A young rabbi complained to the Rabbi

of Rizhyn,  “During the hours when I devote

myself to my studies, I feel life and light,

but the moment I stop studying,

it is all gone.  What shall I do?”

 

The Rabbi of Rizhyn replied,

“That is just as when a man walks

through the woods on a dark night, and for

a time another man accompanies him who

has a lamp, but at the crossroads they part

and the first must grope his way on alone.

But if a man carries his own light with him,

He need not be afraid of any darkness.”

 

The whole world need not be filled with light for you to walk, just your own heart.  A little flame and that is enough, because that will light enough path for you to walk – nobody walks more than one step at a time.  A small flame in the heart – of awareness, mindfulness, dhyana, meditation – a little flame and that is enough.  It lights your path a little.  Then you walk, then again the light goes further.

 

 

Now, remember what Gurdjieff taught:

Man is a machine.  He is born, lives, loves, dies, but not as a man.  He is born, lives, loves, dies just like a machine.  He is not conscious.  Everything happens; he is not the doer, he has no will of his own.  But he believes that he is the doer, he believes that he has a willpower, a will of his own.  He believes that he is.  This is the greatest stupidity possible, the base of all ignorance.  Because of this belief, he never becomes aware of the true situation.

Man, ordinarily, is only in two states: asleep with closed eyes and asleep with open eyes, and continuously an undercurrent of dreaming goes on.

To say that “I am” is not true in the ordinary state of humanity, because there are many ‘I’s’ within you.  You don’t have a single ‘I’, you don’t have a single center of reference.  One mood comes and goes, another mood comes and goes, and with each mood, a separate ‘I’ dominates you.

When you are angry it is not the same ‘I’ as it was when you were in love.  A totally different personality takes possession of you.  And many times you suspect it – many times you have been angry and you have said, “In spite of me, I was angry.”

What do you mean when you say “in spite of me”?  Then who is angry?  You have suspected rightly that the ‘I’ that you are ordinarily identified with was not in power, somebody else – a vagrant ‘I’, a vagabond ‘I’, an unusual ‘I’ – dominated you.

 

 

Once, a Hasid mystic, Joseph Jacov, was asked, “What is the difference between a rabbi and a zaddik?”

A rabbi is the ordinary priest, belongs to the organized religion – the church, the synagogue, the temple.  A zaddik is a rebellious master – does not belong to any organization, only belongs to himself.  The rabbi is a teacher, the zaddik is a master.  The teacher teaches, but has not gone through the transformation himself.  The zaddik is also a teacher but he teaches by his life, by his very being.  What we call in India satguru, the enlightened master, is “zaddik” in Hasidic terms.

So somebody asked Joseph Jacov, “What is the difference between a rabbi and a zaddik?”  The Hasid said, “The zaddik remembers, and the rabbi knows.”

The rabbi knows much but doesn’t remember himself – he is lost in his knowledge.  He may be a great scholar, he may be very efficient as far as scriptures are concerned…but a zaddik remembers!  He may not know much, or may know, but that is irrelevant.  He remembers – he remembers himself – and that remembering is the difference.

 

 

To remember yourself, to be a whole being, means living is possible only in this moment, because there is no other moment!  And when I am saying these things, don’t start thinking about them – because thinking is a process and leads you into the future.  Listen to me and realize it – it is not a question of thinking.  I am not talking about any hypothesis, I am simply telling you a fact.  I am not giving you a doctrine, I am just indicating what is the case.  You need not think about it.  You can listen to it and if you have listened to it well, attentively, immediate is the realization of it.

You will lose track again and again because it will be my light.  But once you know that light is possible, you become confident that your light is also possible.  If it can happen to this man, why not to you?  My bones are just like yours, my blood just like yours, my flesh just like yours.  I am as much dust as you, and this dust will fall unto dust as your dust is going to fall.  If something of the beyond has become possible to this man, you can be confident, there is no need to hesitate – you can also take the jump.

With me, in these days while you will be with me, I will try to walk with you with my light.  Remember: delight in it, but don’t depend on it.  Read the Torah, read the Bible – delight, they are really beautiful – but don’t depend.  Delight so that your own urge, your own desire, takes an urgency, an intensity to arrive – to arrive where you already are!  It is not going somewhere else.  It is being there, where you are.

Religion is not a goal, it is a revelation.  Religion is not a desire, it is reality.  Just a little turning – and I say just a little and everything becomes possible.  Life becomes possible; otherwise you will live empty and waiting.

 

 

There are religions – Hinduism, Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism and many more – but they are religions, not the religion.  They are the reflections of the moon in many kinds of minds, they are not the real moon.  The moon is one, it can be reflected in millions of lakes; reflections differ, the reflected is one.

Mind is a mirror.  When religion is reflected through the mind, a Hinduism is born or a Mohammedanism or a Judaism.  When the religion is not a reflected one – when one comes face to face with reality without any mind whatsoever, when there is no mind between you and the truth – then there is born the religion.

Hasidism is the religion.  Sufism is the religion.  Zen is the religion.  They differ only in names; otherwise they are all the same.  Their language is different, not their content.  They all have looked at the moon, but they call it different names.  Obviously.  That is natural.  But they have not been looking at the reflections.  They don’t believe in creeds, ideologies, scriptures, dogmas, doctrines; they know the truth.  And when you know the truth there is no need for scriptures.  You carry the scripture on your head when the truth is not known.

Theories are substitutes, dead.  Truth is always alive, eternally alive.  It cannot be confined in words; the message is wordless.  And you cannot come to it by somebody else, because whenever there is a medium, it becomes a reflection.  When your own mind creates a reflection, what about other minds through which you come to know it?

One has to come in immediate contact – direct, heart to heart.  Nothing should be allowed between the two, your heart and the heart of reality.  They should respond, in a deep resonance.  They should meet and mingle and merge, and there should not even be a curtain of words, knowledge, concepts.  Only then you know what religion is.

Hasidism is religion, Judaism is just a reflection.  Or you can say the same thing in other words: that Judaism is just the periphery and Hasidism is the core – the very core, the living soul, the very center.  Buddhism is the periphery, Zen is the core.  Islam is the periphery, Sufism is the core.  And the core is one, peripheries are millions.  On one center you can draw many concentric circles.  You can go on drawing them, the center remains one.

 

 

So don’t say “there.”  “There” is non-existential.  The “there” does not exist, cannot exist.  All that exists is here, now here.  That’s all there is to life: now-here.

Once you move from the now and the here you are in misery.  Once you move in your desire you move from now and here and you create a thousand and one miseries for yourself.  Be herenow and forget about God.  If you are herenow you are in God and God will reveal…he will reveal himself to you.

There is no need to search for him because the very search is basically unsound.  You cannot search for him because he is all.  He cannot be sought in any direction because all directions are his.  You will not find him anywhere because he is everywhere.  So all search, from the very beginning, is bound to fail.  Don’t seek and search, just be herenow and he will search for you ad he will seek you – that’s what Hasidics say.

One of the greatest contributions of Hasidism is that you cannot seek him, he seeks you.  How can you seek him?  You don’t know the address, you don’t know the face, you will not be able to recognize him.  If he suddenly meets you on the street you will not even say, “Hello” – you will not recognize him.  And he will be so strange, you may get scared.  Or you may not be able at all to see him because we tend to see only that which we know; that which we don’t know we tend not to see.

Scientists say, only two percent of impressions are delivered to the mind through the eyes, ninety-eight percent are not delivered, because if all the hundred percent impressions are delivered you will be in a mess – you will go mad!  That will be too much.  You will not be able to cope with it.  So only selected information is given to the mind, ninety-eight percent is dropped out.

And I know well, if God meets you…and I know that he meets you every day; millions of times, but the mind drops him.  Unknown, strange, you cannot fit him anywhere with your mind, and he will be a disturbance.  You simply don’t see him.  How can you seek him?  Where will you seek him?

Hasidism says: You cannot seek him, he seeks you.  You just be available and ready.

God is always ready to meet you, you prepare.  You be ready wherever you are: he will seek you, he will rush – from everywhere, from all directions.  He will penetrate you in a thousand and one ways and reach to your heart.