Sufism, Vol. 1 The Perfect Master Chapter 6: Only One Ecstasy, Question 3

The third question:

Question 3

JEWISH RELIGION, LIKE ZEN, IS BASED ONLY ON THE FORMLESS AND DOESN'T PERMIT THE WORSHIP OF FORMS. BUT EVER SINCE RYE BEEN IN INDIA THESE LAST EIGHT YEARS, I'VE MOVED AWAY FROM THIS IDEA AND HAVE FALLEN IN DEEP LOVE NOT ONLY WITH YOUR FORM, BUT ALSO WITH HINDU RELIGION, ITS MULTITUDE OF MYTHOLOGICAL FIGURES AND THE STORIES AROUND THEM -- RAM, KRISHNA, SHIVA, ETC. I LOVE KEEPING MY ROOM DECORATED WITH PICTURES OF YOUR FORM AND OF ALL THESE AS WELL, AND IMMERSING MYSELF IN THE FEELING OF BEING SURROUNDED BY AN INDIAN MYTHOLOGICAL WORLD OF GODS AND GODDESSES, THOUGH INTELLECTUALLY I KNOW THE ILLUSION OF IT.

I ALSO LOVE FORM BY WAY OF THE INDIAN TREES, SKIES AND NATURE, AS WELL AS THE INDIAN PEOPLE -- IN GENERAL AND IN PARTICULAR -- AND I SEEM TO COME ALIVE HERE IN INDIA IN A GREAT HEART-THROBBING DANCE OF JOY AS I NEVER COULD FEEL LIVING IN THE WEST.

MY HEAD KNOWS THE TRUTH OF THE CONCEPT OF THE FORMLESS AND OF THE IDEA OF 'KILLING THE BUDDHA', BUT MY HEART IS ABSOLUTELY IMMERSED IN THE LOVE AND WORSHIP OF FORM. I EVEN HAVE NO DESIRE FOR ENLIGHTENMENT ANY MORE AND WOULD RATHER LOVE BUDDHA THAN BECOME HIM, IN THESE MY OWN WAYS.

DOES THIS MEAN I AM STUCK SOMEWHERE AND NEED YOU TO BE A TOTAPURI TO CUT MY FOREHEAD, OR IS IT OKAY FOR ME TO REMAIN IN MY PRESENT ECSTATIC, HEART-THROBBING WORLD?

ANANDA PREM, THE JEWISH CONCEPT OF GOD AS FORMLESS and the Zen concept are not the same. Zen has NO concept of God -- because how can you have a concept of a formless God? That is absurdity! The moment you have a concept you have created a form. That's why Zen never talks about God, Buddha never mentioned God at all. He has been asked again and again, but he keeps mum, he will not say.

If you talk about the formless God, what are you saying? What do you mean by 'formless God'? If you contemplate on the formlessness of God you will be surprised: either you have to drop the idea of God like Buddha, like Zen, or you have to create some form. Either the formlessness can remain and God has to go, or God can remain but then the formlessness has to go.

So remember it: Zen has no idea of God. Formlessness cannot be called God. The moment you call it by any name, you have given it a certain form; the formlessness is falsified, is destroyed. It is no more formless. About the formless God you can be only silent. You cannot even say THAT much -- that God is formless. That is profane! that is sacrilegious! You cannot define in any way: Not even are you allowed to say that God is indefinable because that becomes a definition. You have said something, you have ALREADY said something. And you are saying nothing can be said.

Buddha is very logical in that way. Zen is very clear. Judaism is not so clear. It is AGAINST creating forms of God, that is true -- but its being too much against simply shows it is obsessed with the idea of form. That's how Mohammedans are also obsessed, because they are an offshoot of Judaism.

Judaism is obsessed that there should be no statue of God in any temple. And Mohammedans have gone one step further: that if you find any statues, destroy them! free people of the forms of God! As if you can free anybody from the forms of God -- because forms exist in the mind, not in the temples. They are not in the statues but in the intellectual visualization of God.

Why should Judaism not permit the worship of forms? The very effort to deny forms shows that somehow you are still attached to the form. It is not formlessness! It may be an anti form attitude, but not formlessness.

Zen is really formlessness. And because of this, just as Prem says:

JEWISH RELIGION, LIKE ZEN, IS BASED ONLY ON THE FORMLESS AND DOES NOT PERMIT THE WORSHIP OF FORMS.

If God is formless, who are you to permit or not to permit? The very idea of permitting is destructive to freedom. Judaism has not given freedom to people. It is not just an accident that all the revolutionaries have come from the Jews. It is a rebellion. From Jesus to Freud, all the revolutionaries have come from the Jews. Why? No other religion has created so many revolution-aries -- no other religion is so restrictive.

If a religion is free, the revolutionary has nothing to do there. Hinduism has not created any revolutionaries. Buddhism has not created any revolutionaries. Why? Because the freedom is so total! What is the point?

If Jesus had been born in India, nobody would have thought about him that he was a revolutionary. People would have allowed, because there is no question -- who is there to allow or not to allow? It is everybody's own choice.

Because Jews have not been allowing forms, Jesus was born. And Jesus became the form of God for Christians, for millions of people. And then it has been happening again and again.

Marx comes out of Jews, and Albert Einstein, and Sigmund Freud. Why? The religion is very restrictive. It does not have the flavor of Zen.

And when I am talking about Jews, I leave aside the Hassid Masters. They HAVE the flavor of Zen. But Jews don't accept them either. They are thought to be rebellious. And whenever a religion becomes too much interested in permitting and not permitting, it becomes ritualistic, dull, dead. It becomes formal.

Just see the point: Jews talk about the formlessness of God and their whole religion has become absolutely formal! Just ritualistic. Nothing of the interior, nothing of the heart. Just a social formality.

I have heard:

The couple were registering at a small hotel in Vermont. They were asked to show their wedding license. The man flashed a fishing license to the near-sighted clerk and laid it on the desk.

After the couple went upstairs the clerk examined the license more carefully and rushed up after them. He banged on the door shouting, "If you ain't done it, don't do it! This a isn't the license fer it!"

Who can permit? Who can give you a license for anything? If there is any possibility to know God it is through freedom. It is through ABSOLUTE freedom.

You say: BUT COMING TO INDIA, I HAVE MOVED AWAY FROM THIS IDEA....

It is good that you have moved away from this idea -- that was just an idea, not your experience. But now you have moved to another idea, just the opposite. That's what has been happening to Jews down the ages. When they rebel, they move to the opposite idea. Just the opposite. It always happens. You react, and you move to the other extreme.

Now, Prem says she has moved away from this idea. You may have moved, but you have moved in the opposite direction. Now she is surrounded by all kinds of gods and goddesses: Ram and Krishna, Shiva.... In India you have millions of gods. They say there are more gods than people in India.

I have known people whose whole day is lost into worship ping. I used to stay with a man. He had at least three hundred statues in his small temple, his own temple. Three hundred statues of all kinds of gods and goddesses. And from four o'clock early in the mowing he would start worship ping -- you have to take care of three hundred gods. Half the day was wasted in it. And he was in such a hurry he could not worship even one, because he knew, "Now there are still two hundred and ninety-nine waiting," and he had to rush to everybody. And he had to be careful, other-wise somebody may have become angry -- those three hundred jealous gods. You have to pay the same attention to each.

He was getting crazy! I said, "You will go mad! Three hundred gods are too much."

Now Prem says she is feeling ecstatic. Yes, you will feel ecstatic because you have moved to the opposite polarity. It gives freedom. But this is not true freedom -- soon you will lose it. Soon you will become tired. And then there is every possibility the mind will start moving to the other extreme agate. And the truth is just exactly in the middle, remember. The truth is just exactly in the middle.

In ancient Greece, on the temple of Delphi, there were two inscriptions. One is very well known, the other is not so well known. There must be some cause why the other never became so well known. One was: Know THYSELF. And the other was: NEVER in EXCESS. But the other is not so well known, and they both are together. They each are as important as the other, of the same plenitude, of the same potential.

One can know oneself only if one lives a life of no excess, if one moves JUST in the middle. Otherwise, one becomes a victim of extremes.

Now, from the idea of formless God you are becoming a victim of thousands of forms. Just exactly in the middle, where gods disappear; neither form nor formlessness, when there is utter silence -- there is the home.

And Prem says: I EVEN HAVE NO DESIRE FOR ENLIGHTENMENT ANY MORE AND WOULD RATHER LOVE BUDDHA THAN BECOME HIM...

READING YOUR QUESTION, PREM, I started becoming worried about Buddha. It is perfectly okay, you will love Buddha -- but what about Buddha? Your love will be your love, with all its poison. In fact, your love is not love at all. Only through light does love arise. Only after enlightenment does love flow. Before that it is just a false illusion of love.

You can go on loving Buddha, but you will never know what Buddha is -- how can you love? Your love will be nothing but a kind of illusion, a hallucination.

You have loved people before, now you project the same illusory energy on Buddha. And if Buddha is alive he won't allow it. He will try to destroy it in every way, because he will think of you in this illusion, in this dream. You may feel good, but this is a dream all the same. Sooner or later you will awake and then you will see that you have been wasting your life.

Yes, there is excitement but there is no ecstasy. And don't think your excitement is ecstasy. They look alike. And the greatest danger in life is from things that look alike. Excitement looks like ecstasy -- it is not. Ecstasy has NO excitement. It is a very tranquil state. Ecstasy is absolute silence, nothingness. It is enlightenment!

Now, you say: I EVEN HAVE NO DESIRE FOR ENLIGHTENMENT...

In a way that is good, because if you don't have any desire for enlightenment, enlightenment Becomes more possible. But the way you are speaking it seems that you are clinging, you are afraid. It is not just a statement of no-desire: it is a statement of rejection. You are afraid of enlightenment, you are afraid to become SO conscious -- because then all these illusory loves will disappear and all these mythological gods that you are surrounded with will look stupid. You will hove to throw them down in the river. You will hove to get rid of them, because they are un-necessarily occupying space.

You cannot love Buddha unless you become a Buddha! And to become a Buddha is what enlightenment is, and that's what ecstasy is.

Prem, you are not in an ecstasy. You may be in a heart-throbbing excitement, you may be enjoying this trip, but for how long? And these gods that you are surrounded with are all nothing but your projections. You have created them. You can put your energy into Ram, and then he becomes alive, but it is YOUR energy.

Why not become alive COURSES? Why put it in Ram and make him alive? Why go THAT far? And you say:

DOES THIS MEAN I AM STUCK SOMEWHERE AND NEED YOU TO BE A TOTAPURI TO CUT MY FOREHEAD?

I am not a Totapuri. Ramakrishna was too much attached to form, and Totapuri was too much attached to formlessness. I am not attached at all! To me both are the same. Attachment to form or to formlessness is the same. I am not giving you a formless god, I am not trying to substitute form by formlessness -- no, I want you to drop both form and formlessness and just be... free of ALL illusions. In that JUST BEING is freedom. Meditate on these lines of J. Kerouac:

THERE IS NO WAY TO LOSE.

IF THERE WAS A WAY,

THEN

WHEN THE SUN IS SHINING ON THE POND

AND I GO WEST, THOU EAST,

WHICH ONE DOES THE TRUE SUN

FOLLOW?

WHICH ONE DOES THE TRUE ONE BORROW?

SINCE NEITHER ONE IS THE TRUE ONE,

THERE IS NO TRUE ONE WAY.

AND THE SUN IS A DELUSION

OF A WAY MULTIPLIED BY TWO

AND MULTIPLIED MILLIONFOLD.

SINCE THERE IS NO WAY, NO BUDDHAS,

NO DHARMAS, NO CONCEPTIONS,

ONLY ONE ECSTASY,

AND RIGHT-MINDEDNESS

IS MINDFULNESS

THAT THE WAY IS NO-WAY

ANYHOW SOME WAY.

Only one ecstasy. Ecstasy has nothing to do with form or formlessness. Ecstasy has nothing to do with Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism. Only one ecstasy. And what is that? I teach you only that, and what is that? That is being so utterly quiet, unmoving, not going anywhere, not desiring anything, not dreaming anything -- gods or no-gods, forms or no-forms -- no thought at all. The thought of form, the thought of formlessness, are all the same. Can't you be in that mirror like silence? nothing is reflected even! The mirror is empty. That is the one ecstasy.

That one ecstasy is God. The taste of it is God. God is not a person with form or without form. God is the taste on your tongue of that moment -- of that moment of bliss, of that moment of Tao, of that moment when ALL stops, time stops, and the world stops.

I am not a Totapuri at all. He was very much obsessed with the formless, otherwise why should he bother to cut Ramakrishna's forehead? I would not have done that. For what? I am not in any way interested in changing you from one position to another position, from one philosophy to another philosophy. They are all points of view. My effort is to make you free of ALL points of view -- Ramakrishna and Totapuri both.

And what happened? do you know? And that's what I am afraid of, Prem, it can happen to you. Ramakrishna said after those six days, "The last barrier has fallen," and then he lived at least ten more years -- and continued to worship Kali. And the day he died, he died with the name of Kali on his lips: "Jai Kali, Jai Kali!" The day, the moment he died, it was not the formless, it was again the form. What happened? For a few days he remained in that excitement of the formless, then he became tired and moved again.

No excess. No extreme. Be in the middle. Exactly in the middle is the door. If you think of time, then in the past there is no door, in the future there is no door -- but in the present, because that is exactly in the middle. If you think of form and formlessness there is no door, but exactly between the two. Neither this nor that -- NET I, NET I -- just exactly between the two. Neither the soul nor the body. Don't become a spiritualist or a materialist. Don't think of the external reality or the internal. Just exactly in the middle!

Always go on thinking of the middle, and slowly slowly relax in the middle and let the extremes dissolve. And you have wived home.

Sufism

VOL. 1, SUFIS: THE PERFECT MASTER

Chapter-6

Only One Ecstasy