Before we enter Yoga Sutra 34 let’s understand – maturity.
There is a parable in Friedrich Nietzche’s the gay science.
A madman enters a marketplace with a lantern, crying. “I see God! I see God!” but the busy crowd is unconcerned at his outbursts and laughs at his comical antics. Turning suddenly on them he demands, “Whither is God? I shall tell you, we have killed him – you and I.” But as they ignore the enormity of his announcement, he finally flings his lantern to the ground and cries. “I come too early. My time has not come yet. This tremendous event is still on its way.”
This parable is tremendously significant. As man grows, his God changes. Has to be so because man creates his own God in his own image. It is not vice versa. It is not as it is said in the Bible that God creates man in his own image. Man creates God in his own image. When man’s image changes, his God obviously changes.
And there comes a point in man’s growth when God disappears completely. God as a personal God is out of the immature mind of humanity.
Existence as divine is a totally different concept. Then God is not a personal being somewhere high in heaven ruling the world, manipulating, controlling, managing. No, all that nonsense disappears as man becomes mature. It is a childhood concept of God, a childish concept of God. If a small child is to understand God, he has to understand as a personal being. When humanity grows and becomes mature, that God is to die. Then a totally different existence arises. Now the whole existence is divine – not that there is God.
For Nietzsche himself, this realization that there is no personal God was too much. He could not bear it: he went insane. He was not ready himself to understand what insight had happened to him. He himself was childish; he needed a personal God. But he meditated upon it, and as he meditated, the more and more he became aware that; that God is no longer there in the skies. It is dead. And he also became aware that he has been killed by us.
Of course, if it was created by us, it has to be killed by us. The concept was created by man in his childhood. In his maturity the concept is dropped – as when you were children you played with toys, then you became mature, and you forgot all about those toys. Suddenly one day you come across in a corner of the house, in the rubbish. An old toy. Then you remember how much you had loved it, but now it is meaningless. It has to be thrown; you have changed.
Man created the personal God, then man destroyed it. This realization was too much for Nietzsche himself; he became insane. His insanity is an indication that he was not prepared for the insight that happened to him.
But, in the East, Patanjali is absolutely godless. You cannot find a greater atheist than Patanjali, but it does not disturb him because really he is a grown-up man, really grown-up in consciousness, mature, integrated. For Buddha God doesn’t exist….
If there is a personal God, he can forgive Friedrich Nietzsche because he will understand that this man still needed him. That man Nietzsche was still divided, confused – half of his being was saying yes and half was saying no. If there is a personal God, he can even forgive Gautam Buddha because at least he denied him. He said, “There is no God.” That too is paying attention. But he will not be able to forgive Patanjali. He used him. He not only not denied him, that he is not, he used the very concept as a device. He said, “For the ultimate growth of man, even the concept of God can be used as a hypothesis.” Patanjali is absolutely cold about God, colder than Gautam Buddha, because when you say no there is a certain passion, when you say yes there is a certain passion – in love, in hate, there is passion. Patanjali is absolutely indifferent. He says, “Yes, the concept of God can be used.” He is the greatest atheist the world has ever known.
But in the West the concept of atheist is totally different. It is not yet mature. It is on the same plane as the theist is. The theist goes on saying, “there is a God” in childish terminology, as a father, and the atheist goes on denying that there is no such God. They both exist on the same plane. Patanjali is the real atheist, but it does not mean that he is irreligious. He is a really religious man. A really religious man cannot believe in God. It will look like a paradox.
A really religious man cannot believe in God because to believe in God he has to divide existence in two – God and no God, the creator and the creation, this world and that, matter and mind. He has to divide, and how can a religious man divide? He does not believe in God; he comes to understand the very divinity of existence. Then the whole existence is divine; then all that is there is divine. Then every place is a temple, and wherever you move and whatsoever you do you are moving in God and you are doing to God. The total – you included – becomes divine. This has to be understood.
Yoga is a perfect science. It does not teach to believe; it teaches to know. It does not say to you, “Become blind followers”; it says, “Open your eyes,” and it gives you the method, how to open your eyes. It does not say anything about the truth.
It simply says everything about your vision, how to attain the vision, the capacity to see, the eyes, so that whatsoever there is, is revealed to you. It is more than you can ever conceive of; it is more than all your gods put together. It is infinite divineness.
One thing more about this parable. The madman said, “I come too early. My time has not come yet.” Patanjali came really too early. His time has not come yet. He is still waiting for his time. It always happens that people who realize the truth are always ahead of their time – sometimes thousands of years ahead. Patanjali is still ahead of time. Five thousand years have passed; still his time has not come yet. The inner world of man has not yet become a science. He has given all the foundations; he has given the whole structure. The structure is waiting for humanity to come close and to understand it.
Our religions, so-called religions, are juvenile. Patanjali is a giant, a pinnacle of a man. His height is so much that you cannot see the peak; it is hidden somewhere in the clouds. But everything about him is absolutely clear. If you are ready not to cling to your confusions, if you are ready to follow the path that he shows, everything is absolutely clear. About this man Patanjali there is nothing like mysticism. He is a mathematician of the mystery; he is a logician of the illogical; he is a scientist of the unknown. And it is tremendous even to conceive that one man has put the whole science together. Nothing is lacking, but the science is waiting for humanity to come close so that the science can be understood.
Man understands only that which he wants to understand. His understanding is dominated by his desires. That’s why Patanjali, Buddha. Zarathustra, Lao Tzu, they always feel they have come too early. Because man is still asking for toys to play with. He is not ready to grow. He does not want to grow. He clings to stupidities. He has invested too much in his ignorance and he goes on deceiving himself.
Just watch yourself. When you talk about God – you are not talking about God you are talking about your God. And what sort of God can your God be? It cannot be more Than you; it can only be less than you. It cannot be more beautiful than you; it can only be more ugly than you. It cannot be a clarity. It is bound to be a confusion, because in the concept of your God you will be involved. It cannot go higher than you. Your height – at the most – can be the height of your God.
People think according to their desires, ambitions, egos, and everything becomes colored by it.
It happened that Mulla Nasrudin contested an election: He received only three votes. His wife, when she came to know, turned to him and snapped, “There! I always knew you were keeping another woman!” One vote of Nasrudin, himself, one his wife, and from where comes the other?
The jealous mind thinks in terms of jealousy. The possessive mind thinks in terms of possessiveness. The angry mind thinks in terms of anger.
Look at the Jewish God. He is as possessive as any man can be. He is as egoistic as any man can be. He is as revengeful as any man can be. He does not look divine at all. He looks more like a devil than like a god. The whole myth of Adam being turned out of the garden of Eden shows nothing much about Adam, but it shows much about God, “Because Adam disobeyed” – what type of God is that who cannot tolerate such a small disobedience, very intolerant, who cannot tolerate a little freedom? That God may be a slave owner, but he is not a god.
What was the sin of Adam in fact? Curiosity, nothing else. Because God had said, “Don’t eat the fruit of this tree. This is the tree of knowledge,” and Adam became curious. Simple, very human. To think otherwise is impossible. And for that small thing – how can you call it a sin? That is the whole base of all scientific curiosity and inquiry. All scientists are sinners. Patanjali, Buddha. Zarathustra – all are sinners because they are tremendously curious to know what truth is, what life is. They are all Adams. But the Jewish God could not tolerate; he became mad. He turned Adam out of the garden and the greatest sin has been committed. Curiosity is a sin? The effort to know the unknown is a sin? Then to seek truth is a sin. Disobeying, being rebellious is a sin? Then all great religious people are sinners because they are all rebellious.
No, it has nothing to do with God. It has something to do with the Jewish mind, small mind thinking about God, creating a God in its own image.
Tags: God Disappears Completely Patanjali