Shilaidaha
Thursday, 28 February 1895
I’ve received an anonymous letter today. It starts—
To give up one’s life at another’s feet
Is the utmost one can give!
Then there’s an excess of admiration expressed. They’ve never seen me, but nowadays they can see me in Sādhanā. So they write—‘The sun’s rays [rabikar] have fallen upon your efforts [sādhanā], so however small or far away the seekers of the sun [rabi-upāsak] may be, the sun’s rays emanate for them too. You are a poet of the world, yet we think that today you are our poet too’, etc., etc. Man is so eager to love that in the end he begins to love his own idea. To think of the idea as any less true than reality is merely one of our illusions. What we get through our senses is something that philosophy and science tell us has been created by our senses, but nobody really knows what it is—and what we get through our ideas is constructed by our minds, and nobody can say what that really is either. Still, people believe in their senses’ creation more than they do in their mind’s creations. Yet those who know me through their senses by spending time in my company may still be very far from my real self—and this anonymous devotee of mine who knows me only through ideas may perhaps know me relatively more truly. Every person has an ideal person inside themselves; one can reach a little of that self only through love and devotion and affection; the endless ideal that resides within every boy can only be felt by his mother with her entire heart and soul—she cannot see that ideal self and that ineffable truth within other boys. Reality often hides that ideal self from view. Our imagination may enable us to feel affectionate towards children, but when we see a real boy’s shabbiness, ugliness and whining, we just cannot imagine what it is in him that could make his mother want to sacrifice her life for him—what makes her think of him as the most precious and most beautiful thing in the world! The thing which makes the mother think of her son in such a way that she can give up her life for him—is it false? And what I think about her son that makes me incapable of sacrificing my life for his—is that the greater truth? I say that there is something in every boy and every old man for which one can lay down one’s life. It is because we don’t have enough love in our nature that we cannot discover that ideal. Christ’s sacrifice of his life for mankind and for every man has just such a truth hidden within it. Every living thing is a treasure for eternal time and eternal care, and has a limitless appeal. Look how one thing has led to another. The fundamental thing is—in some respects I’m unworthy of receiving the gift of love my devotee gives me; perhaps if they had known me intimately in my everyday life, they would have been unable to offer me this sort of love; but in another reckoning I do have the right to receive this sort of love; in fact, maybe even much more than this. This is what is at the heart of the Christian and Vaishnava religions. This afternoon I sat and wrote a letter to you which had a lot of talk about renunciation, and now in the evening I’m writing another letter in which the talk is all about love!