Tomorrow Never Comes

When we say that all things in the universe are the creative activity of God, this is really like putting legs on a snake or painting the reflection on a mirror. It is not to be compared to seeing that activity as it is, although we say that it is Gods activity to draw attention to it in a particular way. But the trouble is that people spend so much energy looking for the God that they fail to see the activity, which is surely a sad state of affairs. What is this activity? The rivers flow; the flowers bloom; you walk down the street. Really we should need to say no more than this, but it is sometimes called the activity of God to point out a certain understanding to the sort of person who might retort, The rivers flow; the flowers bloom; you walk down the street---so what? So what? Well, what else are you looking for? Here is someone who eats out the grocers store and still complains that he is starving. But the word and concept God, Brahmin, Tao or what you will, was really introduced for such unappreciative stomachs. It is a way of emphasizing actual life to draw attention to it in much the same way as we underline words or put them in italics. Thus we call the universe the activity of God to induce the so-whatever to pay some attention and reverence to it, because he always bolts his life instead of rolling it appreciatively round his tongue. He always thinks of the second and third piece of cake while he is eating the first, and thus is never satisfied with any of them, and ends up with a thoroughly disordered digestion. This is called the vicious circle of having lunch for breakfast, or living for your future. But tomorrow never comes. The snow is falling on the windowsill. Is this the activity of God? Maybe. But if anyone watches it in order to see God he will surely be disappointed. No man hath seen God. No, and in looking for God he may fail to see the snow.

Thou art Brahman! But if you look in yourself in order to find Brahman, you will be very disappointed indeed. Yet all this trouble has started because people have taken a simple device much too far. The idea of God is a finger pointing the way to Reality, but when people try to join God and Reality, to identify the one with the other, to find the former in the latter, they are trying to join together two things that were never in need of being joined. This is like trying to make the eyes see themselves. Yet how do we arrive at the state where to watch the snow falling is so much one with God that we need no more introduce God than put red paint on the roses? Whence all this hurry to arrive at a state? Are you not already watching the snow? Are you not already face-to-face with the eternal mystery? Take it easy for a while; just watch the snow falling or the kettle boiling, and not so much hurry. Whats wrong with watching the snow or the kettle that anyone should want to arrive at a state? It is possible that any ordinary moron candor this just as well, and why not go him one better? How splendid is his ignorance! Like the stones, the grass, and the wind, he has Enlightenment without knowing it, and cannot appreciate his good fortune. Yet, he too, is a so-whatter, for he asks So what? when others go questioning for God. He is not free to watch the snow because he can do nothing else, and especially because he does not appreciate his freedom. But you are free to abandon yourself to actual life and to know that living in God in another name for this abandonment, for watching the snow and walking down the street. And you are free not only because you have once been a sowhatter, but also because you have been living in this abandonment all the time, without knowing it. If you had actually to get into it, to arrive at a state of abandonment where you had not previously been, you would not be free for this would involve going somewhere, arriving tomorrow at a place where you were not yesterday. And tomorrow never comes.

You say you do not feel this abandonment right now. What do you expect to feel? IS it not a feeling; it is feeling. It is not a thought; it is thinking. If it were a particular thought or feeling there could be coming into it and going out of it; but God is One and all-inclusive, and here there can be neither coming nor going, inside or outside. More than this, the great abandonment of Enlightenment does not depend even on feeling and thinking, consciousness or unconsciousness, living or dying, As the verse says:

This you can not describe, nor paint, Nor yet admire, nor feel.

It is your real self, that has no hiding-place. Destroy the universe, and it remains. No, you cant feel itbut then how can you know anything about it at all? Because you can use it and feel its use, just as the wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof but canst not tell whence it cometh not whither it goeth. What is it like to feel its use? This is told in another verse:

Sudden the cold airs swing. Alone, aloud A verse of bells takes wing. And flies with the cloud.