What I say is simple;
It is what happened to me,
It is what happened to you, too.
I write not of great masses of men;
there are no masses of men,
There is only one
There is only Me or You.
Me and You, you will say, makes two,
But I insist there is only one man,
One man only, in all the world, just one.
Do not say that you will kill a man,
You cannot kill a man and live,
You are that man.
Do not say that I address another man,
I do not address another man,
I address myself.
You do not understand.
Nor do I understand.
But as you read the words here written,
By me written, by me written for myself,
Perhaps you will understand then when I contemplate myself
I do no more than you do when you contemplate yourself,
Could thought meet thought, as they now meet,
Even as they now meet, your thought and mine,
Soon, O soon, those thoughts would merge and
become one consciousness.
Where then would you be?
I, the sender of this message, where am I?
Where are we senders and receivers?
When shall we meet?
Is this a meeting?
Take this problem and be aware
That in taking it you are taking me,
As I am aware that in taking it
I am taking somebody else
And all the time there is only one.
Think on this problem,
Go all the twisting ways of thought
and be assured that you are not alone,
I am with you.
And know that although you are restless,
Eternally restless and in quest of things,
That which you seek is yourself,
And which you will find is yourself,
What else is there in all the world but yourself?
Do not be frightened,
Remember that when you wrote those words you were unafraid.
Do not be terrified when you see the awful beauty of God's face.
You will have come face to face with yourself.
It is a tedious way we go, we two,
We two who are one,
But I tell you that we will never be happy until we meet,
We shall never be wise until we admit me into you.
Do you not feel me shoving at the doors of your mind?
What is it then that shoves at the door of your mind?
You may say
This man is confused,
He writes without pattern,
He gives uneven measure with his words
Permits no discipline to squadron off his thoughts.
He takes a step forward,
Then back a step, then back a dozen steps
And seeing another road, without a thought
Goes up that road and where, O where
is the first road or even the second road:
Where is the patter,?
There is a pattern in the crowded street;
Even in the last echo of the last footfall
There is a well-knit plan, an order
And a running current; as the river
Takes all its little streams so, too, the street
takes all its various footfalls.
Not a multitude of bloodstreams but one,
Veins of the street connect with the city's arteries.
They too connect, city to city,
Town tumbling into town, breath a nation,
One breath for all the lungs that breath,
Unity of disunities and so the nations meet,
Blood into blood, flesh knit with flesh,
A brotherhood, a Unity, a One.
A One that turns in space, from such disorder
Moves to the measure of a single sunbeam;
Moves for what motive power and for what,
With such precision, Why, as the heart beats,
As the blood flows not in the veins,
Moves as an organ of what great breathing body?
O soul of mine containing all and all receiving
Yet must I labour to propound one unity of you and I,
The unity of nations, this simple truth, this doctrine of the One.
In all the blood of war
In all the silent screaming tragedies I saw
In all the still bodies I passed by the burning road
In all the terror, the pain, the strong wills bending
In all the forced marching under a hot stone sun
The sweat drenched eyes
The body moving on the legs of will
The scorching fist of thirst thrust deep to the very heart
In all this I see
Not a great mass of men but one man
One man alone, one only,
And I am convinced that the one I saw was not another
But as much me as I am I
As you are you.
Of Myself and You, of Me
1970's ©