Western religions are more concerned with behavior, doctrine, and belief than with any transformation of the way in which we are aware of ourselves and of the world.
This is why the gospel is impossible: because we’re supposed to follow the example of Christ. When he says, for example, “Be not anxious for the morrow. Do not worry about what you shall eat, what you shall drink, and what you shall wear.” God’ll take care of you. Doesn’t he take care of the birds? Don’t the flowers grow? And they are wonderful. They’re crazy. They’re great. What are you worrying about? I’ve never heard a sermon preached on that. Never. Because it’s totally subversive; the economy would crash!
To know that you are God is another way of saying that you feel completely with this universe. You feel profoundly rooted in it and connected with it. You feel, in other words, that the whole energy which expresses itself in the galaxies is intimate. It is not something to which you are a stranger, but it is that with which you (whatever that is) are intimately bound up. That—in your seeing, your hearing, your talking, your thinking, your moving—you express that which it is which moves the sun and other stars. And if you don’t know that, if you don’t feel that—well, naturally, you feel alien, you feel a stranger in the world. And if you feel a stranger, you feel hostile. And therefore you start to bulldoze things about, to beat it up, and to try and make the world submit to your will, and you become a real troublemaker.
And science fiction wasn’t in it! You know? You go GOINNG, like that, and here is Cleopatra. And so on, you know? And then press this button—symphonic music in four-channel sound. Sixteen-channel sound. Anything, you know? All possible pleasures are available. And when, you know, you’re like—everybody’s dream of the Sultan in the palace—you suddenly notice there’s a button labeled “Surprise!” You push that—and here we are.
I am responsible for the way the world is.
The hereafter is, of course, now. Because if you will examine it closely, there is nowhen else than now. And if you want to make hell of it, you can make hell of it. If you want to make heaven of it, you can make heaven of it. Purgatory, purgatory. It’s all here. Always was, always will be.
The universe is fundamentally a system which creeps up on itself and then says, “Boo!” And then it laughs at itself for jumping. And, you see, every time it does it, it forgets that it did it before, so it never becomes a bore.
We are going ’round in circles. But, you see, going ’round in circles—as you may have observed by looking at the sky—is what the universe is doing.
People who don’t understand religion don’t know how to make the right kind of processions. There are those who go in military march, and they don’t understand it because their objective is to get there. There are those who dawdle like ducks, and they don’t understand because they are trying to be dignified. On the other hand, there are those who walk as if they had already arrived, and this is the way kings walk. Because a king is the center, and he is always where it’s at. Where it’s at is where the king is, by definition.
A lot of people think that omniscience is like knowing everything that’s in the Encyclopædia Britannica. That’s not omniscience, that’s intellectual elephantiasis.
You’ve got to ask yourself the question what it is that you really want. This is the most fundamentally important question.
The task of the actor on the stage is to come on so well that the audience thinks it’s real: so that he has them crying, so that he has them shaking with fear, so that he has them sitting on the edges of their chairs. Well, that’s just one ordinary Joe Dokes actor. But supposing the actor of the play is the real big actor—wow! That play would seem real.
It’s a question of taking responsibility for what happens.
A completely known future is past; you’ve had it!
Seeking’s alright; I mean, it’s a free country—but it invariably takes you away from what you’re looking for because every search supposes I will find it later, not now. In the next moment. That somehow, by some gimmick, by some exercise, by some process of transformation, I will later discover what I want. This is postponement.
Instead of getting into these infinite regressions of “what is beneath,” “what is behind”—look! It’s right out in front of you now. And when you catch on to that, now gets very profound.
What is important, surely, is this immediate now. Not why are we here, but what are we here? Unless you live in the eternal now consciously, you have no use for plans. Because people who live in the future, or for the future—when their plans come off, they’re not there enjoying them. They’re planning for another future. They never catch up with themselves.
