Kaivalya Upanishad #15

Before entering this sutra, a few words must be understood.
That which has no body, yet is; that which has no form, yet is; that which has no shape, yet is—toward That the indication points.
What appears to us is form, shape, body. What does not appear to us—That also is. I look at you. What appears to me is not you. Surely what you are slips beyond the grasp of my eye. Your hands are seen, your feet are seen, the body is seen, the skin is seen, eyes and ears are seen. You are not seen. As you know yourself from within, there is no way to know you that way from outside.
We accept Atman in the other only because we sense Atman in ourselves. Otherwise only the other’s body is visible. Whether there is something within him or not does not appear. Within ourselves we do have a sense of something more than body, hence we infer that the other must also have it. But in the other it is not visible to us. And what is visible is different from That. Therefore a day comes when one whom we knew as living till yesterday lies dead. Everything is the same as yesterday, and yet nothing is the same. As far as visibility goes, all that the senses could grasp is still present; but that which never came within the grasp of the senses has vanished. It has withdrawn.
That which has withdrawn was never seen even as it withdrew. The body breaks, decays, dies; no one is ever seen leaving it. For this reason scientists have always said there is nothing within. Soul is only a property of the body, a mere sum of the parts. Like a clock: no breath drives it—the mechanism itself runs it. When the mechanism falls apart we do not ask, ‘Where did its soul go?’ It had none.
Materialist thinkers have said till now that the body is a machine, and the functioning produced by the combination of its mechanisms is life. Life is not different from this body. This has always been the crux of the debate. And mankind has unknowingly split into two camps. One camp does not regard man as a machine. The other does.
The camp that does not see man as a machine cannot see the universe as a machine either. And the camp that says man is a machine—then nothing remains that would resist being called a machine. The whole universe becomes a machine.
The materialist’s vision is that the universe is mechanical. There is no separate consciousness in it. The spiritualist’s vision is that the universe is not mechanical. The mechanical appearance is only the outer sheath. Hidden within is the invisible.
How is this invisible to be verified? How is this invisible to be experienced? How to accept it? How will reverence toward it awaken?
By argument this has never been possible. The spiritualists have given many arguments, but all went in vain. They have offered many proofs, but they are childish. Spiritualists have not been able to argue it. The arguments of the materialists are serious, weighty. If the decision were by logic alone, victory would go to the materialist. If logic is decisive, the atheist wins. The theist cannot win by logic.
Yet in the end the theist does win—but not by logic. The reason belongs to another dimension: experience. There are things in life that can only be known by experience—many things. And the higher, the truer, the more beautiful, the deeper, the more arduous, the more mysterious a thing is, the more experience alone remains the way.
There is a blind man. Concerning light, there is no argument by which we can convince him that light is. Do you think there is any argument that can make a blind man trust that light is? Until now none has been found. You cannot even convince him that there is darkness. We commonly think the blind must be living in darkness. We are wrong. The blind do not see darkness either—because to see darkness, too, eyes are needed. Do not think the blind live in darkness. Darkness and light are both experiences of the eye.
So we cannot even say to the blind that light is the opposite of darkness. He has no experience of darkness either. He has no experience of that dimension at all. In his world, light and darkness have no existence. No information about them has ever been received within. So however many arguments we may offer, they will be meaningless. They will carry no sense. And the blind cannot arrive at trust by such arguments. The truth is: the one who argues for light before the blind is the foolish one.
The blind is only blind. The arguer is the dullard—because he does not understand that for light there is only one argument: the eye. If I have no ears, there is no way for me to know that sound exists.
On this, note a subtle point. It may be difficult, yet science is inclining toward it.
You sometimes see: a few clouds in the sky, a little rain; from one corner the sun pierces through and a rainbow appears. Have you ever wondered: if you close your eyes, will the rainbow still remain in the sky? You will certainly say, what has my eye to do with it? I close my eyes, the rainbow remains. But science says the moment you close your eyes the rainbow does not remain—because for a rainbow to come into being, sunlight is needed, water droplets are needed, and an eye is needed. Three things. The sun’s ray must pass through a droplet at a particular angle and strike the eye at a particular angle—then the rainbow is formed. Do not think you are seeing something out there; your eye is a participant in its very construction.
This means: if there is no viewer on the ground, a rainbow will never form. Your eyes contribute to the rainbow as much as the sun and the water droplet do.
With the rainbow this is easy to grasp. But do you understand that even the sun’s ray—if there is no eye on the ground—will not be light? This seems harder. Yet it is not. Scientists now agree: if there are no eyes on earth, there will be no light. Because even the experience of light requires the sun’s ray and the eye equally. Light is the confluence between the sun’s ray and the eye. Where the eye meets the sun’s ray, there light is born. Light is an experience, not a thing.
Understand it this way.
You sit in a room. Curtains of many colors hang, chairs of different colors, books with covers of many hues, walls painted—so many colors. Have you ever noticed that when you put the light out, your red chair is no longer red and your green curtains are no longer green? You may think at night as you fall asleep in the dark that your curtain must still be green—then you are mistaken. This is a scientific fact; it has nothing to do with religion.
Science says: for the curtain to be green, sunlight is needed, and a human eye is needed. If these two are absent, the curtain cannot be green. Because what appears green to you is not green in itself. Light falls—the ray contains seven colors. Whenever a ray strikes something, it is reflected back. No object is colored in itself. Each object absorbs some of the seven colors and returns the others.
It is a delightful paradox: a green curtain means the fabric has absorbed all the colors and returned only the green. When that returned green ray touches your eye, the curtain appears green. It sounds inverted: the green curtain does not ‘drink’ green, it releases it; it drinks all the rest. It may be everything-but-green. It releases green. And when that released green strikes the eye, the curtain appears green—because of that green ray.
But if there is no eye in the room—even if there is light—door closed, no one inside—then the curtain will not be green, the chair will not be red, the wall will not be yellow. Letters will not be black in the books, nor pages white. In the night, with neither eye nor light, all things become colorless.
The experience of light is a joint event: the presence of rays and the presence of the eye. Therefore, without eyes, there is no arrangement by which a blind man can be given the experience of light. No argument is useful to make him sense it. We would ourselves see the futility of explaining; better to attempt a cure.
Yet concerning the Atman within man we set out to decide by argument. That too is an experience. Until the eye of meditation becomes available, that experience does not occur. Hence meditation has been called the third eye. When that eye arrives, what is seen is Atman. And then what appears has no hands or feet, no body, it is formless—mere consciousness. And when That appears, if in its utter purity it is realized, then this sutra resounds within.
In this sutra the Rishi has said: ‘That which has no hands and no feet, and about which no thinking can be done.’
For thinking is possible only up to where something comes within the range of the senses. The limit of thinking is the limit of the senses. Wherever the senses can reach, only that far can thinking go. Thought follows the senses. What your eye has seen, your mind can think about. What your eye has not seen, your mind cannot think about.
People commonly say: such-and-such is imagination. But even imagination is based on experience. No imagination is truly imagination; it is only a combination of two or three experiences. You can say: I have never seen a horse made of gold flying in the sky, yet I can imagine it. But mark it: you have seen things that fly, you have seen things of gold, you have seen a horse—and you are merely combining the three. There is no imagination in it. If you could imagine something of which you have no experience at all, you would bring a miracle into the world. It has not happened yet.
Whatever you can think is given to you by the senses. Mind is not the king of the senses, it is their follower. Mind is not their master, only their shadow. The eye gives, the ear gives, the hand, the nose, the tongue give—mind gathers these experiences and follows behind. Your five senses—can your mind ever think a single thing unrelated to them? Not one.
Let us understand this differently; it may be easier.
On earth there are beings with four senses. Suppose they have no eyes. In the thinking of such beings, light will never take form. There are beings with three senses—say they have no ears. In their life there will be no experience of light and sound—not in thought, not in imagination, not in dream.
From this let us think in reverse.
Somewhere on another planet—scientists say on fifty thousand planets life may be possible—if there is life and the beings there have six senses, we cannot even imagine what they would know by that sixth sense. If four are possible, three are possible, then six, seven, ten may be possible. If a ten-sensed being were to meet us, we could not even conceive what he thinks. Even if he told us, we would understand nothing. His words would sound meaningless to us. We have five; so we think the universe ends with five senses. Those with four think the universe ends with four. Those with three think three completes it.
The amoeba, tiny bacteria, minute germs—have only body, no senses—call them one-sensed. Only body. The primary organism, the amoeba, has only body—no eye, no ear, nothing else. It lives entirely by body. Through body it gets food, breathes, moves—no feet—its body grows and grows, until after a point the body splits in two—that is its progeny. It has no senses. And yet it too must have some experience of the world. Its experience is only of touch. It bumps into things, things touch it—only touch. Its world is very simple; only one event: touch. There is no way to make an amoeba understand that other events also occur here.
The Rishi has said: That which cannot be thought. For thinking can reach only as far as the senses know. And That the senses can never know. Neither eyes see That, nor ears hear It, nor hands touch It. It remains beyond the senses. What is beyond the senses cannot be conceived by mind. Thought is impossible about It; contemplation is impossible about It.
‘That which has no hands, no feet, about which no thought can be entertained—that Shakti, that Parabrahman, I myself am.’
That which is unthinkable, inconceivable, indefinable, beyond the senses—that I am. This must be known from within. You do sense that you are. But have you ever asked: when you know other things, you know by the senses—by which sense do you know that you are? Light is known by the eye. Sound by the ear. But by which sense do you know yourself to be? How do you know ‘I am’? By what instrument? What faculty reports it? Which sense gives you this news?
Indeed the experience occurs: ‘I am.’ The atheist knows it, the materialist knows it. And if someone says, ‘I am not,’ even to say so, to deny, he must at least accept himself. The ‘I’ cannot be denied—for in denying, it is already accepted.
Mulla Nasruddin once brought his friends home. Sitting in a coffee-house the talk went on and on. It reached the point where Mulla said, ‘There is no one as generous as I in this town.’ It was only talk; he had no idea it would cause trouble. Twenty-five friends were present. They said, ‘If so, we have never seen your invitation. You have never asked us for tea at your home. If you’re truly generous, let’s go to your house for a meal today.’ Mulla was aflame; ‘All of you come, you are invited.’
But as they neared the house, the wife also neared—and fear spread. At the door his hands and feet trembled. What would he say to his wife? ‘Friends, wait outside a bit. You know how it is. I’ll persuade my wife first, then invite you in.’
He went inside. He told his wife, ‘By a great mistake I have invited twenty-five friends for dinner.’ The wife was already ablaze because Mulla had not returned all day. ‘You come after all day and bring this nuisance! No food is cooked at all today.’ Mulla said, ‘Then do one thing: go and tell them Mulla Nasruddin is not at home.’ His wife said, ‘Are you crazy? You brought them yourself.’ Mulla said, ‘Just try.’
Mulla’s wife went outside and asked, ‘How have you come?’ They said, ‘How? Mulla invited us for dinner and we have come.’ She said, ‘Mulla is not at home.’ They said, ‘Strange! We saw him with our own eyes entering the house, we heard with our own ears you two talking. We even heard him say: Go and tell my friends Mulla is not at home!’ Hearing this, Mulla’s anger grew—he heard everything inside. His fervor rose. He opened a window and shouted, ‘It is also possible that Mulla came with you and slipped out the back door!’
One who says, ‘I am not,’ his denial is of this kind. Even to deny, the ‘I’ is present. But how do you come to know this ‘I’? By what means have you known that you are? What means, what method, what instrument? Which sense gives you this news? You will be in difficulty. No sense gives this news. Surely this experience is not available through the senses. You know yourself to be without any cause, without any testimony.
If you were in a court and a case demanded that you present a witness that you are, what witness would you bring? Yes, you could bring witnesses for your name, your father’s name. But if the court insists: first testify that it is certain you are—no witness can be presented. For there is no witness. It is your inner knowing—suprasensory knowing; the senses have nothing to do with it. Therefore no sense can testify.
Take another thing into account: even if all my senses are removed from me, the sense of my being does not vanish. If my hand is cut, the sense of being does not diminish. If my eyes are plucked out, the sense of being does not diminish. If my tongue is cut, no diminution in my sense of being. My world will shrink; I will not. If my eye is gone, the world of light ends for me—no dimension of light remains; my world becomes impoverished, color and light are gone. If my ears are burst, then for me there is no music, no sound, no word, no language; my world shrinks further. If my feet and hands are cut, the connections of movement with this world are broken.
But here is the marvel: my sense of being does not lessen by an inch. For if my sense of being does not come from the eye, why should its loss diminish it? If the ear has contributed nothing to my being, why should its removal lessen it? The blind man’s world is smaller, but his Atman is not small. Sometimes it may even be larger—larger meaning: as the world grows small, there is less to distract outward, so attention begins to turn inward.
Its knowing does not come through the senses. The knowing bears no relation to them. Therefore even if all my senses are taken away, I am as I was. That whose knowing is not through the senses and yet is known—we must give this knowing a new name. Hence it is called self-knowing, Atma-bodha. If I see you, light is needed. If light is extinguished, I do not see you. But even if all the lights of the world go out, can it happen that I no longer see myself? Let the world’s light be extinguished, let there be dense darkness, nothing is visible—still one will remain visible: I. This inner existence is suprasensory. What is within you is suprasensory as well.
And of That whose knowing does not depend on senses, the Rishi has also said: That which has no hands, no feet. That which is in hands and feet, yet has neither hand nor foot. That which has no eyes and no ears—yet hears through the ear and peers through the eye. The one who uses the ears and nose and hands and feet—but who has no hands or feet, no ears or nose. The senses are his instruments, but he is not bound to them. He is without senses. And know this: precisely because inner consciousness is without senses, it can use the senses—otherwise it could not. The eye does not see by itself. Through the eye That sees which has no eye. Through this eye, That which has no eye sees. The eye is but a window. Through this ear That hears which has no ear. The ear too is only a window.
Hence another curious fact: if one strives, one can hear without ears. If one strives, one can see without eyes. If one strives, one can speak without words. Much inquiry has begun now in this direction; so many universities research psychic phenomena, parapsychology. Many facts have become scientific.
Let me first tell you those facts that have become scientific, for they are beyond dispute. Religion has continually proclaimed them—again and again. But people find it difficult to accept religious statements until some experiential experiment becomes clear.
There is a story about Buddha: however far his disciple might be, if he remembered Buddha, an inner connection would be established. No matter how far; and if he wished to ask, he could receive answers. This sounds like fancy, a fable. But now on scientific grounds it is settled in the West that distance in time and space is no barrier to thought-transmission. Thought can be transmitted across any distance.
In Russia, Fayadev has successfully conducted controlled experiments of thought-transmission over a thousand miles within full scientific protocols. From a thousand miles he can transmit a message—without speaking—he closes his eyes, not only closes them, he goes almost into coma, becomes unconscious. He meditates; after fifteen-twenty minutes he becomes like a corpse. And when he becomes corpse-like, he can transmit thought. Without words, without using voice, his thought travels—far, very far.
The Russians have been keen for twenty years—especially because of space travel. In space, to rely only on instruments is dangerous, as a recent disaster showed. If a radio fails—and instruments are never fully trustworthy—if a spacecraft’s radio fails, our link is lost forever. Whether the crew lives or dies, where they are—no news could ever reach us. This is dreadful.
So in Russia arose the concern: there must be a complementary arrangement alongside instruments. If instruments fail, can thought still be transmitted? If the devices go dead, can any astronaut at least send Earth this much: where we are; how to make contact. Can a few words be transmitted? Thus for the first time they thought of telepathy. For the first time they remembered that all the religions of the world have said: thought can be transmitted without the senses. They began to try. In twenty years Russia has conducted many experiments and achieved remarkable success. Thought-transmission succeeded across great distances: if I remain inwardly meditative, thought can be projected.
A great difficulty remains: how does the thought go? No sense is used—neither by the sender nor by the receiver. On the receiver’s side too, no sense is at work, for he too must lie quiet. He who hears the thought does not say it arrives via the ear; he says, ‘I hear within.’ The ears have nothing to do with it. Even if the ears are sealed so that not even the slightest sound can enter—drums beating outside, they are not heard—yet what Fayadev ‘speaks’ from a thousand miles is heard. One thing is clear: it is not going via the ear.
Then by where?
In America Ted Serios can see things at great distances. From New York he has seen the Taj Mahal. Not only does he see; an image appears in his eye. Not only does the image appear; it can be photographed. Thousands of photos have been taken—images drawn from his eye—and they report the Taj accurately. What is happening to this man? And when the image comes, his eyes are closed. He meditates on the Taj with closed eyes; when the image forms within, he says, ‘Now I will open my eyes—ready the camera.’ For the image disappears in a flash. Sometimes odd things happen. The last time he was experimenting on the Taj, he told the cameraman, ‘The image is caught—eyes closed; with closed eyes the Taj image cannot come from the front in any case—New York and Agra are far apart, there is no way the eye sees; eyes are closed—and Ted Serios said, “All right, camera ready, finger on the trigger, I open my eyes.” He opened them and said, “Missed! We’ve come to the Hilton Hotel.”’ And the photo showed the Hilton, not the Taj.
It is possible to see without eyes—across distance. What is hidden within us, we have only used through the senses. Without the senses we have not used it. Therefore we do not know its suprasensory powers.
This sutra speaks of those powers. It says: That supreme Power, that Supreme Brahman, I am. I have the capacity to know all without intellect, to hear all without ears, to see all without eyes. This capacity lies hidden in each one. Whether we use it or not is another matter. The greatest miracles that appear in life—such capacities lie hidden in all; it is a matter of application.
There was Ramamurti—he would make an elephant stand upon his chest, or pull a car with it. There was nothing special in his chest; it was like anyone’s. The difference was long practice. Yet however much practice, making an elephant stand on the chest is an experiment in pranayama. We see the principle daily but never think of it—a rubber tire bears the weight of a massive truck. It is not the rubber’s strength; it is the strength of the air within.
Ramamurti had practiced filling such a dimension of air within the chest that the chest could be used like a tire. Then the elephant can stand. The weight does not fall on the chest, it falls on the air-dimension inside. The chest suffers no harm; the air bears it. Such dimension can be filled in anyone’s chest. We all have six thousand alveolar sacs in which air can enter; ordinarily we breathe through no more than fifteen hundred. Our breath goes shallow and out. Four and a half thousand remain filled with carbon lifelong; air never reaches there.
Yoga says: if those four and a half thousand sacs are also filled with prana, a person’s life span will triple—because life and age are a play of oxygen. This capacity is in everyone, but it does not manifest for lack of practice.
The mind too has capacities in all of us that do not manifest. Practice is needed. And the suprasensory Atman holds infinite capacities in man of which we have no inkling—far from practice, we do not even know them. Not knowing makes them seem like miracles. If someone says, ‘I can think without intellect,’ how will we believe? If someone says, ‘I can see without eyes,’ how will we believe? If someone says, ‘I can hear without ears,’ how will we believe? We will not—not because these are unworthy of belief, but only because they have no relation to our experience.
Do a few experiments and you will be amazed.
If there are four hundred people here and they all experiment, at least four among them will emerge right now—even they will not know beforehand.
This happened in Russia. About ten years ago a woman began to read with her fingertips. Suddenly she lost her eyesight, and she loved reading—her only passion. Blindness drove her to despair. Twice she attempted suicide and was saved. Her love for books was so deep that when she went blind, she would hold books in her hands and keep caressing them. One day she felt she could see the title. She was frightened. As her hand moved over the book, the title appeared; she was alarmed. She turned the pages; slowly the book before her became clear. She began to read.
Russia is a land of scientific mind; they do not conclude that what happens once is a miracle—they conclude it can happen to all. They experimented on hundreds of children and found that hundreds could read with their fingertips. We have simply never used it.
But the finger cannot see; there is no eye on the finger. The finger is only a pretext. The truth is: within man there is a capacity that can see without eyes. We have not experimented with it. Begin a little practice and you will be surprised. Sit with closed eyes, open a book, and attend only to this much: which page number is it? Do not worry. Ten or twenty times you will err; keep at it. Some among you will begin to see the page number. If one digit can be seen, anything can be seen. Then it is a matter of practice; there is no great hindrance. And what I say has now been so widely tested that even a scientific mind no longer doubts it.
The senses are our ordinary doors of knowing, not the necessary ones. Beyond the senses, too, one can go and see. That is our inherent capacity.
Concerning Mahavira the Jains say—this has been hard for them to explain—that Mahavira did not speak to his disciples; he sat silent and in that silence spoke. The Jains have faced great difficulty; then they say: it is the miracle of a Tirthankara, not everyone’s capacity. No—this has nothing to do with Tirthankara alone; it can be everyone’s.
George Gurdjieff began an experiment thirty years ago with his disciples: he would insist on complete silence for three months. Complete silence—very difficult. But if someone attempts it for three continuous months—twenty-four hours a day—something happens. Inside, all the noise stops. Gurdjieff would say: the day you become utterly silent, that day I shall speak to you without words. And he did speak to his disciples.
Gurdjieff died not long ago. Hundreds of his disciples still live who used to hear him without words. But they had to pass through three months of total silence. When one passes through such silence, the whole inner clamor ceases. In that stillness a very subtle voice—one that does not arrive through the ear but through the heart—can be caught.
It reaches you too, but inside you there is such a crowd, such a marketplace, that you do not hear it. This is no special privilege. You are already very ‘special’—that is the difficulty! There is a mob within. Because of that bazaar the voice is not heard. Otherwise it is sounding every moment. Sometimes we too hear it but we do not trust it, because we have no experience. Suddenly one day you think of a friend and he knocks at the door. You say: coincidence. Because you do not know the inner way. One day you are utterly happy and suddenly you become sad for no reason; later a telegram arrives—someone dear has died, someone is ill. You say: coincidence.
There is no coincidence at all. Whenever someone dear to you dies, a shock reaches you without the senses—inevitably. Death is no small event; it is great. And with one to whom you are linked there is an inner connection, an inner door through which messages pass. But we dismiss it as coincidence—because we do not know. If we become aware and experiment consciously, within one or two years you will be a different person. You will begin to see things that eyes do not see and hear things that ears do not hear. Experiences will become yours that have no external means of becoming yours. Then a realm of inner wealth begins. A distinct world of inner experience opens. Flowers bloom to which we are strangers. Music plays that has nothing to do with ears. Such sounds, such light, such colors, such experiences unfold as these senses have never even brushed against.
Use the word coincidence less, if possible remove it entirely from life. When anything occurs that hints of something beyond the senses, accept it as fact and begin to work in that direction. Calling it coincidence is a kind of defense—an evasion of a fact, a way to forget it, to explain it away. A fact that arises as strangeness we normalize by calling it coincidence. There is no coincidence in this universe. What is here is bound in a profound chain of cause and effect. Whatever happens has a cause behind it. Calling it coincidence, we fail to search for the causes. If we search, we will begin to experience our inner powers. And the day we begin to taste that power—where seeing occurs without eyes and hearing without ears—we have stepped out of the world. That day we have entered the temple of Brahman.
‘Beyond all forms I am the knower of all; but there is none who knows me, the chit-svarupa.’
‘Beyond all forms I am the knower of all.’
I know form, and I know what is beyond form.
‘But there is none who knows me.’
This is a difficult sutra.
Difficult because it hides a deep philosophical consequence: for Paramatman the whole universe is in front. Even leaving aside the vast Paramatman, consider the flame, the lamp of Paramatman within us; it will be easier. I see you, I see trees, the sky, the moon and stars; I see all—but I cannot see myself. There is no way for me to see myself. I have the experience of myself, the sense of myself, not a seeing. Nor can it be. Seeing is possible only of that which is distant, other, separate. How can I see myself? Even to see, distance is needed, otherness is needed, space is needed. If I were to become the seer of myself, I would have to split into two—one to see and one to be seen. Impossible. I cannot split. And if I do split, that which is seen is no longer ‘I’; the ‘I’ remains that which sees.
Understand it thus: my inescapable destiny is to be the seer; I cannot be the seen. Whatever I do, I remain the seer; I cannot become the object—how would I? I am the knower, and in every situation I remain the knower. The consciousness hidden in the person is essentially the seer and can never be the seen. Likewise, the consciousness hidden in the entire universe is essentially the seer and cannot be the seen.
Hence the sutra says: ‘I know all, I am the knower of all; but me, the chit-svarupa, none knows.’
Paramatman is the ultimate Seer, the final. There is no way to see Him. Thus when we say ‘vision of God,’ we use a faulty expression—but we are compelled. Whatever we say will be faulty; language itself is faulty in that dimension. If we say ‘vision of God,’ there is error—because it implies we become seers of God too.
You may never have thought in this way. We think of ‘darshan of God,’ but what does it mean? It means: I can be the seer of God; I can make even God an object to be seen. There can be no vision of God. What happens we try to indicate with the word ‘vision,’ because we have no other word. If we say ‘experience,’ the same error arises: He becomes an object. Whatever word we use, God becomes objectified.
Therefore a thinker like Buddha refused to say anything about God—not because He is not, but because whatever would be said would be wrong. People did not understand; they thought Buddha does not accept God. There has never been a greater theist than Buddha. But his theism is so ultimate, so absolute, that he will not use even a single wrong word about the Divine. He will not even use the word ‘God’—for even in that, error creeps in. Whenever we use a word, we become the knower of that word. Through the word, the knower stands above.
When someone says, ‘I have known God,’ the Upanishads say: know that he has not known at all. For he who says, ‘I have known God,’ has not even understood that He cannot be known. What can be known is not God—it is the world. Put it this way: whatever can be known is the world; what slips beyond knowing is Brahman. Then whom shall we call a knower of Brahman? No one can be. Then who is a Brahmavetta, a Rishi?
Let us take it differently. He cannot be known; but one can be lost in Him. One can be dissolved in Him. Knowing Him is difficult; becoming Him is possible. For knowing requires distance; becoming demands all distance be erased. Knowing needs a gap; becoming is the fall of all gaps. What will a drop know of the ocean? But the drop can fall into the ocean. It can become one. And becoming one, it will know as we now know ourselves—without cause, without senses.
The day one becomes one with God, that day alone one knows—but not as one knows an object; one knows as one knows one’s own being. How do you know yourself? In that very manner does one know God—no cause, no light, no sense—yet one knows. That knowing is an expansion of this very self-knowing. It is not a knowing that knows the world.
Therefore the sutra says: ‘Beyond all forms I, the knower of all, am; but me, the chit-svarupa, none knows.’
This sutra is precious.
One who seeks the Supreme Brahman must keep it deep in the heart: He cannot be known; He can be lived. One can become one in Him, one can be lost in Him, one can be dissolved and be That—but one cannot know Him. Knowing entails distance; as long as there is even an inch of distance from Paramatman, there is no way.
How to lessen even this distance? Bring God near? Call Him? Shout? However much you call and cry, there is no way to bring Him near—for He is already near. Still we shout and call. One thing is clear: that which is near is not being recognized. There is no other reason. So if we want to bring God near, calling will not work; dissolving ourselves will. As we melt, as we disperse, He becomes near. The day we are utterly scattered, lost, that day He will be exactly where we are.
Understand it with this image: an iceberg floating in water, wanting to meet the ocean. It shouts, it cries, but it does not melt. And it is in the ocean. Shouting will do nothing; calling will do nothing. The ocean is here. It floats in it. It wants to meet the ocean—where to search? The more it searches, the less it finds.
Just like this is our condition. We are ice. There is only one task for the ice: melt, vanish—then, right here, beneath your feet, in this very ground, the ocean, the Divine, is found. We too must melt.
Therefore for this melting we have chosen the word ‘tapas.’ A precious word. Tapas means heat, ardor. If the ice is to melt, it must be warmed. Warm it—and it melts.
We too must warm ourselves. In that warmth we melt. Our ego, our ice, our rock melts; it becomes one with the ocean. Then we are the ocean. Then we will not say, ‘We know the ocean.’ We will say: ‘We are no more; only the ocean is.’
Now let us prepare for meditation.