The Whole and Holy Circle_

Master Lu-Tsu said:

Perceiving, just perceiving... what in India we call darshan. Seeing brings one to the goal, not going anywhere. You need not go anywhere, just SEE. Once you start looking into the intervals, into the gaps, you will be able to see who you are. And you are the goal, you are both the source and the goal, the beginning and the end, the alpha and the omega. You contain all that you have ever longed for, you have all that you have ever desired. You need not be a beggar. If you choose to look into the gaps you will be an emperor, if you continue to be caught by thoughts, you will remain a beggar.

Not even a single step has to be taken beyond yourself because God is already within you, God is already the case. It is your innermost core. God is not there above, somewhere in the sky; God is within you, somewhere where thoughts no more disturb you, where silence prevails, where utter unoccupied consciousness is present, reflecting nothing.

Then you experience your own taste for the first time, then you are full of the fragrance of your own being. The Golden Flower blooms.

The thought is the manifest; the no-thought is the unmanifest. If your gestalt consists only of thoughts you will not know anything more than the ego. The ego is called 'the self-conscious heart'. You remain nothing but a bundle of thoughts. That bundle of thoughts gives you a consciousness of the self, 'I am', ego.

Descartes, the father of modern Western philosophy, says, 'I think, therefore I am.' His own meaning is very different because he is not a meditator, but the statement is beautiful; in a totally different context it is beautiful. I give it a different meaning. Yes, I am only if I think. If thinking disappears, the I also disappears. 'I think, therefore I am.' This I-amness, this self-conscious heart is nothing but a continuum of thoughts. It is not really an entity, it is a false entity, an illusion.

It is just like taking a torch in your hand and if you start revolving the torch in your hand you will see a fire circle which is not there. But the torch is moving so fast that it creates an illusory circle of fire, it creates the illusion of a fire circle. It is not there. Thoughts are moving so fast that they create the idea of an 'I', ego.

Lu-tsu says one has to move from the self-conscious heart to the unself-conscious heart. One has to move from ego to egolessness, one has to move from self to no-self. The self is the manifest part - tiny, very small, gross. The unself, no-self, is the unmanifest part - infinite, eternal. The self is a temporal phenomenon, born one day, will have to die one day. The unself, what Buddha calls anatta, no-self, is part of eternity, never born and never going to die. It abides forever.

And within your six-foot body you have that original quality still alive, vibrating, that original quality that was there before heaven and earth were made. Zen people call it 'the original face' - when nothing was born, not even earth or heaven; all was unmanifest; when all was silence and no sound was born; when there was no form and all was formless, all was in seed.

You have that original silence in you. Hindus call it anat nad. Buddhists have a special expression for it, 'the sound of one hand clapping'. It is within you, it is your reality. To taste it is to become immortal, to taste it is to be golden. Then dust is transformed into the divine.

The goal of all alchemy is to transform the lower metal into the higher.

One can sit in meditation and can only look at one's ego. That's what people call contemplation: they look into their thoughts, they don't change the gestalt. All that happens to them is that because they are ordinarily occupied with so many things, they cannot look in at their thoughts. When they sit specially for meditation, they forget the world for the moment and the thoughts become more clear-cut, they are more alert to their thoughts.

This is the state of a philosopher, this is how philosophers have been thinking, speculating, philosophizing. This is not true contemplation. And this will never take you beyond the ego, beyond death, beyond time. And that is where one's goal lies.

Let me repeat: if you want to meditate you will have to change the gestalt. Just closing your eyes and looking into the ego won't help.

The great English philosopher, David Hume, wrote, 'Hearing and reading again and again the great maxim and the advice of all the great Masters, "Know thyself, meditate," I also tried to meditate. But I found nothing inside except thoughts, memories, imagination, dreams. I have found nothing else.'

He is right because he does not know what meditation is. He is a philosopher, and one of the most talented philosophers of the world, very very logical, consistent - but just a philosopher, not a meditator. He must have tried if he says so, and he must have come across many thoughts wandering around inside. And then he said, 'But I don't see any self, I don't see any silence, I don't see any God. It is all futile.'

He missed because he was not aware that first you have to change the gestalt. You have not to look at the thoughts, you have to look in the gaps; look for the gaps, you have to search for the gaps and you have to jump into the gaps. If he had jumped into the gaps he would have seen thoughts disappear, dreams disappear, memories disappear. All left behind, slowly, slowly it becomes a very, very distant noise. And then a moment comes... it simply disappears and you have gone beyond. You have reached the further shore.

 

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