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AUM, MAY MY SPEECH BE ROOTED IN MY MIND,
AND MY MIND ROOTED IN MY SPEECH.
O SELF-ILLUMINED BRAHMAN, BE MANIFEST UNTO ME.
SPEECH AND MIND FORM THE BASIS OF MY KNOWLEDGE,
SO PLEASE DO NOT UNDO MY PURSUIT OF KNOWLEDGE.
DAY AND NIGHT I SPEND IN THIS PURSUIT.
I SHALL SPEAK THE LAW; I SHALL SPEAK THE TRUTH.
MAY BRAHMAN PROTECT ME;
MAY HE PROTECT THE SPEAKER, PROTECT THE SPEAKER.
AUM, SHANTI, SHANTI, SHANTI.
The ultimate truth is not far away, it is not distant. It is near you, close, closer than you are to yourself, but still you go on missing it, and you have been missing it for millions of lives. This continuous missing has become a habit. Unless this habit is broken, the closest remains the most distant; unless this habit is transcended, God, truth, or whatsoever we may call it, remains just a myth, a theory, a doctrine, a belief, but not an experience.
And unless the divine is your experience, the belief is futile. It is not going to help you; on the contrary it may hinder you, because just by believing in it you deceive yourself that somehow you have known it. The belief becomes the deception. It doesn't become an opening, it closes you. It makes you knowl-edgeable without knowing it; it gives you a feeling of knowledge without any intimate experience of it.
Remember, untruth is not such a great hindrance as the belief in the truth. If you believe you stop seeking; if you believe you have already taken it for granted. It cannot be so. You will have to pass through a mutation; really you will have to die and be born again. Unless the seed that you are dies, the new life cannot sprout out of it. Belief becomes a barrier; it gives you a false assurance that you have known -- but that is all you have got. Belief is just borrowed. A Buddha says something, a Jesus says something, or a Mohammed, and then we go on following it, believing in it. This can create such a situation within you that the distant will appear close and the closest will continue to appear distant -- it creates an illusory mind.
I have heard one Sufi story. Once it happened that a fish in the ocean heard somebody
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