The World as Self, Part 3: The Fundamental I

The Self is also known in Sanskrit as Brahman. This is a neuter word. Brahman is from the root brh, which means ‘to expand,’ ‘to grow.’ It isn’t quite clear exactly why this word was chosen. Sometimes there’s a still better word for the Self—which I like—is the word tat; almost like ‘tit for tat.’ Tat means ‘that.’ We get our word ‘that’ from the sanskrit tat. And so, when a baby comes into being first of all, the first thing it says is, Da! Da. The baby’s pointing, Da, da, da! And it’s saying, That! Look, isn’t that marvelous? That, you see?

So that is the which in which there is no whicher, and so you get the formula in this Brihadaranyaka Upanishad: tat tvam asi, which means: tat: ‘that;’ tvam: ‘that in,’ you know, ‘you;’ asi: ‘are.’ ‘You are that,’ or ‘that thou art;’ ‘that art thou.’

So in this sense, then, every self is modeled on—and is an expression of—the one Self, because you all feel, individually, that you’re the center of the world. And everything else is seen in circles, circling out, sphering out from where you are. And that’s, as it were—they called them ‘microcosm,’ the little cosmos. But then, in the same way, the macrocosm as a central self, although this is not central in the way we talk about centers in space. Do you see that? A center of a circle is in the middle of the circle and the circumference is away from it. But you could say—you could use a phrase that the Christian theologians have used of God—that circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.

You could speak of Brahman that way. It isn’t in the middle of the universe, spacially speaking. You might ask the question, Where is the universe? Ever thought of that one? Where is it? Well, you can’t say where because everywhere has to be in relation to something. There would have to be another universe to say where this one is. But then, since those two together would constitute ‘the universe,’ we wouldn’t—still—be able to say where it was. It isn’t anywhere.

And so, in that sense, the center isn’t anywhere in space, locally—and furthermore, the kind of space we are dealing with is only one possible kind of space. It’s the kind of space our physical organisms are attuned to. We are, you see, like the radio: we pick up what wavelengths we’re on.

So, then, when inquirers used to come to that great modern Hindu saint Sri Ramana Maharshi, and they’d ask him all sorts of silly questions like, Who was I in my last incarnation? What will I be in my next one? he would always reply, Who is asking the question? Who are you? Find out, because that’s the thing you need to know. As it were, dig down into the depths of your being and say, What is this that I call ‘I’? That’s one of the very fascinating questions. It’s also—it teases us out of thought; to think about death in the sense of going to sleep and never waking up. Imagine that. And you find you can’t—and yet, it’s a thought that, although you can’t get to grips with it, it remains fascinating.

Also, the question, How is it that suddenly you awakened into this world? Where were you before? In Zen Buddhism they have the meditation problem, the kōan. Before your father and mother conceived you, what is your original nature? And that’s the same sort of weird question as what it would be like to go to sleep and never wake up. What was it like to wake up having not previously gone to sleep? It’s very mysterious.

But as you go on and plumb this question you begin to develop the feeling that your existence is exceedingly odd. In many ways odd. Odd because it is here and it so easily might not have been. After all, if your father hadn’t met your mother, would you be here? Of course, somebody would be here, because he might have met somebody else. Would that be you? Of course it would. Don’t you see? You can only be you by being someone. But every someone is you. Every someone is ‘I.’ That’s your name. You say, It’s me. I am here. And everybody feels that I in the same way. It’s the same feeling, just like blue everywhere is the same color.

So I-ness being, as it were, the most fundamental thing in man is also fundamental to the universe. It, too, is ‘I.’ And our ‘I’ is a special case of it. Coming out from the “central eye,” like so many tits from the belly of a sow, or so many spines from a sea urchin, so many legs from a spider. And that is, of course, why the images of the Hindu gods are shown with many arms or many faces: because it is saying that all arms are the arms of the divinity, all faces are its masks.

So, you see, there’s really nothing to worry about because the important you is perfectly indestructible. It’s what there is. Our comings and goings, our fortunes and misfortunes are a sort of mirage. The more we know about them, the more we know about the world, the more diaphanous it seems. And therefore everything in the world has the characteristics of smoke—you know, when you blow a cigarette, or pipe, or something, and a cloud of smoke, and you see it in a sunbeam and it’s full of whorls and designs and all kinds of marvelous things going on, and then, slowly, it disappears. Well, everything’s just like that.

Now, there are two attitudes you can take to that state of affairs. You can say sour grapes, it’s all a lousy, wretched trap. And here I am, I’m given all these feelings of love and attachment and joy of life, and then I fall apart. My teeth drop out, my eyes become feeble, I get cancer or cirrhosis of the liver, or something, and then it all falls apart, and it’s too bad! Therefore, therefore, don’t become attached to things. Don’t enjoy life. Treat it, holding it off—like that—just like a very, very firm person who’s been jilted and says, Never again will I get mixed up with love, because love hurts.

But on the other hand, a weaving of smoke can be very beautiful, provided you don’t lean on it. Provided you don’t try to preserve it. Catch hold of it—then you destroy it. So, exactly the same way: there’s nothing in the way of form that you can lean on, that you can grasp. And if you see that, then the world of form is very beautiful. If you let it go.

To love people—you see, if you are husband and wife you must let each other go, otherwise the marriage is either going to break up or it’s going to be hell. If you love a person you say to that person, Look, I love you—whatever that may be. I’ve seen quite a bit of it, and I know there’s lots I haven’t seen. But still, it’s you, and I want you to be what you want to be. And I won’t be happy if I’ve got you in a cage. You’d be a bird without song. And they’re likely to go on loving each other. But if they wrap each other up with all sorts of ties and chains and documents and things, then they’re not on a very safe basis. The very firm words of those documents belie the situation, because nobody curses, and swears, and kisses the Bible, and all sorts of things like that if he means ‘yes.’ If there’s some doubt that he means yes, then he’s asked to make all these rituals of cursing and swearing, signing on dotted lines, and see and some—indicates doubt right at once. It’s just a fly in the ointment from the beginning.