for me it is not a doctrine, it is an experience.
And I don’t want to make it a doctrine for others either.
Doctrines have badly undermined the truth.
I want every person to know it for themselves.
Nobody can perform this act for the other.
But, through doctrines,
it is this very act that appears to have been accomplished,
thus everybody’s individual search
has become dull and dead.
Believing in the doctrines and scriptures
one has sat down quietly,
as if one has neither to know anything for oneself,
nor has to do anything about finding the truth.
This situation is utterly suicidal.
Hence, I don’t want to participate
in this vast scale arrangement
for killing man through the repetition of doctrines.
I want to displace all the established doctrines,
because this alone seems compassionate to me.
This way, all that is untrue will be destroyed.
And the truth is never destroyed,
it is ever available in its eternal freshness
to those who seek.
52. Love.
I received your letter.
I am always with you.
Don’t be worried,
don’t be sad,
and leave your sadhana in the hands of God.
Let his will be done.
Be like a dry leaf,
let the winds take you where they will.
Isn’t this what is meant by shunya (nothingness)?
Do not swim,
just float.
Isn’t this what is meant by shunya?
My regards to all.
1969
53. Love.
Your letter has come.
Love has not to be asked for –
it is never obtained by asking.
Love comes through giving –
it is our own echo.
You feel my love pouring on you
because you have become a river of love
flowing towards me,
and when your love flows like this towards all
you will find the whole world
flowing in love towards you.
To respond with unconditional love towards all,
towards that which is,
is the God-experience.
54. Love.
Can two people ever meet?
It is just not possible on this earth,
communication seems impossible –
but at times the impossible happens.
The other day it did.
Being with you, I felt meeting is possible,
and also communication,
and without words, too.
Your tears answered me.
I am deeply grateful for those tears.
Such response is very rare.
I have seen your Madhu Shala,
seen it again and again.
If I could sing
I would sing the same song that is there.
I call that sannyas the real sannyas
which accepts the world with joy.
Aren’t sansara and moksha really one?
Duality exists in ignorance,
in knowledge there is only one.
Oh, can that really be religion
which cannot sing and dance the songs of bliss and love?
P.S. I hear you are due to come here.
Come, and come soon.
Who can trust time?
Look – it is morning and the sun rises.
How long will it be before it sets?
55. Love.
I am one with all things –
in beauty, in ugliness,
for whatsoever is, there I am.
Not only in virtue
but in sin too I am a partner;
and not only heaven but hell too is mine.
Buddha, Jesus, Lao Tzu –
it is easy to be their heir.
But Genghis, Taimur and Hitler?
They are also within me!
No, not half – I am the whole of mankind!
Whatsoever is man’s is mine –
flowers and thorns,
darkness as well as light.
And if nectar is mine, whose is poison?
Nectar and poison – both are mine.
Whoever experiences this I call religious,
for only the anguish of such experience
can revolutionize life on earth.
56. Love.
I have received your letter.
I was very glad indeed to get it,
more so since you have sent a blank sheet.
But I have read in it all that you have not written
but wanted to write.
Besides, what can words say?
Even after writing,
what you had meant to write remains unwritten.
So your silent letter is very lovely.
As it is, whenever you come to see me you are mostly silent,
but your eyes tell all, and your silence too.
Some deep thirst has touched you,
some unknown shore has called you.
Whenever God calls he calls this way –
but how long will you go on standing on the shore?
Look! The sun is out
and the winds can’t wait to fill the boat’s sails!
57. Love.
I have received your letters –
but they are not just letters really, they are poems born out of love,
out of love and prayer, for where there is love there is prayer.
So it is possible to get glimpses of God through another
whom one loves –
love providing the eyes that can see God.
Love is the door through which he appears.
So