Awareness: The Gateway Toward Eden
1 July 1972 pm in
CHIDAGNI SWAROOPAM DHOOPAH
”TO CREATE THE FIRE OF AWARENESS IN ONESELF IS DHOOP, THE INCENSE.”
FOR PHILOSOPHY, many are the problems – infinite. But for religion there is only one problem,
and that problem is man himself. It is not that man has problems, but man is the problem. And why
is man the problem?
Animals are not problems. They are so unconscious. blissfully unconscious, ignorant, that there is
no possibility of there being any awareness of problems. Problems are there, but animals are not
aware. There are no problems for gods because they are totally conscious. When the mind is a
total consciousness, problems simply disappear like darkness. But for man there is anguish. The
very being of man, the very existence of man, is a problem, because man exists between these two
realms: the realm of the animals and the realm of the gods.
Man exists as a bridge between two infinities: the infinity of ignorance and the infinity of knowledge.
Man is neither animal nor Divine. Or, man is both – animal and Divine; that is the problem. Man is
a suspended existence – something incomplete, something which is still to be – a becoming, not a
being.
Animals have beings. Man is a becoming. He is not; he is only becoming. Man is a process.
The process is incomplete. It has left the world of ignorance and it has not reached the world of
knowledge. Man is in between. That creates the problem, the tension, the anguish and the constant
conflict.
There are only two ways to be at peace, to be without problems: one is to fall back, to regress, to fall
back to the world of animals; the other is to transcend, to go forward and to be a part of the Divine
Being. To be either animals or gods: these are the two alternatives.
To fall back is easy, but it is going to be a temporary thing – because once you have grown you
cannot fall back permanently. You can regress for a moment, but then you are again thrown forward,
because there really is no way to go back. There is really no possibility of falling back. You cannot
be a child again if you have become a young adult, and you cannot become young again if you have
become old. If you know something, then you cannot fall back to the state when you were ignorant.
You cannot go back. but for a moment you can forget the present and relive the past in your memory,
in your mind.
So man can regress to the animal level. It is blissful, but temporary. That is the reason why
intoxicants, drugs, alcohol, have such an appeal. When you become unconscious through some
chemical you have fallen back for a moment. For the time being you are not a man, you are not a
problem. You are again part of the world of animals, the unconscious existence. Then you are not a
man; that is why there are no problems.
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