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Section Two THE DIVINE TRUTH—ITS NAME AND FORM The divine truth at the heart of things, people have called by all kinds of names, every one presenting it from his own angle of experience. But always it is the one Reality. There are millions of ways leading towards it; but one thing is certain, you can find it, whatever the way you follow, whatever the form you give it: the result is the same, the final experience is identical. If all have touched the thing, they touch the same thing always. And the proof that they have touched the thing is that it is the same for all; if it is not the same thing, then they have not touched it. You can give it any name you like: a name is only a word. What is the value of a word, after all? Have you not noticed that there are people who do not understand you, however clearly you speak to them. There are others again who understand you if you utter only two words. The external form—the sound of a word—has a meaning, if there is a force of thought behind; the greater the force of thought, the more powerful and precise and clear it is, the greater the chance of people receiving the force and understanding the word that carries the force. But if someone speaks without thinking, usually it is impossible to understand him; he would seem to you to make only a noise. You must have noticed also that people who have lived together and are habituated to each other's Page-27 thought and talk, do not require any definition of the words they use or even a large use to understand each other. There has been a mental adjustment and the words are only an excuse for the inner contact, the contact between brain and brain which underlies or even precedes the words. But when you meet a new person, it takes you time to adapt and adjust yourself to understand the words he uses. It is the meaning, the thought behind the word that is important. When the thought is powerfully thought, it produces a vibration of which the word is only a carrier, an intermediary. Indeed, you can develop the thought-power to such an extent that you are able to establish a direct material contact with the minimum or even no words at all. Naturally this requires a strong power of concentration. But you will find that the bodily mechanism is only a mechanical means; it is an instrument, but not always important or indispensable. When we are conscious of the Divine, do we see Him in all things in some particular form ? You expect to see a divine form in each and all things? It may happen so. But I am not sure; I have the impression that there is a large part of imagination in such experiences. You may, for example, see the form of Krishna or Christ or Buddha in every being or thing. But I say that much of human conception enters into this perception. Otherwise what I was telling you just now would Page-28 not be true. I said all who have the consciousness of the Divine, all who get the contact with the Divine, wherever one may be, to whatever age or country he may belong, all have the same essential experience. If it were not so, the Hindus would always see one of their gods, the Europeans one of theirs, the Japanese a third variety and so on. This may be an addition of each one's own mental: formation, but it would not be the Reality in its essence or purity which is beyond all form. One can have a perception of the Divine Presence, a very concrete perception, one can have even a personal contact with the Divine, but it need not happen in and through the kind of form you imagine; it is something inexpressible, beyond all explanation or definition, it is evident only to one who has the experience. It may be as you are suddenly lifted up into a peculiar condition, you find yourself in the presence of the Divine which takes a form familiar to you, a form you have been accustomed to associate with the Divine, because of your education, your upbringing and tradition. But, as I say, it is not the supreme essence of the experience: the form gives after all a limitation to the experience, takes away from it its universality and a large measure of its power. Page-29 |