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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.