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have condemned Gautam Buddha's story many times, but this time I am going to appreciate it, just to put things in balance. The story is: Gautam Buddha is born while his mother is standing under a saal tree, and he is born standing. And the first thing he does is to take seven steps in front of his mother and declare to the universe, "I am the most enlightened person ever." I have condemned it for different reasons; now I want to appreciate it for different reasons.
In fact, every newborn child, if he could, would say the same thing, "I am enlightened." If every newborn child could walk, he would take seven steps and declare to the whole world, "I am the most enlightened person, unique." Perhaps the story is simply a symbolic way of recognizing each child's innocence as his enlightenment, as his ultimate experience.
But he will be lost in the world. Perhaps once in a while somebody comes back to his childhood again. My effort is to bring you back to your innocent childhood again. What you have not done in your first birth you can do in your second.
After I have gone from here tonight, everybody has to take seven steps and declare to the whole world, "I am the most enlightened person!" Try it, and you will really rejoice. And you will never fall back again into the old ignorance and start looking for how to become enlightened. Finish it tonight!
And you are asking how one can recognize if one has not realized. It is a question like if you are given a rotten egg in a restaurant and you say, "This is rotten." And the manager comes and says, "Are you a hen? Have you ever produced an egg? If you have never produced an egg, on what authority are you saying that this is rotten?"
There is no need. You can recognize things which you may not have consciously realized, but which must be an undercurrent of realization within you. Except that there is no other way. How do you realize when you fall in love that it is love? Certainly somewhere deep inside you there must be a hidden corner that already knows what love is. How do you recognize when you see a roseflower and say it is beautiful? Have you ever seen beauty? Have you ever realized what
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