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Main Index
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| | | Book Name: Sufis - The People of the Path, Vol 2 | Previous Next | |
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to go. Man has become that for which he was seeking, searching, struggling.
Man is a paradox. He is not what he is. He is that which he is not yet. But the day you realise the ultimate, you will have a laugh arising in your very heart, because then you will know that you were always this. It was just unknown to you. The future was contained in you, just hidden. You had to discover it. These seven valleys are the valleys of discovery.
This is a beautiful map; this is the Sufi map.
Now this story.
THERE WAS ONCE A WOMAN WHO ABANDONED THE RELIGION IN WHICH SHE HAD BEEN BROUGHT UP. SHE LEFT THE RANKS OF THE ATHEISTS TOO, AND JOINED ANOTHER FAITH. THEN SHE BECAME CONVINCED OF THE TRUTH OF YET ANOTHER. EACH TIME SHE CHANGED HER BELIEFS. SHE IMAGINED THAT SHE HAD GAINED SOMETHING, BUT NOT QUITE ENOUGH. EACH TIME SHE ENTERED A NEW FOLD SHE WAS WELCOMED, AND HER RECRUITMENT WAS REGARDED AS A GOOD THING, AND A SIGN OF HER SANITY AND ENLIGHTENMENT.
HER INWARD STATE, HOWEVER, WAS ONE OF CONFUSION.
This woman was lost in the first valley -- the valley of knowledge -- and she got hooked to the negative. She became knowledgeable. She went to this school and to that; she went to this teacher and that; she studied this doctrine and that; and each time she started something new she would be thrilled. It would be a kind of honeymoon. And sooner or later she would be fed up with it and she would start moving and searching again.
The total result was that she gathered much knowledge of diverse nature, much knowledge of contradictory systems. All those systems work, remember -- never forget it! Each system works, but it works in its purity only. If you mix it with many systems it will never work. It will be like you take a few parts from a Mercedes-Benz and a few parts from a Rolls Royce and a few parts from a Chevrolet and a few parts from a Ford and a few parts from a truck and a few parts from somewhere else, and you put them together. They are all useful, but this mechanism that you have created out of them is not going to work. A part that was functioning in a certain mechanism will not be able to function with other kinds of parts.
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