And unless the divine is your experience, the belief is futile. It is not going to help you; on the contrary it may hinder you, because just by believing in it you deceive yourself that somehow you have known it. The belief becomes the deception. It doesn’t become an opening, it closes you. It makes you know-ledgeable without knowing it; it gives you a feeling of knowledge without any intimate experience of it.
Remember, untruth is not such a great hindrance as the belief in the truth. If you believe you stop seeking; if you believe you have already taken it for granted. It cannot be so. You will have to pass through a mutation; really you will have to die and be born again. Unless the seed that you are dies, the new life cannot sprout out of it. Belief becomes a barrier; it gives you a false assurance that you have known – but that is all you have got. Belief is just borrowed. A Buddha says something, a Jesus says something, or a Mohammed, and then we go on following it, believing in it. This can create such a situation within you that the distant will appear close and the closest will continue to appear distant – it creates an illusory mind…
Sometimes it happens that the closest, the nearest, is so obvious that you can forget it. The nearest is so near that you cannot look at it, because even to look at something a certain distance is needed, space is needed. And there is no space between you and the divine; there is no space between the fish and the ocean – no gap. The fish is part of the ocean, just like a wave; or the ocean is just the infinite spread of the being of the fish. They are not two; they exist together, their being is joined together. Their bodies may appear different but their inner spirit is one, it is unitary.
The same is the situation with us. We go on asking about God – whether God exists or not – and we argue much for and against. Some believe, some disbelieve; some say it is just a myth and some say it is the only truth, but they all depend on scriptures, nobody has an immediate experience.
When I say immediate experience I mean experience that has grown into you, or into which you have grown… intimate, so intimate that you cannot feel where you end and that experience begins. God cannot be an object of any search; he remains the very subjectivity. You are not going to find him somewhere because he is everywhere, and if you start looking for him somewhere you will not find him anywhere. All that is, is divine. God just means the whole existence, the totality, the ocean that surrounds you, the ocean of life…
If the truth is somewhere in the future then you are bound to be tense, then you are bound to be worried, a deep anxiety is bound to be there. Who knows whether it will happen in the future or not? The future is uncertain; you may miss it – you have been missing so long. But if the divine is here and now, the very existence, the very breath, the very you, then there is no uncertainty, then there is no worry, no anxiety.
Even if you go on missing, you cannot miss him. You may have missed him for so many many lives, but really you have never missed him because he has always been hidden there, waiting for you to turn within. You have been looking outside, you have been focused on the objective world, and that which you are seeking is hidden within, it is your subjectivity.
God is not an object; God doesn’t exist as an object. Whatsoever theologicians say, they are absolutely wrong – God doesn’t exist as an object. You cannot worship, because he is hidden in the worshipper. You cannot pray, because he is hidden there from where the prayer arises. You cannot seek him without, because he is your withinness.