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Chapter 10: The Cause of Misery

The first question:

How is it that you describe the life that is really ours, and which you have transcended, so correctly and in every detail, while we remain so ignorant of it? Is it not paradoxical?

It looks paradoxical, it is not - because you can understand only when you have transcended. While you are in a certain state of mind you cannot understand that state of mind; you are so involved in it, you are so much identified with it. For understanding space is needed, a distance is needed; and there is no distance. When you transcend a state of mind, only then you become able to understand it because then there is distance. You are standing aloof, separate. Now you can look, unidentified. Now there is perspective.

While you are in love you cannot understand love. You may feel it but you cannot understand it. You are so much in it.. For understanding, aloofness, detached aloofness is needed. For understanding, you need to be an observer. While you are in love the observer is lost, you have become a doer. You are a lover, you cannot be a witness to it. Only when you transcend love, when you are enlightened and gone beyond love, you will be able to understand it.

A child cannot understand what childhood is. When childhood is lost you can look back and understand. Youth cannot understand what youth is. Only when you have become old and are capable of looking back - aloof, distant - then you will be able to understand it. Whatsoever is understood, is understood only by transcendence. Transcendence is the base of all understanding. That’s why it happens every day: you can give advice, good advice, to somebody else who is in trouble; if you are in the same trouble you cannot give that good advice to yourself.

Somebody else is in trouble, you have space to look, observe; you can witness. You can give good advice. When you are in the same trouble you will not be so capable. You can be, if even then you can be detached. You can be, if even then you can look at the problem as if you are not in the problem - outside, standing on a hill and looking down.

Any problem can be solved if even for a single moment you are out of it and can look at it as a witness. Witnessing solves everything. But while you are deep in any state it is difficult to be a witness - you are so much identified. While in anger you become anger. No one is left behind who can see, observe, watch, decide. No one is left behind. While in sex you have moved completely, now there is no uninvolved center.

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