Logic – In Gita Verse 4.4 Arjuna said: The sun-god Vivasvān is senior by birth to You. How am I to understand that in the beginning You instructed this science to him?
Arjuna’s question is very logical – he says that “how can I understand that in the beginning You instructed this science to him” – this shows his ignorance and not willing to practice what Krishna is saying to him.
Logic has created many misunderstandings. It goes on insisting on the duality of things without seeing the interconnecting link.
Let’s understand this verse from Buddha’s story: One morning a man asked Gautam Buddha, “Do you believe in God?” And Buddha said, “God? God does not exist. The question of belief does not arise.” And he said it so strongly.
In the afternoon, another man came and he asked, “Does God exist?” And Buddha said, “Yes, absolutely yes. Without God, life would be just dead, unconscious. God is the intelligence of existence.”
And in the evening another man came and he said, “I don’t know – from where to begin. I am not a thinker; I don’t know whether God exists or does not exist. I have not yet taken a partisan view. Would you help me to see the reality?”
Gautam Buddha, listening to him, did not answer, but closed his eyes and went into deep meditation.
The man, seeing the beauty and the grace of Buddha meditating, himself fell… You know that kind of experience: if you are sitting with a few people and one man goes on yawning, soon you start feeling sleepy also. We are not islands, we are connected, so things enter into each of us. And a man of the quality of Buddha, with such tremendous silence, created such an atmosphere that the man fell into that silence; he also closed his eyes.
After one hour, Buddha shook him and asked him, “Have you received the answer?” The man touched Gautam Buddha’s feet and he said, “I am grateful. There is no question and there is no answer. There is only pure silence in the inner being of man, and that silence goes on spreading into the innermost core of the universe. But there is no question, no answer. Life is very innocent. I am grateful that you showed me the way.”
Ananda, who remained always by Gautam Buddha’s side to take care of him… he was very much puzzled because he had heard all three answers. In one God does not exist; in one God exists; in another, the question does not arise. When everybody had left, Ananda asked Gautam Buddha, “Don’t disturb my sleep. I will not be able to sleep with such kinds of contradictory answers. One expects you to be consistent. If you say yes then go on saying yes, if you say no then that is your answer. But what kind of answer is this?”
Buddha said, “Ananda, I have told you many times: those were not your questions and I was not answering you.”
Ananda said, “I know, I have also heard you saying to me, all kinds of things. But one thing is certain, I have ears and they hear. I cannot close my ears when you are answering somebody. I have heard all the three answers and they are all contradictory.”
Gautam Buddha said, “Just for your sleep’s sake… I would like to say to you, the first man who had come to me was an atheist – a confirmed atheist, well-known atheist. He wanted me to say something that supported him. He was not a seeker, he was not really on a quest. I had to shatter his ego. And the same was the case with the other man. He had come with a prejudice and he wanted to be supported in his prejudice. And that would be very unkind, to support anybody’s prejudice. I destroyed his prejudice. You simply heard those answers, you did not see what was the undercurrent.
The undercurrent was the same: to destroy the prejudice, to destroy the belief and to bring those people to real, authentic experience. That’s why I did not answer the third man, because he had no prejudice. He was so innocent that to tell him something would have been a crime. So all that I could do was, I went into meditation, and around me in the deep silence of the night… And he was an innocent man; he also fell into silence. He experienced for the first time his own inner peace – no question, no answer. And he was grateful. He touched my feet, saying that I had solved his trouble.”
The work of a master is very complex because he is working with so many people of different prejudices, different conditionings – and he has to shatter them all and make people absolutely clean, just as they were born, knowing nothing. But that knowing nothing was such a beautiful flower in the child. It filled him with wonder.
Knowledge kills wonder. Not knowing fills you with mysterious experiences.
Like Ananda Arjuan also could not understand what is undercurrent. So he raised this question: How am I to understand that in the beginning You instructed this science to him?
Logic is not the way to life – it leads away. The path that leads to life consists of a clarity just like that of a mirror: it reflects everything but holds on to nothing.
Tags: Logic
