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hence all the scriptures are out of date. No map can ever be in tune with reality, because to make a map of the unknown takes time. In the first place it is very difficult to bring the unknown into the language of the known.
It is as if you reach an island where people have never seen any flowers and you want to convey to them the beauty of roses, marigolds, lotuses. How are you going to convey it? Whatsoever you do will not be enough, they will not understand. You will have to find a few metaphors. For example, on the sea beach of the island there may be coloured stones. You can show those coloured stones and you can say "The flowers have such colours," but you will be misunderstood because those people will think that flowers are like stones.
It is next to impossible to convey accurately. That is the first difficulty, how to make a map of the unknown.
The second difficulty is that if you try and you succeed somehow in making something approximate, by the time it is ready the territory has changed, it will not fit it, and the people who follow that map will never reach. But they will worship the map. That's what people are doing, worshipping the Bible, the Vedas, the Gita, the Koran. These are all old maps. They are beautiful efforts, the people who made those maps did it out of great compassion and love, but humanity only worships them.
And remember, the map is not the territory. You can hang the map of India on your wall -- it is not India. On the map everything is shown, the Himalayas, the Ganges... but seeing the Himalayas on the map is one thing, you are not seeing the Himalayas at all. To go to the Himalayas and to see the Himalayas is totally different.
The master can only give you hints, not even guidelines, just hints, subtle indications, fingers pointing to the moon. But the moon is rushing, changing every moment, so only a master who is still alive in the body can be of any help, because he can go on changing his finger as the moon changes. Once the master is dead you make a statue of him; now the finger is still pointing somewhere but it is a stone finger. One thing is certain, it is not pointing towards the moon at
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