Please Don't Clone the Truth

Can you clone the Truth? Can you organize the Truth, believe in the Truth, or turn the Truth into a technique? Please don't try to package and sell the experience of Truth. Because if you do, you will kill it...

Truth is a direct encounter, not a fact or a teaching. Truth can never become the content of your mind, because Truth is consciousness itself, not what consciousness contains.

Truth is utterly spontaneous, flowing gracefully and ever-dissolving. Truth is the melting of all boundaries and containers in one ever-expanding formless moment.

That is why Truth cannot be institutionalized by a spiritual movement or a church. As soon as we try to packaged and program the Truth, it ceases to be true.

Truth awakens in a small community of equals, a spiritual family, not an institution. They gather around an ecstatic Friend, who is a candle of awakening. The Friend passes the flame of Truth to others through innocent spiritual friendship. Each member of the circle catches the flame of Truth, like a divine madness. Then each burns in their own unique life of Grace, conforming to no doctrine, imitating no master.

But inevitably, the period of innocence comes to an end. The spiritual family grows into a religion, too large and over-organized to communicate the spontaneity of Truth. The zealots of this organization try to imitate the master. They program and systematize their master's teaching. They write it down as a formal doctrine. They seal it in cans, to preserve it. Then they market and sell it, offering their glitter on a slick website to attract the multitudes.

The more successful the organization grows, the more canned and dogmatic it becomes. A hierarchy of the privileged encrusts itself between the common people and the master. The master is no longer a spiritual Friend, but a well-marketed demigod, a personal savior.

What happened? The spiritual family became an institution. The institution became a religion. The religion became a corporation. The corporation now sells its product to a professional caste of yuppie seekers, the only class who can afford "the truth."

Eventually, the movement stops growing, because its members get so insulated in their bubble of official language and doctrine, that they only talk to themselves. Though they don't realize it, they have become a cult in the eyes of the world, speaking holy gibberish.

In such a movement, conformity is valued above spontaneity. When conformity is valued above spontaneity, Truth disappears, replaced by an army of True Believers.

The sweetness of the fruit is not in the husk. Drink the dewdrop, leave the flower. Don't confuse the Teacher with the movement that encrusts itself around him. The Master and the movement are as distinct as Jesus from the medieval Church. You are not doing anything for the Master by imitating or worshiping him. Gratitude is enough. For by imitation and worship of the Master, you may be contributing to his fall.

Jesus never said, I am God. He said, "the Father and I are one," and so are you. He preferred to be crucified than worshiped.

You don't need to clone another's Truth, because the Truth is you. 

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