Say I Am You – Inspirational Quotations and Poem

threading flowers for garlands, she is lost in contemplation

 

Here is the second in the photography series, Say I am you.  I don’t know how many of you read Rumi, I find his poems irresistible and this one in particular.   Rumi’s poems elegantly and consistently touch our inner being and inspire us to go beyond our limitations towards the Divine.  He is expressing once more in this  poem how he is in everything, and everything is in him. He ends with these few words,  “Jelaluddin, You the one in all, say who I am. Say I am You.”

 

The Hari Krishna ladies, Bangalore

 

 

the street vender – I wonder what she is thinking?

SAY I AM YOU

I am dust particles in sunlight.
I am the round sun.

To the bits of dust I say, Stay.
To the sun, Keep moving.

I am morning mist,
and the breathing of evening.

I am wind in the top of a grove,
and surf on the cliff.

 

Getting Ready for xmas-Bangalore

Mast, rudder, helmsman, and keel,
I am also the coral reef they founder on.

I am a tree with a trained parrot in its branches.
Silence, thought, and voice.

The musical air coming through a flute,
a spark of a stone, a flickering

in metal. Both candle,
and the moth crazy around it.

Rose, and the nightingale
lost in the fragrance.

I am all orders of being, the circling galaxy,
the evolutionary intelligence, the lift,

and the falling away. What is,
and what isn’t. You who know

 

little boy in Andra Pradesh village. He is stepping into his home, away from me and the camera –

Jelaluddin, You the one
in all, say who

I am. Say I
am You.

 

~rumi

 

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The poem “I am You” to soothing but apt music. Heavenly!

 

The photographs here are from my Indian Collection.  

Visits 2012 and 2013. thank you!

 

 

Nisargadatta Maharaj Speaks On Wisdom – Faith

 

Nisargadatta  Maharaj once said:

“Wisdom tells me I am nothing. Love tells me I am everything. Between these two, my life flows.” ‘I am nothing’ does not mean there  is a void or a wasteland within. What it means is that with constant awareness we open to a clear, unimpeded space, without centre or boundaries, there is nothing separate.  Being nothing in this way, we are also, inevitably, everything there is. “Everything” does not mean self- importance or the egotistical idea that self-aggrandisement is everything,  but a decisive recognition of interconnection; we are not separate. Both the clear open space of ‘nothing’ and the interconnectedness of ‘everything;’ awakens us to our true nature.”

 

 

 

Here is a story about a powerful emperor who found that owning nothing gave him more happiness that owning everything.

…

Ashoka was an emperor in northern India who lived around two hundred years after the time of the Buddha. In the early years of his reign, he was a bloody tyrant. He wanted everything for himself. Land, riches, gems, jewels, he was greedy for them all. Ashoka might have been emperor but inside he was a very unhappy man. A man who could not find happiness even though he had conquered all the lands.

One day, after a particularly terrible battle that he had launched in order to acquire more land and wealth, he walked on to the battlefield amid the appalling spectacle of corpses of men and animals strewn everywhere, already rotting in the warmth of the sun. He watched as the carrion-eating birds devoured the bodies. Ashoka was aghast at the carnage he had reaped. He sat down and cried.

Just then a Buddhist monk came walking across the battlefield. The monk did not say a word, but his being was quite radiant with peace and happiness. Seeing the monk, Ashoka thought, “Why is it that I, having everything in the world, feel so miserable? Whereas the monk has nothing to call his own, other than the robes he wears and the bowl he carries,  looks so serene and happy, even in this terrible place?”

Ashoka made a momentous decision on that day. He pursued the monk and asked him, “Are you happy? If so, how did this come to be? How can you be happy with nothing?” In response, the monk who had nothing, introduced the emperor, who had everything, to the Buddha’s teachings. The consequence of this chance meeting, was Ashoka changed from that day onward. Ashoka devoted himself to the practice and study of Buddhism and changed the entire nature of his reign. He stopped waging wars. He fed the poor and gave them homes.  He transformed himself from a terrible tyrant into one of history’s most respected rulers, acclaimed for thousands of years after as just and benevolent.

Everything I Say, is God – Children Of light

“God is whole and constant. In himself he is motionless, yet he is self-moving… He is hidden yet obvious everywhere. His being is known through thought alone, yet we see his form before our eyes. He is bodiless yet embodied in everything. There is nothing which he is not… He is the unity of all things… He is the Whole which contains everything. He is One, not two. He is all, not many. The All is not many separate things, but the Oneness that subsumes the parts. The All and the One are identical. You think that things are many when you view them as separate, but when you see they all hang on the One and flow from the One you will realise they are united – linked together and connected by a chain of Being from the highest to the lowest, all subject to the will of God”

– the Hermetica

“The journey to God begins with the awakening to the concept that the phenomenal world is a veil which conceals the Divine. We begin the Quest by removing the veil, only to become aware that the veil and the Divine are one and the same thing. The veil is the theophany itself: the manifestation of the Divine through Its Names and Qualities. When we see the veil, we are seeing nothing but the Divine.”

– Laleh Bakhtiar (Sufi Mystic)

“The Ancient of Ancients, the Unknown of the Unknown, has a form, yet also has not any form. It has a form through which is the universe is maintained. It also has not any form, as It cannot be comprehended.”

– the Zohar

“Exalted in songs has been Brahman. In him are God and the world and the soul, and he is the imperishable supporter of all. When the seers of Brahman see him in all creation, they find peace in Brahman and are free from all sorrow.”

– the Upanishads

“There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.”

– St Paul

“Except God no substance can be granted or conceived. .. Everything, I say, is in God, and all things which are made, are made by the laws of the infinite nature of God, and necessarily follows from the necessity of his essence.”

– Spinoza

“All things come out of the one, and the one out of all things.”

– Heraclitus

“A human being is part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness.”

– Albert Einstein

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I went to the beach late this winter afternoon to see the sunset, but the clouds came over. I stood there on the wet sand hoping the sun would break through again. Then I saw a glorious Golden Light beam down from behind the clouds onto the silvery ocean and in that one second, I saw the Divine.  The first photo is my photo of that mystical moment. Both photos can be clicked to see full detail. (Below. is another photo taken a little earlier….)

Let Go, Let God – Early Devotees

Here is a wonderful “Sai teaching story” from Al Drucker. The same  can be found  on his website at http://www.atmapress.com/.  I never got an opportunity to speak to Al, although I heard much about him during my time in Prashanthi Nilayam. Al, was one of the first Westerners to arrive at Swami’s feet, and was given a rare glimpse into the inner sanctum of Sai Baba’s ashram. He enjoyed a physical closeness that few people in later years could ever imagine. Luckily he has written down many of his accounts.

   

Let Go, Let God

Once I complained to Swami, “Swamiji, the spiritual path is so difficult.”

“No,” he said, “it is very easy, easier than anything else in the world.” He took his handkerchief and grasped it in his hand very tightly.

He said, “You see, this is difficult. But spiritual path is not this. Spiritual path is very easy.” He just opened his hand and the handkerchief fell down to the ground. “You see how easy it is. Letting go is easy. That is all there is to it.”

So when we reach the point when we want nothing else but God and to fill ourselves only with God, then we are on the spiritual path. And that is not really so difficult. All we have to do is just let go of everything else.

One time he came up to me on the verandah and asked, “Drucker, what do you want?” I laughed at his twist of my name and I answered his question, “Swamiji, I’m very content. I’m satisfied.”

“You mean you want nothing?” he asked, with some astonishment in his voice.

I said,”Swamiji, all I want is God!”

“That’s not NOTHING,” he said quite forcefully, “That’s EVERYTHING… that’s health, wealth, freedom, liberation, bliss…” And he continued on with a long list of good things. Then he added, “Nothing is there!” pointing to the world outside the ashram, “Everything is here! Everything!” and he pointed to my heart.

So, it is all already here within us, one hundred percent; nothing more needs to be given. Only the veil of ignorance must be removed. The room may have been dark for thousands of years, but the sunlight will always be waiting. Pull away the curtain and instantly the darkness will be replaced by a dazzling flood of light.