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The religious experience is an oceanic experience. Just for this small phrase, this small statement, I consider him to be one of the greatest psychologists that we have produced anywhere around the globe. He has touched exactly the right point.
Religious experience is an oceanic experience, a dewdrop slipping from the lotus leaf into the ocean -- in one way, disappearing into the ocean, in another way, the ocean disappearing into the dewdrop, both becoming one.
The monk simply disappeared into the crowd because he did not want to be recognized. He did not want even to pay obeisance to the master, because that would also be in some way a hidden desire to be recognized by the master.
But a man who has understood the truth needs no recognition. He becomes a nobody. In Buddha's language, he becomes anatta, he becomes a no-self.
He is no more; only the existence is.
It is a beautiful anecdote for you to meditate, to contemplate on.
Sampu wrote:
CHILD WAITING EARTHBOUND.
CLOUD SPARROW
HIGHER AND HIGHER.
It is a small haiku. It says, CHILD WAITING EARTHBOUND ... a child in the mother's womb is waiting to come to the earth. First one has to get roots into the earth; only then you can spread your branches into the sky like wings. Unless you have roots, you cannot spread your wings into the sky. The deeper the roots, the higher goes the tree ... almost reaching to the stars.
Only one painter in the West, Vincent van Gogh, a Dutch painter, had such tremendous insight -- almost the insight of a mystic, very close to being a buddha. He always painted his trees surpassing the stars. The stars remained underneath the trees, and the trees went beyond the stars. Whenever he was asked, "What are you doing? This is simply insane. No tree can reach beyond the stars!" ...
The closest star is four light years away -- the closest. You have to understand four light years. Scientists had to find a new measurement; yards and feet and miles would no longer do. This is the measurement for the stars -- the distance is so vast. What is a light year? A light year is: light travels in a single second one hundred
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