Sufism, Vol. 1 Sufis: The People Of The Path Chapter 2: In Hiding, Question 3

The third question:

Question 3

WHY DON'T PEOPLE BELIEVE IN THE THINGS THAT ALL THE GREAT MYSTICS HAVE ALWAYS BEEN PREACHING?

They don't understand and they don't want to understand. The language is different, the approach is different, the longing is different.

People understand only that which they long for. Your language is basically rooted in your longing. Your longing becomes your language.

A man who is sexually obsessed only understands the language of sex. A man who is sexually obsessed, perverted, repressed, only understands pornography. To a man who is sexually satisfied pornography will look absurd. He will not understand why, why people are so mad about it.

A man who wants to forget himself will be interested in drugs, but a man who knows the beauty of remembering himself will not be able to understand at all why people should drug themselves, why they should try to forget. It is tremendously joyful to remember.

Sufis say there are two types of people or two states of humanity. One they call GOFIL -- the people who are utterly oblivious of themselves, asleep, unconscious -- and another, the people who remember, the people who have a certain remembrance of their being. Now those who are searching to remember themselves will have a different kind of language. One who is searching for money knows only the language of money, and one who is searching for peace has a different kind of language. There are many languages in the world; they depend on your desires.

The man who has started searching for God, truth, is mad in the eyes of the so-called worldly-wise. The mystics have always been thought to be mad. You tolerate them at the most. And if they are very persistent then you start worshipping them -- but either you tolerate or worship, you don't become affected by them. You remain aloof, untouched. You keep a distance.

The story is told of a preacher who went to the mountains to preach, and upon arriving struck up a conversation with the first old man he met.

'Are you a Christian?' the preacher enquired.

'Nope, Mr. Christian lives up the "holler",' answered the mountaineer.

'What I mean is, Brother, are you lost?' persisted the preacher.

'Well, I reckon not,' replied the mountaineer. 'I have been here nigh on to thirty years and know every cow path in these here hills.'

'You don't understand,' said the preacher. 'I mean are you ready for the Judgement Day?'

'When's it comin'?' asked the mountaineer.

'Well,' said the preacher, 'it might come today or it might be tomorrow.'

'For goodness sakes, don't tell my missus,' cautioned the mountaineer. 'She'd want to go both days!'

There seems to be no communication. The preacher is speaking one language, the mountaineer is speaking another kind of language, and they both seem to speak plain English.

You may speak the same language but in one language there exist many languages -- within one language another, and within that another. A poet speaks one language, a scientist speaks another, a businessman still another.

And a mystic? A mystic speaks a very absurd language, that's why he is not understood. He speaks nonsense, exactly nonsense -- because he says things which are not sensibly comprehensible. He says things which are not available to the senses. He says things which are not even possible to put in a logical form, which cannot be formulated in a rational way. He talks about some mysteries, vague, cloudy, and in an absurd way -- because he talks in paradoxes.

All true religion is paradoxical. He uses contradictory terms so much that in the end nothing is left in your hands. If you ask a mystic if God is near or far, he will say, 'Both. He is the nearest and he is the farthest.' Now what are you going to make of it? If you ask him, 'Is God in the world or outside the world?' he will say, 'Both, or neither. ' What are you going to make out of it? Or he may laugh. Or he may remain quite silent. He may not say a single word.

To understand a mystic you will have to become a mystic yourself. To understand a mystic you will have to be initiated into mysticism. To understand a mystic you will have to drop your old patterns of the mind, the old ways of thinking. Logical thinking has to be dropped. You will have to become illogical. You will have to be ready to accept the irrational too -- because life is irrational and life is mysterious and you cannot put life into dogmatic forms.

You cannot say 'God is', you cannot say 'God is not' -- because God is both. He is so comprehensive that 'is' and 'is not' are both implied in his being. 'Isness' is his periphery and 'is not-ness' is his very centre. At the very centre God is nothing but pure nothingness. Out of that -- ex nihilo -- everything arises. The world is just on the circumference; at the centre there is nothing, or, there is only nothing.

When mystics say these things you can hear, but how are you going to understand if something like this has not started happening in you already?

You ask: WHY DON'T PEOPLE BELIEVE IN THE THINGS THAT ALL THE GREAT MYSTICS HAVE ALWAYS BEEN PREACHING? Another reason... how can you believe? You have to know. Belief is not going to help at all. Even if you believe you will suspect deep down, you will doubt deep down. Every belief carries doubt within it. Belief is not going to help.

And belief will create just the opposite. For example, people who believe become very serious. You can find them in the temples, in the churches, in the mosques. People who believe become very serious and people who know become very celebrating. The mystics don't believe. They know. They have seen. They have experienced. And because they have experienced God there is a kind of playfulness around them. They exist in joy. You will find a dance around them. If you look into their eyes you will find cheerfulness, ecstasy. If you go and look at a person who believes, you will always find a long face.

I have heard....

A very young niece was visiting a holier-than-thou aunt in the country for the summer. Her puritanical attitude was in constant evidence. Every time the little niece wanted to do something, the long faced aunt would say, 'Don't do that... you can't do that.'

One day the little niece was walking down the road, very unhappy, when she came upon a long faced mule near the fence. She walked over, patted its head, and said, 'Don't feel bad, Mr. Mule, my aunt has religion too.'

Religious people become very long-faced. Religious people become very sad. Religious people stop living in the world and have not started living in God. They are stuck. Hence the sadness. And religious people are not only sad themselves, they create all kinds of sadness in other people too. They cannot tolerate anybody happy. Wherever they find something happy they will be there to destroy it, to condemn it. They are against all joy. They are against all innocent joy. These people have poisoned humanity.

Belief is not going to help. Become a mystic but don't Believe in mystics. Become a Sufi but don't believe in Sufis. Become me but don't believe in me. If you believe in me you have gone astray. What is the need to believe? When you can have the taste, why believe in it? Belief means you are postponing. You are saying, 'Yes, today I will believe, tomorrow I will taste.' But why not today? Why not now? If you feel my vibe, then rather than thinking in terms of belief start thinking in terms of living it. And don't believe a thing unless you have experienced it, otherwise you will become a hypocrite.

And this should be used as a criterion: a man of belief is sad and a man of knowing is tremendously happy. A man who only believes is just dull, dead, shrunken in, frozen, ossified. And a man who knows, flows, flowers; much fragrance comes from his being. He is constantly flowing. He is never stagnant. He is always new.

Let religion be lived, not believed.

Sufism

VOL. 1, SUFIS: THE PEOPLE OF THE PATH

Chapter-2

In Hiding