One has to become a child again and then life is complete. In childhood we start and in childhood we end. If one dies without becoming a child, his whole life circle is incomplete. He will have to be born again.
That is the whole eastern idea of rebirth. If you can be reborn – reborn in this life –
There is no need to be born again. If you can really become a child in this body, there is no need to be born into the world again. You can live in the heart of God. There is no need then to come back. You have learned the lesson and completed the circle.
It is very difficult, because your whole experience, your whole pattern, your whole character resists and says, ’What are you doing? It looks foolish!’ But be foolish and let it assert itself. You will feel so unburdened, so new, and as fresh as a new drop. That freshness is something of the spirit, because your body is old but your consciousness can be new and young.
So it is somewhat of a miracle. If you allow it, it will grow and you will be able to see things again as a small child with no ideas, no verbalisations, with no mind. Then the world is so luminous. Life is like a rainbow – so many colours, so many sounds. It is a great orchestra – but only a child can feel it because we have so many ideas. Those ideas act as blinkers.
Even when we see the moon, our ideas about the moon are standing between us and the moon. The moon is never really available to you – so many layers, so many screens. If you allow this child to grow again, it will be a death and a resurrection. The old will disappear by and by and will be replaced by a totally new consciousness and then you will be able to see that a rose is a rose is a rose.
You will be able to penetrate into the facticity of things with no words, no verbalisations, no philosophy, no metaphysics, no religion. A child knows none. He simply looks direct. His being is immediate. He is full of presence, available, open.
Allow it. This is something very significant, but you can lose it. If you don’t help it, it can be lost easily because your whole personality will be against it.
You will have to consciously work a way for it, to allow it. Your whole past will be there like a rock and this new phenomenon will just be like dripping water, a small stream, which can become a river if you help; otherwi,se the rock is too big. But ultimately, if one goes on helping, the softer, the more water-like, the stronger one is, the more the rocklike things disappear.
In the long run the rock is always defeated by the water. The old man is always defeated by the child. Death is always defeated by life. One should remember that, and one should always help the softer, the younger and fresher things.