# Adrift in the Stream of Grace The moment when one drifts away in the stream of grace—what is this moment? Is it a surrender, or an awakening? Is it the soul's final dissolution, or its truest coming into being? We speak of grace as though it were a river, and ourselves as vessels caught in its current. But perhaps the image misleads us. Grace is not something external that carries us along; it is the revelation that we were never separate from the flow. The banks we thought we stood upon were illusions. The solid ground beneath our feet was always water. In this drifting, there is a peculiar paradox. We lose ourselves, yet we have never been more ourselves. The individual will—that small, fretting thing that believed itself captain of its own ship—surrenders at last. And in that surrender, something larger awakens. Not a self that remains unchanged, but a self that dissolves into its true nature. The Bengali soul knows this moment. It is the moment when Ramprasad cries out in ecstasy, when Ramakrishna trembles on the edge of the infinite, when the *bhakta* ceases to be a separate worshipper and becomes one with the beloved. It is not death, though it resembles death. It is not life as the world counts it, yet it is the only genuine living. In this stream, there are no swimmers, no effort, no destination. There is only the flowing itself—eternal, indifferent, and utterly kind.

In too much light, amid such multiplicity, I lose you. So I go into darkness to find you, into solitude. There I know you as the knower of darkness. There I feel myself one with you. Yet even in that oneness, show me the difference.

You make me forget everything, yet you forget nothing. Slowly, steadily, you remind me of it all. Here I see our difference clearly. In forgetting lies my distinctness. In your refusal to forget, in your reminding — there lies yours. Your nature is remembrance.

When I forget all, what distinctness remains in me? Then I know nothing. Where then do I differ from you? I have nothing of my own. But you have everything. Because you have everything, you know everything; because you know, you make me know. This sleep and waking, memory and forgetting, knowledge and ignorance — the cycle continues without end. This is your eternal play with me. This play is your nature. This play is your love. In this play you are mother, I am child.

Such strange play I see nowhere else. Not among human beings. No human comes so deep within me, seizes and assimilates me so utterly. No one plunders all that is mine and restores it in such measure. So I find no satisfaction in human love.

From human love to love-seeking with you, there is little aid or likeness I find. The resemblance between the two has grown very small indeed. Yet you show me the image of love-play with you, you make claims of a love most deep and secret — claims I cannot hold, cannot fully acknowledge with all my being.

What fleeting feeling you give me now and then — in the deep silence of this night, you have shown me that such a secret, tender bond with you is possible as has never been, never could be between one human and another. What vision! What touch! What mingling of heart! I have read no poem, no novel that speaks of this. It is no creation of my fancy. You stand before me directly, made manifest and felt, and show me this. Therefore I cannot let go of the bond.

In my life, the obstacles to this union seem only to grow. And with them, despair. Yet your claims do not diminish — they only increase. In your increasing claims, I sense that union, lasting union, draws near. I cannot fathom who places these obstacles. I desire you, you desire me — then who obstructs?

What obstacle remains? This is our union, yours and mine—indissoluble, unbreakable. Separation is mere illusion. I will not harbor this illusion in my heart. I beg you, deliver me from this delusion. Take my breath away, steady my mind, let your grace flow ceaselessly through the river of my life.