One Hundred Six. We are that dog, chasing its own tail endlessly, pursuing itself at every moment. If we set about solving all our problems this way, we will eventually go mad—because though it is possible to chase one's tail, it is impossible to catch it. In this manner we will run our whole lives long, yet never grasp what we pursue. Philosophy is precisely the same. All philosophers chase their own tails in this fashion and end their days in madness. Our problems are woven inseparably into us; so when we adopt various strategies to solve them, growing restless and frantic, chasing them like lunatics, they too circle back and pursue us in the very same way. No matter how we try to get hold of our problems, no solution emerges—instead they drive us to madness. Even if we do find some solution, the problems do not end; they remain, lodged within. When we attempt to solve our own problems, we are driven by our ego. Then, noticing we cannot resolve them alone, we turn to a friend or an expert. An expert is someone who knows much about a subject, who can explain it to us. He is a human like ourselves, simply someone who knows quite a bit about a certain field. In seeking an expert, there is nothing to surrender to; we merely purchase his counsel for money, and it serves us not at all. For though he insists firmly that he has solved the problem, within days it returns in some other guise. Thus we spend our whole lives running to experts. When we come into the presence of one whose very sight awakens the creator within us—when we feel we have arrived at the threshold of creation itself—in that very moment, our problems vanish. It seems we have conquered all our suffering, and here lies the difference between a guru and an expert. A guru presents before us our entire existence, stands us before the creator, so that we might lay all our troubles before that presence, so that we might speak with the creator. Between myself and my existence nothing stands; not even a guru can stand between me and my source. When such a relationship forms with our being, we can reveal ourselves before the creator with the greatest ease. When we disclose ourselves completely to that presence, nothing remains hidden within us; a profound emptiness is born in us, and that emptiness brings us the answer to every question we hold. To the degree one stands unveiled before the creator, to that degree one becomes capable of drawing near the source.
# One Hundred Seven
And so we see it: a child’s prayer, or that of a holy person, a saint or sage—these bear fruit swiftly. For a child knows nothing of pretense, nothing of how to hide. And a pure, sanctified soul has already learned the true way to lay himself bare before the Creator. Thus their prayers reach Him quickly. The Creator is our occasion to lay bare all our feelings, all our troubles—for the Creator dwells within the whole of existence; you will not find Him fixed in any one place. The Creator moves and is forever still; the Creator is the whole, or perhaps I myself am the Creator, and the Creator lies hidden within me. The Creator is like the light of the sun—scattered across everything, yet cannot be touched. When we gather in prayer, we are truly drawing that wholeness into our feeling, returning to our own existence.
One Hundred Seven.
Love is our prayer, woven into our feeling, yet cannot be grasped separately. When we surrender ourselves in love toward the Creator, there is no need even to speak—our love alone suffices. Our pure love is what brings us to the Creator. This is why it is said: the one who loves has no need to pray, for his love itself is prayer. A question may arise in our minds: when does love become prayer? One bitterly cold night, a mother reminded her small child of his daily prayers. Huddled under blankets in that terrible cold, the child heard his mother’s words and said, “On such a freezing night, would it be right to wake the Creator for prayer? In this bitter cold, will it not cause the Creator great suffering to hear my prayers?”
Does such a child need any words for the Creator? Is not the child’s emotion, his feeling, his love for the Creator enough for Him? This child is saying: to call upon the Creator on such a bitterly cold night for prayer would cause Him terrible suffering, and he does not wish to cause the Creator pain. In such love, there is no need for words. The Creator sees our hearts. What matters more than the language we speak or what we say is our feeling toward the Creator and our devotion. One who is devoted to the Creator—even if he were without speech—could still find Him. For love sees with the heart; love is heart speaking to heart, not through words or sentences, not alongside them. Our feelings of love are heavenly. When heavenly feelings arise within us, we become one with all existence. Our sorrows and their solutions too merge with the whole. We have obtained so much of what we have desired, yet still feel emptiness—because we have separated ourselves from the whole, from our own existence. Thus even as rain falls upon our head, its waters do not reach our roots. We remain parched, for we have cut ourselves off from the soil.
# Prayer
Prayer is that feeling which unites us with the whole. The power of love is such that even the Creator Himself cannot separate it from the lover’s heart, from the worshipper’s heart. Though one might erase from a person all his knowledge, all his memories, all his words, his prayer and his love can never be erased. Love and prayer are not qualities; they are the nature of existence itself—love is the very nature of the Creator. There is a famous story on this matter. There once lived an extraordinary devotee of the Creator named Balsyam. He was so intimate with the Creator that whenever anything in the world went against the Creator’s will, whenever something seemed unjust to him, he would quarrel openly with the Creator about it. Every day he would lodge hundreds of complaints and say, “Creator, you said that whenever a problem arose in the world, whenever an injustice occurred, you would appear on earth. Then why have you not come yet?” He had a disciple who wrote down all his utterances, his life story, and indeed all his daily conversations with the Creator. In this way he tormented the Creator so constantly that the Creator once thought, how am I to silence him?
The Creator sent forth a messenger so that the messenger might come and empty Balsyam’s mind completely, so that he would remember nothing and could no longer torment the Creator with endless complaints and pleas. The Creator’s messenger, following the strategy prescribed to him, completely erased Balsyam’s memories from his mind. When Balsyam awoke from prayer, he found he remembered nothing—he had even forgotten his disciple. It was his disciple who came to him and reminded him of his identity. Then Balsyam asked his disciple, “Is there nothing by which I might recover my past memories?” The disciple too could recall nothing, for his memory had been partially effaced as well. After much searching, the disciple found in a scrap of paper some of the conversations between Balsyam and the Creator, and upon showing it to Balsyam, his memory returned. And immediately Balsyam began to lodge his complaints with the Creator once more, and he pleaded that the Creator send Jesus Christ back to earth without delay to end this world’s misery.
The Creator, growing vexed, reproached His messenger, saying, “Surely you have not discharged your duty properly!” Then His messenger informed Him: this person is most strange, and no stratagem works upon him. True love is precisely thus—nothing born of prayer ever fades from the heart, nor is it possible even for the Creator to efface it. Love is the ultimate truth, the only truth. When the Creator Himself is all solutions, and when He stands before us, why do we carry our troubles elsewhere? We dwell always in clamor because we fear our own existence, wish to remain distant from it. Though we fear ourselves and the very existence of all being, we nevertheless construct for ourselves a small existence, because a question forever arises in our minds: if both creation and Creator are true, which is the primary truth? Creation or Creator? There are two kinds of existence—one singular, the other whole. When we include ourselves in any group, small or large, it is then that class consciousness typically takes birth in our minds.
We come to believe that only we are true; all others, false. This duality of ours separates us from the Creator and hurls questions at Him. Yet we never heed the truth that this is mere imagination, bearing no resemblance to reality. Everything save the whole and singular being is imagination on our part. Thus when we place ourselves within some small group, no matter how many we number, we remain singular—because outside us exist other singular beings distinct from ourselves. When we separate ourselves by faith, we are still singular; when we leave our small group and enter a larger one, we remain singular still, because beyond that group lie other groups multiple. Each of our groups has an existence, yet belonging to that group, we ourselves have none. How so? When a person dies, though one small existence perishes, the religion to which he belonged does not—it endures.
While groups can be divided, society cannot; nature or the whole can never be partitioned. Though we entrap ourselves in the illusion of belonging to separate groups, attempting thereby to prove ourselves distinct, this remains impossible. It is mere imagination; there is no difference within existence—existence is singular. The whole can be singular as the whole can be, and the union of many singulars can create the whole, but nothing exists between these. If anything remains between, it dwells only in our imagination; it is unreal, not eternal fragments. We labor under the delusion that each singular group—Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Buddhists—each stands real in its place, but we inhabit complete falsehood, for only the singular being—the Creator—is true, and the whole is that singular one’s vast form. All of the whole is unified within the singular. Nation, group, country—these are mere words. They are nothing apart from the singular or the whole. To become part of the whole or to burn with thirst for existence is no error, but when we attempt to quench that thirst through the fictions of our imagination, then it becomes unreal.
**One Hundred and Eight.**
# To Thirst Is to Be Incomplete
To thirst is to remain incomplete until we become creators, for the truth of a human being dwells in the singular, while the truth of the Creator dwells in the whole. A human becomes whole only when they can stand singular. Even when merged with the whole, they can be distinguished separately. We distinguish ourselves through our uniqueness. We draw a circle around ourselves, and through that circle, we ensure that no one becomes a part of another. Yet were we ever truly different? Once we become part of an existence, can we ever truly become something separate? Around us crowd only humans and humans, and yet where is humanity itself? We say only we are good and only we shall survive, then we oppress others, we impose our will upon one another. We desire that others be erased, that only we endure, that our tribe endure, and yet do we ever pause to wonder—as we wish it for them, do they not wish the very same for us?
If we become enemies to one another, if we all desire to destroy each other, then in the end, is it possible for any of us to survive? If humans do not live, where does humanity live? If humanity does not live, how do humans live? This is why it is said: grand words forever summon terrible destruction. Some cry, “Islam is in danger!” Others cry, “Hinduism is in danger!” But who truly is in danger? The words themselves? Or the people who shelter in the shadow of these words? When harm comes to a religion, does it annihilate the religion itself? Or does it annihilate the people of that religion? Of course the religion endures—that is to say, these words endure—while only some people vanish from the whole. After all this destruction, the religion remains intact; only some fools, some simpletons, some word-intoxicated people have departed. Perhaps they would have lived longer still; perhaps the Creator would have granted them more opportunity to know the whole. But we ourselves have never granted ourselves that chance, for the reign of blindness held sway within us, and we have been driven by our deluded egos.
At times we have paid the price of our foolishness, at times of our ignorance; sometimes our misguided ego has compelled us to fulfill its desires, and sometimes our unconsciousness has prevailed over us. In this way, we have been destroyed age after age. We ourselves have summoned our own ruin, we ourselves have effaced ourselves, and yet we have never presented ourselves before the Creator seeking a solution to our troubles. Grand words are always hollow, and so they easily bring us death. The very words that steal our lives endure; people do not. We must understand: words are always dead, they have no life, and whatever has no life within itself is a lifeless, utter cruelty. This is why a true seeker never goes to another seeking solutions in times of trouble; they remain within themselves. They know the Creator stands before them—not elsewhere, not in words, not in temples or in other people; the Creator of all stands before them, within themselves. We need only turn away from the external and look inward.
A worshipper knows with unmistakable clarity: humans have nothing to offer one another if the Creator does not dwell within humanity. What can a society give to its people when the sense of the Creator is confined merely to a handful of words? When the whole awakens within us, we are left with only two shores—existence and the Creator; everything else beyond this is illusion. The waves that flow between the two shores of a river—that is prayer. We are forever seeking safety, forever seeking life in the crowd, because humans fear solitude; we seek help from others to survive, we live in dependence upon them. When we find our life in the crowd, when we live by following the multitude, let us at least acknowledge this truth: we are living a deceptive life, clinging to what is not true reality, dwelling in profound delusion.
Once Mulla Nasrudin drank so heavily that he nearly lost consciousness on the way home. Believing he was dying, when a policeman rushed to help him, Nasrudin asked that a Brahmin be summoned. The policeman, learning from his name that he was Muslim, asked, “Why would you, a Muslim, ask for a priest? I will bring you a Maulana from the mosque.” Nasrudin replied, “I wish to convert to Hinduism.” The policeman, bewildered, asked, “Why do you wish to die a Hindu after living your entire life as a Muslim?” Nasrudin answered, “So that another Hindu may die with me!”
Even in death, the ghost of our tribe does not release us; thus we desire that our tribe not diminish even at our final breath. Within the tribe we find the security of life. So at the threshold of death too, we cannot bear to leave the crowd—we surrender to it so that we might secure a safe life. A worshipper must always avoid the crowd, for the crowd’s path is not the path of the devout. Therefore, whoever walks upon the path where all others have gone, whoever follows the multitude’s way—a true worshipper abandons such a path and takes another. Only those who have the courage to walk against all others reach the true destination; they are the ones who journey for themselves. When we render ourselves completely alone, only then does prayer arise in our hearts, for it is only through this solitude that the Creator can be found. One shore begins from us and the other ends at the Creator’s threshold, and prayer dances between them. Prayer descends deeper and deeper still, until it crosses beyond both shores. When both shores vanish from sight, the worshipped and the worshipper become one; between them remains only prayer, only love. The Creator endures as long as the worshipper exists. When the lover is no more, love too vanishes with him.
One Hundred Nine.
# Two Selves Within
Within us dwell two kinds of selves; one wishes to be worldly and the other wishes to be spiritual. Our nature is spiritual, but our mind is not. Our mind teems with vast waves of thought, a ceaseless stream of countless varieties of thinking flowing in at every moment. Yet the self that exists beyond the mind—that is the true self. Can we understand whether we are worldly or spiritual? If we follow the path of our mind, we are worldly. But when we transcend our mind, when the mind ceases to function, when there is only intimate dialogue with the soul, then we are truly spiritual. If we suddenly grow angry, if we react, we must understand that we are following our ego, we are worldly then, we give primacy to the earthly realm. The mind’s work is to create anger, hatred, stubbornness, to incite us to chase after irrelevant dreams. When we follow our mind, we become mere observers. We forget ourselves and end up pursuing a false self.
Anger is such a state of our mind that once it lodges within us for any reason, we are then compelled to become transgressive. For anger has a current—when it arises within us, whether instantaneously or shortly after, we must confront it. Once the seed of anger takes root in us, we cannot possibly evade it. Rather than controlling anger, we must suppress it in that very moment when its cause begins to form within us; we must step out of it. For the being that does not rage has nothing to react to. Often we seethe inwardly while showing nothing to anyone. This too is harmful, for though it may be silent now, it will soon manifest—by then the wave may have grown enormous. When anger arises within us, if we observe it deeply, we will see it growing steadily, and when it becomes so large that carrying it becomes unbearable, we are then nearly compelled to commit wrongs, forced to react. To harbor the mind within oneself means to nurture its many destructive tendencies.
# When Brain Flows Within Us
When the brain flows within us, the Creator withdraws from us. Whenever we rise above the brain, we see the Creator, we become the Creator, the Creator manifests and reveals himself within us. The “I” of the brain is not truly I at all—it is a being entirely other than myself. The distance between that “I” which we present before ourselves, severed from the soul, and the true “I” is immeasurable. To find one’s spiritual essence is to find the true “I”. The way we know ourselves is knowledge of the external world, not our inward-turning nature. When we turn inward profoundly, that is the path to knowing ourselves. We must descend so deeply into ourselves that once we know ourselves completely, nothing else remains—only knowledge. Here lies the distinction between the knower and the one of heart. A knower is one who knows himself completely, but a person of heart is one who knows his own love. He who has conquered the realm of love is undoubtedly a great victor; but he who has conquered only the spiritual, has yet one victory remaining—and that is love.
Love is humanity’s greatest achievement, the gift that brings to us the joy of all other victories. Spirituality alone is like a tree that has life but is not alive, a tree on which no flower or leaf ever dances, that spreads no fragrance, releases no oxygen. Would you wish to own such a tree, one that gives not oxygen, nor air, nor even fragrance? Would you wish to own a tree that merely contains life, yet stands only on the brink of collapse? Spirituality clears the weeds from the garden of our mind, keeps the mind transparent, plants seeds of good thought in the mind, tills the mind’s soil for proper cultivation—but to gain beautiful flowers and fruit, you must sow the seeds of love. For the fragrance of flowers, their beauty, the satisfaction of fruit—these alone bring complete fulfillment to the garden of our mind. Meditation is the preparation for tilling the garden of our mind, and love is the flower and fruit of that garden. This is why knowledge alone is not true—knowledge that keeps us distant from the realization of love is incomplete.
**One hundred ten.**
Love brings knowledge to its fullness. Knowledge without love is like dry bread; it is something that tills the soil of our mind’s garden but remains powerless to sow seeds there. When we sow the seeds of love in that soil, all our labor bears fruit, and only fragrance remains. What value has the tilling of soil where no seed shall be sown? If we labor to make the soil fit for cultivation, yet sow no seed, all our toil becomes futile. A heart where no flower blooms, a heart that spreads no fragrance—it is no different from stone. Love softens our mind, adorns it. Love is the ultimate attainment; meditation is merely the preparation for planting the sapling of love in our hearts. If we cannot plant love itself, then that heart has no worth.
# The Heart That Has Not Bloomed
A heart in which the flower of love has not blossomed—understand this clearly—is still governed by ego. Our egocentric self lingers somewhere in the depths of our heart. It is because of our ego that we cannot love, for ego itself is our mind. Our mind presents everything to us; even what we believe we have acquired through experience is entirely constructed by our brain. How does this work? We take as proof of existence whatever we can touch before us, but does everything that we have not seen, everything that has not yet come within our reach, cease to exist? Everything we see before us—we see only because our eyes transmit an image of that particular thing to our brain, and only then do we perceive its existence. In this very moment, does what we see with our eyes truly exist where we see it? We come to know of an object’s presence only when our eyes transmit that information to our brain; we have no other path to knowing it. But does that mean nothing exists beyond this—nothing that we do not see, nothing hidden from our sight or that we have never touched?
This means our brain is a limited entity. It can present nothing beyond its own capacity. Where the boundary of existence ends, there spirituality begins. There may be a world beyond our world. How can we deny the existence of all that lies beyond what we have discovered, all that remains unknown to us? Is this not the very limitation of our knowledge? We have seen this world, but only as much as our own reflection allows—only as much as our capacity, our boundary, has permitted us to see. Does that mean nothing exists beyond this? How can we be certain that nothing lies beyond? When we declare absolute certainty about anything, we must understand this: the reach of our knowledge is limited, and our brain keeps it in check. For if we knew how to open the inner eye of our heart, then all that lies invisible beyond this would become accessible to us.
We must remember: there exists a world beyond the reach of our sight—it is the world of our perception, the world of our consciousness, which we have long allowed our brain to control and govern. Our brain has confined the infinite realm of our perception, so that we accept as truth only what falls within the narrow scope of our vision. The vastness of our existence lies beyond that boundary, and to see it, to know it, we must step beyond our limits. We know that the current flows in the direction of the wind, or that the wind determines the course of the stream—but is the opposite impossible? What if the stream itself moves the wind? We tend to accept as truth or as inevitable only what we ourselves have experienced. This is the limitation of knowledge. What if neither the stream nor the wind is responsible for the other? What if all these things exist only in our brain, in all that we imagine and take to be true?
We know the Creator is all-knowing, yet why is one who has known the Creator not His equal? Cannot a master sometimes surpass the Creator? Is he who knows the Creator more profoundly than the Creator Himself merely a sage? Or, having known the Creator, does he not also know the Creator’s works, His power, His capacity? Then is not the measure of his knowledge greater than the Creator’s own essence? This world is illusion. Everything we see, everything hidden from our sight—all of it is illusion. As we are lost in dreams within sleep, who knows whether we too are not trapped within some vast, endless dream? Perhaps when that delusion lifts, our true life begins; or perhaps we do not know when, where, or how our beginning or end occurred, or has already passed. It may be that this is our end, or that this is our very first beginning. It is possible that we came from some world beyond this one and became ensnared in this world’s illusion; or we may not know at all whether any life exists beyond this world. Perhaps man’s decay is not confined to his brain or his body alone—perhaps this body decays together with his very soul. Some part of his body may linger elsewhere, or some fragment of his soul may have entered us, completing what was incomplete within us!
**One Hundred Eleven.**
Everything we know is so narrow that when one sleep ends, the dream seen within it vanishes from our mind as swiftly as possible. Do we remember all our dreams? How many dreams from your life so far do you recall? Truth is that which admits of no doubt. Our greatest truth is this: when the sense of ‘I’ within us ceases to be, then we ourselves no longer remain. When there is no ‘I’ within me, no doubt can arise, for doubt itself requires an ‘I’ to doubt. This false ‘I’ within us—its very existence is illusion, the illusion that keeps us bound to the world, enslaves us to the mind, holds our thoughts and perceptions captive. Truth is that which endures both in the authenticity of our existence and in the authenticity of our non-existence. In the presence of Truth, thought is unreal; in the presence of non-existence, thought has no being at all. Between these two dwells the existence of illusion. Illusion is something that cannot be proven, yet cannot be denied, and therein lies its doubt. How so? Because we have no direct connection with it. Where the brain has no existence, there begins the Creator; the path to seeing the Creator lies there. When the brain becomes non-existent within us, we are left with two states: one is our heart, the other our pure existence.
# On Maya, Truth, and the Creator
Maya exists only in the mind. Truth is that alone which bears witness before the Creator—and He alone is the Creator who testifies to truth. Only he perceives truth who perceives the smallest truths. Whatever one beholds with conscious awareness is the authentic truth. When the question arises within us—whether a spiritual person holds the knowledge of the Creator—if one can understand that our brain is not superior to its creator, then the solution to our question and our problem emerges. The brain dwells within us; therefore, when we learn to move beyond our brain, how can it carry meaning greater than ourselves? Our brain is precisely what we deem acceptable. Beyond our acceptability, the brain is merely a misconception. He who has come to know the Creator fully is surely superior to others, for through him the Creator’s testimony is proven. He who has completely known the Creator has nothing left to know, for supreme knowledge is the highest knowledge.
When from within someone the Creator, creation, and existence all vanish, only that testimony remains—that heart, that understanding. The ultimate moment of consciousness is the Creator. After traversing all planes of consciousness, only the Creator remains. The Creator alone is consciousness, or consciousness itself is the Creator. A spiritual person who has attained knowledge of the Creator—in whom the Creator, his consciousness, his heart still dwell—becomes the Creator; for he fully comprehends the Creator’s nature. And he who attains knowledge of the whole finds all else insignificant—perhaps an experience, an achievement, an acquisition. The true source of supreme knowledge lies dormant within us all, hidden, which only we ourselves can seek. However small or insignificant we may be, we are that supreme power. Nothing exists below us or above us. And when contemplating ourselves we feel diminished, we must know that what diminishes us is nothing but our ego.
Our ego is born of our littleness; from our littleness ego takes birth. And when we think ourselves great, that too is created by our ego. Our smallness or greatness—all flows from ego. When we think ourselves great, we display our trivial acquisitions, none of which are truly ours; we merely benefit from them for a time. For we wish to prove ourselves great before others by displaying our power, wealth, possessions, and competence; driven by our ego, we question ourselves—how can I be small when I possess so much to boast of effortlessly? When we know the highest of knowledge, when we know the Creator completely, all longing within us becomes void. There remains in us a fragment of the Creator; we are immersed in the Creator’s supreme feeling. Then we know nothing remains beyond this. Whatever we may acquire, the emptiness of our heart will not depart until we attain complete knowledge of the Creator. For to attain the Creator is the supreme attainment; beyond this there is no attainment that can fill the void of our heart. This can be known only when we reach that stage.
Why is a religious place regarded as religious? Why is a place of worship considered more sacred and significant than other locations? Why does a pilgrimage site carry greater weight than ordinary places? It is surely because there a devotee, a worshipper, was born and performed worship there. All the sacred lands of the entire world hold importance for this very reason. These places are held to be sacred because in them a devotee of the Creator has become one with the Creator, because in that space a pulse of the Creator has been felt in a way that has not occurred in other ordinary places. In those spaces where, throughout the ages, the wise and the devout have sat and drawn near to the presence of the Creator, an entirely different atmosphere prevails—because humans are mortal, but places know no death. Thus even after a person passes, the radiance of their light remains in that place. Around the place, a conscious state always takes form, and therefore it becomes universal.
One Hundred Twelve.
All the scriptures of the world were revealed upon individual sages—those who have drawn near to the presence of the Creator, who have become beloved of the Creator, who have come close to the Creator—that is to say, all holy texts were sent as messages through specific persons to all of humanity. Those upon whom such texts have been revealed are, without doubt, elevated above the texts themselves. Why? Because that sage is a medium, the space between the two shores of a river, the intermediary between Creator and creation—what we call prayer, what we call consciousness, or the water that quenches thirst. When the Creator is worshipped somewhere with the whole heart, when all creation and all present things are rendered insignificant in order only to remember the Creator, then at that place neither the Creator nor the worshipper remains—only prayer exists. This prayer becomes elevated above all else. This is why it is said that the worshipper stands above all things, above the Creator and the scriptures themselves. It is only through a worshipper that the Creator can be known. Without devotion, the Creator remains non-existent; the Creator is revealed through the devotee.
Had worshippers not appeared age after age, the Creator would have remained unknown to us, existing for us merely as a name. Just as a teacher appears because students are needed, so too does the Creator become manifest because the devotee is in need. When the devotee is ready, the Creator begins to reveal himself through the devotee. Then the devotee becomes the Creator. This is why the true devotee stands above the scriptures—such persons never need to read a holy text to know the Creator; from within them, the entirety of scripture reveals itself to all. The devotee is that complete form of the Creator, that which holds the Creator within. Therefore, wherever the devotee dwells, wherever he moves, that place becomes sacred. From that place, the light of the Creator begins to radiate. This is why it is easy to approach the Creator’s presence from holy places. A worshipper stands above all sacred places. This is why it is said that no one is greater than oneself, but for that reason, one must surrender oneself completely to oneself. When we surrender ourselves to ourselves, then no one, nothing stands greater than us—not even a guru, not even a devotee. For whoever knows a devotee rises above that devotee. And this becomes possible only when we know how to become smaller than the small. When we know how to become smaller than the small, then we become as great as the Creator.
# The Throne Within
When we remain deficient in knowing ourselves, all problems encircle us. The supreme purpose behind all our purposes is this: to know the inner self. This means we are attempting to become something that casts off all our pettiness. Our ego is like a soiled mat, unfit to sit upon, while our heart is our true throne. Yet we have never sought our throne. So we have walked on, grown weary, and at last settled upon that filthy mat—not our rightful place. Because we could not find that royal seat, we have mistaken the soiled mat for our throne and presented it as such to the world. And when someone comes and points out our error, we prove them foolish instead. We call them blind. The entire creation watches us sit upon this soiled mat, yet we ourselves have never seen it. And if someone comes, pointing with their finger to show us, we regard them as our enemy. We believe they wish to steal our throne from us. For ages, all humanity has seated itself upon a filthy carpet and called it a throne, consoling itself with the thought that no greater throne exists.
This is why, when a truly illuminated person—a teacher, a wise one—comes to us and tries to awaken us, to stir what lies within, to bid us free ourselves from the servitude of ego, to shed all our “I-ness,” we face profound resistance.
When an illumined soul places before us the throne within our heart, we cannot see it. We see only the throne we have made. For when we attempt to mount a new seat, fear arises: we fear losing our kingdom. We think our throne is slipping through our fingers. We harbor endless doubt about whether such a seat truly exists at all. We will see our true throne only when we have completely shed our ego, our “I-ness.” Then that old, soiled carpet—the illusion of this world, our greed and longing for all things—will dissolve from our sight. We shall begin to perceive the Creator’s existence. The true purpose of our life will become clear before us.