My desire
Desire, my desire, my lifelong friend, I always stay with you. Since I call you my friend, my lifelong friend, may I ask you for a favour? It is a simple request. I am sure you can grant it if you want to. This is my soulful and breathless request: Three times a day will you just allow me to remain all by myself? Each time I will need only three seconds. That means only nine seconds during the entire day I wish to be alone, without you.Early in the morning at five o’clock I wish to utter a soulful message to my Beloved Supreme for three seconds. This message is: “O my Beloved Supreme, I love You and nobody else. I love You and nobody else. I love You and nobody else.” At twelve o’clock noon, I wish to utter another soulful message to my Beloved Supreme three times: “O my Beloved Supreme, I need You and nobody else. I need You and nobody else. I need You and nobody else.” At seven o’clock, when the evening sets in, I wish to utter my third soulful message to my Beloved Supreme: “O my Beloved Supreme, I belong to You and to nobody else. I belong to You and to nobody else. I belong to You and to nobody else.”
Only nine seconds a day I wish to have from you, O my lifelong friend, O my desire. If you grant me this boon, then there shall come a time when I shall, in return, give you something that you never imagined and never deserved. I shall give you what I shall acquire: my heart’s boundless joy to feed you, my soul’s boundless light to please you and my God’s eternal, infinite and immortal Beauty. O my desire-friend, my lifelong friend, I wish only nine seconds a day to be all by myself. If you fulfil my request, I shall give you things that you will otherwise never be able to receive either in this incarnation or in any incarnation. So, my dear desire-friend, just grant my request: three seconds, three seconds, three seconds — nine seconds a day allow me to be with myself, in myself and for myself. For the Real in me and with the Real in me I wish to remain for nine seconds a day.
EA 9. 4 July 1977, 8:05 p.m. — Informal gathering at a disciple's house, Jamaica, New York.↩