The self is also known in Sanskrit as Brahman.
 This is a neuter word.
 Brahman is from the root "brh", which means to expand, to grow.
 It isn't quite clear exactly why this word was chosen.
 Sometimes there's a still better word for the self, which I like, is the word "tat",
 almost like tit for tat.
 "Tat" means "that".
 We get our word "that" from the Sanskrit "tat".
 And so when the baby comes into being, first of all, the first thing it says is "da".
 The baby is pointing, "da, da, da", and it's saying "that".
 "Look, isn't that marvellous, that!"
 So "that" is the witch, in which there is no witcher, and so you get the formula in
 this Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, "tat tvam asi", which means "tat", "that", "tvam",
 Latin, you know, "you, asi, are", "you are that", or "that thou art", "that art thou".
 So in this sense, then, every self is modelled on and is an expression of the One Self, because
 you all feel, individually, that you're the centre of the world, and everything else is
 seen in circles, circling out, sphering out from where you are.
 And that's, as it were, called the microcosm, the little cosmos.
 But then, in the same way, the macrocosm has a central self, although this is not central,
 in the way we talk about centres in space.
 Do you see that?
 The centre of a circle is in the middle of the circle, and the circumference is away
 from it.
 But you could say, you could use a phrase that the Christian theologians have used of
 God, "that circle whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere", you could
 speak of Brahman that way.
 It isn't in the middle of the universe, spatially speaking.
 You might ask the question, "Where is the universe?"
 Ever thought of that one?
 Where is it?
 Well, you can't say where, because every "where" has to be in relation to something.
 There would have to be another universe to say where this one is, but then, since those
 two together would constitute the universe, we wouldn't still be able to say where it
 was.
 It isn't anywhere.
 And so in that sense, the centre isn't anywhere in space, locally, and furthermore, the kind
 of space we are dealing with is only one possible kind of space.
 It's the kind of space our physical organisms are attuned to.
 We are, you see, like the radio.
 We pick up what wavelength we're on.
 So then, when inquirers used to come to that great modern Hindu saint, Sri Ramana Maharshi,
 and they'd ask him all sorts of silly questions, like, "Who was I in my last incarnation?
 What will I be in my next one?"
 He would always reply, "Who is asking the question?
 Who are you?
 Find out, because that's the thing you need to know."
 As it were, dig down into the depths of your being and say, "What is this that I call I?"
 That's one of the very fascinating questions.
 It's also-- it teases us out of thought to think about death in the sense of going to
 sleep and never waking up.
 Imagine that, and you find you can't.
 And yet, it's a thought that, although you can't get to grips with it, it remains fascinating.
 Also the question, "How is it suddenly that you awakened into this world?
 Where were you before?"
 In Zen Buddhism, they have the meditation problem, the koan.
 Before your father and mother conceived you, what is your original nature?
 And that's the same sort of weird question as what it would be like to go to sleep and
 never wake up.
 What was it like to wake up having not previously gone to sleep?
 It's very mysterious.
 But as you go on and plumb this question, you begin to develop the feeling that your
 existence is exceedingly odd.
 In many ways odd.
 Odd because it is here, and it so easily might not have been.
 After all, if your father hadn't met your mother, would you be here?
 Now of course somebody would be here, because he might have met somebody else.
 Would that be you?
 Of course it would.
 Don't you see?
 You can only be you by being someone.
 But every someone is you.
 Every someone is I.
 That's your name, you say.
 It's me.
 I am here.
 And everybody feels that I in the same way.
 It's the same feeling.
 Just like blue everywhere is the same color.
 So I-ness being, as it were, the most fundamental thing in man, is also fundamental to the universe.
 It too is I.
 And our I is a special case of it, coming out from the "central I," like so many
 tits from the belly of a sow, or so many spines from a sea urchin, so many legs from a spider.
 That is of course why the images of the Hindu gods are shown with many arms or many faces,
 because it is saying that all arms are the arms of the divinity.
 All faces are its masks.
 So you see, there's really nothing to worry about, because the important you is perfectly
 indestructible.
 It's what there is.
 Our comings and goings, our fortunes and misfortunes, are a sort of mirage.
 The more we know about them, the more we know about the world, the more diaphanous it seems.
 And therefore everything in the world has the characteristics of smoke.
 You know, when you blow a cigarette or pipe or something, and a cloud of smoke, and you
 see it in the sunbeam, and it's full of whorls and designs and all kinds of marvelous things
 going on, and then slowly it disappears.
 Well everything's just like that.
 Now there are two attitudes you can take to that state of affairs.
 You can say, "Sour grapes.
 It's all a lousy, wretched trap.
 And here I am, and I'm given all these feelings of love and attachment and joy of life, and
 then I fall apart.
 My teeth drop out, my eyes become feeble, I get cancer or cirrhosis of the liver or
 something, and then it all falls apart, and it's too bad.
 Therefore, therefore, don't become attached to things.
 Don't enjoy life.
 Treat it, holding it off like that, just like a very, very firm person who's been jilted
 and says, "Never again will I get mixed up with love, because love hurts."
 But on the other hand, a weaving of smoke can be very beautiful, provided you don't
 lean on it, provided you don't try to preserve it, catch hold of it.
 Then you destroy it.
 So exactly the same way, there's nothing in the way of form that you can lean on, that
 you can grasp.
 And if you see that, then the world of form is very beautiful.
 If you let it go, to love people, you see, if you're a husband and wife, you must let
 each other go.
 Otherwise the marriage is either going to break up, or it's going to be hell.
 If you love a person, you say to that person, "Look, I love you," whatever that may be,
 I've seen quite a bit of it, and I know there's lots that I haven't seen, but still it's you,
 and I want you to be what you want to be.
 And I won't be happy if I've got you in a cage.
 You'll be a bird without song.
 And they're likely to go on loving each other.
 But if they wrap each other up with all sorts of ties and chains and documents and things,
 then they're not on a very safe basis.
 The very firm words of those documents belie the situation, because nobody curses and swears
 and kisses the Bible and all sorts of things like that if he means yes.
 If there's some doubt that he means yes, then he's asked what they call these rituals of
 cursing and swearing and signing on dotted lines and putting a seal, something like that.
 Indicates doubt right at once.
 It just does fly in the ointment from the beginning.


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