| |
a narrow sphere that the meaning cannot be conveyed. That is why I said that religion cannot be taught.
However difficult, mathematics can be taught because it is symbolic, and symbols can be conveyed. Physics can be taught because there is nothing inexpressible about it. But the nearer you come to the human heart -- for example, in poetry -- the more you feel that your words have not conveyed the thing, that something has been left behind. The container is there, but the content has been left behind. The words have reached, but the meaning has been left behind. The flower has been received, but the perfume has died in the very giving of it.
Words are at the midpoint between science and religion. In science everything can be conveyed; in religion nothing can be conveyed. These are the three roads: science, which means reason, and is expressible; poetry and art, which are emotion, and are expressible up to a certain point beyond which they become inexpressible; and religion, spirituality, which is absolutely inexpressible. That is why the relationship between guru and disciple is not that of teacher and pupil.
Religion cannot be taught.
Then how is it conveyed? There are other methods.
When you are in love with someone, gestures become meaningful for the first time. A slight twinge in the face is detected, a slight waver in the eyes is known and understood. Unless you are in love you never pay attention to such minute things; you just see a face but you don't see its total complexity, you don't see its constantly changing patterns. You see the face as an external thing, you never see the content in it. But when you love someone the face is not just a figure but a living pattern. Minute things and subtle changes in expression are detected and known. Even before the lover has said something, you have known it. Even before the lover comes to know that he has felt something, you can detect it.
And reverence is even more subtle than love. The very existence of the guru is a communication. Everything that he is constantly delivers messages which are caught, known, decoded, and understood by the reverent mind. These gestures, these
|
|
|