Chapter 12: Buddha in the Supermarket
And the third possibility is of interdependence. That happens very rarely, but whenever it happens a part of paradise falls on the earth. Two persons, neither independent nor dependent but in a tremendous synchronicity, as if breathing for each other, one soul in two bodies - whenever that happens, love has happened. Only call this love. The other two are not really love, they are just arrangements - social, psychological, biological, but arrangements. The third is something spiritual.
You also say, “I have watched two birds fly, intimate with each other and with the wind, so easy and without strife, in perfect harmony.” Yes, it creates jealousy. But birds are not aware; they have no consciousness, they exist below consciousness. Their harmony looks like harmony to you, not to them. And their joy on the wing is your interpretation, not theirs. Remember it: it is your interpretation. They can’t interpret; they have not yet evolved that consciousness which can interpret, which can look back, which can look forward, which can look into things. Their behavior is mechanical.
Man is a higher being, man has the capacity to be conscious. And with consciousness, trouble begins. The higher you move, the more dangerous every step becomes. If you fall, you will be falling from such heights that you will disappear somewhere in the valley. In the valley you can walk unconsciously, there is no fear. But when you are moving towards the top, reaching to the peak, you will have to be more and more conscious.
Man is very close to existence, the closest. Hence the responsibility and the danger, the hazard, the adventure. You can fall. And what is the fall?
Because you are capable of being conscious, there are two possibilities. You can become self-conscious - that is the fall. If the self overpowers your consciousness, you have fallen. If consciousness does not allow the self to overpower it, if you simply are conscious and there is no self in it - a consciousness without a center, a consciousness without anybody being there to be conscious - then you are rising and rising and rising and the climax is not far away. Maybe a few steps more, and you have arrived home. Then you will know what harmony is. And you will know the eternal harmony of existence, the silence that has never been broken; from the beginningless beginnings to the endless end, it continues the same. Then you will know the virgin purity of existence, which has never been polluted.
What can poor birds and animals know of it?
But I can understand, sometimes it creates great jealousy. Two birds on the wing in such harmony, in such love and intimacy, not only between themselves but with the wind, with the sun, with the rain, and man starts feeling, “Why can’t I be so happy? Why can’t I relate with such beauty? Why can’t I enjoy the wind and the rain and the sun so relaxedly?”
It is not because you are lower than the birds, it is because you are higher and much more is required of you. It is because you are higher that existence’s criterion for you is higher too. Yes, a drunkard looks lost, without any anxiety, without any worry, and Buddha also looks without any worry and without any anxiety; Buddha also looks drunk. But do you think they exist on the same plane? The drunkard has fallen from consciousness, and the Buddha has risen from the self.