Philosophical Questions

God Is Unknowable

The courageous person is not one who has no fear – only idiots don’t have fear – the courageous person is one who has fear but in spite of the fear he goes on the journey, in spite of the fear he goes on into the inquiry of the unknown. And the unknown is only a learning process because finally you have to take the quantum leap from the unknown to the unknowable. The unknown is not that risky, remember it.

The unknown is that which can become known, hence it is not opposite to the known; it is reducible to the known, it can be transformed into the known. Mind feels doubtful, afraid, but not so afraid, not so much doubtful as when the moment comes to take the jump into the unknowable, because the unknowable cannot be reduced to the known. “Unknowable” means it is going to remain unknowable – its very nature is unknowability.

God is unknowable, not unknown.

Science believes only in two categories: the known and the unknown.

Religion believes in three categories: known, unknown, unknowable. If science is right, then sooner or later we would have reduced all unknown into the known – and the science will commit suicide there will be no need for science any longer. Because every day more and more territory of the unknown is being taken by the known – things which were unknown yesterday have become known today, things which are unknown today will be known tomorrow – sooner or later, whatsoever time it takes, but all unknown will be reduced into known. That’s why science thinks that there is no need for religion – science is enough.

But if you ask the greatest scientists in their rare moments of revelations, then their statements are totally different. Just before Albert Einstein died, just two days before, he said that “The universe has become more of a mystery to me than it ever was before I started inquiring about it. I know less today than I used to think before.”

Eddington, another great scientist, wrote in his autobiography that “When I started my scientific career I was a total materialist. I was brought up in a materialistic atmosphere. I was told that only matter exists and I believed that only matter exists. But now, before I die, I want it to be on record that now existence seems to be more like a thought than like a thing. The more I have tried to understand, the more I have felt the mysteriousness of it all.”

There is something in existence which is irreducible to the known, which is not unknown but unknowable. Seeker is a journey from the known to the unknown and from the unknown to the unknowable. And during the journey you feel happiness arise.

Listen to your happiness, follow your happiness. It always gives you the right indication. If a man listens to one’s happiness he can never go wrong. Happiness is simply an indication that you are coming closer to truth, that you are coming closer to the harmony of existence. Even the longing to come closer to it releases hidden sources of joy in you. And the moment you become harmonious with it your life becomes a sheer ecstasy.

Don’t be hindered by your doubts and by your uncertainties and by your fears. Everybody has to face them and the more intelligent a person is, the more one has to face them. But real intelligence is to be capable of taking the jump in spite of them all.