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Main Index
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of life. How to represent it in marble?
"This is a beautiful symbol. The eyes are closed. That means these people are not seeing anything, that all thoughts have disappeared, that there is nothing to see. The closed eyes are symbolic that there is nothing to see. The long ears are symbolic that they have started hearing the ultimate music of existence."
He said, "Your explanation looks plausible and I cannot argue with you, but you don't have any support from the scriptures." I said, "I don't need it. What I am saying is self-explanatory, it needs no support from scriptures. And what I am saying is not a scholarly statement; what I am saying is my own experience. With closed eyes I have been in a state when you don't see anything, but in that moment you hear for the first time a very celestial music surrounding the whole existence. So I am saying it on my own authority."
Jainas never wrote the history of the twenty-four tirthankaras, but only about one. And they cannot call it history because in Mahavira's life they have included all twenty-four tirthankaras' lives too. All that was essential in twenty-four lives, all that was meaningful, they have combined. Mahavira is just a representative, a symbol. Just the way the statues are symbolic, Mahavira's life is symbolic. So they don't call it history, they call it ancient tales, old stories. But they are not fiction, they relate to reality.
The New Man will be the end of the world of heroes. Alexander the Great will not be possible any more. Even if he comes riding on his horse, people will be simply entertained. He will look just like Don Quixote. Nobody is going to bother about Alexander the Great.
History ends with the old man. Heroes end with the old man. The New Man will write symbolically. He will write about the New Man and his qualities in a symbolic way -- not about separate persons, which brings comparison, which makes someone big, high, holy, someone a sinner, inferior, a nobody. The old man was living vertically, in a hierarchy. The New Man will live horizontally, with no hierarchy. Everybody is doing his best and doing what he wants to do, and doing it not just as work
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