1. Spiritual Music
2. Love
3. Meat
4. Finding Good Teachers
5. Reincarnation - The Effects
6. Reincarnation - A Story
7. Positive Books
8.
God is like Mozart
9. Proving God
10. God and the Banana: A Story
|
|
The other day I saw a review in Gramophone,
a magazine for classical music. It ran as follows:
Subject
of my review of this month is Rubinstein's recording of Mozart's
piano concerto in B flat major, KV 595. I feel Rubinstein plays
here at his best. His touch is light and lyrical, the balance
with the orchestra is sublime, he expresses the depth of this
late Mozart concerto like only a very mature pianist can do...
Rubinstein played this in 1961 on a 275 cm concert grand (Steinway)
and the recording was made in the Royal Albert Hall in London.
In the next
issue of Gramophone there were several letters from readers. One
started like this: "Surely this record is not worth listening
to. I heard 1961 was a uncreative year for Rubinstein..." Another
reader wrote: "I am not going to buy the recording because
it can't be good. You said Rubinstein played on a 275 cm. concert
Grand and such an instrument is too big for the intimate concertos
that Mozart wrote..." A third letter ran as follows: "...I
don't agree with your opinion about Rubinstein's recording. I haven't
heard it, but as a true Frenchman I know that the acoustics in the
Royal Albert Hall are barbaric compared to those in Paris..."
Yet another letter said: "Thank you for your review. I feel
no need to listen to the recording, because hearing your description
is already music for my ears..."
The true reviewer
An absurd story?
Yes. Certainly. But we do the same when we argue about God. For
millennia atheists and believers have quarreled about the question
"Does God exist?" Non-religious people 'know' that God
doesn't exist, and give many arguments for it.
Religious
people, in their turn, answer that they deeply feel that God exists. Often they, too, have arguments
for this. Religious people 'know' that God wants us to pray in this
way and eat in that way, although none of them has directly heard
God say anything about it. They only heard priests, rabbis, imams
and other people who didn't perceive God either. Have you met someone
who has experienced God? The only reliable opinion about the Mozart
recording came from the person who had actually heard it.The only
person to talk about God is the one who has actually experienced
him.
Convincing
each other
All people who argue back and forth about God's existence, or God's
word and God's instructions to the faithful, are all people who
have never experienced him. In the best case have sincerely believing
people felt something deep and indescribable, but, usually, also
quite vague -no undeniable experience of the infinite, omnipotent
God that the religious scriptures describe. Moreover, they can't
give their experience to others. So how can these people convince
each other?
The proof of the pudding
You can't possibly
discover anything essential about Rubinstein's Mozart recordings,
if you haven't heard them.In the same way you can't find out anything
about God by just using intelligent arguments. They are theoretical.
The proof of the pudding is in eating it. The proof of God's existence
is in experiencing him.
Has anyone done this?
Yes. Most people
who argue so fiercely about God don't know this, but yes, there
are people who have experienced God.
Experiencing the Whole
Throughout history,
all over the world, people have developed techniques that made their
minds broader and more sensitive. Normally our mind is very restless,
and we don't perceive the subtle things that we could experience
with a calm mind. Now these researchers, these people who got control
over their restless mind and made it into a very sensitive receiver,
they experienced that there was something in the universe that they
hadn't felt before. Something that was bigger than all of us. Something
that was the total of all of us.
They felt that 'something'
was actually the wrong word. What they perceived was alive. It was
conscious and radiating a warmth that made the researchers feel
incredibly blissful. Most of these researchers didn't know each
other, and they used different words to describe their experience.
Some called this universal entity the Cosmic Mind, some
called it Universal Energy. Some called it God, Allah, Jehovah,
Christ Consciousness, Cosmic Consciousness, Supreme Father, or Nirvana.
They were all talking about the same experience*. They experienced
the Oneness of everything that exists, the connectedness of everything.
They felt that the universe was a whole --a Consciousness.
And they all felt a overpowering feeling of love. They said this
God was love.
Expanding the mind
This is what deeply religious people
have also said. However, often they can't feel the whole of God,
because God is bigger than our normal mind. They didn't have the
tools that the mystics, the mind researchers, had developed to expand
the mind. They felt only a shadow of the real God and had therefore
trouble convincing others. Neither did they have a systematic, scientific
tool to teach others to repeat their own experience.
A dream?
Now this God-experience,
that so many people have had throughout history, could be a dream,
a hallucination. Maybe the mind can play strange tricks upon us
even when we think that we know how to operate it. But all who had
this 'hallucination', changed deeply. Shy people became outgoing
and confident, closed people became open, egoistic people became
loving, hopeless people became full of joy and felt a new purpose
in their lives. People who had been chasing happiness for years
and years and found nothing that gave them lasting joy and peace,
got it simply by "hallucinating" about God. If this is
self-delusion, it is worth having it.
Finding our own truth
Should we, unenlightened
people, believe in God because somebody else has experienced him?No.
We don't need to believe
.
We can find out for ourselves. We can know. Those mystics, those
yogis who have experienced God, can teach us how we, too, can do
that. All those people who argue endlessly in favor or against God's
existence, can simply learn how to experience God. And that will
end the discussion completely.
Changing our lives Those who experienced
God and kept experiencing that feeling of love and security and
hope, became radiant people, full of inner peace. They felt that
the base of the universe was a loving Force. They felt that everything
and all events are connected. As a result they felt that everything
that happens, has a positive purpose. They had nothing to fear anymore
in life. Their life was often not easy on the outside, but they
had experienced something that kept them calm and positive inside.
Nothing could really shake them.
We can be like that.
The knowledge, the techniques are available. They have been tested
and developed during thousands of years. They are called meditation.
Meditation techniques are tools to calm and to expand the mind,
until we can comprehend the entity we want to experience.
When we open our ears, we can make the jump from discussing Mozart
to hearing Mozart. When we learn to open our mind, we can take the
leap from arguing about God to experiencing God. And then all discussions
become unnecessary.
* There is a difference between experiencing
God at the level of Saguna (with properties) and the level of Nirguna
(without properties). Nirvana and the Cosmic Consciousness belong
to the latter. |
