The seventh sutra:
Regard earnestly all the life that surrounds you.

Regard the constantly changing and moving life which surrounds you, for it is formed by the hearts of men; and as you learn to understand their constitution and meaning, you will by degrees be able to read the larger word of life.
Reverence for life, regard for life. Ordinarily, the so-called religious are life-negative. They are against life. Look at their faces, look at their eyes: they are condemning everything. This negativity has created a denial of life all over the earth. Religion became – or appeared to become – an ally of death, not a friend of life. It appears that religion is against life because it constantly goes on telling you “Leave life, transcend it. Move to some other life which is beyond.”
God seems to be against you being in life. Life has been taken as a punishment: “You are here because you sinned. You would not be here if there was no sin in your life.” But this whole attitude is ill, pathological. Really, the divine and this life are not two things. Rather, they are an extension of one phenomenon.
Here and there, this and the beyond are not two things. Really this here, this life is a step toward the beyond and if you deny it, you will not reach the other. You cannot go beyond. To go beyond, no denial is needed.
To go beyond, a deep insight into life is needed. How can you create a deep insight into life? Unless you have reverence for life it is impossible. Revere life wherever you find it, help it to grow. Be creative toward it, don’t be destructive.
But we are destructive in many ways. Look around you: everything that is deeply connected to life is condemned. Sex is condemned, love is condemned, because they are the source of life.
A person who is religious must be a monk, a celibate. Why? Why should a seeker of the divine be a celibate? What is the need? Why is there so much propaganda against sex, against love, against life? – it is because sex seems to be the source of this world; it seems to be the original energy that moves this world. Those who are against the world are bound to be against sex. “Cut out sex completely from your life!” – that is their teaching. But if you cut out sex, you cut off all of life. If you are against sex, you cannot revere life. You have gone against life itself.
These sutras are very meaningful. They say to revere life in all its forms because the more reverence you have, the deeper you can go. God is not really beyond but, rather, within this life. Godliness is the center, the very center, and life is just the periphery. Move deeply into life and you will reach to the very center, the very ground of life itself.
God is not the creator; he is the very creativity. Christian concepts about “God the creator” have created much confusion. These attitudes are a little childish; good if you are talking to children, but nonsense if you are talking to people of understanding.
It appears from the Christian – and Mohammedan – dogma that God created the world somewhere in the past. He created the world in six days and then, on the seventh, he relaxed. And after that, he has not done anything. The world started running on its own.
This concept creates a divisive attitude: that God and the world are two different things. That’s not true. God has not created the world and made it separate from himself. It is not like a painter. A painter paints a picture – then the painter is one thing, the picture is something different. The Hindu concept is deeper. Hindus say that God is not like a painter but, rather, like a dancer: Shiva the dancer – like a dancer, because the dance and the dancer are not two. You cannot separate them. The painter can be separated from his painting, but the dancer cannot be separated from his dance. Dancer and dancing are one.
God is not the creator, a separate entity. God is the very creativity, the very life. If you are against life, you are against God.
Gurdjieff is reported to have said a paradoxical but very true statement. He has said that the so-called religions are all against God because they are against life.
Authentic religiousness is always for life, never against it.
If you move deeper into the dance, you will reach the dancer. The dance is just the form: if you move deeper in the dance you will reach the very heart of the dancer. If you move deeply into life, you will reach the life-originating principle: godliness.
God is creativity. Or, if you allow me to say it, I would like to say that God is the very existence itself. God is life. Jesus has said “God is love.” That was one of the reasons he was crucified – because he called God “love.” Love is condemned, it is a sin, and he called God love? He must have looked very rebellious, he must have seemed too much in favor of the life on earth. The old Jewish mind, the old religious mind couldn’t tolerate it: “This is sacrilege! Jesus talking about God in terms of love? God is beyond life and love! You must leave everything: life, love, everything. Only then can you find him. And this man Jesus – he brings God down to earth and he talks in terms of love.”
Really, God is life, God is love. God is this very world. Don’t create a division, don’t create a dualism. Only then can you revere life. Whenever you see life anywhere – a seed sprouting, a tree flowering, stars moving, a river flowing, a child laughing – remember, godliness is near you. When a child laughs, look at the laughter. Enter it, and you have entered the very temple. When the river flows, watch lovingly. Be one with its flow, be in a deep reverence.
Hindus have called all rivers goddesses, they have called all hills deities. They have made the earth holy. It is one of the most beautiful things that has happened in human consciousness. Hindus call the Ganges “mother.” This is reverence for life. They call hills “gods.” This is reverence for life. They worship trees. Those who have become intellectually sophisticated think they are stupid, superstitious people, but they are not. The tree is not the thing: when they are worshipping a tree or a river, they are worshipping life.
A tree is more alive than any temple, than any church; a river is more alive than any mosque. The stone idols in your temples are dead, a tree is more alive. You may be superstitious, but the person who is worshipping a tree is not. He may not be aware of what he is doing, but he is revering. There is a deep reverence for life in all its forms there, a deep respect.
And, celebrate! Wherever you feel that life is growing, celebrate it, love it, welcome it – and a great transformation will happen to you. If life is revered in all its forms, you become more alive. You become more receptive to life, and life begins to flow abundantly in you; it overflows in you. That is what bliss is: life overflowing.
But you are more interested in death and less interested in life, more interested in destruction, in hate, more interested in wars than in love, in life. And that makes you dead and dull. Before you are really dead, you are dead many times over. When death really occurs to you, you are already dead.
Whatsoever you revere you will become. If you revere life, you will become life and more life. If you revere death, you will become death and more death.
Remember this:
Regard the constantly changing and moving life which surrounds you, for it is formed by the hearts of men; and as you learn to understand their constitution and meaning, you will by degrees be able to read the larger word of life.
The eighth sutra:
Learn to look intelligently into the hearts of men.

Study the hearts of men, that you may know what is that world in which you live and of which you will to be a part.
We never look directly into anyone’s heart. It is dangerous, insecure, because then you may become involved; you may have to do something. So we never touch anyone. We just remain aloof, far away, removed.
We move without touching anyone. And when I say this, I don’t mean only physically but psychologically also. We move without touching anyone physically; we are very afraid to touch anyone physically or to have anyone touch us. Psychologically also we live in a shell: enclosed, encapsulated.
There are reasons for it. If you penetrate somebody’s heart, you will have to do something about it. You will be filled with love, you will be filled with higher, superior values. Then you cannot remain as mean as you are, you cannot remain as unkind as you are, you cannot remain as self-centered as you are. If you look into the heart of the other, you will have to melt. The very looking into the heart of the other will become a merging of your egos.
So, no one looks at anyone. We don’t even look into the hearts of our friends. We take them for granted. We never even look into the hearts of our wives and husbands, our lovers and beloveds. We create an image and we live with the image. We never talk to each other directly, because if you talk directly you don’t feel safe, you become vulnerable. Remember this: if you penetrate anyone’s heart, simultaneously your own heart becomes vulnerable. Otherwise is not possible. If I look deeply into you, I become available to you. You can also look deeply into me.
But that feels dangerous. I don’t want anyone to look deeply within me, because on the surface I am different, a false person. Deep down, I am someone else. On the surface I go on smiling – very kind, very loving – and deep down there is much hatred, much ugliness. So I don’t want anyone to penetrate me.
But if I penetrate you, the very effort to penetrate you simultaneously makes me available to you. We are afraid. We don’t want anyone to trespass, to look within us. So it is better not to look into anyone’s heart and to be looked into by anyone. We become encapsulated, dead. We go on moving within an imprisonment.
How then can you know life? If even a human heart is strange to you, and you have not looked into it, how can you move deeply into the greater heart of the divine, the very center of existence? Learn to look. From looking into the hearts of others you can learn to look deeply. The heart is the thing you can look deeply into: it is the person’s depths. The depth of the person is his heart.
We talk through the mind. It is not the depth. The mind is on the surface, on the periphery. We talk, we discuss; we communicate only with words, we never remain silent for even a few minutes. Even those who are in love go on constantly talking, because if you are silent the heart can be penetrated. So we go on talking and talking.
The husband comes home and he starts talking nonsense, saying irrelevant things – about what happened in the market, what happened in the shop, what was in the news, what came on the radio. He goes on talking, and the wife also goes on talking – what other wives are talking about in their houses, and so on. They go on talking, they go on talking until they fall asleep. Why so much talking? What is the purpose of it? Are they really interested in communicating something? No. They are afraid to communicate. If they are silent then their hearts will start communicating, so they go on talking. Talking creates a barrier. They meet mind to mind so that they will not meet heart to heart, because a heart-to-heart meeting is possible only in silence.
This is the way we are living. Then we say that we are living in misery. What else is possible? Misery will be your fate. But it is not your destiny; it is your own created misery, it is you who have created it. Encapsulated, you will be in misery. Open, vulnerable, you will become capable of being blissful. This opening is to be learned through reaching, reaching into the hearts of others.
This sutra says:
Learn to look intelligently into the hearts of men.

Intelligence is impartial; no man is your enemy; no man is your friend. All alike are your teachers. Your enemy becomes a mystery that must be solved, even though it takes ages; for man must be understood. Your friend becomes a part of yourself, an extension of yourself, a riddle hard to read.
The sutra says: Learn to look intelligently… By intelligently is meant: be impartial. If you are partial, you cannot reach the heart. All partiality focuses you in the mind; only an impartial consciousness comes to the heart.
The heart is impartial, the mind is always partial. The mind is always party-bound, sectarian, for this and against that. The heart is neither for nor against. The heart is simply an opening, a receiving, a welcoming. It has no enemies and no friends; only the mind has enemies and friends. By intelligence is meant impartiality. Only then are you intelligent.
If you are partial, you are not intelligent. You may appear to be so: you may appear to be sophisticated, educated, logical, but you are not wise, not really intelligent. Intelligence has the quality of no prejudice, no partiality, no feeling for and against, because only then can you look at the whole.
For example, if I say that you are my friend, it will be impossible for me to enter your heart. Or if I say that you are my enemy, then too it will be impossible to reach your heart. When I say you are my friend I have taken you for granted. Obviously, I understand that I have understood you. Otherwise, how is friendship possible? When I say you are my friend, I show my partiality: I’m saying that I like you. And when I say I like you, I have become partial. Then I cannot reach your heart. My liking will become a barrier.
When I say I like you, I am really imposing myself upon you, my likings. I say you are good because how you are is according to my liking. Now that I have entered you, I have imposed myself upon you, I cannot reach your heart. I cannot know you as you are – because of my liking.
When I say you are my enemy, I am saying I don’t like you, I dislike you. This dislike becomes a barrier. When I say I like you, I will try to find out things which I like. When I say I dislike you, I will try to find out things which I dislike. Then I am just trying to prove myself, not trying to know you as you are. Liking-friendship, disliking-enmity are my interpretations, my fictions. The naked fact of you, the naked facticity of you is forgotten.
Intelligence means that you are neither my friend nor my enemy. You are you, I am I. I am not going to impose myself upon you. Now, I will try to understand what you are. Not my likes and dislikes, but what you are. Every man is a mystery, every man is a riddle. If you can try to solve the mystery of even one single individual, if you are capable of solving even one single riddle, you will have become capable of much more, because even that one individual would have been understood through the heart. You have come to know the art of how to penetrate the heart.
And the same technique, the same method, will help you to penetrate the divine heart. The divine heart is greater, infinite, but the human heart is a glimpse of it. The human heart is a fragment of it, alive. So don’t be dead toward the humanity around you. Learn to love it, revere it. And – Learn to look intelligently into the hearts of men.
This learning will make you more mature; this learning will make you more sensitive toward a higher learning, which is divine. The heart of the divine can be penetrated only by those who have become capable of knowing the human heart for what it is.

---