TAO THE PATHLESS PATH - EP#14

A man who lives an ordinary life – loves his wife, children, goes to work, is an ordinary human being condemned by the priests, by the so-called mahatmas. They exploit this same ordinary man, they live on him, they are suckers – but they are holy, they are spiritual. Their hands are never muddied because they don’t work, they don’t move into life. They remain far away; they are “holy.” And the man who lives is “unholy.”If you look deeply, you will find that the very word sacred is based on ego distinctions. What is sacred and what is not sacred? If God is everywhere, then everything is sacred. If God is in the rock and in the tree and in the man and in the woman, then everything is sacred. God is everywhere, in everything; God is the only reality – then how can anything not be divine? Even the Devil has to be divine. And that is the beauty of the word devil: it comes from the same root as divine. The Devil has to be divine otherwise he cannot be.So I want to dissolve all distinctions because through distinctions egos exist. So I don’t say what is sacred and what is ordinary. To me the ordinary is extraordinary, the mundane is sacred. Day-to-day life is holy life – hence I use the word esoteric as a ridiculous word. It hurts too many people because there are many people who think that if religion is obvious, then where will they find their ego trip? If everything is unhidden from the very beginning, then their ego has no challenge. Ego is challenged only by the difficult. This is my observation: if you find one hundred persons interested in religious inquiry, ninety-nine will be there only because God is almost impossible. That gives the thrill; that makes them feel good – that they are going to attain the impossible. Others are only working for the possible and they are working for the impossible. They feel very good; their ego is strengthened.Here with me, God is the only possibility; nothing else is possible. God is not impossible. He is just in front of you; he is not hidden. He is holding your hand; he is sitting by your side. He is in your child, in your wife, in your husband. He is in your friend, and he is in your foe. He surrounds you from everywhere: you exist in the ocean of God. But then the egoist feels dull. He says, “Then what is the point?” The egoist wants to go to the moon because it is impossible. The egoist wants to go to Mt. Everest because it is impossible.