To go through into heaven, you have to be not you, because “wither I go, you cannot come.” You have to leave yourself behind in order to get in there. But how can that possibly be done? How can one give one’s self up? How can one, by one’s own power, completely abandon one’s self to the love of God? That’s the puzzle. That’s what has to be tried. And all the disciplines that we undertake, all the devotions that we make, all the meditative exercises that we do, are efforts to give ourselves up.
I get one of these manuals of devotion (you know, little black books with pink edges), and it says, “Jesus, I love you. Jesus, I give my heart to you. Jesus, I adore you.” And you kneel down before the blessed sacrament and you say all this, and you know you’re a complete phony, if you’re honest. Why you’re saying this is because you think that’s what you ought to do, and you want to be on the side of the big battalions. I mean, if God the Father is the boss of the universe, you’d better get with it! Otherwise, you know, you’re going to go to hell.
Preaching religion—telling people that they ought to behave this way and they ought to behave that, that they should have faith, that they should love one another—produces nothing but hypocrisy.
When you find out that there’s absolutely nothing you can do to improve yourself spiritually, to be more loving of God, to be less defensive of self, there’s nothing you can do—there’s a message there. Very, very important message. The reason you can’t do anything is that the “you” that you think you are doesn’t exist. It has a certain existence—what we call the ego—but it exists in the same way as the equator exists, or a line of longitude, or an inch: it is a social institution, a convention. But it is not an effective agent, it is not an effective energy. And that’s why you can’t do anything about it.
The organism is inseparable from a particular environment—an environment of other people, of plants, animals, air, heat, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, forever. And if you fully felt your organism, if you experienced it thoroughly, you would know that it was inseparable from the entire universe: that the entire universe is simply your extended body.
You are watching, and you realize there’s nobody watching, but the universe is sort of watching itself through your eyes. You’re an aperture through which the universe is aware of itself.
In this moment you are witnessing the creation of the universe.