"Devi's Questions"

WHAT IS THIS WONDER-FILLED UNIVERSE? We know the universe, but we never know it as wonder-filled. Children know, lovers know. Sometimes poets and madmen know. We do not know that the world is wonder-filled. Everything is just repetitive – no wonder, no poetry, just flat prose. It doesn’t create a song in you; it doesn’t create a dance in you; it doesn’t give birth to the poetry inside. The whole universe looks mechanical. Children look at it with wonder-filled eyes. When the eyes are wonder-filled, the universe is wonder-filled.

When you are in love, you again become like children. Jesus says, ”Only those who are like children will enter my kingdom of God.” Why? Because if the universe is not a wonder, you cannot be religious. The universe can be explained – then your approach is scientific. The universe is either known or unknown, but that which is unknown can be known any day; it is not unknowable. The universe becomes unknowable, a mystery, only when your eyes are wonder-filled.

Devi says, WHAT IS THIS WONDER-FILLED UNIVERSE? Suddenly there is the jump from a personal question to a very impersonal one. She was asking, WHAT IS YOUR REALITY? and then suddenly, WHAT IS THIS WONDER-FILLED UNIVERSE?

When form disappears, your beloved becomes the universe, the formless, the infinite. Suddenly Devi becomes aware that she is not asking a question about Shiva; she is asking a question about the whole universe. Now Shiva has become the whole universe. Now all the stars are moving in him, and the whole firmament and the whole space is surrounded by him. Now he is the great engulfing factor – ”the great encompassing.” Karl Jaspers has defined God as ”the great encompassing.”

When you enter into love, into a deep, intimate world of love, the person disappears, the form disappears, and the lover becomes just a door to the universe. Your curiosity can be a scientific one – then you have to approach through logic. Then you must not think of the formless. Then beware of the formless; then remain content with the form. Science is always concerned with the form. If anything formless is proposed to a scientific mind, he will cut it into form – unless it takes a form it is meaningless. First give it a form, a definite form; only then does the inquiry start.

In love, if there is form then there is no end to it. Dissolve the form! When things become formless, dizzy, without boundaries, every thing entering another, the whole universe becoming a oneness, then only is it a wonder-filled universe.

WHAT CONSTITUTES SEED? Then Devi goes on. From the universe she goes on to ask, WHAT CONSTITUTES SEED? This formless, wonder-filled universe, from where does it come? From where does it originate? Or does it NOT originate? What is the seed?

WHO CENTERS THE UNIVERSAL WHEEL? asks Devi. This wheel goes on moving and moving – this great change, this constant flux. But who centers this wheel? Where is the axis, the center, the unmoving center?

She doesn’t stop for any answer. She goes on asking as if she is not asking anyone, as if talking to herself.

WHAT IS THIS LIFE BEYOND FORM PERVADING FORMS?

HOW MAY WE ENTER IT FULLY, ABOVE SPACE AND TIME, NAMES AND DESCRIPTION?

LET MY DOUBTS BE CLEARED. The emphasis is not on questions but on doubts: LET MY DOUBTS BE CLEARED! This is very significant. If you are asking an intellectual question, you are asking for a definite answer so that your problem is solved. But Devi says, LET MY DOUBTS BE CLEARED. She is not really asking about answers. She is asking for a transformation of her mind, because a doubting mind will remain a doubting mind whatsoever answers are given. Note it: a doubting mind will remain a doubting mind. Answers are irrelevant. If I give you one answer and you have a doubting mind, you will doubt it. If I give you another answer, you will doubt that also. You have a doubting mind. A doubting mind means you will put a question mark to anything.

So answers are useless. You ask me, ”Who created the world?” and I tell you ”A” created the world. Then you are bound to ask, ”Who created ’A’?” So the real problem is not how to answer questions. The real problem is how to change the doubting mind, how to create a mind which is not doubting – or, which is trustful. So Devi says, LET MY DOUBTS BE CLEARED