One of the greatest achievements of Albert Einstein was to make the universe free from boundaries. His work is as important as the work of all the mystics of the world. The mystics have been trying to make your consciousness boundary-less; Albert Einstein tried to make this whole universe unbounded, unlimited, infinite, although there is no way to prove it. Except that the contrary cannot be proved either. In the absence of contrary proof it seems to be rational to accept, at least as a hypothesis, that existence has no boundary. It cannot have, because to make a boundary you will need another existence. Who will make the boundary? What will be beyond the boundary? And if there is something beyond the boundary, it is still the universe. It can be very simply conceived that boundaries don’t belong to existence.

But mystics are not concerned with the objective world. Their concern is with the inner world, the inner universe of consciousness. Has it a form? And if there is no form, how can you see if somebody is self-realized? How can you see that one has seen oneself? Only form can be seen.

Nangaku changes the whole situation. He says, “It is not a question of your ordinary eyes. Of course they can only see the form, but deep in your very being is a capacity to know the formless”.

But Baso was no ordinary disciple.

Baso said, “Can it progress or decay?

“I accept your hypothesis, but I have a few questions,” Baso says. “Can it progress, the no-form, the unlimited consciousness, can it progress or decay?”

He is putting his master to a fire test.

Nangaku replied, “If it is seen as progressing and decaying,
becoming firm and dispersing, it is not seen.”

To ask whether perfection can be more perfect will be absurd. Perfection is perfection: it cannot be more, it cannot be less. Take a small example: Can a circle be more circular, or less circular? A circle is a circle: it can be neither more circular, nor less circular.

“Your very question shows,” Nangaku said to Baso, “that you have not seen it. Your third eye is still fast asleep. Your mind is young, your intelligence is great, but your inner eye is not yet open, it is a bud, it has not become a rose.”

Another master, Enkei, was asked by a monk,
“It is said that if we see the form of things, we see the mind.
If we take a lantern as form, what is the mind?”
Enkei said, “You don’t understand the meaning of the ancients.”
The monk asked, “What is the meaning of the ancients?”
Enkei said, “The lantern is the mind.”

This is something to be understood: when you bring something before a mirror, it reflects it so perfectly that you can say that the mirror has become it. If the mind can see, it is a mirror. Your eyes are mirrors and nothing else. They reflect, and in reflecting, they become whatever they reflect.