Love and happiness

Date Unknown

When I roam the lofty mountains I feel like my soul is raised on high and covered like the peaks in never melting caps of snow. And when I descend into the valleys I feel deep and profound like them and my heart fills with mysterious shadows. The same thing happens at the edge of the sea. There I merge with the surging waves; they pound and roar within me. When I gaze at the sky I expand. I become boundless, unlimited. When I look at the stars, silence permeates me; when I see a flower the ecstasy of beauty overwhelms me. When I hear a bird singing, it's song is an echo of my own inner voice, and when I look into the eyes of an animal I see no difference between them and my own. Gradually my separate existence has been effaced and only God remains. So where shall I look for God now? How shall I seek him? Only he is; I am not.

I was in the hills, and what they wanted to tell me was transmitted through their silence. The trees, the lakes, the rivers, the brooks, the moon and the stars were all speaking to me in the language of silence. And I understood. The words of God were clear to me, I could only hear him when I became silent. Not before.

What shall I say to you? Listen to the stars in the sky. I wish to say the same thing their silent, dancing lights are saying. I wish to say that whatever is, is beyond the power of speech, beyond the reach of hearing.

Creation springs from love. It is nourished by love. It moves towards love and eventually merges with love. And you ask me why I say love is God! This is why.

I watch mankind moving from one perversion to another. It is as if some fiber essential to life has been destroyed within him - and within his civilization as well. Not only the individual, all the society is living within a framework that has become perverted and twisted. Its discordant notes echo throughout the world and the harmony that a sound culture creates is nowhere to be heard.

No instrument is as out of tune as man. And just as a stone causes ripples across the surface of a lake, the perversity of one man can agitate the whole of humanity. A man may be an individual but his roots are in the corporate body of mankind. Each man's infection is tremendously contagious.

What is the diseases that afflicts our century? Many diseases have been isolated, but I wish to point to one in particular that, in my opinion, is at the root of all other afflictions. Whenever a man is overcome by this fundamental illness he turns to suicidal destruction. What name shall I give this disease? It is not easy to name it. The best I can do is to call it the drying up of the well of love in the human heart.

Everyone is afflicted with this absence of love. Our hearts are not functioning at all. There can be no greater misfortune in a man's life than the absence of love, because without love his relationship with life is severed. It is love that connects us to the whole.

Without love a man stands alone, separated from the core of existence. Without love everyone is a lone entity, lacking any connection with others of his kind. Today, man finds himself totally alone.

We are all shot off from each other, trapped within ourselves. This is like being in the grave. Even though he is alive, man is a corpse.

Do you see the truth is what I am saying? Are you alive? Do you feel the flow of love in your veins? If you do not feel that flow, if the throbbing of love in your heart has ceased, then you should understand well that you are not really alive at all.

Once I was on a journey and someone asked me which word in a man's vocabulary was the most valuable. My reply was, "Love". The man was surprised. He said he had expected me to answer "soul" or "God". I laughed and said "Love is God."

Raising on the ray of love one can enter the enlightened kingdom of God. It is better to say that love is God than to say that truth is God, because the harmony, the beauty, the vitality and the bliss that are part of love are not part of truth. Truth is to be known; love is to be felt as well as known. The growth and perfection of love lead to the ultimate merger with God.

The greatest poverty of all is the absence of love. The man who has not developed the capacity to love lives in a private hell of his own. A man who is filled with love is in heaven. You can look at man as a wonderful and unique plant, a plant that is capable of producing both nectar and poison. If a man lives by hate he reaps a harvest of poison; if he lives by love he gathers blossoms laden with nectar.

If I mold my life and live it with the well-being of all men in mind, that is love. Love results from the awareness that you are not separate, not different from anything else in existence. I am in you; you are in me. This love is religious.

The doors of love only open for the person who is prepared to let his ego go. To surrender one's ego for someone else is love; to surrender one's ego for all is divine love.

Love is not sexual passion. Those who mistake sex for love remain empty of love. Sex is only a passing manifestation of love. It is part of nature's mechanism, a method of procreation. Love exists on a higher plane, and as love grows, sex dissipates. The energy that has been manifested in sex is transformed into love.

Love is the creative refinement of sex energy. And so, when love reaches perfection, the absence of sex automatically follows. A life of love, an abstinence from physical pleasures is called brahmacharya, and anyone who wishes to be free from sex must develop his capacity to love.

Freedom from sex cannot be achieved through supersession. Liberation from sex is only possible through love.

I have said that love is God. This is the ultimate truth. But let me say as well that love also exists within the family unit. This is the first step on the journey to love, and the ultimate can never happen if the beginning has been absent. Love is responsible for the existence of the family and when the family unit moves apart and its members spread out into society, love increases and grows. When a man's family has finally grown to incorporate all of mankind, his love becomes one with God.

Without love man is an individual, an ego. He has no family; he has no link with other people. This is gradual death. Life, on the other hand, is interrelation.

Love surpasses the duality of the ego. This alone is truth. The man who thirsts for truth must first develop his capacity to love - to the point where the difference between the lover and the beloved disappears and only love remains.

When the light of love is freed from the duality of lover and the beloved, when it is freed from the haze of seer and seen, when only the light of pure love shines brightly, that is freedom and liberation.

I urge all men to strive for that supreme freedom.

Do not say that you have been in prayer because that indicates you can also be out of prayer. The man who is out of prayer at any point can never have been in prayer at all. Prayer is not an activity you can move in and out of. Prayer is the perfection and the fullness of love.

To live is to live in God. To live in truth is also to live in love. But those who remember God have forgotten about truth, and those who remember truth have overlooked love. It would be better if they had forgotten God and remembered truth - but it would be even better if they had forgotten about truth and were prepared to live lives of love. Wherever love is to be found, truth steps in of its own accord. And where truth is, God is too.

Every day I watch you going to the temples. I see you poring over the scriptures, day in and day out.

And this worries me. I have never seen you show any appreciation of nature. If you cannot see God in nature, how can you possibly see him somewhere else? Open your heart and let nature's sweet music resound within you. Welcome nature; enthrone nature in your heart of hearts. Before long you will recognise that your guest is God himself.

It is utter foolishness to oppose nature. You will never attain God by opposing nature. God is hidden in nature.

You must never fight with nature; you must learn to allow its mysteries to unfold for you. Nature is a veil to be lifted. Nature is part of God; it is his manifestation. He is deeply embedded in nature; it is his home.

If you quarrel with nature you will never move close to God; rather, you will move further and further away from him. But we have always been taught to fight with nature; we have always been told that God is against nature. The spiritual poverty of man is the result of this conflict.

Man has been told to seek God by fighting his nature - but God is in his nature and his nature is in God. There is no God separate or aloof from nature. God and nature intermingle.

In their antagonistic attitude to nature educational systems have stolen from man the ladder that leads him to God. Nature is the bridge. You don't stop on a bridge, you use a bridge to cross over.

You don't quarrel with a bridge that leads to your destination. And there is no other route.

You have to love nature; you have to love it with all your heart. Love is the only force that can throw open the gates to God. But you have been told that nature is a bondage, a prison, sinful. These terrible and wrong teachings have infested man's mind with poison, spoiling any love for nature, preventing any possibility for perfect knowledge.

It is essential a man bring nature back into his life before he attempts to invite God into it. A love of nature eventually transforms itself into a prayer unto God. Man is not to free himself from nature, he is to find his own freedom in nature itself.

"Does God exist?" you ask. it is not at all proper to ask a question like this because you don't even know what the word "God" means. "God" means "whole". The whole of existence itself is God. God is not a separate entity. he is not some individual, some power. What exists is God. And even this is not the proper way to say it. It is more accurate to say that existence itself is God. Even in saying "God exists" there is redundance.

Questioning the existence of God is questioning the existence of existence. The existence of all other things is obvious, but this is not the case with God. And this is because he is existence himself. The power, the energy that exists in all things may also be apparent, but this is not so with God. He himself is that power.

How can the totality be known in the same way the component parts can? God cannot be something I can know, because I am in him too.

Yet it is possible to be one with God, to sink into him. In fact, we already are one with him; we have already drowned in him. You realize this when you lose your "I". Knowing this is knowing him.

This is why I say that love itself is knowing God. God can only be known in love because in love the "I" disappears. You will never find love where "I" exists. Love is only there when "I" is not.

There is a parable about a lump of salt who went to visit the sea. It met the sea and it came to know the sea, but it did not return. To know the sea it became the sea itself. The only way it could know the sea was by becoming the sea. The only way a man can know God is by becoming God.

A friend of mine was very unhappy. When I saw him weeping I led him outside and said, ;"Look at the stars!" At first the tears kept welling up in his eyes, sparkling like the stars themselves but his misery soon subsided.

"How is it,' he asked me, "that my heart threw off its burden when I looked at the stars? How is it my misery vanished when I looked at the sky?"

"It is misery to be removed from God," I replied. "It is sorrow to be alienated from nature. It is anguish to be separated from the soul." That same evening someone asked me, "What is the greatest pleasure in the world?"

I answered, "To be in the world and yet not of the world. The only way to guarantee happiness in your life is to have your feet firmly planted on the earth and your heart firmly planted in God."

DON'T WE EVENTUALLY GET TIRED OF OUR PLEASURES? And doesn't a pleasure we are tired of become a bore, a pain? But have you ever noticed a man tiring of those pleasure he gives to other people? No, such a thing has never happened. Let me tell you a secret; only the pleasure we give to others becomes bliss. And there is no end to bliss. Bliss is the nectar of life. It is eternal, endless.

I REMEMBER THE DAYS WHEN MY MIND WAS IN DARKNESS, when nothing was clear inside me at all. One thing in particular I recall about those days was that I did not feel love for anyone, I did not even love myself.

But when I came to the experience of meditation, I felt as though a million dormant springs of love had suddenly begun to bubble up in me. This love was not focused, not directed to anyone in particular, it was just a flow, fluid and forceful. It flowed from me as light streams from a lamp, as fragrance pours from flowers. In the wonderful moment of my awakening I realized that love was the real manifestation of my nature, of man's nature.

Love has no direction; it is not aimed at anyone. Love is a manifestation of the soul, of one's self.

Before this experience happened to me I believed love meant being attached to someone. Now I realize that love and attachment are two completely different things. Attachment is the absence of love. Attachment is the opposite of hatred, and hatred it can easily become. They are a pair, attachment and hatred. They are mutually interchangeable.

The opposite of hatred is not love. Not at all. And love is quite different from attachment too. Love is a completely new dimension. It is the absence of both attachment and hatred, yet it is not negative.

Love is the positive existence of some higher power. This power, this energy, flows from the self towards all things - not because it is attracted by them, but because love is emitted by the self.

Because love is the perfume of the self.

When I came to know love I also came to understand non-violence. And my understanding came from my experience of the self and not from any scriptures. This realization of my self provided the answer to everything. If love is a relationship it is attachment; if love is unrelated, uninspired, unattached, it is non-violence.

An ascetic once asked me how he could attain the love I talked about so much. I told him, "Love cannot be attained directly. First attain wisdom, and then love will come of its own accord. "Wisdom is the important thing. Love follows automatically.

It is impossible to achieve knowledge without attaining non-violence at the same time. And so non- violence is the real test of a man's knowledge. Non-violence is the ultimate accountability; it is the ultimate criterion. A man's religion can be called pure only after it has been forged in this furnace.

The individual man's search for wisdom is the same as the basic inquiry of religion.

When knowledge is freed from attachments it is transformed into wisdom. When all objects, when all points of focus disappear, knowledge knows itself. Knowledge of the self by the self is wisdom.

No duality exists in this awakening; there is only pure knowledge. And this illumination of knowledge by itself is the greatest revolution possible in human consciousness. A man becomes truly related to himself, to his being, only through this revolution. Then and only then is the real purpose and meaning of life revealed to him.

This revolution is attained through meditation. Meditation is the way to attain wisdom. Meditation is the means; wisdom, the end. And love is the result of having successfully achieved that goal.

Man's mind is constantly filled with objective things, with outer objects. And one's knowledge is always surrounded by objects, by ideas, by one thing and another. You have to free knowledge from this bondage to objects. Meditation is the way to attain this freedom.

When one is asleep one is free, but one is also unconsciousness. The mind is absorbed within itself.

This state is its nature. The Hindi word for this state is SUPTI. It comes from SWA meaning "the self" and APTI, "to enter". In deep sleep one enters into the self.

The states of deep sleep and of meditation are similar to one another except in one important respect. Meditation is a state of perfect consciousness and awareness, whereas sleep is a state of unconsciousness. In deep sleep one has a feeling of harmony with the world. In mediation there is complete oneness and identification with the universal consciousness.

Remember, sleep is not a state of mediation. Many psychologists think that when the mind is empty, that when there is no object in the consciousness, that one is in the state of sleep. This is a mistake; this is the result of thinking without experimentation. When the consciousness is asleep it may be free from attachment to objects, but this does not necessarily mean it is empty of them. To set one's consciousness free requires so much work and such conscious effort that it becomes impossible to sleep afterwards. Then, only pure consciousness remains.

There are three stages in the process of mediation; detachment from the objects in the mind, awareness of the thought currents of the mind and finally, retention of the understanding of the mind.

With detachment from the objects of the mind, their impressions stop forming; with awareness of the currents of the mind there is gradual slowing down of their development. Only when these two stages have been achieved and one is able to retain the understanding of the mind is there the possibility of self-realization.

The point of origin of a thing is also its point of dissolution. No matter what something's origins are, its dissolution is innate within it. It is inherent in its very nature. Meditation is the dissolved state of mind. Just as the waves ultimately disappear into the ocean, the mind dissolves into the universal consciousness.

The center of the mind is the ego. When the mind dissolves the ego is released and what remains, is experienced, is the soul.

People ask me what non-violence is every day. My answer is that non-violence is knowledge of the self. If you come to know yourself you will know the essence of man. This awareness gives birth to love, and it is impossible for love to inflict pain. This is non-violence.

The ego is at the core of one's ignorance of the self. All violence is born there; it is born within the ego. A man feels that he is everything and that the rest of the world exists for him alone. He sees himself as the center, as the focal point for all existence. The exploitation that is born of this egoism is what violence is.

Love is the center of self-knowledge. And when the ago dissolves, love is perfected.

There are only two states of consciousness that exist - the state of the ego and the state of love.

The ego is the narrow state, the seed-form, the atomic stage; love is all encompassing, love is God.

The center of the ego is I; the ego exists for itself. The nectar of love is the universe. Love exists for all.

The ego is exploitation; love is service. And the service that flows from love, freely and spontaneously, is non-violence.

BEGIN TO MEDITATE. Practice it faithfully so that your life can be filled with the light of wisdom.

And when there is light within you, love will flow from you and spread itself far and wide. Love is the highest flowering of spiritual growth, of spiritual attainment. Those who die without experiencing love have perished without experiencing life.

If you have not known love, you have not known anything at all - because love is God.

IT IS UNNECESSARY TO GO IN SEARCH OF GOD. Just live a life of godliness; just show your godliness in every action. In fact, godliness must become your very breath, for only then will you realize God.

ONCE I STOOD BY THE SEA AND ASKED MYSELF why all the rivers flowed into the ocean. But I knew the answer; even a child does. It is because the ocean is lower than the land through which the rivers flow. The thought filled my mind with dancing beams of light. Blessed is the man who is lowly, who is humble, because God showers down on him the riches of his glory.

YOU WISH TO SERVE? Remember, a man who is drowning in a vast ocean cannot save another who is floundering in the same sea.

I WAS STANDING BY THE BANK OF A RIVER. It was a small stream and in the gathering dusk the young girls from the village were hurrying home with their earthen jars filled with water. I had observed that they had to stoop down to fill their jars from the river. One also has to know the art of stooping to fill one's jar at the fountain of life.

But how to bend is something man seems to keep forgetting. His ego will not let him bend. And so all love, all prayer, is slowly vanishing from life. In fact, anything of any real significance seems to be disappearing. Life has become a kind of struggle instead of the beauty and harmony it ought to be. But strife is the only thing that can endure where the mysterious art of bending has been lost. It could not be considered at all surprising if rigid and unbounded egoism cause unbearable pain in a world where the warm hearted art of yielding to each other is unknown and unrecognized.

Yielding links the individual to the group. Being unable to yield separates a man from the universal existence. Of course this giving way must be natural and spontaneous or else it only serves to puff up the ego. Any yielding that is done deliberately is not real and behind it, in some recess of the mind, an element of resistance persists. When it springs from the intellect it is not genuine; it is not vital, not complete. And furthermore, this kind of giving way ends up causing remorse because the ego is wounded. It is an action that has gone against the ego and, in revenge the ego indulges itself in self-pity.

Only when the human heart is devoid of egoism can it yield naturally and perfectly. And this yielding will be as natural and as complete in every detail as the bending of the tiny blades of greass in the wind. They have no hostility towards the breeze; they have no egos. The day a man is able to assimilate this natural bending, this spontaneous yielding into his being, the mysterious secret of God will be revealed to him.

A certain young man once said to a FAKIR, "In the past there were people who saw God with their own eyes. How is it such people do not exist today?"

The venerable gentleman replied, "Because no one is prepared to stoop so low!" To drink one's fill at God's fountain you must stoop down. How can those who stand on the bank with their noses held haughtily in the air ever fill their jars with water?

I KNOW THAT YOU ARE IN SEARCH OF BLISS, but how can you find bliss by searching for it?

Bliss is available to those who distribute bliss, to those who spread bliss around. If you wish for bliss then give bliss. Do not desire; give. Only by giving will it come to you; only by sharing will it shower on you. God's ways are strange. Do not stand at the threshold of bliss like a beggar; go there like an emperor. Haven't you noticed that all doors are closed to a beggar. And who is a beggar anyway?

A beggar is a man who begs, who pleads, who supplicates. And who is an emperor? An emperor is a man who gives. So I urge you - give, give, give. Give with no strings attached. Then you will see that what you have given is returned to you a thousand times over. Everything comes back to you.

Your only asset is the echo of your own liberal gift. Do you ever recall receiving anything without having given something first?

A RELATIVE OF A FRIEND OF MINE WAS ILL and he took her a bouquet of fresh flowers from his garden. When he returned from the hospital I noticed the fragrance of the flowers still lingered on his hands. I observed the same thing in many other ways. Whatever we give, its perfume or its foul odor always lingers on. Those who wish to live in fragrance only give fragrance.

WHENEVER I THINK OF MANKIND I am reminded of the thousands of eyes into which I have looked. It pains me to think of them because I remember what I have seen in them. What I hoped to see was never what I saw. I was looking for happiness and found misery; I was looking for light and found darkness; I was looking for God and I found corruption. What has happened to man?

Man's life is not real. Where there is neither peace nor harmony, nor energy nor bliss, how can we call it life? How can we call chaos life? This cannot be called life at all. A more apt description would be to call it an agonizing dream, an unconscious hallucination, an endless chain of misery. It only ends in death. And most people die before they have ever lived at all. It is one thing to be born - all men are born - but very, very few attain life.

The only man who really attains life is the man who experiences God in himself and in all of humanity.

Without his realization we are but lifeless bodies, unaware of the timeless beginnings of life, unaware of the vital currents of life. Without this consciousness one's life can never be blissful. Man's ignorance of himself, of his self, is his misery.

When a man has achieved self-knowledge his heart is filled with light. And unless this happens, his being is in total darkness. When a man reaches to his self, to his soul, he becomes divine, but if he does not, he becomes less than the animal. Those who are unable to feel any truth in themselves apart from that of the body can never attain this godly existence, this divine life. When a man experiences the light of life beyond the physical body, only then does his upward path of God begin, and then everything he has seen or experienced in nature becomes transformed into God.

If restlessness, misery, agony, darkness or unconsciousness exist within us, the infection spreads from the inner to the outer and envelops us completely. One's interior condition governs one's outer conduct; it is but a reflection of the inner. Whatever we are on the inside pervades all of our external relationships. In one's thoughts, one's speech, one's behavior, the inner being is externalized.

In this very way, the inner feelings of each and every individual ultimately add up to and create the society in which we live. If you find poison in a society, the seeds of this poison are hidden in the individuals who comprise it. If a society wishes for nectar, then these are the seeds that will have to be sown in the hearts of its citizens. If men's hearts are filled with happiness, then society, the result of their mutual relations will reflect this love, friendship and compassion.

If there is a harmony within a man, this symmetry will be apparent on the outside and the melody of his inner symphony will spread far and wide. But if there is misery within, if there is weeping and wailing, then the same discord will echo in his conduct. This is only natural. The only man who is full of love is the man who has attained happiness within himself.

Love is moral; the absence of love is immoral. The deeper a man goes into love, the higher he reaches to God. The less a man loves, the lower his spiritual state is. Love is the basis of a pure and moral life. As Christ said, "Love is God."

Someone once asked St. Augustine, "What should I do how can I live so that I commit no sin?" St.

Augustine replied, "Love. Just love. And then whatever you do will be right and moral."

Love. In this one word everything that enables man to rise to God is contained. But it is important to remember that you can only love when you are happy inside. Love cannot be tacked on from the outside. It is not a garment you can wear. Love is your soul. It has to be discovered, uncovered. It is not imposed, it is manifested.

Love is not an action. It is a state of consciousness. It is only real when it has become your nature, and only then can it become the basis for a divine life, for a life in God.

You must also remember that a moral life, in the absence of this spontaneous inner manifestation of love, is not capable of leading you to God. This kind of morality lacks validity. It is always based on one thing or another, like fear or attraction, and it makes no difference whether the foundation of this morality is spiritual or material.

A man who leads a pure or a moral life because he is attracted to heaven or afraid of hell is neither moral nor pure. He is not really moral at all. Morality is unconditional; there is no question of loss or of gain. Moral behavior grows out of the combination of happiness and love. If it springs from any other source it is false. Just as light streams from the sun, purity and morality flow from inner happiness.

A strange incident comes to mind. One day Rabiya was seen running through the bazaar carrying a torch in one hand and a pitcher of water in the other. People stopped her and asked, "Where are you running with these things in your hands?" She answered, "I am going to burn heaven and douse the flames of hell. I am going to destroy the obstacles that block your path to God."

I agree with Rabiya. I would like to eradicate both heaven and hell as well.

A truly moral life has never been based on fear or on allurement. Nor can it ever be. If it is, it is an illusion of morality. And this leads to self-deception, not to self-development. The evolution of mankind's knowledge to date has shown the falsity of lives based on this so-called morality. And as a result, the immorality of mankind has been exposed in all its nakedness.

The old concepts of heaven and hell are now disappearing, and along with them, the attraction and fear men once had for them. A great responsibility now rests on the shoulders of the present generation, on our shoulders. We have to find a new basis for moral living. This foundation has always been there but it is up to us to reveal it, to uncover it.

The inner beings of Mahavira, of Buddha, of Christ and of Krishna were not based on false ethics, on a pseudo morality. They lived in love, knowledge and happiness, but not through fear or because of enticements. We must revive the morality that is grounded in love. Without this, there is no possibility for a moral man in the future. Morality based on fear is dead. And if the flame of love is not rekindled, man will have no choice but to become immoral. You cannot force a man to be moral, just as you cannot force an intelligent man to accept some belief blindly. The only path for man to follow is the path of love. It is through love that purity and morality will be reborn. But love in man will only happen when happiness is born in the self. And so the real question is of attaining the experience of inner happiness. If there is happiness within, if there is self-realization, love will grow. One who does not have the total experience of the self cannot achieve happiness. Happiness comes from being established in the self. And so self-knowledge spreads from his being. What a man has seen within his self he then sees in all. As soon as one knows the self one knows the whole of existence, the totality of all. And when one sees oneself in every living thing, love is born.

There is no greater revolution than the revolution of love. There is no greater purity, no greater attainment. The man who attains love attains life.

I HAD A BATH IN THE GANGES AND WASHED THE DUST FROM MY BODY. I said to the friends who were with me. "You know, there is another Ganges. If you bathe in it your soul will be cleansed."

"Which Ganges is that?" they asked.

I answered, "The Ganges of love."

I SAW YOU WORSHIPPING GOD and heard you praying to him, and now you tell me I must say something to you about God. What shall I say to you? I will say this much; a prayer that comes from the heart, without sound and words, is better than a prayer that is all sound and words but has no heart in it. But prayers are always just words, and it is precisely for this reason prayers never become love and worship is always lifeless.

How can you reach God with this deathlike worship? How can God's doors be thrown open in answer to these loveless prayers? If God were a stone perhaps these prayers would reach him. I grant you that God is present in stones, but he is not a stone himself. Only those who approach him with love and vitality are able to meet him face to face.

IF YOU NURTURE THE POISON OF HATRED WITHIN YOUR HEART YOU CAN NEVER EXPECT THE FLOWERS OF BLISS TO BLOOM IN YOUR LIFE. They need love to blossom. When the nectar of love is sprinkled in profusion, the flowers of bliss grow tall, spreading their fragrance on the four winds.

IF THE TASK YOU ARE ENGAGED IN NEITHER THRILLS YOU NOR PLEASES OTHERS, would you like to know why? You evidently feel it is a burden that has been imposed on you. Only a job that is undertaken and carried out with joy will bring you pleasure.

GIVE. Give. Give. Spread kindness all around. Render service wherever it is needed. And give love in abundance. He who gives will receive.

SO YOU ARE IN SEARCH OF BLISS? Then get ready to shower bliss on everyone you meet. The world is just an echo - whatever you do comes back to you. The man who rains well-being on others finds himself drenched in blessings that pour down on him from everywhere. And words of abuse are repaid with still viler insults. Never expect love form those at whom you throw stones, and if you stick thorns in others expect nothing more than a rich harvest of nettles. It is an eternal law that hatred begets hatred and love begets love.

THERE ARE FRIENDS WHO HURL INSULTS AT ME AND THEN GO AWAY. My heart is genuinely grateful to them for through the abuses I can feel my love flowing towards them, and it spreads a peace that is not of this world throughout my entire being.

I USED TO THINK A GREAT DEAL ABOUT NON-VIOLENCE, but everything I ever heard about it seemed so superficial. It touched my intellect but not my heart. And slowly I understood why.

The non-violence everyone talked about was negative. The negative can never go deeper than the intellect; to touch life something positive is needed, If by non-violence one means nothing more than the renunciation of violence then it can never have any relation to real renunciation, something positive as well as something negative.

It is the negative character of the term "non-violence" that has made it so deceptive. The word is negative, but the experience to which it refers is a positive one. Non-violence is an experience of pure love, of a love that is not attached to anything at all. A love that is free of attachment is not focused; it is not directed to someone in particular, but to anyone and everyone. In fact, it is not really directed at all; it simply is. Unattached love is non-violence.

The aim of non-violence is to transform man's nature though love. Being non-violent is not renouncing violence, it is expressing love. And when love is there, violence automatically drops away with no effort at all. If a man feels he loves and yet has to make an effort to rid himself of violence then his love is not real at all. Darkness disappears at the advent of light; if it doesn't then you can be sure it isn't light which has come. Love is enough. The very existence of love is the non-existence of violence.

What is love anyway? Generally, what is known as love is really attachment. It is a means of escaping oneself through someone else. This kind of love acts as an intoxicant. It does not free someone from misery, it merely stupefies him, makes it bearable. This kind of love I call the relationship form. It is not really love at all. It is an illusion of love that grows out of one's own wretchedness.

Misery can lead the consciousness of man in two directions - he can try to forget about it or he can do something to relieve it. Through the first approach a man may feel some happiness, some pleasure, but it is transitory because it is not possible to forget about the underlying unhappiness for long. What is popularly known as love is exactly this sort of thing - a state of intoxication, of infatuation, of forgetfulness. It springs out of one's misery and is nothing more than a way to forget it.

The love I speak of as non-violence is the outcome of real happiness. It does not alleviate one's misery, it only happens when one's misery is gone. It is not intoxication, but wakefulness.

The consciousness which chooses the second direction, relief from misery, moves towards the essence of authentic love. When a man is happy inside, love flowers in him. In fact happiness in the inside becomes love on the outside. They are two aspects of the same feeling. Happiness is at the center; love is on the circumference.

This love does not require a relationship for its expression, it is the innate nature of the self. As light pours from the sun, love flows from the self. It has no relation with the outside world at all, nor does it aspire to any. It is totally free. This love I call non-violence.

If a man is in misery he is in a violent state; if he is happy he is non-violent. No one ever commits non-violence. It is not an action. It is existential; it refers to being. It is not a change in one's self.

The important question is no what I do, it is what I am.

Everyone must ask himself whether he is miserable of happy. Everything depends on one's answer to this basic inquiry. But we have to look beyond outward appearances. One must strip oneself naked to perceive the reality, to look clearly, to see without self-deception. But when a man lifts the veils that covers his self he only sees darkness and misery. He becomes afraid. He wants to run, to hide. But those who mask their misery out of fear will never attain happiness. Misery is to be removed, not hidden. And to remove misery, it has to be exposed. This perception is penance; this insight is atonement. Disguising one's misery leads to the world; perceiving one's misery leads to the soul.

What we know as life is nothing more than an illusion, an hallucination. Success is our measure for life. We say a man has made a success of his life when ha has succeeded in forgetting his underlying misery though the intoxication of wealth, of fame or of position. But the real truth of the matter is something totally different. These kinds of people have not attained to life at all, they have lost it. By forgetting their misery they are committing suicide.

Becoming aware of one's misery is planting the seed of understanding in the soul. Misery contains the essence of awakening within it. One who does not try to escape from himself will awaken into a new consciousness, fresh and unprecedented. He will become the witness to an inner revolution that will transform him entirely. Within himself he will see the darkness dissolving and he will discover that light pervades his entire consciousness. In this light he will come to know himself for the first time. Then he will realize for the first time, who he is.

When a man can feel the urge of awareness beginning to pierce through his misery, himself- awakening has begun. Only those who face the extremes of their misery finally transcend it. To know the truth requires this kind of courage.

Knowing who I am is knowing the truth. And then all the pain is gone. Misery is nothing but ignorance of one's self. When the self is discovered, one lives in consciousness and bliss. This is BRAHMAN; this is God, To know the self, to know God, is to know the truth. To know the truth is to attain happiness. When truth is attained, love and happiness flower in one's inner being. Happiness within becomes non-violence without.

Non-violence is a result of the experience of truth. And then the fragrance of non-violence spreads from one's being on the four winds.

LOVE IS FREEDOM. Even the bonds of love are freedom. The man who binds himself with the infinite bonds of infinite love becomes free. So I say, don't seek freedom - seek love.

More times than not the search for freedom leads to the chain of egoism, but he search for love cannot even begin before the ego has been destroyed. The search for love means the death of the ego, and the annihilation of the ego is freedom itself.

The ego dreams of possessing the world. It is afraid of death so it even begins to dream of triumphing over salvation. The ego exists in the race for worldly things and it will also continue to exist in the race for spiritual salvation. The man who does not understand this will fall into the valley of self-deception.

The slavery and bondage of this world coexist with the ego. Isn't the ego slavery itself? Isn't the ego the birthplace of all bondage? I ask, how can the seeds of salvation root in that soil?

What can be more absurd, more stupid, than the desire of the egoist for salvation? For salvation, it is not the ego that has to be liberated, it is we ourselves who have to be freed from the ego. That is why egoists are not afraid of renunciation, of self-sacrifice, of religion, of perfect knowledge, of salvation - but are afraid of love.

The ego can escape in renunciation, in self-sacrifice or in the hope of salvation, but it cannot escape in love. Love is not the ego's salvation. It can never be. Love is complete and total liberation from the ego. Forever.

SOMEWHERE DOSTOJEVSKY HAS A CHARACTER SAY, "I wish to assure you that my love for mankind is increasing every day, but at the same time my love for my associates is decreasing."

How easy it is love mankind but how difficult it is to love men! And perhaps the less a man loves his fellow men the more he loves mankind! We do not love ourselves and so this attitude suits us quite well. This is how we escape our duty to love ourselves and how we avoid any remorse that could rise out of this self-deception. This is the self-same reason those who profess to love humanity are always so hard-hearted, so ruthless and cruel. Mass murder can be carried out with no compunction whatsoever in the name of this love and concern for humanity.

I have no wish to placate you with false, hollow and worthless words exhorting you to love mankind.

The so-called religions have said these things to you for generations. I am here to urge you to love real men, to love your fellow beings - not mankind but the men who live and work around you.

Humanity is just a word; mankind is just a label. You cannot find humanity or mankind anywhere.

And so humanity is easy to love because the only thing you have to do is mouth a few platitudes.

The problem centers around real men, around men like you, around men who walk on the earth beside you. To love them is nothing short of penance; it is a great atonement. To love them is a great spiritual discipline; it is a noble task indeed. To love them you have to go through a revolution that shakes you to your very roots. It is to such a love that I call you. This alone is what real religion is all about.

I ONCE SAID SOMEWHERE THAT I WAS AN EMPEROR and someone asked, "Where is your crown?"

I replied, "It is not on my head but in my heart. It is not made of precious stones but of virtuous thoughts and deeds. It does not glitter with diamonds and emeralds but sparkles with the lights of knowledge, peace and love. Any emperor who wants to wear this crown has to become a beggar first."

HAVEN'T YOU NOTICED how often we search in far of places for what is really close at hand? This is the case with happiness. Understand where happiness exists. That is where you will find it, not where you are seeking it.

A PAIR OF TRAVELERS TOOK SHELTER for a few days in a very squalid hut. One of them grumbled and complained about the dirt and the mess, while the other man immediately set about cleaning the place. He found immense satisfaction in this labor of love. The same hut made one man quite miserable and another very happy.

Is there a greater satisfaction to be found in life than undertaking a task with love? Is there anything more gratifying than serving others? No, nothing at all if you seek lasting pleasure in life try to make your worldly abode as clean and tidy as possible and leave it more beautiful that you found it for those who come after. You will always find happiness in the creation of beauty WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO MANKIND? It always surprises me how we manage to keep on living despite so much misery, despite such a general sense of futility, despite such utter boredom.

When I look into the soul of man I see only darkness; when I ponder his existence I find nothing but death. Man is alive but has no concept of life at all. Life has become a burden to him. Without beauty, peace, happiness and illumination, life is life in name only. Have we totally forgotten how to live? The animals, birds, and even the plants seem to exist in greater harmony with each other than man is able to do.

Some say the prosperity of mankind is increasing by leaps and bounds. God save us from this kind of prosperity! This is not prosperity, it is just a cover-up for our poverty for our weaknesses.

Prosperity and power are ways to escape from one's self. It fills my heart with sorrow and pain when I see the inner poverty and anguish that lies beneath the mantle of this so-called prosperity.

Anyone who gives this the slightest thought will easily realize that material affluence is only a way to conceal inner poverty. Those who suffer from a sense of inferiority are the ones who hanker after position and wealth. To escape from his inner being, form what he really is, a man tries to project another being, another personality on the outside. What a man pretends to be outwardly is generally the opposite of what he is really like. This is why the proud appear to be humble, the sensual become celibate, the poor seek affluence and the wealthy talk of renunciation. It is foolishness to say the prosperity of mankind has increased; the reverse is what has actually happened.

The richer a man becomes on the outside, the poorer he becomes on the inside. In his race for outer riches he totally forgets about the attainment of inner wealth. A man really grows, really develops when his consciousness rises to the heights of beauty, harmony and truth.

I would like to know wether you are satisfied with material things or whether you want to develop your consciousness. The man who is satisfied with he outside world will always be basically unhappy.

This kind of life is simply one of convenience. Convenience is only the absence of trouble, whereas real satisfaction is the attainment of happiness.

What does your heart say? What is the greatest desire of your life? Have you ever asked yourself these questions? If not, then let me ask you now. If you were to ask me I would reply that I wish to attain to that state where nothing further remains to be attained. Is this not the answer that pulsates in your innermost soul as well? I do not ask this question of you alone, I have also asked it of thousands and thousands of others.

It is my observation that all human hearts are the same and that their ultimate desire is also the same. This soul wants happiness, perfect and pure happiness, because only then will all desires end. As long as desire exists misery exists, because with desire there can be no peace.

The total absence of desire brings happiness. It also brings freedom and liberation, because whenever something is lacking there are both limits and dependency. Only when nothing at all is lacking is there the possibility of total freedom. Freedom brings happiness. And happiness is salvation.

The desire for total happiness and for ultimate freedom lies dormant in everyone. It is in the form of a seed. It is like a seed that contains a tree within it. In the same way, the fulfillment of man's ultimate desire is hidden in his very nature. In its perfectly developed state, it is our nature to be happy, to be free. Our real nature is the only thing that is true, and only perfecting it can bring complete satisfaction.

The man who does not seek to fulfill his own nature mistakenly thinks prosperity will alleviate his misery. But material wealth can never fill his inner emptiness. And so, even when a man attains everything possible in the world he still feels that he has missed out on something. His innermost being remains empty. As Buddha once said, "Desire is difficult to fulfill."

It is strange that no matter what a man may attain he is never satisfied, that even after he has accomplished his goal he yearns for still greater achievements. And so the poverty of beggars and emperors is the same. At this level, there is no difference between them at all.

No matter what gains a man makes in the outer world they are unstable. They can be lost, destroyed at any time and in the end death claims them. So it is not surprising that one's inner heart is never fulfilled by these sorts of things, by things that can so easily be taken away. This kind of prosperity will never give a man a sense of security, no matter how strenuously he pursues it. What really happens is that a man has to provide security for the things he has acquired.

It must be clearly understood that outward power and prosperity can never eradicate one's sense of want, one's insecurity or one's fear. Self-deception is the only way to camouflage these feelings.

Prosperity is an intoxicant; it hides the reality of life. And this type of forgetfulness is far worse than poverty itself because it prevents a man from doing anything to rid himself of his real poverty.

Poverty is an intoxicant; it hides the reality of life. And this type of forgetfulness is far worse than poverty itself because it prevents a man from doing anything to rid himself of his real poverty. Poverty is not caused by the absence of any material object, nor by the lack of power or prosperity, because even if one becomes rich and powerful it is still there. Do you not see the poverty of those who seem to have everything. Have your burdens ever been lightened by your material possessions?

My friends, there is a great difference between prosperity and the illusion of prosperity. All external wealth, power and security are but shadows of the real riches that exist within you. The basic reason for this feeling of poverty is not the non-attainment of anything external, it comes from having turned away from the self. And so this feeling cannot be eradicated by anything outer, it can only be erased from within.

The nature of the self is bliss. It is not a quality of the self, it is its very essence. Happiness is not a relationship with the self, the self is bliss itself. They are just two names for the same truth.

What we call the self is bliss from the experiential point of view, so be careful not to confuse what you know as happiness with real happiness. Real happiness is the self itself. When this has been attained the search for all else ceases. Achieving a false kind of happiness only intensifies the search, and the fear of losing this so-called happiness disturbs one's peace of mind. Water that increases one's thirst is not really water at all. Christ said. "Come ,let me lead you to the well whose water will quench your thirst forever."

We continuously mistake pleasure for happiness. Pleasure is only a shadow, only the reflection of happiness. But most people exist in the illusion that his phantom of happiness is what life is all about. And naturally they are ultimately disillusioned. It is like mistaking the reflection of the moon itself and trying to grab hold of it. The deeper a man dives into a lake to find the moon the further and further away he goes from the real moon.

And in the same way, in their search for pleasure, people move further and further away form happiness. This path only leads to misery. Do you see the truth in what I am saying? Surely your own life must bear witness to the fact that the race after pleasure only leads to unhappiness.

But this is quite natural. A reflection is outwardly identical to the original, but it is not the real thing at all.

All pleasures hold out the promise of happiness and give one the assurance that they are happiness itself - but pleasure is only the shadow of happiness. Accepting pleasure as happiness can only result in failure and in feelings of remorse. How can I catch you by trying to grab your shadow? And even if I did catch your shadow, what would I have in my hands?

Let me also remind you that a reflection is always opposite to what it is reflecting. If I stand in front of a mirror my reflected image is exactly opposite to the way I am really standing. And this is also true of pleasure. It is just the reflection of happiness. Happiness is an inner quality; pleasure is an outer manifestation, only existing in the material world.

Only happiness is bliss. Continue your pursuit of pleasure and you will discover for your selves the truth of what I am saying. All pleasure ends in misery.

But what something becomes at the end it was at the beginning as well. Because your vision does no penetrate deeply enough, what you should be able to perceive at the beginning is only apparent to you at the end. It is just not possible that what is revealed at the end of some event was not also present at the outset. The end is but a development of the beginnings. What was hidden in the beginning is manifest at the end.

But you see things in reverse order - if, indeed, you see anything at all. Over and over again you keep on following paths that lead you to misery, pain and remorse. Why does man do the same things over and over again when he ends up in misery every time? Why? Perhaps it is because he sees no other path before him. That is why I say your sight is dim and distorted; that is why I question whether you have any sight at all.

There are very few people who actually use their eyes. Everyone has two eyes, but in spite of them most people are blind. The man who does no see within himself has not yet used his eyes. Only the man who has seen the self can really say he has used his eyes. If a man is not able to see his self, will he ever really be able to see anything?

My friends, your ability to see only begins when you see the self. When a man has seen his self he begins to move in the direction of happiness. He turns towards pleasure no longer. And others can feel this change in him. The direction of pleasure is from one's self towards the world; the direction of happiness, from the world towards the self.

VIRTUE IS HAPPINESS.

ONE DAY A FRIEND AND I WERE WALKING through a field when we noticed some farmers sowing seeds and singing merrily at their work. Their songs delighted me, but my friend with me was very gloomy. He was planning to become a sannyasin.

"Come," I said, "let's go watch the farmers sowing and listen to their songs."

I speak the truth when I tell you that the whole of existence is one vast field. And those who wish to sow the seeds of love, truth and sacrifice must remember that the farmer never sows seeds with tears in his eyes. Only sorrow and misery are sown with tears; and the harvest will also be of tears.

The way to sow seeds is to the accompaniment of joyful songs. The attitude with which the seeds are sown permeates them.

Taking sannyas with a downcast heart will only lead to sorrow. Real sannyas is born out of joy and hope.

THE YOUNG SON OF A FRIEND OF MINE asked his father, "When will I be big enough to do what I want to all the time?"

His father replied, "My dear son, I don't know. I have never seen anyone get that big."

I was also there and I said, "I know the secret. I know how it is possible to grow big enough to do what you always want to do. The way to do this is to love whatsoever you do. That is getting big."

I ONCE MET A HAPPY MAN and discovered the secret of his happiness. He did not worry about finding work that suited his tastes but knew how to love the tasks that fell to his lot.

WHAT CAN I GIVE TO YOU? Shall I present you with precious a gem? No, after all it is only a stone.

A beautiful flower? No, I won't give you a flower that will fade away. I shall give you the overflowing love form my own heart. It is not hard like stone or transient like a flower. The love form a man's heart is the perfume of God. It is the divine music that thrills the listener to his very core.

THE REALIZATION OF TRUTH, THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE SOUL, is not a matter for intellectual discussion or mental deliberation. Only those who remain worthy and receptive through constant effort will be able to comprehend truth.

Our knowledge of the physical world is limited by our capacity to know, but truth is not limited to the extent of our knowledge at all. You must have noticed that no matter what you come to know, something else always remains to be known. The frontiers of truth are always beyond the scope of our knowledge. It does not necessarily follow that what we know is true; truth is much too vast for the reach of our comprehension. It is incomplete, imperfect. The man who thinks the limits of his knowledge and those of truth are the same, gets stuck there; he is not able to move ahead any further.

Even as far as the objective world is concerned our knowledge is restricted. It is limited to what we perceive through our senses. To a blind man there is no such thing as light in his world. You will never find anyone with a true concept of light in a community of blind men. They can never completely understand darkness either, because the experience of light is an essential factor in understanding darkness, in comprehending the absence of light. If a man is deaf, sound is a total stranger to him. The only part of existence that is revealed to us is that which is intelligent to our senses.

Our world is relative to our abilities of perception. But we cannot truly say that this is all the real world is. The frontiers of the world we experience and those of the real world are not the same at all. We restrict our world to ourselves.

Many worlds exist within this one world. There are as many worlds as there are individuals in each of the different species. And on an even more minute level of examination, there are as many worlds as there are living organisms. In this one world the number of individual worlds is countless because the number of beings who know, perceive and experience are countless as well. The universe is subdivided into as many imaginary worlds as there are separate cogs in a wheel. On a lower level than man there are quite a large number of animals whose sense faculties are far inferior to those of men. We know that many of them cannot see or hear. Some cannot taste; some cannot smell.

These creatures do not have the total experience of sight, sound, touch, taste and smell that man has. The realm of a man's experience extends only as far as his senses allow, and it would be sheer ignorance to try to restrict the real world to that which our limited knowledge is able to perceive.

Had we been blessed with more senses we would most likely have extended our world of experience still further. This is what the inventions of science have allowed us to do. I only bring this up to illustrate that our knowledge is relative to our capacity to know, to the abilities of our senses to grasp and to understand things.

What is true of the visible world is also true of the invisible one. Whenever people ask me, "Does the soul exist?" I reply with this question, "Do you have the ability to experience the soul, to know God?"

The real question is one of your ability, not of the existence or non-existence of God. If you have the capacity, then you will surely experience those truths that are now beyond your reach; as long as you do not possess that ability those truths will always appear false to you. If some unknown fear forces you to accept certain things they are not real truths at all. Real truth only comes form your own experience.

Twenty-five centuries ago a seeker after truth fell at the feet of Buddha, beseeching his guidance, "How do you see truth?" he asked. "What I have seen," Buddha replied, "will not help you much. Your sight is not developed enough to see the truth. Whatsoever I say you will misunderstand, because you cannot realize the reality of what you have not yet experienced.

"Once I was in a village," Buddha continued, "and they brought a blind man to me. They asked me to convince him of the existence of light. I told them their request was utter foolishness since the man lacked the instrument of vision, since he had no sight. I told them they should take him to a doctor who could treat his eyes.

"Where there are eyes to see, there is light."

I say the same thing to you. You need not be concerned with truth; your concern should be with whether or not you have the sight necessary to see beyond the objective world.

You only see matter, and whatever exists beyond the world of matter is outside the range of your experience completely. Its vibrations its waves, its impulses fail to have any impact on you. When you meet a friend your contact with him is confined to his physical being. You do not come into contact with his soul. When you look at a tree in your yard, your perception stops at its outer physical limits; you have no access to its inner soul. Why is this? It is because a man who has had no close contact with his own soul, who has had no experience of the vital energy that exists within it, cannot hope to recognize or realize the presence of the universal soul that pervades all things.

The question is not one of God, of truth or of light, it is one of visions. In my view, religion is more a remedy than a subject for deliberation.

If we goad our slumbering energies into action then fresh vistas of experience will open up before us and we will have at our disposal the knowledge of those things that give real meaning, direction and purpose to life. As one's sensitivity becomes finer and one's receptivity grows keener the world of matter recedes into the background, the tangible world falls away. Finally a point is reached when the universe ceases to appear as an object of perception on a gross level and only the pure and unclouded vision of God, of the universal soul remains. But to achieve this you have to ready yourself. The farmer cultivates the soil before he sows the seeds, and those who seek the realization of God must prepare their soil as well. They must tune themselves within to hear the outer symphony that permeates all of existence.

Because our eyes perceive it, the sun is visible to us. The sun makes an impression on us because we have the necessary organ of sight and the necessary capacity for receptivity. When I speak to you may voice enters you and produces a responsive echo because you have a sense organ that enables sound to reach you.

God never ceases to exist, not even for a single moment. Our breath is his; even our limits are his - but you do not realize it because you bar his entrance with you own hands.

There are three stages in the process of keeping this entrance open, three vital keys that can bring about your merger with God. I am going to talk about them now. I shall tell you how to generate that power in yourself by which the gross dissolves and the subtle comes into view, by which material objects vanish and the universal soul becomes visible. The keys I am going to talk about will take you from the visible to the invisible, form the gross to the subtle, form the world, to God.

The first key is self-love. You have to love yourself. This love has to be unhampered and unconditional. The man who cannot love himself is incapable of loving others. Without love it is impossible to move beyond the physical, beyond the world. The power of love is the only power in man that is not of this world. The door to God can only be opened by the key of love.

Let me interject a note of caution here. You may find it strange to hear me advocating love of oneself since the traditional scriptures are so against it. Directly or indirectly, the precepts and injunctions lain down by the scriptures promote self-hostility. I ask, is it possible to suppress the self without being hostile and antagonistic towards it? The temple of righteousness and virtue has been built on this very conflict within oneself. On the struggle between loving one's self and hating one's self. No one should be surprised to find that his life, if he has based it on this kind of thing, has turned out to be grotesque and uninspired.

The beauty that is life will never reach fruition through self-conflict, because such a man is simply draining his energies, simply wasting those powers which could have made his life a success had they been used correctly. Such a man ties his hands behind his back and then tries to make them fight with each other. Who will conquer whom? Neither success nor defeat is possible. All that is possible is struggle, the eventual depletion of one's energies and ultimately death. And since all of a man's faculties are conspiring together to bring about his self-destruction his life becomes odious to him. He feels lethargic; everything seems futile. Beauty, truth and bliss can only be attained if a man is engaged in the creative cultivation of this self.

And sermons on the suppression of the self will never produce any note of inner harmony either.

They only generate discord and lead to misery, to anxiety, to cares and woes.

The person who is fraught with inner conflict, who fights with himself, who splits himself into friend and foe, who makes enemies of some of his faculties and pits others against them, actually creates a living hell for himself. And the saddest thing of all is that this kind of life is what has been considered a religious life, what has been praised as a life of virtue!

In my view, a life of virtue is a totally different state of affairs. It is not a life of inner conflict but one of inner peace, inner harmony, inner music. It is not a life of self hatred, it is a life of concord, a life of integration. And those who wish to attain to the innate harmony of the soul have to lay the foundation for this at the very beginning. Starting out on a basis of conflict, no one can ever hope to achieve a state of bliss that is devoid of conflict. It is just not possible. In the beginning, the end is already present.

Remember, the first stage is infinitely more important than the final one. God is the perfection of harmony, and if you wish to merge with that divine symphony it is essential you have some semblance of accord, some note of harmony within you to begin with. And how is this note of harmony to be produced? It will never be achieved by self-reproach or self-hostility. It can only be produced by loving yourself. The most basic prerequisites for a life of spiritual endeavor are love of oneself and inner harmony.

This will most likely confuse you. You have often been advised to suppress things inside you but I assure you that there is nothing whatsoever in you that requires suppression or uprooting. There are certain drives within every man that should be harnessed - not eradicated; there are certain forces that must be awakened, that must be loved - not suppressed. They only need to be controlled and directed along their proper course. But anyone who looks upon these drives with hostility will never succeed in transforming them. A man of understanding is even able to transform poison into nectar but one who has no understanding will turn nectar into poison for certain. To me, understanding is nectar; the lack of it, poison.

You must have noticed that we use decaying things as fertilizers, things with foul odors. A short while ago someone gave me a bouquet of fresh flowers. How fragrant they are! But when their perfume first stirred my heart I also remembered the source of their fragrance. As it traveled through the seeds and the stems of the plants that produced these exquisite blossoms, the foul smell of manure had been transformed into this enchanting aroma. If you simply heap manure all over your yard the stench will corrupt the whole atmosphere. But if you spread it on your garden the air around your house will smell of sweetness. What you call a foul smell is only the undeveloped form of what you call fragrance. They are not hostile to each other. A discordant bar of music is nothing but the undeveloped and disarranged form of the same notes that can blend so easily and harmoniously into a beautiful piece of music.

Nothing in life deserves to be smashed or annihilated, but there is much in life that should be transformed, that should be purified, that should be elevated.

There are certain energies in man which are neutral by nature. They are neither favorable nor adverse, neither good nor bad. They are simply neutral. The way in which we use them gives them their form.

One's sexual potentiality, the thrust of passion - against which so-called spiritual leaders have waged unending war of aeons - is neutral. It is a potential. It is this energy, when transformed that evolves into divine energy, into a godly force. It is the primordial creative power.

What happens with your sex energy depends on how you use it. What it can become does not depend on it alone, but on your understanding and on how you live your life. Have you not observed that it becomes brahmacharya, the state of celibacy when it is transformed? bramhacharya is not hostile to passion; brahmacharya is the purification, the transcendence, the sublimation of passion.

In the same way, the energy that manifests itself in violence becomes peace, serenity and tranquility.

It is only a question of transformation.

In life, the process of creation is of far greater importance than the process of destruction. If you can comprehend this fact clearly then the notion of struggling with yourself or of being hostile to yourself will almost never arise in you. The creation of an integrated self is only possible in an atmosphere of self-love.

I would also like to add that the physical body should not be excluded from this love. Give the body abundant love and it becomes alive vital; its slumbering potential is awakened. But please remember I am not speaking of debauchery or of abstinence. Neither the debauchee nor the abstainer loves his body in the way I mean.

The debauchee shows his contempt for his body through his lack of self-restraint. Out of his disdain for his body he is inclined to abuse it. The abstainer has recoiled to the other extreme, but he is equally hostile to the body. Of course, the two have gone in different directions. The abstainer harasses his body in the name of self-control, in the name of renunciation; the other harasses his in the name of licentiousness. But neither feels any thankfulness to the body; neither has any love for the body. One of the characteristic features of a healthy mental equilibrium is a positive and a loving attitude towards the body. harassing the body in any way is an indication of a mind that is unhealthy, of a mind that is sick.

It all boils down to the fact that there are two kinds of mental infirmities that can plague a man.

One is unrestrained enjoyment; the other, thoughtless renunciation. This is why the libertine can so easily make an about-face and dive into renunciation so fully. What a shame he cannot just stop in the middle! It is very unfortunate it is so easy to proceed from one illness to another.

These unbalanced people have taught us much. They have taught us that the body is an enemy, that we have to fight with it. And the religions have become obsessed with the body because of these harmful teachings. But this is to be expected; to be opposed to the body requires focusing a great deal of attention on it.

I say that if you wish to go beyond the body, to rise above the body, do not fight with it, do not allow any hostility towards it to grow in you. Love your body. Seek its friendship. The body is not your enemy; it is an instrument, a wonderful tool to be used. You have to stretch out the hand of friendship to anything you wish to use. And above all else you have to extend a friendly hand towards your own body. It is a marvelous example of God's expertise as a skilled craftsman. It is a ladder laden with secrets that can lead you to God.

Only a mad man fights with a ladder instead of climbing its rungs, but unfortunately we live in a world of such madmen. Beware of them. It is very difficult to assess the havoc they have wrought amongst us.

You have no idea of the thousands of secrets that lie hidden in this body that has been naturally bestowed upon you. If you were able to learn the secrets of your own body alone you would possess the key to the endless mystery of the universal soul. This body is so small and yet how many wonderful mysteries it conceals! The mind is hidden in the body. The soul is hidden in the mind.

God is hidden in the soul.

A certain sage was about to die. He took his leave of his disciples and devotees and then stood up, folded his hands and said, "Oh, my beloved body, it is you who led me to God. I thank you for it.

Without you I would not have accomplished anything, and yet I subjected you to untold sufferings, to pain, to work for which I gave you nothing in return. I am deeply indebted to you, for the help you gave me was endless. At this hour of farewell I beg your pardon. For all my action against you, for all my forgetfulness towards you, I humbly ask you to excuse me. But for you it would have been impossible for me to reach God!"

You have to see your body in this way. Such an attitude of thankfulness, this kind of loving zeal is necessary. The sage said, "Oh, my beloved body!" And these words bestir a wonderful feeling if bliss within me. Would not he same kind of sympathy and understanding for your body also brighten your life? May I inquire if you have ever looked upon your body with such an overflow of love and sympathy? Have you ever felt blessed by its acts of service? Have you ever told it of your gratitude?

If not, what great ingratitude! What an unbecoming oversight! What discourtesy you have shown it!

Your attitude towards the body must be one of deep understanding and sympathy. You must have enough awareness to look upon it with friendliness and to protect it. It is your fellow traveler on a long, uphill journey; it shares your joys and your sorrows. It is an instrument, a means, a ladder.

And so to me it is impossible for any man with even a single iota of sense to be cruel to it, to enter into any sort of conflict with it whatsoever.

As ill luck would have it, there have been and still are in the world many men of distorted vision whose high handedness, violence, unrelenting suppression and harassments of their own bodies have provoked such feelings of sadness and remorse in us that we have eventually sounded the fervent prayer, "Oh, God, save mankind from such spirituality!" Activities of such magnitude, of such seriousness, only go to show the total lack of intelligence in such men. But unfortunately their evil influences still linger on, still haunt mankind even today. Let us all keep away form such sick and perverted sermonizers. These kinds of pulpiteers do not deserve to be revered, they need to be healed. I certainly hope we will be able to cure them one day.

As I have explained before, this hostility to the body is a reaction to the resulting weakness, dissatisfaction and sense of failure that comes from unrestrained sensual indulgence. And so you blame your innocent body for your own sinfulness. I appeal to you to remain alert to any kind of pain inflicting self-denials based on this hostility to the physical body. Because you have played havoc with your body, you may find yourself tempted by various forms of self-discipline.

If a man sees another man's wealth and grows jealous or another's beauty and becomes envious and plucks out his eyes because of it, I would call him a mad man. Your eyes don't tell you to become anything at all. The eyes are simply ready to carry out your bidding and obey in the manner in which you care to use them. The physical body is your slave; it is your full-time servant. Wherever you wish to take it, it will follow you. If you want to go to hell it is ready to go to hell. If you want to go to heaven it is ready to follow you there. The real question is not of the body, it is of your volition.

Don't ever forget that the physical body just tags along in the wake of the will. You would be committing a great mistake if you were to torture and victimize or even to destroy the body instead of modifying your will. Harassment to the body is a form of violence, and I do not approve of violence, either to the self or to the body, I advocate self-love; I know of nothing more foolish than self-violence.

What I mean by self-love has nothing whatsoever to do with being egocentric. An individual who is centered in the ego never loves himself; if he loved himself he would be free of the ego. And nothing is more diabolical, dispiriting or disheartening than egoism. The ego centered man is the type who indulges in self-violence in the garb of a holy man, because there is no better way for the ego to attain such a great measure of nourishment and satisfaction than this. This is why you always find a kind of haughtiness and superiority in so-called models or virtue, self-styled saints and half-blown sages. They are egotistical because they believe they are saints; they believe that are saints because they are egotistical.

In the vast universe God has created it is just not possible for anything to be unfriendly or hostile to you. It is a different matter, however, how you use, do not use or misuse things. A man of understanding will turn a rock lying on the ground into a stepping stone while a man without understanding will make it a stumbling block. It is the way in which you look at things that matters in life. If one's vision is distorted it makes a tremendous difference. And if you start out by looking upon the physical body with hostility do not be surprised if it eventually turns against you and lets you down. Set out with the idea the body is your friend and it will be your friend forever.

If this hostility disappears, if this grudge against the body is dropped a great load is taken off the self.

You are relieved of tension; you feel peaceful, at rest. Experiment with this yourselves. Remember that the body is only a medium, only a vehicle. On its own it does not lead you anywhere. Feel no ill will towards it. if you look upon it without bias or prejudice you will find that your heart will be naturally filled with thankful love and gratitude for the countless services it has silently rendered you for so long.

But do not stop with the body. Go deeper still. The physical body in only the starting point of our journey towards love of the self. If you move deeper you will encounter the mind. You have to love it too; you have to seek its friendship as well. Man is normally only aware of these two levels of his being - the body and the mind - but if you wish to rise above them or go deeper than them you have to learn how to use them.

Without a doubt, the campaign against the mind has been carried on with even greater intensity than the one against the body. Form spiritual quarters the mind has been the central target for attack.

We must free ourselves from this barrage of hostility. The mind is a power, an energy, and like all others is a divine power. It is a highly developed, very subtle energy. Criticizing it, being hostile to it, or abusing it are actions of sheer stupidity, fraught with fatal consequences.

You must realize that even today man it not completely acquainted with all of the mind's mysteries.

He really does not know how to use his mental energies at all. At present the mind is more or less in the position electricity once was. There was a time when electricity was only a destructive agent, but today it is being employed in colossal creative projects. When man understands his own mental powers in their entirety, it will usher in the most creative and blessed age in human history.

The mind is a reservoir of limitless potential, but those who oppose the mind are clashing with their own potentialities and seeking annihilation at their own hands. They criticize and oppose the mind, they say, because of its unsteadiness, because of the fickleness of its nature. But fickleness is a sign of life! Only those who are afraid of life and eagerly awaiting death welcome sluggishness and unchangeability. They see peace and quiet in these things. But let me warn you; the peace that grows out of lethargy is quite unreal and sluggishness of mind is very self-destructive. What appears to be peace is nothing but the silence and desolation of the cemetery. The restlessness of life is infinitely preferable to the stillness of the graveyard. It is not the forced quiet that comes from suppressing the mind but the serene peace that evolves on its own out of a total understanding of the mind that is worthwhile, that is worth achieving. Only such a peace leads to greater heights. A deathlike silence leads to the earthly, to the material, and not to God.

You need a lively peacefulness, an active silence. Only something that is vital and alive can be a doorway to a life that is sublime. This is why I do not approve of suppressing the mind or of any effort to subdue its fickleness as a way to attain peace. Never allow yourselves to sink into such a mire of stupidity and stagnation. There is already enough sluggishness in the world. Please be kind enough not to add to it any further. I am for a mind that is both lively and peaceful at the same time. And as I pointed out earlier, the only peace of mind that can be alive and vital is the one you acquire without losing the mind's fickleness. Perhaps "mobility" would be a better word than fickleness. Nevertheless if you wish to go somewhere a calm lake is useless; a rushing river flowing towards the sea is what you need.

With mobility of mind a man can reach the universal soul, he can reach God himself. So never be sorry your mind is fickle. Never censure it for this; never look upon it as an enemy because of this.

Rather, be thankful. Bat for the mind's fickleness, but for the mind's mobility you would have become a stagnant pool long ago. If your mind were not fickle you would have ended up siting atop some rubbish heap somewhere absorbed in some intellectual exercise. If the mind were not fickle, the greedy would hanker forever after the objects of their greed, the deluded after the objects of their delusion, the sensual after the objects of their sensuality. And then the path to God would be closed to them forever. It is because the mind is fickle it is able to keep eliminating all its false gods and to keep moving ahead. Since the mind is mobile it does not allow us to remain stationary, to become stale; it goads us on and on.

There is a great and mysterious secret behind this fickleness of the mind and I wish to share it with you; unless and until the mind finds a final resting place that suits it, it will never allow you any peace, any rest. That is why it is fickle. And the mind's final resting place is in God. That is when it sheds its fickleness, never before. See just how kind and benevolent your mind is to you! If it were not so changeable you would get stuck in some kind of worldly trap and would then shelve forever all your attempts to reach God. Do not criticize or abuse your mind for its fickleness. Accept its changeability as a great favor and learn how to utilize it.

Remember, if your mind cannot remain steady, if it fails to stay fixed on something it is due to an error on your part, to a transgression for which you must accept the blame. That is why the mind does not want to remain in that situation, in that space. For example, you try your utmost to concentrate but the mind refuses to cooperate. That is your mistake. By its very nature the mind is inconstant. It is trying to tell you this, to remind you of this. But instead of taking the hint you treat the mind as your enemy!

Let me tell you a tale I have heard.

Once upon a time, when Egypt was ruled by a great pharaoh, an equally great saint lived in a small Egyptian village. He was highly respected, even by the pharaoh himself.

One day, without warning, the pharaoh paid the holy man a visit. He had come to invite the sage to his palace. When the pharaoh arrived at the hut he found that the sage had gone out. Although one of his young disciples was present he did not recognise the pharaoh because of the simple garments he was wearing.

The young man invited the pharaoh to sit down on the ridge at the edge of the field while he went into the village to fetch the holy man. Not only did the pharaoh refuse to sit, he began to pace up and down. Noticing this, the disciple suggested he might prefer to sit under a shady tree. The pharaoh still would not sit down, but continued to pace up and down under the tree. A little puzzled, the disciple then invited the pharaoh to go into the sage's hut and sit there. Still the visitor would not oblige him. He entered the hut be continued pacing back and forth.

The young man went to fetch the holy man in a very perplexed state of mind. On the way back he told his Master of the very odd behavior of the visitor from the city. "My son," the sage said, "he is our pharaoh. Neither in nor around the hut is there a place to sit that befits his status. That is why he is pacing up and down.

Your mind is restless for exactly the same reasons. It cannot find a place worthy enough to be its eternal abode. It is your duty to find it a throne that befits its dignity. But instead of doing this, you fight with it because of its fickleness, you argue with it because it keeps pacing up and down. Have you ever thought about the places to sit you have offered it? Can you really expect it to sit in one of those? My friends, the mind is doing you a favor by it fickleness. You may continue to ask it to sit down an all sorts of places, but it will not sit down. The mind cannot and will not sit anywhere but in God. That is its throne. That is its unlimited generosity to you Don't forget that the so-called fickleness of your mind is really of great help to you. Understand well that if you cannot get it to settle in one place it is because that place is unworthy of it. I might also add that any success you may have in pinning it down in a place unworthy of it amounts to nothing at all. No sooner do your succeed in forcing it to sit somewhere than it gets up and runs off somewhere else after a while. This drifting here and there, this fluttering hither and thither, you will continue until it reaches its point of ultimate rest. And that point of ultimate rest is God.

Many people say the ability to concentrate the mind is essential if one aspires to the realization of God, but I say that once God is realized the mind will then have the necessary concentration. People say the mind has to be kept fixed so that God can be realized, but I say that where God is realized is the point where the mind becomes still, where the mind comes to rest.

The mind rushes naturally towards what ever promises it pleasure and never towards something that may cause it pain, but the moment the prospect of pleasure disappears the mind drops its objective and veers off towards something else. This is why you will never find the mind focused on any one object in particular.

For example, get ten thousand rupees together. At first the mind will figure pleasure awaits it here - but the very next moment it moves on. It has hardly sat down before it is disillusioned. Amass ten lakhs, ten times ten thousand rupees, and you will again experience the same disillusionment. Even ten billion rupee notes covering you from head to toe will not make any difference at all.

You cannot curb the mind's rambling tendency to keep rushing as I said before, towards the place that affords it a hint of pleasure. But as soon as the prospect evaporates it flees. It is only the tiniest bit constant as long as the spell of promised pleasure lasts. But the day it gets a glimpse of real pleasure, of the pleasure that never ends, it drops its wanderlust completely and is filled with absolute peace, with total stillness. Therefore I will never advice you to try to enforce any fixedness to mind whatsoever. A forced steadiness causes sluggishness and leads to stagnation rather than to the attainment of the ultimate goal.

When that final goal is reached, the mind becomes steadfast and remains steadfast on its own.

Unfortunately, this fact has been misunderstood. It has given rise to the notion that the ability to kept the mind still is necessary if one is ever to reach the journey's end. This is as silly as putting the cart before the horse. The fact that your eyes remain closed when you are asleep does not necessarily guarantee you will fall asleep every time you close your eyes.

My advice to you is to steer you mind in the direction from which the perfume of real pleasure comes, to lead your mind slowly and lovingly towards the abode of absolute happiness. Set your mind on real bliss and the mind is sure to follow. But use no force, or compulsion - not even out of forgetfulness. Contrary to what you might expect, force will only provoke resistance. What you prohibit becomes inviting; what you forbid becomes attractive. If you show any inclination to refrain from doing something the mind will take to it with added gusto. This is natural; this is the way the mind is. It is your ignorance of this simple fact that involves you in so many things that normally you could easily avoid.

The fundamental thing to remember is that the mind is not your enemy. Don't suppress its tendencies, but understand them and guide them with love, with common sense. Only that which is worthwhile can survive in the light of reason, in the clarity of common sense.

An unforgettable rule of existence is contained in the phrase "amor vincit omnia" - love conquers all.

Never think for a second you can vanquish anyone by hatred. It never happens. It is impossible to overcome those you hate, those you consider your enemies. You can only conquer those you love.

So if you wish to master your mind you must love it. Only the path of love leads to victory. There is no other way.

So the first key, the first golden rule, is to love yourself. Let transformation, not suppression, be your guiding light. Allow no split within yourself. Marshal all your faculties into one single effort - into love.

All unity, all unification, is born out of love. If you are filled with an abundance of love for what you are, good or bad; if all hate and slander disappear from your mind; if you cease opposing yourself; if you stop finding yourself noble or contemptible and fall in love with all that you are, with you in your totality - then one compact and indivisible personality will form within you. This is what the formation of a personality is. Love is a cementing force. It amalgamates all the heterogeneous elements into one.

When all your different faculties have joined together into one unified whole a great and wonderful energy is created within you. The energy that was split, that was divided, that flowed in different directions and was simply wasted away becomes immense. It becomes astronomical in its synthesized form.

The wondrous achievement of this newfound energy, the outcome of this fusion, is that it has the capacity to transform things that you have always been unable to overcome in spite of constant effort, in spite of never ending struggle. The moment you love those insignificant things, be they failings you saw in yourself or whatever, they are transformed. This unification of personality is the foundation of self-transformation.

If you wish to improve yourself, to develop yourself, to uplift yourself, then you must become a single and unified whole. The man who is split into several pieces wastes all his energy pitting one piece against the other. He drains himself trying to control the pieces, trying to maintain the balance of power between them. There is no energy left over for the transformation of the self, for its purification.

Only the man who loves himself and who is able to attain and retain this undivided and unsplit unity can build up that surplus energy needed for self-transformation.

Now we come to the second key you need to enable you to fly to God. As we have seen the first key is love of oneself - and the second key is love of others. You will never succeed in your progress towards the love that leads to God unless you have abundant goodwill, unbounded love, overflowing kindness and a heart filled with grace towards all living things.

Jesus Christ said, "When you go into church for your daily prayer and kneel down and raise your hands unto the Lord, if you remember that your neighbor is angry with you, first go to him and show him love. Leave God there and go to your neighbor. Love him and beg his pardon. Make peace with him first. How can he who has not yet succeeded in making peace with men succeed in making peace with himself and with the Lord?"

There is no way the person who refuses to love on the human plane can expect to be able to raise his prayer to the level of God.

A sage living in a certain village was one approached by a devotee who expressed the desire to realize God. He asked the holy man what he should do. Looking him up and down and probably getting a very complete picture of him, the sage said, "Well, my son, tell me first of all whether you love anyone. Then I may be able to give you some assistance."

The devotee, under the impression that earthly love was an automatic disqualification for those seeking God, said that he did not love anyone and that his sole purpose in life was to realize God.

The holy man said, "My son, think well. Search your heart. Don't you love your wife, your children, your family or your friends?"

The devotee was emphatic, "No. I don't love anyone at all. I only wish to realize God."

The sage said nothing, but tears began to well up is his eyes. Surprised, the devotee said, "Master, why are you crying? Why don't you say something to me?"

The sage replied, "My son, if only you loved someone I could transform that into the love of God.

But there is no love in you. And love leads to God; love is the direct route to heaven."

In the name of religion you have all been taught not to love anyone else! The teachings of these so-called religious people have just been food for your egos. These injunctions not to love anyone but God will never take you to him; love is the power that is closest to God himself.

Why are people afraid of love? Are they afraid it may tie them down? But love is only constricting when you are unable to continue radiating it, when you are unable to keep on giving more and more.

It is the inadequacy of your love that is the binding factor, not love itself. A love that is insufficient, that is neither fill nor frank and honest, can become a bondage. Only a shrinking love can chain one person to another. A love that is full to the brim, that is always expanding and increasing, breaks through all barriers and begins to overflow. When love really ripens it knows no frontiers; it assumes the unlimited vastness of the sky.

And so I tell you, let your love increase and multiply. Widen the sphere of your love. Place no restrictions on it; make no conditions for it. Let it expand day by day; let it flow over, above and beyond the person you love. Let it stop nowhere; let there be no halting of its course.

It is the fear that love may get stuck somewhere on its journey to God that makes so-called spiritual people wary of love. But if the flow of my love gets stopped somewhere it is my own fault, not that of love. There is no excuse for any hostility towards love whatsoever. If you blame something on love, the fault is really your own. If a man is coarse or narrow-minded his love cannot help but be static, and if he is antagonistic towards love for this reason then he becomes still meaner, even more narrow-minded. What little fullness and richness love possesses is being lost because of these parochial attitudes held buy our so-called religious leaders.

As I see it, we have to increase our love, to let ourselves become submerged in it. If you try to hoard love all you will save is your ego, so expand your love, spread it around. When you toss a pebble into a pond it may sink, but the ripples extend in ever-widening circles from shore to shore. Love is the same. Love produces waves of throbbing vibrations until those ripples of love reach the shore where God is. This kind of love is deep and fervent prayer.

I will never be the one to suggest you should hate your parents or your wife and children or anyone or anything at all. In fact, you must love them so much that they will not be able to contain it within themselves, that it is received in overflowing abundance. Let you love spread everywhere, flooding everything, so that nothing can hold it, so that nothing can contain it. Let your aim be to generate so much love that no one but God can tolerate it. Only the unlimited can sustain the unlimited. No finite receptacle can hold the infinite. A love that is unbounded will fill it, flow over it, flow beyond it. It will be given more than its share, but it will be far beyond its expectations, far more than it can hold.

As far as you are concerned love can never become a hindrance. Love can only be an obstacle if it becomes stuck somewhere. A love that has become stuck is not real love; it is lust, sensual attachment. And expanding, growing love, on the other hand, is deep prayer.

Never forget that a love that comes to a standstill somewhere turns into self-deception, lust, enslavement - but the love that rolls on like the waves in the ocean is no less than a fervent prayer, no less than God himself, no less than the benediction of ultimate and absolute salvation. If your love does not halt on its way, but marches on, it sets you free. Let there be no end to its onward march until the last man in the world has been brought into its fold, into that communion with the universal soul.

Let me repeat a few things to impress them upon you. I advocate love of oneself and I advocate love of others. Also never ever think of love as unholy or evil, and take care your love does not get stuck somewhere en route to God. This stopping is unholy; this stopping in unloving.

Those who look upon love as profane and view it in a narrow-minded way never try to understand that the love they are condemning is simply love that has been restricted, that has been impeded on its way to God. But the more love is restricted the shabbier it becomes. And the man who withholds his love from others becomes completely cornered in his ego. He gets stuck in the ego - hung up on the I-ness and my-ness of life. In this whole, vast universe the two poles that are the furthest apart are the center of the ego and the abode of God. Stopping, or even pausing at "I" leads to hell.

There is no end to the pain and misery of the egoistic man, because all the doors to bliss are closed to him. And only love can open them. All the doors to beauty and harmony are closed to him too.

And only love can open them as well. Love is the mysterious and secret key to the abode of truth, beauty and goodness. Whatever is fine and good and perfect in life can only be revealed by using this wonderful key. It is the ego that locks the door.

There is one door, however, that egoism can open - the door of hell. That is the only door it can open.

Remember, except for these two there are no other keys. And no man can hold both keys in his hands at the same time. It is a matter of divine law that a man can only have one key in his possession at one time. The man who is willing to let one go is the only man who can have the other.

Not only does the key of love open the hearts of men, it also opens the hearts of everything under the sun - of every rock, of every plant, of every animal, of God himself. Luther Burbank, the celebrated American botanist, is remembered throughout the world for something the profundity of his love wrought in the vegetable kingdom. He was able to make plants accede to his requests.

Once he said to some cacti "My friends, you need not be afraid of anyone. You don't need these thorns to protect you. Isn't the great love I have for you enough to protect you?

In the end the cacti listened to him. And as a token of their love those thorny desert plants brought forth a whole new variety totally devoid of thorns. Whenever anyone asked him how he had achieved this impossible feat he would reply, "With love."

I also wish to assure you that even the impossible is possible through love. Man cannot conceive a greater impossibility than God, and yet he too yields to love. Love is never an impossibility. Love is such a very simply thing. Love is present in everyone. It only needs to be developed; it only needs to grow.

Although the seeds of love have been sown in all men it is only the very fortunate who live to enjoy the flowers of love. Why is this? It is because we never allow the seeds of love to germinate. We seek love but are not willing to give it. Love grows when it is offered, not when it is sought.

Remember, love is an unconditional offering. The man who is capable of giving love receives it in abundance. And giving love freely also creates the capacity to accept it. The giving of love is what qualifies a man to receive it. The measure of love a man is given is commensurate with the amount of love he offers. This is the way greater and greater depths of love are achieved until ones very breath is gradually transformed into love - into full wholesome and perfect love.

The beginning of the perfection of a man's love can always be traced to his readiness to give love and never to any impassioned demand for it. Dictatorial demands for love will never enable anyone to begin perfecting his love. Love's state is imperial, not beggarly. Those who insist on love never receive it, and this failure, which is so dispiriting to them, gradually renders them incapable of giving love as well. And as this inability to give love increases, love becomes even harder and harder for them to obtain.

Please remember that love means giving without any desire for return, without any desire for getting anything back, without any sort of demand at all. You have to free your love from any expectation of return whatsoever. In the affairs of love there can never be any kind of commercial transaction. The pleasure of love, the bliss of love, the fullness of love lies in giving, and not in obtaining something in exchange. The giving must be so abundant and so spontaneous that the question of receiving something in return does not cross your mind at all.

That is why the person who gives his love is always under an obligation to the one who accepts it. It is only through the act of giving love unconditionally, as an all-embracing gift with no strings attached, that you will grow the wings that take you to God.

Let us spread our wings of love and soar upwards into the vast firmament of God. When your wings of love are fully spread the idea that some things belong to you and some things belong to others, the awareness of mine and yours, disappears - and what remains is consciousness, the very being of God himself.

In the absence of love man wanders in the desert of egoism, amidst the thorny shrubs of hatred, violence and anger. Once your wings of love have grown there is no need to remain stuck on this sandy, desolate terrain. Then your flight to the wonderful world of beauty, to the limitless, inexhaustible and perfect beauty becomes so easy. So let us be filled with love, with love towards all, with love unconditional. Standing or sitting, sleeping or walking, be submerged in love. Love is the very breath of our existence; love is the waves that surge in your heart.

Now you have reached the precincts of the sacred temple of God, so there is no longer any need to visit ordinary temples. Temples with idols of stone can neither claim perfection nor reality. And is it surprising that the hearts of those who frequent these temples of stone are hard and rock-like?

I do not doubt that sermons and discussions on God take place within these temples, but what is disseminated from them is nothing but hatred - hatred and violence disguised in the gaudy apparel of false love.

I tell you in all truth that you should recognise no other temple that the temple of love. It is God's only temple. I fear these other temples have been designed to prevent men from reaching the temple of love. Satan himself must have had a hand is this!

Love itself is the only temple. And love itself is the most sacred of scriptures. "The man who has a smattering of the language of love," says Kabir, "is the real scholar." Certainly nothing remains to be learned if one has learned all about love. The mastery of love is the mastery of learning. And the man who hasn't learned the art of loving is totally ignorant. No knowledge, no feeling, no experience is superior to that of love. The eye of love reads what is written on leaves, carved on stones or hidden in the waves. The signature, the autograph of God is everywhere!

Of what real use are the works of mortals? What can we gain from the words of ordinary men?

Where will they lead us? The words of man cannot take us above and beyond man, that is for certain. To go beyond man we must leave man behind. In fact, man's words, his scriptures, his principles are all obstacles on the path to God. You have to read, to learn, to comprehend what is God's reach to him. And the word of God is written in love. One has to learn the language of man to read what man has written, to read his SHASTRAS, his scriptures, but to read God's book you have to learn God's language. And God's language is love. If you wish to attain to God's language learn the art of love.

God's entire creation surrounds you. Look at it your eyes will not fail you. But if there is no love in you, you will neither be able to see it nor to know it. A great and mysterious miracle takes place when you begin to look around with the eye of love. What you saw before fades away and what had escaped your notice comes into view. Then nothing is left but the form of God, nothing but manifestations of the divine.

What the scholar loses, the lover attains; what learning misses, love achieves. For the scholar who has a smattering of love's language, however, it is a different matter. Nevertheless, entering into the depths of life is impossible without love. On its own, knowledge tends to get lost because it always circles things, it always takes the long way around. And it is also a misconception to think that knowledge can annihilate the distance between man and God. Only through love can this distance disappear. Knowledge goes no deeper than the physical body, but love does not stop before it reaches the soul. And knowledge that is divorced from love is incomplete, not really real at all. Only knowledge that is contained in love is real knowledge.

What shall I say about the importance of love? What shall I say about how to realise it? Is one to repeat the word "love" as a mantra, over and over and over again like some zealots do with the names of Ram and of Krishna? Will repeating the word help you to attain love? Never. Mere repetition of some word will never achieve anything. Love must be lived; it must become part and parcel of your very being. Your life will only be purposeful, meaningful, when the vitality of love throbs through every moment of it.

Be alert to the energy of love; let it awaken within you. Let no opportunity to love ever find it slumbering inside you. Let no call to love ever go unheeded. Let you love provide a fitting reply to every challenge, and even when non comes from any quarter, let your love continue to flow as light streams from a lamp, as perfume pours from a flower. A steady and unbroken current of love should always radiate from you being.

Always keep the fire of love blazing high within and you will find there are no obstacles in your way.

By its constant flow even the gentlest little stream erodes the biggest boulder and so clears the path before it. And can anyone deny that there are enormous stumbling blocks on the path of love? There are huge obstacles in love's path for certain, but the power of love is boundless and more than equal to any barriers. Just let the limitless energy of your love flow on unceasingly; let it be always active, always on the move. Love goes about its business slowly and silently but with a quiet efficiency that eventually wares huge rocks down into particles of sand. A lot of fuss is a sign of weakness; powerful forces function silently. And how silent and free from fuss is the creative activity of God!

Give love the chance to transform your very roots. Love's potion can give you a new life, a life that will never end. This is why love is unafraid even in the face of death. Love knows no death at all.

In 1857, when the Indians revolted against their rulers, the English put to the spear a sage who had been silent for years. They took him to be a spy, an agitator. The sage laughed as the spear entered his body and spoke his first words in years. He said, "TAT-TWAM-ASI"; he said, "thou too are that." The soldier who speared him was "that" too; he was the universal soul as well. Even at the moment of his death he embraced his murdered with the glow of deep love and profound prayer in his eyes. He had long before discarded words and selfishness and had filled his being with pure love. Otherwise, how could love have gushed from his when the spear penetrated his flesh? During all the years when his heart seemed mute to all outward appearances it was only filling up with love.

It had become a veritable fountain of love and it made it impossible for him to look upon his murderer as an enemy. He only saw the beloved in him. Love had transformed an enemy into a friend and death into salvation.

Love can change darkness into light or poison into nectar. Can you conceive of a miracle more stupendous than the miracle of love? Love transforms everything because it transforms one's very vision. Vision is a creative force. What we see is our world; our world is what our eyes perceive.

If there is love in one's eyes, love is all around. But if there is no love, then there is not even God.

Instead, wherever we look we see only enemies.

Early one morning a traveler approached a village. He ran into an old man on the outskirts and inquired, "Sir, tell me, what sort of people are the villagers who live here? I have left my own village and am considering settling here."

The old man looked the stranger over and said, "First, may I ask you what kind of people have lived in the village you have just left?"

As soon as he heard this question the stranger become very red in the face and quite angry. "The very thought of those people fills me with rage," he said. "Please don't mention those wretched people to me at all. It is because of them that I had to leave the village. You won't find such wicked people anywhere else in the world."

The old man said, "Then brother, I am sorry, but the villagers here are no better. You will only find wicked people here as well. Perhaps you had better go and live in some other village."

The first man had hardly left when another stranger approached the old man with the same question.

"Sir, what sort of people are the villagers that live here?" he asked. "I think I should like to stay here, I had to leave my own village."

The old man replied, "Before I answer you question I would like to know what kind of people live in the village you have just left."

The man replied, "Although I have never met such nice people anywhere else I had to leave the village for some compelling personal reasons." As he spoke these words, loving tears rolled down his cheeks at the memory of his former home.

The old man quickly said, "You are welcome to live in this village, my son. You will find the people here even nicer than those you have left behind. There are many, many good people here." And after a pause the old man added, "No matter which village you go to you will be warmly welcomed.

In every village you will find good people, nice people. The world is what your eyes perceive."

The world in nothing; it is nothing but your eyes. If your eyes are full of love you will see only hearts throbbing with love everywhere you look. And when you see the whole world pulsating with love know well that is the hour of your realization, the hour of your realization of the divine of God.

Reaching the door of God does not mean that Ram will be waiting for you in cloud-covered splendor, armed with bows and arrows. It does not mean that Krishna will be standing there, piping a tune of celestial welcome on his divine flute. Attaining God does not mean that some elderly gentleman with a long white beard will be sitting there at a switchboard controlling the universe. Approaching God means attaining that experience where the universe ceases to be a separate object and you merge with the universal soul, where the object vanishes and only the energy, the force, the power remains. It means the attainment of supreme bliss. It means the attainment of truth, of beauty, of eternity.

God is not a person; he is an experience. God is bliss, a limitless ocean of bliss. But before you can merge into that ocean you first have to generate a preliminary realization of the ocean within yourself.

Of the three keys that can lead you to God I have already spoken of the first two. The first is self-love; the second, love of others. Let us now talk about the third key, the love of God himself. To attain this third key, you have to go beyond the other two. The second is a step beyond the first, and the third is a step beyond both.

The first step involves admitting "I am". Although it is not a reality, it is nonetheless a fact. And to the ignorant it is a more important fact than anything else. The knowledge of "I am" may be a means to your awakening, but it can never be a means of escape.Those who try to flee from it will always find it close on their heels. Can you ever really run away form your shadow? You know you can't. The more you try to escape it the faster it pursues you.

Simply accept the fact of the ego, the fact of "I am" and get involved in the search of love. As love grows in you egoism first begins to diminish and then if finally fades away completely. If the man accepts that his shadow exists and just steps into the light of the sun he automatically frees himself from his own shadow and from the shadow of all sorts of other things. Egoism is to love as shadows are to light. The impenetrable darkness of egoism disappears in the all-illuminating light of love.

It is the existence of "I" that gives rise to "him"; only when I am "I" are others "others". In the light of love both the awareness of "I" and the awareness of "the other" disappear. And in the end only love remains; then there is neither "I" nor "you" nor "other" - there is only love. This is the state of love I call the love of God. This love is not directed towards anyone in particular, not from or for or on behalf of anyone or anything in particular. It simply is. This pure and simple love I call the love of God.

What are the implications of this love of God? It means the disappearance of that illusion that has been present for so long, the idea that "I am something", that "I am what I am". This is entirely untrue, utterly unreal. You really are not, not at all. You have no personal existence whatsoever.

Consider the phenomenon of breathing, for example. Breath is drawn into your body and then expelled. If you think that it is you who is breathing, you are wrong. One day the air that goes out simply does not come back in - so how can you say you are breathing? If you think you are living, that you are doing this living, you are wrong. The day life withdraws from you, you are unable to remain here even for a single moment. If you think you are born your are worn. If you think you die, you are wrong. You have never been born, nor will you ever die. Your breath is not yours, nor do you have any control over it.

Neither life nor death are yours. Some mysterious drama is being enacted within you. Someone is at play inside you. Someone speaks through you; someone expresses through you. Someone is born within you; someone dies within you. You are a playground, a playing field where players come and go. You are just a flute though which someone plays beautiful music.

"I am no more than a hollow piece of bamboo." said Kabir, "and the songs of love directed to God are all his." The man who realizes this understands. The man who has used the two keys I have already mentioned will be able to comprehend this easily and will be able to realize that there is no such thing as individuality in this world. Whatsoever exists, exists together - collectively, jointly. Nothing exists in isolation.

The breath you think of as yours has already been the breath of millions and millions of others; this air I am now exhaling will become the breath of millions and millions yet to come into this world. The billions of cells that make up my physical body have once been part and parcel of billions of other bodies. How can I call this body mine? When I leave this body these cells will help formulate the bodies of countless others. Even before you leave the body it undergoes change every moment, discarding old cells, forming new ones. And the new cell that enter your body are the old cells that have come from others. This body of mine has already belonged to thousands of men, to millions of animals, to billions of other living organisms and will, in the future, constitute millions more bodies just the same. How can I say it is mine?

The mind is not separate either. The component parts of the mind come and go just like those of the body. There is nothing that is mind there is nothing that is yours. Adopting this attitude is the first step in developing love for God.

When a man actually realizes that nothing is his, when this attitude goes deep since nothing is his he begins to feel that he does not exist at all. As long as you have the idea that you possess something the delusion that you are persists and so you begin to want things. You measure your greatness by the size of your house; you measure your greatness by the elevated post you occupy; you measure your greatness by the extent of all your property; you measure your greatness by the power you wield. Why? I-ness increases in proportion to one's possessions. I-ness grows right along with my- ness. The frontiers of I-ness and "my-ness" coincide. And so if the illusion of my-ness is eliminated, the basis for I-ness disappears. If nothing is mine, if I have nothing, what am "I" left with then? Then where is "I"? With my-ness gone, I-ness is left empty-handed.

People often ask me whether I am suggesting they simply drop everything and run away to rid themselves of I-ness, of the illusion of "I". My usual reply is that it is not a question of renouncing or of not renouncing what one possesses, but that the crux of the matter lies in one's attitude towards one's possessions. Even if you lay aside everything you own the attitude of my-ness can easily continue. That is why so-called renouncers keep a careful account of what they have renounced and measure the growth of their renunciation by the value of the things they have given up. One holy man once told me, "I have thrown away hundreds of thousands of rupees." I asked his when he had done this. He replied, "About thirty years ago." When I heard this I was quite amused and said.

"You don't seem to have gained much by your action; other wise, in thirty years you should have forgotten about all those lakhs of rupees."

The question is not one of renunciation, but one of realization. Unless realization has happened to you, even your renunciation may feed your ego, may puff it up even more. It is the assumption that things are yours that is wrong; there is nothing wrong with using things that exist.

There are two types of misguided approaches as far as this question is concerned. One way of looking at things is that of the hedonist. He says. "These are mine. I will enjoy them." The other viewpoint is that of the renouncer. He says, "These are mine. I will let them go." But both approaches begin with "these are mine." The man of real knowledge takes a third stance. He says, "Whatever is is God's." Things are neither yours nor mine. Even we ourselves are not ours. I really am not; your really are not; The ego is illusion. Everything is simply happening, and I am only part of that process."

If one can achieve and maintain this third attitude then life becomes as natural and as easily accessible as water and air. Such a life is a life of love. And such a life is a life of sacrifice, because love of God means letting the ego go.

Malukdas has said that the birds do not work, that the python does not hunt for a job, and yet God provides for them in abundance. But people have misunderstood these words. They say Malukdas is telling us not to do anything. This is not the correct interpretation at all. Birds work. They work from sunrise to sunset. They build nests; they search for grain. What Malukdas means is that the birds are not conscious of themselves, that when "I am" is not there the desire to acquire disappears.

The attitude of "These are mine" must vanish, and when this is gone the love of God develops. When this development has reached fulfillment and the feeling of "I am not" has been generated, then the revolution about which I have been speaking takes place.

There is a Sufi song that tells the tale of a lover who knocks at his beloved's door. "Who is there?"

is asked from within. His answer is, "It is I, your lover." There is no reply. He knocks again, saying , "please answer." After a long pause he hears, "Go away, There is not enough room in his house for two." He leaves.

Years pass. Summers and winters and rainy seasons come and go; countless moons rise and countless moons set. Finally he returns and knocks at the door once again. The same question comes from within. This time he answers "You alone." The song says the door swings open then.

Had I composed the song I would have thought the time had not yet come for the door to open. The awareness of "you" still indicates the existence of "I". I would have told the young man to go away once again, and the song would go on a little longer.

When the lover says "You alone" silence would prevail once more. He would wait a while and then say, "Let the door be opened now. It is not me any longer, only you alone are." From the inside the voice would say, "He who is conscious of one is still conscious of two. He who remembers you still remembers "I". In this room there is only room for one." The lover would go away.

Days would dissolve into years, but still he would not return, because he would now have no idea that he was to go anywhere at all. He would have no idea he was supposed to return to his beloved.

Finally the young lady herself would go to him and say, "My love, come! The door is open."

Just as "I" vanishes, "you" also vanishes - and what remains is God.

Where "I" and "you" disappear is the starting point of the beginningless and endless existence. It is a limitless ocean of consciousness; it is the being of God himself. You can know it; you can live in it.

You are in it. You stand in it already, you live in it already - but you do not realize it. You do not feel it within you; you do not recognize it outside you. You are too full of "I". Relieve yourself of this burden.

The man who is empty of "I" is the only man who is really full. Get rid of your I-ness. Eliminate it completely.

It is to this end that I have spoken of the three keys, of the three rungs on the ladder to God. When you merge into love you dive into the fullness of the void, into the fullness of emptiness. Move ahead step by step. Get lost in love drop by drop. And at the last, lose yourself in love as a raindrop loses itself in the ocean. Are you not aware that when it loses itself the tiny raindrop becomes the vast and boundless ocean?

ACCEPT LIFE. It is the gracious gift of God. Never fight with life; never flee from it. Love life. There is no greater conquest possible than the victory of love.