Don’t do that, he said, and I will tell you

something of interest to you.

All right, what is it? But no philosophy.

The king is giving a free banquet to all comers –

he simply lied to them.

The children ran off towards the king’s palace

as the fakir warmed to his theme –

the delicacies and delights of the entertainment…

He looked up and saw them

disappearing into the distance,

and then suddenly he tucked up his robes

and started to sprint after them.

I had better go and see, he panted to himself,

because it might be true after all.

206. Love.

To be religious is to be a yea-sayer:

yes to everything –

yes to life and yes to death,

yes to light and yes to darkness.

Total acceptance is religion.

Says Nicolas De Cusa: Yes God! Yes God!

Yes, yes and always yes.

Say yes – and feel it,

and you have entered the temple of the divine.

Say no and you yourself have closed the doors –

or closed yourself to the divine.

No is suicidal, no is poisonous –

know this and be a yea-sayer.

Let your heart say yes with every beat.

Breathe yes in and out

and you will feel the divine all around you

within and without.

He is always present but he cannot enter through a no sign.

He cannot trespass on you.

With a no you are an ego

but with a yes you are just egolessness.

Ego is a Leibnizian monad without any doors or windows,

and egolessness is the gate.

Be a gate – the divine is waiting to enter you from eternity.

207. Love.

Begin to live positively – that is,

with positive emotions.

To be negative is to be self-destructive

and ultimately suicidal.

But ordinarily the mind works that way

because it is only an instrument for safety and security;

it detects only death and not life.

So to be completely positive is to transcend mind.

Some fakir was asked to talk to a group

about the negative nature of the mind.

He tacked up on the wall a large sheet of

perfectly white paper.

He made a black spot in the paper with a pencil.

Then he asked each man to say what he saw.

Each man replied: A black spot.

The fakir then said: Yes, there is a little black spot.

But not one of you saw the big expanse of white paper –

and that is the point of my speech.

208. Love.

The forms of existence are finite – all forms.

Really, to have a form means to be finite.

But existence is infinite

because only the formless can be infinite,

and existence is formlessness,

that is why it can take all forms.

But to take form in any way is to allow death in

because form is a death sentence,

whilst existence itself is eternal life.

Do not be identified with the form:

this identification creates the fear of death

– in fact, all fear.

Remember the formless

and you will know immortality

because you will be that – then.

209. Love.

One’s attitude is everything.

Negative attitudes negate life –

they are good for dying but not good for living.

Life needs positive attitudes;

life feeds on them

because they make you

not only happy but creative also.

Once there lived an old woman,

but the older she became the younger she felt –

because youthfulness has nothing to do with age,

it is an attitude,

and with age and its richness

one can really be younger than the young.

The old woman was so cheerful and creative

that everyone wondered at her.

But you must have some clouds in your life,

said a visitor.

Clouds? she replied. Why, of course:

if there were no clouds

where would the blessed showers come from?