Only a naked mind can see God, only a naked heart can feel God. You can go on searching with all your philosophies and your religions and your dogmas; you will never find him. You will not find him anywhere – and he is everywhere. Something is blocking the way.
If you are a Hindu you will not be able to see God. If you are a Mohammedan you will miss because you are a Mohammedan. If you are a Christian you have already created the obstacle. Don’t be a Hindu, don’t be a Mohammedan and don’t be a Christian; then there is a possibility to know God. And then you need not go anywhere else – wherever you are, God comes to you. God has been always coming to you. He has been knocking on your doors. But you are so full of your own noise, of your own scriptures, that you can’t listen to that still small voice. He comes in a thousand and one ways, he goes on coming, he goes on hoping. But you are stubborn, and the irony is that you think you are searching for God.
The first sign of a seeker is that he drops all dogmas. How can you seek with a belief inside you? You have already accepted a belief; without knowing the truth you have already arrived at a conclusion. A mind full of conclusions is incapable of knowing. Only a mind that has not yet concluded is capable of knowing, because that mind is receptive.
Drop your knowledgeability, drop your learning, drop all that you have gathered from others. And you need not go to search for God: he comes. Only he is – to say “he comes” is not right, because he is already here. He surrounds you; he is your within and your without. You breathe him. Whenever you embrace anybody you embrace him, whenever you love anybody you love him. You may not recognize it, but all your love flows towards him.
God is not separate from existence. But the philosophers and the theologians have given you the idea that God is the creator. God is not the creator, God is creativity. It is not that he created the world one day and finished it and then has been far away, resting. No, he is continuously creating it.
Don’t divide the creator and the creation; that division is false. There is no creator and there is no creation, there is only creativity. When a flower blooms it is God blooming again, when a bird sings it is God singing again, when the sun rises it is God rising again, when you open your eyes it is God opening his eyes again. In nature that creativity is unselfconscious. In man that creativity is trying to become conscious. Man is the morning, nature is the night. In nature God is fast asleep; in man he is trying to become awake.That’s why Kabir insists so much for surati – remembrance, awareness, consciousness. The more aware you are, the more you will be godly. You are already godly, but only in awareness will you recognize the fact; only in awareness will you be able to see who you are.
A few things before we enter into the sutras. In the East, we have not thought of God as separate from existence. Not like a potter who makes a pot – then the pot is different from the potter. Not like a painter who paints a canvas – once he has painted, he is separate from the painting. The painter may die and the painting will live – the painting has its own life now; the painter is not needed.
In the East, we have conceived of God as a dancer. You cannot separate the dance and the dancer. God is Nataraj, the dancer of all dancers. You cannot separate the dancer and the dance, they are always together. If there is a dance there is the dancer; the dance has no other life than the dancer. And when the dancer is really in dance he is not separate from his dance either. The dancer dissolves into his dance.
Remember that metaphor, it is very symbolic and significant; it will help you to move into godliness more easily. Prayer is not needed, remembrance is needed. You are that already – all that is needed is to remember who you are.
