Self-Realization

Inner Adventure

These are outer adventures, nothing compared to the inner adventure of meditation, Zen, because when you go inwards you go alone, absolutely alone; nobody can accompany you. You lose all contact with the outside world: the deeper you go in, the outside world starts disappearing. At the very center of your being the world disappears like a dream.

It is not a philosophy only that the mystics have called the world illusory, maya, a dream, made of the same stuff as dreams are made of. It is not only a philosophical concept; it is rooted in deep spiritual realization. It is an experience, existential experience. They had experienced it. The moment you reach at the very center of your being, the whole world disappears: the people, the mountains, the stars, they start receding back and a moment comes they are no more there. There is infinite vastness, nothingness.

And when the world disappears, remember, you as an ego also disappear……because you can exist only in relationship to others. I/thou is a pair: the “I” cannot exist without the “thou.” Psychologists say that the “thou” comes first into existence and then comes the “I” – that the “I” is added later on. First the child becomes aware of others – the mother, the father, the other children. First he becomes aware of the “thou,” and slowly slowly he starts feeling that “I am separate.”

Small children, in the beginning, address themselves in third person. For example, a child will say, “Johnny is hungry.” He is hungry – his name is Johnny – and he says, “Johnny is hungry.” He has not yet become aware enough to say, “I am hungry.” Even about himself he thinks in terms as if he is somebody else. Looking into a mirror, a small child does not recognize that it is his face; he thinks there is some other child. He tries to catch hold of the child. If he cannot catch hold he tries to go behind the mirror: “Maybe he is hiding behind the mirror.” Very slowly, as the “thou” becomes clearly defined, he becomes aware of the “I.”

The same happens in a reverse way when you move into meditation. First the “thou” disappears and then slowly, slowly “I” loses all meaning. Naturally one feels afraid, doubtful. It is a dangerous journey, the most dangerous journey there is, but with tremendous ecstasy. Each moment of it is full of ecstasy, excitement, surprises and surprises, mysteries upon mysteries.

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.