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structure. The sage says, "Everything is of God." There is no place for 'mine'. There is no scope at all even for 'I' to say 'mine' for itself. If it can say 'I am', it is wrong. If it persists in saying 'I am', then it is a bewildered 'I'. It is necessary to understand this from two or three points of view.
The first is this: you are born, I am born. But nobody asks me whether I want to be born or not; no trouble is ever taken to find out my wishes. My birth is not dependent on my desire or on my acceptance. When I know myself, I know myself having been born. There is nothing like my being before my birth. Let us consider it in this way: you are constructing a building; you never ask the building whether or not it wishes to be built. The building has no will of its own. You are constructing it, and it is erected.
Have you ever thought that you also were never consulted before your birth? Existence causes you to be born, and you are born. Existence creates you, and you are created. If the building becomes conscious, it will say, 'I'. If it becomes conscious, it will refuse to consider its maker as its owner, as its master. The building will say, "The builder is my servant; he has constructed me. The materials are mine; he has served me. I was willing to be made, so he has made me."
But the building has no consciousness. Man has. And in fact who knows whether the building has consciousness or not? It is possible; it may be so. There are thousands of levels of consciousness. Man's consciousness is of one particular kind, it is not necessary for all things to have the same kind of consciousness. A building may have consciousness of a different kind, stone may have of yet another kind, plants another. It is possible that they, too, live in their own 'I'. When a gardener is watering a plant, maybe the plant is not thinking, "The gardener is giving me life," but rather, "I am showing favor to this gardener by accepting his service. Through my grace I accept his services." Nobody has ever approached the plant to inquire about its desire to be born.
It is absolutely absurd to call it my birth when it is caused without my desire. Where is the
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