About his head were wound fold on fold of muslin of the same mystic hue, and the way of winding, and his speech, bewrayed him of the Punjab.
But as I have said, you must never locate the holy. He walked with head erect, straight as an arrow, nor receiving nor giving salutation to any; and he came to me where I stood talking to my Wisest of the Wise, and “When,” said he, “may I come to talk with the Miss Sahib of the big-little things?” And I: “How know you that I like to talk of these things? and what are they?”
“I know; the Miss Sahib knows. When may I come?”
So we found a convenient season; and he, the free, made of himself for the sake of removing ignorance, a slave of time, coming punctually Sunday after Sunday to talk the big-little things, “Life and Death,” and “Whence we come,” and “Whither we are bound.”
With eyes screwed together in earnestness, one finger on the tip of his nose as he meditated, he would talk hour after hour; nor did he discourage discussion, he begged it. It was one way he said of teaching us to know ourselves. “And how shall we know God until we know ourselves?” “Be self-knowers. God is within, and it is the God in us that seeks to find God.” ... “God! by what sign shall we know Him? how conceive? Imagine a world without space or place or time or anything created. Imagine only light and light and light, everywhere pulsing, throbbing.... From the beginning was that, and only that, and that was God. But with God exists the Power and Mercy of God, not separately, but as closely allied as sweetness to sugar, as the scent of the rose to the rose, as the colour of a flower to the flower.... Men talk of one God as if there could be two or three. There’s just God—the All-pervading, the Essence of Being, the heart of the heart of Beauty, the great first Flame which lights every flame that leaps into life.... Light and light and light, brilliance at the soul of brilliance ... the God-spark in every soul, in everything created ... only by recognizing this shall we recognize God, there is no other way.
“... Yes! the windows of the soul get dimmed and the flame gives no light. Is that the fault of the flame? Clean the windows of the soul; such work is allowed to man, such only, not his to create Light, that was and is from Eternity.
“One day all the several sparks of light will go back to the Great Central Light whence they came, the soul will find God.... What need to make haste? What need to fret? Every soul must find God at long last ... light will return to Light.”
In countries loved of the Buddha one sees by the roadside a little shrub with white leaves among the green. The Buddha passed that way, is the legend, and the shrub has kept memory of the passing. I have sometimes thought that so among the leafy professions of mankind there are some white souls that keep the memory of the passing of the Great God. The “Truth-Named” is one such.
I remember on one occasion thanking him when he had said things which gave food for thought.
“Huh!” he said, “Miss Sahib, that was not yet talk of God. I did but try to make a clearing in the jungle where we might sit down and meditate about these things.” Another day he said: “There are three diseases in the world—Actual Sin” (the breaking of what we call commandments), “this disease can be cured by good works; Restlessness, to be cured by meditation; and Joylessness, to be cured by making occasion to give joy to others. The mark of a true religion is Joy.”