The Guilt Of Doubt

QUESTION:

LATELY SEVERAL FRIENDS HAVE ASKED ME IF I WAS SCEPTICAL TOWARDS SANNYAS,

THE ASHRAM AND YOU. I HAD TO ADMIT TO THE TRUTH AND SAID, ’YES, AT TIMES I AM.’

THIS LEFT ME WITH A FEELING OF GUILT. HAVE I COMMITTED SOME UNFORGIVABLE,

SACRILEGIOUS CRIME OR IS IT NATURAL TO BE SCEPTICAL OUT OF BEING SURE? I DO

NOT KNOW IF YOU ARE ENLIGHTENED. I CAN ONLY FEEL YOUR BEAUTY AND TRUST.

Doubt Arises trust

Bhava, faith is afraid of doubt – afraid because it has repressed it. And whatsoever you repress

you will remain afraid of, because it is always there deep inside you, waiting to take revenge, and

whenever the opportunity arises it is going to explode in you with vengeance. Your faith sits on an

earth-quake and every day the doubt becomes stronger, because every day you have to repress it.

Sooner or later it is more than you can repress, it is more than your faith. Then it simply throws your

faith away.

But trust is not afraid of doubt because trust is not against doubt. Trust uses doubt, trust knows how

to use the energy contained in doubt itself. That’s the difference between faith and trust. Faith is

false; it creates a pseudo kind of religion, it creates hypocrites. Trust has a sublime beauty and truth

about it. It grows through doubt, it uses doubt as manure, it transforms doubt. Doubt is a friend,

doubt is not the enemy.

And unless your trust has moved through many doubts it will remain impotent. From where will it

gather strength, from where will it gather integration? If there is no challenge it is bound to remain

weak. Doubt is a challenge. If your trust can respond to the challenge, can befriend your doubt,

it will grow through it. And you will not be a split person – deep down doubting and just on the

surface faithful, believing – you will have a kind of unity, you will be an individual, undivided. And

that individuality is what is called ’soul’ in the old religions.

The soul is arrived at through doubt, not through believing. Belief is just a mask: you are hiding your

original face. Trust is a transformation: you are becoming more illumined. And because you are

using doubt as a challenge, as an opportunity, there is never any repression. Slowly slowly doubt

disappears, because its energy has been taken by trust.

Doubt, in fact, is nothing but trust growing. Doubt is trust on the way. Always think of doubt in

such a way: that doubt is trust on the way. Doubt is inquiry and trust is the fulfillment of the inquiry.

Doubt is the question and trust is the answer. The answer is not against the question – there will be

no possibility of any answer if there is no question – the question has created the occasion for the

answer to happen.

So, please, never feel guilty around me. I am utterly against any kind of guilt. Guilt is absolutely

wrong.

But it has been used by the priests and the politicians and the puritans down the ages – for centuries.

Guilt is a strategy, a strategy to exploit people, to make them feel guilty. Once you have succeeded

in making them feel guilty, they will be your slaves. Because of the guilt they will never be integrated

enough. Because of the guilt they will remain divided. Because of the guilt they will never be able

to accept themselves, they will be always condemning. Because of the guilt they will be ready to

believe in anything, just to get rid of guilt. They will do anything – any nonsense, any nonsense ritual

they will perform – just to get rid of the guilt. Down the centuries the priest has made people guilty.

All the so-called religions exist on your guilt, they don’t exist on the existence of God. They have

nothing to do with God and God has nothing to do with them. They exist on your guilt.

You are afraid, you know that you are wrong: you have to seek the help of somebody who is not

wrong. You know that you are unworthy: you have to bow down, you have to serve those who

are worthy. You know that you cannot trust your-self, because you are divided. Only an undivided

person can trust himself, his feeling, his intuition. You are always shaking, trembling inside; you need

somebody to lean on. And once you lean on somebody, once you become dependent on somebody,

you remain childish, you never grow. Your mind age remains that of a child. You never attain to any

maturity, you never become independent. And the priest does not want you to become independent.

Independent, and you are lost to him; dependent, and you are his whole market-place, his whole

business.

I am utterly against any kind of guilt. Remember it always: if you start feeling guilty about something

around me, then you are doing it on your own, then you are still carrying the voices of your parents,

the priests within you; you have not yet heard me, you have not yet listened to me. I want you to be

totally free of all guilt.

Once you are free of guilt you are a religious person. That’s my definition of a religious person. Use

doubt – doubt is beautiful – because it is only through doubt that the trust attains to maturity. How

can it be otherwise? It has to be beautiful – it is only through doubt that the trust becomes centred.

It is only through doubt that the trust flowers, blooms. It is the dark night of doubt that brings the

golden morning closer to you. The dark night is not against the dawn, the dark night is the womb for

the dawn. The dawn is getting ready in the very being of the dark night.

Think of doubt and trust as complementary: just as man and woman are, just as night and

day, summer and winter, life and death. Always think of those pairs in terms of inevitable

complementariness, never think in terms of opposition. Even though on the surface they seem

to be opposed, deep down they are friends, helping each other. Think of a person who has no trust:

he will not have any doubt either, because he has nothing to doubt about. Just think of a person who

has no trust at all – how can he doubt, what has he to doubt? Only a man of trust has something to

doubt. Because you trust, hence you doubt. Your doubt proves your trust, not otherwise. Think of a

man who cannot doubt – how can he trust? If he is even incapable of doubt, how can he be capable

of trust?

Trust is the highest form of the same energy; doubt is the lowest rung of the same ladder and trust is

the highest rung of the same ladder. Use doubt, use it joyfully. There is no need to feel guilty at all.

It is perfectly human and natural to feel great doubts about me sometimes and great doubts about

what is going on here. It is perfectly human – there is nothing extraordinary in it. If it doesn’t happen,

then something seems to be abnormal. But remember that one has to reach to the trust. Use doubt,

but don’t forget the goal, don’t forget the highest rung of the ladder. Even if you are standing on

the lowest, look at the highest. You have to reach there. In fact, doubt is pushing you towards that

because nobody can feel at ease with doubt.

Have you not watched it? When there is doubt there is uneasiness. Don’t change that uneasiness,

don’t interpret that uneasiness as guilt. Yes, uneasiness is there, because doubt means you are

uncertain of the ground you are standing on, doubt means you are ambiguous, doubt means you

are not yet a unity. How can you be at ease? You are a crowd, you are not one person, you are

many persons. How can you be at ease? There must be great noise inside you, one part pulling you

in this direction and another part in that direction. How can you grow if you are pulled in so many

directions simultaneously? There is bound to be unease, tension, anguish, anxiety.

Nobody can live with doubt and in doubt. Doubt pushes you towards trust, doubt says, ’Go and find

a place where you can relax, where you can be totally.’ Doubt is your friend. It simply says, ’This is

not the home. Go ahead, search, seek, inquire.’ It creates the urge to inquire, to explore.

Once you start seeing doubt as a friend, as an occasion, not against trust but pushing you towards

it, suddenly, guilt disappears. There is great joy. Even when you doubt, you doubt joyously, you

doubt consciously, and you use doubt to find trust. It is absolutely normal.

You say, ’I do not know if you are enlightened.’

How can you know it? There is no way to know it unless you become enlightened. How can you

know what has happened to me unless it happens to you too? It is absolutely right to feel that you

cannot trust me sometimes. The miracle is that sometimes you can trust. Just those few moments

will be enough. Don’t be worried. Trust has such infinite power. Trust is just like light and doubt is

like darkness.

Just a small candle of trust is enough to destroy the darkness of ages. The darkness cannot say,

’I have lived in this place for so long, I cannot leave so easily and I cannot leave only because of

this small candle.’ Even a small candle is more potential than the darkness of ages, of centuries, of

thousands of lives. But it will have to go... once the light is there it has to go.

Those few moments of trust – let them be far and few in between, don’t be worried – they are

enough to destroy all your doubts, slowly slowly. And by ’destroying’ I mean just releasing the

energy contained in doubt. Just breaking the shell called doubt... and deep inside you will find the

pure energy to trust. Once it is released more and more trust will be available to you.

You say, ’I do not know if you are enlightened.’

Good that you don’t believe. If you start believing you will stop seeking. A believer never moves – he

has already believed. That’s why there are millions of people worshipping in the churches, temples,

mosques, GURUDWARA... But their worship is out of belief; because it is out of belief, those millions

of people remain irreligious. They don’t search for God, they don’t seek God – they have already

accepted. Their acceptance is lame; they have not struggled for it, they have not earned it. You

have to fight, you have to struggle, you have to earn. Nothing is without a price in life; you have to

pay the price. They have not paid the price. And they think that just by worshipping in a temple they

will attain? They are utter fools, they are wasting their time! All their worship is just an illusion.

The really religious person cannot believe; he searches. Because he cannot believe, he remains in

doubt, and nobody can be at rest with doubt. One has to seek and search and to find. Doubt goes

on gnawing at your being, goes on goading you: ’Search, seek, find, and don’t be contented before

you have found.’

Good that you cannot believe. Only remember: there is no need to believe and there is no need to

disbelieve. And that’s happening. And I am happy.

You say, ’I can only feel your beauty and trust.’

That’s all that is needed. That’s enough, more than enough; that will become the boat to the other

shore. If you can feel my love, if you can feel my trust in you, if you can feel my hope in you, if you

can see that something beautiful has happened although you don’t know what exactly it is – you

cannot define it and you cannot explain it – but you can even feel that something of the beyond...

That’s what beauty is: beauty is always of the beyond. Whenever you see a rose flower and you say,

’It is beautiful,’ what do you mean? You say you have seen something of the beyond. Something

invisible has become visible to you; you cannot prove it. If somebody else standing by your side

denies seeing any beauty in the rose, you cannot prove it to him – there is no way. You will just have

to shrug your shoulders. You will say, ’Then nothing can be done about it. I see and you don’t see,

and that is that.’

You cannot go to the scientist to dissect the rose and find whether it contains beauty or not. It does

not contain it; the beauty is not contained in the rose. The beauty is from the beyond, it simply

dances on the rose. Those who have eyes, they will see; those who don’t have eyes, they will not

see. You can take the rose to the chemist; he will dissect it, he will find everything that is in the rose

but beauty is not in the rose. The rose was just an occasion for beauty to descend from the beyond.

The rose was just a screen for the beauty to play upon. The rose was just a stage for the drama to

happen; it is not the drama itself. You take the rose away, you dissect the rose, you cut it into pieces,

you find all the constituents – but beauty is not a constituent of the rose, although without the rose

the beauty cannot descend.

It is just like the sun rises in the morning and the rays are dancing on the lotus pond. You don’t see

the rays themselves, you can’t see. That’s what THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER says:

you can’t see essence, you can’t see life, all that you see are only consequences .

Have you ever seen the light itself? No, you have never seen it. If you think you have seen light

itself, you have not thought about it, you have not pondered over it. You have seen lighted things,

you have not seen light itself. You have seen the lighted pond, you have seen the lighted lotus, you

have seen the lighted face of your woman or man or your child, you have seen the lighted world, but

have you seen the light itself? If there is nothing for the light to play upon, you will not be able to see

it.

That’s why the moment the astronauts go away from the earth, even in the daytime, the sky is dark,

utterly dark, because you cannot see light itself and there is nothing there for the light to play upon.

Hence the infinite sky is dark. You see light on the stars because stars become the playground for

the light, but surrounding the stars it is all darkness because there is nothing to obstruct the light.

And unless light is obstructed you cannot see it.

You cannot see enlightenment, you can see only the consequence of it. You cannot see what has

happened to me, but you can see something has happened, something like x. There is no need to

call it enlightenment either, just x will do. Something mysterious has happened. And the more you

feel me, the more you will become aware of it; and when you become more aware of it, something

inside you will start responding to it. What has happened to me can trigger a process in you. It

cannot be the cause of your enlightenment, remember; your enlightenment will not be the effect of

my enlightenment. There is no cause/effect relationship between the Master and the disciple, there

is a totally different kind of relationship.

Just in this century Carl Gustav Jung was able to penetrate into the mystery of that different kind of

relationship. He calls it ’synchronicity’. Cause and effect is a scientific relationship; synchronicity is a

poetic relationship. By ’synchronicity’ what is meant is that if something has happened somewhere

and you become available to it, you remain vulnerable to it, something can start responding in you

parallel to it. But it has not been the cause of it, it cannot cause it.

It is just like somebody is playing beautiful music and a great desire arises in you to dance. It is not

caused by the music, it is a parallel response in you. Something that was fast asleep in you – the

energy to dance – has been hit; not caused, just hit, provoked, inspired. It is synchronicity. If it is a

cause then it will happen to everybody.

For example, you are here, three thousand sannyasins are present. I am available to all of you, but

you are not all available to me or, even if you are available to me, you are available in different ways.

The quality differs, the quantity differs. If I can be a cause of your enlightenment, then all three

thousand of you will become enlightened. But I am not the cause, I can only become a catalytic

agent. But for that, you have to be open towards me. If I were a cause, there would be no need

for you to be open to me. Fire burns whether the wood is open to it or not; it is a cause. Water

evaporates at hundred-degree heat; whether it is open to the heat or not doesn’t matter.

Cause and effect is a blind relationship, it is materialistic: it is between matter and matter. But

synchronicity is not material, it is spiritual, it is poetic, it is a love affair. If you become open to me,

something will start happening to you. And remember, I am not the cause of it. You need not thank

me, you need not be grateful to me. I am not the cause of it. If anybody is the cause of it it is you,

because you opened towards me. I could not have done it alone. There is no doing on my part. I am

present, all that is needed is that you also be present here and something will start happening. And

nobody is doing it, neither I am doing it nor are you doing it. I am available, you become available,

and these two energies fall into a love affair, they start dancing together.

So don’t be worried that you cannot know about my enlightenment.

You say, ’I can only feel your beauty and trust.’

This is enough. This will do. And once it has happened in you, you will know. To know a Buddha

one has to become a Buddha, to know a Christ one has to be a Christ.