A BIG STACK OF HAY

 
A gentle-faced man, perhaps fifty years old, rose from among the group and asked permission to deliver some Sanskrit verses. Receiving permission to do so, he recited them so feelingly that apparently the stream broke the flood gates of his heart. He burst into tears, cried out "Avatar Meher Baba-ki-jai" and asked forgiveness for his sins.

Baba motioned the desolate figure into his arms, embraced him warmly, stroked his shoulder and his damp cheeks tenderly and then held him quietly on his chest.

"Don't be afraid," he said. "You need not tell me any more. If I am the Avatar, then I know everything, and everything will be forgiven. If I am not the Avatar, what good will it do you to tell me anything, and what use would it be to ask my forgiveness?

"Christ often said, 'I forgive you, I forgive you'. Those who loved Christ accepted His prasad (offering) of forgiveness. But those who would not recognize Christ naturally could not understand Him. His words were just words to them.

"I can forgive; I have come to forgive. Forgiveness is the highest thing for those who are forgiven. It is not a great thing to me to forgive. In fact, in reality there is nothing to be forgiven, for there is really nothing like good and bad. You find them so, and they are there in duality, due to your own bindings in duality.

"In the bondage of duality there is good and there is bad, but in reality everything but God is zero. Maya, which causes you to mistake illusion for reality, is present for you but not for me. For me, only I am, and nothing else exists*. It therefore means nothing for me to forgive, and everything for you to be forgiven.

"Forgiveness consists in loosening the bindings of duality in maya, which makes you feel and find the One as many. Therefore 'I forgive you' amounts to the loosening of your bindings.

"Although it takes a lot of time to build a big stack of hay, a single lighted match can burn all of it in no time at all. Similarly, regardless of the accumulated dirt and refuse of sins, divine forgiveness burns them away in no time."

The Sanskrit scholar stepped gratefully back into the audience.

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*i.e. only God exists