Product Description

Man is born only as a seed, not as a flower. Flowering has to be achieved; one should
not take it for granted. Birth itself is only the opportunity for life, it is not life itself. You
can still miss life — and millions miss it for the simple reason that they think that just
being born is enough to be alive. It is not enough. It is necessary — without it there will
be no life — but it is not synonymous with life. You have to be twice-born.
Jesus says: Unless you are born again you shall not enter into my kingdom of God.
A kind of rebirth is needed. The ordinary birth is the birth of the bodymind mechanism,
but your spirit is only a potential — it has to be actualized. Abraham Maslow has called
this process self-actualization. Gautam Buddha would call the same process “no-self
actualization.” Abraham Maslow has no idea of the ultimate; he is thinking about it,
speculating about it. He has stumbled upon a certain truth, but he does not know how
to express it. He has not experienced it himself; it is only an intellectual understanding,
hence he calls it “self-actualization.”
But in that ultimate flowering the first thing that disappears is the self. In fact, the self is
the only barrier for that flowering. The self is the hindrance, not the help. The self
surrounds you like a wall; it is not the bridge.
When you are really born, born to life or to God — to me both are synonymous — you
are no more, no more as you understand yourself to be. A pure emptiness prevails, an
utter void prevails, a silence which is soundless. A music is there certainly, but without
any sound. The Zen people call it the sound of one hand clapping. That no-self is your
original face. When you are not, you are, and you are for the first time.
If Abraham Maslow had experienced the ultimate state of flowering he would never
have called it self-actualization; he would have called it “no-self actualization.” You are
born as a self, as an ego.