 The dance is so perfect, we almost forget the dancer but there can be no dance without a dancer. We cannot see the dancer because our vision, our attention becomes so surface oriented. To identify the dancer in the dance, either you must get immersed in the dance that you also become the dance that you are not a spectator. You are it, then you know the dancer by experience, you're touched by it. But if you want to know the dancer in its full depth, in his full depth and dimension, you want to know the source of dance, that which is the basis of the act, then you must be able to pay absolute attention. In a way staying away from the dance, these things look contradictory. On one level I'm saying you must plunge into the dance, another level I'm saying you must be able to watch the dance with that most intensity. This is not contradictory because you know the world is round, nothing contradicts anything. It is just that when you look at it, fragmented, if you cut it down into pieces and look at it, everything seems to be contradictory. So if you are here totally involved in the dance, totally involved in the act itself, that's one way of knowing. Or if you know how to keep away from the act, absolutely uninvolved in the act, but you're able to absorb the act totally, you can decipher the difference between the act and the actor, the dance and the dancer, that is also a way of knowing it. The second takes much more awareness, sharpness, intensity, maybe training too. So it's easier to become part of the dance slowly as the rhythm picks up. As you get sucked into it, you're sucked deeper and deeper into it. One day you don't know which is you and which is the dance. Once you're a part of the dance, you cannot miss the presence of the dancer. It is just that we're inventing obstructions, hurdles and barriers where they don't exist. Recently someone asked, I'm 54 years of age, you think that's a long time. And I have seen so many spiritual teachers, but I've never been drawn to anybody like you. I'm helplessly being drawn towards you. What is it that you got? So I said, I don't have anything that you don't have. It is just that all of us were given a seed at the possibility of boundlessness. You are very careful man, you are very careful and good, so you preserve the seed. I destroyed the seed and made it into a tree. If you want to make a seed into a tree, the seed has to go. If you nurture the seed, it will become a tree. If you keep seed as a seed and walk around, it's stupid actually. But it is not. Preserving yourself is considered smart. Allowing yourself to be demolished, to destroy the limited possibility of what an individual person is is not considered smart. To be exclusive and to be preserved is considered smart. So after all you are a smart man, so smart, you even con life to smart. So once you become like this, there is no possibility of you being part of any act. You can neither be aware and just watch it, because that takes a different kind of dispassion. Nor can you jump into it and become a part of it. Once it happened, Abe Maxwell met a painter whose name was Valkovitz and Valkovitz was seventy-three years of age and just recently had been through an eye surgery. So he said, you've just been through an eye surgery. How's your vision? Is it good enough to paint? Can you continue to be a painter? Without sharp vision, this is difficult. So Valkovitz said, I think I can paint. In case I find my vision fails and I cannot paint, I will become a critic. You can become an art critic if you can't see anything. So if you become a critic, you miss the whole act. Either you be a painter or you be a lover of art. If you're a critic, you miss the whole point. You will know the… you'll know neither this nor that. And this keeps happening all the time. Self-appointed critics simply waste their lives and forget his name. One great literary critic said this, I have seen statues and portraits of authors, poets, artists, but never of a critic because you're a parasite like life. You don't have a life of your own. You thrive constantly looking and feeding on somebody else's life. This will not get you anywhere. If you're seeking survival, you can be a parasite. If you're seeking liberation, you cannot be a parasite. A child sucks upon her mother's breast, but you don't call a babe a parasite. That is okay because a child is only nourishing himself to become free of the mother. A parasite is never intending to become free. A parasite is too concerned about its survival that it misses the possibility. So if survival is all we seek, there are many ways to survive, though every seed has come with the same possibility. Between a seed and a tree, there is a journey to be made. If you want a seed to become a tree, you have to nurture it. You have to protect it. There are weeds that you have to take care of. There are too many weeds. Same silly weeds, bothering humanity for a million years. Still human beings haven't figured out how to handle these weeds. Simple things like anger, hatred, jealousy, fear. Doubt and less doubt. The same silly weeds have lasted too long because weeds don't need any nursery. Weeds don't need any protection. Weeds don't need any cultivation. They just grow. But if you want a sacred seed to sprout and prosper, you have to weed the place, cultivate the land, manure it and you have to make sure enough water and sunlight finds its way. If you're afraid of the harshness of the sunlight and avoid it, you will also avoid the life-nurshing warmth of the sunlight. In your enslavement to the instinct of self-preservation, you would like to avoid the sunlight, go stand in a shade, but you will miss the warmth of the life-nurshing light too. That which is the basis of life is also that which ends life. That which burns also bakes. If you're a good cook, you bake. If you're a bad one, you burn.