The thing is going to end—the thing that we call “I” is going to be as it is in deep sleep with no dreams.
Supposing the water—at each place where a finger of water stretches out over dry ground and doesn’t go any further because the land is too high—the water were to say to itself, “I’ve failed,” we would say it was neurotic water. Just wait and it will find a way. Now, when you find—you see, there’s this predicament that I’ve been describing to you—that there’s no way of transforming yourself to become this fearless, joyous, divine being as distinct from the quaking mess; when there’s no way, this is not a gloomy announcement. It is a very, very important communication. It’s telling you something—like the land is telling the water: “This isn’t the way to go. There’s another way. Try over here.” So, in the same way, life is telling you: “That’s not the way to go.”
The “you” that you imagine to be capable of transforming yourself doesn’t exist. In other words, an ego, an “I” separate from my emotions, my thoughts, my feelings, my experiences (who is supposed to be in control of me), cannot control them because it isn’t there. And as soon as you understand that, things will be vastly improved.
Although we are not stalked on the ground, we are nevertheless inseparable from a huge social context of… well, to begin with, parents, siblings, people who work for us and everything. I mean, it’s just impossible to cut ourselves off from a social environment—and also, furthermore, from a natural environment. We are that. There’s no clear way of drawing the boundary between this organism and everything that surrounds it. And yet, the image of ourselves that we have does not include all those relationships.
Our idea of personality of ourselves includes no information whatsoever about the hypothalamus (an organ of the brain), the pineal gland, really, of the way we breathe, of how our blood circulates, of how we manage to form a sentence, how we manage to be conscious, how you open and close your hand. The information contained in your image of yourself contains nothing about all that. And therefore, obviously, it’s an extremely inadequate image.
You are no less than the universe. Each one of you is the universe expressed in the place which you feel is here and now. You’re an aperture through which the universe is looking at itself, exploring itself.
You are the whole works that there is. It always was and always has been and always will be. Only, just as my whole body has a little nerve end here which is exploring and which contributes to the sense of touch, you are just such a little nerve end for everything that’s going on. Just as the eyes serve the whole body and help it to find its way around, so you are, as it were, serving the whole universe. You’re a cell in it. And it’s exploring itself.
If you see yourselves in the correct way, you are all as much extraordinary phenomenon of nature as, say, trees, clouds, the patterns in running water, the shape of fire, the arrangement of the stars, the form of a galaxy. You are all just like that. There’s nothing wrong with you at all.
The only thing that (at least to begin with) you can do is watch. Watch what’s going on. Watch not only what’s going on on the outside, but also what’s going on on the inside. Treat your own thoughts, your own reactions, your own emotions about what’s going on outside as if those inside reactions were also outside things.
It’s very difficult in the context of our competitive world to speak about things like this: to bring about the idea of doing something which is not acquisitive, which you’re not going to get anything out of, because there’s no one to get anything. When you understand what I’ve been talking about (about there being no experiencer separate from experience), then there’s no one to get anything out of life or to get anything from meditation.
Now, I know—I’m sorry—but everybody thinks that to spend a lot of time gently humming nonsense to yourself is a waste of time. What are you going to do with the time that you save, you know?