Living the mystery of life

Purpose of words is to create silence. Does every word you speak create silence in others or does it create turbulence in their minds? Purpose of knowledge is to make you feel that you don’t know! If the knowledge makes you feel that you know it all, then it has not fulfilled its goal. The more you know, the more you become aware of the unknown. Knowing is just pushing the brick a little further towards ignorance.

Before, you thought that you had less ignorance and now you know that you have more
ignorance. Purpose of knowledge is to create awareness of the Being. This creation is enormous and infinite. It is a mystery. Mysteries are there not to understand, but to live. Love is a mystery, sleep is a mystery, your mind is mystery and all that you see around is a mystery. Your life is a mystery. Trying to understand mystery is confusion, but living it fully is called enlightenment.

There is one ‘‘I don’t know’’ that comes out of ignorance. This is an ugly ‘‘I don’t know’’. Then it passes through knowledge and becomes a transformed ‘‘I don’t know!’’. This is a beautiful ‘‘I don’t know!’’ which is a wonder. This is how every question turns into a wonder. What is the difference between a wonder and a question? Question is associated with sorrow and restlessness whereas wonder is joy in expression.

What is your life? After all, how many years are you planning to be here in this planet? Look in the light of the time. In the time scale, millions of years have passed and millions will come in the future. What is your life? 60 years or 70 years or 100 years? Span of life is insignificant. It is not even a drop in the ocean. In terms of space you simply don’t exist! This understanding dissolves the ego.

Ego is ignorance of your reality, ignorance of your existence. Now, just to know this do we have to do some thing else? Just open your eyes and see, ‘‘Who am I? How I am on this planet? What is my life time?’’. Awareness dawns in the mind. It does not worry about small little things like, ‘‘this person said this thing to me and that person broke away with me and this happened with that person and I am going to say this and that’’. All smallness will simply drop away with this beautiful ‘‘I don’t know!’’.

Ignorance has its necessity. Ignorance keeps the joy in the game. In a game if you know the result before you are playing you won’t be playing sincerely. If you know you are going to win a game you won’t put your 100 percent in the game. If you know that you are going to lose a game, then also there is no charm in playing the game. The game is joyful when its results are unknown, when they are hidden away... The nature is so kind and loving to you that it does not tell you about your future and does not remind you of your very old past. But, even with the short little memory it has given us we try hard to make our self miserable!

When the state of ‘‘I don’t know’’ passes through knowledge, you are delivered in another state of ‘‘I don’t know!’’... That is a beautiful ‘‘I don’t know!’’ and that is the end of knowledge. So the whole journey is from ‘‘I don’t know’’ to ‘‘I don’t know!’’. There is a saying that before enlightenment you chop wood and carry water and after enlightenment you chop wood and carry water. But with a slight difference; before it was a miserable ‘‘I don’t know’’ afterwards it’s a beautiful ‘‘I don’t know!’’. Every knowledge whether scientific or artistic leaves you in a place of amazement and wonder. You ask a poet, ‘‘How did you write this poetry?’’ He will say, ‘‘I don’t know!’’. You ask a scientist, ‘‘How did you discover this?’’. He
will say, ‘‘Oh! I don’t know!’’. This ‘‘I don’t know!’’ level of consciousness is innocence.

Some of you might have the problem that the mind goes round and round. This is because you want to know all the time. Just remain in ‘‘I don’t know’’, the mind becomes quiet. Knowledge is like a detergent agent. You put the soap on the cloth, but wash it away. You never say, ‘‘it is a wonderful detergent soap, let it remain on my body’’.

Some of you might have the problem that the mind goes round and round. This is because you want to know all the time. Just remain in ‘‘I don’t know’’, the mind becomes quiet. Knowledge is like a detergent agent. You put the soap on the cloth, but wash it away. You never say, ‘‘it is a wonderful detergent soap, let it remain on my body’’.

The more you try to understand and try to dig it, you seem to understand less and less. The mystery deepens, but an illusion comes as though ‘‘I know it’’. But that’s for a short while. We ourselves do not know and we try to explain to others! Stop your explanations; your explanations have put you into a soup and make other people also more confused. You don’t know what is happening in your mind. Mind is like a rollercoaster — it’s a crowd. Something comes up sometime and then some other thing pops up.

Just be in the simple and innocent state of ‘‘I don’t know!’’. This life is a mystery — beautiful — lives it. Living the mystery of life so totally is joy. Becoming the mystery is divine. You are a mystery!

Courtesy: Guruji's column in The New Indian Express