October 7, 1913
THIS return, after three months of absence, to the house which is consecrated to Thee, O Lord, has been an occasion for two experiences. The first is that in my outer being, my surface consciousness, I have no longer any feeling that I am in my own house or the owner of anything at all. I am a stranger in a foreign land, much more of a stranger here than in an open field among the trees; and I smile, now that I have learnt what I did not know before, I smile at the idea of the feeling of being the “mistress of the house” which I had before my departure; it was necessary that all pride should be broken, crushed, trampled down definitively, so that I may at last be capable of understanding, seeing and feeling things as they are. I offered Thee this dwelling, O Lord, as if it was possible for me to possess anything and so make of it an offering to Thee. All is Thine, O Lord, it is Thou who placest everything at our disposal; but how great is our blindness when we imagine that we can be the owners of anything! I am a visitor here as everywhere else, Thy messenger and Thy servant upon earth, a stranger among men, and yet the very soul of their life and the love in their hearts.
In the second place, the whole atmosphere of the house is charged with a religious gravity; here one descends immediately into the depths; meditation is more gathered-in and more serious; dispersion disappears and gives place to concentration; and I feel this concentration literally descending from my head to enter into my heart, and my heart seems to reach greater depths than my head. It is as if for three months I had been loving with my head and that now only I begin to love with my heart; and this brings with it an incomparable gravity and sweetness of feeling.
A new door has opened in my being and an immensity has appeared before me!
I cross the threshold with devotion, feeling hardly worthy yet to enter upon this hidden path veiled from the sight and, as though, invisibly luminous within.
All is changed, all is new; the old garbs have dropped and the new-born child half-opens its eyes to the light of the dawn.
The text above is quoted from the Third Edition, 1954 (translation by Rishabhchand Samsukha)
This book is freely available at https://www.auro-ebooks.com/prayers-and-meditations-1954-edition/
