SEE INSIDE

It is very difficult to speak about the god, because he is
largely unknown. And largely unknowable. In fact, I think we can
define spirituality as a search in the god to know the unknowable
in him. It is a continuing search. we have this habit of judging from
the externals and not bothering to penetrate inside to see what is
there. This inability or unwillingness to go inside has many
consequences. It makes us look only at the outside.We have the modern packaging industry, which hides a product under a very nice cover, very expensive sometimes. I sometimes buy a few pins and a few buttons for my shirt, and I have the conviction that they cost less than the package in which they are wrapped up for me.
This is also the problem with human beings, in many of us, if you don’t mind my saying so, the outside is very attractive, but there is not much inside.
So, spirituality says we have to develop the ability to see inside.
We buy a book looking at the cover; we buy magazines looking
at the glossary pictures. In fact, those of you who are in the America
will understand that they have those beautiful big cars, and they are
the most uncomfortable cars ever produced. I used to find the old
Volkswagen, the Beetle, difficult to get into but very easy once you
are inside. The modern cars are very easy to get into, but very, very
uncomfortable inside. I think in our human relationships we have the
same problem. Today it is very easy to form an attachment to other
human beings, even the so-called love affairs, “les affaires de Coeur.
” But there is no comfort, there is no joy, and there is no love.
So you see, something, which is very easy to get into generally
has very little inside. Par contra, often that which is very difficult
to get into is perhaps the most valuable thing.
Spirituality is a process. It has nothing to do with knowledge
and the intellect. Because it is the process, we have to have faith,
we have to have effort, and it is takes time. One may say, “But what
about those saints who became instant saints?” They had developed
somehow the capacity to plunge into the heart of the individual. Any
one who has the similar capacity is capable of doing it in an instant
of time. How much this journey into the infinite recesses of the God’s
heart will take depends on us. Therefore, when people ask us,
“How long will it take?” we have really no answer. It depends on you.
It can be this moment; if it is unfortunate, it may never be. All this
knowledge is enshrined in God. One does not expect a flower
to be hard and strong. Flowers made of stone and marble, yes, but not the natural flowers; that they are the softest things. Therefore, you
may say, ‘soft as petal’, you see, they exude a fragrance, and it is
that fragrance which goes out into the atmosphere and attracts. In
fact, a special person is described as a flower of the tree which blooms in the night. It is there, but one cannot see it. One does not even see the tree on which it is blooming.
But if you have a sensitive nose, and you follow that nose, inevitably
you come to the tree and to the flower. So, it is not something to be seen, it is not something to be tasted.
Because, though flowers are soft, not at all soft things are flowers.
Flowers have fragrance, but not all fragrant things are flowers.
Flowers are tender, but not all tender things are flowers. You may
think this is obvious; it is not so obvious. Otherwise, we would not
be looking for soft things, tender things, fragrant things in any
thing except flowers. We look for these things in perfumes, in the
hair of the women, in their lips, you know, in satin, in silk. But we
buy a flower for ten francs and drop it on the road. It is a tragedy
of modern existence, of the culture of the West that we have to cut
the flower from its parent plant to admire it, and to possess it.
Every act of possession is dismembering the beauty of the thing
which we want to possess. Therefore, possessiveness is bad, whether
it is the possessiveness of a wife for the husband, or the husband for
the wife, or the mother for her children. Where there is possessiveness, there is death, there is destruction. Not for the thing itself, because the thing is always destroyed, but for the Soul which is inside. Therefore, all possessiveness is destructive. When a husband loves his wife and, God forbid, the wife dies before him, if he weeps and wails and beat his breast and says,‘my wife is dead’, it is another tragedy. When he looks for another woman, it is a bigger tragedy. And if he finds fulfillment in her and forgets his wife, it is the biggest tragedy. If there is true love,the form does not matter, because my form is as fragile and as destructible as yours. Who goes first is not important.
In love there is no first, there is no second. Love can only be between equals. I mean, I can love my dog, but I cannot love a dog like I love my wife. It is crazy to say I love my dog, I love my cat, you see, it is the disease of a society in which we are no longer able to love people, human beings. These pets and these toys have become objects, pseudo-objects of our pseudo-loves. Therefore, we buy expensive things which have no use, just because my ego is supported by my possessions. People buy books which they never read.
It is like one of those famous stories , of an asura and Deva, the opposite types of human beings, one totally demonic, diabolical,
and the other divinised. They go to heaven to look for the vessel of
immortality, the vessel which contains the nectar of immortality –
amrut, we call it, - that which makes you immortal, deathless. And
there is one gold pot, and a mud pot. The deva, because he was a
cultured being, allowed the asuras to go first. The asura was very
happy. He went to the gold pot and took it away. It contains very
potent wine of the Gods, which made the asura even more crazy than he was before. The mud pot contains the nectar of immortality. So you see, this is how we have to see, from the content, and not from the container.
So, this is the tragedy of the intellect, that the intellect
is useless to judge a person in such a situation. What is it useful
for? It must be useful for something. Well, it is useful for your
daily work, it is useful for scientific research, but not for the
deeper values for life. I have not seen any intellectual so far who is
happy. I have met many of them, very high intellectuals, respected in
their societies, honoured in their societies, and when they are outside
, they are wearing their nice suits and their ties, and they look very
happy and very nice. But when I get them alone, they are like a mouse
before a lion. They don’t know what they are doing; their intellect is
of failure. They have the same problems like a beggar has; they have
the same couple problems, the same problems of love affair, the same
drug problem, the same alcohol problem and they have one very big
extra problem which a poor problem does not have: they have to play a part of being a professor, or research chemist, or something, and this acting is of enormous strain on them. So, you see, how much we have to pay for these things.
When you put a flower here and take it away, the room is filled
with its perfume. Is it possible for a human being to be here and go
away and not leave its presence here? But, because we have trained
ourselves to go only to the physical, to love the physical, to adore
the physical, to worship the physical, to posses the physical, to
enjoy the physical, we have reduced ourselves to the absolute crudest
level of existence. Spirituality says, “Drop this, however beautiful,
however adorable, it began to die when it was born. You are only
looking at dying things all around. What is it that you can love and
adore? It is the indestructible Self within. Try to look at that, try to find it, try to love it. That you have eternally”.

So, we have to feel the presence of things, and it is an unfortunate thing that often we don’t feel the presence until it is absent. When the sun is there, we don’t recognize it. Either it is too hot or too cold; we draw our curtains and remain in the darkness,though the sun is shinning outside. When the sun sets, we put on our beautiful luminaries, brass crystal, expensive, trying crazily to create a small sun in our home. The cosmic sun has gone, and we are left with a small human sun we create for ourselves. This we are doing in everything that we do. We bring very expensive perfumes in bottles, the most expensive thing in this creation comes also in this human bottle. The bottle goes, the perfume remains. In fact, you keep it closed in the bottle; it is of no use. It is like a lady who buys the most expensive perfume for five thousand dollars per one millilitre, you see, but never opens it because she is afraid the perfume will evaporate.
This is the second disease of humanity, and it is not new. Jesus
Christ said long ago, two thousand years ago, “Don’t hide you light
under bushel.” We are still doing the same thing. We want to hide our
qualities for love, our ability to be compassionate, our craving to be
merciful. We want to be all these things. I don’t think the most
stupid criminal qualities. That’s why sometimes they murder a man, and they are weeping there until the policeman comes, you see, for his
real self. “What have I done?” “How did I do this?” He is weeping for himself. So, when we bottle up this tenderness, and humanness, and kindness, and compassion, love, it is a waste of Nature’s creation. Today this is all we produce, sealed bottles containing the most tender, most beautiful, most fragile, soft things, and we buy them and throw them away like that. We don’t only throw away the bread that we buy, because in today’s society, in this consumption-oriented society, we throw away ninety percent and use ten percent of everything that we buy. Unfortunately, we do this with human beings, too, even with the greatest saints that history has brought before us. Therefore, saints have been crucified, burnt at the stake, tortured.
It is like a child which breaks a perfume bottle to release the scent, not knowing what is inside, or a child which removes the wings of a fly to see how it will fly, killing the fly. This is symptomatic of our modern search for knowledge. We are not able to learn anything without destroying that which we are trying to learn
– ‘ vivisection’, intuitively called, once upon a time. Even in our
loves, we cut open the hearts of our beloved, trying to see if the
heart really exists, not believing in the performance of the heart,
but wanting to see the heart. It is the like that old story of the man
who cut open the goose that gave him a golden egg every morning. He wanted everything. He wanted everything at that moment, all the eggs it could lay in the future, and he had only a dead goose on his hands. That is why we have dead love affairs, dead lovers, because instead of allowing a bud to open by itself and flower itself, we are forcing open the petals and voila, I have a dead flower in my hands.
You see, we may drink wine when it is, ‘ah’, when we are happy,
but then comes a thirst which can only be slaked by drinking water.
Most of you would know the thirst that alcohol produces, and it is a
fool who drinks more alcohol to satisfy the thirst that alcohol has
already produced. This is the philosophy of indulgence: more of sex to fulfil the sex that you have already had; more of drugs to fulfil the
drugs that you have already had. And landing up in a self-destructive
cycle, repeating the old adage, that first the man drinks from the
bottle, then the bottle drinks from the bottle, and finally the bottle
drinks the man.
This is our usual life, you see. We fall into that which we are
trying to exploit and enjoy. That is our slavery, and it is
self-created slavery. It is foolish to say that somebody was tempted
and became a slave of this, or that.



A MESSAGE FROM THE AUTHOR

I am shamaali,f,63,india. I teach "science of peace and the language of the heart. I like working up on my self and learning through experiences ..these days i started teaching outside and started teaching through net ..i take 100 & and i give the essense of peace u need for 100 years. Unfortunately i need money to exist on the physical plane.you know everything is give and take in material plane.we need both wings "the spirituality and materials" to fly. I start teaching ,by the time you feel that ypu have started loving ur innersense and gained a new power of peace,which is a doorway to eternal peace,you may send my fee then ..
hey, I am a candid heart.