The Face Before I Was Born
path one should not remain on the level of dhyana for too long; seven or eight years are enough. The path evolves within one, taking the wayfarer ever further. A few months after the experience with the key I had another important experience. I had just slipped off in meditation when I felt for a moment within my heart a love so complete that nothing more could be desired. Like a butterfly’s wings touching the edge of my heart, love was present. Just an instant’s touch within the heart and I knew that I was loved with a completeness that cannot be found in the outer world. The totality of the love included everything within me. This moment of love changed my life, because it gave me the absolute security I had been seeking. I knew that total love exists, and so I could live without the insecurity that had haunted me. The outer world no longer carried the threat of incompleteness. The first instance of His touch carries the beauty of a first love. Other experiences of His love have followed, deeper and more intoxicating. But in that first moment everything was present and the foundation of my life in the world was changed. We all long for this total love, and seek it in a parent or lover. All my life I had been haunted by this longing, the need to be loved. Now it had found me, arrived unexpectedly, wonderful in its completeness. I no longer needed to look for it in the outer world, seek it in a physical embrace. I had been given my first experience of love’s true wholeness, of a caress that carries the quality of union. These two experiences imprinted within my consciousness the knowledge of a freedom and love that are not dependent upon the outer world. I now knew what my heart had always told me, and more and more
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