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As flowers bloom in spring,

the soul is drenched in fragrance

as meditation is born.

As everything glistens green beneath the rain,

consciousness shines with many colors

as meditation showers.

All this and much more takes place,

and this is only the beginning.

Ultimately everything goes;

fragrance, color, light, music –

everything disappears.

And an inner space, like the sky, appears –

empty, formless, without quality.

Wait for that. Long for that.

The signs are good, so do not waste even a moment.

Go on! I am always with you.

112. Love.

Thirst is good,

longing is good, an aching heart is good,

because he comes through the vale of tears.

Weep so much

that only the tears remain, not you.

If the tears alone remain

and he who weeps vanishes

then God comes by himself.

That is why I let you go, not stopping you.

I knew you would regret it –

but this regret is good.

I knew you would weep

but these tears have their usefulness –

can there be a profounder prayer than tears?

113. Love.

What is truth?

This much at least can be said:

It cannot be defined.

So forget about all definitions,

drop all evaluations and interpretations –

these are all mind games,

all creatures of thought.

What is, is beyond the mind.

Thoughts are as unaware of reality

as the waves are of the peace of the lake.

With waves

the lake loses its tranquillity;

when the lake is calm

then the waves cannot exist.

One has to know that-which-is.

Its interpretation is very different from knowing it.

Interpretations take one astray –

they are as illusory as scarecrows.

The seeker of truth has to be wary of words.

Words are not the truth,

truth cannot be words.

Truth is an experience,

truth is reality,

and the path to it is neti, neti –

neither this nor that.

Drop explanations,

drop definitions,

drop scriptures and doctrines,

remember neti, neti – not this, not that!

Then drop I and thou

and say neti, neti.

What is left manifest in the emptiness –

that is truth,

and that alone is.

All else is dream.

114. Love.

The decision to take sannyas is propitious –

and sadhana follows decision like a shadow.

Seeds have to be sown in the mind as well;

there too – as we sow we reap.

The way has to be carved out of the mind too.

The temple of God is close

but the mind is like a dense forest

we have to hack our way through to reach it.

The first steps have to be taken from where you are.

Even for a long journey

the first steps have to be taken just close by,

and in every journey,

not only that towards truth,

the beginning is not different from the end –

they are two ends of the same span,

two poles of the same entity.

Yet often you cannot guess from the first step

where you will end up;

those first steps may seem quite unrelated to the last!

Charles Catering recollects this interesting incident:

Once I bet a friend

that if I bought him a birdcage to hang in his sitting-room

he would have to buy a bird.

The friend laughed and said

he could keep a cage without a bird –

there was nothing to it!

He accepted the bet

and I bought him a beautiful cage from Switzerland

which he hung in his sitting-room.

Naturally, the inevitable happened –

life has its own logic.

Whosoever saw the cage

immediately sympathized with him,

asking:

When did your bird die?

He would answer: I never had a bird.

Then they would say: So why the empty cage?

Finally he got sick and tired of explaining

and went and bought a bird.

When I asked him about it he said:

It was easier to buy the bird and lose the bet

than to explain things to each and everyone

from morn till night.

And also,

seeing this empty cage hanging there

day in and day out, my mind kept repeating:

The bird! The bird! The bird!

So, if you hang commitment like a cage in the mind

it won’t be long before the bird of sadhana comes!

115. Love.

Man lives not in reality but in dreams.

Each mind creates a world of its own which exists nowhere.

During the day as well as the night

the mind is swamped in dreams.

When the dreams become too much, too intense,

insanity results.

To be clear and healthy is to be without dreams.

Once, the president of a country went

to inspect the nation’s largest lunatic asylum.

The director took him to a room and told him:

In this room, the inmates suffer from car-phobia.

The president, curious, looked through the window.

But there is nobody there, he said.

They are all there, sir – under the beds repairing cars,

the director replied.

Everyone is lying under their dreams in the same way.

If this president had looked within, what would he have found?