Chapter 36: Interested In Remaining Disinterested
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The second discourse was titled "Forgive and Forget":
People ask God for forgiveness. But, since God is everything and everyone, who is there for Him to forgive? Forgiveness of the created was already there in His act of creation. But still, people ask God's forgiveness, and He forgives them. But they, instead of forgetting that for which they asked forgiveness, forget that God has forgiven them, and instead remember the things they were forgiven — and so nourish the seed of wrongdoing, and it bears its fruit again. Again and again they plead for forgiveness, and again and again the Master says: "I forgive."
But it is impossible for men to forget their wrongdoing and the wrongs done to them by others. And since they cannot forget, they find it hard to forgive. But forgiveness is the best charity. (It is easy to give the poor money and goods when one has plenty, but to forgive is hard; but it is the best thing if one can do it.)
Instead of men trying to forgive one another, they fight. Once they fought with their hands and with clubs. Then with spears and bows and arrows. Then with guns and cannons. Then they invented bombs and carriers for them. Now they have developed missiles that can destroy millions of other men thousands of miles away, and they are prepared to use them. The weapons used change, but the aggressive pattern of man remains the same.
Now men are planning to go to the moon. And the first to get there will plant his nation's flag on it, and that nation will declare: "It is mine." But another nation will dispute the claim, and they will fight here on this Earth for possession of that moon. And whoever goes there, what will he find? Nothing but himself. And if people go on to Venus, they will still find nothing but themselves. Whether men soar to outer space or dive to the bottom of the deepest ocean, they will find themselves as they are, unchanged, because they will not have forgotten themselves nor remembered to exercise the charity of forgiveness.
Supremacy over others will never cause a man to find a change in himself; the greater his conquests the stronger is his confirmation of what his mind tells him — that there is no God other than his own power.