
Feel it now! Now or never.
excerpt
series:
Be Still and Know
Chapter 1
Sep 1, 1979 Buddha Hall

023



(no question)
God is not a goal, hence there can be no way to God. All ways are wrong.
God is right now, this very moment. God is always in the present, now and here, and always now and here.
There can be no way to God. The very idea of “the way” is fallacious. “The way” means you have postponed; “the way” leads to tomorrow, and the tomorrow never comes.
“The way” means you have projected into the future: God is somewhere else and you have to travel. Then religion becomes a journey. And religion is not a journey, it is already the case.
God has not to happen to you. God has happened, because you are alive.
What is life? Who is breathing in you and who is conscious in you? God is not to be known, God is the knower. God is not the object that you have to see, God is the seer in you.
This is the most fundamental thing I would like you to remember.
What I am teaching here is not a way, it is a totally different phenomenon. Hence I am not creating a religion, I am not creating a sect – I am simply waking you up to the reality of God. Even while you are asleep God is within and without; even in your sleep you are in God.
It is like, if a man is asleep and it is spring and the flowers are blooming and the birds are singing and the trees are green, celebrating – but the man is asleep.
He is unaware of the spring, he is unaware of the flowers, of the birds’ songs; he is unaware of everything that is happening. But that does not mean that it is not happening.
He may be unaware, he may be asleep, but the spring has come, it is there. Any moment the man can open his eyes; any situation may help him to be awake. And suddenly he will be surprised that there was no need to go anywhere – all was already here.
That’s how it happens when a man really wakes up – not that one has to travel somewhere. All traveling is dreaming, all pilgrimage is dreaming, desiring. And your so-called religions have made God a goal, and your mind is perfectly satisfied with that because mind can exist only if there is a goal.
The mind needs tension, the mind needs a way to remain tense. If there is a goal then mind can remain desiring – unfulfilled, frustrated, hoping one day to get it. This is how mind can nourish itself, and it can dream about the joys of finding God and the beauties and the blessings.
It can create paradise in imagination – and all these are simply dreams of the mind. The moment you think of the future, you have slipped out of reality and fallen into the ditch of dreaming.
My effort here is to bring you out of your sleep and dreaming.
I am not teaching a way, so you cannot claim that my way is the best way – it is not a way at all. You cannot say that this is the only way, because I am saying there is no way at all. I am simply trying to make you alert to that which is already there.
It is beating in your heart, it is God beating in your heart. It is pulsating in your being; every fiber of your body, of your being, is alive. That aliveness is God.
God is not a person but only the presence. Feel it now! If you can ever feel it you can only feel it now – now or never.
Hence I don’t give any opportunity for your mind. You would like me to say something about how to find God, where to find God, where to go. You will be perfectly happy if I give you ways, goals, faraway, distant goals; you will be tremendously happy.
Why? Because the goal helps you to remain the same as you are, the goal helps you to remain asleep and dreaming. It becomes a new dream, a new desire, a new ambition: How to attain God? It becomes a new ego trip. I am shattering your egos, because your egos are a kind of shell that surrounds you and keeps you oblivious to the reality. It keeps you encapsulated within yourself, does not allow you to open your eyes and see what is happening.
God is this total existence happening.
Be silent and know. There is nowhere to go, there is nothing to achieve, no ambition has to be fulfilled. God has already decided to be inside you; that’s why you are alive.
Be Still and Know
Chapter 1