ALL ELSE BUT GOD IS ILLUSION

 
From the beginning of all beginnings I have been saying, I say it now, and to the end of ends I will say it, that

HE WHO LOVES GOD BECOMES GOD.

It is a fact that I have come amongst you. One of these days the whole world will come to realize how I have come, where I have come from and the purpose of my coming. I repeat once again I have come neither to establish panths and jaats (groups and classes) nor to establish mandirs, masjids, churches and ashrams in the world. I have come to receive the beauty and give the blessings of love. All else but God — whether rites, rituals or ceremonies in the name of religion, worldly possessions, family, money or one's own physical body — all else but God is illusion....

How can one explain love? There are as many ways of explaining love and obedience as there are men. There can thus be no end to the understanding of them except through obedience based on love, and through love itself. All great saints, teachers and masters say the same thing in one way or another when the emphasis is laid on love for the sake of love, or failing that, on obedience in the cause of love.

For spontaneous surrender the heart must, so to speak, be worn on one's sleeve. One must be ever ready to place one's neck under the ever-sharp knife of command of the beloved, and the head should figuratively be detached in order that it might be completely surrendered at the master's feet. Obedience should be so complete that one's concern with it makes one as much awake to possibilities as it makes one deaf to impossibilities — as envisaged by the poet:

Darmiyane qahre darya, Takhta bandam karda-ee
Baad mi gu-ee kay, Daaman ter makun hoshyar baash.

I was tied to a raft and thrown in the ocean and then
I was warned to be careful not to let my robe get wet.