The Whole Truth

He left twelve years old;
came back at twenty four,
stiff with great regard
for what he’d learned.

His father said to him:

'did you ask for that teaching
by which the unheard gets to be heard,
the unknown gets to be known?'

'No sir, the seeds are far to small.'

So now his father says:
'And yet, within each tiny seed,
there is a subtle something which
your eyes don't see, something unseen
from which this spreading tree has grown.
That ground from which all things are born,
on which depends all that is born,
and into which all things return,
this ground is what you need to know.'

The world that happens of itself
has scraped outward holes,
through which perception looks outside
and does not see the self within.

But someone brave, who longs for that
which does not die, turns sight back in
upon itself, and it is thus
that self is seen, returned to self,
to its own true reality.

Truth is that which is desired
beneath all seeming goals of mind.
It's that which all desire seeks,
and it should thus be understood:

Seen where the mind turns back
to self from which it comes,
truth is at once both goal and base
as it appears through changing time.

It is each being's inner self,
the single guiding principle
that makes from its own unity
the many seeming things of world.

Beneath the many different forms
imagined by our partial minds
to personify the truth they seek,
It is the source of love.

It's known by those who see it as
it is: already standing here,
as one's own self. Just this, and
only this, brings lasting happiness.

It's grasped only by being it:
by coming just to what one is,
to one's own true reality.

But when one sees what's truly loved-
as one's own self, unlimited,
personal, beyond all else,
the source from where all help and
guidance comes, where everything belongs-
there one is freed from misery.

Then he can journey on, from place
to place, and get back home again.

So also, one who has a teacher
knows that he's delayed
only so long as he is not
released from ignorance.
And when released, he knows
that he's arrived,
entirely complete.