The Unknown Can Only Be Unknown

thought to myself how utterly stupid, how utterly pointless this whole event was. Soon after

arrived in the emergency room, it was determined that I was a lucky man. For even though my right arm had been badly broken and my right calf had been ripped open so severely the bone was completely exposed, there were no internal or spinal injuries. Briefly pausing to look directly into the face of death, 1 experi- enced shock and dismay at the thought that my life could have come to an end when it seemed like my work was only beginning. At the same time, I knew beyond any doubt in a way that is difficult to describe in words that it wasn't my time yet. "Your wife's going to be OK," one of the doctors told me after a half hour had passed. "She suffered a bad concussion and has a fracture in her upper jaw. But she's had a CAT scan and her brain hasn't been injured." 1 was relieved. After my arm had been set in a temporary cast, my leg was sewn up by an intern who told me not to look until he was finished. This took well over two hours. During this time, a few of my students were allowed to come in and sit with me. "The cab went straight through a red light, hit both of you and then ran into two cars going west on 53rd Street," one of my students said as the intern worked intently on my leg. "What happened to the cab driver?" 1 asked. "1 saw the police pulling him out through the window The Unknown Can Only Be Unknown M7 of his cal") coniplclcly covered in blood," he responded. don I know v\ hal happened aller ihat." "Those goddamn taxis!" a surgeon exclaimed, over- hearing our conversation. "Eighty percent o\ our trauma cases are from accidents involving taxis," he said irately. "Really?" I replied, expressing shock and disbelief. "Theres an epidemic," he went on to say. ''Last night a man came in who had been hit by a cab going seventy miles an hour down a side street. When he came in, his face was this big," he said, holding his hands about two feet away from each other. "He had no face left. Tomorrow morning we're going to do a sixteen-hour operation to try and put his face back together." Why had this happened? What did it all mean? On and off throughout the entire ordeal that had unexpectedly begun to unfold that evening I asked myself these questions. I tried to find some kind of meaning in it. 1 was seeking for a clue that would unlock the mystery of how and why something like this had occurred. The only meaning that 1 could possibly find was that 1 should slow down. But almost as soon as this conclusion popped into my head, the absurdity of it became apparent. Slow down? For whom? Wn what? And why? It made no sense. 1 was a \oung man who had so much energy. To do wiial? To do cxacth what it was that I had been doing. The passion liial welled up Irom insitlr me woukliil perniii me lo lead an\ other lile HH An ( huondiliondl KcUuionship U) /,i/i than the one I had been leading. The utter senselessness of it all, the random and indis- criminate nature of chaos that is a fundamental fact of hfe, was there staring me right in the face—naked and unre- pentant. There is a part of human nature that seeks to jus- tify each and every event that occurs, that always strains to find meaning even where there may not necessarily be any. In what 1 was facing into there was no satisfaction to be found. There was only a big question mark. I thought about how lucky my wife and I had been. One more inch and most likely one or both of us would have been dead or crippled beyond repair. I thought about the poor man who now, as the surgeon described to me, was lying upstairs in the hospital with a maze of tubes going into his throat, his face so disfigured that it was just a mass of flesh and bone. What did that mean? He had been hit, as I had, by a cab that was speeding and out of control. It takes courage to accept and come to terms with that which seems unjust and yet does not inherently contain any personal meaning or significance. In both cases, no doubt the cab drivers were at fault, but in a crazy and unfair world they had their own reasons for being out of control at that moment. Many of the taxi drivers in New York are new immigrants, a significant number of whom can hardly speak English. 1 was told shortly after the accident that the drivers live under a tremendous amount of pressure. They have to pay an extremely high daily fee to rent the cabs and The Unknown Can Onlv Be Unknown

therefore will drive as fast as they can in order to insure I he chance of making a decent profit. I was shocked to hear thai some, after working long hours, come away with only thirty-five dollars in their pocket. thought to myself about how spiritually minded people had a particularly strong need to find personal meaning and to give significance to almost everything that happened to them. My mind wandered back to an extraor- dinary evening that occurred two years earlier in Boulder, Colorado, the new-age/spiritual mecca nestled safely in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. 1 was giving a talk about the role that superstition plays in the minds of far too many seekers. 1 described to the audience how 1 had noticed that most modern-day practitioners of eastern spiritual disci- plines often unwittingly appropriated the superstitious beliefs of those traditions, along with the teaching or prac- tice that had attracted them in the first place. Then 1 spoke about the necessity of becoming free from superstition alto- gether if one wanted to be truly liberated from fear and ignorance. And 1 explained how superstitious beliefs were one ol the props that the ego used to protect itself against the overwhelming insecurity that one had to face when looking into the unfalhomahlc mystery of life and death. Ihen soniclhing strange happened. 1 suddenly fell a tension liiat was so thick it could he cut with a knife. looked oul across the room, taking in w ilii one glance the An Vmonditioual Rchuionship ro i/i two hundred or so faces that were staring at me. It was unmistakable. A wall of fear had risen up from the floor to the ceiling that was astounding in its intensity. It was visceral. All I could feel was: NO! 1 was stunned. The audience was largely made up of people who, compared to most, would be considered unusually free in their thinking, adventurous and especially open-minded. "What is it?" 1 thought. It was the stench of religion and superstition masquerading as informed, sophisticated, modern spiritual thinking. It was fear of the unknown! It was fear of not knowing—that means not being sure of what's out there, not being sure of what's in here and not being sure how it all works. Without the willingness to become deeply unsure about all these things, no room to actually find out can reveal itself. Indeed, I found it was seldom that a human being could sustain a condition of rare vulnerability and profound interest in what was true, while simultaneously remaining free from fixed ideas, superstitious beliefs and some form of religious fundamentalism.... That reminded me of an equally fascinating moment in Tel Aviv in 1992. Just after 1 had finished teaching one stormy December evening, 1 was informed that three ortho- dox Hasidic gentlemen, two of whom were young rabbis, wanted to speak with me. One of my students ushered them in, and after they all sat down in a row across from me The Unknown Can Only Be Unkmmn he sal in a chair facing ihcni. I remember al llial moment the oM sensation ol becoming aware ol the (act that he wasn't Jewish. This part ol my heritage,

rarely thought about. Both ol my parents had been atheists and therefore received no Jewish education whatsoever. I was not even bar mitzvahed, I could not speak Hebrew and my knowl- edge of Jewish history and tradition was less than minimal. 1 informed my Jewish brothers of this fact but they were not perturbed. 1 was intrigued by the unique nature of the situation and was curious to see how it would unfold. Our meeting was continuously punctuated by bursts of lightning and the crackling sound of thunder outside, at which times one of my Jewish brothers would immediately put his hands together, close his eyes and say a prayer out loud. They explained to me that thunder and lightning were reminders of the first cause, the explosion of creation. The prayer was an acknowledgment of that fact. At first they asked me about my history. They wanted to know what had happened to me and how I had come to be a spiritual teacher. After I responded to this question as simply and as quickly as 1 was able to, the\' made tiieir mission clear and unequivocal. What 1 was doing was nice, but I was Jewish. This was a fact that 1 had to be willing to lace and come to terms with. Because 1 was Jewish, they e.\|')lained to me, Judaism suited me more than am cnher path |M)ssibly could. It was in m\' bltHKl, it was in my genes, it was who I was. Then the\' went on to make clear to me An I 'Mi()M(/ifi(>Miil Rclduouship (o l.iji in many different ways how and why Judaism as a rehgious path was the highest, superior to Islam, Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism. One of the rabbis even told me how he had originally been a Christian priest and how fortunate he was to have come to Judaism. These were very learned and intelligent men and their arguments were intriguing. I was fascinated by their use of logic. But at the same time, I was disappointed by what seemed to be obvious rigidity and unabashed fundamental- ism. This tended to make our conversation together one- sided. Doing my best to remain open-minded, dared myself to consider the possibility that maybe they were right. As thunder and lightning continued to crackle and explode outside, 1 was waiting for a bolt of lightning to hit me between the eyes, the force of my Jewish heritage bring- ing me to my knees. I remember at that moment thinking, "What if it were all leading to this?" Half smiling to myself, I imagined what my students in Europe and America would think.... But nothing happened. "This may be your last chance," one of my Jewish brothers said to me with growing intensity. "Once you get on that plane tomorrow you don't know what will happen—you may never have this chance again!" Their insistence soon became annoying and I was amazed to see how such obvious passion and intelligence could coexist with such fanaticism. There was no room to meet. There was no room for the unknown.... The Unknown Can Only Be Unknown Then

remembered how during a recent trip lo London, a couple who were very taken with my teaching revealed it all lo nic once again. For twelve years they had been disciples ol the late Swami Muktananda, and like others who had been with him, had many powerful spiri- tual experiences. Eventually becoming disillusioned with their path and the integrity of their teacher, they left. Several months later they came to see me, which was also a powerful experience for them. Hearing me speak inces- santly about the need to question all of our ideas about the nature of reality if we wanted to be free thrilled them. After so many years of being told who and what God was, they finally discovered the freedom to find out for themselves. Suddenly night seemed to turn to day and all became pos- sible once again, as simultaneously things began to make sense that hadn't made sense before and new questions arose that pointed in the direction of yet uncharted waters. It was my emphasis on inquiry and insistence on integrity that moved them so deeply. Beaming like lightbulbs, their excitement was obvious. But after two weeks had passed, noticed that one of the lightbulbs began to grow dim. Then they asked to see mc privately What unfolded was extraordinary The woman, it seemed, was going through a crisis ol lailh. Suddenly the very thing that had excited her ihc most when she had met me— radical questioning— began to ter- rify her. That which had been recognized as the door lo An VmondiHomd RiUuionship to Lift liberation was now in the midst of her crisis seen as the door to hell itself. "Before 1 encountered your teaching," she said, "I knew where everything was. Everything made sense. Now 1 don't know what's true any longer." I was amazed. In spite of all the spiritual experiences she had, without the support of a preconceived, metaphysical model to tell her who she was, where she was and what it all meant, spiritually she was lost. She was like a small boat drifting listlessly on a vast ocean without an anchor. "Wait a minute,"

said. "That's what excited you so much about this teaching in the first place. You recognized how after all this time, without realizing it, you were hold- ing up the universe and everything in it with your mind even all the ideas you had about God, you suddenly began to question. That's what thrilled you, that's what excited you—seeing and going beyond, finding out for yourself what's true!" "Yes," she said. "But 1 no longer feel excited about it.

just feel terrified and confused." Then it all became clear. ''You're no longer sure if God exists! That's what the problem is, isn't it?" "That's right," she said. "But even if God doesn't exist," I said, "wouldn't you want to know the truth?" That prospect didn't seem to excite her.... The Unknown Can Only Be Unknown Il was now 5:45 in ihc iiioniiiig and I was lying quiclly in in\ hospital bed staring al ihc ceiling. A close sludcnl of mine who had been with me lor ihe enlire nighl had jusl lallen asleep in a chair next lo my bed, his head leaning gently against ihe wall. Aside from a dull ache in my right arm,

wasn't experiencing much pain. In the short time since the deep gash in my calf had been sewn up, the wound had become an object of fascination for me. In an odd way we had become friends. As I lay there, I began to wonder what kind of conclu- sions others would draw about the meaning and signifi- cance of what had happened the night before. Then

smiled to myself, thinking about the likelihood thai the conclusions my friends and supporters would draw would differ greatly from those of my detractors. Within twenty-four hours, I was informed that my stu- dents in America and Europe had been deeply affected by the accident. The results were twofold: first, their supersti- tious ideas were shaken to the core, as many admitted that they never thought that something like this could happen to me. But even more importantly, they discovered a renewed sense ol urgency in their own relationship to becoming free in this birth. They knew in a way they never had beloiv that the)' coukl take nothing for granted. The preciousness ol life, the immediacy o{ death and the unbcaiabK delicate possibilit) of enlightenment were revealed in a \\a\ that was ruthless, o\'er\\ helming and jirolound. ,'\m ( 'Mc('M(/i(i(»M(i/ Rchitiouship (0 Life