It's like looking at a holograph. We shift our glance, or the perspective of our glance, and all of a sudden we see the same thing, but in another perspective. It's the same forest but it's an alternate perspective, because we are seeing it from the point of view of the trees instead of just from our limited vantage point. The emotion is a wonderful sense of resonance with - kinship really - with all created things. As Saint Francis said, "I thought I was looking at the world, but the world was looking at me."

When we start meditating, we think we are the observer, or the spectator of the knowing subject. Our problems, or our thoughts, or our memory of the physical world are the objects of our cognizance. Now we've reversed that. In fact, the whole Universe is looking at itself through our eyes.

We can do the same thing talking with another person. While we are paying attention to what they are saying, and what we are saying, we can still communicate with him/her at a deep soul level. What s/he is saying is very inadequate in comparison with what s/he implies behind what s/he says, and the same with what we say, what we imply behind what we say.

If meditation is a rehearsal for life, think of a person with whom we've had difficulty communicating. Maybe there is a way of obviating the obvious by communicating with him/her at a deeper level. In any case, there is no way in which we can explain what we imply, and it's the same for that person.

The next phase is called turning within. This is the quantum leap; it is the point at which our meditation really starts. If we are limiting ourselves to the input of the environment, we're not validating the impact of our being upon the environment. Consequently we are determined, we are conditioned. We're trying to interpret what is happening with a very inadequate mind or mode of thinking.

The same thing happens with our food. In order to digest our food, we produce enzymes. The enzymes are going to act on the food - proteins, and fats, and hydrocarbons - in order to transform them into amino acid chains that we can incorporate in ourselves. There is an action of us upon the environment, or the way the environment has been ingested. This is the key to unfurling the potentialities of our being. Therefore, it is important in terms of our self-esteem.

I find the way to do this is to downplay thoughts regarding the environment - the physical environment, or the social environment, or the psychological envi- ronment, even the emotion of the psychological environment. In fact, emotion plays a very important part here. Downplay that impact; don't eradicate it altogether, simply downplay it. It's just like a holograph, we downplay one perspective in order to highlight another. Of course we can't do it with our will. We need a kind of imperviousness that safeguards the integrity of our being from being caught up in the hoax of the way things appear.

We are pulled two directions. On one hand we need to involve ourselves with people, with the circumstances of life, with what has been achieved by our civili zation, to participate in these great achievements. On the other hand we realize our involvement is always at the cost of our freedom.

We think it is circumstance that curtails our freedom. In fact we can be free in our opinion, and in our emotion, and in our identity, while being extremely constrained by circumstances. The vagabond is not necessarily free. We need to find our freedom, first of all with regard to opinion. We realize our opinion is not absolute; it is relative. I don't say it's not valid. It's relative. Then we find some kind of freedom from our obstinacy. We question our opinion. That helps us downplay the impact of the memory of the environment.

We feel a kind of emotion - we can't do this with our will- the emotion of peace rather than joy, what it feels like to find ourselves at peace with ourselves, and with people, and with life. It is really independence, and we know how depen- dent we have become in the world. That's why a sannyasin, or a dervish, finds freedom more easily, because he or she is much less dependent upon those things that we, in our civilizations, are dependent upon: our comfort, our facilities. Life has become much more comfortable for us than for people living in the caves in the Himalayas.

Dependence can lead to addiction, which is much more serious than dependence, not necessarily addiction to drugs, but all kind of things: TV, chatting, being loved instead of loving - a lot of addictions. There is no doubt those addictions impair our self-esteem. The reason for the extraordinary power of those sannyasins and rishis, the reason for their power, is they have found freedom from dependence upon anything. In the dervishes it's the Divine power. I've found greater power amongst the dervishes than amongst the rishis in the Himalayas, because of the sense of the Divine investiture in their being, the majesty of the Divine being they've inherited, that we've all inherited.

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