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Main Index
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with him. He is, as yet, united, integrated within himself. No crack has yet developed within him. He is still an indivisible whole.
We cannot experience the bliss of a child or the love of a child. It should actually be the other way around: our greater ability, backed by our experiences of a lifetime, should qualify us. But this is not so because the process of experience is disrupted within us. When I touch your hand, it is only a hand touching a hand. If my hand is inert, the intellect remains unaffected.
One of the three gurus of Mahatma Gandhi was a person by the name of Handiaro. It is said of him that when anyone touched his hand, they got the feeling of touching a dead man's hand. His friends have recorded that if anyone were to touch Handiaro's hand with his eyes closed, it was difficult to tell whether they were touching a piece of wood or a live hand.
His hands were devoid of all sensitivity.
Perhaps this is an exaggeration, but in our case it is very true. If the hand is alive, if it is very sensitive, then every hair on the hand, every pore on the skin, is filled with a current of electricity. Then only can the intellect take in the experience, the bliss, of the touch.
If the hand is lifeless, no message reaches the intellect, because the intellect has no direct means of its own. The senses are the gates of intelligence and the body is the medium of the soul. The body is the extension of the soul in the world of matter. If we become enemies of our bodies, we sever all our connections with the world. Our connection too breaks in existence in the same proportion as our connection to the body.
We live, but there is always a distance between us and existence. Go where we may, this distance always remains. When we love, this distance remains, when we are friendly or kind, the distance remains; whatever we do, this distance remains and is very difficult to cross. Lao Tzu says: "Duality forms within us because of this disparity between the senses and intelligence." This disparity, however, is also useful. Distance should be formed at one time and broken at another time. That is why Jesus has said: "Only those who
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