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Main Index
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come up to the door and knocked. There were footmarks on the dust, on the steps.
There are many parables. Buddha and Mahavir have told many stories with only one essential idea -- that Enlightenment is at any time, at any moment, possible. It can happen any moment. One has to be alert and conscious and aware. This parable of "The King of the Night" is not just a parable. It is real. We all are interpreting things in that way, and all our interpretations are just rationalizations of our sleep and for our sleep. We say, "It is nothing but the wind, it is nothing but the clouds." Then we can sleep at ease. We go on denying religion, we go on denying anything that will break our sleep. We rationalize that there is no God, that there is no religion, that there is nothing -- nothing but wind, nothing but clouds. Then we can sleep at ease, comfortably.
If there is a God, if there is Divinity, if there is a possibility of something higher than we are, then we cannot sleep so conveniently. Then we will have to be alert and awake and struggling, making efforts and endeavouring. Then transformation becomes our immediate concern.
Awareness is the technique for centering oneself, for achieving the inner fire. It is there hidden; it can be discovered. And once it is discovered, then only are we capable of entering the temple -- not before, never before.
But we can deceive ourselves by symbols. Symbols are to show deeper realities to us, but we can use them as deceptions. We can burn an outer incense, we can worship with outer things, and then we feel at ease that we have done something. We can feel ourselves religious without becoming religious at all. That is what is happening; that is what the earth has become. Everyone thinks they are religious just because they are following outer symbols,. with no inner fire.
Make efforts even if you are a failure. You will be in the beginning. You will fail again and again, but even your failure will help. When you fail to be aware for a single moment, you feel for the first time how unconscious you are.
Walk down the street, and you cannot walk a few steps without becoming unconscious. Again and
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