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existence.
The East has found this to be the only spiritual experience, not God, not your holy scriptures, not your prophets; they are all creating fictions. Not even your prayers because they are nothing but your desires. The only thing that is really significant is to be quiet, centered, grounded, in the very life source, in your very being. This sutra of Om, shantih shantih shantih is heard when you are at your very center. It is not by your repeating it that you will reach to it. It is not exactly the same either. We have invented it... approximately, just to communicate what has happened: something similar, but far deeper; something similar, but far more delicate; something similar, but not the same.
The mystics' writings start exactly the way the universe has started, and they end exactly as the universe finally goes to rest. There is a statement relevant to this sutra by Gautam Buddha. It is very significant. He says that it is absolutely foolish to think the way all the theologians of the world think about the beginning -- how the world began.
I can see the significance of a statement that you can never come to a conclusion about how the world began -- because you were not there. How can you be before the world began? -- you are part of the world. So all that you say about the beginning is just imagination, hypothesis, guesswork.
Buddha says that the mystic is not interested in how the world began, his interest is in how it ends, because in that very ending you will find the beginning too. But without finding the ending, you can only guess and argue and fight about the beginning -- and it is all futile. The philosopher's work is absolute nonsense. The mystic is very earthbound, very pragmatic, very realistic. Buddha says, "First find how it ends" -- and it is to be found within you.
You cannot wait for the whole world to end. That way it never ends. It is always there -- beginningless, endless. But within you how did the world begin? And within you how does the world end?
Those who remain clinging with the world are the materialists. Others start looking inside and try to find how everything ends, and still you are
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