I can’t tell you how glad I was to get it –
written by hand, too.
You write: Now your presence is felt in your absence.
Love really is presence.
Where there is love
space and time vanish,
and where there is no love
even what is near in space and time
keeps immeasurably apart.
Only lovelessness separates
and love is the only nearness.
Those who find total love
discover everything within themselves.
The whole world then is inside, not outside
and the moon and stars lie in the inner sky.
In this fullness of love, ego vanishes.
I want God to lead you to this fullness.
31. Love.
I arrived here yesterday
and have been thinking of writing ever since
but it didn’t happen until now.
Forgive the delay
though even a single day’s delay is no small delay!
What shall I say about the return journey?
It was very blissful.
I kept sleeping, and you were with me.
It appeared I had left you behind
but actually you were still with me.
This is the being-together that is so real
that it cannot be divided.
Physical nearness is not nearness,
there can be no union on that level,
only an unbridgeable gulf,
but there is another nearness which is not of the body,
and its name is love.
Once gained it is never lost.
Then no separation exists
despite vast distances in the visible world.
If you can arrive at this distancelessness
with even one other it can be found with everybody.
One is the door, the all, the goal.
The beginning of love is through one, the end is all.
The love that unites you with everything,
with nothing excluded, I call religion,
and the love that stops anywhere I call sin.
32. Love.
I received your letter;
I have been waiting for it ever since I returned.
But how sweet it is to wait!
Life itself is a waiting!