Consciously or unconsciously, we call to ourselves that element that makes us what we are. What we experience in life, therefore, has come either from what we have already called in the past or from what we call in the present. It is very difficult for a person to hear this for the first time and to accept it immediately, for no person in this world is desirous of calling something that they do not wish to have. As the modern philosopher Emerson has said, “Think beforehand of what you want.”
The principle of the whole creation is based on this. Even the fruits and flowers, the plants and trees, in order to be what they are, call for that element that makes them so. If fragrance belonged to the flower, then every flower would have fragrance. It is a certain flower that has fragrance; that flower has fragrance that calls for it. Each flower has a different color. Why? Because each flower calls for it. Every seed or herb with all its medicinal value shows that its peculiarity belongs to it; it is calling for it. The life of little insects will show us also the proof of the same fact. Their green or blue or red color and beautiful or ugly form is based, is constructed, on what they have called to have for themselves. Little insects moving among beautiful flowers, which are to be found in the green, show in their color, in their construction, beauty; for they live in beauty, they call for beauty. Insects living in the mud show again a different quality. Why? Because they call for it. The rose has a past, and since the seed of the rose had conceived those properties that the rose shows, it has maintained as its heritage that fragrance and color. At the same time, it takes from the air and the sun as sustenance that which makes it the perfect rose. In other words, there is perhaps in the same garden another plant, a flower that is without fragrance. It has the same sun; it has the same air; it is in the same space. However, it is the rose that calls for the properties that make it a rose. That other flower, being in the same place, does not call for it. It only calls for those properties that keep it as it is. Is it not so, if it is said symbolically, that one being creeps on this earth, another walks gently, the third runs, and the fourth flies, and they are all on the same earth, under the same sun?
No quality can exist without being maintained by what it attracts every moment of the day. As our physical body, for its existence, depends upon physical sustenance and as our mind depends on the sustenance of its own sphere, so each quality has its food, a food which it calls and a food on which it lives. As the body may cease to exist if not given sustenance, so every quality, however great it might show itself to be in a person, may cease to exist if there is no sustenance within reach. If we keenly observed this life around us, we would find a thousand proofs of this. In how many born with genius, in how many with a tendency to write poetry, in how many with an inclination to sing, in how many with a desire to do some good, do their qualities vanish? They could not find their qualities if starved of that food on which they live.
The more we study science, be it natural science, be it the science of chemistry, the more we shall find that each being and each object by its peculiarity shows that it is so, or it is so because it has called for that element to become so. The human being, who is the finished specimen of the creation, shows this doctrine in its fullness. Human success, failure, sorrows, joys, all depend upon what they call and what they have called for themselves. Many will say, “Is it not that they are experiencing what was meant for them to experience?” That is the idealistic point of view, and a good point of view to take. It is consoling also. At the same time, when we come to the study of metaphysics, we shall find that the secret behind creation is that which Hindus say: it is the dream of Brahma. Since each being represents Brahma, the Creator, so each being, in their part, is a creator of their own life. It is ignorance of this fact that keeps humanity back from progressing towards perfection. It is the knowledge of this which alone can be called a divine knowledge. For it is by this knowledge, if anyone has arrived at a higher realization, that they have arrived.
There is another side of it to be considered. A person says, “There are many undesirable things, that I could have never desired.” And the answer is, “Yes, you had not desired them as you see them now, but as you saw them before; it was another form in which you desired them.” Very often happiness shows itself in the guise of unhappiness; very often pain shows in the guise of pleasure. The person who does not seek after pain will seek after pleasure, but does not know that perhaps behind that pleasure the pain was hiding. A seeker after success may not see failure hiding behind it; at the same time the very seeking of the success would lead the person to failure. For that success was in appearance, in reality it was a failure. Life is a comedy; and the more you look at it, the more you can smile at it, not smiling at others, but smiling at yourself. It is always different from what one thinks it to be, whether you look at pain, at pleasure, at happiness, at success and failure or at any other thing.
There are two ways of calling what makes you yourself. One way is calling that which stands outside of your life to make your life complete, be it wealth or power or position or anything else. There is another way of calling, to call the very self. By calling your real self you naturally harmonize with your spirit. You may become so harmonised that with both friend and foe you would feel harmony. Once you have communicated with yourself, once you have called yourself, your real self, naturally you become harmonized with pain and pleasure and you become contented with success and failure. For, in spite of all the diverse experiences of our external life, there rises in the bottom of our heart a harmony and a peace and a power that keep us centralized. In order not to be wet in the rain, we cannot stop the rain; all we can do to stop it is having an umbrella, which is waterproof. We cannot, by developing ourselves materially or spiritually, stop the natural consequences of life.
When we are in the midst of the world, we are exposed to all the agreeable and disagreeable experiences that life gives us. If there is a way of making life easy for ourselves, it is only this way: that we harmonize within ourselves, so that we harmonize with all different conditions and experiences of life. If we complain, there is no end to our complaint; in order to have no complaints we must not complain. Only we must be conscious of this fact: that all that we experience is called by us, and that which we shall experience will be called by us also. Therefore, at each step in our life we must be wise, in order to distinguish in all things desired by us what we must call for ourselves and what we must not call for ourselves. If we mourn over the past, it is passed. It is no use moaning over it. It is just as well to forget the past, except beautiful impressions, good memories. It is the present for which we are responsible; for it is the present that will build our future. The present is the reflection of the past, and the future is the re-echo of the present. The most essential thing, therefore, is, that by centralizing our thought within ourselves, by finding our real self, we must so harmonize that the future may become harmonized. There is a prayer of the Eastern people: We give thanks for all we have experienced; we only ask for what will make our future the best.
November 5 or 7, 1925
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