Alert With Awe – In Gita Verse 11.22 All the various manifestations of Lord Śiva, the Ādityas, the Vasus, the Sādhyas, the Viśvedevas, the two Aśvīs, the Maruts, the forefathers, the Gandharvas, the Yakṣas, the Asuras and the perfected demigods are beholding You in wonder.
Arjuna says that whenever anyone is united with Existence or Krishna they are in wonder, in awe.
Awe, wonder, surprise: these are the ingredients of the charisma, of the mystery of life.
The civilized man has lost something because now we live in the man-made world where it is almost impossible to find any signature of God. How can you find God on asphalt roads? They don’t grow, they don’t breathe. How can you find God in cement structures? They are not alive! How can you find God in machines, in technology? – Although it is great, even the greatest machine cannot give you the sense of the mysterious, of the miraculous. Even facing the greatest machine you cannot feel awe, you cannot feel reverence, you cannot feel like falling on your knees and praying. And if you cannot feel like falling on your knees and praying once in a while, how can God remain a part of your being? How can you remain alert, aware of the divine?
Always stay alert with awe and trembling: you must understand this. What does it mean? Why have awe and trembling been linked together? Awe and trembling seem to be two totally opposite things. Why should the one who is in awe, in trust, be trembling? How can one who is trembling be in awe and trust? But there is a great purpose behind saying this. It is not a question of harmonizing them both; in fact the two are present in two different dimensions: awe towards the future, and fear about falling back.
Awe relates to making future progress, and trembling to the possibility of falling back, even at this stage. They do not exist on the same plane; their dimensions are different.
Always remain trembling. It is still possible for you to fall back. The fear of this will keep you alert: that you can still fall back. Wherever you hear the voice of your ego, immediately tremble. You can still be pulled back; the bridge has not yet been demolished completely, the way back is still in place. You can still take the path back.
Have a trust about the future – a complete trust in the future, and a trembling about the past – have no trust at all in the past. Be mindful of both these things: that there is still much to happen, that everything has not yet happened – this awareness towards the future – and that although the past may have been erased, it has not been totally wiped out – it is still possible to fall back. The roads are still in place. A small mistake and you can fall back a long, long way.
To climb is very difficult but to descend is not. Within a split second you can fall way back, you can fall a long way down, whereas it takes a very long time to rise. This is the fear. And to have a total trust towards the future, a hope.
Keep these two things in mind.
Trust Itself Is Such a Blessing: When everything is going smoothly and beautifully, you can trust. But you are trusting somebody else: God, God’s only begotten son, any messenger of God, a prophet, a tirthankara or a Gautam Buddha. It does not matter. You are trusting somebody else and things can go wrong any moment. The basic trust has not to be in existence, it has to be within you.
You should learn to become more conscious and alert to trust yourself. Do you trust yourself? If you trust yourself that will be unconditional trust because it cannot be for any particular reason. And out of that unconditional trust will grow many branches: you will become a huge tree with great foliage. You will trust love, you will trust the truth, you will trust godliness, you will trust beauty; you will simply trust because your heart is full of trust and there is not even a shadow of distrust. Even if you want to distrust, you cannot.
Only when you cannot distrust, even if you want to, have you come to the very center of your being, from where arises the trust in existence, in life, in people, in trees.
And that is not because of any conditions. Trust itself is such a blessing, such an ecstasy in itself! Once you have tasted it within yourself you would like to taste it in the whole cosmos. If it is so great just within you, how much greater it will be when you trust everything. It does not depend on any condition being fulfilled…
Love is another dimension of trust. Have you ever thought about it? People go on saying, ‘I love you more and more.’ But love does not know any quantities. It is a quality; you cannot measure it less or more – one kilo or two kilos or three kilos. It is good that people don’t use that; that: ‘I love you two kilos, and it is growing. Don’t be worried! Soon you will see – I will be loving you three kilos.’
It is not a quantity, it is not part of the world of quantities, it does not matter that it can be measured into more or less. Trust is the highest fragrance of love. You cannot say, ‘I have been able to trust more and more.’ You are saying it because existence – perhaps just by coincidence – has been a great support to you, or perhaps you are imaginative enough that whatever existence brings to you, you start imagining, ‘This is what I always wanted’…
So first you see that trust is not a quantity but a quality. Either you have it in total or you don’t have it in total; either it is nil or it is one hundred percent. You cannot divide it into slices. It is indivisibly one, organically one.
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