the knowledgeable man goes on missing it. Only lovers know, scholars never. But to be a lover needs courage -- you have to dissolve and disappear.

To be knowledgeable needs no courage. That is the hiding place of the cowards. All cowards become scholars. Because they cannot love, the only thing left for them is to try to know. And because knowledge is impossible in the very nature of things, all that they claim is false.

All knowledge is false, absolutely false. Not even a bit of it is true. It CANNOT be true. Only love is true, only love can be true.

Do you see the point? The way of love is the way of union, and the way of knowledge is the way of separation. Love is marriage: knowledge is divorce. Love understands: knowledge only pretends.

Remember it, because the mind is always trying to become knowledgeable. It is always collecting information and avoiding transformation. Information is a way of avoiding transformation. You go on collecting... you can become a walking encyclopedia, but still you will remain the same, exactly the same. Because this is not the way to grow in being, this is not the way to become wise.

The knowledgeable man is never wise, he cannot be. He collects rubbish and thinks it is precious. But the first step has been wrong so the whole journey goes wrong. The more he thinks he knows, the less he knows. The more he thinks he is coming closer to knowing the truth, the farther away he is moving from truth.

Existence is. If you are also in that state of isness you will understand what it is. But that is not knowledge. That's a totally different dimension. You will know, yet you will not be able to reduce it to knowledge. You will see, but you will not be able to describe it. The mystery will not be demystified by your knowing it -- it will be deepened, it will be thickened. Life will become more joyous.

One cannot know, but one can dance it. One cannot know, but one can sing it. It can never become knowledge, but it can become ecstasy, great ecstasy. A great orgasmic life is possible.

The Sufis say: Avoid being scholars, pundits. Avoid! Because sometimes it has happened that sinners have reached, but scholars never. Sin is not that big a thing as knowledgeability. Seen rightly, knowledge remains the ultimate sin.

The biblical story is to be remembered again: Adam falls from grace -- not because of any sin but because he has eaten the fruit of the tree of knowledge.

There were two trees, special trees, in the Garden of Eden: one was the tree of knowledge and the other was the tree of life. He became interested in the tree of knowledge. It looks foolish to us when we read the story. Why should he not go and eat from the tree of life? But that's what everybody else is doing too -- nobody wants to eat from the tree of life, because to eat from the tree of life first one has to pass through a kind of death.

The moment you eat the fruit from the tree of life, you will die as you are. You are momentary. Your being now is temporal. You will die in time and you will be born in eternity. That's what life is! -- life abundant, life eternal. You will die as a tiny being, you will disappear as a drop of water, and then you will appear as the ocean. Oceanic will be your resurrection! But before that, the dewdrop has to disappear.

That is the fear. Because of that fear, Adam never went close to the tree of life. That's why you have not gone close to it. That's why millions of people go to the universities, to the libraries, but avoid going to a Master.

A Master, a Perfect Master, is a tree of LIFE. He is not a teacher. A teacher means the tree of knowledge: a Master means the tree of life.

A Master does not impart knowledge, he imparts being. He stirs your heart, makes it more alive. He breathes in you, gives you a new rhythm. He touches you in your deepest core and creates a dance there.

Adam avoided the tree of life, so everybody else is doing it. Down the ages, people have been following Adam. But the tree of knowledge attracted him immensely. The temptation from the serpent was: "If you eat from the tree of knowledge, you will become as wise as God -- you will become a god." That's the temptation of knowledge. One thinks, "If I can know more, then I will be more -- I will become like a god." By knowing, nobody becomes a god, but only by BEING.

The serpent is deceiving you too. The serpent is not something outside; it is another name for your mind. The mind says, "Know more -- if you know more you will be more." It convinces you very logically.

Once Adam has eaten from the tree of knowledge, his eyes are closed towards eternity. He becomes caught up in the net of time. And time means death. And God has told Adam, "If you eat from the tree of knowledge, you will start dying. You will lose eternity. You will lose the quality of deathlessness. You will become a mortal!"

This parable is immensely beautiful. I take it again and again -- it has so many aspects. To me this seems to be the greatest parable ever -- it has SO many meanings.

If you eat from the tree of knowledge you will become mortal -- because you will become more and more confined into time, into mind. Time and mind are synonymous. It is mind that creates time -- psychological time, I mean, not the chronological time. The more you become mindless, the less you are aware of time. When you become perfect, you become constantly, completely unaware of time. Then all is eternity.
Once a Buddhist monk came to see me. He had come from a very very far off place, Kalimpong. He travel led for many days to see me. He said, "I have only one inquiry to make, and only for that have I come."

"What is the inquiry?"

He said, "My inquiry is this: since you became enlightened, what has been happening? What experiences have you been going through SINCE you became enlightened? What has been occurring? What more? What new experiences after enlightenment?"

I said, "You don't understand the word 'enlightenment'. After enlightenment, nothing happens. All happening stops, disappears. One simply is."

He could not believe it. He said, "I cannot believe it. Something MUST be happening. Twenty years have passed... something MUST have happened! How can it be that nothing has happened?"

I said to him, "You will be puzzled, but let me say it as it is: Before enlightenment nothing had ever happened, because all that had happened was just writing on water. After enlightenment also nothing has happened, because time has disappeared. So the first happening and the last happening was enlightenment. Before that, all that happened was valueless; now it makes no sense, it was like a dream. And once you are awakened, nothing ever happens again. Not that the sun does not rise, not that the night is not full of stars, not that the flowers don't bloom any more -- ALL this goes on! But nothing happens in you. All remains calm and quiet."

So mind goes on creating new ways, goes on projecting new events. "Tomorrow I have to do this, the day after tomorrow I have to do this." Mind cannot remain without events, so it projects events. And when events are projected time is created -- psychological time. When nothing is projected, time disappears.

Still Adam ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge, and since then every Adam has been doing it.

Sufis say we have to reverse the whole process. We have to vomit what Adam has eaten. We have to throw it back. We have to become pure of it. It has not to be allowed to circulate in our systems any more. With knowledge goes time, with time goes mind -- it is ALL entangled with knowledge. And once there is no knowledge, no mind, no time, you are back home.

Let me repeat: Sinners have reached, but scholars never.

I have heard:
George Santayana, a great American philosopher, remarked once during World War II, "I am reading the Upanishads... to take the bad taste out of my mouth."
The Upanishads? Why should he read the Upanishads to take the bad taste out of his mouth? The Upanishads are not knowledge: they are statements of pure joy, they are euphoric statements. They are ecstatic ejaculations, assertions of mad mystics. You cannot become knowledgeable by reading the Upanishads. They don't argue, they don't prove -- they simply declare!

That's what Lao Tzu does, Buddha does, Plotinus, Eckhart, Rumi, Al-Hillaj -- all the mystics have been doing that. What they say is not knowledge: what they say is just an overflowing joy.

When Aristotle says something, it is knowledge. When Plotinus says something, it is not knowledge. You have to make that distinction very clearly. When Jesus says something, it is not knowledge; it is just his ecstasy. It is not that he is saying it -- it is said through him. God is speaking through him. He is possessed by God. What he is saying is not knowledge. It is his declaration: "I have come home." It HAS to be declared. It has to be declared from the housetops. It has to be shouted in the marketplaces. But it is not knowledge! And the difference is very clear.

If you read the Upanishads, you will see it. No argument is proposed, no syllogism, no proof, is given. Simply, the seer says: That art thou -- TAT-TVAM-ASI. Finished! He does not give any argument for it. He does not try to explain it. He does not propose a philosophy around it. Such a potential statement, bare, naked.

When the Upanishads were for the first time translated into non-Indian languages, it was a problem for the translators: These people go on asserting without giving any proof -- what kind of philosophy is this?" It is not philosophy really. It is religion. And that is the difference between philosophy AND religion.

Philosophy proves, argues, proposes, fights, debates: religion declares. Religion says: God is! No proof is given. If you ask a mystic, he will say, "Look into my eyes. Come, hold my hand! Feel it!" But is this an argument? And it is not going to convince the skeptic. He will look into the eyes and will not see anything. It can convince only the trusting. It can convince only the disciple.

Santayana was bored with all the knowledge that the West has produced in these days, and could see perfectly well that "It is because of this knowledge that this world war is happening." Knowledge creates hate in the world, because it creates separation.

Love is not possible out of knowledge, because love is a diametrically opposite dimension. Hence he is right to say, "I am reading the Upanishads to take the bad taste out of my mouth" -- the bad taste of knowledge, the ugly knowledge that has created the ugly war, the murderous knowledge.

His students were a little puzzled. They said, "Has he gone mad or something?" And they inquired, "What is happening?"

He said, "This is something I have been searching for -- this is not knowledge, this is knowing. This is authentic!"

When he was just about to die, he said, "The Upanishads have been the solace of my life, and will be the solace of my death."

What happened to Arthur Schopenhauer? What is the beauty of the Upanishads? What is the beauty of Sufism? What is the beauty of Zen? What is the beauty of Hassidism? The beauty is that they are not knowledge -- of course, great knowing, but not knowledge at all. Great insights are there, but no philosophy is proposed to be believed in. You don't become more knowledgeable through them: you become more innocent.
RELIGION IS EXISTENTIAL, philosophy is analytical. Knowledge has to be analytical; it can't be existential. Knowing has to be existential; it can't be analytical. If you want to know, forget all about analysis; otherwise, you will come across MULCH knowledge but never will you become a knower.

If you want to know a flower, don't dissect it -- otherwise you will destroy it. Be with it, in absolute quietness, with a throbbing, loving heart. Breathe it in, dance around it, sing a song, or be silent! Play upon a guitar, or on a flute. These are the ways to become friendly to the flower. When you are playing on a flute the flower starts leaning towards you, the flower becomes open. He understands... a friend has come. He knows when the cuckoo calls, he knows when a peacock dances -- he will know you too if you sing a song or play on the flute or dance a dance around it. Those are the languages he understands. Or silence he understands -- the silence of the stars and the earth.

Just be silently with the flower! Or let tears flow, let your tears drop on the flower. He understands that language too. When it rains and it has a contact with the clouds.... But be existential, don't be analytical, and the flower will release its secrets to you.

Secrets can be released only to friends. When you are analytical, you are an enemy. When the scientist goes to the flower, he goes in a very antagonistic mood, very egoistic, self-willed, adamant, stubborn. He goes like a rapist. Science is a kind of rape on nature.

Be a poet, be a painter, be a musician -- these are existential ways. And the flower, slowly slowly, will gather trust in you, will know that "This man is not dangerous, he is not a scientist. He is not after knowledge. He will not rape me. He is a lover." And the flower will drop all protections, defenses, arm ours. And suddenly there is a meeting -- AND a kind of knowing which is not knowledge.

That's how one comes to know God.

Remember these two words: analytical and existential. Never be analytical. That is the path of knowledge. Be existential -- that is the path of knowing. Knowing is loving: loving is praying: and one thing leads to another.

It is a well-known fact of history that in Greece, Aristotle formulated the syllogism as a way to explain and examine valid reasoning. He was the father of logic in the West. But at the same time, almost exactly the same time, another man in India was working on the same lines -- but in a totally different dimension, with a totally different quality. His name was Gotama -- the founder of Indian logic. rut the difference is great. Their syllo-gisms are almost the same, their logic is almost the same -- it has to be -- but the difference is in their goals.

Aristotle says: it is to explain and examine valid reasoning. Gotama created similar syllogistic forms, but as he stated at the beginning of his Naya Sutras, the purpose of the study was to aid human beings in the attainment of supreme felicity -- liberation, MOKSHA, ecstasy, samadhi.

The difference is clear. Even if reason has to be used, it has to be used with full awareness to help ecstasy, to help supreme felicity, ultimate liberation. For no other reason.

Philosophy is not an end in itself: it is a means. If it helps, good; if it doesn't help, throw it away, it is garbage. Use your mind to go beyond mind. Let philosophy commit suicide in you.

That is the message of this small story.

You can beat iron only when it is hot, and you can give it a shape and a form. But when it is cold, it is impossible. A situation is a hot state of affairs. Sufi Masters watch always for particular situations to give particular lessons. It may take years, but they never speak out of context -- never.

So, to be with a Sufi Master needs great patience, because he will not speak unless the situation has arisen and things are hot and he can give a shape and form. He can teach you something only when the situation is ready.

The Master is passing, a crowd is there.

A man who knows never makes anybody feel guilty. The man who knows helps people to get out of their wrong patterns, but does not make them feel guilty. It is a great art, the most sublime art there is. It is very subtle -- has to be, because when you are trying to change a person it is very easy to make him feel guilty; it is very easy because the thing is delicate and you are touching his sensitivity. And you are trying to change him, so somehow or other you are saying, "You are wrong as you are." That has to be avoided.

Man is not wrong, never wrong. That should remain the fundamental. Man in his innermost core is always right -- even though he may commit a few errors on the surface. But those errors are momentary, of not much value. But his fundamental goodness, his natural goodness, is absolute.

Once a person starts feeling guilty, you have contaminated his natural goodness. You have hurt him deeply; you have created a wound in his soul. So the art is never to create a wound in the soul. The real Master is always indirect. He changes people, he transforms people, but his way is always indirect. The person who is being changed and transformed never comes to know of it -- or comes to know only when he has already changed, when he is already transformed. Then he feels grateful.