THE REAL GIFT

 
What is meant by the "real gift"? If a gift is to be real, then both the giver and receiver of the gift must forget the transaction completely. To forget completely would mean that the giver should not feel he has given, and the receiver should not know that he has received. If the giver does not forget, then he has obligated the receiver; and if the receiver does not forget, he experiences a sense of obligation towards the giver.

The real gift of love bestowed on man comes from God alone, and remembrance is absent in both the One who gives and the one who receives. Because of this complete forgetfulness man can strive eternally to love God, and God remains the eternal Beloved for mankind.

How can God, Who is omniscient, forget? Because unless He "forgets," the gift He bestows upon man cannot be the real gift that it is. Man, too, is left in ignorance of the operation of this gift, through which he ultimately realizes his Godhood.

When the Omniscient bestows the real gift of love, He manifests His complete forgetfulness of it by apparently becoming callous towards His lovers. Hence the untold sufferings on the path of love that are experienced by the lovers of God, as also the unimaginable pangs of separation felt by them for their only Beloved God.

Because God is omniscient and knows the real meaning of the real gift, He becomes callous towards His lover who, absorbed in the profound depth of God's love, becomes oblivious that he loves Him, and hence loves Him ever more intensely.

It is this "forgetfulness" which arouses in the lover the unalloyed pangs of separation and consumes him in the ever growing fires of this incomparable love form which he emerges in the image of his Beloved in triumphant and eternal unity.