Walking the Tightrope_ at The Turiya Files

Watch...somebody says he is a Mohammedan, somebody says he is a Hindu, somebody says he is a Christian, somebody says he is a Jew - their beliefs are different but watch their life and you will not find any difference. The Mohammedan, the Jew, the Christian, the Hindu - they all live the same life. Their life is not at all touched by their belief. In fact, beliefs cannot touch your life, beliefs are devices. Beliefs are cunning devices through which you say 'I know what life is' - and you can rest at ease, you are not troubled by life. You hold a concept and that concept helps you to rationalise. Then life does not bother you much because you have all the answers to all the questions.

But remember... unless religion is personal, unless religion is not abstract but real, deep in your roots, deep in your guts, unless it is like blood and bone and marrow, it is futile, it is of no use. It is the religion of the philosophers not the religion of the sages. When the third type comes in...and that is the real type, these other two are the falsifications of religion, pseudo dimensions. cheap, very easy, because they don't challenge you.

The third is very difficult, arduous; it is a great challenge; it will create a turmoil in your life - because the third, the real religion, says God has to be addressed in a personal way. You have to provoke him and you have to allow him to provoke you and you have to come to terms with him; in fact, you have to struggle with him, you have to clash against him. You have to love him, and you have to hate him; you have to be a friend and you have to be an enemy; you have to make your experience of God a living experience.

I have heard about a small child - and I would like you to be like this small child. He was really smart....

A little boy was lost at a Sunday school picnic. His mother began a frantic search for him, and soon she heard loud sounds in a childish voice calling, 'Estelle, Estelle!'

She quickly spotted the youngster and rushed up to grab him in her arms. 'Why did you keep calling me by my name, Estelle, instead of Mother?' she asked him, as he had never called her by her first name before.

"Well," the youngster answered, 'it was no use calling out "Mother" - because, the place is full of them.'

If you call 'mother' there are so many mothers - the place is full of them. You have to call in a personal way, you have to call the first name.

Unless God is also called in a personal way, addressed with the first name, it will never become a reality in your life. You can go on calling 'father' but whose father are you talking about? When Jesus called him 'father' it was a personal address, when you call, it is absolutely impersonal. It is Christian but impersonal. When Jesus called him 'father' it was-meaningful; when you call 'father' it is meaningless - you have made no contact, no real contact with him. Only experience of life - neither belief nor philosophy - only experience of life will make you able to address him in a personal way. Then you can encounter him.

And unless God is encountered you are simply deceiving yourself with words...with words which are empty, hollow, with words which have no content.

There was a very famous Sufi mystic, Shaqiq was his name. He trusted God so deeply, so tremendously, that he lived only out of that trust.

Jesus says to his disciples, 'Look at those lilies in the field - they Labour not and yet they are so beautiful and so alive that not even Solomon was so beautiful in all his glory.'

Shaqiq lived the life of a lily. There have been very few mystics who have lived that way but there have been people who have lived that way. The trust is so infinite, the trust is so absolute that there is no need to do anything - God goes on doing things for you: In fact, even when you are doing them he is doing them; it is only that you think you are doing them.

One day a man came to Shaqiq accusing him of idleness, laziness, and asked him to work for him. 'I will pay you according to your services,' the man added.

Shaqiq replied, 'I would accept your offer if it weren't for five drawbacks. First, you might go broke. Second, thieves might steal your wealth. Third, whatever you give me you will do so grudgingly. Fourth, if you find faults with my work, you'll probably fire me. Fifth, should death come to you, I'll lose the source of my sustenance.

'Now,' Shaqiq concluded, 'it happens that I have a Master who is totally devoid of such imperfections.'

This is what trust is. Trust in life then you cannot lose anything.But that trust cannot come by doctrination, that trust cannot come by education, preaching, studying, thinking - that trust can only come by experiencing life in all its opposites, in all its contradictions, in all its paradoxes. When with in all the paradoxes you come to the point of balance, there is trust. Trust is a perfume of balance, the fragrance of balance.

If you really want to attain to trust, drop all your beliefs. They will not help. A believing mind is a stupid mind; a trusting mind has pure intelligence in it. A believing mind is a mediocre mind; a trusting mind becomes perfect. Trust makes perfect.

And the difference between belief and trust is simple. I am not talking about the dictionary meaning of the words - in the dictionary it may be so: belief means trust, trust means faith, faith means belief - I am talking about existence. In an existential way belief is borrowed, trust is yours. Belief you believe in but doubt exists just underneath.

Trust has no doubt element in it; it is simply devoid of doubt. Belief creates a division in you: a part of your mind believes, a part of your mind denies. Trust is a unity in your being, your totality.

But how can your totality trust unless you have experienced it? The God of Jesus wont do, the God of MY experience won't do for you, the God of Buddha's experience won't do - it has to be your experience. And if you carry beliefs you will come again and again to experiences which don't fit the belief, and then there is the tendency of the mind not to see those experiences, not to take note of them because they are very disturbing. They destroy your belief and you want to cling to your belief. Then you become more and more blind to life - belief becomes a blindfold on the eyes.

Trust opens the eyes; trust has nothing to lose. Trust means whatsoever is real is real - 'I can put my desires and wishes aside, they don't make any difference to reality. They can only distract my mind from reality.'

If you have a belief and you come against an experience which the belief says is not possible, or, the experience is such that you have to drop the belief, what are you going to choose - the belief or the experience? The tendency of the mind is to choose the belief, to forget about the experience. That's how you have been missing many opportunities when God has knocked at your door.

Remember it is not only you who are seeking truth - truth is also seeking you. Many times the hand has come very close to you, it has almost touched you, but you shrugged yourself away. It was not fitting with your belief and you chose to choose your belief.

There is a joke about a vampire who flew into Patrick O'Rourke's bedroom one night for the purpose of drinking his blood.

Remembering the stories his mother told him, O'Rourke grabbed a crucifix and brandished it frantically in the vampire's face. The vampire paused for a moment, shook his head condolingly, clucked his tongue, and commented genially in the purest Yiddish, 'Oy vey, bubbula! Have you ever got the wrong vampire!'

Now, if the vampire is Christian, good! You can show the cross. But if the vampire is Jewish. then what? Then 'Oy vey, bubbula! Have you ever got the wrong vampire!'

If you have a certain belief and life does not fit with it, what are you going to do? You can go on showing your crucifix - but the vampire is a Jew. Then he is not going to take any note of your cross. Then what are you going to do?

Life is so vast and beliefs are so small; life is so infinite and beliefs are so tiny. Life never fits with any belief and if you try to force life into your beliefs you are trying to do the impossible. It has never happened; it cannot happen in the nature of things. Drop all beliefs and start learning how to experience.