Written Messages

Pavel Banya, Bulgaria St. John the Baptist’s Day

24th June 2015

I.

Him, whom I enclose with my name, my identifications, my psychological investments in guilt, gullibility, gratifications, as also with my vulgarities of vanities and vested interests; weeps in this dungeon of divisions and dissentions.  And That One, The Divinity, division-free Awareness, sacred Silence, enormous Space within remains to be revealed!  I am ever busy building this wall all around, and this wall goes up day by day.  I lose sight of Him, my true being, in the dark shadow of this wall of wicked activities of ‘I’, the mind.  And Me, the Life, languishes in the lurch!

I take pride in this great wall, and I plaster it with the dust of divisive consciousness and the sand of the separative psyche ‘I’; lest a hole should be left in this ego-structure.

This care and concern for my ‘me-ness’ keeps me everlastingly aloof from Him, my true being.

II.

Obstinate and agonising are the travesties, but it is painful to break them. Freedom is all I want, but to go towards it, I feel afraid.  I am certain that priceless wealth of freedom is in Thee and that Thou art my best friend, but I have not the courage to sweep away the stink of ‘I-ness’ that fills my room of resistances and reactions.

The shroud of selfishness that covers me is a shroud of dust and death; I hate it, and yet I hug it in love!

My debts are large, my failures great, my shame secret and heavy; yet when I come to ask for freedom, I quake in fear lest my prayer be granted!

III.

Ah, why do I ever miss His sight whose breath touches my being?  Let me not force myself into a poor preparation for Thy worship.  If Thou speakest not, I will fill my heart with Thy silence and endure it.  I will keep still and wait like the night with starry vigil and its head bent low with patience.

Then Thy words will take wing in songs from the birds’ nests, and Thy melodies will break forth in flowers in the forest groves.

I am waiting for Love to give myself up at last into His hands.  Neighbours come with their laws and their codes to bind me fast; but I evade them ever, for I am only waiting for Love to give myself up at last into His hands.

Those who came to call me in vain have gone back in anger.  I am waiting for Love to give myself up at last into His hands.

Notes:

1. Once demi-gods remarked to God: “You say human beings are very dear to you but you have made them with clay instead of the best available metals like gold or silver”.  God replied that it is only in soil the seed can be sown, flowering can happen and fruits can grow, whereas this will not happen in any other element like gold or silver.  Human beings have this potential to understand and be available to Life.  This seed of understanding bears fruit and helps in dissolving the darkness of mind and thus human beings are blessed with wisdom, love and peace.

2. There was a Sufi living in a small town.  He was quite a poor man and could only afford a donkey for his moving around.  Many years have passed and this donkey learned to kneel before him so the man could comfortably take his seat.  One day the Sufi had badly injured himself and people witnessed the following scene:  the donkey knelt down and then took the man to a hospital all by himself.  The word spread quickly, that this Sufi must be a master, a man of wisdom, because even a donkey grew wise in his company. People started seeking a meeting with this Sufi.  One man approached him saying:  “You must be a great teacher, whose presence made even a donkey grow in wisdom and he took you to a hospital”.  Sufi then exclaimed:  “What!  What hospital?  He took me to a veterinary hospital!”  Induction of insight may happen, only if the material is right.  Even if you are near a sage, the perception of truth may not transcend your conditioning.

3. Once, a wise-man was asked - “Who is your Guru?”  Reply came - “A dog!”  And then he explained that he was endlessly struggling with his fears and was unable to be free from them.  He was once sitting on a riverbank brooding in fear and he saw that a very thirsty dog came running to drink water from the river.  But he saw his reflection and became afraid of the image-dog.  He barked and, of course, he saw the image-dog also barking ferociously and he ran away out of fear.  But his thirst was intense and the dog came rushing to the river again.  And the same phenomenon happened preventing the dog to drink water.  But then thirst became so great that he desperately jumped at last into the river and the image-dog vanished – the fear was just an illusion – and the dog was restored to life after drinking plenty of water.  The wise-man immediately saw the fiction of fear in himself and freedom from fear occurred instantaneously.  And thus the dog was considered by the wise-man as his Guru-Process.

4. Swadhyay is the process of transcending time, which is the distance that Chittavritti (thought) travels in its complications, in its pursuits of achievements.  The travelling is always along the old path covered with a new coating of borrowed concepts and conclusions drawn from the ‘spiritual’ or ‘religious’ market – but always the same road, leading nowhere except to pain and sorrow.  It is only when the Sakshi (Choiceless Awareness) transcends spontaneously the psychological time of becoming and just relaxes in being, that truth ceases to be an abstraction based on thought-induced fancies and fantasies.  Then Bliss is not an idea derived from pleasure, but an Actuality that is not vulgarised through silly verbalizations.  The emptying of the ego is the enlightenment of Truth.  Seeing this, is the only doing; inaction of the ‘Swa’, the ‘I’, is the highest action of Intelligence (Chaitanya).  This is the ultimate flowering of Yoga and Its Fragrance of Freedom (Jivan Mukti) – Final ending of all Viyoga (separative psyche), even though the ‘Swa’, the ‘I’, continues to function as an efficient co-ordinator in the technical area for performing the daily tasks with all perfection and excellence.  Only in the interval between seeing and doing is born conflict, misery and confusion.  That which has no time is Everlasting.

Jai Sage Tagore