Tantra: The Supreme Understanding

CHAPTER 1

The Ultimate Experience
11 February 1975 am in Buddha Hall

IN HIS SONG OF MAHAMUDRA, TILOPA SAYS:
MAHAMUDRA IS BEYOND ALL WORDS AND SYMBOLS, BUT FOR YOU, NAROPA, EARNEST
AND LOYAL, MUST THIS BE SAID:
THE VOID NEEDS NO RELIANCE, MAHAMUDRA RESTS ON NOUGHT. WITHOUT MAKING
AN EFFORT, BUT REMAINING LOOSE AND NATURAL, ONE CAN BREAK THE YOKE – THUS
GAINING LIBERATION.

The experience of the ultimate is not an experience at all – because the experiencer is lost. And
when there is no experiencer, what can be said about it? Who will say it? Who will relate the
experience? When there is no subject, the object also disappears – the banks disappear, only the
river of experience remains. Knowledge is there, but the knower is not.
That has been the problem for all the mystics. They reach to the ultimate, but they cannot relate
it to those who are following. They cannot relate it to others who would like to have an intellectual
understanding. They have become one with it. Their whole being relates it, but no intellectual
communication is possible. They can give it to you if you are ready to receive; they can allow it to
happen in you if you also allow it, if you are receptive and open. But words won’t do, symbols won’t
help; theories and doctrines are of no use at all.

The experience is such that it is more like an experiencing than like an experience. It is a process –
and it begins, but it never ends. You enter into it, but you never possess it. It is like a drop droppingin the ocean, or, the ocean itself dropping into the drop. It is a deep merger, it is oneness, you simply
melt away into it. Nothing is left behind, not even a trace, so who will communicate? Who will come
back to the world of the valley? Who will come back to this dark night to tell you?
All the mystics all over the world have always felt impotent as far as communication is concerned.
Communion is possible, but communication, no. This has to be understood from the very beginning.
A communion is a totally different dimension: two hearts meet, it is a love affair. Communication is
from head to head; communion is from heart to heart, communion is a feeling. Communication is
knowledge: only words are given, only words are said, and only words are taken and understood.
And words are such: the very nature of words is so dead that nothing alive can be related through
them. Even in ordinary life, leave aside the ultimate, even in ordinary experiencing when you have
a peak moment, an ecstatic moment, when you really feel something and become something, it
becomes impossible to relate it in words.

In my childhood I used to go early in the morning to the river. It is a small village. The river is very
very lazy, as if not flowing at all. And in the morning when the sun is not yet arisen, you cannot see
whether it is flowing, it is so lazy and silent. And in the morning when there is nobody, the bathers
have not come yet, it is tremendously silent. Even the birds are not singing in the morning – early,
no sound, just a soundlessness pervades. And the smell of the mango trees hangs all over the river.
I used to go there, to the furthest corner of the river, just to sit, just to be there. There was no need
to do anything, just being there was enough, it was such a beautiful experience to be there. I will
take a bath, I will swim, and when the sun will arise I will go to the other shore, to the vast expanse
of sand, and dry myself there under the sun, and lie there, and sometimes even go to sleep.

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