Raso Waisah - God is Juice
In India god is thought to be a
taste, a taste on the tongue. God is not thought to be a thought but a very
tangible taste, and because it is a taste it cannot be expressed in words. It is
impossible to reduce it to words.
One of the most famous statements of the Upanishads is 'raso waisah': god is
juice. It has tremendous meaning - it means that god has to be drunk, it means
that god is like wine, that one has to become a drunkard, that only by drinking
god does one come to know god - not by thinking about him, not by contemplating
him, not by reading about him. The people who go on about and about, go on round
and round.
One has to be thirsty for god... just as a man lost in the desert is thirsty and
for whom even a single drop of water will look like nectar. When one is thirsty
for god then things start happening. Then it is no more an intellectual question
- it becomes an existential quest. Then it is a question of life and death, not
a curiosity only. All that is implied in the word 'raso'....
And certainly when god descends into one's being it comes like nectar pouring
from the beyond. It satisfies every pore of your being, every cell of your
being. All thirst disappears, and forever.
Think of god as taste, as experience, as something to be drunk, as something to
be eaten, digested, so that it becomes part of you. Thoughts never become part
of you; they remain undigested food. They may gather as fat in your being but
they don't make you more vital; they dull people, they make people
unintelligent.
It is a strange phenomenon but you can watch it everywhere: the more
knowledgeable a person is, the more unintelligent you will find him, because he
does not need intelligence; he has a substitute. His knowledge works for him. He
can afford to lose intelligence. Knowledge starts pretending to be intelligence.
Knowledge is cheap and intelligence is an arduous effort. To grow into
intelligence is to go through a fire.
So thoughts never make one intelligent, never make one more alive, never bring
one closer to god or reality. In fact the more thoughts you have, the farther
away you are from reality. So never think of god as a thought, never think of
god as a word. It is not! And because we have been thinking of god as a thought,
as a word, as a concept, great misunderstanding has arisen and people go on
wasting their whole life in theological studies, in philosophical nonsense.
God is like love... exactly the same juice as love is. One has to fall into love
to know it - there is no other way - and sannyas has to be a falling in love
with god, for god, not a question but a quest.
And if the heart burns, longs intensely, passionately, the cloud of his nectar
starts gathering around you and one day when you are really thirsty, it showers.
And a single shower of his energy, and you are no more the same. It washes from
you all impurities that you gather down through so many lives; it simply
cleanses you of all dirt that naturally gathers on the mirror of consciousness.
Suddenly one is reborn, fresh, young, totally new, and only those new eyes are
capable of seeing the beauty and the benediction of existence.
A short video illustrates above words:
- Download this video (25 MB, .mp4-file, right-click and 'save link as')