�It is the most precious pearl of salutation,� he resumed as he saw that nobody replied, �It means that I salute the light of God that is in you.�
�In fact,� he resumed after a while, �It means that the light of God in me salutes the light of God in you. But you know, there is no difference, for the light of God that is in me is the same as the light of God that is in you. And since salutations are made only between two separate entities, it is better for us not to speak of salutations at all. But to say that he light of God in us celebrates its presence in our hearts eternally.�
�I have come to you to bridge the gap between cultures. I desire no victory for a religion over another, a way over another, or a path over another. I desire that you all become bound together by divine love. I desire light to you, peace and liberation from all the alien pains that beset you.�
�The One told me that he gave me more that I desired. He turned me with his touch of love into the most sacred thing that can exist. The one made a divine well out of me. It is a well that needs no bucket, for it overflows with love eternally. The Divine told me that he had overflowed me with his divine consciousness. Come to me, I am the water that Jesus spoke of. He who drinks me shall have the divine nature deeply rooted in his heart. For the divine had made me one with his nature. I am the door, I am an ugly wooden door, the paint on me is scratched, my wood is feeble and the iron that keeps me is rusty, but behind me are the most marvelous treasures of self-knowledge and eternal peace. Come through me and you will discover your self. I am a mirror; if you look at me you will not see yourself, but you will see your Self. Only then you will know that what you think of yourself is not of your Self, that is, only then you will know what is really of your Self.�
We take a different approach towards divinity. The divine is beyond our thought and our reason. It is beyond our senses and our experiences. We cannot wish to know it directly by our senses. But the divine is merciful. Although being totally without, for our sake, it has made itself totally within. Although totally devoid of form, its essential desire to be apprehended and revealed made it flow in all forms. Although totally beyond knowledge, being neither knowing nor known, its unexplainable love towards us made it evolve personhood, evolve self, so that we can see it, or now better him, in the deepest depth of ourselves.�
�Now, to achieve the spiritual gnosis, we must achieve pure agnosia in our souls. Agnosia, as contrasted to gnosis, means �non-knowledge�. This is definitely not to be confused with ignorance as ordinary people might think. A man who approaches the divine by agnosia is a wise man, a man who realized that the divine purely transcends knowledge, and thus, is better approached by a pure, non-sophisticated approach. In that sense agnosia becomes the humble approach towards the divine. By realizing one can never grasp the unknowable through knowledge, one will simply �let leave� or offer himself to the divine as such. When we were young children, we were full of the darkness of ignorance, by learning we came to the light of earthly knowledge. Our greatest leap, the leap of faith as Kierkegaard calls it, is the leap to the darkness. Not the darkness of ignorance, but the darkness of super knowledge. A saint is a man who realizes this darkness inside, a false avatar is he who keeps the darkness of ignorance inside and tricks the poor into believing that it is the darkness of the divine.�
He seemed to feel very irritated and guilty for speaking with much profundity, and then he asked us to lie on the grass. He asked us to close our eyes and to �put our souls in our ears�. I closed my eyes and made my body comfortable on the fresh misty grass. The sound of the falling water was cooling and the sound of the birds in the sky was fascinating. I tried to follow Sri Bakashananda�s instructions. I tried to focus all my attention to my ears. I tried to draw a figure of what I heard. I could see a wonderful place, perhaps paradise calling me. I have never been auditively simulated in that manner since I heard �The dance of the sugar plum fairy� coming out of my broken Blanky. But I could not stop other senses as well. It seems we give too much attention to vision; we have made bullies out of our eyes. Just as they are gone all other senses flourish with extreme joy. My skin wordlessly told me about the incredible story of billions of oxygen molecules bombarding it with loving kisses. My cheeks told me how pure and innocent the misty grass felt on them. My nose? It was in God�s heaven! The fresh air of Indian countryside dawn, when mixed with numerous infinitely small clean mist droplets was turning dangerously lovable.
I spent precious moments meditating in that lovely manner. Moments were passing slowly yet lightly. Time was wonderfully extended in sublimity.
The perfect man, that is he who has realized the divine within himself. He is capable of absolute withdrawal from the world, just as much as he is capable of pushing his soul into every place and memory. The pure man is capable of bombarding the surroundings with his very essence, so that he can see the world from inside itself, and see the divine in the creatures. At the same time and with an equally astute approach, he can collapse on himself, pulling the peripherals of his soul from each and everything, then his soul reshapes itself as a sphere, attaining the least possible surface area, the least possible contact with externalities. Then, he experiences the world from above, not as un ongoing process but rather as a project that has been sketched on the desk of God an eternity ago. And then, when he collapses on himself, he experiences the divine from inside, not as action, but as potentiality.�
�When one realizes the knowledge that all is energy,� Sri Bakashananda resumed after a brief pause, �The world to him will no longer appear as an iron sculpture, but will rather appear as a piece of clay. The man who lives according to the eternal laws of spirit knows no sharp edges. He becomes no longer bound to the drama of suffering inflicted upon him by limits. He rather becomes a constructor of being. He becomes the product of the universe that shapes the universe. He would become the Son of God who is giving birth to his father back in time. Do you know now why Ouroboros, the symbol of the serpent biting its tail became exceedingly popular among the wise ancients? One who realizes the eternal knowledge will see himself as a ring in the chain. He is the product of the universe as much as its sculptor.�