I have seen the seeds of this growth within you
and it fills my soul with great joy.
The seed is there, now it has to become a tree.
It could be that the time is at hand.
God-realization cannot happen without meditation
so you must turn towards this now
with courage and perseverance.
I have great hopes – will you fulfill them?
My regards to other friends there.
I wait for your letter.
Remember what I said about the blank paper?
Everything else is fine.
I am in bliss.
16. Love.
I received your letter.
What you say has made me very happy.
Words that come out of the depth and fullness of heart
echo the infinite
just as a tiny flower expresses infinite beauty.
When love breathes life into words
what is expressed is
not what is said
but what wants to be said.
Inside each of us there is a poet,
there is poetry,
but because we live on the surface
these are never born.
Those who go deep
awaken divine love
and this love fills their lives
with music, beauty, peace and poetry –
their very lives become music
and on to this stage truth descends.
Truth will descend where there is music
so life must be turned into a melody.
Only through music can one reach the truth.
You too have to become music,
the entire life, every little act,
has to be turned into music:
this happens through love.
Whatever is – love it.
Feel love for the whole world.
Feeling love for all with every breath
brings the inner music.
Have you ever seen this happen?
See this,
fill yourself with love and see.
Whatever breaks up the inner music –
that alone is irreligious, that alone is sin.
And whatever fills us with music –
that is religion, that alone is religion.
Love is religion
because love is beauty,
love is music.
Love is God
because it is all that is needed to attain him.
Give my love to everybody there
and feel the light of my love beside you.
17. Love.
I have received your letter.
You long for the peace I have within me.
It is yours any time.
It is the deepest possibility in everyone,
it only has to be uncovered.
As springs of water lie hidden under layers of earth
so does bliss lie hidden within us.
The possibility is there for everyone
but only those who dig for it can redeem it.
The excavation of these hidden treasures
lies through religion.
Digging with it one reaches the well of light within.
I have shown you how to dig and what with,
but the digging has to be done by you.
I know your soil is absolutely ready,
with very little effort the infinite streams can be reached.
This state of mind is attained
with the greatest good fortune
so don’t waste it or miss this opportunity.
Fill yourself with determination
and leave the rest to God.
Truth runs alongside will.
Don’t hesitate to write, I have lots of time for you.
I am for those who need me –
nothing in my life is for myself.
18. Love,
so much love.
I received your letter when I got back.
I could feel the ardor of your heart through your words.
I well know the fervor that stirs your soul
and the thirst that turns into tears within you.
I was once there too, I too have suffered it.
I can well understand your heart because I have traveled
those same paths you now have to take in the quest for God.
I too have experienced the longing
that one day turns into a raging fire
in which one has to consume oneself.
But this burning brings the birth of a new life.
The drop can only become the ocean
when it ceases to exist.
Continue your efforts in meditation;
you have to go deeper and deeper into it –
it is the only way.
Through it and it alone can one reach life’s truth.
Remember:
If you become absorbed in sadhana,
fully committed and surrendered,
you are bound to reach the truth.
This is an eternal law.
No step taken towards God is ever wasted.
My regards to all.
19. My respects to you.
Your letters were received.
I have just got back from a camp at Ranakpur.
It was just for friends from Rajasthan,
that’s why you weren’t informed.
It lasted five days and about sixty people participated.
It was a wonderful success
and it was obvious that much happened.
Encouraged by the results
the organizers are planning a camp on an all-India basis.
You must come to that.
I am glad to hear your meditation is progressing.
You have only to be silent.
To be silent is everything.
Silence does not mean absence of speech,
it means absence of thoughts.
When the mind quietens down
it becomes linked to the infinite.
Don’t do anything,
just sit and watch the flow of thoughts, just watch.
This just watching dissolves thought by itself.
The awakening of witnessing
brings freedom from the modifications of the mind.
With thoughts finished, consciousness is.
This is samadhi.
Love to all friends.
1965
20. Love.
Last night when lamps and lamps
were lit up all over town
I thought: My Sohan, too, must have lit lamps
and a few among them must surely be for me!
And then I began to see the lamps you had lit,
and also those your love has kept lit always.
I shall stay here another day.
I have talked of you to everybody
and they are eager to meet you.
21. Beloved!
Your letter came, and your photo too.
You look really simple and innocent in it!
Such love and devotion!
The heart when purified by love turns into a temple
and I can see this clearly in your photo.
May God help this simple innocence grow!
Two thousand years ago someone asked Christ:
Who can enter the kingdom of heaven?
Jesus pointed to a little child and said:
Those whose hearts are as innocent as a child’s.
Looking at your picture today, I remembered this story.
22. Love.
I have only just arrived here, the train was five hours late.
You wanted me to write as soon as I got here
so I am doing so.
Throughout the journey I thought of you
and of the tears falling from your eyes.
Nothing in the world is more sacred
than tears of love and joy.
Such tears, so pure, are not of this world.
Though part of the body,
they express something which is not.
Whatever can I give you in return?
23. Love.
I looked for your letter as soon as I got here yesterday.
Though it was Sunday, I kept waiting for it.
It came this evening –
how much you write in so few words!
When the heart is full it pours into the words
and so few are needed.
An ocean of love can be contained in just a jug!
As for scriptures on love –
it is enough to know the four letters of the word!
Do you know how many times I read
through your letters?
24. Love.
Your letter arrived this morning.
The garland you have weaved
from flowers of love
has a fragrance that I can catch!
And the love-vine you have sown
spreads through my heart!
The tears of your love and joy
bring light and strength to my eyes!
How blissful it all is!
25. Love.
I am in bliss.
It was good that you met me in Bombay,
my heart was overjoyed to see what is happening in you.
This is how a person prepares
and moves along the stairway towards truth.
Life is a dual journey:
one journey is in time and space
the other is within oneself and truth.
The first ends in death
the second in deathlessness.
The second is the real journey
because it takes you somewhere.
Those who take the first journey as it, waste their lives.
The real life begins the day you start
the other journey.
A really good beginning
has taken place in your consciousness
and I am filled with bliss to feel this.
26. Love.
On my return home from the tour
I looked for your letter.
It came together with the grapes
so the letter, already sweet, became still sweeter.
I am in bliss.
Your love enhances it yet more
and the love of all makes it infinite.
One body – so much bliss!
What else can others do but envy he
who feels all bodies to be his!
May God make you envious of me,
may everybody envy me,
this is my prayer.
27. Love.
Your letter reached me
as I was sitting on that very same spot on the grass!
What I was thinking then
I shall tell you only when we meet.
What a fragrance memories leave behind!
When life is filled with love
it is so blissful.
Life’s only paupers are those
without love in their hearts,
and how to describe the good fortune
of those whose hearts hold nothing but love!
In moments of such abundance
one encounters God.
Only love alone have I known as God.
28. Love.
I received your letter.
I am blissful to learn of your bliss.
This for me is bliss.
With every breath
I pray for all to be filled with bliss.
This is my understanding of religion.
The religion that ends in temples, mosques, churches,
is a dead religion.
A religion that fails to go beyond dead words and doctrines
has no significance.
An authentic and living religion
unites one with the whole
and leads one to the whole.
Religion is whatever unites you with the cosmos.
Whatever feelings lead you towards
this marvelous meeting and merging
are prayers, and all those prayers
can be expressed in a single word;
that word is love.
What does love want?
Love wants to share with all
the bliss it has.
Love wants to share itself with everyone!
To give of oneself unconditionally – that is love.
To love is to dedicate
one’s being to the whole
as the drop surrenders to the sea.
I pulsate with such love.
It has filled my life with nectar and light.
Now I have only one wish:
that what has happened to me should happen to all!
Give my love to everyone there.
29. Love.
I received your letter.
How did you hurt your finger?
It sounds as if you are not taking care of your body.
And why the restless mind?
In this dreamlike world
there is nothing worth making the mind restless for.
Peace is the greatest bliss
and there is nothing worth losing it for.
Meditate on it.
Just being aware of the truth brings about inner change.
I think you won’t be coming to Udaipur to assist me
and that’s on your mind.
Come if you can,
if you can’t – never mind,
you are helping me all the time.
Isn’t one’s love help enough?
If you don’t come I will miss you
because the camp at Udaipur
is linked for me with being with you,
so I am hoping you can come.
Regards to all.
30. Love,
and lots of it.
I looked at once for your letter
amongst the pile waiting for me on my return.
I can’t tell you how glad I was to get it –
written by hand, too.
You write: Now your presence is felt in your absence.
Love really is presence.
Where there is love
space and time vanish,
and where there is no love
even what is near in space and time
keeps immeasurably apart.
Only lovelessness separates
and love is the only nearness.
Those who find total love
discover everything within themselves.
The whole world then is inside, not outside
and the moon and stars lie in the inner sky.
In this fullness of love, ego vanishes.
I want God to lead you to this fullness.
31. Love.
I arrived here yesterday
and have been thinking of writing ever since
but it didn’t happen until now.
Forgive the delay
though even a single day’s delay is no small delay!
What shall I say about the return journey?
It was very blissful.
I kept sleeping, and you were with me.
It appeared I had left you behind
but actually you were still with me.
This is the being-together that is so real
that it cannot be divided.
Physical nearness is not nearness,
there can be no union on that level,
only an unbridgeable gulf,
but there is another nearness which is not of the body,
and its name is love.
Once gained it is never lost.
Then no separation exists
despite vast distances in the visible world.
If you can arrive at this distancelessness
with even one other it can be found with everybody.
One is the door, the all, the goal.
The beginning of love is through one, the end is all.
The love that unites you with everything,
with nothing excluded, I call religion,
and the love that stops anywhere I call sin.
32. Love.
I received your letter;
I have been waiting for it ever since I returned.
But how sweet it is to wait!
Life itself is a waiting!
Seeds wait to sprout,
rivers to reach the ocean.
What does man wait for?
He too is the seed for some tree,
a river for some ocean.
Whoever looks deep inside
finds that a longing for the endless and boundless
is his very being.
And whoever recognizes this
begins his journey towards God
because who can be thirsty and not look for water?
This has never happened and never will!
Where there is longing,
there is thirst for attainment.
I want to make everyone aware of this thirst.
I want to convert everyone’s life into a waiting.
The life that has turned into a waiting for God
is the true life.
All other ways of life are just a waste, a disaster.
33. Love.
I received your letter.
Its poetry filled my heart.
It is said that poetry is born out of love.
In your letter I saw this happen.
Where there is love
the whole existence becomes a poem;
the flowers of life bloom under the light of love.
It is strange that you ask
why my heart holds so much love for you.
Can love ever be caused?
If it is,
can it be called love?
Oh, my mad friend! love is always uncaused!
This is its mystery,
and its purity.
Love is divine
and belongs to the kingdom of God
because it is uncaused.
As for me
l am filled with love
as a lamp is filled with light.
To see this light one needs eyes.
You have those eyes so you saw the light.
The credit is yours, not mine.
34. Love.
I never imagined that you would write
such a loving letter!
And you say that you are uneducated!
There is no knowledge greater than love,
and those who lack love – these are the true illiterates,
because the heart is the real thing in life,
not the intellect.
Bliss and light spring from the heart,
not from the mind, and you have so much heart – that is enough!
Can there be a better witness of this than me?
I am surprised that you write asking me
to point out any mistakes you have made.
So far on earth, love has not made one mistake.
All mistakes happen through lack of love,
in fact this for me is the only mistake in life.
Writing to you: May God make you envious of me
was no mistake.
I would like the bliss that has arisen in my heart
to make you thirst for it more and more.
Queen of Mewal!
there is no reason for you to worry about it!
35. Love.
It was just this time of night, two days ago
that I left you at Chittor.
I can see now
the love and bliss filling your eyes.
The secret of all prayer and worship
is hidden in the overflow of those tears.
They are sacred.
God fills the heart of those he blesses
with tears of love,
and what to say about the calamity of those
whose hearts are filled instead with thorns of hate?
Tears flowing in love
are offerings of flowers at the feet of God
and the eyes from which they flow
are blessed with divine vision.
Only eyes filled with love can see God.
Love is the only energy
that transcends the inertia of nature
and takes one to the shores of ultimate awareness.
I think that by the time this letter reaches you
you will already have left for Kashidham.
I don’t know how your journey was
but I hope it passed in song and laughter.
Give my kind respects to everyone there.
I am waiting for your promised letters.
1966
36. Love.
I was very happy to meet you the other day.
I felt the stirrings of your heart and the longing of your soul.
You have not yet flowered as you were born to:
the seed is ready to sprout and the soil is right.
You will not have long to wait.
But now you have to work with great determination.
It is only a matter of starting the journey,
God’s gravitational pull does the rest.
37. Love.
It is good that you are forgetting the past –
it will open up an altogether new dimension of life.
To live completely in the present is freedom.
The past does not exist apart from memory
and nor does the future apart from castles in the air.