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Chapter 8: Witnessing

You are waiting for a friend. The friend appears - not for you, but for the man who is sitting at the top of the tree. The moment the friend appears on the road he has become present to the man at the top of the tree, but to you he is still future - he has not yet appeared on the road. Unless he comes within your boundary of perception he will not be present. He is future. Past, future and present are relative; it depends on your height and where you are.

That’s why Jainas insist that Mahavira knows all the three tenses of time - because of his height. He can see end to end, nothing is hidden from him. So whatsoever you think is past is still present for him, and whatsoever you think is future is present for him.

Then the friend appears - you talk to him and he moves on. After one furlong he disappears for you, he has become past. But for the man on the top of the tree he is still part of the present. It depends how wide the compass of your understanding is. If your compass is total, then there is no time. Then you can see end to end. Then everything of the past is also present - right now. Then everything that is going to happen in the future is also present - right now. Then there is no past, no future; only present exists. Only one moment of present exists - that moment is eternity.

You have both possibilities. You can exist through the mind, then you are limited. It is just as if you are looking from a window toward the sky - then the frame of the window becomes the frame of the sky. The frame of the mind becomes the frame of your world. Then you jump out of the window; you come out under the whole sky. Now there is no frame.

In French painting a new cult is arising, the cult of paintings without frames. It is a beautiful phenomenon, because all frames are false. In life everything exists without a frame, but when you paint a picture you put a frame to it. That frame is the most false thing. And the irony is that sometimes people purchase such beautiful and decorative frames that even the picture is not as costly as the frame. The frame is more costly and precious - and the frame is false. Life exists without a frame. Have you seen life anywhere with a frame? But you take a picture; immediately a frame comes into existence. The frame is false. All frames are from the mind; mind gives a frame to everything which is frameless, formless.

You can be both, it depends on you. In deep meditation the mind is no longer involved. It goes on functioning in the beginning but by and by, when you don’t listen to it, it stops its chattering. Seeing that nobody bothers, seeing that nobody pays any attention, it stops.