This is something to be understood very deeply, because it happens to persons who are on a religious search that either they get identified with the surface, or they become against it. Then they start thinking that this world is to be negated, the world of the waves has to be denied. Either they think that waves are the ocean, or they move to the opposite pole: they start saying that the waves are illusory, that they are not, that they have to be denied. Both standpoints are wrong. From one wrong polarity, if you jump to the other, the other is bound to be wrong. The truth is somewhere in between, in the middle.

Don’t jump from the waves to the ocean, but rather from the waves and the ocean to just in the middle from where you can see both – the ocean and the waves also. Then your life becomes a synthesis, and when your life is a synthesis the music of the divine is created.

The Upanishads are not against the world. They are for Brahman, but they are not against the world. Their Brahman includes everything, the Brahman is inclusive. This is the first state.

Now follow the traits of seekers of the second stage, called the stage of thought.

The first stage is the stage of feeling, feeling that Brahman surrounds you, everywhere is Brahman. And remember, the seeker has to start from the feeling, from the heart, because only the heart can be the base. The heart is the base of your body, and the heart is going to be the base of your divine body also.

If you go to the physiologist he will say, “Yes, there is a heart, but that heart is only physiological, just a pumping system; nothing more is there – no love, no feeling,” because he dissects the body and he comes only to know the body and the bodily. But everybody, even that physiologist, when in love will put his hand on his heart. If he is frustrated in his love, then he will feel a deep ache in his heart. He cannot explain it. As a physiologist he will say, “This is illusory,” but as a man he also feels the same. And remember, a physiologist is just a specialization, a fragment; man is the whole.

So don’t listen to the physiologist, listen to his totality. When he is in love he feels his heart is filled, something has poured into it, he has become heart-full. We don’t have such a thing, not even such a word – heartful. We say that a man is healthy, healthful; we say a man is mannerly, mannerful – but we never say a man is heartful, or loveful. These words must be created, because these are existential facts. When you are in love, you are heartful, loveful, overflooded, and of that overflooded feeling the heart is the center.

When you are in love, close your eyes and feel where your feeling has its center. It can never be in the head; it is impossible. It can never be anywhere else – it will be just in the heart. The heart is the base of your body, and it is going to be the base of your higher body also. That’s why the Upanishads say that the first stage is of feeling. Thought is not denied, thought has to take its own place – but that is the second stage.