Patchwork

Seen from the air, the workings of man on the earth below often resemble a vast patchwork – fields of ochre, brown and green welded together by roads and boundary lines. It seems that each set of shapes repeats itself; every local pattern links with another. Viewed from a plane at night, towns and villages appear like stars, with trails of light radiating from their hub.

Looking down through the plane window during a flight, it’s easy to get into a philosophical mood. Perhaps we wonder whether this is how humanity appears from the saints’ perspective. Are we part of a huge interconnecting pattern?

Absorbed in our own little lives, closed off from each other by walls of ego, we may feel ourselves to be unique, possessed of unusual circumstances and subject to intensely individual problems or delights. But isn’t it actually the case that who we are, what we do, what we feel, are things that fall into quite predictable patterns which link us to a million others?

What is new under the sun?

“Very little”, the saint might reply.

Now consider a patchwork quilt constructed by a needle worker who carefully pieces together tiny scraps of fabric to make a whole. Unlike the natural landscape, this is the creation of just one hand.

When the Master sits on his dais before his sangat and sevadars, perhaps it is a patchwork of this sort that he looks on – a vast assembly of us, all individual yet all harmonized. Each separate part, like a scrap of fabric, may have a design which is different from its neighbour’s, yet we form an intricate pattern, linked by some special magic into a sympathetic whole.

The needle worker’s art ensures an overall tone which blends the separate parts. The Master’s art binds us with the love of God, making a patchwork beyond compare.

Love is losing your own identity and becoming another being. To lose your individuality and merge into another being -that is love. And only shabd can help you to achieve that.
_{Maharaj Charan Singh, Spiritual Perspectives, Vol II}