In Wonder

Mysteriousness

There is a Christian mystic, Eckhart. He has made a unique statement: one who is surprised by everything is a saint. Everything, very small happenings surprise him. A pebble falls in the water, creates noise, ripples start spreading – the saint is amazed. It is so wondrous, so mysteriousness!

He breathes, lives, it is quite amazing.

Every morning while praying to God Eckhart used to say, “It is another day! The sun has risen again. Thy mercy is great. What would we do if the sun would not have arisen? Human beings are helpless.”

Eckhart used to say, “Today I am breathing, tomorrow I may not; what can I do?”

You cannot draw breath from somewhere. It is not in your control. Breath is so close to you, and yet you do not own it. If it goes out and does not return, it will just return! We do not know or possess a thing which is so close to you. And we think that we know everything. This ‘knowing everything’ has killed you. Remove this garbage and unburden yourself. Immediately, when the blindfold of knowledge will be removed from your eyes, they will be filled with mystery.

The inner pilgrimage of this mystery is called wonder; the outward journey is called astonishment.

If you apply those mysteries to objects, you will become a scientist and if you are able to apply that mystery to your own self, you will become a great yogi. And in both the cases the results will be different, because astonishment is violent, sense of wonder is nonviolent. Surprise applied anywhere, starts disintegrating, analyzing because surprise is restless, wonder is full of interest. Try to understand this difference properly. It is not written in the dictionary; it cannot be written because the compiler of the dictionary has no idea what wonder is.

Astonishment is violent, aggressive. When you are astonished by something, you become tense.

That tension has to be dealt with. A certain restlessness will hang over you as long as your enquiry is not complete, you have not known. A scientist is engrossed in his laboratory eighteen hours a day… what for? He is restless, as if possessed by a ghost. And he will keep on investigating till he resolves it.

But the sense of wonder is not aggressive. And the sense of wonder is not a restlessness, on the contrary the sense of wonder is restfulness. Whenever someone is filled with wonderment one is at rest. You don’t have to destroy the sense of wonder, you have to drink it, you have to taste it. You have to merge with wonder, you have to become one with it. Astonishment is involved in destruction, wonder begins to live. Wonder is a way of life, astonishment is a violent state of mind.