BANGALORE: When one has the vision in the heart, everything, Nature and Thought and Action, Ideas and occupations and tastes and objects become the Beloved and are a source of ecstasy.
430. The philosophers who reject the world as Maya, are very wise and austere and holy; but I cannot help thinking sometimes that they are also just little stupid and allow God to cheat them too easily.
431. For my part, I think I have a right to insist on God giving Himself to me in the world as well as out of it. Why did He make it at all, if He wanted to escape that obligation?
432. The Mayavadin talks of my Personal God as a dream and prefers to dream of Impersonal Being; the Buddhist puts that aside too as a fiction and prefers Nirvana and the bliss of nothingness. Thus all the dreamers are busy reviling each other’s visions and parading their own as the panacea. What the soul utterly rejoices in, is for thought the ultimate reality.
433. Beyond personality the the Mayadin sees indefinable Existence; I followed him there and found my Krishna beyond in indefinable Personality.
434. When I first met Krishna, I loved Him as a friend and playmate till He deceived me; then I was indignant and could not forgive Him. Afterwards I loved Him as a lover and He still deceived me; I was again and much more indignant, but this time I had to pardon.
435. After offending, He forced me to pardon Him not by reparation, but by committing fresh offences.
436. So long as God tried to repair His offences against me, we went on periodically quarrelling; but when He found out His mistake, the quarrelling stopped, for I had to submit to Him entirely.
437. When I saw others than Krishna and myself in the world, I kept secret God’s doings with me; but since I began to see Him and myself everywhere, I have become shameless and garrulous.
438. All that my Lover has, belongs to me. Why do you abuse me for showing off the ornaments He has given to me?
439. My Lover took His crown and royal necklace from His head and neck and clothed me with them; but the disciples of the saints and the prophets abused me and said, “He is hunting after siddhis.”
440. I did my Lover’s commands in the world and the will of my Captor; but they cried, “Who is this corrupter of youth, this disturber of morals?”
441. If I cared even for your praise, O ye saints, if I cherished my reputation, O ye prophets, my Lover would never have taken me into His bosom and given me the freedom of His secret chambers.
442. I was intoxicated with the rapture of my Lover and I threw the robe of the world from me even in the world’s highways. Why should I care that the worldlings mock and the Pharisees turn their faces?
443. To thy lover, O lord, the railing of the world is wild honey and the pelting of stones by the mob is summer rain on the body. For is it not Thou that railest and peltest, and is it not Thou in the stones that strikest and hurtest me?
444. There are two things in God which men call evil, that which they cannot understand at all and that which they misunderstand and, possessing, misuse; it is only what they grope holy. But to me all things in him are lovable.
445. They say, O my God, that I am mad because I see no fault in Thee; but if I am indeed mad with Thy love, I do not wish to recover my sanity.
446. “Errors, falsehoods, stumblings!”, they cry; how bright and beautiful are Thy errors, O Lord! Thy falsehood save Truth alive; by thy stumblings the world is perfected.