Three Friends

Seeking refuge from heated gusts of wind, we pulled thick curtains over the doors and windows of the room to create shades, and only then did we find some relief. And in this dark, shaded room, as blades of the fan started to move, coolness set in and created a dazed and intoxicated feeling. At the time it was the four of us, friends, present in the room. One person was reclined against the sofa. The other person was sitting uptight in a Buddha pose, staring into space, lost in some thought or the other. The third person was busy reading a book. And the condition of the fourth person in the room was such that he had only but a cotton wrap ['lungi'] around his waist. The atmosphere was as if the ambience of the room had come to halt at a single point. Although the four gentlemen were seated in their separate ways and were engrossed in their separate thoughts, they had one thing in common—what was summon between them was that their eyes were twinkling with reflection. One from among those four initiated the chain of conversation.

“Friends, what is the definition of friend, and who is the best of friends?"

The person seated in the Buddha pose staring into space was startled by this question, and he said: "A person's best friend is his own heart — the one who comes to understand his own heart, and sees his own image inside his heart, becomes aware of the friend. That is, becomes his own friend."

The third person who had been busy reading, took his eyes off the book and asked, "How is it possible to become one's own friend?"

The gentleman sitting on the sofa also joined in the conversation and said, "It is possible for a person to become his own friend by gaining awareness of his heart. As long as we consider life to be only a means of fulfilling physical needs we remain at a distance from our heart and soul. Once when we start to think above and beyond the physical needs, doors [leading] to spirit and spiritual realities open upon us."

The topic was so complex that all four gentlemen present in that cool dark room started attending to the issue with their intellectual energy. The question that arose was: 'What is the difference between the heart and the spirit? And in the absence of a body? how meaningful would remain the needs of the spirit? And in the absence of a spirit the body has no worth whatsoever. How plausible

is it to say that the relationship between the heart and the spirit is the true

relationship while the relationship with the body is mortal and unreal, even though we become aware of the body first and the spirit afterwards; also, our knowledge of the spirit is merely academic and not observational, whereas the body holds an academic as well as an observational presence?'

The person clad in the lungi brought up something far-fetched. In a loud and echoing voice he said, "Existence of the body is dependent on the spirit; the spirit is not dependent upon the, existence of the body. And this is proved by the reality that in the absence of the spirit, man is nothing but a corpse. As long as spirit is connected to the body of flesh and blood, the physical body remains active. This body of flesh and blood is able to see, and hear, and touch, and speak, and it is able to feel the waves of heat and coolness. But if the spirit breaks its connection with this body of flesh and blood, the physical body neither hears, nor speaks, and neither does it feel. In the presence of the spirit, a person feels even the slightest prick of a needle point upon his body, and in the absence of the spirit a person would not feel a thing or have any power to defend even if his body were to be chopped in little pieces with a large cleaving weapon. This process of life proves that the reality of a person is his spirit and not his body of flesh and blood. If a person is aware of his heart and his spirit, he is a friend to himself, whereas if a person considers his body of flesh and blood to be his all, he is an enemy to himself. The heart becomes an enemy to the person who has no concept of a spiritual life within him. If a person wants to employ his heart for a foul job, the heart refuses to serve him. It traps the person in materialism, confined by time and space. And if a person seeks from his heart the path to his soul, the heart, like good and sincere friend, directs him towards the spiritual relationships. And the heart not only tells him, but shows him, the spirit is pure, while the body is foul. It is revealed to the person that all the happiness associated with the body is temporary like the body itself, and since the spirit itself is perpetual joy, those of spiritual inclination remain happy. The shadows of fear and grief run away from them. This material world—the world of the bodies of flesh and blood is a world of dualities: Happy at one moment, and sad the next moment the cause of our disgrace. In this materialistic world of duality, we will not be able to understand anything sill we understand the contrast of joy and sadness, honor and disgrace, coolness and heat. Unless I am aware of what disgrace is, I will not be able to comprehend the meaning of honor. Unless I have suffered through severe hardships, I will not be able to understand happiness. To pass through this contradiction, one must free oneself from the duality of this material world. When a person passes through the duality of this materialistic world and becomes a student of self-awareness, he looks upon each object with the same perspective, whether it is pebbles and stones or whether it is gold. And as long as a person is unacquainted with the knowledge of self-awareness, his heart remains restless and anxious. To remove the anxiety and restlessness of the heart one must adopt a specific way of thinking, and this way of thinking is the free way of thinking."

The person clad in the lungi said, 'this free way of thinking is actually the conscious of a qalander ['spiritual free thinker, untied to conventions']. The qalander conscious shows us the way to strengthen the ties of friendship with our heart. And that way is [realization] that [in this world] we have neither enemies nor friends.

We are our own enemy, and our own friend. When the qalander conscious comes into action a person sees the entire universe as a stage. On this stage theft are some who are fathers, some who are mothers, some are children, some are friends, and some that are enemies, some sinful, and some who are pure. These, in reality, are the different personas of those who work on this stage. When one character from among these, or when all of them, step down from the stage, the magic of the duality of the world breaks and they all become one.'