For the Indian people and a Message to the world
Children personify everything. A cloud’s roar is nothing else than the growl of an annoyed person over yonder. So do grown up children give a sense of curdled personality to all those they come in contact with. When anything is apparently going wrong, to quarrel with the surroundings instead of setting us right with the Law of Love, is like breaking the Telephone receiver for hearing the bad news from the friends at the invisible end.
The Australian blacks believe that rain is caused by themselves through mysterious incantations and similar other ways, the process being called Melka. “When on our expedition,” says a noted authority, “we were overtaken by violent tropical storms, my blacks always became enraged at the strangers (the other blacks who had caused the rain).” This same old, dark ignorance like the primitive blacks characterises those who fret and worry in any way over the faults of their neighbours. The rain falls and nothing but the impersonal Law of Nature is behind it. The flower blooms and nothing but the same impersonal Law is in manifestation. Just so, Judas knows it not, but in his betraying kiss, nothing but the Law of Love is operating in full force. Who would have remembered Christ by this time but for what immediately followed that false kiss? The beautiful Joseph says to his apologising .brothers, “It was not ye that threw me into the well. The Lord Love, in order to exalt me in Egypt, found no better lovers than my own brothers.”
Everything seems so changing, fleeting, and melting in my fingers. I cannot give any sense of constancy and personality to any object, and so how can I criticise? In the lightning flash is seen a railway train at full speed or a passing cloud. We think it to be at rest, stationary; but when we know more of it, we think otherwise. So do people see things only in the fleeting light of Maya, and on that base their sense of constancy and personalities, possessions. This is called worldly wisdom. Look at things in the daylight of abiding Truth, the Infinity within, and you are one with Immortal Peace.
The debates and discussions of mankind always prove futile. All attempts to settle differences by argument breed dissension, discontent, and dissatisfaction; and why? The foundation is not properly laid before raising the superstructure. First win the heart, then appeal to reason. Love might hope where reason would despair. The wind could not take the coat from the traveller in the fable, but the heat did.
People are too anxious for agreement of thought and creed. They don’t wait for the union of souls. Understanding is understanding, or standing under the apparent forms and seeming moods. This is brought about by love. Unless you feel all, you know not all. You need not think so much as sink. If Love breaks Law, it is the fulfilment of law. If anything else breaks law, it is fanaticism and revolution. Love is the only divine law. Other laws are organized robbery. Love alone has the right to break law. Owning through love is divine, owning through law illegal.
Politicians of India, you have been trying the method of protesting criticism and heart-burning complaint, but things have been taking the worse turn every day. Let us try now the right way. If the other party did wrong, doing wrong in return will only add another black to the previous black but will not make it white. An elderly gentleman was about to spank a boy for showing him disrespect, saying, “Fool, why did you misbehave? “The boy replied, “Sir, I was naughty because as you say I was a 4 fool/ Now you are so wise, behave as is worthy of you.”
When an electrically charged body comes not in contact but only in proximity with another body, the result in the second body is what they call a charge by induction, that is to say, quite the opposite kind of electricity is generated. It is the actual contact that brings about a kindred charge. So when you want to settle matters through reasoning and logic while the glass-partitions of caste-feeling and race-feeling do not let the hearts unite, you come in dangerous proximity. The result produced is quite the opposite of what you desire to effect. You cannot know a man unless you first love him.
Love might hope where reason would despair.
Religions, creeds and denominations are worn by people merely like amulets about the neck. All kinds of virtue and efficacy are ascribed to them, and yet after all what little we achieve is utterly independent of those pet charms. Let us redeem our manhood and rise above those favourite superstitions. How long will you cling to those toys of names and forms?
Yes, you must give up one after another, all your pet prejudices, possessions, clingings, attachments. Your possessions possess and obsess you. You cannot fence out anybody without first fencing in yourself. Hidden in this painful Stripping Robbery lies the treasure of Blissful Success. The dearest name of God to Rama is Hari which literally means the Robber. O Sweet Hari! Some might object. Oh! If I love and yield to the foe, he will eat me up. Rama says’, “O you deluded cheat, did you ever really try the experiment? “
On all the doors of life is written “Pull,” but you misread and begin to “push.”How will the door open in such a case? Pushing is arguing; pulling is drawing within your own self through Love. Heart is the entrance to the jubilee hall of Inspiration; Head is the exit. Love inspires, head expounds. Feelings always precede thinking, as the body precedes the clothes. Change the feelings in an individual, and his whole method of thinking will be revolutionized.
What is life? A series of interruptions. Yes, it is so to the people who live on the surface of life, but not to one who lives as life (or love). It is true that there is nothing so poisonous as the company of gossips, believers in appearances, shameless slaves of shameful “respectability,” but where the lord Love encamps, no impertinent tramps can loaf around. We have no need to shun their company. Law is no law and Nature no more than a stubble, if the intruders dare encroach on you, except when their services are just needed.
Ganimat of Punjab in his Nairang-i-Ishq tells us of Aziz, the schoolmaster, poor schoolmaster! madly in love with one of his pupils, Shahid. While correcting the calligraphy exercises of his students, the senseless teacher guides himself by the blurred and slurred scribble work of his pupil-master who was just a beginner in school. Well done! How true! Defects are visible only where our eyes are jaundiced with lack of love. When Lord Love pitches a tent in our heart, day is, as it were, added to day, as if another sun had adorned the heavens.