Coming to the study of religion from the spiritual point of view, there is a story told in India of the magic lantern that Aladdin saw. What is this magic lantern? This is a magic lantern, which is hidden in the heart of every soul. Only for the time being its light becomes covered, and all the tragedy of life comes from this covering of light. Why does humanity seek happiness? Because happiness is your own being. It is not because you love happiness, or because you would like to be happy, but you are happiness yourself. Why do you seek it? You seek it because you are happiness. When you find this happiness closed off from you, you want to find it. But the mistake you make, and perhaps every person makes, is to look for this happiness on the outside, when it is to be found inside.
The most powerful words Jesus Christ spoke were, “I am the truth, and I am the way.” Now consider this sentence: “I am the truth, and I am the way.” There are two things: there is truth, one thing, and there is the way, another thing. When people confuse these two things, they become perplexed and cannot find the way.
For the idea is this, people always misuse the word “truth.” For a person always calls fact “truth,” but truth is something that altogether uproots fact. Then what is fact? Fact is the illusion of truth, but fact is not the truth. Now you may ask me, “What is truth?” That is the one thing you cannot speak in words. During my travelling I was very often asked, “But tell the Truth, tell us something about the Truth.” When urged by people, I sometimes thought: what if I could have some bricks, and I could write upon them, Truth, and say, “Now hold it fast, for this is the Truth.” For if Truth were so small that our human words could speak about it, or could contain it, then it could not be Truth.
Therefore, the Sufis have always named Truth, Haqq, which in another language means God. It is this Truth that we all seek. It is the most wonderful thing that however false a person is in the world, that person does not want another person to deceive them, or to be false to them. A person whose profession may be lying, from morning till evening they may be lying, but they do not want their spouse to lie to them when they come home.
What we do is satisfy our craving for Truth by being contented with facts, supposing that they are truth. It is because of this contentment with facts that so many creeds exist in this world, and so many faiths, and so many beliefs. Then they fight with one another. But no facts can satisfy the craving of our soul’s continual search for Truth, which no words can express.
Now coming to the second part of Jesus’s words: “I am the way.” This is a great problem to consider. The person who wants to find “the way” quickly, at the first step, may very often be mistaken. They may find what appears to be “the way,” but it is not always so. It is very strange how a person will give years and years to the study of grammar, music, or science, but when it comes to the Truth then the person wants a direct answer from you. If it were the lack of patience on the person’s part, it would be excusable; but it is not often so. It is that the person considers the Truth to be so little. If someone were too eager, if someone were too impatient, it would be possible that in one step they might reach the Truth. There is every reason to be hopeful. It is difficult to get gold, but it is not so difficult if a person really wants the Truth. This is because gold is something outside ourselves; the truth is something within ourselves. But how amazing that a person wanders about all their life in search of something that can only be found within oneself!
There is only one consideration: The Way. Why is there a Way? It is not because there is not already a Way made between humanity and God. There is and always has been a Way between humanity and God, but humanity has gone astray from the Way. A person, therefore, needs to be shown the Way by their elders. For instance, if there were not a Way, it would certainly be unjust to the birds and the insects and all creatures. It would be unjust if there were a bliss that is only given to humanity. God is the perfection of justice; in whom there is no injustice to be found, and God has not excluded any soul, however small, from this bliss.
Now coming to humanity, it seems that even the birds and the beasts have their times when they concentrate, they meditate in their own way, and they offer their prayer to God. There is no being on the earth, however small, who does not contemplate for a moment. If a person’s sight were keen, they would see in the mountains and in the trees, by sitting in the solitary woods, by sitting in the caves of the mountains, that they all have their prayer and they all have their at-one-ment with God. Why do the Great Ones, the Souls who do not find rest and peace in the midst of the world, go to the wilderness? It is in order to breathe the breath of peace, of calm that comes to them in the heart of the wilderness.
People who are the most intelligent of all are the most astray. In spite of all their pride, having created an artificial world as an improvement upon nature, they have lost the Way. Creating this artificial world has led to losing their Way. In this artificial world that they have made, are people happy? Do they not cause more and more bloodshed, each time worse than before? Are they not unjust to others? Are they not deceitful toward others? A world that can give a person that intoxication, and that can absorb all their mind and time and effort in that intoxication, how can that give them the happiness which is the craving of the soul?
It is therefore, that the Way has, from time to time, been shown and will be shown to the individual who for a time lifts their head up from this world and asks for the Way to be shown. Although the Way seems to be very far, the distances cannot be compared with the distances of this earth. The Way is so short, even shorter than an inch, yet it can be as long and as distant as are the thousands of worlds distant from us on this earth. The Way contracts and stretches according to the attitude of the soul. However, there is one hope. As God says in the scripture: “The soul who comes one step toward me, I go toward them one hundred steps.”
There are many different opinions about how the condition of the world should be bettered. Some think the world can be bettered by religious reform, some think by educational reform, some think by social reform. Indeed, every reform made with the idea of doing some good is worthwhile. However, the reform that is most needed today is spiritual reform. Today, the hour has come when narrowness should be abandoned that we may rise above those differences and distinctions that divide humankind. This rising above will raise humanity. For the Lord is not pleased when some of the Lord’s children are considered as brothers and sisters, and others are considered as separate. No parent is pleased at seeing some of their children favored and others neglected. What we need today is to train ourselves to feel greater tolerance toward one another.
By spiritual reform I do not mean looking for wonder working or talking about metaphysical problems. For the problem that is to be solved is solved by itself. We have only to wish for and to want it for it to be solved. The problem we have to solve today is the problem of reconciliation and reconstruction, which neither the politicians nor the statesmen have been able to solve. Only spiritual awakening can solve it. The way to spirituality is expansion of the heart, widening of the heart, in order to accommodate Divine Truth. It is the heart that must be expanded. It is with the expansion of the heart that Divine Bliss is poured out. True spirituality is the raising of consciousness to the plane that is the abode of the Divine Being.
October 31, 1923
CW 1922, Vol. II, pp. 371-374.
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