Judging Self Realization
You cannot know Self Realization
People suffer in this world because of craving. There are many objects of craving. It does not necessarily mean food that you crave for: lobster dinner or you crave for chicken or turkey or pork chops or whatever. But craving also has so many other forms. You crave for wealth, you crave for relationships, you crave for you name it. Everything is based upon craving. And these cravings are accentuated by the senses and their counterparts. So you lose craving. You lose lust, for example, which is also a craving. You crave for what you want to do. But yet you can do the same thing without craving. Do you see? Then you know that you have reached a step higher.
You can make sensual love, have sensual love with your beloved, and the act would seem the same in divine love, and yet it is the same act. One is filled with craving, animal passion. The other is also filled with passion, but divine passion, where you want to find mergence with the object, with the beloved, so that the object and the subject become one. That is divine love beyond craving. So you still do the same things. Like the old Zen story which I might have told you before, I can’t remember, where the chela asked the Zen master, «What did you do before you became enlightened?» So the Zen master replied, «I chopped wood, I make fire, and I cook food.» «And what do you do now after enlightenment?» So the Zen master replies, «I chop wood, I make fire, and I cook food.»
Same action even after reaching enlightenment. But the action, although it is the same to the ordinary eyes, assumes a great difference to the enlightened one. Before wood was just wood, fire was just fire, and food was just food. But now the wood becomes God, and through the wood fire is made. So the wood is sacrificed to the fire, which is also God, and the food cooked on the fire is also divine, also God. So the wood, the fire, and the food become divine and you see the Divinity. That is when you rise above the senses and become enlightened. Right. So, the wood and the fire and the food assumes a different perspective altogether.
Now, after reaching the highest stage of meditation, you would want to know what happens to me, and how can I know that I am beyond the senses? You cannot know. You cannot know that you have transcended. You can only judge it by comparison to what you regarded a certain object to be before enlightenment, and what that same object seems to you after enlightenment. So the mind would analyze. But when you are beyond the mind, when you have transcended the limitations of the mind and have become limitless, then how can the finite mind ever comprehend that which is infinite? So that knowledge of enlightenment is not confined to the mind, because it cannot be confined, it cannot be imprisoned. So when that stage is reached, nirvana, enlightenment, self‑ realization… self‑realization is when the self realizes itself, and the real self within you is beyond the mind and the senses. So therefore it remains that self and exists in its own power.
Everything you see around you in the world requires an external power. But when a person is realized, he does not need any external power to make the car of his life go. It runs. You don’t need to fill in gas, runs on its own. Do you see? So therefore we call it self‑existent, non‑dependent. And yet, in that non‑dependency you enjoy everything that you have done before in a totally independent way instead of a dependent way. You are dependent on this, that, and the other. This camera won’t work if you never had electricity. So your camera is dependent upon electricity. And even if electricity is there and the camera is there, both those things are still dependent upon Terry who is doing the photography. Right. But that’s still not enough. Terry’s also dependent upon some power of knowing the machine and how to operate the machine. Do you see?
So one dependency leads to another dependency. But in the self‑realized state the camera exists on its own, and within its lens the entire universe is reflected, seen, for the lens becomes the universe. So that existence experiences itself. There is no outside experiencer to judge it, to say that I am self‑realized. There is no outside power to tell you that you are realized, but you just know experientially that you are realized, and your measure could only be that calmness, that laughter bubbling in you, by the cup that floweth over. And when you observe these things you will know that you are existing in existence by existence itself without any form of dependency. Do you see?
Now dependency, naturally, implies bondage. The camera had to have the stand. So it has a bondage with the stand. The tripod, or here in this case this what‑have‑you is used as a tripod. And then the tripod and the camera is dependent upon Terry to press the right buttons. And Terry is dependent upon that energy to make him press the buttons.
But what is there that could press the energy, the Divinity to function? Nothing. Nothing at all. It is functioning by itself all the time. Do you see? You have your watch or a clock and you wind it. It runs for twenty‑four hours. There has to be a winder of the clock. And that is in the form of dualism, where you have the watch and the winder. You have that force, the power, and the object of the power that winds the watch, right, and in twenty‑four hours the watch stops, because the winder has not turned that thing there to make it tick. But that independent existence requires nothing else for it to tick. It just keeps ticking on and on. That reminds me of the quartz watches that you don’t need to wind at all. It winds by itself and just carries on. If it’s a good watch and lasts for years and years and years, and you do not need to touch the winder. Do you see?
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