Theos-Talk Archives (July 1998 Message tl00012)

Part 2 of 2

Meditation of the heart is understanding

Still lacking the fixed purpose from which comes the delight of
living, I went to California. Circumstances forced me there because my
brother was ill. There among the hills we lived in a small house in
complete retirement, doing everything for ourselves. If you would
discover Truth you must for a time withdraw from the world. In that
retired spot my brother and I talked much together. We meditated,
trying to understand, for meditation of the heart is understanding.

There I was naturally driven within myself and I learned that as long
as I had no definite goal or purpose in life, I was like the rest of
mankind, tossed about as a ship on a stormy sea. With that in my mind,
after rejecting all lesser things, I established for myself my goal. I
wanted to enter into eternal happiness, I wanted to become the very
goal. I wanted to drink from the source of life. I wanted to unite the
beginning and the end. I fixed that goal as my Beloved and that
Beloved is Life, the Life of all things. I wanted to destroy the
separation that exists between man and his goal. I said to myself that
as long as there is this void of separation between myself and my goal
there is bound to be misery, disturbance and doubt. There will be
autority which I must obey, to which I must yield. As long as there is
separation between you and me there is unhappiness for us both. So I
set about destroying all the barriers that I had previously erected. I
began to reject, to renounce, to set aside what I had gathered, and
little by little I approached my goal.

When my brother died, the experience it brought me was great - not the
sorrow - sorrow is momentary and passes away, but the joy of
experience remains. If you understand life rightly then death becomes
an experience out of which you can build your house of perfection,
your house of delight. When my brother died, that gap of separation
still existed in me; I saw him once or twice after death but that did
not satisfy me. How can you be satisfied alone? You may invent
phrases, you may have great knowledge of books, but as long as there
is within you separation and loneliness, there is sorrow. Because I
desired to establish life within myself, because I desired to become
united with the goal, I struggled. Life is a process of struggle, of
continous gathering of the dust of experience.

If you are lost on a dark night and you see a distant light, you make
your way towards that light with bleeding feet, through bogs, through
pitfalls, through difficulties, because you know that the light
indicates a human dwelling. So have I walked and struggled towards
that light which is my goal, which is the goal of all humanity,
because it is humanity itself.

All the pitfalls, all the things which entangle, all the things which
hurt, are transient and pass away. I suffered but I set about to free
myself from everything that bound me, till in the end, I became united
with the Beloved, I entered into the sea of liberation, and
established liberation within me.

Fall in love with yourself

The simple union wish the Beloved, the direct way of attainment, which
is the eternal way, gives ecstasy to life. If you search for Truth in
the realms of maya, in the realm of the intellect or of mere
emotionalism, or in the physical sense-world alone, you will never
find it. Yet when you have found it you realize that it is contained
in them all. You cannot separate life from any expression of life and
yet you must be able to distinguish between life and its expressions. 

Because at first I tried to separate life from the goal, because to me
life was one thing and knowledge another, everything became confused
and I turned for support to tradition, to comfort, to self-contentment
and satisfaction. When you perceive the light of your goal, you are
guided by it as a ship is guided by a lighthouse on a dark shore. When
you have seen that vision of perfection, that hidden beauty which
cannot be explained in words, which is beyond intellectual theories
and mere emotional excitement, it will act as your eternal guide, it
will shed its light upon your path and whatever your experience or
lack of experience may be, you will attain. Attainment is not for the
few but for all, at whatever stage of evolution they may be. You can
perceive the Beloved when you have learnt to translate the ordinary
sorrows and pleasures of life into terms of eternal Truth. If you can
interpret all experience in the light of your goal, then you will
become united with that goal.

Because I am united eternally, inseparably, with my Beloved - who is
the Beloved of all, who is yourself - I would show you the way,
because you are in pain, in sorrow, in doubt. But I can only be a
signpost for you. You must have the strength of your own desire to
attain. You must experience the pain and the sorrow in your own self.
You must strive for yourself. Your desire must come from your very
soul. It must be the result of your own experience, for by that alone
will you attain.

By telling you of my attainment I do not wish to create authority
because if I create authority in your mind I shall destroy your own
perception of the Truth. I want to make you breathe the fresh air of
the mountains, but if you seek my authority you will remain in your
dark valley of limitation. It is much easier for you to follow and
worship blindly than to understand and so become truly free.

Until I was able to identify myself with the goal, which is the
Beloved of all, which is the Source and the End of all, I did not want
to say that I had found and, in finding, had become the Beloved. Till
I was able to unite with the eternal I could not pass on the Truth to
others; till I was certain of having found the lasting goal I did not
want to say that I was the Teacher. Now that I have found, now that I
have established the Beloved within myself, now that the Beloved is
myself, I would give you of the Truth - not that it should be received
with authority, but with understanding. It does not matter whether you
accept or reject it. When a flower opens and gives its scent, it does
not heed if the passer-by does not delight in its fragrance.

I have painted my picture on the canvas and I want you to examine it
critically, not blindly. I want you to create because of that picture
a new picture for yourself. I want you to fall in love with the
picture, not with the painter, to fall in love with the Truth and not
with him who brings the Truth. Fall in love with yourself and then you
will fall in love with everyone.

---
I want to be your companion with the freshness of the breeze

---

In order to attain liberation it is not necessary to join any
organization, any religion, because they are binding, they are
limiting, they hold you to a particular form of worship and belief. If
you long for freedom you will fight, as I have fought, against
authority of any kind, for authority is the antithesis of
spirituality.

If I were to use authority today and you accepted my authority, it
would not make you free, you would be merely following the freedom of
another. In following the freedom of another, you are binding yourself
more strongly to the wheel of limitation. Do not allow your mind or
your hart to be bound by anything or by anyone. If you do, you will
establish another religion, another temple. While destroying one set
of beliefs you will establish another set of beliefs. I am fighting
against all traditions that bind, all worship that narrows, all
following that corrupts the heart. If you would find that freedom to
which I would point the way, you will begin, as I began, by being
discontented, by being in revolt, in inner dissent with everything
about you. You frequently use the phrase "We will obey our leaders'.
Who are your leaders? I never want to be a leader. I never want to
have authority. I want you to become your own leaders. 

Life is simple and magnificent, lovely and divine, but you want all
the beauty and the freshness of the dawn and of the still night to be
caught and held in a narrow circle so that you can worship it. Go down
to the sea-beach of an evening when the fresh breezes are blowing and
all the blades of grass are in motion and the particles of sand are
flying about and the trees are waving their branches, and the waves of
the sea are breaking over each other. You want to gather and bind all
that beauty into a narrow temple. You need have no beliefs in order to
live nobly. An yet your say, "I must worship gods, I must perform
rites, I must go to shrines, I must follow this and do that". It is an
eternal must. That way of living is not living at all.

Whatever you do, do not create another temple around me: I shall not
be held within it. I want to be your companion with the freshness of
the breeze. I want to free you from your own limitations, to encourage
within you individual creation, individual perfection, individual
uniqueness. The self can only be purified and truly transcended when
it has developed its own individual uniqueness to perfection; not when
it is held in limitations, bound by traditions, by forms, and by all
the unnecessary paraphernalia which you think essential to your
well-being.

I remember a story written by a Norwegian - the hero of that story in
search for freedom and happiness joins one religion after another and
worships one God after another, performs one ceremony after another,
and still he cannot find what he seeks. At length he becomes a
Buddhist and drops his physical body and enters Nirvana. He enters the
Nirvana of the books and there he sees all the gods of all the
religions seated and conversing with each other. They offer him a
vacant seat. This hero appears as a flame, but this flame does not
want to be caught, and while all the gods try to catch hold of him he
disappears. The gods cannot follow him because even gods themselves
are bound.

Do not be bound by me or by anyone. Happiness is within yourself.

I set out to find for myself the purpose of life and I found it
without the authority of another. I have entered that sea of
liberation and happiness in which there is no limitation or negation
because it is the fulfilment of life.

Because after my long journey towards attainment and perfection I have
attained that perfection and established it in my heart, and because
my mind is tranquil and eternally liberated at the flame, I would give
of that understanding to all.
==================================================

Bernie

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