I say, ‘Dear friend, nothing depends on all your ancestors, and still less on the gods they worshiped, for they have long been dead, and their gods have never existed except in the imagination of poetically minded people. No real actuality ever lay behind their names and images. So if you let go of your utterly empty belief in your gods, truly nothing is lost by it; for they can strengthen your soul no more than painted food can satisfy your body. As I said, therefore, nothing at all depends on any of that; but everything depends on the one pure truth!
‘For if you live from falsehood, then your life is in itself nothing but falsehood and can never attain reality. But if your life, proceeding from truth, is itself truth, then everything your life draws forth from itself is also reality and actuality! Yet no one can see or recognize truth from falsehood; for to falsehood everything is falsehood. Only whoever is born anew from the spirit of truth and himself becomes truth within himself, indeed full truth—for him even falsehood becomes truth!
‘For whoever can recognize falsehood as falsehood is himself truth in everything, because he immediately recognizes falsehood for what it is, and that too is truth! Do you grasp this?’
The colonel says, ‘Friend, You speak rightly, and there is deep wisdom in You! But the great, glorious truth—where is it, and what is it? Are things truly as we see them, or does the eye of the Negro perhaps see them differently from us? To one person a fruit tastes sweet and pleasant, to another the same fruit tastes bitter and nauseating! Likewise, different peoples speak different languages; which among them is true and good? Considered specifically for each individual, much may be true; but in my view a universal truth encompassing everything can never exist. And if there is one, then show me where and what it is, and what it consists of!’
I say, ‘My friend, look, therein lies the old Gordian knot you know, which no one could untie except the hero of Macedonia known to you!
‘What you see and feel through the means of the flesh is like the flesh and its means. Like it, it is inconstant and perishable. But how could what is inconstant and perishable possibly offer you material for truth that remains eternally constant and imperishable?
‘There is only one thing in the human being, and this great and holy one thing is love, which is a true fire from God and dwells in the heart. And nowhere but in this love alone is there truth, because love itself is the primordial ground of all truth in God and, from God, in every human being!
‘If you wish to behold and recognize things, as well as yourself, in full truth, you must behold and recognize them from this sole true primordial ground of your being. Everything else is deception, and every person’s head and what is in the head belong to the domain of the Gordian knot you know, which no one can untie by careful deliberation.
‘Only with cutting force can a person, with the spirit of love in his own heart, hew this knot apart and then begin to think, behold and recognize in the heart. Only then, on this new path, will he attain the truth of his own and every other being and life!
‘Your head can create countless gods for you; but what are they? I tell you: nothing but empty, lifeless formations in the brain, produced by its loose mechanism. But in your heart you will find only one God, and this One is true, because the love in which you have found one God who alone is true is itself truth.
‘Truth can therefore be sought and found only in truth; but the head has done enough if it has supplied you with the key to truth. Yet anything that urges and draws you toward love can be a key. Therefore follow such a drawing and such an urging, and enter into the love of your heart, and you will find the truth that will free you from every deception.’