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Book Name: The Hidden SplendorPrevious     Next
 

life.

But you are not aware of it all, and in fact if you were aware, you would go mad. So much is happening inside you that it would be impossible for you to maintain your sanity.

The child in the mother's womb sleeps twenty-four hours a day, for the simple reason that in those nine months more things happen in his body than will happen in the seventy years which are to follow after his birth. Much more is happening in those nine months than is going to happen in the body between his birth and death. Hence, he has to remain constantly asleep -- no awareness at all.

When you are tired, when you feel spent, you need a good sleep -- have you ever thought why? You need a good sleep so that your awareness does not interfere with the rejuvenating of your body. In the morning you feel fresh, again ready to work. What a miracle sleep has done to you! On a greater scale, when it becomes almost impossible for the body to rejuvenate itself, death happens. Death is nothing but a long sleep, a deep sleep, so that your soul can move into another body, into some womb. But your awareness can be a disturbance, so your death almost always happens in a deep sleep. Before you die, you fall asleep; you lose all consciousness, all awareness -- it is the greatest surgery that nature does.

What is true about the body and about your physiology is also true about your psychology -- much is happening of which you are not aware. You become aware only when a certain situation arises: you are a peaceful man, but somebody insults you and anger arises in you, of which you were not aware. It has always been there, hiding in the darkness of your unconscious, but if somebody insults you, immediately it is ready to react.

I am reminded of one of the most beautiful stories, historical. A great Japanese emperor wanted to see Nan In, a Zen master. Because he was the ruler over all Japan, he thought that Nan In could be ordered to come to the court.

His prime minister advised him, "Don't be foolish. You may be the emperor of the whole of Japan, but there are a few people in the country who are beyond your domination -- or anybody's domination. You cannot order

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