When Somebody Becomes A Nobody

When Somebody Becomes A Nobody

First: you need a shift from the objective to the subjective. Meditate more and more with closed eyes about your emotions, your thoughts. Look deeper into the inner world, the world that is absolutely private to you. The objective is public; the subjective is private. You cannot invite anybody into your dreams, it is not possible. You cannot say to your friend, `Tonight come into my dream,' because the dream is absolutely yours. You cannot even invite your beloved who may be sleeping just by your side. But you dream your dreams and she dreams her dreams.

Dreams are private; they're subjective; the objective is the marketplace. Many people can watch one thing, but most people cannot watch one thought, only one person can - ­ the person to whom the thought belongs.

Remove your consciousness more and more towards the private. The poet lives a private life; the politician lives a public life. M K Gandhi used to say that he didn't have a private life. That means he must have had a very poor life. A private life is a rich life. The politician's life is there to be watched by everybody: on TV , in newspapers, on the street, in the crowd. The politician only has a public face. When he goes home he is nobody . He loses all face.

You have to find your private face. The emphasis should be more on the private than on the public. And you should start learning how to love the private ­ because the private is the door to godliness. The public is the door to science but not to religion. The public is the door towards arithmetic, calculation, but it is not the door to ecstasy , to love. And enjoy things which are very private: music, poetry , painting...Zen insisted on calligraphy , painting, poetry , gardening ­ something that is absolutely private, something that you live from the inside towards the outside, something that rises as a wave in the innermost core of your being and spreads outward.

Public life is just the reverse: something rises outside and faces in towards you; the original, the source, is always outside.Your centre of being is never within yourself. That's why a politician is always afraid of the outside ­ because his life depends on the outside. If people don't vote him in he will be nobody .

That doesn't make a difference to a painter or poet. During Vincent van Gogh's whole life not a single painting was sold, but that didn't matter; he enjoyed himself. If they sold, good; if they did not sell, good. The real prize was not in their being sold and appreciated, the real prize was in the painter creating them. In that very creation he has attained his goal.In the moment of creation he becomes divine.

Whenever you create something you become a small god in your own right. If God is Creator then to be creative is the only way to reach him. Then you become a participant, no more a spectator.

The real prize is not when a painting is sold and critics appreciate it all over the world ­ that is just a booby prize. The real prize is when the painter is creating it, when the painter is lost in his painting. There is the real prize, there is the attainment.

Om Namah Shivay