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because no one is their own,

no one is themselves.

Most people are other people.

They are not living

but only acting roles given to them by others.

Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions

and their faces are just masks.

They are faceless.

They have no authentic being at all.

Their lives, a mimicry –

and their passions, a quotation.

Break this vicious circle otherwise you will never be.

Break this through meditation –

and it cannot be broken by anything else

because through mind it cannot be broken,

and except for meditation, all else is mind.

Mind is the prison,

meditation, the door.

And the only door.

202. Love.

Only God is –

that is why it is so difficult to find him.

And God is everywhere –

that is why he seems to be nowhere.

And the seeker is the sought –

that is why all seeking is so futile.

Stop and see.

But the mind is running constantly.

Do not be, and see.

But the mind is trying to be continuously.

Says Auden:

For the garden is the only place there is, but you will not find it,

until you have looked for it everywhere

and found nowhere that is not a desert.

The miracle is the only thing that happens,

but to you it will not be apparent,

until all events have been studied

and nothing happens that you cannot explain.

And life is the destiny you are bound to refuse

until you have consented to die.

Stop and see.

Do not be, and see.

203. Love.

Live in the body intimately and deeply.

Feel the body more and let the body feel more.

It is astonishing how many people

are almost completely unaware of themselves physically.

The body is suppressed and denied life too much,

that is why it is just a dead weight and not a living joy.

That is why I insist: go back into the body

and regain the wonderful joy in its movements,

sheer movements.

Make it a meditation and you will be enriched

beyond comprehension.

204. Love.

John Burroughs remembers:

One day my boy killed what an old hunter told him

was a mock duck.

It looked like a duck,

it acted like a duck,

but when it was placed on the table –

it mocked us!

Remember to make a clear-cut distinction

between your self and your mock-selves – the masks,

otherwise in the end they will all mock you!

205. Love.

Man is strange, very strange,

because he begins by deceiving others

and ends with deceiving himself.

A fakir was walking down the village street

deep in thought

when some urchins began to throw stones at him.

He was taken by surprise,

and besides he was not a big man.

Don’t do that, he said, and I will tell you

something of interest to you.

All right, what is it? But no philosophy.

The king is giving a free banquet to all comers –

he simply lied to them.

The children ran off towards the king’s palace

as the fakir warmed to his theme –

the delicacies and delights of the entertainment…

He looked up and saw them

disappearing into the distance,

and then suddenly he tucked up his robes

and started to sprint after them.

I had better go and see, he panted to himself,

because it might be true after all.

206. Love.

To be religious is to be a yea-sayer:

yes to everything –

yes to life and yes to death,

yes to light and yes to darkness.

Total acceptance is religion.

Says Nicolas De Cusa: Yes God! Yes God!

Yes, yes and always yes.

Say yes – and feel it,

and you have entered the temple of the divine.

Say no and you yourself have closed the doors –

or closed yourself to the divine.

No is suicidal, no is poisonous –

know this and be a yea-sayer.

Let your heart say yes with every beat.

Breathe yes in and out

and you will feel the divine all around you

within and without.

He is always present but he cannot enter through a no sign.

He cannot trespass on you.

With a no you are an ego

but with a yes you are just egolessness.

Ego is a Leibnizian monad without any doors or windows,

and egolessness is the gate.

Be a gate – the divine is waiting to enter you from eternity.

207. Love.

Begin to live positively – that is,

with positive emotions.

To be negative is to be self-destructive

and ultimately suicidal.

But ordinarily the mind works that way

because it is only an instrument for safety and security;

it detects only death and not life.

So to be completely positive is to transcend mind.

Some fakir was asked to talk to a group

about the negative nature of the mind.

He tacked up on the wall a large sheet of

perfectly white paper.

He made a black spot in the paper with a pencil.

Then he asked each man to say what he saw.

Each man replied: A black spot.

The fakir then said: Yes, there is a little black spot.

But not one of you saw the big expanse of white paper –

and that is the point of my speech.

208. Love.

The forms of existence are finite – all forms.

Really, to have a form means to be finite.

But existence is infinite

because only the formless can be infinite,

and existence is formlessness,

that is why it can take all forms.

But to take form in any way is to allow death in

because form is a death sentence,

whilst existence itself is eternal life.

Do not be identified with the form:

this identification creates the fear of death

– in fact, all fear.