What it means to be a tathata
Tathata is an individuality in emptiness -- in a void. It should be said, it is a living void within. It is a void which is surrounded by bones, flesh and tissues. He is a man of tao who becomes like this void. He reaches the fourth stage. To be a tathata is to jump from collective unconsciousness to cosmic unconsciousness. In the condition of a witness, we go from the outer world, and the individual enters the unconscious. In awareness, the individual goes beyond unconscious, and enters collective unconscious. In collective unconscious the individual has to practise to be a tathata, then he enters the cosmic unconscious. There is no Sadhana left after cosmic unconscious. There is no Sadhana in tathata. In this stage, everything in life goes on by itself, no effort is needed to work it up. The effort to go within is no longer there, what one was within is lost. Tathata is the achievement to sink deep down the abyss of life. Religion is the door. Yoga is the process of going up to that door. And tathata is the presiding Tao in that temple.
THE DOER AND THE SLEEPER
An unawakened -- sleeping -- person is not a doer. Things are happening to him, but he thinks I am doing. The awakened person also is not a doer but thinks I am not the doer. This is the only difference. There is no difference in their actions but there is difference in their attitude -- knowing -- of their performance. The awakened also walks, the unawakened also walks. An individual full of awareness walks with the knowledge of, 'I am not', and a person without awareness walks full of ego -- full of pride. This is the difference.
The crystallization of an awakened person happens when an individual takes birth in such a person. Jung also says the same thing which Gurdjieff says, when a person is a awake within, his individuality becomes stronger. So, it is natural to raise a question whether the individualization of an awakened person becomes strong or dies out. Is it transformed into ego or does it go away? This is merely the difference in language, nothing more. The birth of void -- emptiness which Gurdjieff calls crystallization. Really speaking an individual is born for the first time by being 'void', because by becoming void, he achieved that virat -- huge individual. By becoming void, by losing individuality, a person becomes 'an individual' for the first time, but this is difficult to understand.
This is one of those contradictions of religion we fail to understand. When a drop of water falls into the ocean, someone can say the drop is lost, where is it now? And someone else can also say that the drop has become the ocean. Someone can say, the drop is lost, it is non-existent, it has become void. Someone can say the drop has become the ocean. It was nothing before, but it has become the ocean now for the first time.
