| ENERGY
|
GAIN ENERGY APPRENTICE
LEVEL1
|
THE ENERGY BLOCKAGE REMOVAL
PROCESS
|
THE KARMA CLEARING
PROCESS APPRENTICE LEVEL3
|
MASTERY
OF RELATIONSHIPS TANTRA APPRENTICE LEVEL4
|
Add to Onlywire
Del.icio.us 
Digg 
Reddit 
Technorati
THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 4
Chapter 2: Via transcendence
Question 3
Energy Enhancement Enlightened Texts Dhammapada The Way of the Buddha, Vol. 4
The third question:
Question 3
BELOVED MASTER,
I KNOW THAT GOD IS LOVE, BUT THEN WHY AM I SO AFRAID OF HIM?
Sudharma, you don't know that God is love. You have heard me saying again and again that God is love; hence you have started repeating it. It is parrotlike. I KNOW God is love, hence it is impossible to be afraid of God. How can you be afraid of love?
Fear and love cannot exist together; their coexistence is impossible. In fact, it is the same energy that becomes fear that becomes love. If it becomes fear, there is no more energy available to become love; if it becomes love, fear disappears. It is the same energy! The same energy in a chaotic state is called fear; and when it becomes a cosmos, when it is in deep accord, it is called love. You still don't know that God is love.
You say, "I know that God is love...."
You have heard, but you don't know. This is information as far as you are concerned; it is not yet knowing, it is not your own authentic experience. And remember always that unless something becomes your own authentic experience, it is not going to transform you; hence the problem.
You say, "I know that God is love, but then why am I so afraid of him?"
You are bound to be afraid of him because you don't KNOW that God is love. You have been told by the priests for centuries that God is constantly watching you, that God wants you to be this way and not that way, that these are the ten commandments of God, follow them. And if you don't follow them, God has prepared for you a great hell. The father preparing hellfire for his own children? -- impossible, even to conceive.
The priests have made God so ugly just to dominate people, because people can be dominated only through fear. Remember this: the whole trade secret of the priests, Hindu, Christian, Mohammedan, Jaina, Buddhist -- their philosophies differ but their trade secret is the same. That trade secret is: always keep people afraid, trembling. If people are afraid, they are ready to submit. If people are afraid, they are ready to be slaves. If people are afraid, they cannot gather courage to rebel. Fear keeps them impotent; fear is a psychological process of castration. For centuries it has been done: fear has been the greatest weapon in the hands of the priests and they have used it very liberally.
The Goldbergs' son, Jake, refused to take school seriously. He never did homework and was constantly playing hooky.
The principal suggested they send him to a Yeshiva. The Goldbergs did, but after a few weeks he was expelled.
The Goldbergs knew that Catholic parochial schools were very strict, so they decided to send Jake to one. They enrolled him in Christ-the-King School for Boys, and warned their son to behave and to do his lessons, because this was his last chance. If he was thrown out now he would be sent to a school for delinquents.
After a week of parochial school, Jake came home with terrific grades. Miraculously he had been converted into a well-behaved, serious student.
"How come you changed all of a sudden?" asked Goldberg.
"Well," he answered, "when I saw some man hanging on a cross in every room, I figured I had better not be a wise guy anymore."
Make people afraid, keep them always trembling. Let them know that God is dictatorial, a very angry God, jealous, and is absolutely unable to forgive if you disobey. Disobedience is the greatest sin in the eyes of the priests; hence Adam and Eve were expelled. They had not done much of a sin. What had they really done? Nothing much to talk about, but priests have been talking about it for centuries. And God was so angry that not only Adam and Eve were thrown out of the Garden of Eden, paradise -- with them the whole humanity!
You are suffering because Adam and Eve disobeyed. You have not done anything wrong; you are suffering for their sin because you are descendants. The sin is so great -- not only the persons are punished, but for thousands and thousands of years their descendants have to be punished too.
And what was the sin really? Why is so much fuss made about it? It was so innocent, it was so natural, that I cannot conceive how Adam and Eve could have avoided it. If anybody is responsible for it, God himself is responsible. There were millions of trees in the Garden of Eden and there was only one tree which God did not want Adam and Eve to eat from -- only one tree, the forbidden. And the reason why it was forbidden also seems to be very ugly. The reason is: if you eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge, you will become like God and God is very jealous. Look at the reason why the tree was prohibited. The reason is that if you eat from the tree, from this tree, the tree of knowledge, you will become immortal, like gods. You will know as much as God knows -- and that is intolerable! So God has protected that tree especially for himself -- he must be eating from the tree of knowledge -- and prohibited Adam and Eve.
Now this is exactly what every father goes on doing. He smokes and he prohibits the children: "Don't smoke -- this is bad. This is bad for you!" But because the father looks so beautiful smoking, the children become enchanted. They would also like to be like the father -- and he looks so manly when he is puffing on his cigar, he looks so proud! He never looks so proud as when he is puffing on his cigar, resting in his chair, reading the newspaper. The children become attracted. When the father is not there they also sit on the same chair, spread the same newspaper, although they cannot read, and start puffing. And it gives them great joy because it gives them great ego.
In fact, to prohibit is to invite. To say to children, "Don't do it!" is to ask for trouble.
I used to live with a family. There was a problem: the father was a smoker, a chainsmoker -- a very well-known professor in a university. And he was afraid: he asked me, "What to do?"
I said, "Do one thing...." He had only one son growing up and he was afraid that sooner or later the son would start smoking. I said, "If you listen to me, the best way is to give the son cigarettes, offer him the cigarettes yourself and tell him to smoke as much as he wants."
He said, "What are you saying? Are you mad or are you joking?"
I said, "Then leave it to me -- I will manage it."
I offered the son a cigarette. He said, "But you don't smoke."
I said, "That is another matter -- don't you worry about me. But YOU learn! It is one of the most beautiful things in life!"
He again asked, "But then why don't you smoke?"
I said, "You leave me out of it -- I am not a very intelligent person. Look at your father! And if I am stupid, are you going to be stupid?"
I had great difficulty in convincing him because the question he was again and again asking was, "You tell me to smoke, but why don't YOU smoke?"
I said, "You try, then you will know!"
So he tried, and he knew, and he threw the cigarette. And he said, "Now I know why you don't smoke. Then why did you insist? Then why did you try to convince me? It is nauseating, sickening!" He coughed and tears came to his eyes -- and that was that, and it was finished.
And I told his father never to say to the child, "Don't smoke."
Remember the ancient story of Adam and Eve. If I had been God I would have taken Adam and Eve to the tree of knowledge and would have forced them to eat to the point that they should have started vomiting, and that would have been the end of the whole story. But God told them not to eat from this tree. That was an invitation -- no serpent is needed.
The serpent is an invention of the priests so that God can be avoided; the responsibility can be thrown on the poor serpent. The serpent is simply poor; the serpent has nothing to do with it, the serpent is absolutely innocent. Have you ever seen any serpent persuading any woman for anything? And why should the serpent be interested? If he wanted to eat, nobody was prohibiting him. Why should he seduce Eve to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge? What is he going to gain if Eve and Adam become knowledgeable? No, the serpent is an invention so that the responsibility can be thrown on him.
But if you go deep into the story it is simple: God is responsible. First you force an order on people, and just your forcing creates a resistance in them, creates a great urge to disobey. Then disobedience is sin; the greatest sin is disobedience. And then you have to create hell and all kinds of punishments, and you have to keep people afraid.
The story was invented by the priests to make man afraid. The priests never wanted man to become intelligent, because intelligent people are dangerous -- dangerous to the status quo, to the establishment, dangerous to the vested interests. The priests wanted the people to remain utterly ignorant, unintelligent. For centuries they did not allow people to read scriptures. In many religions women are still not allowed.
And still a very deep conspiracy goes on. The conspiracy is that all the scriptures are in languages which are dead; nobody understands them, only the priests. Priests remained powerful for centuries because they were the only ones knowing. The scriptures were in ancient Sanskrit, Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, Latin -- ancient languages which are no longer spoken. There is even suspicion that there are a few languages which were never spoken. For example, Sanskrit seems to be one of the languages which has never been a spoken language. It has always been the language of the scholars, not of the people; of the pundits, not of the masses.
In India there were two languages: one was called Prakrit; PRAKRIT means "the natural," that which is spoken by the people. And Sanskrit literally means "the refined," "the aristocratic," which is spoken only by the scholars and academicians in the universities. All the great scriptures were written in Sanskrit.
It was left to Mahavira and Buddha to speak for the first time in the language of the people -- and the brahmins of India have never been able to forgive these two persons for that sin. To speak in the language of the people means the power of the priests is gone. If people become knowers, if they know what is written in the scriptures, they will not be so easily befooled. In fact, you can worship the Vedas only if you don't understand them. If you understand them, ninety-nine percent is just rubbish. One percent is pure gold, certainly, but ninety-nine percent is pure rubbish. But if you don't understand them, all is gold. In darkness, anything can be given to you with the words, "It is gold -- worship it!" And for centuries the Vedas have been worshipped.
Priests wanted you to worship the scriptures, not to understand them -- because if you understand the scriptures, sooner or later, one thing is going to become clear to you: that the scripture is not the real source. Sooner or later, you are bound to stumble upon the truth that, "Krishna is speaking from a meditative state, Christ is speaking from a meditative state. What he is speaking is secondary -- from where he is speaking is primary. Unless I reach to that state of consciousness I will not be able to understand the words, because those words in themselves are empty; the meaning can only come through experience." Scriptures were prohibited; it was a sin.... Only the brahmins, the priests, the highest caste, were allowed to read them -- all over the world.
The conspiracy still continues. Still the prayers are done in dead languages, you don't know what you are saying. How can you feel anything when you don't know what you are saying? How can it come out of your feeling and out of your heart? Your prayer becomes just like a gramophone record: ''His Master's Voice' -- a repetition. And you hope that by repeating dead rituals you will arrive somewhere. You will simply waste your life.
And then great fear arises: "I don't know from where I come, who I am, where I am going. All around is darkness and darkness, infinite darkness, and not a single light in life." Then you have to go to the priest and bow down to him. You have to ask for guidance.
This is the trade secret: keep people afraid. And you can keep people afraid only if you keep them ignorant. Let them remain trembling, then they will always be ready to touch your feet, ready to obey you -- because you represent God, and disobeying you is dangerous, very dangerous. They will be thrown in hell for eternity.
Greenberg, shabbily dressed and carrying two paper bags, was stopped by a customs inspector.
"What have you got in those bags?" the official asked.
"I got twenty-five thousand dollars here, which I am bringing to Israel to donate."
"C'mon," sneered the official, "you don't look like you got the price of a meal; how could you be donating twenty-five thousand dollars to the state of Israel?"
"Well, you see, I had a job in a men's room, and when the men came in I said to them, ''Give to help Israel or I will cut off your balls.'"
"Alright, so you got twenty-five thousand dollars in one bag, but what is in the other bag?"
"Some men did not want to donate."
That's what priests have been doing: destroying your guts, destroying your courage, destroying your self-respect, destroying your self-trust.
Sudharma, you say, "I know that God is love, but then why am I so afraid of him?" You are still surrounded by the nonsense that priests have stuffed your head with; you are full of that rubbish. It takes time to get rid of it, it really takes a long time, because it has been going on for centuries. It has been such a long long, ugly history that it is a rare phenomenon to find a person who can escape out of it.
My whole effort here is to help you to escape out of it. I am against the whole business of priesthood. I want you to stand face-to-face with God without any priests, without any priesthood. God is yours, you are God's; there is no need of any mediator. The function of the master is not to become a mediator between you and God. Just the contrary: the function of the master is to withdraw all that comes in between you and God. He himself at the last point withdraws; between you and your God he stands no more. He stands only to a certain extent, while other things are being removed. When everything else is removed, he removes himself; that is the last thing the master does.
And the moment the master removes himself, he no longer stands between you and God, that is the moment you know that the whole existence is love. It is the stuff called love that the universe is made of.
Jesus says: God is love. I say to you: Love is God. When Jesus says: God is love, it is possible God may be many more things too; love is only one attribute. When I say: Love is God, I say love is the ONLY quality. There is nothing else in God except love; in fact it is another name of love. You can drop the name "God," nothing will be lost. Let love be your God.
But you will have to get rid of the priests. You will have to get rid of your so-called religions, churches, temples, rituals, scriptures. There is much garbage which has to be got rid of. It is a great work, because you have been told that this is very precious. The garbage has been imposed upon you as if it is gold and, because it has been told to you so many times, you have become conditioned.
People become conditioned to seeing certain things. When there is a certain conditioning, you look at things through that conditioning and it appears like that.
Two men were sitting under a tree; one was a Hindu, another was a Mohammedan. Birds were singing, it was a beautiful spring morning. They both listened for a time, then the Hindu said, "Can you hear? All the birds are resounding the sound aum. I can hear it. I have been practicing aum for thirty years, and now I have become capable of deciphering it very easily. All the birds are resounding with the same sound: the soundless sound, the ancient sound of the Hindus, OMKAR."
The Mohammedan laughed and he said, "Nonsense! I have also been practicing my prayers. The birds are not saying aum, they are saying AMIN."
Mohammedan prayers, Christian prayers, end with amin; Christians call it AMEN, Mohammedans call it amin. Hindu prayers end with aum. There is certainly a truth somewhere, partially expressed by all the three. When the mind becomes absolutely silent a certain sound is heard. If you are a Hindu you will interpret it as aum, if you are a Mohammedan as amin, if you are a Christian as amen, but nobody can say for certain what it is. In fact it can be interpreted in so many ways -- it is your interpretation that is imposed on it.
If you ask a real mystic, one who is neither Hindu nor Mohammedan nor Christian, he will say, "Sit silently by my side and listen. There is no need to interpret it at all, because whatsoever we say about it will be our imposition, it will be our idea imposed on the sound. Just listen, sit silently -- I am listening to it, you also listen. I know it, you will know it. There is no need to say anything about it."
It is said, once it happened:
A great mystic, Farid, met Kabir, another great mystic. For two days they sat silently together. Yes, sometimes they laughed, giggled for no reason at all, and sometimes they hugged each other and kissed, but not a single word was spoken. Almost a thousand people had gathered -- the disciples of both -- with great expectations that something will be communicated, and nobody wanted to miss such a great opportunity. Kabir saying something to Farid is bound to be something rare, or Farid saying something to Kabir is bound to be something which is only heard once in a century.
But two days passed, and the disciples became fed up and bored. And the more they were bored, the more the mystics were giggling and laughing and hugging and kissing. And then the time of departure came; Farid had to leave. Kabir went out of the town to give him a farewell, just to say goodbye. They again hugged, they again giggled, and then they departed.
The disciples of Farid followed Farid and the disciples of Kabir followed Kabir back home. When they were alone they asked, the disciples of Farid asked, "What went wrong? You are continuously talking to us -- what happened? Why did you become dumb? For two days why didn't you speak, and what is all this giggling?"
Farid said, "There was no need to say anything, because I am hearing the same thing that he is hearing, I am seeing the same thing that he is seeing, so what is the point of saying anything to him? It would have been absolutely foolish on my part. When I can see he is hearing the same, seeing the same, being the same, we are encountering the same reality, what is the point of saying it?"
Then they asked, "Then why did you giggle?"
And he said, "We giggled because of you, because you were getting so bored! We were laughing at you. You had come to hear us talk -- you were foolish, you missed a great opportunity. Two masters were there, utterly silent; two pools of silent energy, two doors open simultaneously to God -- and you missed. And you wanted some words, some noise. You could have sat in silence, you could have become part of our silence. You could have fallen EN RAPPORT with us. You didn't do that -- you were bored, you were fed up, you were yawning. And just seeing you we giggled, we laughed at what kind of fools we have gathered!"
Nothing can be said; when you know, there is no way to express it. But if you want to express, then the word that comes closest to God is ''love'. Even that is just approximate, but very close. And the word ''God' has become associated with wrong people, with wrong notions. In fact, many people feel offended the moment you utter the word ''God'. I have no attachment to that word; you can drop it.
But remember love; I cannot tell you to drop that, because without love you will never reach God. Without God you can love, and God is bound to come in whether you know or not, whether you believe in God or not. Belief is not a requirement: love is an absolute necessity, a must. Sudharma, you have heard me say God is love. Experience it, and then all fear will disappear. And start dropping the priests and the centuries of wrong conditioning. They have made you afraid.
In fact, priests are the enemies of God, because the more people are afraid of God, the less is the possibility of their knowing God ever -- because fear is a wall, not a bridge. Love is a bridge, not a wall. Of course, fear helps the priests to live and exploit you, but it deprives you of God. Priests are in the service of the Devil. If there is somebody like a Devil, then priests are in HIS service; they are not in the service of God.
That's why so many religions are there, yet the earth remains irreligious, utterly irreligious; so many temples and so many churches and mosques, and yet you don't see the fragrance of religion. You don't see people's faces full of grace, their eyes full of silence, their feet dancing, their lives showing that God is. They may say that they believe in God, but their life says something else, totally different. Their life shows absolute irreligiousness; dishonesty, inauthenticity, insincerity, hate, anger, greed -- nothing of prayer, nothing of love, nothing of compassion, nothing of meditativeness.
Sudharma, meditate, love -- and forget the priests, drive them out of your being. You are suffering from hang-ups.
Next: Chapter 2: Via transcendence, Question 4
Energy Enhancement Enlightened Texts Dhammapada The Way of the Buddha, Vol. 4
| 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 |
