People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive. So that the life experiences that we have on the purely physical plane will have resonances within that are those of our own innermost being and reality.
It’s in the biblical tradition—all the way; in Christianity and in Islam as well—this business of not being with nature. And we speak with a sort of derogation of the “nature religions.” You see, with that fall in the garden [of Eden], nature was regarded as corrupt. There’s a myth for you that corrupts the whole world for us. And every spontaneous act is sinful, because nature is corrupt and has to be corrected, must not be yielded to. You get a totally different civilization, a totally different way of living according to your myth as to whether nature is fallen or whether nature is itself a manifestation of divinity. And the spirit being the revelation of the divinity that’s inherent in nature.
To be in a place that never heard of the fall in the garden of Eden. To be in a place where I can read in one of the Shinto texts, “The processes of nature cannot be evil.” When every impulse, every natural impulse, is not to be corrected, but to be sublimated, you know? To be beautified.
When you know this, then you’ve identified with the creative principle yourself, which is the God-power in the world, which means in you. It’s beautiful.
Whatever you do is evil for somebody.
Eternity isn’t some later time. Eternity isn’t a long time. Eternity has nothing to do with time. Eternity is that dimension of here and now which thinking in time cuts out. This is it. If you don’t get it here, you won’t get it anywhere. And the experience of eternity right here and now is the function of life.
All of this as it is is as it has to be, and it is a manifestation of the eternal presence in the world. The end of things always is painful. Pain is part of there being a world at all.
I will participate in the game. It’s a wonderful, wonderful opera—except that it hurts. And that wonderful Irish saying, you know, “Is this a private fight, or can anybody get into it?” This is the way life is. And the hero is the one who can participate in it decently—in the way of nature, not in the way of personal rancor, revenge, or anything of the kind.
Every mythology, every religion, is true in this sense. It is true as metaphorical of the human and cosmic mystery. But when it gets stuck to the metaphor, then you’re in trouble.
Heaven and hell are within us, and all the gods are within us. This is the great realization of the Upanishads of India, already in the ninth century B.C.: all the gods, all the heavens, all the worlds are within us. They are magnified dreams.
