Beauty without eyes, wisdom without ears, learnedness without a nose, strength without arms (hands) and kindness without legs (feet) – these are incompatible issues.
Leave to rest at home all of your thoughts, all of your desires and all of your deeds, which have incompatible aspects in themselves, and you [should] start along the wide path to work without them.
Life makes sense for the compatible.
Life without length, a feeling without breadth, a thought without depth and height are unattainable [things]. Do not strive for the unachievable! If you do, you will get thicker and denser [become silly and brainless].
God created beauty. He created the human wisdom, the human learnedness, the human love, the human strength, the human kindness, so that He can be known for being gentle [kind].
The human leads to God.
Take care of the precious that always gives meaning to life.
Don’t poke the slime that has settled along your path.
Don’t try to extinguish the inextinguishable. Don’t try to light what cannot be lit.
Don’t waste your time on counting the dust particles raised everyday by the wind.
Don’t try to gather all the rain drops on one place.
Don’t give as a present what cannot be given as a present.
Don’t eat what cannot be eaten.
Don’t think of what cannot be thought of.
On seeing water, go to it and wash your feet.
When you become aware [conscious] of the air, accept it in your mouth.
When you get to know wisdom, open your ears.
When you come to love, start talking.
- This is the path of all accomplishments.
I shall now put a question to you: why and what for does one weep [cry]? If you cannot answer the question, I will answer it: Man weeps [cries] because man hasn’t eaten; man weeps because man has overeaten; man weeps because the food is not delicious. This is the philosophy of weeping. In general man weeps for things that are beyond one’s reach. Which things are beyond one’s reach? When man cannot reach the apple, man weeps. When he eats up the apple and feels that it becomes sour in his stomach, man weeps again. Man is disgruntled that the apple does not thank [him] for the favour he had done to it. When the food is not well cooked, man is filled with indignation that when it enters him, it does not talk nice[ly]. Which man would be grateful if he is cooked? Which man would be glad if he is eaten? Which man would be happy if he is put to prison?
Therefore when the food remains [stays] in the stomach for longer than needed, it starts grumbling that it is imprisoned. As soon as you imprison the food for a longer period of time, it causes you pain. And when man has nothing to eat, man weeps. And when there is nobody to comfort man, he weeps again. When bread comes to you, what do you have to say to it? You have to thank it, to be glad that it visited you.
You meet a beautiful maid who occupies the attention of a whole society with her beauty. Everybody talks about her, admires her, while she walks neat and smart. Some time later another maid, more beautiful than the first one, comes to the same society. Everybody’s glances and admiration is turned [veered] to her. The heart of the first one is filled with rancour [bitterness] against the second one, as her competitor. What should the first maid do? How is she supposed to behave towards the second maid? She has to admire the beauty of the second maid the way everybody does and [she has to] stop thinking about her own beauty. Enjoy your beauty as long as you are the only one beautiful among the people. As soon as somebody else, more beautiful, comes over, enjoy his/ her beauty. When two beautiful people meet, they will distribute the work among them properly: the one will be canvass, and the other one – an image on the canvass. No beauty can appear without canvass. However, conversely, the canvass is worth nothing without the image.
What I have been talking about so far amounts to a small snack for the hungry. Such a snack can only beguile one’s hunger, the way children are beguiled with candies. Indeed, the joy of many is for the candies they receive. As soon as there are no candies, they start weeping, they start grieving. The deeper their grief, the more candies they were deprived of. What is the greatest candy in the human life? The greatest candy for a young woman is the young man, for the mother – the child, for the learned man – the book, for the strong – the knife, for the worker – the hammer, for the artist – the brush, for the idle – the gramophone.
In spite of all this, contemporary people are disappointed by the changeable, the transient in life, and are looking for something lasting, something permanent, that can be always relied upon. Man is young, gets older and dies. Youth is always a changing [temporary] variable in one’s life, therefore one cannot set one’s faith in [rely on] it. The young grow, develop, until one day they notice [perceive] that they start getting old. Old age, however, is also a changeable [temporary] variable, because the old die. Neither youth, nor old age is a permanent variable in the human life. Both come and go, leaving no trace. Why do young people get old? And why do old people die? The young get old and the old die because they feed on candies. Stop feeding on candies for you not to get old and [not to] die.
The young are loved, the old are respected.
The young are loved for love’s sake; the old are respected for [their] wisdom. When the young lose their love, they get old. When the old lose their wisdom, they die. Put in other words: when somebody loses one’s love, the youth within [oneself] has grown old; as soon as one loses one’s respect, the old age within [oneself] has died. By the time the young are no longer loved, they have grown old; by the time the old are no longer respected they have died. In order not to grow old, the young should eat the living bread knead [made] by an old person; in order not to die, the old should eat the living bread knead [made] by a young person. So, let those, who do not want to grow old and to die, observe these two formulae in their lives.
In order for a man to be eternally young, it is not enough for him to eat the living bread, but he should know how to chew it. Consequently if you do not know how to chew the Word you are listening to, you will swallow it without it bringing any benefit to you. In the same way the mammals swallow their food without chewing it. This makes them different from the human beings. Human beings chew their food, but they have to know how to chew it. Every thought that a human being perceives [takes in] must be chewed well, i.e. it must be understood and applied. Application is a process of food digestion. In food digestion every food particle is sent to the place specified for it.
When I use the image of the young maid and of the young lad, I take these as symbols. The young maid stands for youth, the young man – for old age. When they meet, they do not understand each other, they do not know each other, and subsequently the young maid loses her youth and grows old; the young man loses his old age and dies. Both are losers. It is said that the young have to meet. – No, a young person cannot meet a young person. This is incompatible. When a young maid meets for the first time a young man, she [actually] meets old age; when a young man meets the young maid, he [actually] meets youth. If the young maid thinks that she has found youth in the person of the young man, she is beguiling herself.
So, when you meet a young person, ask him what he is; when you meet an old person, ask him the same question. Then ask the same question to yourselves too, whether you are a young or an old person. You need to put this question to yourselves, because it is incompatible for two young people to meet. It is also incompatible for two old persons to meet. A young and an old one can meet – this is compatible. In ordinary life, however, young can meet young and old can meet old people, but in the Divine world this is incompatible. In ordinary life everybody can be an artist: one takes paints, a brush, a canvass and paints. This is no art; this is smudging [daubing]. These are incompatible things. When the watchful eye of an artist takes a look and the smudged canvass, he finds that this is no way to paint. In nature everything is put in its proper place. The paints that nature lays upon the canvass of its pictures are strictly determined in colour; they are neither deeper nor fainter than [those that] they have to be. The paints Nature uses do not change colours. They differ in nuances, but they always retain their primary colour. For example, there is a blue colour in nature that never changes; it only varies by nuances. The same is also true for precious stones. Precious stones retain their colours, while only playing with light and as a result there appear various receding nuances, various colours of light. Put in scientific jargon, precious stones refract the rays of light and reflect them within.
What I spoke about today is food, material which you have to understand, process and apply, i.e. to take in [learn], to process internally and each single particle should be sent to its proper place.
16th August, 5 o’clock in the morning
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