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Chapter 20: Just a Glimpse and the Work Is Done

Your question is very beautiful and concerns the whole work we are involved in, here in this strange place. I call it strange because in the whole world there is no gathering of seekers who are together searching for themselves. Their relationship has nothing to do with their religion or their marriage or their social acquaintance or their Rotary Clubs. The people who are present here are absolutely unrelated to each other, yet there is a deep relationship - unspoken, unsaid. The relationship is that you are all seeking the same thing.

You are all seeking yourselves.

The goal is not outside. Nobody is going to take you to the goal. But the goal is so much within you that just a little relaxation - not effort, but just a little let-go, falling into it - and you have touched your very life source.

You are not meeting any god and you are not entering into somebody’s heaven - Mohammedans, Hindus, Christians, they all have different kinds of heavens, according to their needs. You are not entering into somebody else’s imagination.

You are not even entering into your own imagination.

You are simply dropping out of the mind which can imagine. You are getting into a space where imagination is impossible; you can only see that which is.

And seeing this, you have attained all that can be attained. Seeing this you have attained the liberation, the salvation, the freedom. Seeing it for the first time you are no more a beggar, you are the richest man in the world.

The man in Japan who is thought to be the richest man, just because he has twenty-two billion dollars; and the richest man in America, who has four billion dollars - both are just poor in comparison to the person who has reached his own being, who has touched the reality of his eternal existence, whose mystic rose has opened its petals.

And it is so easy.

You are concerned; you say, “I cannot believe how easy it is!” Nobody can believe. I have myself never believed how easy it is. But when it happens, it happens, and one is simply in a tremendous awe - “My god, it has always been here within my reach and I was looking all around the world. It was in my hands, empty hands, and I was seeking it everywhere except within myself.”

That’s why it has become difficult. I have told you about the Sufi mystic woman, Rabiya. One evening just as the sun is setting and the darkness is descending.She is old; she comes out of her small house, searching for something on the street. A man passing by sees that the old woman is looking for something, and in this darkness, at her age, perhaps she may not be able to find it. So he stops her and asks, “Rabiya” - she was well known - “what are you seeking?”

She said, “I have lost my sewing needle.” The man said, “Then it is almost impossible to find it. The sun has already set, darkness has descended and the road is vast. Where has it fallen? If you can tell me exactly the place, then I can try to help you. In your old age you will not be able to find a needle.”

The woman said, “This is the problem. I am very ashamed to say that I have lost it in the house.”

The man said, “My god, you have lost it in the house and you are looking for it outside in the street! Are you mad?”

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