The Secret of Shapes, Sounds and Fragrances
26 April 1971 pm in Woodlands, Bombay, India
Suppose we have a key in our hands. We cannot directly understand the purpose of it from the key
itself, nor is it possible to imagine from the key itself that a great treasure is likely to be revealed
with its help. There is no hidden indication in the key regarding the treasure; the key itself is closed.
Even if we break it or cut it into pieces, we may find the metal of which it is made, but we cannot
learn anything about the hidden treasure which the key is capable of revealing. And whenever such
a key is preserved for a long time, it only becomes a burden in our life.
In life there are many such keys which can open the doors of treasures even today, but unfortunately
we neither know anything about those treasures nor about those locks which can be opened. When
we do not know either about the treasures or the locks, then what is left in our hands cannot even
be called a key. It can only be a key if it opens a lock. This same key may have revealed treasures
some time in the past, but because today nothing can be unlocked, the key has become a burden.
But even so, somehow we do not feel like throwing it away.
The key has left a sort of lingering fragrance in the unconscious mind of man. Maybe some four
thousand years ago that key did open some locks, and treasures were found: the remembrance of
that in the unconscious mind makes us carry the burden of that key to this day. However much one
may be persuaded about the uselessness of the key, we cannot gather the courage to throw it away.
In some unknown corner of the heart there still lingers the hope that some day some lock might be
opened by it.
Take, for example, temples.... There is no sect on earth which has not built something like a temple
– it doesn’t matter whether it is called a masjid or a church or a gurudwara. Today it is possible for us to learn something from other sects, but there was a time when we did not even know about the
existence of other sects, so there was no way to learn from others. The temple is not the fanciful
result of the imagination of some eccentric people, but its roots lie somewhere deep in the inner
consciousness of man
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