Kaivalya Upanishad #14

Let us understand it like this. My hand is a fragment; my eye is a fragment; my feet are a fragment; yet I am indivisible. And my eye and my hand, in depth, are joined, are in union. My eye sees and my hand reaches out to pick up the thing. My eye sees a snake on the road and my foot leaps away. Still, the foot is separate—feet cannot see; and the eye cannot leap. The hand can touch, the ear can hear. The heart beats, the brain thinks. Blood flows, bone-flesh-marrow take form—these are all parts. If we try to understand each piece separately, it appears separate.
But if we descend deeper, within all the fragments there is a One that overshadows them, encompasses them all. Otherwise how could the eye see and the foot leap? Somewhere the eye and the foot must be linked. Somewhere the eye and the foot must be two expressions of the same reality. Deep within, where the heart throbs, there the brain’s thought must also be joined. For when the brain’s thought changes, the rhythm of the heart changes. When the brain’s thought shifts, the flow of blood alters. Anger arises in the brain—the blood pressure rises. Lust awakens in the brain—the whole body is affected, stirred. A thorn pricks the foot—tears well in the eyes. Somewhere the foot and the eye, somewhere the heart and the brain, somewhere every atom of this body must be united.
That unity does not show. What shows are these fragments. That unity is hidden from the eye. Of course it would be—deep, deeper, concealed. Exactly so: as this person—our person—is unified, so too the vast, the Virat, is one.
Let us approach it from another side; perhaps it will come to mind.
In each human body there are about seventy million living cells—that is, seventy million living units are at work to make a single body. It means seventy million lives dwell within you. You are a great township. Hence Indians called the body pur, a city, and you the Purusha, the dweller. You are a large settlement. Seventy million persons are within you. Each cell holds its own destiny, its own individuality. Each cell of your body is, in its own right, a person—not in your right, but in its own right. If your cell is taken out, it will live—it can live without you—and for millions of years it may live. You will be gone in seventy years; it may live for millions—in its own right. It has its own tiny heart and its own tiny brain. And scientists say: if not today then tomorrow we may discover that it has its own experience, its own thoughts, its own ego. Why? Because it protects itself; it strives for self-preservation. Under attack it contracts; in love it expands. It too loves.
And that cell has no idea you exist at all! These seventy million cells within you know nothing of you—that there is one person formed by their union. That a total personality is being created out of their sum—they know nothing of it.
The Upanishads hold, the mystics hold—rather, it is not correct to say they believe, they know—that likewise we are tiny cells in this vast cosmos. And what is being formed by the coming-together of us all, we do not know. The day it is known, that very day its name is Paramatman. We too are cells in the Virat. We live in our own right, just as a cell in our body lives in its own right. Perhaps one day subtle observation will show that within that cell there are yet smaller cells, living in their own right.
As there are atoms for the physicist, molecules, electrons—from these all matter is made—so too consciousness has its particles, its living cells; from them all life is made. To see this vast life in fragments is science; to see it as indivisible, as a Whole, is religion.
If a scientist approaches your body, he will dissect it into parts, break it into pieces. He will separate each cell and attempt to understand it. Of course. Because no cell of your body has any knowledge of you—no cell can give news of you. Therefore the scientist will say: there is no soul within man. Man is only a sum of millions of cells—not a unit, only an aggregate. Man is nothing separate. The soul is nothing separate. It is the total of these seventy million cells. Then he will cut a single cell and find chemical elements within it, discover certain metals, certain juices, certain substances. Those particles of matter will also give him no news that, combined, they made a living thing. They only give their own news; of that life they know nothing.
So in the end the scientist will say that a cell is the sum of chemical substances, and the soul of a person is the sum of cells. It is a sum—understand this well. There is no separate individuality in life—only a sum! A sum of fragments; the Whole is the indivisible.
Religion holds exactly the opposite. Religion says: the Whole is not a sum of fragments; the fragment is a part of the Whole. The Whole is not built by adding fragments; the Whole is in its own right. It is not a mathematical addition; it is an organic unity. The Whole is in its own right; the fragments do not know it. Because the fragment cannot know the Whole as long as it lives enclosed in itself. It does not know. When the fragment steps out of itself, rises beyond itself, awakens and looks past itself, then the sense of the Whole begins.
The very key to rising beyond oneself is sakshi, witnessing. The key to crossing beyond oneself is sakshi. Whenever someone looks even at himself with witnessing, then within him the remembrance of the Whole begins. For all these parts he can see—the hand he can see, the feet he can see, the eyes he can see—but who is the one seeing all these? He becomes separate. The very moment of separation, the shadow of the Whole begins to fall over the fragment—or within the fragment the seed of the Whole begins to sprout. Or the slumbering feeling within the fragment breaks, awakening takes hold, and the eye lifts beyond itself.
Understand it thus: a child is in the mother’s womb—he has no knowledge of this world. Why? Because the child in the womb is an enclosed unit in his own right. He has no direct relation with the world. He does not know the sun rises, the moon and stars are; he does not know there are people, that there is a vast world—he knows nothing. And the child so securely enclosed in the womb is bound in such a sure unit that if he were to take himself as the whole world it would not be surprising. For he need not arrange food, nor arrange water, nor arrange self-defense. He need do nothing; he only is. And is complete. There is no lack anywhere. It cannot even occur to him that there is anything apart from him. But when he comes out of the womb, breaks his boundaries, the world begins.
Therefore psychologists say that birth is very traumatic—the child gets a great shock. An existence enclosed in a limit suddenly shatters and he stands in an infinite world where nothing is familiar. For the first time it is known: I am not alone—there is much more. Psychologists say the shock is so deep that throughout life man does not quite recover from it. They even say—there is some truth in it—that man’s search for peace, for bliss, for freedom, for the soul, for the Divine, is due to his experience in the womb. In the womb he was utterly free, utterly blissful, utterly peaceful—no tension, no boundary; life wholly available. No obstacle anywhere; no responsibility, no burden, no worry.
Psychologists say that this very search for moksha arises from that peace experienced in the womb. There is some truth here… some truth up to a point, because that experience is deep, and the shock of the world that follows is also deep. No psychologist has yet linked this with Indian thought; if they did, they would be amazed. If they link it, then the Indian longing—how to be free of birth, how to be free of death—will at once appear as the longing to be free of the shock of the womb-to-world. How to be free of the shock inflicted by birth?
Our conception of moksha is of a vast womb. We have called it the Hiranyamaya Garbha—the womb of the Divine. In that womb of the Divine, may I dissolve as I was dissolved in the mother’s womb—no worry, no pain, no sense of other. But when the child comes out, the world appears.
A seed breaks, sprouts, and then has the vision of the sun. As we are, our condition is similar—we are enclosed in the shell of ego. Beyond it we see nothing. Only I, only I. If some glimpse of another appears, even that is only because of my I. “My friend,” “my brother,” “my wife,” “my husband.” Through the little tie of “mine” a little glimpse comes to me. This alone is my world. Beyond this, the vastness spreads—I know nothing of it.
Religion is a second birth, a rebirth. Another womb is to be broken. This is to break the ego as well. But the ego will break only when something begins to sprout in me beyond the sum of my parts. Something other begins to awaken within—more than the sum. The day one begins to sense the Whole amid the parts, know that that very day the journey toward Brahman has begun.
First point: the Whole is not the sum of parts. Let us grasp it a little further; perhaps it will come to mind. The matter is difficult—and without experience, harder to understand.
From one to ten, counting is merely addition. Add one, ten times, and you get ten. If you remove the ones ten times, you are left with zero. Ten is a sum of ten units—nothing more.
But a poem is not the sum of the words it contains; it is something a little more. That “little more” is the difference between mathematics and poetry. If someone says, “It is only the sum of words,” he is wrong. When you read a poem, even if the words are forgotten, a subtle fragrance remains within you. The precise words may not remain, yet the way the heart was touched by the poem lingers. If you pull all the words out, write them in order on a sheet, reading them produces no feeling. Arrange those same words differently and the poetry scatters, dissolves. What you experience while reading poetry is not a sum of words; it is something more. Perhaps this too is a little hard to grasp.
Then understand it thus: a painter paints on a canvas with colors, but the painting is not a sum of colors. The very same colors in Picasso’s hand become something else; in Van Gogh’s hand something else; and if you smear them, perhaps nothing at all. You might even use more costly pigments and more paint upon the canvas, and Picasso might throw a common pigment and yet the canvas becomes something other. Surely a painting is not the sum of colors; it is more than a sum. It is expressed through color, but it is not color itself. A poem is expressed through words, but it is not words.
A veena player strikes the strings; this is not merely striking wire. Anyone can strike; music does not arise out of that. In this striking there is an inner harmony. There is a quality beyond the strike. In the music that is heard there is also a hidden music. That hidden music manifests through the audible music, but it is not a sum of tones.
Sum means: whatever is in the parts is exactly what will be in the sum. More-than-sum means: what did not appear in the parts appears in the whole. When a sum is more than the sum of parts, an organic unity is born.
Often we fail to distinguish these two—and if we do not, we lose a precious dimension of life. The first point we grasp; the second does not reach us.
Understand thus.
If my body is cut into pieces, all parts laid separately, and then all parts are rejoined and I am stood up again—if all my parts are separated and then joined—now take a motor engine, dismantle it, lay out each piece and then reassemble it. Then you will see the difference: the engine was only an aggregate of limbs. Dismantle, then rejoin—and the engine starts. But if you take a human body apart, then put it back exactly, nothing starts. Something is lost. That which was more than the sum is lost.
This means that whatever is only a sum can be understood by analysis. But that which is more than the sum can never be understood by analysis. Hence it often happens that one deeply learned in grammar fails to understand poetry. He knows only the sum—the rules of language, the mathematics of language—he knows all this; but in language something appears that is beyond rule, beyond mathematics, outside the system—though it flashes within the system, it descends from beyond it—and that he misses. The more a linguist knows language, the harder it becomes for him to understand poetry, because the understanding of poetry demands an altogether other dimension. That dimension is: a living unit is not a sum of parts; it is more than the sum. And that “more” only manifests; if you break things, it becomes unmanifest, it is lost.
This sutra declares this profound truth.
The Rishi has said: “I am the smallest of the small and the greatest of the great.”
Both “I’s” are I. Do not think that if I am the smallest, how can I be the greatest? In this sutra the Rishi is saying: the fragment is also I, and the Whole is also I. In the most minute I am; and in the most vast I am. It means the small and the vast are not two things—they are united. Otherwise how could I be in both? In this finger I am; in this whole body I am. In truth my being is an expansion—from the minute to the vast. Or say: the minute and the vast are the two poles of my being—the subtlest of the subtle, where seeing ends and nothing is visible, there too I am; and the greatest of the great, where seeing finds no boundary and becomes infinite, there too I am. Here “I” does not mean the Rishi’s person. Here “I” does not mean ego. Here “I” means the sakshi, the witness, of which the previous sutra spoke. Of that sakshi. With the experience of that sakshi, the minute and the vast become the two ends of my own being.
And this minute and vast spread in innumerable dimensions. Jesus said: “Before Abraham I was.” Thousands of years had passed between Abraham and Jesus. What does it mean? Krishna says to Arjuna: This Gita I speak to you, I have spoken before to such-and-such Rishi; before that to another; before that to yet another—and thousands of years had passed for those Rishis.
What are Krishna and Jesus saying? They are saying that in the dimension of time, the first is also I, and the last will also be I. The entire stream of time is a single flow in which the first and the last are joined. This whole current of time is my current. The smallest particle—there too I am. And a vast sun—there too I am. These are the two ends of space—smallest of the small, greatest of the great. First and last—these are the ends of time. In every dimension there is the expansion of the One.
From above it seems very difficult to know that a tiny speck in your yard is the same as this vast universe. Mathematics will be in trouble. How can it accept that this small speck and this immense cosmos are one? It will say: where is this tiny grain, and where the vast universe! Where the vast universe, where a blade of grass! But in a single blade of grass the same life manifests that burns in a great sun.
Even if we wish to understand scientifically, we can. It will give a little help.
You might not have noticed that if we explore scientific computations to a little depth, and do not tie science within a boundary nor turn the scientific mind into a dogma, then through science too glimpses of religion begin to appear. For finally science is also working upon the same reality upon which religion works—the same life. Somewhere its perceptions will connect with the realizations of religion. A small blade of grass—what is life within it, in science? The meaning of life there is the same as within you, and within a great sun.
What is happening inside a sun? The same is happening on a vast scale. Our earth is so big; our sun is sixty thousand times larger. But this is a small, mediocre sun—by no means great. There are suns far bigger in the universe. Scientists say there may be two billion suns in the cosmos. What you call stars at night are great suns. Only the distance is so vast they appear as small stars. Our sun before them is tiny. Its account hardly counts. In this vast universe, if you go to ask for the address of our sun, it will be hard to find which sun you are talking about.
The day we succeed in space travel and man goes far, that day if we reach some other earths—and scientists say at least fifty thousand planets should have life—if we ever reach them, it is then they will first learn that there is another sun with a tiny earth where life exists. In this stretch of two or three billion suns, the formula of life is the same as in a small blade of grass. Scientists call it oxidation. They say the small blade drinks oxygen from the air and burns it within. Its life runs by this burning. Like a lamp is burning. Have you noticed—in a storm the lamp might survive, but if you cover it with a vessel, it goes out. Because as soon as the lamp drinks up the oxygen inside the vessel, it dies. The lamp is burning by breathing oxygen from the air the whole time.
You are doing the same. The breath that runs continuously is taking in oxygen, and there is an inner fire in you that burns that oxygen. That is why if your breath stops, life departs. When you cover the lamp you cut off its breath—life departs. Cover a blade of grass—you cut off its breath; life departs.
Plant a beautiful sapling inside the house and within two days you will find its life ebbing. Because its living process, according to science, is that it takes air within and burns oxygen; and when oxygen is burned, the leftover carbon is thrown out. We too are throwing it out, continuously. Hence if you sleep in a crowded room and the room is sealed on all sides, by morning all may die. If the oxygen of the room is exhausted and all keep throwing out carbon, then compelled to inhale carbon, you will die.
Whether a sun burns, or a blade of grass lives, or a Buddha lives—the law of living is one. Each, on its own scale, is burning prana-vayu, the life-breath, by science. So if we understand even this, we will see that in the smallest of the small and the greatest of the great, the same life is.
Some scientists suspect that the earth also breathes. The earth also takes breath—through each hair, each pore. Therefore no earth can be alive unless it has at least a two-hundred-mile envelope of air. Our earth has such an envelope around it. Scientists now have a clue: any planet that has an atmosphere, and within it a certain proportion of carbon and oxygen—life will be there. Because that planet is living. It means some earths are alive, some are dead. But those that are dead today were once alive; and those that are alive today will one day be dead. Their lifespan is long. We die and are reborn many times; the earth continues to live.
Mountains also breathe. Among mountains there are dead mountains and living mountains. The hill we sit on is a dead hill. Once it was alive. It is the oldest mountain in the world. Himalaya, compared to this hill, is a child. But the Himalaya is still alive. You will be surprised to know that the ascetic’s attraction to flee to the Himalaya has a deeper cause. The Himalaya is one of the few living mountains on this earth—still alive, still growing, still breathing. It grows daily, rises higher. Still there is movement, growth, increase. On a living mountain, sadhana becomes very easy. But it depends on the method of sadhana. Depending on the method, which mountain? Some methods are such that a dead mountain is supportive.
Wherever the Jains have chosen their tirthas, all are dead mountains. Chosen knowingly. The Jain method of sadhana is supported by dead mountains. Therefore the Jains left the Himalaya altogether. It seems astonishing—that in a land with the Himalaya, a religion leaves it untouched—there must be a deep reason. There is. The Himalaya is a living mountain. The Jain method depends deeply on tapas—ascetic fire. The more dead the place, the deeper the austerity becomes.
The Hindu life-method is not a movement toward reducing life, but toward increasing it. Both reach the same end. If life is reduced to zero, one enters the vast; or if life increases to fullness, one enters the vast. Thus wherever life could be found, the Hindus chose their places of sadhana on living mountains; and if a living mountain was not found, they chose a river. It is interesting—no river is dead. All rivers are alive. A dead river only means the riverbed remains, the water dried—she is gone.
Wherever life could be found, the Hindus chose their sacred sites there. Wherever life had ebbed, the Jains chose their places—so that tapas could grow deeper and deeper.
The Jain path is a method to attain total death; hence “Santhara” could be ordained. The Hindu path is a method to attain total life. The result is one. Whether life becomes zero or becomes full—two ends—beyond both you fall out of the circle. Fall from the end of fullness, or from the end of emptiness—you fall out.
Earth breathes; mountains breathe. Their process is the same. In the ground there are coal mines. Science says that is the carbon the earth accumulates. You too accumulate coal within. That coal piles up and makes you old. The more carbon accumulates, the older you become. The day the carbon proportion becomes so excessive that it outweighs your life, you approach death. The day you die, in the language of science, that day you became carbon. The oxygen in you has gone—the body-machine has broken. If we take this as the process of life—indeed it is the process of life at least for its manifestation; life is not only this, but its manifestation requires a certain balance of oxidation—then the entire cosmos lives by the same process, in one movement. Earth breathes—that is surely so.
Of late some Russian scientists are beginning to think that just as our chest expands and contracts in breathing, so the earth becomes a little larger and smaller moment to moment. Perhaps from the tremors of this very breathing many movements are produced. If not today, tomorrow it may become clear that the earth too suffers heart attacks. Not only the earth, but the entire universe breathes—and the whole universe becomes smaller and larger. As our chest expands and… surely the time of its expansion and contraction will be very long—its breath will be very deep.
The Hindus have said in symbol: what is a kalpa for us is a single day for Brahma. So what is for us many millions of breaths may be a single breath for Brahma—so long that in that one breath we are born and die many times. Therefore we do not even notice it.
While we are breathing, within that breath creatures are dying; they never know. One inhalation goes in; within it, countless microbes live—are born and die. Our lips meet once; in that moment of meeting, countless microbes live—are born and die. They will never know that these lips will separate. The one who was born, lived, procreated, died within our breath—how will he know that this breath will return?
The whole universe breathes. The Hindus put it thus: what is in the seed, what is in the body, that alone is in the cosmos. It is expansion. What is in the atom is in the infinite. Only the scale differs.
But the Rishi says: “I am the smallest of the small and the greatest of the great. This strange world should be seen as my own form. This strange world should be seen as my very form! I am the Puratan Purusha, the ancient one, the base of all. I am the form of Shiva, and I am the golden, the Hiranyamaya.”
See this strange world as my very form. Strange—he says strange knowingly. Strange because mathematics will not be able to comprehend it. Logic will not resolve it. This is its strangeness. And whoever tries to resolve it through logic will go astray; he will never resolve it. What logic resolves is not strange. What mathematics finishes off is not strange. Strange means where mathematics is powerless, logic is futile, where through calculation nothing is grasped—rather, it is grasped by the one who drops all calculation and takes the leap. This world is strange because at times the mad understand it and the clever miss it.
Perhaps this is our suffering—that there is too much cleverness. Our misery is that we have discovered all rules of what is right, what is true—and when something does not fit, we are in difficulty.
Greece gave birth to logic and, in two and a half millennia, developed it far. But the truly interesting event occurred in Europe. Greece tried to discover truth through logic; truth did not come in two thousand years—something else came. And the flower that has bloomed today on the Greek roots of the West says: there is no truth in life at all. Life is meaningless. Life is absurd. Truth was not found; meaning was not found; the purpose of life was not found; why life is was not answered. As logic advanced, the conclusion in hand was: there is no truth; all talk of truth is mere play of words.
Therefore in the West it is being felt that philosophy has died. In Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard—what is taught today in the name of philosophy is not philosophy at all. What is taught is that philosophy was born of linguistic error. It is linguistic—the matter of language. Due to language man raises such questions; then keeps asking. There is no truth. Truth is only a linguistic game. There is no meaning in life; all meaning is imagined. There is no coherent chain in life—life is anarchy.
Logic will take you there. Because life is strange. Life is a mystery. And whoever goes to understand mystery through logic, he has decided not to understand. I say, I love someone. Love is a strangeness. You ask: Where is it? Show me. Then I will be in trouble. If I try to show, what can I do? I can only behave lovingly. You can say: might this not be acting—what guarantee? It could be acting. We have seen so much acting in the name of love that likely it is acting. What proof is there of authenticity within?
If someone asked Hanuman, he tore open his chest and showed. But if someone did that now, we would seize him, take him to a hospital and investigate: surely some trick! Pre-arranged. Otherwise how could Rama be inside the heart? What proof is there that love is? To this day none has been given. It is amusing—you all think—you may not all love, but you all think—yet even this cannot be proved: that you think. What proof? If we cut your brain, no thoughts are found. If we cut your heart, we find no love. In the heart there is a lung, an instrument to move breath. In the brain there is a very subtle network of nerves, but no thought is found. How thoughts exist in this web of nerves is not clear. How they could—this too is hard to conceive. Thought and nerve—no visible connection.
Here is an electric wire. If someone cuts this wire to examine it, electricity will not be found. From examining the wire, only the wire is found—not electricity. There surely was electricity—the bulb glowed—but cutting the wire you do not find it. Something other than wire flows through it. The moment you cut, the flow stops. As soon as you cut the brain, the flow ceases.
A new direction in medicine has begun to appear, which says that all our methods of diagnosis regarding man are wrong. Suppose you are ill and your blood is taken out for testing. New thinkers say: the blood that was flowing inside was alive; when you took it out, it died. Testing the dead and deciding about the living is not right. Inside the body that blood was alive, of a different nature; it flowed in the current of life; an electricity ran through it which was life. You removed it—the electricity was left behind; the wire came to your hand. Electricity left behind, you now test the wire and from that result you attempt to set the electricity right. This is all delusion.
Perhaps tomorrow we will have to discover ways to investigate the body within the body itself. Outside it dies; its very nature changes.
Life is strange, for it does not come to logic. And in whatever comes to logic, life slips out, is lost—like trying to clutch mercury, and it scatters; so life slips away. Close the fist of logic—and life escapes. But if we insist, even if life escapes, that we will complete the logic, in the end we will find life is futile. Life is not. All is deception. All untrue.
Still, no one dies from this. Sartre may say life is meaningless—yet he will live. The Marxist may say life is purposeless—he will live. Anyone may say it is without reason, futile, causeless, chaotic—no one dies of it. But then one will live in sadness; life becomes a torment, a burden to be dragged.
There was in Greece a thinker, Pyrrho. He used to say: life is so futile that only suicide is meaningful. But Pyrrho lived to ninety. When he was an old man, somebody asked: you taught your whole life that life is futile and there is no way out except suicide—why have you not died yet? Pyrrho said: The matter is such that I had to live to explain it to people. Many died—so the story goes—many disciples committed suicide obeying Pyrrho; but poor Pyrrho had to live for the sake of instructing others. But why instruct if life is futile? And what will be understood even then?
At least Pyrrho’s life seems meaningful—he is persuading, and successfully; some are dying, and he is living for their sake. His life seems meaningful, though he convinced others it is futile. And he is living happily because he gets converts, disciples.
If Sartre too is living—and life is futile—then living will be heavy.
Albert Camus begins a very important book with the statement: There is only one metaphysical problem before mankind—suicide. The only metaphysical problem is suicide. Life is not the question; suicide is the question. This is the Greek logic’s fruit of two thousand years—this is the mistake.
India has worked in a different direction. India’s direction is not to solve life’s mystery and strangeness by logic, but to enter by experience. There is no way to understand the strange by thinking. Thought is enmity, not a way. No doorway opens by thinking. Before mystery, thinking is stupidity. Thought has its field.
Where there is no mystery, thought is a method. But where there is mystery, it is appropriate to leave thought outside and enter naked. Where is that field not of thought? To know the fragment, thought is useful; to know the Whole, the indivisible, thoughtlessness is useful. To understand the piece, logic is useful; to understand the vast, the total, logic is useless.
Why?
Because logic understands only by cutting, by analysis. The method of logic is to break. Therefore, if the whole is to be known, to know it through logic is sheer nonsense. If the work of a sword is to cut, to try to join something with a sword is stupidity. It is not the sword’s fault. The sword is made for cutting. You take up the sword and go to join something; in the end joining becomes harder—what was joined breaks further.
Logic is a sword to cut into any fact. Much is understood by cutting too—science uses that process. Science is analysis—breaking; hence logic is the way. Religion is synthesis—joining; hence logic is not the way. And if logic is not the way, then this sutra is right: This strange world should be seen as my own form. The world is strange—illogical, irrational. If you insist on intellect, you will remain outside. Leave intellect—only then is there entry. That is why I said at times the mad arrive and the intelligent get stuck. In the eyes of the intelligent, Jesus is mad. Some in the West have even written books trying to prove Jesus was deranged. For how could anyone in his senses say, “I am the son of God!” What does it mean?
India is not so bold or we would say the same about Krishna—that this man’s mind is unbalanced. For how can someone say, “Leave all and surrender at my feet”? This seems sheer ego, the ultimate height of madness—that a man says, “Leave all and come to my refuge; I alone am the all.”
If we ask a Freudian psychoanalyst about this sutra—what does it mean?—he will say: “I, the smallest of the small, and I the greatest of the great”—this mind is unhinged! Neurosis. You can be small or you can be great; both together is absurd. And if he hears further that the Rishi says: “This strange world is my form; I am the Puratan Purusha; from whom all is born—I am that; into whom all dissolves—I am the last,” he will say: this is the last straw. This man has lost all sense. This “ego” has become so big it encircles even the ancient. This balloon of ego has inflated to engulf everything.
A Freudian will call “Aham Brahmasmi”—I am Brahman—the final derangement of ego. He cannot accept more. And if we proceed by logic, he is right. If we accept that logic is the only way, he is right. But it is a delightful thing that one who can declare thus—such flowers bloom in his life; one who proclaims “Aham Brahmasmi,” such music flows from his life, such rays of bliss burst, cool breezes blow around him—not only is he filled with joy, whoever comes near, whoever is touched, becomes a participant of an unparalleled grace. But Freud—who says these are all madmen—cannot sleep in the dark without a light on. He is always afraid. If someone speaks a little against him he becomes so angry he could do anything in that rage. He will consider Buddha abnormal—then he has missed. He thinks himself normal.
If Buddha is abnormal, then abnormality is to be desired. If Buddha is mad, then madness is right. If Freud is intelligent, only the unintelligent will choose such intelligence.
But logic! It is not Freud’s fault. Freud is a scientist; his intellect is of analysis. He has no means of synthesis. In his hand is a sword—he cuts things. He cuts and fragments are in hand; the Whole is lost. He holds petals of the flower; the beauty of the flower is gone. He holds the words of the poem; the poetry is gone. He holds the colors and canvas; the wholeness of the painting is gone. What else can he do? On his laboratory table there is no method but cutting. Cutting and cutting, pieces come to hand. Even the most beautiful picture becomes ugly in parts—meaningless.
My own view is that Sartre and those like him who say life is meaningless say so because fragments are in their hands. Divide a poem into twenty-five bits and distribute them—meaning disappears. Meaning lived in the whole.
There is a delightful incident in Van Gogh’s life—the Dutch painter, extraordinary. No woman ever loved him—his face was ugly. One prostitute, out of pity—finding nothing else to praise—praised Van Gogh’s ear: “Your ear is very beautiful.” It was the first time any part of Van Gogh had been praised by any beautiful woman. So overwhelmed was Van Gogh that he went home, cut off his ear, wrapped it, and presented it to her. She was horrified: “What have you done?” He said: “No one ever praised anything of mine. You liked the ear so much—I thought I should gift it to you.”
But a severed ear is meaningless. If it had any meaning, it was only within the unity of the whole body. What could the lady do but throw it away?
Under the influence of the scientist and the logician we have done just this with nearly all of life. We cut everything. Cut, and all becomes futile. Nothing has meaning, no purpose remains, no rasa remains—because the stream of life is severed and dried. Everything turns corpse-like.
Death can occur in fragments; life is always in the Whole. And this wholeness is in all dimensions. Therefore the sutra says: “I am the Puratan Purusha. The very first that was—I am. The very last that will be—I am. What has enveloped all—I am. What, enveloped by all, is hidden within—I am.”
These are not proclamations of “I.” They have nothing to do with ego. They are experienced facts. Known by those who threw away logic and embraced mystery. Those who tried intellect with great intellect and found that intellect robs life and puts death into your hand. If intellect holds everything, the world can be nothing but a cremation ground. Life is bigger than intellect. Life is beyond intellect. And intellect cannot attune to life.
The truth is intellect is only a tool of life—useful, within limits. Life is greater and vast. Whenever the small tries to understand the vast, it imposes its limits upon the vast. Life can be known by living, not by thinking. Life can be known by being life, not by ratiocination. And life, as it is—only if there is the courage to know it as it is, can it be known. If beforehand we decide that life must be such to be acceptable, then it can never be known. Intellect decides beforehand. Intellect decides first. Intellect says: what is consistent—that alone will be true. And truth appears utterly inconsistent. Then trouble arises.
Intellect says: two and two must make four. Life is strange—here two and two sometimes make five; sometimes they remain three. Life is living. If you add dead things, two and two become four. But add living things—anything can happen; nothing can be said. Nothing can be said!
If we measure two lovers separately, and then measure them after they fall in love, do you think two plus two remains merely two? They become a thousandfold—they are no longer two. If ever you have known a moment of love, you will find that in that moment energies in you awaken that never awakened before. When two lovers meet, two persons do not meet; two worlds meet. And the sum is not two—the sum can be anything. It will change moment to moment. Morning it will be something, noon something, evening something. Today something, tomorrow something—nothing can be said.
Life is beyond reason—beyond the grasp of logic. Logic is a dead framework. Life does not obey any framework. Life breaks every framework and flows on. It flows on, obeying no rule. But it is not anarchy. This refusal of rule is its deep freedom, not chaos. In this non-rule there is a deep consonance. But that consonance will be seen only by those who do not forcibly impose logic’s structure of consistency.
I have heard a Greek folk tale: a man had a very precious bed—a priceless couch, golden, inlaid with jewels. So costly was that bed it could not be made smaller or larger. When any guest came, he would lay him on it—and he would make the guest smaller or larger. If the guest’s leg stuck out, he cut it off in the night. The bed was too valuable—it could not be altered. And out of hospitality, so the guest would not be troubled—if the legs were long, he trimmed them; if the neck hung over, he lopped it. If the legs were short, he had two wrestlers stretch the man, so he fit the bed exactly.
This man was completely logical—the final limit of cleverness. He did exactly what all rationalists do. The frame is fixed; we will enlarge or shrink you. The frame will not change with you.
This is exactly the difference with religion. Religion says: we accept life as it is. And we will know it as it is. And we will live it as it is. We have no insistence to superimpose intellect upon it from above. Only then can the Whole be known. Only then is there entry into the mystery.