You may then not be able to continue to hold on to my daaman because circumstances will seemingly justify your letting it go. I am infinitely merciful, and so repeat the same theme again and again, so that you may remember my words and try your best to cling to me. For example, in a sudden and terrifying earthquake any man, in the blind hope of saving his life, is likely to run, forgetting in an instant his family and all his possessions, and thus forsake them before he realizes what he has done.
Whatever is to happen will happen. This is the principle, or as I call it, the Law of Must, the law on which universal illusion thrives. It is as if the ready and complete film of illusion, from the beginningless beginning to the endless end, is being projected continually. If it is destined that my daaman should slip from your hands, it will. But it is for me to warn, and for you to remain alert. In illusion, you may die at any moment. The illusory life has no guarantee because no one can know for certain what will happen the very next moment. Except God, everything is illusion. This world and all its affairs are so insubstantial that it is meaningless even to say that they have no substance!
It is no joke to realize me! Those who develop inner sight, and even those who are established saints, fail to fathom me. This is because fana [total annihilation] stands between all illusion, from the lowest to the highest, and the One Reality. The practice of shariat , that is, living in strict compliance with the laws and precepts of one's religion, may lead one to tariqat , the Path of Gnosis, which has six stages. But tariqat has its end in fana.
Imagine, for example, that your body is your shell and that your body must be totally consumed by you in the course of the six stages of Gnosis. You will have to do this with your own mouth, piece by piece, at every stage. Ultimately, in the last stage, your own mouth must eat itself!1 This is what I mean by the final fana , and this is why I tell you that it is impossible to realize me without my help.
Although I appear to be quite different in every Avataric period, I always am and always remain the same from beginning to end. I live the worldly life that is lived by the people, in order to help them live the divine life that I live simultaneously. To be established in the hearts of the people, I need no religious organizations. On the contrary, religious organizations need me in order to be established after me. Those who do not love me fail to understand me; and those who do not realize my divinity fail to understand it.
Footnotes
- 1.See The Nothing and The Everything, pp. 9–12, for the story of "The Mischievous Chicken," who ate himself in the Beginning.