Daily Theosophy

He was welcomed by the abbot – who had the same kindness and unconquerable stability as the man who had ordered him with one pointing finger to go in this direction. Immediately he trusted the Abbott completely – no doubt would ever rise in his mind concerning this man. Immediately Mustafa knew that he had found his home.

(172)

(in the monastery)

The Abbot asked Mustafa: “What motivated you to come here, and to undertake this long and arduous journey?” The Abbott knew very well what motivated Mustafa, but still he wanted to hear it from his own lips. Mustafa answered: “There is but One God, who is everywhere, who is greater than any being in the Universe, and He is the Creator of all creatures, their minds, and the source of their consciousness. I want to understand God” The Abbot merely answered: “There is no God. God exists only in your mind. Nothing was ever created. Forget about your God.” Then he went to his room.

This was the very last answer he could have expected. Mustafa had, in one sentence, given vent to his highest thoughts and feelings, his deepest conviction and devotion. He had spoken out his heart in absolute confidence. And in one sentence of the Abbot everything, EVERYTHING, his whole life, was scattered, destroyed, reduced to nil. ‘No God? – No Creator?’ No intelligent Being? Mustafa’s mental universe seemed to collapse, break down in useless dust particles. The Abbot knew that he had to give Mustafa this great test, and also how much he would have to hurt him. But it had to be done. Mustafa had to start from scratch, without any solid basis.

Mustafa went through the deepest crisis in his whole life. He found nothing to support himself. He became so desperate that noting at all in and around the monastery interested him anymore. He didn’t know whether he was alive or dead. ‘Was this where he had made his trip for, for which he had face every possible hardship – was this the result of his years of meditation in the hot desert?’

It lasted two weeks before Mustafa saw the Abbot again. In the meantime he had met nobody else except a very kind assistant who always smiled, but said nothing, bringing food – he had talked with nobody. The Abbot only said: “Who created your God?” Mustafa knew no answer. He had always thought that God was self-created. The next time the Abbot said in passing by: “What was before the beginning?” Again Mustafa knew no answer. God, in his view, had been eternal, so He had been without beginning. He had not been created. Then a light went up in his mind: ‘If God was not created and had no beginning, there could not be creation – because how can the uncreated, beginningless All ever create creation?

God didn’t exist. But creation exists: he could see that with his own eyes every moment. He himself was constantly creating thoughts. And nature was in a continuous process of bringing out new forms. Wasn’t that creation?

Of course God did not exist. If He (or She or IT) exists, that must be somewhere. Somewhere would not be everywhere. So God would be limited to a place. Even if one regarded God as eternal and omnipresent, these ideas were no more than human mental constructions, even though that mind fancied that God was beyond concept or construction. How could God ever be ‘beyond’ illusion, if He were absolute Truth and Reality? There can be no ‘beyond’. And if God existed, then where was non-existence? Mentally Mustafa understood, after he overcome his first shock, that God as he had been taught could not exist. Also God other than he had been taught could not exist – for the same reason. He had to completely let go of the fantasy of a Creator, a Being somewhere, even if that Being was One Being. What was, just was; what was not, just was not. Consciousness was – his consciousness, all consciousness. Or was consciousness itself an illusion? Yes, human consciousness is created by the human mind, which is an illusion. Mustafa’s mind stopped working. It was scattered to pieces. There was no longer a higher or lower, or discursive or dual or non-dual mind, no good mind, no bad mind. No super-mind or subconscious mind. Not even a non-thinking mind. He had crossed the bridge of the mind and had reached the other shore, and needed his mind no longer. All stress and worries had vanished. Still he WAS. All problems had vanished. There was no God, no reaching of God, no unity with God, no Grace of God, no properties of God, no help of God. They didn’t exits. Even he himself had vanished, yet he was. … a god, not God. For now.

Mustafa had arrived more than ten years before Shano came and had been taught about life and death, about the nature of the mind and the universe. Mustafa had seen snow for the first time in the scary mountains