Osho - Dimensions Beyond the Known
Chapter 5. From childhood to enlightenment, the birth of a new man
Question 1
What was that event that made you turn toward the spiritual? What was that miracle?
There has been no such event. It happens many times that some event occurs and a person takes a turn in life. It also happens that as a result of the collective effect of many events, a person's life is changed. In my life there has been no such event that can be singled out as having caused such a change. However, there have been many events whose collective impact may have caused a turning point, but when this happened cannot be determined. Furthermore, I do not think I ever "turned to the spiritual." I was already in that direction. I do not remember any day when I have not been thinking about the spiritual. From my very first memories, I have been thinking about it.
Many events have occurred in which the collective effect is to be considered. I remember no single event that is so outstanding. Ordinarily, just one excuse sometimes diverts the mind suddenly.
However, I believe that the mind diverted toward something by a single event can revert back also.
But if the turning is the collective result of many events, then there is no reverting back because that turning is deeper and has entered into the many layers of one's personality. Just as by a single push you can be forced in a certain direction, so also can another push in the opposite direction cause you to return back.
Again, turning by only a single push is a type of reaction. It is possible, but you are not fully ready for it and you simply become diverted. When the effect of that push vanishes, you can return back.
But if every moment of life slowly and steadily brings you to a state where even you yourself are not able to decide how you came there, then returning back out of reaction is not possible - because then that condition becomes even part of your breathing, so to speak.
However, one memory in my life which is worth remembering is that of death. It is difficult to tell what I might have thought on that day. My early childhood passed at the house of my maternal grandparents and I had great love for them. I did not stay with my mother and father in my childhood but with my maternal grandparents.
My mother was their only child. They were feeling very lonely, so they wanted to bring me up.
Therefore, up to seven years of age, I stayed with them. I had taken them as my mother and father. They were very rich and had all possible conveniences. Therefore, I was brought up like a prince. I came in touch with my father and mother only after the death of my maternal grandparents.
Their passing away and the manner in which it happened became the first valuable memory for me because I had loved only them and received love only from them. Their passing away was very strange. The village in which they were staying was about thirty-two miles away from any town.
Neither was there any doctor nor any vaidya, one who practices ayurvedic medicine.
In the very first attack of death upon my grandfather, he lost his speech. For twenty-four hours we waited in that village for something to happen. However, there was no improvement. I remember a struggle on his part in an attempt to say something, but he could not speak. He wanted to tell something, but could not tell it. Therefore, we had to take him toward the town in a bullock cart.
Slowly, one after the other, his senses were giving way. He did not die all at once, but slowly and painfully. First his speech stopped, then his hearing. Then he closed his eyes as well. In the bullock cart, I was watching everything closely, and there was a long distance of thirty-two miles to travel.
Whatsoever was happening seemed beyond my understanding then. This was the first death witnessed by me, and I did not even understand that he was dying. But slowly all his senses were giving way and he became unconscious. While we were still near the town, he was already half dead. His breathing still continued, but everything else was lost. After that he did not resume consciousness, but for three days he continued breathing. He died unconsciously.
This slow losing of his senses and his final dying became very deeply engraved in my memory. It was he with whom I had my deepest relationship. For me, he was the only love object, and because of his death, perhaps, I have not been able to feel attached to anyone else so much. Since then, I have been alone.
The facticity of aloneness took hold of me from the age of seven years on. Aloneness became my nature. His death freed me forever from all relationships. His death became for me the death of all attachments. Thereafter, I could not establish a bond of relationship with anyone. Whenever my relationship with anyone would begin to become intimate, that death stared at me. Therefore with whomsoever I experienced some attachment, I felt that if not today, tomorrow that person could also die.
Once a person becomes clearly aware of the certainty of death, then the possibility of attachment is lessened in the same proportion. In other words, our attachments are based on the forgetfulness of the fact of death. With whomsoever we love, we continue to believe that death is not unavoidable.
That is why we speak of love as immortal. It is our tendency to believe that whomsoever we love will not die.
But for me love invariably became associated with death. This meant that I was not able to love without being aware of death. There can be friendship, there can be compassion, but no infatuation over anything could catch me. Very deeply did death touch me - and so intensely that the more I thought of it, the more and more clear did it become to me each day.
Thus, the madness of life did not affect me. Death stared at me before the thrust into life began.
This event can be considered as the first which left a deep impact and influence on my mind. From that day onwards, every day, every moment, the awareness of life invariably became associated with the awareness of death. From then onwards, to be or not to be had the same value for me. At that tender age, loneliness seized me.
Sooner or later in life - in old age - loneliness seizes everyone. But it seized me before I knew what company meant. I may live with everyone, but whether I am in a crowd or a society, with a friend or an intimate, I am still alone. Nothing touches me; I remain untouched.
As that first feeling of loneliness became deeper and deeper, something new began to happen in life.
At first that loneliness had made me only unhappy, but slowly it began changing into happiness - because it is a rule that when we become attached to anyone or anything, in one way or the other we turn from facing ourselves. Actually, the desire for attachment to someone or something is a device for escaping from one's own self. And as the other goes on becoming more and more important to us, to the very same extent he becomes the center for us and we become the periphery.
We continue to remain other-centered for the whole life. Then one's own self can never become the center. For me, the possibility of anyone else becoming my center was destroyed in the very first steps of my life. The first center that was formed broke down, and there was no other way but to revert back to my own self. I was, so to speak, thrown back to my own self. Slowly, that made me more and more happy. Afterwards I came to feel that this close observation of death at a tender age became a blessing in disguise for me. If such a death had occurred at a later age, perhaps I would have found other substitutes for my grandfather.
So the more unripe and innocent the mind is, the more difficult it becomes to replace a love object.
The more clever, skillful, cunning and calculative the mind becomes, the more easy it becomes to replace or substitute another for the one lost. The more quickly you replace, the sooner you become free from the unhappiness derived from the first. But it was not possible for me to find a substitute on that very day when death occurred.
Children are not able to find a substitute easily. The place of the love object that is lost remains empty. The older you are the faster you can fill the emptiness, because then one can think. A gap in thought can be filled up quickly, but emotional emptiness cannot be quickly filled. A thought can persuade one faster, but the heart cannot persuade. And at a tender age when one is not capable of thinking but is capable only of feeling, the difficulty is greater.
Therefore, the other could not become important to me in the sense that it could save me from my own self. So I had to live with my own self only. At first this seemed to give me unhappiness, but slowly it began giving me the experience of happiness. Thereafter, I did not suffer any unhappiness.
The cause of unhappiness lies in our attaching ourselves to the other, in expectation from the other, in the hope of gaining happiness from the other. You never actually gain happiness, but the hope is always sustained. And whenever that hope gives way, frustration begins.
Thus, in the very first experience, I became so badly disappointed from the other that I did not try again. That direction was closed for me, and so thereafter I never became unhappy. Then a new type of happiness began to be experienced which can never come from the other. Happiness can never come from the other; what is created is only a hope for future happiness. Actually, only the shadow of happiness is received.
Exactly the reverse is the situation when encountering oneself for the first time. When encountering oneself, unhappiness is experienced in the beginning, but authentic happiness progressively comes about as the encounter continues. On the contrary, encountering the other gives happiness in the beginning, but unhappiness is the end.
So, to me, being thrown upon oneself begins the journey toward the spiritual. How we become thrown back in this way is another matter. Life gives many opportunities for being thrown back to oneself. But the more clever we are, the quicker we are in rescuing ourselves from such an opportunity. At such moments we move out from ourselves.
If my wife dies, I am immediately in search, and then I marry another. If my friend is lost, I begin to search for another. I cannot leave any gap. By filling that gap, the opportunity I would have had to revert back to my own self is lost in a moment, along with its immense possibilities.
If I had become interested in the other, I would have lost the opportunity to journey toward the self. I became a sort of a stranger to others. Generally, it is at this tender age that we become related with the other, when we are admitted into society. That is the age when we are initiated, so to speak, by the society which wants to absorb us. But I have never been initiated into society. It just could not happen. Whenever I entered into the society, I entered as an individual and I remained aloof and separate like an island.
I do not remember that I ever cultivated any friendship, though there were many who wanted to be my friends. Many persons made friends with me, and they enjoyed making friendship with me because it was not possible to make me an enemy. But I do not recall that I have ever gone of my own accord to anyone in order to make any friend. If someone threw himself on me, it was a different matter. It is not that I never welcomed friendship. If someone made a friend of me, I wholeheartedly welcomed it. But even then I could not become a friend in the ordinary sense. I have always remained aloof.
In short, even while studying in school, I remained aloof. Neither with any of my teachers, nor with any fellow student, nor with any other, could I develop such a relationship as would drown me or break my being an island. Friends came and also stayed with me. I met many people as well; I had many friends. But from my side there was nothing that could make me dependent upon them or which would cause me to remember them.
It is very interesting to note that I do not remember anyone. It has never happened that I would sit pondering over someone with the feeling that if I would meet him it would be very pleasant. If someone does meet me, it makes me very happy, but I do not become unhappy due to not meeting someone. For the state of ultimate joy, I believe that only my grandfather's death was responsible.
That death threw me back to myself permanently. I have not been able to revert back from the center.
Due to this condition of being an outsider, a stranger, I have seen a new dimension of experience. It is a condition in which, although I am amidst everything, I continue to remain outside.
I became a universe unto myself. This new experience - and a strange one at that - gave me a sort of pain, although it was a joyous pain. It was like this: that at that young age I began to feel and experience a sort of maturity and elderliness. In this experience there was no ego involvement, but an individuality was still there, and that placed me in some embarrassing situations.
For example, I could not accept anyone as my teacher though I was always ready to be a student.
But I did not find anyone whom I could call my master. Everyone I found was very much involved in and with life. No one who had not seen death could ever become my teacher. I wanted to respect, but I could not. I could respect rivers, mountains and even stones, but not human beings. This was a very embarrassing situation, and it put me in great difficulties.
I met no such teacher whom I could spontaneously respect, because I never felt that there was anything which anyone knew which was such an absolute truth that without it life could have no meaning. Many times I have felt that various teachers were saying and doing things which looked childish - which even I, at that age, would not say or do. Therefore, I had never felt that I was a small child and that I should remain under someone's protection and guidance. Not that I did not go to anyone: I did go to many people, but I always returned empty-handed and felt that all which was imparted I also knew. There was nothing which could be learned from them.
Therefore, a difficulty arose in that many a time others felt that I was egoistic. It was natural for them to feel that way because I was not able to respect and honor anyone or to obey anyone's command.
Everyone felt that I was an immodest and seditious rebel. Up to a particular age, to my teachers, to my elders and to everybody, I have been a discourteous, rebellious, seditious and egoistic person, and they had no hope that I would ever be of any use to anyone in life.
In whatsoever they had put simple faith I could not put any faith at all, and that which they never doubted, I always doubted. To whatsoever they had always stood with head bowed down in pranam, I could not even join my hands. I never felt to do so. I never tried to deceive myself, nor did I learn any hypocrisy. If I had no trust, it was so: I could not help it, I did not try to show off anything which I did not believe to be true.
Therefore, this created some difficulties, but it also had its advantages. I was thrown back upon myself from another direction as well, because I never believed or felt that the truth could be learned from others. There was only one way to learn - to learn from myself only. I therefore never knew anyone to be my guru. I was my guru and my disciple as well. If I could not follow anyone blindly, the only alternative left was to search in my own way. There was no one to show me a way that I might follow. I had to walk by myself.
The most valuable result of this was that I had to pave my own way, follow my own discretion, and in every matter make my own decisions. There was no question of taking anyone's help. This being thrown back again and again upon myself proved very valuable.
This does not mean that I distrusted everyone or that I showed any contempt or disrespect to anyone.
I simply could not respect anyone, and the natural result of all this was that my doubts became stronger and stronger. I doubted everything.
This attitude also became useful when I began to read and write. Whether I studied the Gita, the Koran, the Bible, or whether I studied Buddha or Mahavira, that doubting instinct was always with me. It never happened that I would keep Krishna a little above the other gods and kill all my doubts.
Doubt always remained with me. Therefore, no fanaticism, no blindness, no following or devotion to only one particular religion could result.
The ultimate result of all this was that I remained without any conclusions, full of questions and questions and doubts. There was no final answer about anything. Whatever answers were there belonged to others, and I could not trust anyone else's answers. Others' answers did only one thing for me, and that was to give birth to ten more questions. No one else's answers could become mine.
So from the very first this condition was dangerous, because to live without any aim was very insecure. I was not even sure of what was just one inch ahead, because that I could come to know only from others. About the path up to where one has traveled one can know positively, but about what lies ahead on the path one has not traveled, one can only know from others. Therefore, for me there was no clear path. It was all darkness. Every next step for me was in darkness - aimless and ambiguous.
My condition was full of tension, insecurity and danger. All my relatives and intimates thought that I was a rebellious and seditious person because of this condition. Slowly people began thinking that I might become mad, such was the situation.
In every small matter there was doubt and nothing but doubt. Only questions and questions remained without any answer. In one respect I was as good as mad. I was myself afraid that anytime I might become mad. I was not able to sleep at night.
Throughout the night and the day, questions and questions hovered around me. There was no answer to any question. I was in a deep sea, so to speak, without any boat or bank anywhere.
Whatever boats had been there I had myself sunk or denied. There were many boats and many sailors, but I had myself refused to step into anyone else's boat. I felt that it was better to drown by oneself rather than to step into someone else's boat. If this was where life was to lead me, to drowning myself, then I felt that this drowning should also be accepted.
My condition was one of utter darkness. It was as if I had fallen into a deep dark well. In those days I had many times dreamed that I was falling and falling and going deeper into a bottomless well. And many times I awakened from a dream full of perspiration, sweating profusely, because the falling was endless without any ground or place anywhere to rest my feet.
Except for darkness and falling, nothing else remained, but slowly I accepted even that condition.
Many times I felt that I might have agreed with someone, I might have held on to something, I might have accepted some answer. But this did not suit my nature. I was never able to accept anyone else's thoughts.
Inevitably, it so happened that there was no longer any place within me for any thoughts. Now I realize that all answers are nothing but thoughts. If there are only questions, then a person can become thoughtless.
A conclusion is a thought. If there is no conclusion, then automatically a vacuum is created. I did not know this at the time, but a sort of emptiness, a void, came about of its own accord. Many questions circled around and around. But because there was no answer, they dropped down from exhaustion, so to speak, and died. I did not get the answers, but the questions were destroyed.
One day a questionless condition came about. It is not that I received the answers - no. Rather, all the questions just fell away and a great void was created. This was an explosive situation.
Living in that condition was as good as dying. And then the person died who had been asking questions. After that experience of void, I asked no questions. All matters on which questions could be asked became non-existent. Previously, there was only asking and asking. Thereafter, nothing like questioning remained.
Now I have neither any questions nor any answers. If someone raises a question, that answer which comes from my inner void is the answer. I cannot say that the answer is mine because I never have any prior thought about it. The answer is not ready in advance. I too hear the answer for the first time when my listener is hearing it. Just as he is hearing it for the first time, I am also. It is not that I am the speaker and he is the listener, nor is it that I am the giver and he is the taker. The answer has come, and both of us are listeners and takers.
Therefore, if my answer is different tomorrow from what it was today, I am not responsible for it because I had not given the answer at all. The same void from which it has come is responsible for changing it. I am helpless. Therefore, you will find that I am very inconsistent. I can be consistent only if "I" am answering. If there is any inconsistency, it is due to that void within me. I have no knowledge of it. Whatever answer comes is not given by me. Since that experience, neither have I asked any question, nor have I sought any answer. In that explosion, the old man of yesteryear died. This new man is absolutely new.
You have asked me if there was any turning point. There was no turning point, but there was death.
What is meant by this is that the man who was walking on the path has not taken any turn. Rather, he is dead and is no more. What is, is a new man altogether. Therefore, the question of returning back does not arise. There is no one who has taken any turn. Were that the case, then there would be a possibility of returning back also. But that old man is not there. For example, at a hundred degrees centigrade water changes into steam. Water does not remain as water; it is something else, something new.
Now I do not think from my side. If someone asks something, just as you have done, then I speak.
I do not even think; I just speak directly. As far as memory goes, there also I do not think that it is mine. It seems that it belongs to someone else. What I mean is that those things about which I am telling you which happened in the period before the explosion are not mine; they even appear to belong to someone else. It is just as if they were simply heard by me or read in some novel or seen in some drama or somewhere.
Here, so many people request me to write my autobiography. It is very difficult because the one about whom I would write is not me. Whatever I am now has no story. There is no story after that explosion; there are no events after it. All events are before the explosion. After the explosion there is only void. Whatever was before is not me or mine.
When a person writes about himself, it is an autobiography; when a person writes about someone else, it is a biography. If I write a biography, it will not be mine. It cannot be an autobiography because the "I" is no more there. It can be a biography of a person whom I once knew, but who now is no more. It can be about a person whom I once used to be, but who has now ceased to be. Also, it would be like writing about someone whom I have known or heard about, whom I used to see, but who is now dead.
I never knew that these events which took place constituted a search for the spiritual. I came to know only later that what came about was "spiritual knowledge." But the truth is that those who had known me from my childhood would never have believed that I and religion could ever go together.
It was beyond their expectations because what they were calling or knowing as religion I had always fought against.
What they were calling worship was just so much nonsense for me. What they called a sannyasin was for me nothing but an escapist. What they called scriptures, to which they used to bow their heads in worship, were but ordinary books for me upon which I could rest my foot. Whatsoever they asserted as being beyond doubt, I dragged into uncertainty and suspicion. Their God, their soul and their salvation were all matters of joke and fun for me.
Their seriousness appeared to me as childish. When I would see them sitting with folded hands before their God, I would laugh and disturb them. All this appeared to me so childish that they could never imagine that I, of all persons, could ever become religious.
If those who had known me during those days prior to the explosion and who have since died should come alive again, and should those with whom I have long been out of touch see me today, they would not be able to even recognize my present self, nor would they be able to imagine that I can be that same person whom they had known.
They could never believe it, because whatsoever they believed as religion I believed to be anything but religion. In their minds, I was an atheist, and a total one at that. To my family members, my friends, my relatives and my associates, I was a great atheist. Therefore, those who suddenly meet me today, after a lapse of about twenty or twenty-five years, will have the shock of their lives. It has happened that those who had become atheists in my company, or because of me, are embarrassed because they have all remained atheists.
Recently I went to a village where I met a man who had become an atheist because of me. He is still an atheist, and he became very frightened. He said that what I had told him then, he had continued to believe as true even until now. So I had no idea that what I was doing then would ever lead me into enlightenment.
According to me one cannot go into it by knowing it in advance. It is something which is unknown.
How can one know its address? It is not at any particular place so that by knowing its address one can reach it. One who fixes the address will be a non-religious person. How can one do it without knowing it? Whatsoever a non-religious mind will do will also be non-religious. Therefore, one cannot make it a goal, nor can one reach it knowingly.
Yes, it may happen that someone living in an irreligious way may just become tired of it, and his irreligiousness might break down. Then religiousness will not come, but his non-religiousness will simply break. His non-religiousness will shatter and disappear completely. And one day he may suddenly find that he has become naked. The clothes of irreligiousness will have dropped away and to his surprise he will exclaim, "Aha! This is something new! What has happened is a religious experience!"
Thus, religious experience is a happening, something that is an unplanned occurrence, not an achievement, not a preplanned, progressively attained accomplishment. No one can reach there step by step as if it were on a ladder. But from living - and living irreligiously - that irreligiousness may simply shatter. I say that supreme knowledge cannot be a goal, but the ignorance and false knowledge can disintegrate. And the moment ignorance disintegrates, the remainder - what remains - is supreme knowledge.
About everything my view is similar. No violent person can become non-violent. How can a violent person become non-violent? Whatsoever he does will be violent. In the attempt to be non-violent, he will become violent. He is violent, and if he poses as non-violent, he will remain totally violent within. He will use violence to become non-violent.
But what is possible is that one day a person can become tired of violence. One who is full of tension - grief-stricken and distressed from his suffering - may be so full of unbearable unhappiness that he will take a jump from violence. It is like suddenly jumping when seeing a deadly snake crossing one's path or like running out of the house that has caught fire. One may become so violent, violence itself can generate so much pain and suffering, that one can reach a point where he can never become violent again. Something within may break and shatter, and one may find that now he has become non-violent.
Thus, becoming non-violent is a happening, not a process or a progressive achievement to where one may climb step by step. Who will climb? That violent person? He will climb only with his violence; he cannot reach nonviolence. No matter how many steps a thief might take, the steps will be only those of a thief: they cannot lead him to non-stealing. No matter how many steps a liar may take, they will only be those of a liar: he can never reach any truth. But if the lie totally drops, then there where such a person may find himself will be truth.
So that which is significant in life, supreme, cannot be achieved by our efforts. I therefore did not know what had happened until it happened, and even then I also did not understand it to be a religious happening. How could I understand? Recognition and understanding are always of what is known before. When you came, I recognized you as Tandonji, but I could do so only because I had known you yesterday. If I had not known you before, and if we had met for the first time, ours would be an acquaintance, not a recognition.
Therefore, I could not recognize that happening when it exploded upon me. The only thing felt was that something new had happened which was not known before. What was felt was this, that what had been there now was no more and what had now happened was not there previously.
It took time to become acquainted. It was an acquaintance known only by asking, "Who are you and what are you?" This acquaintance again was very strange, inasmuch as it was only with myself.
Nothing had come to me from outside that I could recognize. Rather, something had dropped from me. That which remained was unknown, and I had to become acquainted with that. Even then this acquaintance is never complete, because daily it takes on a newness. By the time we know it, it becomes still more new. This is the infinite journey of the knowledge of the self. It is endless, beginningless and infinite.
Religiousness is not a dead end, but a supreme end. It is like a river which is flowing: daily the scenery on the banks changes; daily the alignment of trees changes. New rocks and hills come by, and a new moon and new stars are seen. Whatsoever we have known yesterday is lost today. In this supreme experience, one can never say that "I have reached," that "I have realized," that "I have completely known what was to be known." If someone talks in that language, he has not reached at all. One only enters into that experience. He does not reach the end, because it is endless. If someone enters into the sea, he can say that he has entered, that the coast is lost, but he can never say that he has met the sea - because a new coast is never found, and everywhere, all around, there is the sea.
So a religious person cannot write the message about his reaching and his achievement. He can only say that the old is not there and that which is now happening is changing every moment, every day. As such, it is new and again new. It is not possible to say what it will be like tomorrow, because whatsoever it was yesterday is not today. Whatsoever is there today is slowly disintegrating. This unbounded living which renews itself every moment, which never becomes stale, is the religious experience. And we can never make efforts to attain it, nor can we ever fully attain it.
So whosoever says that he has attained it could never have attained it. But he who says that he goes on attaining it more and more daily, but is never able to fully attain it, or who says that when he attains it fully he will tell, or who says that the whole still remains unattained, is the only one who has really attained. Truth is such that something always remains to be known, and yet one feels that it was always known. Our language, therefore, expresses everything wrongly. Those who go through life with an aim - and many do so - never reach.
Recently, someone came and asked me if he could become a sannyasin. I told him, "As long as you feel like asking, do not become a sannyasin, because then one thing is certain: that sannyas is not spontaneous. Sannyas is not to be taken; it cannot be taken. One day it will come to you. Then suddenly you will realize that you are a sannyasin and that you are no more what you were." Then he told me that many people are "taking" sannyas.
To me, whatsoever can be taken at will is false. Religiousness that can be worn is false; religiousness that one tries to achieve is false. Life, death, hatred, violence, unhappiness, pain and anxiety - all these are not taken by us: they have come. Let us live them totally, and from experience, from that living totally, the transcendence will begin.
The more fully we live, the more we find that we are going further and beyond. It is something like this: a person is drowning in a river. If he tries to save himself, perhaps he will be drowned. If he is sinking, then let him sink fully. If he does not try at all to swim, then after reaching the bottom he will find that he has begun to come back upwards. He who is ready to drown will be saved, and he who is afraid of drowning and who struggles will surely drown. The dead float on the water, and the living sink down. The skill of the dead body lies in the fact that it does not do anything, and that keeps it on the surface of the water.
So I came above water like a dead body. I did not do anything for it, nor was I aware of where I was going. Neither do I know today where I am going, nor is there any question as to where I am going.
Now, wheresoever I go is the goal and where I reach is just where I had to reach. Now there is no aim. Now there is nothing to be achieved. Now there is no search. But all this did not come about due to any turning. That is, I have never taken a turn, nor is there any event which can be described as one that has brought on the explosion. Many events collectively helped - and then it happened.
In this world, religion has become a great falsehood, because people say that it can be adopted.
Whatsoever can be adopted cannot be greater than us. After all, it is the "I" who will be adopting it, is it not? And if "I" adopt it, how can it be greater than me or more infinite than me? When it comes, we are not there to grasp it. It comes only when we are lost. No matter what we may call it - call it truth, or God, or enlightenment - at such moments of void, it simply descends.
Whosoever has received it has felt that it is God's grace. The reason for saying so is that it did not come by his own efforts. It is not that it is received only because of his grace, but it appears so since there is no effort on our part.
That is why I have begun saying that we cannot search for it. How can we search for a God whose name and address we do not know, whom we cannot recognize because he was not hitherto known?
How will we be able to search for him? If we know him and recognize him, then there is no need for search. Therefore, I cannot search for him. But if while searching the "I" dissolves, then he will find me. He knows me well enough.
Perhaps I have been already found by him even now, but I am such a person who is running and running but am still not tired. Even now I am not tired, but he will wait until I drop down totally exhausted. And there where I shall drop is his lap.
