The pain of confusion - even that is good.
But the immense inactivity that wraps its coils even around confusion, may we be redeemed of that.
There is no ignorance worse than ignoring our own ignorance.
That we don't know God, that we haven't received Him yet - when we don't even feel this deficiency,
may we at least wake up, not sleeping any further, from the resulting self-destructive lassitude.
May a distress that is deeper than that lassitude arise - by shaking the inertness up at its very core.
"I don't understand, I'm not there yet", may our deepest nature cry out thus.
"In the dark depths of confusion and despair, Oh Lord, I don't see my path" - may this line keep jangling every chord of our senses.
We think only the atheist is confused, but we - since we agree to the presence of God - are not.
And thus we rest assured - and call those people infidel, atheist, confused - whose opinion about God doesn't quite agree with ours.
This creates so many factions, so many quarrels and conflicts, so much tyranny and oppression;
there is no end to them.
We create two types of people - "within our group" and "outside our group";
and rest assured, thinking God's command a special heritage of our group only.
There is no question about it, no doubt amongst us.
Thinking thus, and pledging God's presence only in the covenant, we see God as separate from the entire universe.
We live in our family and in society as if that family and that society has no place for God.
We are going through this universe, from birth till death, as if there is no place in there for the Master of that universe.
When we wake up at dawn to the rise of a wonderful light, we don't see Him in that wonder;
and when at night we enter the depth of slumber in the midst of wide-awake, silent galaxies;
we never feel the calm and detached yet loving Spirit of that Mother of the Universe -
even in one of the corners of the magnificent dark bed in this majestic bedroom.
We don't even feel ashamed to confine this indescribable, amazing world within the periphery of our own house and property.
We were not, as if, born in God's world;
we were born in our own house;
we have no thought except 'I, me, and mine';
yet we keep saying: 'We love God, and we never doubt His existence.'
In my house, in my family, I never behave in a way that reveals Him as the family deity, as the great charioteer driving this household-chariot.
I think I am the Master of the household, I am the governor of the family.
As soon as I wake up in the morning, it is this thought that starts playing;
and as I go to sleep at night, it is this thought alone that gets respite for a moment.
This house, this family is filled with that 'I' - so many papers and records, so many deeds and disputes!
But where is God!
Only in the talks!
Because there is no room anywhere else.
Is there anything more self-deceiving than recognizing God only in the talks!
'I belong to this group', 'we hold such-and-such beliefs', 'I say so' - we leave only this much room to God, and then shamelessly occupy the rest ourselves in a fit of defiance1;
and that defiance is so outrageous precisely because it does not know its own nature.
It paralyzes the entire pain of confusion.
We don't know - even this much remains unknown.
The pain of confusion arises only when God touches a part of our Consciousness in secret.
Then even friends and family cannot stop our wails of anguish.
And we cannot catch Him in the resulting darkness, even with outstretched arms.
Then the understanding dawns that I cannot simply get by with what I have received,
and that I am yet to receive something without which I cannot move forward.
There is no mental state as excruciatingly painful.
When childbirth is near, the fetus on one side is still attached to an umbilical cord that refuses to let it go completely;
on the other, it feels the great pull of birth.
The tug-of-war between liberty and bondage is still raging.
The pain during this time is precursor to childbirth,
and it is the absence of this pain the physician fears.
Even the pain of true confusion is the pain that liberates our own soul in Truth.
On one side, family and friends have wrapped it and shut it tight within itself;
on the other the open Truth is silently calling it to come out -
it is still engulfed in darkness,
and yet it feels the pull of light,
even without knowing what light is.
It feels as if there is no end to that misery,
because the end is not in its sight;
it only feels the hard shell on its four sides, just like the unborn fetus.
Let that unbearable pain come, let our whole nature cry out - that cry will end.
But the wail that has not been awake in pain,
that has not been manifest,
that has been ensheathed in hundred folds of inertness -
that has no end.
That wail remains imbued in our flesh and blood, in our bones and marrows -
we have to carry its weight around twenty-four hours in our senses.
The day that cry of confusion rises within us,
on that day we don't feel comforted anymore by "group belief", philosophical argumentation and scriptural truths;
on that day we understand in a flash that there is no means available to us except Love2.
On that day we pray: "Oh Master of the Universe, please reveal Yourself in the light of Love."
The darkness of our confusion is not completely dispelled by revelation of Knowledge.
When do we know, and yet we don't know?
When we don't have Love revealed to us.
Think for a moment - several hundred thousand people are all around me in this world.
It's not that I don't know them, but they really don't matter to me.
I move ahead in life as if these innumerable people - with their joys and sorrows - don't really exist.
Then who do?
Only my relatives, only my near and dear ones - only those people supersede the innumerable others.
Only these few constitute my life.
Why?
Because it is only these few that I have observed in the light of love.
That my soul is true has been intimately revealed to me by the light of self-love -
and I only consider those my relatives to whom that love extended -
so about them I harbor no confusion,
and to me they are almost as real as myself.
That God exists, and is present everywhere -
it's not that I don't know this;
but I move about every moment entirely in a way that suggests as if He is not present anywhere.
Why do I behave this way?
The reason is that I don't have Love for Him,
so what matters to me whether He exists or not!
Compared to Him, even the most trifling things in my room have much more presence to me.
It is because we don't have Love for Him that our entire vision is not turned towards Him, that our entire hearing is not tuned to Him, that our entire mind is not open to Him.
And it is because of this that we cannot receive Him more than everything else -
Him whose presence is more than anything else -
and so our lives keep carrying around a want that cannot be met by anything else, by any other means.
That God is not there even though He exists -
such an outrageous non-existence -
what else can there be that is more difficult for us!
We are dying every moment under the crushing weight of this non-existence.
The meaning of this non-existence is simply a lack of our Love, nothing else.
It is the emptiness of this non-existence that killed all beauty on earth,
and caused all accomplishments in life to come to nought.
He who is Existence Itself does not exist for us -
how can we atone for such an irreparable loss!
Nothing is happening by simply working on it.
And we are dying day and night, precisely because of this!
We know everything, we understand everything, yet everything is futile -
"Oh Master of the Universe, please reveal Yourself in the light of Love."
Bengali original: http://tagoreweb.in/Render/ShowContent.aspx?ct=Essays&bi=72EE92F5-BE50-4057-6E6E-0F7410664DA3&ti=72EE92F5-BE50-43E7-BE6E-0F7410664DA3