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Chapter 7: Time Is Very Short but My Methods Are Very Quick

How do you intend to raise the consciousness of the entire planet? Do we have enough time? Do we have a chance?

I can only answer for myself. I cannot use the word we.

That word is used by political leaders and religious priests. I am neither of them. I do not represent anybody in the world except myself.

The politician represents a certain crowd; hence his use of the word we has some meaning. He is no more than the total sum of the crowd. Withdraw the crowd and the politician disappears into a vacuum, into nothingness.

The same is true about a pope, a shankaracharya, or any other religious leader. The pope is simply the sum total of all the Catholics of the world. But remember, he is not a man but only a sum total - a number in arithmetic, but not an individual.

The individual can never use the word we, he can only use the word I - and that too with a very specific condition. His I is not equivalent to the ego. His I is not to be written in capital letters, his I should be written in lower case letters. It is not something extraordinary: he is simple, an ordinary human being. I am using the word I in the same way. We is impossible for me because I don’t belong to any crowd, any mob.

My commune is not a crowd.

It is a communion of individuals.

Yes, one can misunderstand it as a crowd. From far away you see a forest, but as you come close there are only trees, no forest. Exactly that is the case with my commune. Those who never come close to it will think of it as a cult, a creed, a certain society. But those who come close will find only trees, no forest - each individual so absolutely unique, alone. The question of “we” does not arise at all.

So when I am saying that I cannot use we, I am also trying to help you understand that you cannot use we either. You will have to be very alert.

And the I that you have to be has not to be the I of the egoist. The egoist uses I in the sense that he is superior to you, that you are nothing compared to him. His I is big, and his whole effort in his whole life in only one: how to make the I bigger and bigger, higher and higher, so that it becomes an Everest; no other peak can ever come even close to it.

This is the way Muhammad Ali uses I - Muhammad Ali, the Greatest. This is the way Alexander used his I - Alexander the Great. Just Alexander won’t do, “the Great” is needed to make him stand separate from thousands of other Alexanders.

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