Christianity, Jesus Christ, Vol. 4 Come Follow Yourself Chapter 8: The whole Sky belongs to You, Question 2

The second question:

Question 2

SOMETIMES I FEEL I DON'T EXIST. WHEN I COME INTO A ROOM, NO ONE SEES ME. WHEN I SPEAK, NO ONE HEARS. WHEN A FRIEND TOUCHES ME, I AM NOT SOLID. I FEEL LIKE A PIECE OF QUICKSILVER THAT RUNS AWAY FROM BETWEEN YOUR FINGERS. HOW CAN I LOSE MYSELF IF I AM NOT THERE?

It is a very basic question. It has to be understood in many steps.

First: nobody can see you except yourself, because the others can see only. your periphery, not you. They can see your body: they can see your eyes, your face, but not you. You are hidden deep behind. These are all curtains; these are all like clouds. Your light, your flame of life, is hidden deep behind. Nobody can penetrate it, you are impenetrable.

Except you, nobody can see you. Except you, nobody can touch you. Except you, nobody can feel who you are.

People can move around and around you, just on the periphery; nobody can reach to the center. Neither can you reach to anybody else's center. The innermost core is absolutely private. Even lovers cannot penetrate it. Deep in love, still you cannot penetrate it.

That is the misery of lovers: they would like to penetrate each other, they would like to go as far as possible, they would like to meet and mingle and become one, and all efforts fail. Whatsoever they do, they find that it doesn't succeed. Somewhere they remain two. Somewhere the separateness remains. They can forget that they are separate, but they cannot become one.

That is the misery of love, the suffering, the anguish, because love would like to become one. Love would like to lose all separateness, all boundaries. But again and again; one comes to the boundary, the limitation.

So, this is the first basic fact to understand: that except for yourself, nobody can penetrate your privacy. That is the difference between a rock and you. The rock can be penetrated to the very center; it has no privacy. That is the difference between matter and consciousness.

Matter has no privacy; consciousness has privacy. Matter can be understood from the outside because matter has no inside. There is nothing like inner in matter; everything is outer. And in consciousness, just the opposite is the case: everything is inner and nothing is outer

Consciousness is an infinite inwardness.

Consciousness is depth, matter is surface. Matter is like the waves on the ocean; you, consciousness, you are the depth of the ocean. And this inwardness can never be penetrated because once it is penetrated it becomes a public thing; it becomes an object. It is no more inward, it becomes outward. If somebody can see you, you are reduced to an object, to a thing. You are not a man then. Try to understand this. That's why whenever somebody looks at you, stares at you, you feel uneasy.

In Hindi we call that type of man LUCHA. The word means: one who stares at you. The word LUCHA comes from LOCHAN; LOCHAN means: the eye. One who goes on staring at you, goes on staring at you, is violating, is trespassing. He is not civilized. He is incivil, uncultured.

There is a certain limit, a time limit: psychologists have come to discover that it is near about three seconds. If for three seconds you look at somebody there is no problem, it is just a casual look. Two strangers can look at each other passing on the road for three seconds. Up to that time, it is a casual look. If it is longer than that, then the look becomes not casual. Now you are trying to penetrate the other person. If you love the person it can be allowed, because lovers are open to each other. But if you don't love the person and the person doesn't love you, then you are offending. Then this is violence. Then you are trespassing on the privacy of the other person, and the other person will feel offended, will feel uneasy. He will retaliate. Why? -- watch: you are sitting alone in your room; you are totally a different person. Then somebody comes in; you immediately change because two eyes have come. You are no more in private. You are taking your bath in the bathroom, humming, making faces in the mirror, and then suddenly you become aware that somebody is looking through the keyhole; you change. That gaze, that look penetrates you like a sharp sword. You are no more -- the humming stops -- your privacy has been violated.

Why do you feel offended if somebody is looking through the keyhole? -- because you have been reduced to a thing. Your subjectivity has not been respected. You are not a thing. Your permission should be asked before somebody looks at you. Without your permission, somebody looking at you like a thief is offending you. He is creating a thing out of you. You are a consciousness, a subjectivity. You cannot be reduced to a thing.

Wherever you feel that you are reduced to a thing, you don't feel free, you don't feel good, you don't feel happy. You feel very, very suppressed. That's the misery in being a slave, or being a servant. You are reading a newspaper, sitting in your room; your servant passes by -- you don't even look at him, you don't even recognize that a man has passed. It is as if a robot has passed, a mechanism, not a man. You don't say hello, you don't say good morning. Nothing is needed, he is a servant. You treat the man as if he had no inwardness, he is just outside, a servant. A servant is a role; it is not his being. He feels -- it hurts that he has been taken as a thing.

You go to a prostitute: you pay because you will make love to her, she feels hurt because she is not a commodity-but you reduce her to a commodity. Life somehow has forced her to be a thing in the market. Even the ugliest woman is more beautiful than the most beautiful prostitute, because to be a woman and not to be a thing gives a grace, a dignity. Even the most beautiful prostitute is ugly. And people who go to her must be people who don't have any aesthetic sense. How can you make love to a woman if you have reduced her first to be a thing? You are making love to a dummy. You are making love to a dead body, a corpse. You are making love to your money. You are not making love to a person, because a person is an inwardness, and a person cannot be purchased.

Always watch around yourself, and you will see that the person is elusive. You can catch hold of the body, but not the soul. Nobody can do that.

The question is,'Sometimes I feel I don't exist. When I come into a room no one sees me' -- no one CAN see you. Just because nobody can see you, don't think that you are not. In fact, the vice-versa would have been a curse: if people could see you, you would be a thing, a chair, a rock.

Feel blessed that nobody can see you, howsoever they try. Even if they brought magnifying glasses they could not see you. You are elusive -- this is your subjectivity, this is your soul, this is your dignity. This is the beauty and the mystery of life: that nobody can see you except you. This is your privacy. Beautiful is the world, because at least one thing is private -- your own consciousness. Otherwise everything would be sold in the marketplace. It cannot be objectified. That's what the Upanishads say: The knower cannot be known; the seer cannot be seen. The knower can feel himself, the seer can see himself.

Secondly: because you cannot be seen by others, how can you ask that God should be seen by you? Even a human being has such a privacy deep within him that nobody can penetrate it, so what to say about God?

People come to me and they say,'Tell us how to see God' -- foolish people. They think that they are very, very intelligent and they are asking a very intelligent question. Not even human consciousness has ever been seen; how can you see the consciousness of the whole? You can become one with it, but cannot see. You can dissolve in it, but you cannot see it.

l have heard an anecdote: When Yuri Gagarin came back from space, many questions were asked of him. One of those questions was,'Did you meet God in space?' Yuri Gagarin is reported to have said,'I have been out in space and didn't see God; therefore, there is no God.' Now these words are emblazoned on the walls of the anti-God museum in Leningrad. On the very gate; in gold letters, these words are emblazoned: I have been out in space and didn't see God; therefore, there is no God.

The first thing that Yuri Gagarin should ask is -- can HE be seen? Has anybody ever seen Yuri Gagarin's privacy, his innermost soul? God is not in outer space, because God is not matter. God is in the inner space because God is absolute consciousness. Man is partial consciousness; even that cannot be seen, so what to say about the total, about the whole?

Just because you cannot be seen, don't think that you are not. You are, but you are not an object. You are subjectivity. You are the seer, not the seen. You see, but you cannot be seen. Your nature is to be a seer, a witness; your nature is not to be an object.

'When I speak, no one hears. When a friend touches me, I am not solid.'

Nobody can touch you. All that can be touched is not you. And I know -- that which can be touched is not solid at all. The body is flowing, continuously flowing.

Ask the physiologists. They say that within seven years the body becomes completely new. Not even a single cell remains old. It is a river-like flow, continuously flowing. It looks solid, just the wall looks solid, but it is not. All the physicists say that the wall is in flux. The atoms are running at the same speed as light, moving continuously. The movement is so fast and the speed is so tremendous that you cannot see the movement. You cannot see the speed, and the wall appears to be solid.

Your body is a continuous flux -- like a river it is flowing. But the flux is so fast that you cannot see. And you think that it is substantial, solid -- it is not. Neither is your mind solid: thoughts are continuously moving. Like clouds, forms come and disappear.

But you? -- you are not a flux, you are not a changing phenomenon. You are eternity. I am not saying that you are solid. You are neither solid nor liquid; you transcend all categories. You are just space, tremendous emptiness. And out of that emptiness all of these flowers flower.

You are flowers of emptiness, forms of nothingness.

That's what we mean when we say,'God has no form, but you are all His forms. God has no names, but all names belong to Him.' The formless descends into millions of forms, and the nameless takes millions of names.

Nobody can touch you, nobody can see you, nobody can hear you; because all these hearings, seeings, touchings -- they belong to the body, not to you. You are always the elusive, that which eludes; the mysterious, the unknown and the unknowable.

But because of this, don't start feeling that you are not. You are, but you are subjectivity, irreducible to an object. This is the whole effort of meditation: to bring you to the point where you can fall into your own subjectivity, where you can disappear into your own depth, where you can come to realize that which is abiding in you -- unborn, undying, eternal.

'How can I lose myself if I am not here?' -- just to understand this is to lose. The'I' that you think you are is not you; and the you that you are, you have not even thought about. The'I' that you think you are is the'I' that is seen by others, touched by others, heard by others, loved by others, hated by others. The'I', the ego, is nothing but the opinions of others that you have gathered about yourself. This'I' you are not, but you are identified with it. You are that'I' which has never been seen by anybody, which has never been touched by anybody. Uncorrupted, untouched, uncontaminated, virgin, absolutely pure, purity itself; that you are.

Drop that which you are not so that you can know that which you are. My whole teaching is: just to drop that which you are not. It looks paradoxical. I am telling you to renounce that which you don't have. Throw away that which you don't have so that which you are can become manifested to you, can be revealed to you.

Christianity

VOL. 4, COME FOLLOW YOURSELF

Chapter-8

The whole Sky belongs to You