VBT – Meditation 86.1

VBT – Meditation 86.1

Beyond Perception

This sutra says if you try to CONTEMPLATE SOMETHING BEYOND PERCEPTION, BEYOND GRASPING – which you cannot grasp by the mind – BEYOND NOT BEING… Immediately the mind will say that if there is something which cannot be seen and cannot be grasped, it is not. The mind will immediately react that if something is not seeable, not perceivable, not graspable, then it is not. The mind will say that it doesn’t exist. Don’t become a victim of the mind.

This sutra says: … BEYOND PERCEPTION, BEYOND GRASPING, BEYOND NOT BEING. The mind will say that this is nothing, this cannot exist, this is a not-being. The sutra says, don’t believe in it. There is something which is being beyond not-being, which exists and which cannot be perceived, and which is not graspable: that is you.

You cannot perceive yourself, or can you? Can you imagine any situation in which you can encounter yourself, in which you can know yourself? You can go on using the word ‘self-knowledge’, which is absolutely absurd, because you cannot know the self. The self is always the knower. It cannot be reduced to a known, it cannot be reduced to an object.

For example, if you think that you can know the self, then the self that you know will not be yourself, but the one who is knowing the self will be the self. You will always remain the knower; you cannot become the known. You cannot put yourself in front of you; you will always recede back.

Whatsoever you know cannot be yourself – this means that you cannot know it. You cannot know it the way you know other things.

I cannot see myself the way I see you. Who will see? Because every relationship of knowledge, seeing, perception, means that there are at least two things: the known and the knower. Self-knowledge is not possible in this sense, because there is only one. There the knower and the known are one; the observer and the observed are one. You cannot convert yourself into an object.

So the word ‘self-knowledge’ is just wrong, but it connotes something, it says something which is true. You can know yourself in a very different sense, in an altogether different sense than from how you know other things. When there is nothing to be known, when all objects have disappeared, when all that can be perceived and grasped is no more, when you have discarded all, suddenly you become aware of yourself. And this awareness is not dual: there is no object and no subject. There is simply subjectivity.

This awareness is a different type of knowing. This awareness gives you a different dimension of existence. You are not divided in two. You are aware of yourself. You are not perceiving, you cannot grasp it, and yet it is existential – the most existential.

Try to think in this way. We have energy: that energy goes on moving to objects. Energy cannot be static. Remember it as one of the ultimate laws: energy cannot be static, it is dynamic. It cannot be otherwise. Dynamism is its very nature – energy moves. When I see you, my energy moves towards you. When I perceive you, a circle is made. My energy moves to you, then it comes back to me – a circle is made.

If my energy moves to you and doesn’t come back, I will not know you. A circle is needed: the energy must go and then come back to me. With its coming back it brings you to me. I know you.

Knowledge means that energy has made a circle. It has moved from the subject to the object, and then it has moved again and come back to the original source. If I go on living in this way – making circles with others – I will never know myself, because my energy is filled with the energies of others. It brings those images, it delivers those images to me. This is how you gather knowledge.