Last Lines

No coward soul is mine

No trembler in the world’s storm-troubled sphere

I see Heaven’s glories shine,

And Faith shines equal, arming me from fear.

Oh, God within my breast,

Almighty, ever-present Deity!

Life that in me hast rest,

As I, undying Life, have power in Thee.

Vain are the thousand creeds

That move men’s hearts; unutterably vain,

Worthless as wither’d weeds

Or idlest froth amid the boundless main.

To waken doubt in me

Holding so fast by Thine infinity,

So surely anchor’d on

The steadfast rock of immortality.

With wide embracing love

Thy spirit animates eternal years,

Pervades and broods above,

Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates and rears.

Though earth and man are gone,

And suns and universes cease to be,

And Thou were left alone,

Every existence would exist in Thee.

There is not room for Death

Nor atom that His might could render void;

Thou—Thou art Being and Breath,

And what Thou art may never be destroyed.

At another time, the Guru asked:

“Where is there anyone that is not you? You are the soul of the Universe. If a man come to your door, go and meet yourself. For all are one. The idea of separateness is hallucination. You hate. You love. You fear. All hallucinations; ignorance and delusion.”

“Every thought and word that weakens is the only evil that exists.”

“If the suns come down, the moons crumble in dust, systems after systems are hurled into annihilation, what is that to you? Stand as a rock; you are indestructible.”

On Immortality: “The particle of energy which, a few months ago, was in the sun, may be in the human being now.

“There is nothing new. The same series of manifestations are presenting themselves alternately, like a wheel coming up and down. All motion in this universe is in the form of successively rising and falling. Systems after systems are coming out of the finer forms, evolving themselves, taking the grosser forms, again melting down, as it were, and going back again to the cause. So with all life. Each manifestation of life is coming up and then going back again. What goes down? The form. In one sense, even the body is immortal. In one sense, bodies and forms are eternal. How? Suppose we take a number of dice and throw them. Suppose the dice fall in this ratio: 5-6-3-4. We take the dice up and throw them again, and again. There must come a time when the same number will fall again, the same combinations will come.

“Now, the atoms comprising the universe are like dice being thrown out and combined, again and again. But there must come a time when exactly the same combination comes again, when you will be here, and this form will be here, this subject will be talked, and this pitcher, for instance, will be here. An infinite number of times this has been, and an infinite number of times will be repeated.

“We are never born and we never die. Each atom is a living thing, leading its own independent life. These atoms combine into groups for an end, and the groups manifest a group intelligence, so long as it remains a group, these groups again combining in turn and forming bodies of a more complex nature, which serve as vehicles for higher forms of consciousness. When death comes to the physical body, the cells separate and scatter and that which we call decay sets in. The force which held the cells together is withdrawn, and they become free to go their own way and to form new combinations. Death is but an aspect of life, and the destruction of one material form is but a prelude to the building up of another.”

And on involution: “The seed is becoming the plant; a grain of sand never becomes a plant. It is the father that becomes the child. A lump of clay never becomes a child. Out of what does this involution come, is the question. What was the seed? It is the same as the tree. All the possibilities of a future tree are in that seed; all the possibilities of a future man are in the baby; all the possibilities of any life are in the germ. What is this? We find then that every evolution presupposes an involution. Nothing can be evolved which is not already involved. Here again, modern science comes to our help. You know by mathematical reasoning that the sum total of the energy that is displayed in the universe is the same throughout. You cannot take away one atom of matter or one foot-pound of force. As such, evolution did not come out of zero. Then, where does this come from? It came in involution before. The child is the man involved and the man is the child evolved; the seed is the tree involved, and the tree is the seed evolved. All the possibilities of life are in the germ. The question becomes a little clearer. Add to it the first idea of continuation of life. From the lowest protoplasm to the most perfect human being, there is only one life. The design is inheritent in the seed before the form is evolved.”

One day Berenice asked: “What about charity? ”

The Guru answered: “When you help the poor, feel not the slightest pride. Be thankful for the opportunity to give. To do so is your worship and no cause for pride. Is not the whole universe yourself? Be grateful that the poor man is there so that by making a gift to him you are able to help yourself. It is not the receiver that is blessed, but the giver.”

Again she asked about beauty. So many people worshiped beauty in all its forms; in fact, they were slaves to beauty.

The Guru answered: “Even in the lowest kinds of attraction there is the germ of Divine Love. One of the names of the Lord in Sanskrit is Hari, and this means that He attracts all things to Himself. His is, in fact, the only attraction worthy of human hearts. Who can attract a soul, really? Only He. When you see a man being drawn to a beautiful face, do you think that it is a handful of arranged material molecules which really attracts the man? Not at all! Behind those material particles there must be and is the play of divine influence and divine love. The ignorant man does not know it, but yet, consciously or unconsciously, he is attracted by it, and it alone. So even the lowest forms of attraction derive their power from God Himself. ‘None, O beloved, ever loved the husband for the husband’s sake; it is the Atman, the Lord, who is inside, and for His sake the husband is loved.’ The Lord is the great magnet, and we are all like iron filings; all of us are being constantly attracted by Him, and all of us are struggling to reach Him, the face of Brahman reflected through all forms and designs. We think we worship beauty, but we are really worshiping the face of Brahman shining through. The Reality behind the scenes.”

Again: “The raja-yogin knows that the whole of nature is intended for the soul to acquire experience, and that the results of all the experiences of the soul are for it to become aware of its eternal separateness from nature. The human soul has to understand and realize that it has been spirit, and not matter, through eternity; and that this conjunction of it with matter is and can be only for a time. The raja-yogin learns the lessons of renunciation through the harshest of all renunciations, as he has to realize from the very first that the whole of this solid-looking nature is all an illusion. He has to understand that all that is any kind of manifestation of power in nature belongs to the soul, and not to nature. He has to know, from the very beginning, that all knowledge and all experiences are in the soul, and not in nature, so he has at once and by the sheer force of rational conviction to tear himself off from all bondage to nature.

“But of all renunciations, the most natural is that of the Bhakti-yogin. Here there is no violence, nothing to tear off, as it were, from ourselves, nothing from which we have to separate ourselves with violence. The bhakti’s renunciation is easy, smooth, flowing, and as natural as things around us. A man loves his own city, then he begins to love his country, and the intense love for his little city drops off, smoothly, naturally. Again, a man learns to love the whole world; his love for his country; his intense, fanatical patriotism drops off, without hurting him, without any manifestation of violence. Uncultured man loves the pleasures of the senses intensely; as he becomes cultured, he begins to love intellectual pleasures, and his sense enjoyments become less and less.

The renunciation necessary for the attainment of bhakti is not obtained by killing anything, but just comes as naturally as, in the presence of a stronger light, the less intense lights become dimmer and dimmer until they vanish completely. So this love of pleasures of the senses and of the intellect is all made dim, and thrown aside and cast into the shade by the love of God Himself. That love of God grows and assumes a form which is called Para-bhakti, or supreme devotion. Forms vanish, rituals fly away, books are superseded, images, temples, churches, religions and sects, countries and nationalities, all these little limitations and bondages fall off by their own nature from him who knows this love of God. Nothing remains to bind him or fetter his freedom. A ship, all of a sudden, comes near a magnetic rock and its iron bolts and bars are all attracted and drawn out, and the planks are loosened and float freely on the water. Divine grace thus loosens the binding bolts and bars of the soul, and it becomes free. So, in this renunciation auxiliary to devotion, there is no harshness, no struggle, no repression or suppression. The Bhakti has not to suppress any single one of his emotions; he only strives to intensify them and direct them to God.

“Set aside this apparent, illusive world, and by seeing God in everything one can find real happiness. Have what you will, but deify all. Possess nothing. Love God in all. Working thus you will find the way which corresponds to the Christian tenet: ‘Seek ye first the Kingdom of God.’

“The Lord lives in the heart of every creature. He turns them round and round upon the wheel of his Maya. Take refuge utterly in Him. By His grace you will find supreme peace, and the state which is beyond all change.

“When at the end of a time-cycle, or Kalpa, the universe is dissolved, it passes into a phase of potentiality—a seed-state—and thus awaits its next creation. The phase of expression is called by Sri Krishna ‘the day of Brahma’ and the phase of potentiality ‘the night of Brahma.’ The creatures inhabiting the world, subject to these cycles, are perpetually being reborn and redissolved, with each succeeding cosmic day and night. This dissolution should not, however, be thought of as ‘going back to God.’ The creature merely returns to the power of Brahman which sent it forth, and remains there in an unmanifested state until the time comes for its re-manifestation.

“Hinduism accepts the belief in many divine incarnations, including Krishna, Buddha, and Jesus, and foresees that there will be many more.”

In every age I come back

To deliver the holy,

To destroy the sin of the sinner,

To establish righteousness.

And then, one day, came the last words spoken to Berenice by the Guru. For, as he knew, her call had come, and she was about to leave him.

“Now I have taught you that wisdom which is the secret of secrets, ” he said. “Ponder it carefully. Then act as you think best. For according to Brahman, he who is free from delusion, and knows me as the supreme Reality, knows all that can be known. Therefore he adores me with his whole heart.

“This is the most sacred of all the truths I have taught you. He who has realized it becomes truly wise. The purpose of his life is fulfilled.”