eric solibakke
agora online html edition
agora press
Oslo, Norway
second edition 1998
1992, 1998 © eric solibakke
avatar meher baba ki jai!
to the avatar
whose name within our memory is
zarathustra
ram
krishna
buddha
jesus
muhammad
meher baba
and to his lovers and would-be lovers worldwide
victory is baba's!
- the avatar lives a life that changes
- oh post of reality in the ground of illusion
- quest for self drives the universe
- the projected personality
- today is today
- you take the threat out of the world
- absolute oneness
- you truly love, love truly both ways
- you come among us as human
- in all the faces of the world
- if god answered his question "who am i?"
- the rhythm, melody and dance of doubles and halves
- you reveal yourself individually in every being
- oh well of renewal in a war torn world
- oh absolute vacuum of all-pervading ocean
- oh water of oneness that wets every heart
- you are the oneness of only love
- the light of oneness casts no shadow
- the world with all its tools and toys
- even the slightest stirring of the all-pervading ocean
- i row with a pair of these shapely branches
- the whole of life distracts the pilgrim
- a morning of mankind dawns in your dream
- you author every drama
- you beyond-mind who divide yourself
- you give me the gift of seeing you
- from bedrock reality in the oneness of only love
- the colorful weavings of opposites
- all is you
- morning concert on the street
- you reveal your presence by a silence
- the moment one speaks
- in the silence beyond every distraction
- everything lies within you
- oh light without shadow
- oh light of oneness that shines without shadow
- who am i to put my foot down
- you are the point the pendulum of breath hangs from
- i'm an illusion
- i am a leaf on the meher baba tree
- your power is so great that you can kill me dead
- shake me out of these stupidities
- open my skull and let all the birds of opinion
- i'm the biggest hypocrite in the world
- when i express love for you
- emperor xerxes punished the ocean with whips
- a brain like scissors and a heart like glue
- surprising little imagined acts of aggression
- my mind says wooing words, like a suitor
- i call on your forgiveness again and again
- remove every desire from me
- curses pop into consciousness like gas bubbles
- when i raise the glass of love to my lips
- those who will arrest you
- i was losing touch with gratitude
- obviously there's a film festival in the theater
- i can't win with me
- i call things real that are not real
- the world like a hungry tiger
- how can i be so foolish as to fall
- the world doesn't always play with me
- maya pinches me between the tools of man and woman
- do not cling to any opposite
- come back to reality
- i am a manifestation of your manifestation
- without your love, i would only lie
- a golden rain of gratitude falls into my heart
- i throw myself into the ocean of oneness
- thoughts pass dreamily by
- you turn the key of love that unlocks the heart
- let words of only love flow
- oh unbegun and never-ending one
- here you are in your unspeakable indivisibility
- indivisible oneness enters into duality
- duality provides a window on unity
- everything streams out of you
- just as sunrise reminds us of sunset
- morning cuts darkness into the appearance of manyness
- we co-dream your creation, or better yet
- you are the dreamer whose dream we live in
- einstein made us see that matter is in fact energy
- when you turn the pages of the book
- mind projects the creation in space and time
- everything in creation comes into form within self
- oh oneness at work everywhere in stillness
- men and women consistently fail
- oh constant and continual renewal of the ancient one
- the main work is to bring back into the heart
- this flower of love, this creation
- everything in creation makes a show
- of course real love looks shockingly different
- whenever i think a thought consciously
- every thought hides half its truth
- i can't say light. i can't say dark
- enlightenment is the final clear seeing
- without you i'm lonely in a forest of thoughts
- the golden rain of gratefulness
- you say that we have had enough of words
- your words nourish the conscious heart
winnowing the ocean
- eternal perfect beloved
the avatar lives a life that changes
the direction of human history
by renewing the life of love on earth.
love awakens from its frozen sleep
within the heart of mankind,
and this divine awakening steams joyfully
through every channel in the entire creation.
of course god comes into his creation,
yet what an unearned and undeserved gift!
mind can't grasp it, and heart runs over
with wonder that words can't say.
but life must live it.
no customs or habits can hold it.
no silly old man's dusty lips
can bind it in split hairs,
nor can any woman's vegetable fingers
starve it into submission.
oh beloved, you renew the world
in the blood and image of your own body,
and we who are the world go wide eyed in wonder.
the great wonder is not that you are god,
but rather we're astonished and awestruck
that you should become a man among mankind.
that you should put on this suit of flesh
and make it noble for all who wear it,
awakens our hearts to divine love
and humbles all pride.
the true power of your love silences the tongue
and then mind itself.
in the face of love's bliss,
mind discovers its irrelevance.
in the unifying grip of love,
mind recognizes its divided nature
and sees underlying unity in every duality.
in the humor of your light love, oh beloved,
mind enjoys the divine pleasure
of dissolving its own bindings.
- eternal perfect beloved
oh post of reality in the ground of illusion,
only you matter.
the body is your temple, your home.
feelings are offerings of sacrifice, your love.
thoughts are priests in attendance, your truth.
you seed consciousness
in the beyond and beyond beyond states,
which germinate when touched by the question "who am i?"
you sprout through seven stages of evolution
as mineral, vegetable and animal,
until you flower as humanity in reincarnation.
you bear the fruit of infinite power, knowledge and bliss
in the form of yogis, masters and saints
on the path of involution
through the subtle and mental worlds.
finally you return to timeless seed
in your nondual state of immeasurable potential,
neither alive nor dead,
neither in the world nor yet totally out of it.
oh love, light, law,
negative thoughts and reactions arise from
struggling against your power and authority.
fear protects desires and their dreams of fulfilment
which are the raw materials of daily life.
oh passionless and aggressionfree,
every person challenges you with his own private test
of your authenticity,
and struggles through the stages of acceptance
-- denial, bargaining, helplessness --
before withering away to dust at your feet.
- eternal perfect beloved
quest for self drives the universe.
love fuels that engine of consciousness.
in the realm of imagination
where one poses the question "who am i?"
self answers imaginatively "i am all and everything."
after searching for self and longing for self,
self finds itself to be you, beloved,
through the eternal marriage that none can undo.
when every duality admits its deeper unity
the creation disappears into "i am only god is,"
before the question "who am i?"
created the universe in reply.
all are self, having come out from self,
existing within self,
and returning to self without ever really leaving it.
let me then recognize each as my self
without false attitudes of acceptance and rejection.
let me see through the disguises of duality
and behold the indivisible reality of oneness in each.
- eternal perfect beloved
the projected personality,
that dualistic play of opposites
in fields of conflict and resolution,
doesn't find god.
god finds god.
he finds himself.
the will of oneness penetrates every purpose
with its drive toward balance.
the indivisible oneness finds itself.
- eternal perfect beloved
today is today.
yesterday, today was tomorrow.
tomorrow, today will be yesterday.
merely by shifting viewpoints,
today becomes yesterday and tomorrow.
by removing viewpoints, today becomes eternity.
who projects these viewpoints? brahma, the creator.
who maintains these viewpoints? vishnu, the preserver.
who removes these viewpoints? shiva, the dissolver.
who remains unchanged
whether viewpoints are projected or not?
you, beloved all-pervading ocean of oneness.
you, unchangeable screen of reality
on which the mass of viewpoints are projected.
you, avatar, with your divine society of sadgurus,
saliks and majzoobs.
why are viewpoints projected?
in order to answer the goad question of creation
"who am i?"
- eternal perfect beloved
you take the threat out of the world
and transform it into the playground of your awakening.
the entire world has no value beyond revealing you.
everything in form and time depends on you,
returns to you, veils your formlessness
in the shapes of love in motion.
oh divine beloved, even the smallest and meanest person
can imagine a golden mountain.
how easy then for you to imagine worlds.
- eternal perfect beloved
absolute oneness
and the all-pervading ocean of only love,
this is who "i am" really is.
no chains of dualities linked by logic
or by sequence in time
can bind absolute oneness
or anchor the all-pervading ocean of only love.
whatever surfaces on this ocean,
whether seemingly good or bad,
the reality behind it is only love.
whatever moral judgment the limited human mind
may place upon public or personal events,
the underlying motivation is only love.
love is absolute, beyond opposites.
the opposite of hate is craving.
love is oneness.
blessing also has no opposite.
why should anybody cling to the shady humors
of relative merits?
nobody can defend them against the illumination
of your absolute love, oh beloved,
which penetrates through solid earth
as easily as through the air of thought.
you love and bless, but never hate or damn.
the expression "god damn it" can never
be anything more than imagined fiction.
out of love comes knowledge,
out of knowledge, power.
out of only love come infinite knowledge and power.
- eternal perfect beloved
you truly love, love truly both ways.
you give us the excitement, variety, challenge,
beauty and awakening
of participation in your creation.
and you also in your love
take away the limitations, burdens, trappedness, frustration
and helplessness
of being caught up in your creation.
- eternal perfect beloved
you come among us as human
to show us your unspeakable face,
which is beyond words and mind.
actually you are always present everywhere
whether in your physical body or not.
the creation itself is your body
and the continuous focus of your unsleeping attention.
in reality everyone is the only-one.
no creature or thing can ever be separate from you,
though everyone experiences the illusion of separation
as if it were genuine fact.
you are unconsciously present in all creatures.
you are in various states of becoming conscious
in human beings.
you are fully conscious in some few humans.
you live a fully conscious life in the forms
of the avatar.
hail to you, oh godman,
and hail to your masters, saints and lovers,
and all the dualistic phantoms of your fancy.
- eternal perfect beloved
in all the faces of the world
mind sees infinite variety,
whereas heart sees only one face,
that of the beloved.
mind prefers the excitement of dancing
with a stranger,
whereas heart longs only to embrace
the ancient beloved.
- eternal perfect beloved
if god answered his question "who am i?"
with only words,
the creation would be no more than a sound,
a complex music.
god answers his own question
not only in thought and sound,
but also in solid and moving matter,
mountain and sea, fire and air.
therefore i must answer my own question "who am i?"
not only in thoughts and words
but also in solid and concrete actions in daily life.
the real meaning of his words
can only be grasped in everyday action,
where the hands are dictionary
and the feet syntax.
a lived word bears weight the rest won't.
- eternal perfect beloved
the rhythm, melody and dance of doubles and halves
cover you over with their love songs
in all three worlds and all six senses.
but you can't really be divided or doubled
into courtship or consummation,
orgasm or afterglow, devotion or divorce.
for you who are love itself,
these are only your theater of playful amusements.
when a spring breeze shifts and sways
through flowering limbs covered in greengold leaves,
who could imagine a finer game?
- eternal perfect beloved
you reveal yourself individually in every being,
though only the awakening human notices you.
you awaken yourself in every human being,
first in the confusion of seeing your beauty
in the creation,
and searching for you out there,
then in the conviction of recognizing your truth
in one's own consciousness,
and seeking within for proof of your existence.
you surprise us all, beloved,
by showing yourself in love.
then we catch sight of you in our own heart,
and begin to cultivate your companionship.
what an amazing companion you are,
so shy to begin with, and so bold in the end!
at first it seems to the lover that he is playing
with an image of himself in a mirror.
then he begins to suspect that the mirror image
is more real than himself.
then he discovers that he himself is that mirror image.
finally he sees that you, beloved, are the reality
which in his innocence he has been mirroring.
then you, eternal all-pervading, you remove the mirror.
- eternal perfect beloved
oh well of renewal in a war torn world,
your oneness binds both friends and enemies.
you are the unity everywhere present,
even in the most raw and dire conflict.
like radio waves, who could know you
without the right receiver?
neither agreement nor disagreement can reach you
in your silent and wall-free citadel beyond opposites
in the blissful realm of reality.
- eternal perfect beloved
oh absolute vacuum of all-pervading ocean,
the entire creation disappears into you
as if into a so-called black hole,
like a dreamer awakening to the light of day.
indivisible one without another,
you project creation's fantastic play of faces
in an illusion of space and time
by pretending to divide yourself
into the dualities of everyday life.
we struggle to master cause and effect
in fields of success and failure,
while you who are the unity within every duality
reside equally in failure as in success.
your borderless totality, beloved,
pulls our hearts off the chopping block
where divided mind lets fall the axe.
your love overflows the mind's narrow banks
and floods the entire consciousness with grace.
we don't mourn our losses.
flood again, beloved, and sweep away
every antique and dilapidated reminder of mind's distress.
- eternal perfect beloved
oh water of oneness that wets every heart
in a single wave,
ultimate love is union in indivisible divinity
where every opposite melts into its mate
and disappears in the oneness of only love.
gone punishment. gone approval. gone longing.
oh man, you think there's something wrong in the world
because you perceive that something is very right.
such attitudes are the play of restless mind
in the field of relative values.
every word is a half-truth.
the entire creation expresses self
but real self lies beyond creative expression,
where no half-truth can survive.
- eternal perfect beloved
you are the oneness of only love
that shines without shadow,
illuminating every nook and cranny of creation,
every surprise twist of the world's root
and every shade of its flower.
in your tower like a lighthouse
you shine into every furthest corner of creation,
dazzling us as you reflect on the splintered shards
of mirror that make up mind's thought.
you enter the heart like sunlight
suddenly streaming through a hole in the cloud cover.
you renew everything in a morning of warm color.
old dreams fade from memory as real day begins.
oh dawn of love in the grey heart of mankind!
your light easily penetrates every hiding place,
casting recognition everywhere.
oh springtime of divine longing,
you bring eternal newness which never ages,
ancient and brand new in one,
seed and fruit in one.
no matter how often you visit earth,
oh ancient one, you're always brand new.
you fuse the old and new into one that renews each thing
all the way back to its source in you.
- eternal perfect beloved
the light of oneness casts no shadow,
neither within the mountain nor under the tree.
no enemy finds cover.
no deceptive appearance performs its magic.
no garments create false mysteries.
no night falls nor winter settles in.
no cloud comes between.
no horizon cuts across the face of time
with its cycles of waiting for beginnings and ends.
never does it dawn, nor does it ever set.
this light of love,
absolutely unclouded purity brighter than any jewel,
sparks every illumination in existence.
oh divine love, dazzled by your brilliance,
we drop our eyes and risk adventures in darkness.
- eternal perfect beloved
the world with all its tools and toys,
mind with all its judgments and comparisons,
emotions with all their power and passion,
alas, beloved, they are all bits of dream stuff.
only you persist beyond the awakening of love.
you are made of love stuff
from beyond the range of mind's constant divorce
and emotion's continual reverse.
even so, you urge us to love the world
as your own personal game,
the tool of your imagination.
you say, love me, love my dream!
but don't be fooled into taking it for real.
be a true sufi -- in the dream but not of it.
- eternal perfect beloved
even the slightest stirring of the all-pervading ocean
whips up the bubbles of aphrodite's beauty
and oneness is lost in desire.
worlds in all their loveliness arise
in this foam of longing and this thrill of beauty
that captures one's favor.
fleeting worlds in creation shift and flow
like whitecaps on ocean waves.
- eternal perfect beloved
i row with a pair of these shapely branches,
oars that move ships.
one of them like a handle on the ocean
steers a ship in its progress
from the near shore of manyness
to the far shore of oneness.
as i journey beyond ocean,
i carry a single one on my shoulder,
the oar of only love,
which winnows seed from chaff
on the breath of the mountain.
- eternal perfect beloved
the whole of life distracts the pilgrim
on the way to divinity.
every focus of attention other than god
hides god -- art, science, religion, business, family.
the pilgrim travels from hiding place to hiding place,
first as numerous as rain drops,
then less numerous and deeper
like streams of attention
moving in specific directions.
distractions themselves carry the pilgrim
toward the goal as attention grows deeper
and gains momentum.
they hide the goal,
yet they also provide the vehicle for finding it.
the pilgrim sweeps along in a few great rivers
destined to wash his eyes in waves of revelation
as they enter the all-pervading ocean of oneness
where no distraction exists.
the very hiding places of god prove to be
his picaresque theater of revelation.
- eternal perfect beloved
a morning of mankind dawns in your dream,
which is the world's everyday reality.
the alarm clock rings in rifle shots, rockets
and the rage of car bombs on crowded streets.
startled and disoriented
mankind fumbles for the off button.
the first beams of morning sun
penetrate cracks between drawn curtains
and touch the wall with nearly painful brightness.
oh beloved awakener, you create this clock
to insure that we not miss the morning,
and you are yourself the off button we fumble for.
we struggle against the weight of sleep,
inviting sunlight into the swarm of fragments
and half-forgotten fantasies in our brains.
by your grace, beloved, we awaken
and flex in the cool enthusiasm
of morning mind on a day of freedom.
- eternal perfect beloved
you author every drama, no matter whether tragic or comic,
which plays in the theater of space and time,
and you act every role yourself.
you observe the performance through tears and laughter,
and applaud or boo as you wish.
you write reviews and interpret the text
in learned journals.
much to my surprise i learn that all dramas,
despite their enormous variety,
have the same theme
and could as well have the same name, Who Am I?
one group of plays deals exhaustively
with the discovery or rather development of the theater.
a second group examines the full range
of possible productions,
making generous use of every capability
offered by the theater.
the third group goes backstage to expose
the entire workings of the theater,
and dismantle it so to speak right down
to its first laid cornerstone.
- eternal perfect beloved
you beyond-mind who divide yourself on the edge of mind
so that you can see and hear yourself
in the space-time image of mind's mirror,
you watch the parade of yourself moving
to the cadence of cause and effect.
you allow love to take up arms on both sides.
you sing and dance the world's entertainment everywhere.
- eternal perfect beloved
you give us the gift of seeing you
in your indescribable simplicity
beyond the borders of mind,
and knowing you in your inexhaustible complexity
within the continuously falling apart realm
of mind's creativity.
nothing can be added to or subtracted from
your unthinkable simplicity.
anything and everything can be added to
and subtracted from your fascinating complexity
of creative activity.
not even so much as a shadow of daily life exists
in your pure, undivided oneness,
but your infinite love allows us to divide you
into our countless desires and satisfactions
and our innumerable fears and sufferings.
in that playful space,
which is after all an illusion
that maya fools us into accepting as solemn reality,
please allow me to give you a gift in return:
that i live the truth of your loving simplicity
at all times,
even while waxing and waning with maya
in the seductions of everyday illusion.
to see you means nothing if i can't also please you
by inviting you to participate
in every activity of my day.
- eternal perfect beloved
from bedrock reality in the oneness of only love
torrents of radiant eternity cascade
into the shadowfree heart,
and further flow into the physical world
through the abdomen nurtured in love's discipline.
just as reality's divine oneness cannot be divided,
so illusion's apparent manyness
cannot really be divided.
love wills to live the life of indivisibility.
love thrives on indivisible truth.
love loves the indivisible.
- eternal perfect beloved
the colorful weavings of opposites
drape over your real form
like the clothes of an emperor.
you are the very first to point out and insist
that you are in fact naked.
despite the shocked face of our protests,
we continue to appreciate the details
of fine weaving and tailoring.
what stunning mountains and fruitful valleys!
what gorgeous dawns arise out of star black night!
what symphonies of speech and song!
oh beloved, even a child rejoices in the beauty
and functioning of your imperial garments.
only profound foolishness, then,
can accept your senseless words.
what a bolt of sudden wonder
to see the truth of your indescribable nakedness!
i was constantly clothing you with my eyes
while you laid aside every new suit with loving patience
and invited me to look directly at you.
meanwhile i clothed myself also
with odds and ends left over from your fabrics.
oh beloved, the moment i saw your nakedness
i discovered my own, and for the first time
i giggled with true innocence.
you are the immeasurable light of oneness
clothed in the costumes of three worlds.
each costume is tailored from fabrics
woven of conscious and unconscious threads.
you parade these dazzling suits in public
before the admiring eyes of everyone.
you also plant those few among the crowds
who scandalize everyone by insisting
that you are naked.
fashion parades in fancy cuts and colors.
all are dressed in unreal garments
which hide the essential truth of selfhood.
only the true emperor is naked
without a stitch of fashion to hide behind.
- eternal perfect beloved
all is you,
even these thoughts
projected on the screen of consciousness.
you cannot be hidden anywhere
because you are the hiding place and the disguise as well.
since you set your footprint on my heart
i am contented seeing you and longing to see you.
both have their characteristic sweetness.
longing is another of your many disguises.
since your inner appearance dawned in my consciousness,
i'm knowledgeable in the abc's of your divine language
which fits so poorly into human words.
your simplicity evades human meaning.
absolute one-and-only-one
with whom there is no other to compare,
suppose we compare christ with krishna
or buddha with muhammad?
your bodies are all made of comparisons
but your love remains untouched
by shifts of time and place.
how can i choose, beloved, when your song
enchants me equally in arabic, sanskrit and greek?
oh thanksgiving heart, welcome the singer of silences.
- eternal perfect beloved
morning concert on the city street --
vehicles accelerate glissando through the gears.
horn jazz cuts to the bone of silence.
your silence is not the silence which mind knows
when it pushes away all sound.
yours is original and ever unbroken,
the silence which mind experiences only in deep sleep.
all sounds which arise in you
are in fact only variations of silence.
compared to your silence, your sound,
which is the sound of all worlds taken together,
amounts to less than a pin-drop.
above the teachings of the prophets
and the singing of the angels
in the stillness of impeccable bliss,
you seal the whispering lips of mind
with the kiss of unthinkable silence.
- eternal perfect beloved
you reveal your presence by a silence
so deep and profound as never to be broken.
never a hint or echo or even a shadow of sound
ever enters the mountain of solid rock silence
to which the worlds cling like shallow caves.
no tools or techniques of noisy busy mind
can chew or chop their way into your silence.
no beam of curiosity can shine in there.
no stone tossed into your silence
ever reports contact with the bottom.
sooner the stone itself dries up
like a drop in the sun than it find bottom
in your unlimited sky of silence.
asking to see you is like asking to hear silence.
only your silence waits with infinite patience
for the end of speech, listening to every word.
and in fact, beloved, only your silence speaks.
the significance of any syllable
and its only real message is your silence
that it struggles against in its short life.
you announce your arrival by a living silence
that participates in every sound in existence
from the om of creation and the ah of sustenance
to the hum of dissolution.
your eternal silence, beloved, can only be lived.
- eternal perfect beloved
the moment one speaks,
a veil of fantasy falls over truth.
all speaking tongues fork like the serpent's,
saying only half truths,
separating cause from effect,
hiding oneness behind a screen of flashy contrasts.
you are truth, oh all-pervading beloved,
which cannot be assembled or taken apart
into befores and afters, edges and middles,
or any other partially exclusive concepts.
you are as big as silence and as small as sound.
- eternal perfect beloved
in the silence beyond every distraction
of man and machine,
you call your lovers with a song.
those who hear you, sit in rapt charm
like the fully absorbed face of lord buddha.
in this everpresent silence
attention moves behind mind's temporary meanings,
far from the incoming deliveries of sensual information.
with such a subtle melody krishna summons his gopis.
your immeasurable silence, like dreamless sleep,
reveals the face of reality itself,
at once unspeakably empty
while at the same time the source, cradle
and inescapable participant in all fullness.
oh beloved, see that!
even the concept of silence
doesn't describe you properly
since it calls to mind the duality of silence and sound.
your real face lies in unity beyond all duality.
we might as well search for you
in the squeals of children at play
or the whistling rumble of landing airplanes.
you clothe yourself there too
in your inescapable omnipresence,
but your real form, your naked beauty,
is the shape of undisturbed silence.
- eternal perfect beloved
everything lies within you
and you are found everywhere,
yet you have no size at all.
space spins out of every creature
according to its own dimensions,
so convincing and solid
that the mouse can't imagine
where the bird goes in winter,
and the farmer wonders
over the astronomer's numbers.
- eternal perfect beloved
oh light without shadow,
when i first heard that you would come to earth
in a form that casts no shadow,
my mind was baffled and i imagined you
appearing in some kind of transparent glass body
that allows light to stream through.
now, by your grace, i meet you
and discover that your human body,
though beautiful far above the ordinary
and radiant with its own inner light,
casts a shadow just like other human bodies.
but the light you bring,
the radiance that shines in your face,
that illuminates your words and gestures,
the heart-light that pours from your forehead and crown,
this light casts no shadow.
rays of this light wipe away shadows.
they pass through the densest substance,
penetrating and illuminating the darkest shade.
i recognize you as the one long ago promised
by buddha, by christ, by muhammad.
oh incomparable one,
no shadow remains in your brilliance.
- eternal perfect beloved
oh light of oneness that shines without shadow
from every thing and being in creation,
you are the ocean of love in which all creation floats
like vishnu in the ocean of kindest milk
from the breast of mother's care.
mind can come to the beach
but cannot swim in the ocean of oneness.
one drop swallows the entire vast complex
of mind's creation.
humans fish around for you in beauty and grief
without recognizing the net of conditionings
that determines their cause and effect bondage.
all creation floats in your heart
like planets in space.
- eternal perfect beloved
who am i to put my foot down
on one side or another of an obvious duality,
or take my stand on good or bad
when in fact all are you?
if i must project a point of judgment in the fantasy
of being separate,
then whatever unveils my closeness to you is good
and whatever supports my fantasy of separation is bad.
you live your life through every sentient being.
what's good for every being is good for you.
oh beloved, in the myths of india you are an ocean
of purest mother's milk.
a drop of your ambrosial ocean
lifts the lover to immortality.
rain your ocean on mankind, beloved,
and break the spell of separation.
all the world's oceans taste bitter with the salt
of tears shed for false values
and loveless conventions.
as beautiful as buddha, as loving as christ,
as playful as krishna and courageous as ram,
as intelligent as zarathustra, as noble as muhammad,
oh beloved, no flattery touches your heart.
only by pleasing you in the way i live my daily life
can i enter your company, embrace you and melt in love.
- eternal perfect beloved
you are the point the pendulum of breath hangs from
as it swings back and forth
in response to the push and pull of duality.
by the power of your imagination
you fashion the entire creation
from nothing other than only love.
you bestow blessings in the ocean
whose still water purifies itself
in apparent waves, tides and currents of only love.
you bind them and free them in drops and floods.
you just put your hands together palm to palm
and all three worlds drown in the total vacuum
of absolute oneness in the ocean of only love.
- eternal perfect beloved
i'm an illusion.
you are real.
no escape from illusion for me.
every me can be no more than a shadow of you,
all-pervading ocean of only love.
as all dualities, contrasts, separations are swallowed up
in the indivisible oneness of only love,
you and i join in one, beloved.
all my smallness evaporates in your almighty truth,
far more intimate than marriage or the physical embrace.
oh glue of illusion's ragged parts,
in the creative profusion of our imagination
we day-dreamed divorces, other lovers and beloveds.
as one we dream the worlds and the laws which move them.
lover becomes beloved.
both disappear in love.
you are the real one living my life.
i'm the imagined one living it.
let imagination not interfere with reality.
let me live my life exactly as you live it.
- eternal perfect beloved
i am a leaf on the meher baba tree.
my beauty serves only to draw attention to you,
so that a passer-by may say,
"what a handsome tree, a mighty tree indeed!"
your roots reach into deepest space
and your branches cradle earth
like the nest of a small and fragile bird.
happy am i to be a part of you,
through the season of foliage, oh beloved,
and happy am i to send my life into you
at the end of this season,
and drop my dry remains as dust at your feet.
- eternal perfect beloved
your power is so great that you can kill me dead
even with the tiny tap tap of valves
in the heating system.
they make me crazy with frustration.
my concentration leaks away in vain struggles
to locate and remove the source of disturbance.
day after day i trace pipes in the walls,
following the sound through the system in the cellar
only to get lost in dead ends.
i fill my ears with wax. it doesn't help.
i press them with my palms.
let the system chatter its stupid message.
i'm conquered, left to die on the battlefield
of loving you and submitting to your will.
other rooms in the apartment don't suffer this sound.
why does it tap only in that place
where i sit to contemplate your beauty
and enter into the enjoyment of your company?
why do you send this irritation against our intimacy?
oh beloved, don't hide behind these clicks.
kill me quickly.
it's better to die and find you
than to live in frustrated longing.
- eternal perfect beloved
shake me out of these stupidities
that pull my mind like dough on the baker's table.
a little sugar makes cake,
a little salt makes bread.
how long can these pastries
make themselves look interesting?
- eternal perfect beloved
open my skull and let all the birds of opinion
fly away in flocks like pillars of smoke.
let even the empty cage of skull fly too.
leave nothing behind but brilliant oneness
that casts no shadow.
- eternal perfect beloved
i'm the biggest hypocrite in the world,
because beyond a shadow of doubt everything is you,
and only you really exist.
meanwhile i'm pretending to be me
acting a role in your dream of creation.
it's a wonderful part, beloved,
playing your devotee, lover and slave.
but in reality it's a sham and hypocrisy
for which i deserve strict reprimand
and reminder that really nobody and nothing
can be anything other than you.
absolutely indivisible one,
prevent me from building false walls for and against
this illusion of preferring the beautiful to the ugly,
the clever to the dull.
oh beloved, you are equally in all.
what meaningless hypocrisy then to accept the important
and reject the trivial.
no matter what number i dial, you pick up the phone
and reply according to the whim of your creative play.
- eternal perfect beloved
when i express love for you,
it's really you loving yourself.
to whatever degree i'm present,
i'm a hindrance to your love.
i require to be flushed away
like filth clogging a pipe.
your caustic love dissolves me.
it pushes me out of the way
like a plumber's snake
so that your love flows freely.
one thing is clear,
love must eliminate me.
- eternal perfect beloved
emperor xerxes punished the ocean with whips.
i keep striking myself with hidden aggression
as if i could beat my heart into love.
holding on to the real you is more difficult
than standing on a pyramid of ice
which rises up to a peak
and disappears into reality.
i don't blame and praise
but rather my conditioned mind does those things.
it walks on a carpet of comparisons.
all thoughts are my thoughts,
not just good thoughts, saintly thoughts, pretty thoughts.
also all thoughts are not mine,
not even the good, saintly, pretty ones.
no thoughts touch who i really am.
the thread of your love guides me
out of the hall of mirrors.
judgment falls away.
both positive and negative lead to you
who are beyond them.
first priority must be to hold on to you
in thought, word and deed at all times.
sink my feet onto the ground, oh beloved,
and make every step whole and indivisible.
forgive me this for-and-against mind.
- eternal perfect beloved
a brain like scissors and a heart like glue.
no matter how much i cut and paste
i never manage to pretty up my sense of inadequacy
within this open-eyed dream.
i'm like a goldfish in a small bowl.
the glass looks just like water,
but somehow i can swim no further.
you watch me with your eye like air everywhere.
you are only love.
all my loveless fantasy misses you completely.
- eternal perfect beloved
surprising little imagined acts of aggression
surface in mind like bubbles of poison gas
percolating through a polluted landfill
under an innocent and well-manicured landscape.
the beloved experiences insults as well as praise.
i hold my thoughts not too loose and not too tight,
the way a jockey holds the reins of a spirited horse.
i could write a fat book of apologies
illustrated by engravings of deep embarrassment.
the beloved promises to bless me even if i curse him.
my heart cannot help but melt in such love.
i welcome any excuse for remembering you, beloved,
whether flattering or critical,
trusting that you much better than i
remain unseduced by the mind's passion
for contraries and contradictions.
forgive my little aggressions
which break into consciousness like a wind of foul gas
from undigested matter moving through the gut.
they make meaningless little noises as they pollute
the space of consciousness for a regrettable moment,
but they signify nothing.
let me feast on your beauty with both eyes,
and take in your cool wisdom through both ears.
oh beloved, let me hold you tight in the hug of both arms.
- eternal perfect beloved
my mind says wooing words, like a suitor,
and sometimes without warning it says hate words
which knock my heart down like a felled tree
and leave me wrestling for dear life.
love wins. love always wins.
the inseparable union of love
makes liking and hating relevant.
without love, no polished floor appears
for the dances of cheek to cheek or fist to fist.
- eternal perfect beloved
i call on your forgiveness again and again
as my rude conditioning continues to assert itself
with mockery, violence and insult.
i reach out my arms to hug you, instead i hit you.
i begin with praise and end with insult.
i burn with shame, wanting only to kiss and please you.
what can you find to love in me,
oh pacific of loving truth?
only the honesty of my call for rescue
as i drown in an ocean full of waves
that i myself create.
my resistance, like the panic of a drowning swimmer,
threatens to sink me in a chaos of arms and screams
broken only by pleading curses.
bring this secret robot out of hiding, beloved,
with his program for torturing my heart.
let him sink by the weight of his machinery
and drown in his own waves.
without him, i float like vishnu
in the still ocean of only love.
- eternal perfect beloved
remove every desire from me,
especially those in mind that entangle me in anger,
and those in body that suck me into lust.
if for some diabolical reason desire must remain,
let it be only the desire to please you.
you are the king of myself,
while mind is only the prime minister,
and body the chief of the armed forces.
let there be no confusion about who's in charge.
- eternal perfect beloved
curses pop into consciousness like gas bubbles.
sewer smells shock paradise.
old angers snake across the path.
help me bring this junk out from under the rug.
help me find the unity in praising and cursing
that drains away desire and fear.
in reality curses are the same as praises,
just devices and vehicles for remembering you.
am i cursing at the bartender
because he won't give me any more to drink?
no one can deny that i'm already drunk.
i'm content with this drunkenness.
i stumble over mounds of dirt
which i swept under the rug in times past.
- eternal perfect beloved
when i raise the glass of love to my lips
i'm never sure whether the wine
will be bitter or sweet.
wine embittered by lust makes me just as crazy
as any ordinary wino sleeping in an empty doorway.
wine sweetened by a drop of the ocean
makes me guest of honor and the host's best friend.
- eternal perfect beloved
those who will arrest you
must catch the four horizons
and bind them in one.
those who will interrogate you
must climb the highest heavenly root
of the tree whose leaves cover earth.
those who will judge you
must woo and marry you in silence,
and consummate the merger in deepest sleep.
- eternal perfect beloved
i was losing touch with gratitude,
falling into carelessness,
and a kind of disappointment in certain knowing.
but knowing is only the skin of the fruit,
only the shell of the nut,
while gratitude is the meat and juice within.
a cocky boy says rude and mocking words
in the privacy of our inner companionship, beloved,
like a suitor's little brother hanging around
the sublime excitement of our breathless meeting.
my heart sings a hymn to the little boy
whose life exploded in a rain of bombs.
he remembers war panic and he's still afraid.
oh beloved ocean of only love,
it's so difficult to see love in bombs
or make sense out of the kicks of their concussion.
the world simply bombs its way into domination
and little boys go up in smoke.
- eternal perfect beloved
obviously there's a film festival in the theater,
and i'm shown moments of great variety
from melodramas and crazy parodies.
i have to pay for the ticket with my life.
instead i walk along the quay
where the rich moor their boats,
and listen for the sea's invitation.
oh beloved all-pervading ocean,
you're not amused by these cartoons either.
- eternal perfect beloved
i can't win with me!
when i have a desire
and you don't give me what i want,
i get frustrated with you.
when you give me what i want,
i get frustrated at myself for having desires.
in both cases, when i come to sit in love with you,
my heart clouds over and attention sticks there.
if i were not an obstacle in my own way,
i would be grateful
both when you deny me and when you indulge me.
in the first case you're wiping away sanskaras,
and in the second you're giving me a longed-for gift.
oh beloved all-pervading ocean of only love,
create that soon i get out of my own way.
drive this dog out of the christchild's manger.
- eternal perfect beloved
i call things real that are not real,
and i treasure worthless falsities.
fits of doubt and jealousy make me crazy.
you doctor my insanity with the medicine of oneness.
i try to help you treat me,
but my mad behavior gets in your way
and makes it more difficult.
you have to wait until i tire
or give some kind of opening you can step into.
a single drop of medicine snaps me out of it.
and there i stand in my embarrassment,
my old self again laughing foolishly,
full of apology and gratitude.
potent medicine, beloved doctor of wholeness,
brings instant health to the madness of hell.
- eternal perfect beloved
the world like a hungry tiger
eats me without apology or remorse.
the driver who parks his car on my face eats me.
the neighbor's aggressive children eat me.
the confounded bicycle that won't work eats me.
they chew on me with calm and expressionless eyes.
somewhere in my heart i find a new flank,
a juicy thigh to throw to the fanged clamp
of the world's jaw.
when i was a boy playing guns,
i counted ten and came alive again.
now as an adult playing tigerworld,
i count one, or perhaps count one ten times,
in honor of the tiger's appetite.
actually i'm eating my own leg.
i'm like the toothless old dog who gums a dry bone
until finally it becomes tasty from his own blood.
the tiger leaps out of me with a roar of frustration
and disappears silently into you, beloved,
without leaving a trace.
i count on you to swallow the yellow and black striped
phantom of cars and bikes and kids
in the omnivorous oneness of your indivisible reality.
- eternal perfect beloved
how can i be so foolish as to fall
for your disguise of opposites,
mistaking your shadow for you?
i boil with anger when my friend overpowers me,
and i freeze with icy heart when my enemy embraces me.
i struggle to free myself
like a dolphin caught in a tuna net,
but only become more entangled,
until you, beloved, dissolve the net
in the universal solvent of your love.
- eternal perfect beloved
the world doesn't always play with me
when i'm ready to play
and my hands go out in vain.
sometimes when i'm far from games
i discover that you amuse yourself in play with me.
your hand never goes in vain.
the flavor of your play, beloved,
sweetens the entire ocean
and cannot be compared with predictable candies
which soon become too much.
i saw a collection of playboy nudes today
all deftly air-brushed
and packaged like expensive chocolates.
body streams toward that magnetic nakedness
which conceives the race.
today my wife went out
and i snuggled with the Odes of rumi instead,
discovering only on the last page
that today is rumi's "wedding night."
your nakedness, beloved, appeals to purity of heart
the way the sun lifts vapors up to pristine clouds
from which life-giving rains spring.
rumi says that language is like a tailor shop
where nothing fits.
i say that your play reminds me of a tube sock.
one size fits all.
- eternal perfect beloved
maya pinches me between the tools of man and woman.
every direction i turn brings me face to face
with another bar in duality's narrow cage.
you hide behind the fastmoving screen of fantasy.
i remember and forget you countless times a minute.
you sit on my neck like a rock.
you are the entire ocean.
surely you can dribble a single drop on me.
my head opens like a barnacle.
- eternal perfect beloved
do not cling to any opposite, you say.
cling only to the daaman of the godman
which is the hem of indivisible truth, love and bliss.
neither suffering nor pleasure are whole.
ultimately both disappear into undivided oneness.
why live life with the goal of minimizing one
and maximizing the other?
the very nature of the world is conflict.
its very essence is division, separation.
real peace, then, lies beyond the created world.
unity underlies every duality in existence,
so plentiful, so everywhere and omnipresent
as to form an ocean of unities throughout the creation.
oh beloved ocean, drown my contradictions
in your everlasting oneness.
in every moment of time's imagined movement,
let me eternally live
the all-pervading ocean of only love.
- eternal perfect beloved
come back to reality, you say.
climb out of the mud of misunderstanding
that grasps the feet and sucks them even deeper
into endless defense and accusation.
grab the daaman overhead.
the moment i touch the hem of the master's garment
the swamp becomes a river with firm banks
carpeted in the soft grass of his love
and warmed by truth.
i clean my feet in the stream,
wash my legs, scrub my clothes.
i lay back on the meadow and dry out in the sunshine,
enjoying the song of water
winding its way back to all-pervading oneness,
back to the indivisible truth of only love.
i sweep into you the way floodwaters
surge down a riverbed and disappear
into the ocean when a dam breaks.
- eternal perfect beloved
i am a manifestation of your manifestation.
your creative life in form must unfold
through every detail in creation.
frightened, i hold back your full manly expression
while the apprentice becomes journeyman
and takes up the tools of mastery.
he tries their weight, tests their fit in the hand,
and perceives the purpose of each,
marvelling at their potential for accomplishment.
who will do this if you don't and if i don't?
who are we waiting for?
we waited for you, kept vigil for you,
watched our calendars like clocks.
you came to teach the ways of duality.
you came to establish the majesty of divine rule.
you came to transform work and action into love.
you came to enlighten those overwhelmed by karma.
you came to give love to the loveless.
you came to give law to the lawless.
we wait for ourselves,
holding our inadequacy out in front of us
like some stinking chicken gut we can't let go of,
counting on you to take it away.
now you arrive in order to awaken sleeping mankind
from its dream of false awakeness.
the light of real apocalypse dawns every day
in our awakening a bit more today than yesterday.
in this love-fractal of a world
the pattern of a single day gives the model
for a year, for a lifetime,
and for the whole cycle of a soul
out from god and back to god.
- eternal perfect beloved
without your love, i would only lie
on the ground of your creation
like a dried root without life.
i could never find my way to the trees
that blossoms as the oak of your sturdy body,
the fragrant rose of your heart,
and the laurel of your luminous mind.
heart overflows with gratefulness,
filling the sky with a rain of sweet tears.
you dissolve the planetary hardness
of my devotion to ego's choices.
you open the sky and pour kindness.
a single seed unfurls gardens of differences.
it blossoms in space without latitude or longitude,
and harvests in time without past or future.
the integrity of divine oneness
appears to divide hundreds, thousands, millions,
an infinite number of times.
oh truth of indivisibility, you remain always only love.
in reality love has no opposite.
in illusion love's opposite is manyness
experienced as separation and indifference.
the joy of your love runs through my veins as life itself.
without it i would die.
only love melts bindings out of mind and sets life free.
clear out every cloud and shadow
from the heart of love for you.
let no darkness hide in your brilliance.
let no clouds form in the unlimited sky of your love.
you love me more than i can love myself
and i must respond to love with love.
i can't help asking you for more.
let me greed and lust only for more love.
- eternal perfect beloved
a golden rain of gratitude falls into my heart,
watering seeds of love.
they come alive, awakening a longing
to live a life of love in thought, word and action.
living love means not getting discombobulated
in any deadend duality as if it were real.
living love means stepping over all lines
of false challenge,
giving all to please the beloved.
living the union of dualities in the indivisible one
requires total extinction in self,
complete surrender of false individuality
to the one real individual,
total sacrifice of the temporary to the eternal.
some part of me protests and takes distance
with a violent gesture
which creates no among the rushes of yes.
love dissolves bindings in mind.
when anger flows into the heart,
it becomes compassion.
when aggression flows into the heart,
it becomes the urge to give comfort.
the moment pride enters in,
even virtues become karmic burdens.
only love cuts through the protests of "me too!"
love itself is the beloved.
- eternal perfect beloved
i throw myself into the ocean of oneness
and merge in the beyond words of unity.
my pen becomes the universal heart
writing love on all the imagined walls in creation.
not even a speck of dust remains
to testify where they stood.
- eternal perfect beloved
thoughts pass dreamily by
like fish swimming through a tropical sea
or like a visit to an aquarium
where the same fish circle around
in one's field of vision.
when i go home, i don't take the fish with me.
nor do i assert that this is my aquarium,
and these my fish.
your mind, beloved one, like the sea of space,
swims with stars and planets.
you touch and penetrate all creatures
exactly the way water surrounds
and flows through sea creatures.
vast human oceans loom no larger for you
than a fishbowl on the corner of your desk,
just as giant stars appear to humans
as mere pinpoints of twinkling light.
in reality you have no size.
whoever says that you're vast is right
but lost far away in your endless imagination.
whoever says you're minuter than a quark is right too
but equally lost.
in reality one step completes the road to you.
a second step brings one to the outermost reaches
of wailing and teeth-gnashing in darkness.
- eternal perfect beloved
you turn the key of love that unlocks the heart,
throwing it open to the warmth of seven shining suns.
some say the heart bursts.
some say it melts.
when the beloved joins the lover,
longing ceases and the heart overflows,
flooding the entire creation
with the all-pervading ocean of only love.
- eternal perfect beloved
let words of only love flow,
beloved all-pervading ocean of only love,
like rain-bearing clouds
which blow over dry land delivering life damp.
your world withers without you.
words draw us into ignorance,
giving the impression that you are absent
and must be carried in from elsewhere.
in truth the ocean is everywhere,
like juice in an apple.
just give us eyes to see the clouds of love
blowing across the omnipresent beach
of all-pervading ocean.
let us taste the sweetness of your grace.
beloved, our thirst grows acute,
like a man beside a well without a rope or pail.
- eternal perfect beloved
oh unbegun and never-ending one,
a niagara of love pours into my heart.
the unity of your love frees my head of shadow.
ultimate knowledge is the science of oneness,
where every duality admits its deeper unity
and evaporates in your nuclear fusion.
wherever love flows, it reaches you.
suffering and joy come together
in the unity of cause and effect.
wherever you go, you step on yourself
and move through yourself like a blast of wind.
imagination displays the creation in consciousness
through the om point of indivisible oneness.
you self-create, self-perpetuate
and self-destruct simultaneously.
light devours darkness while darkness feeds on light.
- eternal perfect beloved
here you are in your unspeakable indivisibility.
how can i ignore you and amuse myself
with the rising and falling of imagination?
i can't erase the features of reality from my heart,
beloved, nor be satisfied with appearances,
no matter how shapely or glamorous.
thoughts fly through the mind
like birds in flocks moving together.
feelings swim through like fish in schools.
media images stuff the mind fat on party snacks
that reenter consciousness in moments of quietude
like onion burps, cucumber belches
and sudden cola burns in the nose.
despite streams of pollution in consciousness,
nothing can pollute the real ocean.
the oneness of only love runs through even the garbage.
the surface of a lake reflects
the passage of the sun and moon and stars,
as well as every cloud which drifts overhead,
but the all-pervading ocean of oneness
has no surface, no reflection.
dream garbage disappears in awakening.
- eternal perfect beloved
indivisible oneness enters into duality
in order to catch our attention
and draw it out of its limitations,
first into the all-pervading ocean of only love
and finally into the very heart of the beloved.
only love lifts the heart over the head
where ultimate truth resides in the beyond
and beyond beyond states of the divine beloved.
without your love, oh compassionate one,
we could never shift attention or lift solutions
out of the massive chaos of three dual worlds.
- eternal perfect beloved
duality provides a window on unity,
a place where unity in its infinite oneness
can be observed and appreciated
through the endless play of its infinite variety.
by itself unity cannot be seen
any more than the eye can see itself,
but in the infinite abundance of opposites
which appear to arise from unity
and barely clothe its oneness
in varieties of contrasts,
oneness can be perceived and enjoyed
in an infinite number of ways.
the garments of duality
with which unity clothes itself
hide nothing from the eye of unity.
all are utterly transparent.
unselfconscious oneness shows itself
both clothed and naked at once.
- eternal perfect beloved
everything streams out of you
like rays of light from the sun.
just as those rays are invisible
while passing through space,
becoming visible only when they illuminate something,
you are invisible until you show yourself
in the form of dualities.
- eternal perfect beloved
just as sunrise reminds us of sunset,
noon points to midnight,
and a drop of rain conjures up an ocean.
you're always in attendance, beloved,
in your indivisible oneness,
speaking a language of parts
in order to communicate the whole.
if we were chopped into tiny bits
and scattered in the four directions, like osiris,
we would never cease to be one beyond gain and loss.
never would we go away and never would we return.
all remain ever one with you, beloved,
in spite of impressions to the contrary.
what flights and falls of imagination!
they reach the mountain's summit
and plunge to the ocean depth
while seated securely on your lap like a loved child.
- eternal perfect beloved
morning cuts darkness into the appearance of manyness
gathering itself as worlds
within the reality of indivisible oneness.
you urge heart to love the worldly appearance
as well as the divine reality.
you coax and pull blossoms of love out of heart
just as the sun draws flowers out of a green stem.
you make a busy garden of my heart,
where fruits distill the flavors of their juice.
i salute you in my heart, you, myself and others
indivisibly one,
not re-joined by love, but eternally inseparable
in love's monolith.
- eternal perfect beloved
we co-dream your creation, or better yet,
you dream your creation through us.
you dream the forest
through the eyes of the bear and the elk
and through the solar eyes of the leaves themselves.
you dream the city through the eyes of the taxi driver
and the heavily lidded eyes of concrete and steel.
you dream desire through the eyes of newlyweds
and despair through the eyes of the unfortunate.
you dream the rhythm, the drum, the drummer's hands
and the dancer's feet.
you dream the mother's love and the baby's need.
you dream victory through the eyes of the soldier
and surrender through the eyes of the saint.
you dream beauty through the flower's eye.
in all creation, beloved, nothing can be found
outside your dream.
only in the single eyes of the perfect ones
do you wake up from dreaming and show us the real dreamer.
- eternal perfect beloved
you are the dreamer whose dream we live in,
and you are the spark of reality
within the dream of each of us.
when the energy of attention doesn't flow out
through the senses into worldly life,
it acts within consciousness to create
the subtle experiences of dream life.
oh awakener, wake us up from the thraldom of sleep.
you're like an alarm clock ringing with real silence
in the midst of the day's imagined noise.
when you awaken us from our dream,
we awaken also from your dream.
- eternal perfect beloved
einstein made us see that matter is in fact energy,
and developed our grasp of the consequences of relativity.
now we await the great scientist who will make us see
that energy is in fact mind,
and will develop our recognition of the consequences
of indivisible unity that swallows relativity
like sky swallows smoke and ocean swallows rivers.
you always maintain a presence here in relativity,
beloved, in major and minor forms,
as well as your constant formless presence
in the absolute unity underlying relativity.
the world struggles
in the pollution of nuclear darkness.
imagine the bombs jesus could construct
with his great powers,
or the electricity pythagoras could generate with his!
you promised to return as a great scientist in 700 years.
oh beloved, don't make this world wait so long
to wake up from this dream of relativity,
and perceive the light of unity that swallows the sun
as easily as the sun swallows the light
of even as many candles as there are stars in the sky.
please wake us now.
- eternal perfect beloved
when you turn the pages of the book,
the dance of meaning sparks from word to word.
one word illuminates all others.
one book replaces the entire library.
just a single ever so slight gesture
of communication from you
makes the tragedy in life
over into the silliest humor of honest comedy.
in a moment of sparkling awake,
you play your divine leela.
- eternal perfect beloved
mind projects the creation in space and time.
clearly then all sciences --
physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, mechanics --
all in their various ways study mind.
they elucidate the properties of mind's projections,
which after all are not different from mind itself.
social and psychological sciences
turn attention to less concrete aspects of mind,
group and individual behavior and archetypes.
spiritual sciences -- vedic, sufic and mystical --
directly study mind
in order to perceive its nature and functioning
as the creative projector of cosmic illusions
of matter within space, motion within time,
and energy within cycles of return.
spiritual understanding awakens love
for the one reality beyond illusion,
and frees mind from identification
with the limitations of cosmic illusion.
- eternal perfect beloved
everything in creation comes into form within self,
exercises the options of form
and passes out of form within self,
exactly like a dream within the mind of a sleeper.
in reality self is the immeasurable depth
of deep dreamless sleep
in which dreams arise at the urging of laws
beyond the grasp of intellect.
whenever self vibrates with the question "who am i?"
dreams appear to reply in subtle and solid forms.
- eternal perfect beloved
oh oneness at work everywhere in stillness,
you comb the wild fibers of impressions
into a woolly mass of memories,
and spin them into threads of sense.
you twist strands of meaning from the threads,
and lay up yarns of truth from the strands.
with the shuttle of your name
you weave these long yarns
on the nirvanic loom of absolute oneness.
you stretch them and lay them together in patterns
that reveal wholeness,
like laertes' shroud woven by penelope
as she waits for odysseus to return from war.
each night she unravels her threads
of patient sorrowful suffering
to begin anew next morning.
thus unity appears within duality,
unravelling illusion's pattern of cause and effect,
which weaves the three worlds
and binds attention in them.
- eternal perfect beloved
men and women consistently fail
to hear the song of your praise.
some hear it as quaint and poetic,
suited only for flights of doubtful fancy.
a few catch the thread of truth
and follow it like ariadne's guidance
to the exit from mind's labyrinth.
an occasional individual hears
the eternal song of silent praise
that hymns you so faithfully
it cannot be distinguished from you yourself.
- eternal perfect beloved
oh constant and continual renewal of the ancient one,
although we are fish in the all-pervading ocean,
we behave like lizards
in the dune sand of dry deserts.
let's bathe in this water that washes away
both the terrifying and satisfying aspects
of a real ocean with imaginary waves
and a total fantasy world of islands and mainlands.
manifest yourself, oh beloved, to a dreaming world
as the truth of oneness that awakens light in shadows,
the all-pervading ocean of only love.
you are the ocean, the ship and the captain too.
- eternal perfect beloved
the main work is to bring back into the heart
all those who have wronged one,
all those whom one cannot love.
when the heart is clear
mind soars free over defenses and desires
to the nirvanic sky of divine oneness.
the pure light of love shines without shadow,
beyond the reach of imagination or thought
in the total silence of breathless oneness.
all the concerns of mind
with their ongoing restlessness
move like shape-shifting clouds in the immaculate heaven
of reality's indisputable oneness.
- eternal perfect beloved
this flower of love, this creation
pulls apart into opposites longing for each other
behind the appearance of fear and aggression.
this multi-petalled rose of creation
catches the eye in a net of color
and casts a spell over the nose,
while it tears at the fingers that grip it.
oh love, you are the indivisible union
in which opposites gladly obliterate each other.
oh lover, let every shred of flesh be stripped away.
oh beloved, more! more! more!
until your enchantment wipes out everything
except your beauty bursting the limits of my heart.
- eternal perfect beloved
everything in creation makes a show
of turning its back on its mate,
while they secretly embrace each other
and whisper your name almost inaudibly.
only real lovers can hear it
over the shouts and threats of normal intercourse.
- eternal perfect beloved
of course real love looks shockingly different
from media portrayals of love.
i'm stunned that the world exactly as it is,
suspended in the ocean of only love, IS real love.
the media hint about disappointment and struggle in love,
but they didn't prepare me to accept suffering as love.
nobody ever mentioned that the bitterest pain
one day becomes the sweetest drop in love's cup.
just as it is, this six flags luna park tivoli world
is nothing other than only love.
- eternal perfect beloved
whenever we think a thought consciously,
we unconsciously create the opposite of that thought.
whenever we speak a word,
we silently speak its opposite in unconsciousness,
thus creating simultaneously
both in light and in darkness.
mind becomes choked with thoughts
like an untended garden overrun with weeds.
false ego is infinitely unconscious.
thoughts move through your brilliance like shadows,
beloved.
real ego is infinitely conscious.
you feed the heart
through the infinite consciousness of real ego.
you water the heart's thirst with overflowing abundance
that melts the ice of ignorance.
- eternal perfect beloved
every thought hides half its truth
like a reversible tapestry
with opposite designs on each side.
we may believe this to be front and that back
or vice versa, this one right, that one wrong.
but you, beloved, permit no hidden truth.
in the indivisibility of your omniscience.
you pull the single yarn of my thinking
which unravels the interlocked stitches
of mind's colorful dream work.
the joy of indivisible union in oneness
cascades into my heart
fulfilling its longing for wholeness in love.
oh single being, thick with all doublenesses,
like a beehive full of honey guarded by menacing stingers,
you are forever as busy as a great queen bee
laying ever more eggs of days full of honey and poison.
- eternal perfect beloved
i can't say light. i can't say dark.
you are the one who holds light and darkness together
by the opening and closing of your mind's eye.
you are the adamant oneness of reality
covered over by the projection of soft manyness
in the divine rem sleep of the sun and moon.
the brilliance of oneness permits no shadow show
of dark and light forms in stillness or in motion.
the sight of you atomizes the entire creation,
into droplets of imagination that instantly evaporate
in the heat of your unspeakable oneness.
source and goal, you are the points of perspective
behind where the road arises,
and in front where it disappears in apparent distance.
- eternal perfect beloved
enlightenment is the final clear seeing
of what one has been looking at forever
with differing degrees of miscomprehension.
fascination with variety causes one to miss
the indivisible oneness within and beyond it.
enlightenment means the undeniable realization
that reality is absolutely indivisibly one,
and therefore all that which is divisible
-- matter, energy, feeling and thought -- are illusion.
enlightenment is the unquestionably clear
perception of the real and the false,
the direct intuition of the self and its dream.
- eternal perfect beloved
without you i'm lonely in a forest of thoughts
full of black and white machine gun magpies,
and the naked x's, y's and z's of winter trees.
when you're with me,
light outshines a million suns.
no shadow falls on the wildflower moods of maya.
love niagaras in heart,
washing it free of suppressed aggression.
no matter how people treat me,
or how they behave toward each other,
all in fact express only the many faces and tones
of love for the great variety of beloveds
who fill the wide world with allurements
and the pleasures of union.
- eternal perfect beloved
the golden rain of gratefulness
becomes the river of grace watering the entire creation
as it returns to the all-pervading ocean of oneness
through night and day dream landscapes
of phantoms and fantasy.
in reality you have no time or place for dream.
you walk without legs, fly without wings
and think without mind.
oh supreme oneness, whatever you do, i do.
i find the ocean of oneness
and give up the duality of asleep and awake.
can one have a dream about not dreaming?
i float in the ocean like a wooden alarm clock.
- eternal perfect beloved
you say that we have had enough of words,
enough explanations and instructions,
and now we must live them.
but you, have you had enough of words,
enough praise and prayers and thanks
to fill your fathomless heart?
writing these words is a great gift for me
that keeps my attention focused in you,
a device for constant remembrance.
so what if they don't please men,
and so what if they fall short in my eyes too!
oh beloved, pray listen to the real message
that lies behind words.
- eternal perfect beloved
your words nourish the conscious heart
like breads of palatable love seed,
as tough and perennial as grass.
oh all-pervading ocean of shadowfree love,
what shall i say to the world
and how shall i say it in order most to please you?
each day must have its poem
and every age its classics.
to whom can a thanksgiving heart sing truth
and be heard?
eternal perfect beloved
1. the golden rain
2. shoulder an oar
4. salt from the beloved's table, welcome home
5. no separation is possible, one another
6. the pearl tree, sea rose
7. how the rock awoke