Men of knowledge have certain answers, absolute certainty—that is part of their stupidity

Socrates was a wise man, not a man of knowledge. A man of knowledge would have given a certain answer. Men of knowledge have certain answers, absolute certainty—that is part of their stupidity. In fact, only stupid minds can be certain. Life is such a vast mystery, unfathomable, unknowable; if you are wise you cannot be certain. Wisdom is cautious. Wisdom hesitates. Wisdom is never certain. That’s why wisdom can never be confined to a theory.

Wisdom doesn’t know

All theories are less than life, all theories are narrow, and life cannot enter into them—life is so vast, so tremendously vast and infinite. A wise man only knows one thing: that he does not know. A man of knowledge knows a thousand and one things and knows that he knows—and therein lies his foolishness. He goes on accumulating facts unlived by himself: theories, words, philosophies—untouched by his own being. He goes on accumulating them in his memory. He becomes a vast reservoir of knowledge, he becomes an Encyclopedia Britannica—but a dead thing.

The more his memory becomes filled with knowledge the less and less he lives in his being. The more and more he moves into the head, becomes a part, a fragment, the less and less he is joined to the vast being and the universe and existence. He becomes in a way non-existential. He is no more a part of this existence, alive, radiant, vibrating. He is a frozen phenomenon; he no more flows with life. He is like an iceberg, frozen and stuck somewhere—stuck in the head. Consciousness, when it becomes knowledge, becomes frozen; when consciousness becomes wisdom, it becomes a flow. A wise man lives, lives totally, but knows only one thing—that he doesn’t know.

Knowledge is transferable

To learn from a wise man is very difficult, to learn from a man of knowledge is very easy. He can give you all that he knows, he can transfer it very easily, language is enough of a vehicle. All that he has gathered he has gathered through the mind, through language; it can be communicated easily. A man of knowledge becomes a teacher. He can teach you, and he can teach beautifully, things which he has not known at all. Maybe that’s why he is not as hesitant as a man who knows. Because when a man knows, he also knows the opposite polarity of life. When a man really understands and knows, he also knows that everything is joined with its opposite, everything is meeting and melting into its opposite. Nothing can be said definitely because the moment you say anything definitely you have stopped its flow, you have made it a frozen fact. It is no more part of the river, it is an iceberg. Now you can accumulate it in the storehouse of the mind.

When a man really understands and knows, he also knows that everything is joined with its opposite, everything is meeting and melting into its opposite

A man who is wise is not a teacher—he can be a Master but not a teacher. What is the difference between the two? A teacher is ready to teach—a Master is never ready to teach. A teacher is aggressive, active—a Master is non-aggressive, inactive. A teacher will follow you and force you, so that you can carry his knowledge on your shoulders. A Master waits. You have to snatch from him, you have to partake of him. He will not follow you, he will not force you. He will not even knock at your doors—he will simply wait. You can partake of his being. You can enter his inner emptiness, the inner palace of his being, his inner kingdom, but that is up to you. You will have to do all the work. The Master is only a presence. If you are attracted, you fall into the presence. A teacher calls, a teacher tries, a teacher makes all the effort so that you can understand. A Master simply is there—open of course, not closed, absolutely open for you to come in. But he doesn’t make even a gesture, because that gesture may be aggressive, that gesture may force you to come in without your own will. And then it will be bad, then you have been put on a wrong path.

A master does not teach

A Master is silent presence. You can learn from him, but he will not teach. With a teacher you will be a student. There exists a relationship, a two-way relationship. With the Master you can be only a disciple, it is one-way—you have to learn. If you don’t learn you don’t learn, if you learn you learn. A Master is so happy with his own being he does not bother. If you learn he blesses you; if you don’t learn he also blesses you—he is a blessing, a benediction.

A man of knowledge becomes a teacher and millions of people are attracted towards him, because when you learn something your ego feels strengthened. Very few rare souls are attracted towards a Master because, in fact, with a Master you will have to unlearn, with a Master you will have to die. Your ego will be shattered completely—because only then can you enter into the temple, into the innermost shrine of the Master’s being.

A Master is a wise man but his understanding is so profound that you cannot understand it. You can only live it. A Master knows, but he knows in such depth—where opposites meet, where life and death become synonymous, where existence and nonexistence don’t mean opposites, where all rivers fall into the ocean—in that depth a Master exists.

It is difficult to understand him because understanding will be superficial and all understanding will be more or less misunderstanding. Don’t try to understand him. How can you understand him? How can you understand an infinite phenomenon? You can live it, you can dissolve into it, you can allow it to dissolve into you, that’s possible. It is like love: you cannot understand love, mysterious are its ways. You cannot understand it, you cannot pin down what it is. Thousands of definitions exist but love has not been defined yet and it will never be defined. Whenever you define, immediately you feel something is missing. And that something will always be missed, because that something is the depth. A definition cannot carry depth, it can only be on the surface.

Very few rare souls are attracted towards a Master because, in fact, with a Master you will have to unlearn

Come to your centre

A wise man lives in the depth. A man of knowledge lives on the circumference; a wise man lives at the centre. There is only one way to reach a wise man—you will have to come to your own centre. Centre to centre there is communion with a wise man. Head to head, mind to mind, there is communion with a teacher, the man of knowledge.

The wise man has by and by disappeared from the world. In the West you don’t find philosophers, you find only professors of philosophy. This is something absurd. A professor of philosophy is not a philosopher; a professor of philosophy is just a teacher—a man of knowledge but not a wise man—not like Socrates, not like Lao Tzu, not like Buddha. They are not professors. They are not professing anything, they are not teaching anything to anybody. They are just there—like the sun is there, you open your eyes and the darkness disappears; like the flower by the side of the path, you just be with it for a few seconds and the fragrance fills you to your very depth; like a river flowing, you come to it thirsty and your thirst is quenched. They are not professors, they are alive people. They are more alive than anybody else, and then they become more and more mysterious.

A professor of philosophy is not a philosopher; a professor of philosophy is just a teacher—a man of knowledge but not a wise man

Knowledge grows, changes, moves—wisdom is eternal, it is always the same. Whenever you attain it, it is always the same. It is like the sky which remains eternally the same. Seasons come and go: now it is winter, now it is summer, now it is raining, now the rains have disappeared. Trees come and die, generations come and go and the drama of life goes on moving, but the sky remains as it is, eternally the same, eternally new, ever fresh and always old. Wisdom is like the sky.

Wisdom grows with time

Of course knowledge can be taught in the universities, colleges, schools. Wisdom can never be taught. Nowhere can it be taught. Wisdom has to be imbibed through life, there is no other way. So only an old man can be a wise man. In wisdom the young man can never defeat the old man, but in knowledge he can always defeat him. How can you defeat the old man in wisdom? Wisdom comes through experience; knowledge comes not through experience but through learning. You can cram it in, and if you are a little intelligent, more intelligent than the average, you can know more than your teacher. You can know more than your father, there is no problem about it. Just a little effort on your part is needed. But wisdom—there is no way. It comes by and by through life. If you live and if you live totally, if you live and you live with awareness, only then, drop by drop, does wisdom come into being. It is such a subtle phenomenon! There is no direct way to reach it. Only old people can be wise. That’s why whenever there is somebody who is wise and young, in the East we know that he is old, he is ancient.

There is a beautiful story about Lao Tzu that he was born old; when he was born he was 84 years of age—he had remained in his mother’s womb for 84 years. Absurd, unbelievable, but a beautiful story—says something, says something very significant. It says that from his very childhood he was like an old man, so wise he could not be a child. It says something. It is symbolic. It says that when he was a child he had as much wisdom as ordinarily a man of 84 would have. He must have been tremendously alert.

If you are very alert then a single experience can give you much. If you are not alert you will go on repeating the same experience and nothing will be gained.

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I had been living a life of spiritual ecstasy on the banks of the sacred Ganga River for several months at that point and undergoing indescribable experiences of divine Oneness. I had tears of bliss streaming down my face and felt touched by a power and presence I had never imagined possible. Despite it all, I had, just on that day in December 1996, reacted to a situation as an “unawake”, victimised, ego-centric child.

What had happened?

When my Guru used the words “stupid” and “smart” to slap me awake, He was not referring to a lack or abundance, of knowledge, ability and talent, nor was He referring to my grades by which I had always judged my scholastic prowess.

Rather, He was referring to the presence or absence of gyan, of real wisdom in my life. The paradox of his statement made it clear that although I was “smart” both in the traditional IQ-testing way and also in the deeper way of having experiential understanding of the Truth, nonetheless I was still “stupid” in my inability to bring that wisdom and spiritual experience into my patterned habits of reaction and victimisation. I may have had the wisdom and the experience, but I was still unable to use it consistently as the foundation of my actions and reactions.

How could I be so smart and so stupid at the same time?

Living an unaware life

Before coming to India, I had graduated with a degree in psychology from Stanford University and was enrolled in a psychology PhD programme; consequently, I spent most of my time entrenched in psychological study. When I came to India and was touched by the presence of the Divine, I discovered peace, bliss and ecstasy more real than I had ever imagined. All the psychological theories, processes and insights paled in comparison to the magnitude of the experiences I was given. It was as though the waters of Ganga rushed over my own challenges and neuroses just as easily as She rushes over the rocks in the riverbed, carrying away remnants of suffering from the past.

Then, the ‘incident’ occurred and I burst into tears like a wounded eight-year-old. Suddenly my tears were not of joy, peace, or Truth, but of fear, grasping and yearning. I was not a 25-year-old swimming in spiritual ecstasy—I was a scared, wounded child. And all it took was for someone to act in a way that pushed my buttons.

As my Guru stared at me with a mixture of compassion, omniscience and incredulousness, He refused to let me sink back into my well-rehearsed role of victim. Rather, He forced me to really look at what was going on. How could I be so smart and so stupid at the same time?

While the spiritual path and the psychological path are deeply interwoven and interconnected, one does not substitute or exempt us from the other

I’m not ‘done’ yet

Jack Kornfield, a renowned Buddhist meditation teacher coined the phrase ‘spiritual bypass’. It is a very tempting short-cut to what appears to be an enlightened life. The concept of a spiritual bypass is that when one has deep spiritual experiences of Oneness, it is very easy to think that one is ‘done’ as far as inner work is concerned. If I’ve merged into the experience of Samadhi, bliss, and union in my meditation or prayers or in the presence of my Guru, then I’m ‘done’. My only goal becomes having that experience more frequently and for longer periods of time.

This is fine if one is living in the jungle, doing nothing but meditation and interacting with no one. Problems arise when one lives in the world and has to relate to other people—all of whom have their own issues, fears, egos and desires. Suddenly and tragically for many of us, we realise that having had the deep, ecstatic experience of the divine does not necessarily make us any more equipped to respond to our family members and colleagues with love, compassion and understanding or to overcome the neuroses we’ve had since childhood.

Interconnected, not exempt

While the spiritual path and the psychological path are deeply interwoven and interconnected, one does not substitute or exempt us from the other. Just as a deep psychological process, full of insight and growth, is a far cry from a deep spiritual awakening, similarly the experience of Grace does not exempt us from having to look at our own anger, jealousies, egos and fears.

Many of us know people who do rounds of japa on their mala every day, or spend hours in meditation, and yet who are provoked by the slightest insult or upset. We see people who perform extensive pujas and yet are not able to get along with the people around them, or who abuse alcohol or drugs or gamble or have promiscuous sex or simply suffer from insecurity and depression.

Psychological work without spiritual experience can become a quagmire of darkness

Meditation, prayers, japa, puja, kirtan are all matchlessly wonderful ways of connecting to the divine, of experiencing the wholeness, the completeness, the fullness and perfection within the Self. But, in most cases, they are neither instant cures nor are they magic wands that make our problems go away. What they give us is a palpable understanding that we are more than our childhoods, our addictions, our depression and certainly more than our fallible body. They connect us to a Self that was never abused, betrayed, abandoned or deprived. They give us that touch of the sun’s warmth, which makes a tree defy gravity and grow horizontally rather than vertically just to get nearer to that light. But we have to do the same work as the tree—we have to continue to grow!

Behind the veil

Psychological work without spiritual experience can become a quagmire of darkness. It is easy to sink into the quicksand of our own histories, wounded identities, fears and desires, to live and relive them over and over again. Yet, a fearless inquiry into our own motivations, reactions, compulsions and anxieties is a great companion on the spiritual path. A willingness to look with honest inquiry into our own failings while simultaneously being aware of our ultimate divinity opens the door to a much deeper experience of the Self.

On every spiritual path being present is hailed as the magic key. Whether it’s a path focussed directly on awareness, like vipassana and insight-based meditation, or whether it’s a path more focussed on bhakti, gyan or karma, in every path, we are exhorted to “be present” and “stay in the present moment.” When we are present, we are aware. When we are aware, we can heal. When we are aware, we witness the anger, witness the ego, witness the longing, the grasping, the pushing, the slipping into familiar habits and roles, witness the repetition of decades-old scripts. None of it is wrong or bad or impure. It is merely ignorance or, as my Guru said so unabashedly, “stupidity”. Fortunately, that ignorance has been, in my experience, very much like the wizard in the Wizard of Oz, terrifying when veiled, huge when projected, but human and ever so manageable when brought into the light.

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A puppet on strings

Most people don’t realise that they’re essentially a puppet. They don’t realise that they’re attached to many, many kinds of strings. These strings are social beliefs, emotional traumas, biological instincts and much more; but often they are complete mysteries to most people. However, when one of the strings pulls on an arm, the arm immediately reacts.

For example, a young girl is insulted in school about the red shirt she is wearing. She doesn’t know why, but she instantly smacks the other girl’s face for the affront; it is completely reactive, and she thinks it’s because of the insult. In truth, it has to do with her lack of self-worth, which is connected to a deeper fight or flight survival mechanism. An ensuing fight creates more turbulence in both girls’ lives, and that creates additional pain and suffering for them, people at the school and their families. Later on, when asked about why she did what she did, this girl says, “I don’t know.”

These reactions happen for a lot of people in many situations because this is reactionary nature and it doesn’t stay limited to childhood and school life. It ripples upwards to heads of nations and states. Heads of countries feel slighted, so they cut off trade with other countries. Or worse still, they go to war. Imagined slights become real issues that become death and atrocity. It’s a horrible state of life that keeps happening over and over again, but it always begins at the level of the individual and how their strings are tied around them.

Identifying the strings in your life

I never say that living an enlightened life will be easy. Instead, dedicating ourselves to the spiritual path helps us to see where we make life hard for ourselves. When we address that, then things get easier within ourselves. The external world may still be very challenging, but at least we are no longer reacting mindlessly to the stimuli, insults and obstacles that are thrown our way. We do this by identifying the strings that are manipulating us. In general, I’d categorise these strings as:

• Biological and genetic
• Emotional
• Mental
• Subtle energy

The biological strings are simply the core animal instincts that still operate in us. They are mainly concerned with survival and procreation to continue the species. Many people are completely overwhelmed by these impulses, and they tend to be part of the backbone of many of our core fears and issues. For instance, money gets tied up with a fear of survival. We feel like we won’t be able to survive without money. As such, people can become incredibly fearful if they ever feel like they’ll lose their job. When this core fear tugs on someone, a person can react in very poor ways.

The genetic aspect is where we have differences from one person to another. For instance, one person may have more biochemical imbalance that tends towards a depressive personality. This is simply something one must account for and understand as part of what is influencing their lives. How to be without reaction is something we need to learn.

The emotional level is where a lot of our raw and most basic feelings are. They are not really separate from any other levels. You’ll notice as you do your self-introspection that these strings are tied up into a big bundle. But they can be addressed separately as you begin to understand how these things all interact within you. As such, a primal concern around survival such as the losing your job example can ignite a lot of fear, but living an enlightened life means that we learn to simply watch our inner reaction rather than to take action upon it. If we believe in the fear, it becomes 10 times worse.

The mental level is home to all of our stories about ourselves, about our families, and about how we think our lives should go. It is built out of the ideas and patterns that we learned as children from our families and society as a whole. It is the home of the ego, which we have usually learned to defend at all costs. All kinds of beliefs and ideas are collected here that are trying to serve different purposes. Until we explore them, we don’t really know why we are doing what we are doing.

The subtle energy field has many interesting energetic connections, and it’s usually the one that we deal with last as the other three are already a huge amount of self-work. It’s enough to say that we are energy, and we are all interconnected. Those of you who are naturally sensitive to energy will find that you can learn a lot about yourself by noticing how different places and people affect your mood. When they do, you know that a subtle energy string is pulling on you and creating a reaction.

Cultivating non-reaction

The first steps to cutting the strings and finding your core issues are being present and having the desire to know yourself. After that, it is important to practise being non-reactive. I am sure that life will offer you plenty of opportunities to be either upset or excited about something. Both ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ feelings should be watched. You can ask yourself simple questions such as “Why does this make me happy?” and “Why does this make me unhappy?” I am not saying to have no emotions at all and be a robot. I am encouraging you to be curious about how and why you behave the way you do. Until now, this was probably an invisible process, so this step is an important one.

As you go, you’ll probably notice a lot of unhealthy behaviour patterns. This is good news. Before you couldn’t see them, now you can. I often outline the most basic steps on healing these issues as follows:

• Identify
• Accept
• Embrace
• Let go

When you can identify something, you can then accept it. Embracing it means to understand the story or feel the feeling. Letting it go means just that. Once you’ve deeply understood something, releasing it is natural, so that new space within you can open up.

Deeper openings lead to deeper understandings

The more open we are, the more we can see about ourselves and others. This is a crucial thing in these times when so much information is coming at us so quickly. A lot of stuff has sped up, and this is why it’s important to slow down. Bringing our awareness more firmly into this moment allows us to see clearly and, as we continue to open, it tends to get easier to know what needs to be done in any given moment. It also tends to be easier to let go of things that do not serve us and to not get caught up in minor squabbles with others. In time, this just becomes how you live, and it’s not really a big deal.

Living an enlightened life, as I said in the beginning, is quite simple and quite sane. It isn’t anything extraordinary. If anything, it is about finally accepting the ordinary and everything else exactly as it is and continuing to learn about yourself so that you can enjoy this present moment—whatever it is—to the fullest.

The post Enlightened living: Sever the strings of darkness appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

The word enlightenment derives from the word ‘light’. But ‘light’ also refers to the physical weight of an object. In this context, light is the antonym of heavy. And the word ‘heavy’ has great spiritual significance that goes beyond physical weight.

What Is Meant By a Heavy Heart

We often use the word ‘heavy’ figuratively to denote heaviness of the heart or the head. It’s difficult to find someone who hasn’t said, “My heart is heavy” at some time or another. Of course, we all know that our hearts and heads don’t become heavy in a literal sense—it’s only a figure of speech, right? Wrong!

In my opinion, a heavy heart or head is more than just a metaphor for mental or emotional distress. The feeling of heaviness always occurs owing to an excess of thoughts occupying our minds.

On an average, it is estimated that we think 60,000 different thoughts each day. Now consider this: if each thought actually weighed just a tiny bit, say a mere gram, our minds would be carrying a load of 60 kilos each day. Phew! That’s a lot of weight to carry around [and a lot of clutter to clear]. No wonder then that our heads and hearts feel heavy and over-burdened all the time—and that, in turn, results in all kinds of health problems ranging from migraines to high BP to heart attacks.

Also read » Enlightenment: chopping wood, carrying water

Try Meditation Whenever Your Heart Feels Heavy

Fortunately, meditation offers a way to ease the excess load on our poor, over-worked hearts and heads. It helps us empty our minds of the rubbish we accumulate day after day. The best way to meditate, according to the ancient sages, is to become a witness of our thoughts. You see, we can’t stop them from coming, but we can certainly avoid becoming a reservoir of thoughts. So, when thoughts enter the mind, don’t hold on to them, observe them. Become a passage and allow them to pass. Zen monk and teacher Shunryu Suzuki explains it this way: “Leave your front door and your back door open. Allow your thoughts to come and go. Just don’t serve them tea.”

Gradually, you will find yourself living more and more in the present. That’s because thoughts are always about the past or the future. When you live in the present, you remain lightweight in the head and the heart. And, isn’t that what ‘enlightened’ people do—live in the present? The only difference between them and the rest of us is the flab of unnecessary thoughts. If only we shed those ‘kilos’, we too could become enlightened.

The post My Heart Is Heavy! appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

Those who are both aware of and comfortable with their sexuality enjoy better interpersonal relations—whether with partner, friend or colleague—as they have a better perception of the influence they are capable of exerting on people around.

Spiritual bliss that follows a heightened state of awareness induces a feeling of being beyond it all. Likewise, sexual gratification also yields an experience of being away—albeit momentarily—from the aches and pains of mundane living.

Why, then, those who make spiritual enlightenment their aim often celibate? It would be quite a blow for a spiritual seeker to wake up one day and find that s/he has renounced what many call one of life’s more [some would say most!] pleasurable activities in vain.

Spirituality vs Sexuality

Spiritual enlightenment is a quest that calls for an inward journey. It is essentially about understanding the self by connecting within and then carrying that heady experience from without. It is a process of self-empowerment. A seeker aims for full control over his/her experience of bliss. In other words, you may switch on/off as you will, when you please, for as long as you desire, for the switch is in your hands.

Sex, as we know, needs two to tango. Sex is all about understanding your partner, and connecting without to feel whole within. As psychologist Erich Fromm explained in his amazing book The Art of Loving, our need to love lies in the experience of separateness along with the resulting need to overcome the anxiety of separateness by the experience of union.

Spirituality Is in the Mind, Sexuality in the Body

Spiritual bliss is a mind game. It is experienced in the mind both during and after a meditation session. Sexual bliss is largely a play of our body organs—an increased flow of blood in the genital region followed by muscular contractions experienced as release that is fleeting.

The mental liberation experienced during meditation is energy-giving. Sex, in spite of giving you a momentary high, is energy-depleting.

A spiritual high may be maintained for as long as you [and, you alone] are able to. A sexual high is largely dependent on your partner’s sexual prowess. Physical organs need rekindling to re-induce pleasurable sensations.

Yet, for many, sex is the closest they will come to experiencing spiritual bliss in their lifetime!

However, it goes without saying that there can be no replacing the original.

Spiritual bliss wins hands down when it comes to control, intensity and duration. In other words, think of sex as an alternative for you to enjoy until you choose to dive within.

Redefining Bliss

Since we were not born to be celibate, is there a way for you to enhance your blissful experience born of sexual indulgence? There is!

Aim to be a detached love

This may sound contradictory for you would believe that you need to feel involved when making love. But, step aside [in your mind] from your own needs and try to focus on your partner’s desires instead. You’ll love better and be loved more for it in return.

Learn meditation

Yes, even if you do not plan to turn celibate. Meditation is all about being aware of your inner spark. This will happen only after you are more conscious of your senses. You may not experience bliss instantly, as a Buddhist monk does, but you’ll certainly acquire a new sensitivity that will enhance your enjoyment of sensual pursuits.

Sexual bliss is an escape from the drudgery of modern living. Use your power of imagination to train your mind to take pleasure from a situation so that when you have sex, you are not merely relying on your bodily response. Allow your imagination to soar. Practice to look intently at a picture-postcard scenery. Then close your eyes and imagine the same vista. Try the same exercise [recreate the scenery in your mind] with your eyes open. Once you get a hang of it, allow your mind to conjure a sensual image of your choice. Keep this image in mind when you make love. It works!

The post Spirituality and Sexuality: Two Sides of A Coin appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.