Knowing One Another Deeply

My greater desire is to see my friends, to gaze my fill upon them and they on me. For when friends see deeply into one another here, below, and they are raised into the other world after become very familiar here, they quickly recognize one another there. Knowing how closely they were together in the world of mortality, their reuniting brings great joy. For all too quickly we lose our friends. Do you not see how in this mortal world you become the friend and darling of some person, and they become the very Joseph of beauty in your eyes. Then, on account of a single shameful act they vanish from your sight, and you lose them completely? That Joseph-like form is changed into a wolf. This very same one you once saw as Joseph you now see as a wolf. Yet, their actual form has not changed, but is still the same as it always was. By that one accidental act you lost them. Tomorrow, when this present essence is changed into another essence, since you never really knew that person deeply, and never penetrated thoroughly into their essence, how are you going to recognize them? The lesson to be learned from this is that we must see one another very well indeed. We must pass beyond the good and bad qualities that are present temporarily in everyone, and must enter into the other’s very essence. We must see with exceptional clarity that these qualities people observe in one another are not their original qualities.
Fihi Ma Fihi - Discourse 10