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Sufism

THE WISDOM OF THE SANDS, VOL. 1

Chapter 8: There is no Ladder

Question 4

 

 

Energy Enhancement                Enlightened Texts                Sufism                 The Wisdom of the Sands, Vol. 1

 

 

The fourth question:

Question 4

WHY IS IT SAID THAT LIFE IS STRANGER THAN FICTION?

Because life is! Fictions are only reflections of life; how can they be stranger than life? Fictions are only parts of life. Life is a very complicated whole: it does not begin, it does not end. Your fiction starts and ends.

I know a person who always reads his novels from the middle. I asked him, "What is the point?" He said, "This way you remain more in suspense -- the end is not known, the beginning is not known. If you start from the beginning you are only curious about the end. I am curious in a double way. I enjoy it more totally!"

Life is like that -- it is always in the middle. You are always in the middle, the beginning is not known. Religions have tried somehow to supply the beginning. All those philosophies on how the world began are just nonsense, because the world never began. It has always been in the middle. That is the mystery, but the mind hankers for the beginning.

And then there are people who supply the answers. They say, "On a certain day God created the world." And what had He been doing before that? Just sitting there stupidly? And how long had He been sitting? Christians say, "God created the world EXACTLY four thousand and four years before Jesus -- on a certain Monday He started, and ended by Saturday evening, and rested on Sunday." Then what w as He doing before that? -- immense eternity! He must have got bored. In fact Eve must have committed suicide or must have gone mad.

The world never began. How can there be a beginning to the total? Because even if the beginning is conceived you will need a few things before the beginning, and then it will not be the beginning. You will need space. God says, "Let there be light! " But where? THERE IS needed. Time will be needed. How can Monday start suddenly without time? It needs a Sunday before it, otherwise how will you call it Monday? It will be so absurd.

No, the world has no beginning and the world has no end. It simply goes on and on and on, and everything is so complicated and everything is so intertwined with everything else that nothing is separate. I am in you, you are in me. You are in the trees, trees are in you. Rocks are in you, you are in the rocks. The farthest corner -- if there is any -- is connected to you. Touch a small pebble and you have touched the whole of existence. Kiss a woman and you have kissed the totality, because that woman is part of totality. When you kiss a woman you have kissed her mother too, and the mother's mother. You may not like it... but nothing can be done about it -- millions and millions of mothers-in-law, standing in a queue behind your woman, from the very beginning. And you have also kissed the child that is going to be born to the woman, and the children's children, and the whole future. Because the woman will go on reverberating, she will live in the daughter, and the daughter's daughter, and she will go on living in millions of ways.

When you kiss a woman you have kissed the whole past and you have also kissed the whole future. Touch reality anywhere and you touch the total. And the total is so immense, immeasurable.

Life is very strange because it is a great mystery.

I have heard about a certain Doctor Smartass.

Once upon a time there were two young men who became close friends. While sitting and talking at lunch one day, much to their surprise they discovered that they were both in treatment with the same psychotherapist, Doctor Smartass. As they compared notes, they agreed that the doctor was competent and helpful. He was also maddeningly composed and pompously sure of himself. If only there was some way to shake him up, to make him feel as unsettled as he made them feel.

Gleefully they hit upon a scheme to unhorse the good doctor. Together they made up an elaborate dream, rehearsing the telling of it until each could present it as his own. That Monday would be the day of reckoning. The first young man would go in for his appointment in the morning and tell the therapist 'his' dream. His friend would repeat the performance in his own session that same afternoon. Let's see how Doctor Smartass would handle that one.

On Monday the first young man went to his session and told his carefully rehearsed dream. He hid his secret glee as he had the therapist work on interpreting the dream. That afternoon, his friend gave a brilliant straight-faced performance as he too recounted the dream as if it were his own. Every detail of the second telling was the same as the first.

He was delighted to see an uncharacteristic look of bewilderment come across the therapist's face. "God, that's strange," said the doctor. "That's the THIRD time today I have heard that exact same dream."

Life IS strange. Things really happen here.

Life is unexplainable. All explanations fall short. All explanations are stupid, silly. The real people who understand the mystery of life don't give you any explanation about it. They help you to experience the mystery but they don't de-mystify it. That's where science and religion depart from each other. The whole effort of science is to de-mystify existence, to explain everything -- and whenever a thing is explained the wonder is lost. Then love becomes nothing but hormones, then falling in love is nothing but chemistry. Then all that you do and all that happens to you becomes very mundane, very ordinary, very superficial, not worth doing really.

Just think... you are falling in love with a woman because of your chemistry. Because certain chemicals are released in your body, certain hormones are moving in your blood, that's why you are feeling sexual, attracted. If those hormones are taken out, if that chemistry is changed, you would not feel attracted. All love will disappear. The moment you think of the chemistry of love, love disappears. Then there is only chemistry -- two chemistries getting attracted to each other -- almost victims of chemistry. The joy, the gladness, the glory, the splendor -- all are gone.

The scientist tries to supply answers, although the scientist has failed -- but people have not yet heard about it. This century has seen one of the greatest phenomena: the scientist has failed, UTTERLY failed! -- because the scientist has come closer and closer to truth, and the closer the scientist comes to the truth the more bewildered he becomes. The closer he comes to truth the more the truth seems to be more and more mysterious, unknowable.

Albert Einstein said before he died, "The world to mc is now more unknowable than it was when I started my work. I had started with the idea that I would find a few explanations, I would make things better explained, a little bit, but I would help to create a few explanations. But all those explanations that existed in my youth are no longer there. I am simply bewildered. I am dying not as a physicist but as a mystic. And next time, if I am to come back, I would like to be born as a plumber rather than as a physicist."

A great statement... because the plumber knows more about the mystery, lives it, enjoys it. By 'plumber' he means, "I would like to be an ordinary person, a very ordinary person -- a farmer, a gardener, a plumber. I would not bother about de-mystifying existence. I would rather live it, experience it. I would rather sing about it and dance about it."

Life IS strange, and that is the basic contribution of religion to the world. Religion helps you to go into the mystery without de-mystifying. That's where theology goes wrong. Theology is NOT religion. Theology is again the same endeavor as science -- trying to find explanations. Zen Masters are right when they laugh at your questions, and Sufis are perfectly right when they answer your questions in absurd ways. The answer does not relate to the question at all. If you become puzzled, it is a great step. If you forget your knowledge, if you unlearn your explanations, it is really a great step towards God.

Live without explanation and you will live a religious life.

 

Next: Chapter 8: There is no Ladder, Question 5

 

Energy Enhancement                Enlightened Texts                Sufism                 The Wisdom of the Sands, Vol. 1

 

 

Chapter 8

 

 

 

 
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