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I was afraid of myself, was running away from myself! I was searching for Atman, searching for Brahman; I was prepared to chop my ego into little pieces and peel off its layers so as to find, in its unknown innermost core, the kernel that lies at the heart of every husk: Atman, Life, the Divine, that final utmost thing. But I myself got lost in the process.
I’ll be my own teacher, my own pupil. I’ll study myself, learn the secret that is Siddhartha.
Light and shade passed through his eyes, star and moon passed through his heart.
It is what fools call magic and think is performed by demons. Nothing is performed by demons; there are no demons. Anyone can perform magic. Anyone can reach his goals if he can think, if he can wait, if he can fast.”
“But what will you live on if you have nothing?” “Never before, sir, have I occupied myself with this question. I have been without possessions for a good three years now and never found myself wondering what to live on.”
Most people, Kamala, are like a falling leaf as it twists and turns its way through the air, lurches and tumbles to the ground. Others, though—a very few—are like stars set on a fixed course; no wind can reach them, and they carry their law and their path within them.
I have had to pass through so much foolishness, so much vice, so much error, so much nausea and disillusionment and wretchedness, merely in order to become a child again and be able to start over.
Above all, it taught him how to listen—how to listen with a quiet heart and a waiting, open soul, without passion, without desire, without judgment, without opinion.
Slowly this was blossoming within him, shining out at him from Vasudeva’s aged childish face: harmony, knowledge of the eternal perfection of the world, smiling, Oneness.
You, Venerable One, are perhaps indeed a seeker, for, striving to reach your goal, you overlook many things that lie close before your eyes.”
And if time is not real, then the distance that appears to lie between world and eternity, between suffering and bliss, between evil and good, is also an illusion.”
No, it is perfect in every moment; every sin already carries forgiveness within it, all little children already carry their aged forms within them, all infants death, all dying men eternal life.
To see through the world, to explain it, to scorn it—this may be the business of great thinkers. But what interests me is being able to love the world, not scorn it, not to hate it and hate
myself, but to look at it and myself and all beings with love and admiration and reverence.”
