# Uncertain Journal: 9 There exists a peculiar silence between what we know and what we believe we know. It is in this chasm that most of our lives unfold—a living in the gap itself, neither wholly ignorant nor genuinely wise. We move through the world with the confidence of the deceived, certain that our maps correspond to the terrain, when perhaps we have never truly seen the landscape at all. Consider the man who has read every treatise on love yet never loved. Or the scholar of death who has only theorized its coming. There is no scandal in this; it is merely the human condition made visible. We are translators of experience we do not possess, philosophers of moments we have not lived. And perhaps this is not a failure but a kind of necessary grace—that we need not fall into every abyss to understand its depth, that imagination itself is a form of knowing. Yet the cost is considerable. We mistake the word for the thing. "Grief" becomes a concept to be managed rather than an abyss in which we drown. "Beauty" transforms into aesthetic theory instead of that moment when the world stops and we stop with it. Language, our greatest tool, becomes our greatest prison—we think we have understood because we have named. The saints and mystics have always known this. They fall silent not from lack of wisdom but from its abundance. They understand that the deepest truths cannot be spoken, only approached—like a bird that vanishes the moment you look directly at it. All our chatter, all our books and journals and careful arguments, are merely the sound we make while fleeing from a silence we cannot bear. Perhaps wisdom is not the accumulation of knowledge but the steady erosion of false certainty. Not learning more, but unlearning—shedding the decorative armor of words until we stand naked before what is.

 
Fifty-Seven.
The word 'friendship' has lost its true meaning in our time. It has strayed far from its genuine definition. The friends we make today are not friends for life. Perhaps we work in the same place or study at the same institution, and for a while we bind ourselves in a relationship. We tell ourselves, we are each other's friends. This is not the true definition of friendship. We cannot choose our parents, our lineage, our religion, our birthplace, our family—these are given to us. But we can choose our friends ourselves. The definition of friendship is this: those in whose company we feel joy, whose presence stirs something within our heart, whose behavior, manner of thinking, and actions profoundly affect us, whose company suddenly carries us to a realm of feeling we have never known before. Most importantly—those in whose presence we rise to the peak of our strength, those beside whom we never diminish ourselves, never feel small. And this, this alone is the true definition of friendship. When the whole world turns its face away, the one person who still comes and stands beside you—that is your friend. A true friend will never abandon you, not even if standing by your side means they themselves are brought to ruin. Such love admits no explanation, no logic or equation can map its shores. It may be that in times of joy you scarcely see them, and yet in sorrow they are surely there.

To understand who a true friend is, or which person matters most in this life of ours, there is a simple thing we can do. While we live now, we see many beside us—those who are with us to be seen, to occupy a place in our hearts, to extract some advantage, from some hesitation, or for some reason. But when we die, when we can no longer see or feel anything, when we cannot know who stands beside us or who does not, then—whether they come to our corpse or not—the person whose eyes will truly weep remembering us, who will carry our memory all their life, that person is our friend. We will not live in their eyes or their face, only in their heart. This is a tremendous thing! That person alone loves us without any self-interest. Close your eyes for five minutes and you will know who truly matters in your life and who does not. The sooner you understand which people are essential to your existence, the better it is for you. We spend most of our life giving our time to those who do not hold us in their thoughts at all. What is the point? What is more precious than time? What sense is there in squandering this precious thing on unworthy hands and ruining your life? There are many who perhaps do not show false love toward us, yet genuinely love us, rising above all logic and argument. You must seek them out. You must forget all their logic, their grammar, their thinking, their reasons, their circumstances, and love them blindly. Giving love to them and receiving love from them—this is what life truly is. The irony is, we have many friends whom we may never truly know in our whole lifetime, whom we may never meet…and never will.

When you choose such a friend, choosing a teacher becomes easy.

For he who teaches us on the path of truth, the path of light, the path of existence—he alone is our true teacher. He is our teacher for life. If we cannot choose a friend, we cannot choose a teacher. If we are capable of choosing a good friend, then we are capable of choosing our lifelong companion. When we do choose a friend, we ought to follow his path. For a good friend will never compel us to follow his way. He will never impose his ideas, his philosophy, his guidance upon us. He will never speak loudly about it with us, will never engage us in argument. He merely offers hints—and this is the way of our teacher. One who is untouched by our pain is never truly our friend. Our friends do not speak loudly without cause because they are not mad, and when they come before us, their whole mind and voice naturally quiet themselves. They have no need or self-interest with us. They never force us onto their path. They simply lay bare their learning, their experience before us. Whether we follow their path or not—this remains entirely our choice. Only if we are worthy of listening to our true friend, only if we know how to receive him, will we be profoundly benefited.

Fifty-Eight.

Man is fundamentally a mysterious being. Within us lies a certain mystery that illuminates our life, and this very light leads us to the heart of truth. A good teacher, by means of this light, unveils before us the simple and beautiful aspects of life. He offers us such a joy that we may discover the true meaning of existence. Life ordinarily runs on two principles. One is necessity, the other is power. The unconscious person believes only in the principle of necessity. The conscious person forever seeks power. The principle of necessity is the principle of limitation. The principle of power transcends necessity. The more conscious we become, the more we dwell in a vast power beyond necessity. Only the wise traverse in the realm of such power. They remain always silent, working silently, yet when they speak, they speak from the height of power itself. That utterance is so intense and true that nothing can negate it.

The source of these two principles is one alone, and that is the source of ultimate truth. The whole of existence moves upon the foundation of these two principles. This process of movement offers us at once supreme bliss and immense power. We find it only when we are fully conscious. When we can move by harmonizing these two principles, then we glimpse that light, that truth. Love is the greatest mystery of the world. One can dwell in love, one can experience love, but love cannot be explained. It is enshrouded in mystery. It transcends all understanding. We can hold it in our feeling and memory. Love has no form, no body. As love grows, it becomes ever more invisible, and at its pinnacle it merges into silence. The highest love has no language. Physical love is the lowest order of love. That which depends only on the body is not truly love at all—at best, it is mere desire. The highest order of love expresses itself through continuous inner prayer.

It cannot be expressed in any language. Only when we experience love at its highest intensity does that feeling flow forth as tears. Love is the name of a pure sensation. This sensation makes us happy, grants us solace, fills us with joy, and greatly strengthens the power of our mind.

Love exists in three strata—the unconscious, the conscious, and the superconscious. Material love is unconscious love; supreme love is love at the highest level of consciousness; and between these two dwells conscious love. In the kingdom of love, there is no past, present, or future. Love dwells eternally within its own realm. From the day we decide to set forth in search of true love, from that day we are dead—for on that very day the old self within us has perished. Therefore, we need no longer fear death anew. The day our old self died, that very day we were born again. Since the day we were born, our new life has begun, and on this path of the new life we can carry nothing of the old. We must remake ourselves from scratch. We have renounced our name, our identity, our reputation, our standing—all of it. Now in this new life we are free from all burdens, from all obligations.

Sometimes it may take us a long time to know of this new birth of ours. So much time is spent adorning the new self that we scarcely find occasion to remember the old self’s existence. Truly, at the beginning of new life, the death of the old life is our first step upon the path of light. Our conscious mind often fails to perceive this. When we enter into the depths of meditation, it begins to happen at once—we step out from our old self, our old existence. Changes occur within us in such a manner that we forget we ever possessed an old self at all. When we descend into the depths of our own mind, we become strangers to ourselves. This is the deepest part of love. Love draws us out from our old self and transforms us into a new self. All of this seems to happen suddenly. Once we find ourselves within this current, there is no returning from it. Many trivial matters of the world no longer touch us then. We discover such a realm of joy that to dwell there is to remain for eternity.

Sixty-nine.
Friedrich Nietzsche has told a parable. It goes thus: one day a madman came down from a mountain peak to the marketplace at the foot of the mountain. It was daylight. Despite the sun’s light illuminating everything around, the madman held a lamp in his hand. He entered a shop and, raising his lamp, began searching for something. The shopkeeper, seeing the madman with a lamp, laughed, and soon a crowd gathered. Everyone laughed upon seeing the madman carrying a lamp in broad daylight. The shopkeeper asked him, “What are you looking for? Why do you carry a lamp in daylight?” The madman replied, “I am searching for God. Have you seen him? Where is God?” They heard him and began to laugh, mocking him. They said, “Is God a child that he has been lost? Is God something hidden here and there? Is he something we have mislaid?” They hurled many such questions and continued their mockery. Then suddenly the madman began to speak: “Do you know what we have done? We have killed God!”

# We Have Killed God

We—you and I and all of us together—have killed God. Yet it seems the news has not reached your ears. It will take time for you to understand it. You and I, all of us together, have slain God. But we committed this deed in such a state of unconsciousness that it will take time for us to comprehend what we have done. The news will take time to reach us. I can well see why you are laughing; you do not yet know how grievously you have erred!’

Indeed, that is the truth of it. We have not awakened the God within us for a long time now. We are dead ourselves, and our God too is dead. We do not even learn to seek, for it has not crossed our minds that we have lost something precious. What we have lost is awareness, connection with our own heart, conscience. Because these are absent, every prayer we offer remains incomplete, and when prayer itself is groundless, the very destination of all our prayers becomes questionable. We merely exist in an ocean of breath—nothing more. Our inner being has died, yet we cannot even perceive this death. Because we cannot perceive it, no urgency or conviction arises within us to awaken ourselves. We have possessed something, or we are chasing after something that conceals from us, at every moment, an immense and magnificent treasure that lies directly before our eyes.

The distance between unconsciousness and consciousness is vast. When we are absorbed in deep meditation upon something, we do not understand in that very moment what is happening to us. This itself reveals how profoundly we were veiled, yet we did not sense it then. When we transform from the old self into the new self, we cannot immediately comprehend the change. By the time we understand it, we have already been completely transformed. Thus must we become absorbed in the path of truth with such depth, only then shall we glimpse that light. We must not be afraid. If we are afraid, we cannot move forward. We must simply continue our practice with constancy. We must surrender ourselves completely to that path of truth. Whether the work brings us joy or not, in the beginning we must perform it with patience and steadfastness. Later, once we have entered deeply into the work, it will become the meditation and wisdom of our entire life.

**Sixty.**

One must keep in mind that there is a difference between surrender and obedience. Surrender means giving oneself over completely, while obedience is accepting something out of a kind of compulsion. To surrender oneself means that I am prepared to do whatever I must do, or prepared to accept it with bowed head. But in obedience, there remains hidden a path of escape—should the opportunity arise, or circumstances change, or the burden exceed what we can bear, we may abandon the practice. Even in deep obedience, if we say yes, still somewhere an invisible ‘no’ lurks concealed. We can shift from that state of yes to no whenever we wish. But in surrender, there is no room whatsoever for even a particle of no. In truth, no existence of ‘no’ remains here at all—only ‘yes’ exists. Obedience, by contrast, harbors that concealed and hidden ‘no,’ which can emerge vindictively when opportunity presents itself. Each time we consciously say yes, our unconscious mind says no with equal force. In the language of philosophy, one-tenth of our brain is conscious, and the remaining nine-tenths are unconscious.

# On Affirmation, Surrender, and the Heart’s Truth

Each time we say ‘yes’ to something, that hidden part of ourselves grows stronger, building a formidable foundation of ‘no’ in the mind. When this ‘no’ finally emerges into the light, it turns against the ‘yes’ with violent revenge.

Only a hypocrite, only a deceitful person, can remain so obedient. A genuine, sincere human being cannot be merely loyal; instead, they are surrendered—which we ordinarily call madness. Hypocrites and frauds can never truly surrender themselves. This is why when deceitful people repeat ‘yes’ to something again and again, they are actually indulging their inner ‘no.’ An authentic person becomes consciously mad. It is a madness of immersing oneself wholly in a calling or a prayer. Whoever has gone far in this world—if you study their lives—you will find that each of them was consciously mad. There is no alternative to this madness if you are to move forward on your own path.

We often see that those who make many promises are the ones who break them most frequently. Yet those who make no promises at all, or who admit their incapacity at the outset of a task, are the very ones who accomplish it swiftly. Why is this? Because when we consciously refuse to do something, it hounds us repeatedly, and then we do it simply for our own peace. Or sometimes, guilt accumulates from not doing the thing, and we eventually do it anyway. Yet there are also instances where we promise to do many things, but that same ‘no’ remains within us—a ‘no’ that is the inverse of ‘yes.’ Then a vengeful desire works within: even though I have given my word, I will not do this thing, because a rebellious voice, a betrayed and deceitful heart within me keeps pursuing me. And from precisely that state of mind, we abandon the task. A surrendered heart, on the other hand, never diminishes any work in the pursuit of truth; rather, it attempts to accomplish whatever it has been asked to do with its fullest strength and capacity.

For a person who has surrendered to themselves, their teacher’s word is paramount, because they have offered themselves to their teacher. A surrendered mind works with a whole heart and with love. Complete attention, love, emotion, respect, sincerity—all converge in that work and pour themselves onto the path of the supreme existence. Just as love has no body, so too those bound by love have no form; just as when two hearts are bound together in love, their bodies remain separate, yet a single soul dwells in both their hearts. This is what it means to be surrendered. A surrendered soul rises far, far above the ego. In that soul there is neither ‘yes’ nor ‘no.’ There is no room for loyalty. Although it may appear as loyalty, a surrendered mind is actually beyond loyalty and disloyalty. We humans hide disgust and deception beneath the mask of obedience. We are loyal so that we might obtain something through deception. We resort to loyalty in order to hoard material wealth, because through it we can easily deceive others.

Here lies the difference between a strong heart and a weak one.

# On the Heart’s Vision: Loyalty and Surrender

A strong heart, or a surrendered heart, can discern the difference between loyalty and devotion. Their inner sight grows so keen that they can look at someone and tell at once what truly moves within that person’s mind. They do not see people; they see into people. This is a practice—cultivate it with regularity, and you hone yourself into an instrument of such perception. Loyalty, by contrast, fractures our very being. Through loyalty, we—one soul in one body—take on two different colors, which is why loyalty becomes destructive when we must travel the long road. Whatever breaks us, whatever strips us bare of authenticity, carries us to the threshold of our own ruin. In other words, our most auspicious qualities—by our own forgetting—become the harbingers of our destruction. If instead of chasing loyalty, we work with full consciousness, moved by genuine sincerity with our entire being, our world would grow more beautiful. Yet this very power of ours to act consciously has been systematically destroyed and continues to be destroyed, until we have become nothing but thinking machines.

The most universally accepted value in the world is loyalty. We have accepted it so readily that whatever we are told, we obey like instruments, we accept without question. To accept and to accept from the heart are two different things. The first is loyalty; the second is surrender. In the name of morality, we have been dressed in the garment of loyalty, and it was done so quietly, wrapped in such reasonable language, that we can no longer even trust our natural judgment, let alone question it! From the very beginning of creation, under the names of custom and convention, we have inherited this gleaming garment of forced loyalty. Our natural suspicion, our power to protest, our language of thought—all have been stolen from us, and we have been burdened with rules and compelled to obey them. We have no right to verify truth; we have no freedom of expression. As a result, we are easily deceived by others, and in return, we deceive them. Essentially, humans today are nothing but the most sophisticated conscious machines. True love’s bond is forged through surrender, whereas loyalty is merely an imposed strategy created by society.

We must surrender ourselves to those we love. For when we surrender ourselves to those we love, we are not surrendering to that person alone—we are surrendering to love itself. We love not the body then, but the soul. When two souls are bound in love, two hearts surrender to each other. Love does not possess anyone, nor does it grant possession. Love is a complete and spiritual essence, transcendent of all authority. Love has its own language. When we receive love, it lights our way. The true path of love is entirely different. When two souls are bound in love, that very thing becomes supreme prayer. When two loving spirits unite, they speak the same language; their thought, their consciousness, their path become one, for their source is the same. Outwardly, this may appear as loyalty, but it is divine surrender. This is why it is said: “Be a good child, be a good companion, be good parents, be a good friend.” Here, “good” does not mean loyal—it means surrendered. To surrender means to be genuine and authentic. We are precisely as honest, as generous, as crude, as deceitful as our innermost consciousness guides us to be—and to reveal all of that, exactly as it is, is to surrender ourselves.

# On Surrender to Love

This is how one must surrender to the beloved.

Love has no form of its own; we love only an imagined form of our dear ones. This is both an excuse and a door—the threshold through which we enter love’s dwelling. In truth, love moves only along the path of the soul. A heart without love harbors no prayer; it harbors no Creator. To surrender to love is to surrender to the Creator. The Creator comes to us wearing the face of the beloved. When we surrender to those we love, we are in fact surrendering to our Creator. This surrender is a spiritual value. Loyalty, by contrast, is merely a shell. Any shell inevitably leads us only toward destruction.

**Sixty-one.**

Man lives by an inborn thirst to know the unknown. We are all ceaselessly searching for the well of our inner strength. Here lies the difference between humans and all other creatures. Man alone is the seeker—he searches for the source of his own existence, he delves into the depths of his thought, he hungers for the spirituality of life, he sits in deep meditation upon truth. Thus we may say that meditation dwells dormant within each of us. If we wish to enter meditation, we must awaken that slumbering essence within. And the very process of awakening that dormant self is the continuous practice of meditation itself. For within each of us lies boundless possibility to discover truth. Yet if we squander our days in endless, rootless pursuits, we shall never find that essence. Time slips swiftly from our hands. This is the true moment to make a covenant with ourselves—to tell ourselves that we shall seek truth until our dying breath. We must kindle within ourselves that fierce hunger, so that even in sleep, this thirst remains awake within us.

Whatever we do must lead us toward that truth. We must forge within ourselves an intense and passionate bond with truth itself. When that fierce hunger awakens in us, then all the elements necessary for the path of truth shall come seeking us of their own accord. Yes, when we yearn to know truth with terrible intensity, it works with such power. This is no ordinary wish—it is the true purpose of every life. Here lies the success of life. Worldly desires—wealth, fame, palaces, power—all these draw us away from the path of truth. Each desire pulls us in a different direction, keeps us enchanted. These desires continuously allure us, drawing us further from the search for truth. They become addictions. We run after these artificial joys like the mad. When we chase money, we are intoxicated by it. Then earning more by any means becomes our sole endeavor. When we chase success, we are blind to all else, grasping only for it. We would surrender everything to attain it. We spend our entire lives chasing fame across the world. And gradually we draw ourselves into such a vicious cycle of sorrow that the very thought of escape never enters our minds, not once, until death.

# Our Living and Dying

Our living and our dying—both become suffused with torment, rendered mundane.

Do we ever pause to ask ourselves what these worldly successes actually give us? The true mystery of our life lies in this: to live each moment as if it were worth living, to embrace each instant and savor its essence. Yet we are so clouded by these worldly attachments that we forget—we even forget to breathe consciously. Worldly desire drives us toward many destinations at once, and in this multiplicity, we often feel as though we are drowning. When we seek truth, all worldly attachments fall away. It places us on a singular path. Then all these worldly aims we have chased like madmen for so long begin to seem trivial. Just as a drop of water settles on a lotus leaf, so do our worldly successes rest—precarious, ready to fall to earth at any moment. This single drop has no connection to the ocean. Truth is vast as the sea; there is no comparison, no kinship between it and one drop clinging to a lotus leaf. Here lies the difference between the pursuit of truth and the pursuit of worldly success. In the ocean of truth, all other accomplishments are like tributary streams and rivers that eventually merge into the great expanse. Alas, we mistake a drop of water trembling on a lotus leaf for the entire ocean, and spend this precious life in that delusion.

The seeking of truth is a longing that burns within us like a blazing flame. It brings forth the ‘I’ within us into clear light. This luminous, undeniable yearning within us becomes our guide. For then we have no backward pull. We have nowhere else to rush. When we grow still and composed, truth itself approaches us and makes itself known. Being itself reveals its own mystery to us. When diverse forces gather within us, the will to know truth becomes clear, and this irresistible will brings together all that is necessary for this knowing. And when we are fully illuminated, there remains no such thing as the ‘I’. There is no separate self called ‘I’. Until we uproot this ego within us, we must understand that we have not yet found the true path. For when we are truly illuminated, it is part of that original existence alone—there is no separate self to call our own.

**Sixty-Two.**

If we claim ourselves to be illuminated, we can be certain of this: we are not yet truly illuminated. Wisdom can never be claimed as our own, for we dissolve our ego in this light of knowledge before we can ever claim knowledge as ours. If we claim ourselves to be radiant beings, we dwell in illusion. To claim it for ourselves means to become arrogant, and an arrogant being can never be part of the light. A person is truly illuminated only when they disappear into the light, when there remains nothing within them that they can call their own. After this, we say, I think, or I remember, I am radiance, I am light. In truth, on the path of reality, thought has no place or connection in this illumination. Thought is always far removed from the light of knowledge, for thinking is a circular process that drowns us in our own mental world, keeping us imprisoned there.

It is a process that binds our eyes and leads us continuously astray like the blind, that does not allow the light of truth to reflect in our eyes. Such thinking is a destructive instrument that perpetually distorts good things through all its own flawed mechanisms.

Many say, it seems to me, I have fallen in love! Love does not come through thought; love is a feeling. It can only be felt. Love stands above all the realm of thought. Similarly, wisdom or being wise is not a matter of thought, nor can it even be felt—it transcends everything. Just as love stands above thought, so knowledge stands above feeling. In a word, wisdom transcends thought, feeling, and all else. When it awakens within us, it dwells there in silence. Knowledge is no accident—either it is present within us or it is not. There is no middle ground. When we say we are almost close to love, or nearly touched by feeling, such a thing can never be. Either we dwell within love, or we dwell outside it. And if we think we have come very close to love, it means we are trying to manufacture love, trying to create feeling.

Love, feeling, wisdom, knowledge—these can never be made. They are eternal; they have existed within us since the genesis of creation and shall remain till death. We need only to awaken them—at the right time, in the right circumstance, in the right context. Therefore, we must shake off all these false notions within us. No one can become wise; wisdom itself lies always dormant within us in its own essence. It is the very nature of our existence. We have only covered it with layers of coating; we need merely to brush away those layers. Existence is whole and complete in itself. To understand life, we must sometimes transcend the ordinary logic of life. The greatest reckonings of life are always the very opposite of its lesser reckonings. The Greek philosopher Pythagoras spoke of two principles in life: the principle of necessity and the principle of power. The principles of necessity are always bound to the lesser reckonings of life, while power constitutes its greatest accounting. Though both are part of the greater existence, they are entirely different and operate differently. The lesser reckonings of life work through quantitative measure, but its greatest accounting always develops quality.

If we can understand one particle of the whole, only then can we understand the vast. The lesser reckonings of life are like individual particles, while the greatest accounting is vast as an ocean. In each drop of the ocean dwells the truth hidden within the ocean’s vastness. Though the two are wholly different in quantitative measure, they are entirely one in quality. Should we remove some part of the whole existence, or add something to it, existence shall remain complete. Should we separate the Creator’s excellence from Him, or add something more to Him, the Creator shall remain the Creator. If our existence is wise, then each part of it must be wise. Only then shall it become manifest to us. Every part of a whole purity must be pure. It is the qualitative aspect of existence that is paramount, not its quantitative measure. More than how vast existence is, what matters is how evident its quality becomes. Whatever we are, we together form a complete entity. The entire existence is the intelligence of a perfect structure.

# From the Translation

Therefore, whatever we may be, we are each a small fragment of that Intelligence. Had we not been a necessary part of the whole Intelligence, we would not have been created at all; for existence believes in perfection, and creation springs from the necessity of existence itself.

There is no such thing as suffering in this world. What we call pain are merely our own invented accounts. We are still sleeping, and these sufferings float to us as nightmares in that slumber. We must awaken from this sleeping state, only then shall we find true joy. If we are mentally afflicted or blind, how can we blame existence itself? How can we take it for a nightmare? It will pain us to admit—or perhaps we will not wish to admit—that these sufferings are in fact our own creation. Only when we become fully conscious will these nightmares, these blindnesses completely depart from our lives. The intensity of suffering depends greatly upon our thoughts. Once a man lost both his legs in a motor accident. For two months after, he could not sleep for worry; he could not accept that both his legs were gone. At last, when he saw that there was no way but to accept it—at most he could fit himself with artificial limbs—he began to close his eyes at a fixed time each day and imagine that he was running, walking, doing all things. Then gradually he began to imagine that he had no body at all. When he began to imagine that he had no body, that he was merely a soul, peace returned to his mind. In his wheelchair he went about his work quite contentedly. When he saw that though he could not walk, his two hands could accomplish much, he began to give thanks inwardly. From that time forward, the man was utterly transformed.

The awareness that he had lost both his legs never worked within him. The accident had become a blessing to him. This is the power of meditation. When we imagine ourselves bodiless, our awareness of the soul becomes more intense. Voluntary suffering never brings blessings. Who knows—perhaps we are transforming our very blessings into suffering! We torment ourselves through our own thoughts, yet we blame the Creator for it. If our understanding is flawed, how can we lay that fault at the Creator’s door! We are misinterpreting everything, and it may pain us to admit this, but it is the truth. And however painful, truth remains truth forever. We cannot alter it through our understanding or our thoughts. Truth is natural, and nature can never be foolish. Nature is possessed of supreme Intelligence. Those of us who oppose nature, we are the ones who destroy nature, destroy ecosystems, pollute the air. Such people must be consciously avoided. If nature were foolish, how could we be wise? And if we were not wise, how could the existence of the whole be true! To deny nature is to deny oneself, and to deny oneself is ultimately to deny the Absolute Truth.

Sixty-three.

We might say: if nature is so wise, or if nature truly embodies justice, then why does death occur?

Because nature sets one against another. If there were no death, what would become of birth? Birth, death, natural calamities—all of it is nature’s orchestration of opposites in constant, cyclical motion. Just as daylight enhances the beauty of night, or daylight itself dispels the darkness of night. Though one is the complete opposite of the other, one happens only because the other is needed. Because we know hatred, love becomes so true. We can love someone only because we hate another. Or through the departure of the unnecessary comes the arrival of the necessary in our lives. For necessity is the lower principle of life, a mere fragment of existence itself. Had we no need of our own existence, we would not be here at all. It is through existence’s necessity that we arrive and flourish. Had there been no man, would womanhood have had any need to exist? Woman and man are complementary to each other. Electricity could not exist without positive and negative magnetism.

Nature knows well how to maintain balance in all things. Health and illness, beauty and ugliness, success and failure, suffering and blessing—all are part of nature. Through all of these, nature dispenses justice to everyone. The principle of necessity pulls us downward, while the principle of power pushes us upward. To sustain life is governed by the principle of necessity, whereas human consciousness persists through the principle of power. One reduces us to machines while the other grants us freedom of mind—and it is because of this that the balance of our existence is preserved. Rationality is not the right process of life; life grows through the divergence of opinions. It is because of contradiction that life is so beautiful. If, on the basis of rationality, only men had been created? Or if only women? If throughout the entire world, men were united with men? Or woman with woman? Would we even be pleased with ourselves? If we merely imagine the whole world engrossed in homosexuality, would we ever accept it as natural? Nature has set one as the complement of the other, bringing diversity to life—without which our existence would become tasteless, monotonous, dull.

Joy dwells within thought itself. Because anxiety exists, joy holds such value. When anxiety arrives, the possibility of joy becomes apparent. Suppose you love someone, and from that love, you wrap them in affection every moment of every day, constantly speaking only of love, showering attention endlessly until they grow restless—how would you feel after some days? If there were no such thing as day? Or if it were only night? If it rained all year round, or if spring alone remained throughout all seasons? What if life had no variety? It is because of variety that life is so alive. Where there is no life, there is no such thing as variety. A living tree’s leaves die, new ones sprout, the tree grows, eventually it flowers or bears fruit, eventually it gives seed—this is how life persists, creation and ending bound together within it. A dead tree has no variety at all. When we quarrel with the person we love, a small separation occurs between us in that moment. In anger, we begin to think we have endured too much, we cannot bear it anymore. This is the end!

That woman or that man—we tell ourselves we will speak to them no more, we will not go to them again, and so on and so forth.

After this, we withdraw from them for days, or hold ourselves at a distance for a time. We do not speak with them. We cannot bear their presence before our eyes, so we keep them at arm’s length, and we ourselves retreat. Often we withdraw even further than the severity of what actually happened warrants. We think to ourselves: this is the end now, surely. There is nothing left to forgive. But then, after some moments have passed, our anger begins to subside. Gradually we find ourselves missing them. And then comes a moment when we think: perhaps this person is not quite so bad after all. Much later still, we begin to see some fault in ourselves as well, and then we draw near to each other again. In that moment, it seems to us like heavenly joy. And so our lives unfold. We quarrel in the morning and by nightfall have forgotten everything and become one again. Or perhaps we quarrel at night, and by morning, when we wake, all is made right. In our distance from one another lies the pleasure of drawing close again. That pleasure then becomes vivid, carrying us on a current of supreme happiness. Thus does life proceed, weaving back and forth.

Some things we can understand even as mere observers, while other things can only be known through participation. Some matters seem wrong when viewed from the outside, yet when we step into their depths, we grasp their truth. Only through conscious living can we know their real cause. When something appears wrong to us from without, we ought to wait with patience. For when the opportunity for experience comes, we shall know the truth itself. Much that seems to us pointless at first glance, or what we dismiss today, might one day reveal its worth to us—if only we can be patient. This happens most often with things we think worthless. Suddenly, when they begin to slip from our grasp, we perceive their true value. Someone with abundant wealth dismisses money, squandering it carelessly. Someone blessed with much time now disregards time, wastes and destroys it. Then one day, when these things become scarce, he understands: all this while, how blessed he actually was, how free from worry. Everything we devalue, we must one day pay a high price for.

To know certain truths of life, one must meditate upon them with undivided attention. One must give oneself time. We spend our time on others, conversing with a multitude of people, and never manage to sit quietly with ourselves for a moment—we do not have even that much time. This work can be done easily enough through meditation. To commune with one’s own mind, to dwell within oneself—this itself is meditation. Meditation is a thing that can only be known through participation. No amount of wealth or other things can purchase knowledge of meditation. Meditation teaches us to think about and understand the many mysteries of this world, what influence our mind holds over those mysteries, the power of our mind and how to put that power to use—such countless matters it opens to our understanding.

Meditation is an inexorable truth—one that can only be known through participation in it. This dwelling with oneself, this meditation with one’s own being, is what renders us uniquely human.