silence shared in words
Knowing the Truth Is to Experience Existence as It Is
Are you against all religions?
Isn’t religion something essentially needed by man?
Yes,
I am against
all the religions,
because I am for religion.
The very fact
that there are so many religions
is enough to prove
that something is basically wrong,
that we have not been able to discover
the truth
about religion,
because the truth can only be one
lies can be hundreds.
Fictions, you can create as many as you like;
it is your imagination.
But the truth is not your imagination.
The truth is a revelation.
It is already there.
You have not to invent it;
you have to discover it.
I am against all the religions,
because all these religions are not religions.
If they were religions there would have been only one religion in the whole world.
There is no possibility
of there being even two religions,
what to say about three hundred religions
it is absolutely absurd.
It is strange that man continues to tolerate it.
These are all fictions,
created by different people,
different societies,
different geographies.
They have nothing to do with religion as such,
because religion
is not geographical,
is not historical.
Religion is not racial,
is not national.
All these categories are irrelevant as far as religion is concerned.
Do you ever think of science in terms
of nations,
races,
countries,
historical periods,
geography?
If the water boils at a hundred
degrees
here,
today,
it has always been boiling at a hundred degrees
everywhere
in the past,
and it is going to boil at a hundred degrees
in the future too.
It will not make any difference
whether the person who is boiling the water
is a Jew
or a Hindu
or a Christian
or a communist;
whether he believes in God
or does not believe in God;
whether he is a sinner or a saint.
It won’t make any difference at all;
the water will boil
at a hundred degrees all the same.
That’s a truth,
and you need not
create any fiction about it.
Religious experience is a truth.
When you discover it,
you will not find that it is Christian
or Hindu
or Mohammedan
or Buddhist.
It has nothing to do with all these words.
The moment you discover religious truth,
all space, all time,become irrelevant.
It is simply beyond time and space.
It is immaterial.
Five thousand years before,
five thousand years afterward,
it is exactly the same.
The universe
remains authentically itself.
It is not
wearing phony masks
that it goes on changing,
so when one mask suits, it uses it;
when another mask suits, it uses that.
The universe has no masks,
it is utterly naked.
It is not like you; it has no personality.
Truth has no personality.
You have
not only personality,you have personalities,
each one of you
many personalities,
because you need
different faces
in different situations
with different people.
When you are talking to your
wife
you need
a different personality:
the personality of a husband.
When you are talking to your girlfriend
you talk differently;
you are
using the personality of a lover.
When you are talking
to the priest,
you certainly behave in a different way.
And when you are talking to your servant,
do you behave in the same way as you behave with the rabbi,
with the pope,
with the mahatma?
No,
when the servant passes through your room,
you don’t even take
any notice
that a person is passing by.
The servant is not human.
You don’t say hello to him;
he does not expect any hello from you
He comes and goes,does his work
he is a robot,
he is paid for that.
You go on reading your newspaper,
you don’t even give a single glance to the person.
You don’t ask him anything, not even “How are you?”
No, that is not
expected;
you are the master.
But when you go to the office and stand before your boss,
then the situation is just the reverse
now you are the servant.
You are standing there
and the boss goes on turning his file as if you are not standing there,
as if there is nobody there.
He may not be looking for anything in those files,
he may be just
turning those files to show you where you belong;
there is no need for him to take any notice of you.
If you watch yourself, you will
see in twenty-four hours how many times you go on changing your personality.
And it becomes such an automatic process
that you need not even make an effort to change it;
the change becomes automatic.
You see your wife coming – it automatically changes.
You see your boss coming – it automatically changes.
It has been your routine for so long,
that now….
You have to understand one thing about man:
that man’s mind has a robot part in it.
When you learn something,
you have to be alert.
For example, if you are learning driving
you have to be alert,
watchful of so many things:
the road,
the people,
the other vehicles passing.
You have to be aware of your steering,
you have to be aware
of the brake,
you have to be aware of the gears.
And in the beginning,
when somebody learns,
he finds it very difficult
to take care of so many things simultaneously.
Once you have learned it, what happens?
Then you can
sing and drive,
talk and drive,
listen to the radio and drive.
Your mind has taken “driving”
to another section,
and that section is the robot section of the mind.
Now the robot takes care
of everything that you were required to take care of in the beginning.
The same happens with your personalities.
So you are not even aware that you change so quickly
no sound is made,
no visible change
but if you watch,you will see everything has changed.