When you’re in the way of waking up, and finding out who you really are, you meet a character called a guru … You know Sri Ramana Maharshi, that great Hindu sage of modern times? People used to come to him and say, ”Master, who was I in my last incarnation?”, as if that mattered.
And he would say ”Who is asking the question?” And he’d look at you and say, basically, ”Go right down to it. You’re looking at me, you’re looking out, and you’re unaware of what’s behind your eyes. Go back in and find out who you are, where the question comes from, why you ask.”
And if you’ve looked at a photograph of that man, I have a gorgeous photograph of him; and you look in those eyes – I walk by it every time I go out of the front door.
And I look at those eyes, and the humor in them; the lilting laugh that says ”Oh come off it, man (laughs). Shiva, I recognize you. When you come to my door and you say ’I’m so-and-so,’ I say, ’Ha ha, what a funny way God has come on today.'”
– Alan Watts
