I have come to you again, bearing a problem. People say to me, "If you are one with God, and He loves you while you worship Him, what does this mean? How can love and worship exist in a single thing?" I explain to them that within non-duality there is duality, and within duality there is non-duality—and therein lies the possibility of love, of worship, of all such things.
I speak to others and to my own mind. The mind understands, yet understands not. For a few days it grasps, then it reels again in confusion. With this restlessness upon me, I have come to you today. You must explain it to me more clearly—how I can be one with you and yet remain different, and how you love me even so. When I cannot grasp this truth, I think: would it not have been better without this doctrine of unity? I would have loved you as a separate being, and enjoyed your love without doubt or hesitation.
But when I come before you, that thought dissolves. I cannot conceive of you as separate; you reveal yourself as my very life, my very soul. In waking hours, clouded often by ego, I imagine myself distinct from you. Then you bring sleep and dispel my pride, my endless "I, I, I." My ego, my selfhood, drowns and disappears into you. I see clearly that I am nothing separate from you.
If I were independent and self-sufficient, you could not unmake me so utterly. No—I am nothing without you. You are my breath, you are my soul. I am in you, you are in me; I am not distinct from you. And this world, these forms and tastes and scents and sounds and touches—all appear to me only as they are joined with you, only as your majesty, as my very substance. Without union with you, I could not perceive you at all. Then where does my separateness lie?
Show me this difference clearly. Even as I am one with you, I see that I do not know all of you. You are revealing your majesty to me, bit by bit. In one place, in one moment, how little of your infinite splendor I glimpse!
My life flows like a stream. You continuously unfold your infinite forms, your infinite majesty before me, ceaselessly dissolving every sense of distance between us. But there is more. You have brought me forth in time, and you are slowly unfolding me. Knowledge, love, strength—you infuse these into me gradually. Just as you do in me, so too in countless other souls. They are not I. I am not they. Here, then, is the clear ground of distinction.
Through my waking, dreaming, sleeping—through all the currents of my knowing and not-knowing, remembering and forgetting—you sustain within yourself my finitude and individuality. So your creation is true; this is no mere fancy of mine. You are creating my selfhood age after age; it has its beginning, its becoming. What I have been seeking, I seem at last to glimpse. The 'I' I search for apart from you, I shall never find. The 'you' I search for apart from me, neither shall I find that. In you I found myself; in myself I found you.
You are beginningless, endless, one, whole. I am born within you, growing. I am bounded; you are not. You have countless children like me. I am fashioned from your knowledge, your love, your power. You are the substance of my life, yet I am small and you are vast. I am your tiny wave; you are the infinite ocean. I have been fulfilled in your teaching. My troubles are ended.
But I see now—the language of your realm of yoga is other than the language of the world. When I leave your presence and return to the world, I cannot make this language understood to others, nor does my own mind grasp it in their terms. People say, and my mind too says, that this language is riddled with apparent contradictions! Let it be. In this place of duality, people have fashioned their words. Here, in this place of unity, language has yet to be born. There is no need for it. You showed me directly—both my oneness with you and my distinction from you. I am content in this seeing. If I cannot speak of it in words, cannot make it known to others, there is no sorrow in that.