There are two ways of knowing the past, present and future: one is the mystical way and the other is the esoteric way. One is difficult and the other is easy: the mystical way is difficult and the esoteric way is easy.

Those who know the past, present and future by the esoteric way know it by their spiritual development. They are the sages, the prophets. They have told the story of the prophets of the past, of what happened ages before. They had not read the records of those times. They looked into the past and knew it, or into the future. They do not explain how they know it. They do not care to give a proof that would satisfy the world. If they are asked and they give an answer, their answer is so complex that a simple person cannot understand it.

If they say, "I am the beginning and the end," people will say, "You are not yet very old, how can you be the beginning?" In the mystical way of knowing past, present and future, there are numberless manners of knowing it. There are people who can tell it by looking in the fire, or in a cup of tea, or by coffee-grounds, or by laying cards, by looking in the crystal, or by asking a spirit or a god.

There was at Hyderabad a dervish who used to smoke hashish and who could tell everything by looking at the smoke. He did not want people to pay him anything and if they gave him anything, it was hashish. Someone came and asked him to tell him about what his uncle was doing. The uncle lived in Bombay, where this dervish had never been. He blew a cloud of smoke and looked into it and said, "Now I am going to Bombay, to such a street, the number of the house is such, the house is like this. Now I am going to the drawing-room. Your aunt is there, but your uncle has not yet come. Now your uncle comes." And so on.

There was another man to whom people went to ask questions and he gave them a right answer to every question. Out of curiosity I went too. He was sitting in a room and before him were the silver coins that people paid him. There were so many silver coins before him that it might tempt anyone. He told each one what questions he wished to ask. To one he said, "You want to ask four questions, one question about home, one about your business, one about your friend and one about your health." The man was very much astonished that he should know the questions he wished to ask.

Once the brother of the Rajah went to see him, to ask him questions and put him to the test. He said, "Ah, you have come to test me? I do not like that, but, as you have come, I will answer you. You wish to ask me what the Rajah will say to you, when you see him today." Then he wrote something on a piece of paper, put it in an envelope and closed it. He gave the envelope to the Rajah's brother and said, "Open this after your conversation with the Rajah." He opened it after he had seen and spoken with the Rajah and found in it the whole conversation. What he had said, and what the Rajah had said, all had been written down.

There are some people who can tell all that has happened to a person and that will happen to him from the lines in his hand. In India there are some extraordinarily clever palmists. And there are some who can tell everything by the means of anything and everything that they see. They look in the air and they see, or they look at a plant, or at the shapes they see in the fire, and from the forms of the lines in the hand and from many other things they can tell the past and future, according to their concentration and their intuition. By concentrating his attention a person sees the forms, and by his intuition he tells their meaning, their language, for everything has its own language. There is the language of our words, and there is the language of forms.

When I was at Hyderabad there was there, walking along the streets, a man carrying a bottle of spirituous liquor and a glass. He wore no clothes, nothing but a few rags wrapped about him. At every few steps he stopped, poured the spirits into the glass and drank; then he took another few steps, poured the spirits into the glass and drank again. A crowd of little boys followed him, and he put his hand into his rags, took out a handful of silver coins and scattered it among them, and went on a little further and did so again. Wherever he put his hand, he found the coins. Another day he would be seen in another street, in the same way. I had the craze of a curiosity for such things, but one would not like to go and speak to him, for everyone in the street was staring at him.

So I sent a boy from our house, who said, "If you would like to hear music, our sahib wants you to come, he will sing to you." He was very pleased, he was in that mood. He came. There were some of our friends sitting there, they were all well-to-do people. He sat and began to say to one, "Blackguard. You are angry and complaining that you have been dismissed from your post. Why did you muddle that money that was in your charge?" To each one he spoke in this way. Among them was a boy to whom he said, "You failed in your examination, in mathematics. Your answer that you had written on your slate was quite right, but then you thought perhaps it was wrong and you looked what another boy had written on his slate and copied from him. That was why you failed." The boy was delighted that he had found out his fault. To all he spoke, scolding them. Only to me he said, "Bless my soul."

There was a dervish living outside the town, in the jungle. People used to go to him to ask his help in their troubles. Once a man went to him and said, "I am in a great difficulty. I am to be tried in the law courts and I have no money even to pay a barrister. My case is coming on tomorrow. Pray help me." The dervish said, 'What have I to do with it. Go away!" He said, "No, you are my refuge, help me." The dervish wrote something on a piece of paper and gave it to the man. The words were, "I have looked into this man's case, and I find that there is nothing in it, and therefore I dismiss the case." When the case came up for trial, these were the very words the judge said.

Coming now to the esoteric way. One who knows the esoteric way loses interest in the mystical way. The mystical way is limited. It can tell that this form means that and this number means that. In the esoteric way everything is revealed. To him who has this revelation, everything speaks. Everything tells him its secret. He knows all. Hafiz says, "To him to whom it is revealed, every leaf of the tree is a book."

All is one life and one light. When by concentration of thought and feeling upon the condition of a friend a person has opened up a way for the light, he is connected with that friend and knows all about his condition. You will say, "If all is one then we should be always sad and suffering from the unhappiness of others!" It is one light, but there is the shade between, isolating each and therefore we are not so much aware of the unhappiness or joy of others. And yet unconsciously its effect is felt. During the war the bloodshed was going on at the front, but he who could see, could see its effect here and everywhere.

He knows it because when he looks at any being, he looks at him thinking, "This is I," and as he knows about himself, so he knows all about every being. In the physical existence we see so many different forms, but behind this physical existence there are not many lives, but one life. By living in this one life, in this one God, he knows every being and thing. There is God in the thing also, in the plant; only in the plant He has not opened His eyes.

There is a beautiful saying of a dervish, "God slept in the rock, dreamt in the plant, awoke in the animal, and became fully conscious in man." Those who are awake are the beings and those who are asleep are the things. And among the human race how few are beings, how many are things.

In this esoteric way the first lesson is not study, it is love, that "I am not, you are." By this a person's self expands. He may expand it first to one person, then to many, then perhaps to the whole world, or even to the whole universe. There are some beings who are in themselves the universe. Outwardly man sees their small earthly form, but within they are as vast as the universe. By expanding to the vastness of God the mystic experiences the greatness of God in every form, as a god, as a human being, as an animal, as a devil, or from a god to a devil, and he keeps his veneration for man, for man is the image of God.