The Robe

Everything Is Mysterious

A Christian cannot know reality, a Hindu cannot know reality, a Mohammedan cannot know reality. Only a man who is courageous enough to drop all this garbage, who can simply be, who can simply be innocent … Jesus says to his disciples, “Unless you are like small children you will not enter into my kingdom of God.” He is saying: Function from the state of not knowing.

The Upanishads say: Those who claim to know, beware – they know nothing. Those who say they know not, surrender to them – because there is a possibility of some transformation happening around them, with them, in communion with them. Socrates at his ultimate peak of wisdom said, “I know only one thing, that I know nothing.”

Function from the state of not knowing, and it will bring you immense, ecstatic experiences, because the person who is without knowledge is capable of wondering. The person who is without knowledge is capable of awe. He can dance seeing a rose flower, he can sing because the sky is full of stars. He can be in tune with existence. Seeing a sunset, he can go into wild ecstasy – because he knows nothing. Life is a mystery to him. Knowledge demystifies life. Because he knows nothing, everything, the most ordinary too, becomes absolutely extraordinary, luminous, because everything is mysterious.

Everything Is mysterious! Your knowledge simply hides your ignorance and destroys your capacity to be mystified. Knowledge is destructive of mysticism. Hence all the mystics of all the ages have been saying one single thing: Drop knowledge – all knowledge is rubbish. Be in a state of not knowing; function from that state. Look at trees like a child, look at the moon like a poet, look at the sky like a madman!

Don’t ask how to see what is, because that question ‘how?’ simply means you want some methodology, some knowledge, some information, so that you can interpret reality. But reality is uninterpretable. You want something so that you can explain to yourself what it is all about – but reality is unexplainable. You would like to define reality, but it is indefinable.

Be ready to be surprised. I have heard:

Michelangelo was painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. He was getting tired of lying on his back and in rolling over noticed that an Italian woman was praying down in the chapel.

The great artist decided to play a little prank.

He sat at the edge of the scaffold and shouted, “I am Jesus Christ! I am Jesus Christ! Listen to me and I will perform miracles!”

The Italian lady looked up, clasping her rosary and answered back, “Shut uppa your mouth! I’m A talk to your mother!”

Just think of Michelangelo … Life is like that. It brings surprises each moment. You go on missing – you go on missing because you can’t see those surprises. You are so full of expectations, you are so full of ready-made answers, you go on interpreting it according to your own mind. You pass through a miraculous world, dull, dead, dragging. This world is nothing but miracles and miracles, and each moment they are happening. And not in a miserly way is the existence miraculous – it is overflowing with miracles! But you have to be again a little child, you have to be again innocent.

It is not a question of method, not a question of how. It is more a question of understanding the very process of how the mind functions. And when you have understood how the mind functions, you will put it aside. Then there is no barrier between you and reality. And when there is no barrier, there is no separation either – because it is the barrier that separates. When there is no barrier, you are one with reality. In that oneness, the reality reveals its secrets to you.