Renowned saint Murari Bapu, who is a great narrator of “Ram Katha — Tulsi Ramayan”, once mentioned the following anecdote.
Murari Bapu was having a conversation with a Catholic Priest on various topics pertaining to Religion, Hinduism, Christianity and so on. During the course of the conversation, The Priest asked Murari Bapu, “Do you know the meaning and importance of the Cross?” Murari Bapu said with all honesty, “Yes, whatever little that I know is that Jesus was crucified on this cross. Since that day, Christians wear the cross in the memory of His great sacrifice for humanity.”
Priest smiled and said, “Yes, that is the general and prevailing understanding. However the deeper meaning is that if you look at the Cross, there are these two lines, one vertical and the other horizontal. The vertical line symolises Capital “I” — our EGO and the horizontal line is crossing the I. The symbol suggests that the day you cross your Ego, you will be closer to God.”
Hence the Priest continued, “We Christians wear the cross on our chest, where the Ego lies, to keep reminding us of this simple but defining message.”
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Osho says in The Book of Wisdom, Chapter 16 –
TO SURVIVE, AND TO STRUGGLE for survival in the fight of life, everybody needs a certain idea of who they are. And nobody has any idea. In fact nobody can ever have any idea, because at the deepest core you are a mystery. You can’t have any idea of it. At the deepest core you are not individual, you are universal.
That’s why if you ask the Buddha, “Who are you?” he remains silent, he does not answer. He cannot, because now he is no more separate. He is the whole. But in ordinary life even Buddha has to use the word ‘I’. If he feels thirsty he has to say, “I am thirsty. Ananda, bring me a little water, I am thirsty.”
For example, you have a name. That is a fiction. You came without a name, you did not bring a name with you, the name was given to you. Then by constant repetition you start becoming identified with it. You know your name is Rama or Rahim or Krishna. It goes so deep that if all you three thousand sannyasins fall asleep here and somebody comes and calls, “Rama, where are you?” nobody will hear except Rama. Rama will say, “Who has come to disturb my sleep?” Even in sleep he knows his name; it has reached to the unconscious, it has seeped through and through. But it is a fiction.
If you go deep into yourself, you will find that the name has disappeared. The idea of ‘I’ has disappeared; what is left is only a pure am-ness, is-ness, existence, being.
And that being is not separate, it is not yours and mine; that being is the being of all. Rocks, rivers, mountains, trees, all are included. It is all-inclusive, it excludes nothing. The whole past, the whole future, this immense universe, everything is included in it. The deeper you go into yourself, the more and more you will find that persons don’t exist, that individuals don’t exist. What exists is a pure universalness. On the circumference we have names, egos, identities. When we jump from the circumference towards the center, all those identities disappear.
THE EGO IS just a useful fiction. Use it, but don’t be deceived by it.
MERRY CHRISTMAS TO YOU.
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एक मैं हूँ कि समझा नहीँ खुद को आज तक..!!
एक दुनिया है कि न जाने मुझे क्या-क्या समझ लेती है..
Ek mein hun ki samajha nahin khud ko aaj tak
ek duniya hai ki na jaane mujhe kya kya samajh leti hai.
While I am still discovering myself, not sure what the world thinks of me.