We begin our creation as the union of a sperm and an egg — tiny little things. We go through a gestation period and then we are born into this world a small being. We are raised by our mothers and fathers and we are totally helpless at the beginning of our birth. Slowly we go through the phases of growth. We grow into a small child and then a bigger child and then a teen and finally we get to our full growth and adulthood. As we go through these phases, the world seems like a huge place to us.
If you ever talk to babies or children three and a half or four years old, they are very much aware of the fact that they are small and have a long time to go before they get bigger. Some are frightened that they are not going to get bigger, but they are very much aware of how small they are and how big the world is.
As we grow we have all these various encounters with the world. The world very often seems like a very large overwhelming place and we are a small, tiny, individual dealing with all these overwhelming circumstances that are thrown at us, that we encounter, and that we have to deal with. Sometimes for some people it seems juggling twenty balls at once just to deal with everyday circumstances and there is great difficulty in doing that.
Many people become mentally ill because of the overwhelming nature of the world to them. One of the ways schizophrenia is defined is through overwhelming input. In other words, all of the worldly things, all of the objects that are in front of people take on huge significance, take on large significance and each individual thing takes on such a large significance that these people have to deal with things that you ordinarily just pass by. For instance the cup and the fork and the spoon and the grape and the plate and the dish and the people and the clothes… everything becomes so powerful that they can’t deal with all of it. Now for most people these small inanimate objects don’t have that kind of an effect on people, but then they have trouble with relationships and with their thoughts of the future and their thoughts of the past and their thoughts of how they are going to do things and thoughts of what they need to accomplish. These things make them it difficult for them to function appropriately, make them volatile, make them depressed, make them have all kinds of different reactions to all of these overwhelming stimuli that are constantly thrown at people.
Then one day, through the grace of God, a teacher comes into your midst, a shaikh enters into your existence and what the shaikh tells you is the world and all your circumstances are a very small thing, The world and everything you see are a very small thing. The work of the shaikh is to make the world small and to make your understanding of the world small.
