On Giving and Receiving

If you look at life’s totality you will notice that every living thing exists for something else. Each organism is like a tunnel. At one end it receives: at the other it gives. In between it converts what it has received into a form suitable for another organism to receive. This giving and receiving is not done by choice; it is choiceless.

There has to be giving as there has to be receiving.

The failure to give and receive is followed first by unconsciousness and then death. If you would try to stop anything giving or receiving, by the same action you will summon to it unconsciousness or death. For unconsciousness is the next to last need of all things with a brain, and death is the final need of all unconscious life.

Why is it that so often when you give to another with a generous smile and gesture at the same time you feel the stab of selfishness and know you really do not want to give?

Why is it when someone gives to you that you often notice your torrent of thanks doesn’t carry the sincerity you verbally express? That for a strange, almost frightening reason you are not moved at all; and could just as easily take and walk away?

Under the unbreakable law of the universe you have to receive what you need, and what you need is not what you imagine you need. Here is the tide that knows no individual. Your mind will always come up with a reason for giving or receiving. It will say you wanted to, or that you were a fool to give and won’t do it again. But in the massive sweep of life the fact remains that you had no choice.

When your mind imagines what you need or imagines that you are giving out of choice, at that moment you can experience in yourself the lie of hypocrisy. For that moment, if you see it, you are conscious.

You go through the act of gratitude because your mind says ‘Everyone would be grateful in the same position.’

Gratitude is, but it is beyond the craving mind — although not beyond experiencing. Gratitude is a state that can only exist when the giver gives because he would die if he did not; and the receiver receives because he would die if he did not. In the moment neither of them thinks or speaks, or feels he is the giver or the taker, and the experience is sacred because in the moment both receive love.

All life begins with the sun. The sun shines and gives of itself: it has no choice. Heat from the sun evaporates water, clouds build up and when they become too heavy it rains and they give of themselves. The air must give of itself to man’s body as breath, and man in breathing converts the oxygen to carbon dioxide to give it to the trees so that they can breathe their need and in living convert it back to oxygen so that man’s body may breathe again. The earth must give of itself to the trees and grass and they give of themselves to the animals and birds who give of themselves to man. And when all things die they must go back to feed the earth; and the earth receives and gives so that all things can receive and give — none has a choice. 

Of all created things, man alone possesses the potential to give by choice the thing that all creation is waiting for, the thing that only man can give — the awakened state of consciousness. To give consciousness is simply a matter of becoming conscious, of waking up. But man would separate mankind from the rest of creation and contribute nothing consciously except to himself. Although he has received from creation and is capable of giving it the most precious gift of consciousness, its final need, he chooses not to give it; and so, by contributing nothing through his life except to himself, he perpetuates selfishness and ignorance on the planet.

Life’s penalty for not giving or receiving consciously is unconsciousness. So man like all things is unconscious. As unconsciousness is the next to last need of all things with a brain, and death the final need of all unconscious life, so all unconscious life is mortal, including man the way he is.

When man rediscovers the truth of choicelessness he begins to know himself; he begins to wake up, become conscious. He begins to see life as it is and not as he dreams it to be in the unconscious condition of thinking and imagining. He begins to give, and the more man gives in the selfless endeavour to know himself, the more conscious he becomes.

Man conscious is man immortal. Man conscious gives to the creation as no other thing can give and is beyond death.

But it is no use my just saying this. You must discover it, realise it for yourself.