Date:   12/15/2023 11:55:28 PM ( 11 m ago)
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Metaphysics is not mathematics, it is not logic. It is a mystery. So it will be good to understand what is meant by "mystery". It means your categories, your ordinary categories of thinking, will not do. If you go on thinking in your ordinary categories, you will go on moving around and around and around, but you will never reach the point. About and about you will move, but you will never reach the point. Logical categories are circular. You go on, you do much, you walk much, but you never reach.

The center is not on the periphery, otherwise you would have reached. If you go on round and round in a circle, you can never reach the center. If you are walking slowly, you may think, "Because I am walking slowly, that's why I am not reaching." You can run; still you will not reach. You can go on using any speed, but speed is irrelevant - you will not reach. The more speed, the more dizzy you will become, but you will not reach because the center is not on the circle. It is in the circle, not on the circle. You will have to leave the circle completely. You will have to drop from the periphery to the center.

Logical categories are circular. Through logic you never reach a new truth - never! Whatsoever is implied in the premises becomes apparent, but you never reach a truth. Through logic you can never come to a new experience. It is circular. The conclusion is always there. It becomes apparent, it was latent - that is the difference. But through logic you never come to realize a new phenomenon, and through logic you never come to the unknowable. The mystery can never be reached through logic because logic is anti-mystery. Logic divides and logic depends on clear-cut, solid divisions - and reality is fluid.

For example, you say a certain man is a very kind person; but this is a statement. And in the meantime, while you have been making this statement, the person who was kind may now not have been so, he may have changed. You say, "I love someone." This is a statement. But in the very statement your love may have disappeared. In this moment you are loving, in the next moment you are angry. In this moment you are kind, in the next moment you are cruel.

In the dictionary kindness never becomes cruelty - never. But in reality it goes on moving: kindness becomes cruelty, cruelty becomes kindness; love becomes hate, hate becomes love. In reality, things move; in dictionaries they are static. Reality is dynamic and moving. You cannot fix it. You cannot say, "Stay here!" And not only do things change - they go on to touch their very contradictions, they move to the very extreme, the other extreme. Love can become hate. It is not a simple change - it is a dialectical change. The diametrically opposite has come into existence. A friend can become a foe, but the word "friend" can never become the word "foe". How can it become? Words are fixed.

Reason works with fixed entities and life is never fixed. You say, "This is God," but the God may have changed into the Devil. You cannot label. In reality, labelling is futile, because while you are labelling a thing it is changing; that time is enough to change it. But logic, reason, mind, cannot work without labelling.

We can understand how love can become hate, but even more fixed categories can change. You say, "This person is man, male; that person is female, woman." Again, these are categories, labellings. In reality this is not so. When I say that in reality this is not so, I mean you may be male in the morning and female in the evening. It depends. There are moods when you are female and there are moods when you are male. And now modern psychology says man is bisexual. Logic will never believe it. No one is man and no one is woman - everyone is both. The difference is only of degrees; it is never of quality, it is only of quantity. And degrees go on changing.

Reality cannot be labelled, nothing can be labelled. But we have to label. It is a necessity; mind cannot function without it. Without labelling mind cannot function, so mind goes on labelling things. This labelled world is known as "this" - the world that is created by labelling. And the world that exists beyond these labels is That - the unlabelled, the undefined, the uncharted.

You have a name - mmm? - this is a labelling, so your name belongs to "this". You are a man or a woman. This is labelling, so your being a man or a woman belongs to "this". If you are finished with your labelling, then there is no That. But if you feel that you exist beyond the label; if you feel that your labelling is just on the periphery and there is a center which remains unlabelled, untouched; if you feel that even this being male or female is a labelling, this being young or old is a labelling, this being beautiful or ugly is a labelling, this being healthy or ill is a labelling - if you can feel something within you which is unlabelled, you have touched the realm of That.

So "this" is the labelled world and That is the unlabelled. The "this" is the realm of the mind - categories, thinking, logic, mathematics, calculation. And, the That is a mystery. If you try to reach it through logic you cannot reach, because logic is anti-mystery. When I say logic is anti-mystery I mean that logic cannot function in a mysterious world. It can function only in a fixed, dead, labelled world.

Alice went to Wonderland, and she was just confused. A horse was coming and suddenly the horse changed into a cow, just as it happens in a dream. You never object in dream. Have you ever objected? You see something, and suddenly it changes without any cause. The causality doesn't exist in the dreamworld. A horse can become a cow, and you never ask why or how this has happened. No one asks in dreams; you cannot ask. If you ask, you will come out of the dream, the sleep will be broken. But the doubt never arises.

Why? If you pass through the street and suddenly a horse becomes a cow, a dog becomes a man, your wife or your husband suddenly becomes a dog, you will not be able to take it. It will be impossible for the mind. But in the dream you take it with no hesitation at all, with no doubt, with no questioning. Why? In the dream the logical categories are not functioning. The "why" is absent, the doubt is absent, the labelled world is absent. So, really, a horse can become a cow and there is no questioning. The horse can flow and become a cow. It is a fluid world.

So in that Wonderland, Alice was just confused. Everything flows into everything else - anything. So she asked the Queen, "What is this? Why are things changing? And how can I function here? - because nothing can be taken for granted, nothing! Anything can be anything, and in any moment it can change. Nothing can be taken for granted, so how am I to function here?"

The Queen said, "This is an alive world. It is not dead. You are coming from a dead world; that's why you feel the difficulty. Things are alive here, A can become B. There are no fixed categories, no categories at all. Everything is just fluid and flows into everything else. This is an alive world - you are coming from a dead world."

We live in a dead world. That dead world is the "this". If you can feel the live current beyond this dead world, then you have felt That. But the rishis have not given any name to it - mmm? - because to give it a name is again to label it. If you call it "God" you have labelled it, so God becomes part of "this".

Shankara has said that even God is part of MAYA - illusion. Mmm? This is inconceivable for a Christian or a Jewish mind, because God means the Supreme Reality. But for the Hindu, God has never been the Supreme Reality - because the Supreme cannot be named! The moment you name it, it is not the Supreme. You name it, and it becomes part of "this". Hindus have struggled and tried to indicate, but never to define.

"That" is an indication. If you say it is God, you have defined it. It has come within the categories. That's why Buddha remained silent. He would not even use the word "That", because he said that if you use "That" it refers to "this". Even to use "That" means a reference to "this", and the Ultimate Reality cannot be in reference to anything. If we say it is light, it refers to darkness, It may not be darkness, but it refers to darkness, it is related to darkness. It has meaning only in reference to darkness, so it is not beyond. So Buddha remained silent. He would not even say "That".

"That" is the last word to be used. But Buddha felt that even to use "That" is not good, so he would deny "this", he would destroy "this", but never assert the word "That". He would insist, "Destroy this, and then..." And then what? But he would remain silent. Beyond "this", he would remain silent.

He would say, "Destroy this, and then..." Then something happens. But then no one knows what happens. Then even a Buddha doesn't know. He used to say: "Then even a Buddha doesn't know what happens, because there is no Buddha to know. Destroy this; don't ask about That." He would come into a new place, and his bhikkhus would go around the village to declare: "There are eleven questions Buddha is not going to answer, so please don't ask them." The first was, "Don't ask about 'That'. Ask about 'this', because this is answerable. Ask about this and he will answer. Don't ask about That."

I remember one sufi mystic, Bayazid.

Bayazid was saying one day that nothing can be said about That.

His Master, his Guru, hearing this just went out of the room. His Master was a very old man, illiterate - mm? - Bayazid was a very literate man. So, many disciples who were sitting there thought that the old man had gone out because he could not understand such deep things. Bayazid stopped that very moment, ran after the Teacher and asked him, "Have I done something wrong? Have I said something wrong?"

The Teacher said, "Yes! Even to say that nothing can be said about That is to say something. You have said something - I cannot tolerate it."

There is a story about Marpa, the Tibetan mystic.

Someone had come to ask him, "Tell me something about That. But I have heard," the questioner said, "that nothing can be said, words cannot be used, language is futile. So tell me something about That in such a way that it is without words."

Marpa laughed and he said, "I will tell you - but ask without words. Ask something about That without words, and I will answer you."

So the questioner said, "How can I ask without words?" So Marpa said, "That is your problem, not mine. You go and find out! That is your problem, not mine. Mine begins when I am to answer, so first go and find out."

It was serious; it was not a joke. The person who had come to ask was serious about it. He went and he thought and he tried. In every way he meditated: "How to ask without words? Really, Marpa is right! If you demand an answer without words you must ask without words." He meditated, he contemplated, he thought about it, but it is impossible. How to ask it without words? Years passed, and because of this constant inquiry - how to ask without words? - thoughts dropped. The man became empty.

Suddenly, one day, Marpa is at his door, knocking. The man opens the door. Marpa is there laughing, smiling. Marpa says, "You have asked and I have answered." And they both laugh. And from that day on, that person, the inquirer, follows Marpa as a shadow, laughing continuously. From village to village Marpa moves, and the man follows him like a shadow, laughing. So everybody who meets them asks, "Why is this man laughing?"

Marpa says, "He has asked without words and I have answered without words - hence, the laughter."

Logical categories will not do because logic exists in thinking and mystery exists in non-thinking. You come in contact with mystery when there is no thought. You come in contact with mystery, all the bridges are destroyed, all the gaps are destroyed, when there is no thought. So from another dimension, "this" means the world of thinking and "That" means the world of no-thought. If you can be in a state of no-thought, you are in That. If you are in thinking, you are in 'this'. When you are in thinking you are not in Being. When you are in thinking you are on a journey away from your Self. The deeper you go in thought, the further away you are from your Self. So a thinker is never a knower - never! A thinker is just dreaming.

You might have seen Rodin's sculpture known as "The Thinker". The man is sitting and brooding. His hand is on his head; the head is lowered. This is one concept, the Western concept, of a thinker. The man is very anxious, tense, worried; his every nerve is tense. He is thinking; a very arduous effort is being made somewhere inside. He is thinking! His every muscle, his every nerve is tense. He has gone far away.

There is another picture - a Zen picture, a Chinese picture - of the thinker. It is good to put them side by side and then meditate. The Chinese picture of the thinker is relaxed; nothing is going on. And the caption in Chinese reads: "He is a thinker because he is not thinking at all." There are no thoughts. Simply the consciousness has remained - no problem, no struggle inside. He is not thinking - he is the thinker! Only the thinker has remained, no thinking. In Rodin's sculpture, there are thoughts, there is thinking. but the thinker is not, the center is not - only the circumference. Much is there as work, effort, but the center is clouded.

In the Chinese picture of the thinker, only the center is - centered, relaxed in itself, no journey. The consciousness has not gone anywhere. It is relaxing in itself. In Rodin's concept of thinking you will touch the this, and in the Chinese Zen painting of the thinker you will touch the That. If you are thinking, then knowing is not possible because you can do either thinking or knowing. The mind cannot do both simultaneously. Either you can think or you can know. It is just like you can either run or you can stand; you cannot do both. If someone says, "I am standing while running," he is saying the same absurd thing as we go on thinking and saying: "I am knowing while thinking."

You cannot know, because knowing is a standing and thinking is a running from one thought to another. It is a process. You go on running and jumping and running and jumping. If you stand still inside, no running... a centering, just sitting. In Japan they call it "Za-zen". It means just sitting. The Japanese word for meditation is "Za-zen". It means just sitting, doing nothing - not even meditation, because if you are meditating you are doing something. The Japanese say that even if you are doing meditation you are still doing something, you are running. Don't even meditate - just be. Don't do anything. Just be! If you can be without any doing, you drop into That, because thinking is 'this' - the thought process, the labelling, the logic.

Thinking is a process of ignorance. You think because you don't know. If you know, there is no need to think. You think because you don't know - it is a groping in the dark. But thinking is a very tense process - most tense! And the more you are tense inside, the less you are in contact with the center. Relaxed, fall into yourself. Relaxed, just be. Relaxed, don't go anywhere. Remain in yourself - suddenly you are in That.

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