LVI

My soul runs after truth, O Son of Truth, and there is no end to her running and no term adequate to describe her exhaustion.

It would be better to be at peace, my soul, and to attract truth to yourself by means of your peace. What would you think of someone who said at midnight: "I cannot bear to be without light, I must run to the sun to bring back some rays?^"

Why begin a race of a thousand years, when light is faster than you and can fall into your lap in a matter of seconds?

Open yourself to light, O soul, and light will come into you.

The walls that stand between you and truth and loom up before you like colossal mountains, which you have been trying to cross by running to the point of exhaustion, are your own creation and are more fragile than the white foam on the lake. If only you could open your eyes wide enough not to see them. Truly, the existence of these walls depends upon your seeing them. If you did not wish to see them, they would not exist.

I once watched a chicken on top of a blackboard running around inside a circle that had been drawn on it with white chalk. I watched him for a long time as he ran to and fro and hesitated to jump over the white line, which he probably perceived to be a living creature or a high wall.

This is like my soul, I said in sorrow, when she thinks that she is cut off from her freedom either by some mighty giants or by frightful towering walls. In actual fact, between her prison and her freedom there exists only an imaginary line, thinner than a hair.

All the walls of your prison, my soul, consist of your fear of the world, of your desire for the world and of your thoughts about the world. All these walls you yourself have built according to the instructions of your senses from the material that they have given you, a material that is truly more fragile than foam.

In the beginning you did not have senses, my soul, and you were not separated from truth. After you became blind, you sent out your senses to chase after truth.  And those greyhounds have been chasing and fetching the closest and easiest game, and bringing back wolves to their blind master, who has been eating them as though they were venison.

Do not run, my soul, for it is characteristic of the senses to run. Servants and slaves run, but a master remains peacefully still.

Behold, in that corner of profound peace and virginal purity left within you, your pre-eternal eye has opened. This eye does not see the walls of your prison, therefore neither does it run up mountains that do not exist. This eye is the Son of Truth, one of the Trinity that rules over all the heavenly kingdom, from which you barred yourself by wanting to be the "Fourth." Truly I tell you, a "fourth" does not exist anywhere throughout what exists. His name is -- Nonexistent.

By your playing and clowning around with me in the dark­ness, my soul, you have made me into a "fourth." All your people out of the world of "fourths" will cast stones at the Son of Truth.  Flee, wretched soul, flee from the world of "fourths." Totally unshackle yourself from it, totally reject it, totally despise it and--bow down before the Truth of the Trinity, which is given to you through the Son of Truth.

O Lord of Truth and Life, help my soul to prostrate herself before You and sob: "You are my Being, my Life and my Truth, O beloved Son of the Holy Trinity. You are my everything, and I surrender myself, naked and poor, to You. I no longer have anything to reject or to scorn or to despise, because nothing even exists except You. Have mercy on me, and receive me into Your arms' embrace."