MAN

The fish in the sea is not thirsty -- but man is. Man lives in God, and is absolutely unaware of it. Man is born in God, breathes in God, and one day will dissolve in God. MAN IS GOD, made of the stuff called God, and yet completely oblivious of the fact. The fish is not thirsty in the sea, but man is. God is the sea -- God surrounds you, within and without. All that is is divine. God is not a person: God is the presence that is overflowing everywhere in all directions. The radiance, the beauty of existence, the splendour, the majestic, the miraculous, the mysterious -- the whole magic of life is God. God has not to be worshipped: God has to be lived. And to live God you need not go anywhere -- you are already in him. To live God you need not cultivate any character. God is already the case. He is your consciousness. To live God you need not become a Hindu or a Mohammedan or a Christian -- you are already in it, he is already in you. It is not a question of the future. THIS very moment God is showering on you. But you are closed. He comes, but you don't receive him. He knocks on your doors, but you don't listen to him. And he has been knocking for ages. The old biblical story is: when Adam disobeyed God, he was frightened, obviously. God came in search of him. Afraid, he went behind a bush just to hide from God. he was not courageous enough to face him, to encounter him. And the story says God called in the Garden of Eden, "Adam, where are you?" Adam heard it, yet did not respond. This is not just a story, this is not something that happened in the past: this is what is happening with EACH of you. God calls you -- either you don't hear, or, even if sometimes you hear, you don't respond. You are hiding! You are hiding from the truth of your own being; you are hiding from yourself. You don't want to see your original face: God IS your original face. and unless you see your original face, you will live in misery. Misery is nothing but remaining ignorant of one's own being. To be alert, to be conscious, of all that has been given to you, to be conscious of all that has been bestowed upon you, to be conscious of the treasures that are hidden in your being, is to be blissful. Man is very strange, the strangest animal on the earth. no other animal lives in such anguish -- even trees are far more blissful, even rocks have more of the heart than man. They are in tune with God, or in tune with totality. man has lost the connection. Man has broken the bridge. Why has it happened? It has to be understood. And it has happened to almost all. Only once in a while does there happen a person who reconnects himself with God -- a Jesus, a Buddha, a Kabir -- but only once in a while. and these people are so few that they cannot be believed. People go on talking about Jesus, Buddha, Mahavira, Zarathustra, Mohammed, but deep down they doubt their very existence. They HAVE to doubt! Nothing like that has happened to you. You have not tasted any of the nectar that they talk about. your life is just bitter, your life is nauseous, your life is sick -- and they talk of wholeness and of health, and of great bliss and of eternal peace... and you know nothing of these things! Your only experience is that of a very poisoned life, a very poisoned spirit. Your experience is so much opposed to what these few people say -- how can you believe in them? And you are the majority. Millions and millions will support your experience that life is hell. And Krishna sings songs celestial on his flute, songs of the beyond. And Kabir sings songs unbelievable! You may listen out of courtesy; you may not say anything out of formality; or maybe just the presence of a Jesus, of a Kabir, of a Bayazid, is so enchanting, so charming, it has such a charisma that it overpowers you, that you become dumb, that you cannot say no. But your not saying no does not mean that you are saying yes. They are two totally different things. Not to say no is one thing, and to say yes is a totally different phenomenon. Not to say no is not going to change you. The no will remain in you -- silent, unspoken. The no will surround your being like a transparent capsule. You may not be able to see it, you may be able to see through it, but it will not allow you to meet and merge with existence -- unless your are capable of saying YES! That single word, 'yes', contains all the religions; all the Vedas and the Bibles and the Korans are contained in the single word 'yes'. That is the meaning of the word Christians, Jews and Mohammedans have been using to complete their prayers -- AMEN. AMEN means, "yes, God, yes -- I say to total yes to you." You may not argue with Kabir -- it is difficult to argue with a man like Kabir. His presence has such weight; his eyes, his fragrance, are hypnotic. Even in you want to argue you would not like to argue. But the argument remains. And once Kabir is gone, Jesus is gone, the argument surfaces, the no comes to the surface, and the formal silence is found to be impotent. People go to the churches and to the temples and to the mosques, and it is all formality. It is nothing but Sunday religion. It is a social phenomenon; they are not individually committed, they are not involved. They are not going to the church or the temple to be transformed. It has a social utility; it is a kind of club -- you can call it a religious club, where people can meet and gossip and talk. It is a meeting-place, but not a meeting-place between you and God. That's what it is supposed to be, but it is not. You go to the temple empty-handed, you come back from the temple empty-handed. Nothing has been happening there. It cannot happen this way. God needs commitment, involvement; God asks for your totality, your surrender, your yes. And when you say yes, with no strings attached to it, with no conditions, when the yes is unconditional, and has not been said out of coercion but has welled up spontaneously within you, it has a tremendous beauty to it, and tremendous power too. Its very fire transforms you from the base metal into gold, from an ordinary human being into an extraordinary divine existence. But, remember, your yes should not come out of any sort of coercion, physical or psychological. Somebody is a Christian because he has been coerced from his very childhood to be a Christian, and somebody is a Jew because he has been coerced from the very beginning to be a Jew. A great psychological conditioning is going on. Children are being exploited; children are being forced to be Hindus, Jainas, Buddhists. The parents are not even aware of what they are doing to their children: they are preventing their children from ever becoming religious. Yes, that's what they are doing to their children. In the name of religion they are poisoning their innocent souls. They think, they may even believe, that they are helping their children towards God. The truth is just the contrary: they are creating great barriers.

The Fish in the Sea is not Thirsty
Chap#1 But Man Is

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