Charity

Charity I do not like. I like concern, true concern. When someone shows me charity, I feel a sense of inferiority, and when I offer charity to someone, I undoubtedly feel a sense of superiority. I want neither a superior feeling nor an inferior feeling: what I want is an equal feeling.

The Christian world believes that charity means an open door to Heaven, but it is totally mistaken, utterly mistaken, hopelessly mistaken. Charity does not mark or determine a sense of true concern and true love, and when true concern and true love are wanting, the door of Heaven can never be open. It will always remain closed. It is not charity, but the feeling of oneness, that opens the door of Heaven. If there is no feeling of oneness, then no matter how much money-power, material wealth or anything I offer to someone, it is bound to take me to the ignorance-world where the dance of superiority and inferiority is going on.

When a part of my existence needs to receive or achieve something and another part comes to its rescue, their sense of oneness immediately opens the door of Heaven for me. If there is something beautiful, and if my mind immediately helps my eye to appreciate its beauty, then there is a oneness-feeling. If my mind wants to study something, and my legs carry me to the school or the library, then there is a oneness-feeling.

Charity cannot give me satisfaction. Charity cannot open the door of Heaven to me. It is only the feeling of oneness that can give me satisfaction, and this feeling of oneness has to be enlarged. When I give someone material wealth, money-power or something else, I have to feel that it is my very necessity to increase my own oneness-feeling for the length and breadth of the world. I have to feel that it is not I who am helping someone. It is I, on the contrary, who am being helped. This charity is not charity; far from it. It is my self-giving in order to realise my higher self totally, integrally, here in the world.

My oneness-offering not only opens the door of Heaven to me, but also opens the doors of Infinity, Eternity and Immortality, for oneness is God’s first Vision-Song and His ultimate, ever-transcending Vision-Reality-Dance. If I want to sing God’s Vision-Song, then my larger part and my smaller part have to be God’s Reality-Dance in this endlessly ever-transcending Reality.


EA 50. 17 July 1977, 7:35 a.m. — Jamaica High School Track, Jamaica, New York.