Looking at life in pieces through keyhole visions makes everything look like one is against the other. But existentially, nothing against anything else. Because, as we sit here—see, that is your body, this is my body. This is my mind, that is your mind. What you call as “my body,” what I call as “my body” is: what I have accumulated is “my body,” what you have accumulated is “your body.” What I have accumulated in impressions is “my mind,” what you have accumulated as impressions is “your mind.” But there is no such thing as “my life” and “your life.” This is a living cosmos. You have gathered a little bit, I have gathered a little bit. We’re enjoying that.
Though we are really nothing in this existence, it has given us an individual experience—which is a tremendous, tremendous privilege. Unfortunately, human beings are not able to appreciate or understand this privilege. Though you are not even a speck of dust in this cosmos, you have an individual experience. You can look at it from your own end as if you are the whole universe yourself. But if you take this individuality too seriously, everything will be contradictory.
What is your life is essentially the way you experience it. What is your life is not in terms of what you have around you. What your life really is is the way you experience it. And the way you experience it, or whichever way you experience it, happens within you. What happens within you? If you don’t take charge of that, I think it’s a wasted life.
There is nothing here in your experience without involving yourself. So you do not know life without yourself. Only because you exist there is life. If you did not exist, what do you know about life? There is simply no possibility. So selflessness is just an idea; a futile idea. The only way you can exist here is selfish. The question is like this: for somebody, selfishness means it’s all about themselves as an individual. For somebody else it’s for him and his family. For someone else it’s him and his community. For someone else, his selfishness for him and his race or religion or nationality. I’m saying: why are you stingy about your selfishness? Why don’t you be absolutely selfish? Why don’t you make your selfishness cosmic? At least global?
What does selfless mean? What does selfless mean—you’ll stop breathing, is it? I’m saying it’s just an idea which has never happened. It is just a foolish idea. There is no such thing as selfless, because the very basis of your experience is self.
It’s a reality which involves many, many forces. We are also one little force in that. So we can push it—we can use our skills, we can use our intelligence, we can use our influence—and push that piece as far as we can. But there are too many pieces. It will never happen 100% your way or anybody’s way. And I’m glad it is so, because if it all happened your way, where the hell do I go? A little bit your way, a little bit my way, a little bit somebody’s way—this is the way the world is.
Everybody’s interested too much in finish line, especially in the Western world. They think finish line is everything. If you’re so interested in the finish line, do you understand what is the finish line for life? You want to cross it quickly, is it? It’s ridiculous! Everybody wants to live!
In yoga there is a very good kind of a saying, which says: “If you have one eye on the goal, you will have only one eye to find your way, which is very inefficient.” So you’re rendering yourself incapable of life simply because you want to get somewhere.
What you call as “within,” or what you call as “me,” is an entire universe. And that’s the only universe you’ve experienced.
Right now you think “I know.” That’s like a blot in your brain. It doesn’t allow you to see anything else.
You and me are sitting here, talking long distance. We’re sitting on a round planet. The damn thing is spinning all the time, and also hurtling through the space at tremendous speed. In the middle of nowhere—nobody knows where this cosmos begins, where it ends—in the middle of nowhere, a tiny little mechanism called “solar system.” In that, tiny little super-tiny place called “planet Earth.” In that, Texas is a micro-super space. In that, Austin city is a super-super-micro space. In that, you’re a big man. This is the problem. Because the moment I think “I know,” I become big in my perception. Once I become big, inevitably I’ll make a fool of myself—whether I realize this in this life or not, somebody who has eyes to see will see: this is a bloody fool!
“I do not know” does not mean that it’s ignorance. See, we must understand this. See, however much knowledge you have—even if you have digested the libraries on this planet—still, what you know in this cosmic space is minuscule. But our ignorance is boundless. So the whole yogic system always identifies with ignorance. Because if I identify with my ignorance, then—whether I am awake or asleep—my intelligence is always on. It never sleeps. The moment I say “I know,” my intelligence goes to sleep. It gets lazy. This is essentially determining what is the quality of your life.
If I give you a belief system, you may believe it, you may not believe it. If I give you a teaching, you may like it, you may not like it. If I give you a philosophy, you may agree with it, you may not agree with it. Now I give you a technology. All you have to do is learn to use it. Whoever learns to use it, for them it’ll work. It’s as simple as that.
The greatest magnanimity of creation is: it gave us an individual experience. There are swarms of insects here. For them, they don’t have an individual experience. They experience themselves as a swarm, as a species. But we experience ourselves as an individual. Unfortunately, instead of enjoying this privilege, we have made this into a point of conflict—conflict between each other all the time: me versus you.
I want you to just imagine: suppose you looked at you or me from, let’s say, galaxy Z. What are we? Even through a telescope or a microscope, we are not visible. It doesn’t matter what they have, we are not visible; we’re such a tiny speck of dust, literally. But we have an individual experience. It’s not a small thing. We can look at the universe and wonder what this is all about! This is not a small thing.
Does intelligence spell solutions or problems? Intelligence means solutions, isn’t it? Unfortunately, today it’s human intelligence which is causing all the problems, simply because we are too stuck with our individuality. We don’t understand this is just a privilege. Tomorrow morning, if they bury us in the land, we will become one with everything, alright?
Without taking a breath, we cannot live. Without food, water, we cannot live. Without constant interaction, we cannot live. But we are acting like concrete block individuals: we are absolutely individual. Yoga means you obliterate the boundary of your individuality so that you experience your universality. Once you experience your universality—if I experience everything around me here, everybody around me here, as a part of myself—after that, do I need any morality? Does somebody have to tell me: don’t drop them, don’t kill them, don’t do this, don’t do that? Once I’ve experienced something as a part of myself, with that I have no conflict. This is yoga.
So these five fingers, right now I experience them very much as a part of myself. But this is just the food that I have eaten. Food I’ve eaten means: it’s just the soil that I’m walking upon right now; it’s just a piece of the planet. But right now, this is very much me. In my experience, this is totally me. Now, why is this so? See, right now, there is a glass of water here. The water in this glass—is this me? No. If I drink it, will it become me? Of course.
What is within the boundaries of my sensation is me. What is outside the boundaries of my sensation is not me. So the sensory body has a presence of its own.
What yoga means is: you sit here—without any outside activity—just sit here and make your life energies so exuberant and active that your sensory body expands. If your sensory body expands to the size of the room in which you’re sitting, you will experience everything around you as a part of yourself. If your sensory body expands like the universe, then we say you are a yogi. That means you become one with everything.
It means that you obliterated the boundaries of your individuality and you became one with everything in your experience. Even if this happens for a few moments in your life, after that you are never the same again. Because everything that you see—man, woman, child, tree, animal, bird; everything—somewhere deep inside you know: this is part of me. When you know this, you don’t have to be driven by commandments or morals or values or ethics. No! You are running out of your humanity; the life that you are. And that’s the way you should be. If your humanity is dead, then you need a lot of morality. If your humanity is alive and overflowing, everything will be fine, you will do the best that is for yourself and everybody around you, and we would completely live a different life.
What you exhale, the trees are inhaling. What they exhale, you are inhaling. Literally, one half of your breathing apparatus is hanging out there.