The understanding of religion is exactly the opposite: religion says that we are not a combination of parts, but an indivisible whole. A part is a piece of the indivisible whole, but the indivisible whole is not a combination of its parts. The indivisible whole exists in its own right. It is not created by the combination of the parts, it is not some mathematical summing up; it is an organic unity. It is itself indivisible. The parts have no knowledge of the whole. A part does not know about the indivisible whole because the part lives confined to itself, so it does not know. When the part comes out of its confinement, when it rises above itself, when it wakes up and looks beyond itself, then it begins to perceive the indivisible whole.

The key for this phenomenon of rising above oneself is called witnessing; the thread for this phenomenon of rising beyond oneself is witnessing. Whenever you begin to see yourself with the eye of the witness, the awareness of the indivisible will start arising in you. You see all the parts: you see the hands, the legs, the eyes – but who is it that is seeing them all? That entity becomes separate. And as it separates, the indivisible whole starts to be reflected on the parts, or the indivisible whole starts to arise from within the parts. The sense of sleepiness in the parts is broken, an awakening happens in you and your eyes look beyond yourself.

You can understand it better in this way: there is a baby in the mother’s womb who has no idea about the world. Why does he have no idea about the world? – because the baby in the womb is a complete entity in his own right, and he has no direct relationship with the world. He does not even know that the sun rises, that there are stars and moons; he does not know that there are people, that there is a vast world – he knows nothing of this. And inside the womb the child is so securely well-defined as a complete entity that it is not surprising that he starts feeling himself to be the whole world. He is not required to make any efforts to arrange for his food or for his drink or his safety; he is not required to do anything – he just is. And he is totally there, nothing is lacking in his being there. He cannot have even an idea that there is anything other than himself. But when he comes out of the womb it will shatter his boundaries and the world will begin to exist for him.

This is why the psychologists say that birth is very traumatic for a child, that he goes through a great shock. He had an existence that was completely confined to boundaries, and suddenly it is shattered and he finds himself completely at a loss in a boundless world. For the first time he realizes “I am not all there is. Much more exists in the world than me.” Psychologists say that this shock is so deep that man does not come out of it for his whole life. Psychologists go as far as to say – and there is some truth in it – that the peace, the bliss, the freedom, the soul, the God that man searches for is all because of his experience in the womb. In the womb he was absolutely free, absolutely in bliss, in serenity; there was no tension, life was totally available without any problem; there was no responsibility, no burden, no worry.