WHEN I FORGET THE MAN BEHIND ME
I met a Sikh who chanted the Divine Names. He was an inspired apostle of his great Master. He loved me, he gave me bread and water. He proffered me his friendship. Strange to say, he
accompanied me in my sleep, to the realms of my dreams. He saved me from many dangers which would have crushed me. He helped me. He gave me clothes from his own back, when he
saw me naked and shivering with cold. He charmed me with his sweetness. He enchanted me with the mystic color of his eyes and the infinite suggestion of the streak of his smile. But the
most wonderful effect of this wonderous man was that his presence and ineffable silence kindled my heart with the Love of the Guru whom I had never seen. I, standing in the shallow waters, become at once infatuated and proud and vain, thinking how suddenly the love for the Guru began burning in me! As I turned my back on him, I became again arid and sandy. The desert in me caught fire and hell itself flamed within me. Suddenly, he came to me in my distress; the clouds gathered, rain fell and all was cool again. Alas! I knew not in my vanity, that it was all he and not I. He made the desert of my heart a garden of roses. The sight of such a Sikh fills me with the Love of God, So perfect is his realization of the beauty of his own Master in himself. True beauty puts you not in mind of itself, but always of its Creator.