|
Main Index
|
| |
| |
|
| |
God is not there! God is here inside your heart, pulsating, breathing, aware. God is very close by.
Ramana Maharshi says: self-knowledge is an easy thing the easiest thing there is. Because it is so close! It is already there, it has always been there. Just a look, just a turning-in, and you are no more a beggar, and you have attained to emperor hood, and you are enthroned, and you are crowned, and you are a king. Just a look within.... But this is what Sufis say. Ramana is a Sufi.
I am using the world 'Sufi' in the widest meaning of the word. Buddha is a Sufi, Jesus is a Sufi, Ramana is a Sufi. By 'Sufi', I mean one who is fed up with philosophies and has started searching for the real, who is no more satisfied with synthetic food and who searches for the real nourishment.
Ramana says: Self-knowledge is as easy a thing as any -- the easiest thing there is. But just in contrast to it, listen to this sentence from Immanuel Kant, a great philosopher: Metaphysics is a call to reason to undertake anew the most difficult of all tasks, namely that of self-knowledge.
Philosophy makes it difficult, very difficult, almost impossible -- because philosophy moves farther and farther away from it. To know about the self is not to know it, to know about God is not to know God -- how can the 'about' be it? About and about... you go in circles. It becomes impossible.
The more you become clever, cunning, calculating, about the about, the farther and farther you are led astray. It is not a question of knowing about the self: it is simply a question of KNOWING it, being aware; not a question of thinking about it, but of centering in it. witting silently in it, and it is revealed.
Ramana is right, he has to be right -- he knows. Immanuel Kant is not right, he cannot be right -- he never came across it. Although he tried hard, he worked hard -- he had one of the keenest intellects ever. His acumen cannot be doubted. His logic is perfect. But as far as his insight is concerned, he is blind.
It is like a blind man thinking about light -- it is bound to be impossible. How can a blind man think about light?
Buddha says that it happened:
In
|
|
|
|
| |