Spontaneity

Life Without Verbalization

O kazi, O pundit, consider it well: what is there that is not in the soul? Everything is within him, within God, within the soul – and he is in everything.

The water-filled pitcher is placed upon water, it has water within and without.

It should not be given a name, lest it call forth the error of dualism.

The whole problem has arisen out of language: within and without, God and the world, matter and mind. The whole problem has arisen out of naming things. Don’t name; drop language, be in a nonlinguistic gap, and suddenly you see there is only one. Sometimes try a nonverbal approach.

That’s what meditation is all about: looking at life without verbalization. Sit by the side of a tree and just look at the tree; don’t even call it a tree, don’t say what kind of tree – casuarina, pine, cedar. Don’t call it any name, drop the names.

Sometimes look into somebody’s eyes and don’t call them any names – man, woman, yours, friend, enemy, young, old, beautiful, ugly – don’t bring names in. Just look into the eyes, try to avoid verbalization, and suddenly you will come to a leap, a quantum leap, where you will be surprised to see that the observer has become the observed, that the observed has become the observer. Then you don’t know who is “I” and who is “thou.” These are the moments from where God enters you; his first footsteps are heard.

At least for one hour drop out of language. And to drop out of language is to drop out of society; to drop out of language is to drop out of religions; to drop out of language is to drop out of all that is man-created. Have you seen it? – Language is very, very significant. Animals are silent, trees are silent; they don’t argue, they don’t have any scriptures. A tree is neither a Christian nor a Hindu nor a Mohammedan; it is simply there in its beauty, with no name. It does not even know its own name; those names are given by human beings. Your society is created through language, your knowledge is created through language. Just think, if suddenly a miracle happened and language disappeared from the world, what would be the difference between man and animal? What would be the difference between a Hindu and a Mohammedan? There would be no difference. All distinctions are language-created.

So make it a small discipline. When I say discipline I say it with great fear, because you can misunderstand the word discipline. When I say discipline, I don’t mean force it upon yourself. The word discipline means learning. When I say discipline yourself, I mean learn.

The more you learn, the more you want to learn, because the more you learn the more you see how much is there to learn. The more you learn, the more you see how ignorant you are ignorant. The thirst disappears only when you have arrived to the ultimate end beyond which there is nothing. And that is the point I call enlightenment.

This state is the ultimate state of peace, bliss.

Once you’re enlightened, couldn’t you learn something new like riding a bicycle or driving a helicopter. Isn’t there something left to be learned?

What I am talking about has nothing to do with bicycles and helicopters. And what I am talking about, if you experience it, then neither helicopters have any excitement nor rockets have any excitement – they are all toys for idiots to play with.