If you give life, you also give death… – man and woman, have you ever thought about this? The delight and fire of beget­ting invite mor­tal­ity, and stoke the fire of the funer­al pyre as well. If you invite a soul into earthly exist­ence to be born, you have thereby invited it to die. With the mys­tery of life and birth you ini­ti­ate it into the mys­tery of death too – the one does not exist without the other. Like two sib­lings, they are like day and night, one of which must sac­ri­fice itself so that the other may pre­vail – from life into death, from death into life.

For a long time you walk only the path of every­day tasks. A good while must pass before the import­ant things have their turn as well. First you want to become someone, some­thing, and only later does the ques­tion grow finer: not only what should you become, but of what qual­ity?

Acquir­ing good qual­it­ies is a noble ideal: know­ledge, good­ness, hero­ism, wis­dom, read­i­ness to serve – the list of such vir­tues could go on without end. While you are only at the start of becom­ing some­thing of qual­ity, these qual­it­ies are far from you, as if they stood around you in a wide circle. But once you man­age to draw these qual­it­ies closer to your­self, then as they approach you as their centre, they also draw closer to one anoth­er. The nar­row­er the circle, the closer they come, so that in the end they not only com­ple­ment one anoth­er but may even become inter­change­able. At first being, con­scious­ness and bliss stand apart, far from one anoth­er, and later these dis­crete con­cepts flow into one anoth­er. At the sum­mit of real­isa­tion, inner peace, self-dis­cip­line and devo­tion become con­cepts that pre­sup­pose one anoth­er at least as much as wis­dom, love and ser­vice, or real­ity, truth and beauty. By then wis­dom and love are insep­ar­able, and they are sib­lings at least as much as day and night, as life and death.

Bod­ily exist­ence is a kind of real­ity, a lim­it­ing and lim­ited real­ity. Your bod­ily nature restricts your free­dom of move­ment and tears you away from the aware­ness of the uni­verse. To over­come this limit, it helps to seek new iden­tit­ies for your­self. Be like infin­ite space, or like the wind, water and fire, or like the earth.

… In your soul you are like space, the all-embra­cing void which, free of lim­its and flaws, per­vades every liv­ing being, mov­ing and unmov­ing, at one and the same time. As the void you can come to exper­i­ence the uni­ver­sal kin­ship of exist­ence, its broth­er­hood.

When you chase the clouds across the sky as the wind, you will learn that the sky is never cloudy. As a breeze you take fra­grances upon your wings, and dry up all mois­ture, per­haps even tears. As breath, you are the breath of life.

When you are water, you become pure and cool­ing, sweet and holy. Pure, because water washes away all impur­ity; cool­ing, because water soothes the scorch­ing of exist­ence. Sweet water nour­ishes life, and as the source of exist­ence it is sac­red from the very first. Even the mere sight of water, its touch or the sound of it pur­i­fies – be like water!

If you become fire, at times you van­ish from people's sight, like the fire hid­den in wood, and at other times you blaze on high. Spir­itu­al prac­tices height­en the power of fire in you, and just as fire con­sumes everything yet does not become impure, so you too, if you become dis­cip­lined, will keep your pur­ity.

When you become earth, feel deeply that out of you all things were taken. Pos­sess­ing mighty powers, you show a pro­found calm. You pass on your sus­tain­ing, solid and peace­able nature to who­ever turns to you.

Once you are born, you have already become some­thing. Begin, and become some­thing of qual­ity too. Become like the Sun and Moon, Earth and stars, be fire and water, be mind and intel­lect, dis­cern­ment and wis­dom, be truth and mercy. Be real­ity from the Real, intel­lect from Con­scious­ness, joy from Bliss!