UPANISHADS
Duality exists nowhere, the whole is one. If we take it as two, or if it appears to us as two, it is because of our way of looking, not because it is so. Through senses it appears to us as matter, and through a non-sensuous approach it appears as mind, as consciousness. But it is one!
Matter is just a very deeply asleep consciousness; consciousness is just awakened matter. Matter becomes conscious. So a stone by your side is just in a deep sleep, a very deep sleep of a mind. It may take millennia for it to be awake, but it is. Even in a stone, deep down a soul is asleep, a possible consciousness is there, a potential consciousness is there. And even in you, it has come only to an awakening -- it is there.
Matter and mind are two states of one thing, of one phenomenon: asleep it is matter, awakened it is mind.
For the UPANISHADS there is no duality between body and consciousness. So he asks, prays that my senses should be strengthened to become more mature, more strong, more sensitive more penetrating. Why? -- because if my eyes can become more penetrating, I can see the divine even in matter, in a tree, even in a stone I can see it. If I am not seeing it, there are two reasons. One, the stone is asleep; second, my eyes are not so penetrating that they can reach even into its sleep and know it. These are the two reasons.
Matter is consciousness asleep, and I cannot feel it because my eyes are not so penetrating. My senses are not even so alive that I can feel the consciousness asleep in the stone. So there are two possibilities: either the stone must become, must flower into consciousness, then I can know -- or my eyes must come to their perfection, then I can penetrate. And then even if the consciousness is asleep, I can know and feel.
The UPANISHAD prays, "Let my senses be strengthened, so I can penetrate your mystery." Your mystery is here but I cannot see it, my eyes are weak or just blind. My eyes are blind, they don't see you, they don't feel you. Wherever I see, wherever I feel, only matter comes to my knowledge. My feeble senses are not capable of feeling you. Make my senses more alive, more strong, more acute, so I can go deep in your mystery, which is all around.
This is a strange prayer and a very beautiful one. Strange, because we have been fed a very wrong conception that the senses are your enemy. So kill the senses, destroy them. With a deadened sensuality, with a dead body, you will be more spiritual. This has been given to us, fed into our minds, this totally wrong conception. It is a very pathological conception towards life -- ill, diseased, neurotic.
The UPANISHADS are very healthy, life-affirmative. They say one is not to be dead in the body; rather, more alive. If you are more alive, more and more alive, then you will not feel the body at all. A moment comes when the body is totally filled with aliveness -- every particle of the body alive, awakened -- then there is no body at all. You become just energy, just consciousness.