LIKES AND DISLIKES ARE MATTERS OF THE MIND
A true guru never worries about people’s likes or dislikes. The only thing he is concerned about is how much he loves. For him, likes or dislikes do not matter at all. As you would read in the Bible, the gardener sows seeds. Some seeds fall on the fertile ground where they bear fruit. Some fall on barren ground where they do not, and some on the rocks which the birds of the air pick up. But the gardener’s duty must plant, and whoever is ready to receive will receive. The force will come into the hearts of those who are ever prepared.
Likes and dislikes are matters of the mind. Anyone’s likes and dislikes depend upon his background, evolutionary standard, and upbringing, and many factors are involved in that. You see this every day in human relationships. Two men meet one girl, and one man would love the girl very much, while the other man would not. The girl is the same, and the same applies either way. So, to like someone or not like someone is an entirely individual thing. But the more you evolve, the more you will start loving the guru and everything else. As you begin developing a greater insight, which is also dependent upon you, you will love your guru more and more, not because of the guru himself, but because of your standard of evolution.
I would love a murderer, a thief, or a saint in equal measure because I do not look at his exterior. A murderer could be a very, very highly spiritual person, and yet because of the force of circumstances, something that might have happened for that moment in his mind, he might have committed something which we would call a vile deed. Therefore, forget to love the guru. Do what the Bible says, “Love thy neighbour as thyself,” and who is your neighbour, not only the one that lives next door to you but the entire world population; they are your neighbours. And that is the principle behind Ahimsa or non-violence. Disliking someone is an act of the vilest form of violence, and who does it harm more? It is not the object of your dislike, but it harms you more because you go nitpicking and fault-finding to dislike someone.
TRUE MASTERS DO NOT CARE FOR PUBLIC OPINION OR NAME OR FAME
You cannot dislike someone if you do not find faults. So, you are going out finding faults, and what right does anyone have to find faults in anyone else? Are you so faultless that you would find fault amongst others? Did Jesus not say, “Those of you who are sinless, cast the first stone.” If you look for perfection, first become perfect, and then you will find perfection in everything else, and no one that is an embodied being could be one hundred percent perfect. They could be ninety eight percent perfect, including all the greatest Masters like Krishna, Christ, Buddha, and the lot. Because if you are one hundred percent perfect, your body will disintegrate. If you are one hundred percent perfect, you will not be able to eat or drink water, and you will not be able to go to the loo because your body will not function. So, the highest perfection of the highest Master is only up to ninety eight percent. But if you look at history. Look at all the great men; you will know this very well. Even Jesus was the most despised man of his time. His people did not like him. The Romans did not want him, the Sanhedrins and the Zealots, and the crowd did not like him; no one liked him. Even his own closest disciples, the twelve. The one he said, “You will deny me three times before the cock crows.” And the other one gave him away, and when he was in trouble, the ten ran away.
But the true Masters, they do not care at all. They do not care about any public opinion, name, or fame. Because as soon as they want and hanker after name and fame, they build up an ego, and to think of “me and mine” is the greatest obstacle one could ever find. They always think of others.
LIKES AND DISLIKES ARE TWO SIDES OF THE SAME COIN
In history, you will find people like Ramakrishna, an incredible Sage, one of the most remarkable men who walked this earth at the turn of the century. He had cancer. He had throat cancer. Ramana Maharshi, great Sage, his name you must have heard, also suffered from cancer of the stomach. Vivekananda suffered severely from asthma. Rama Tirtha was a very, very sickly man, and so was Buddha, and Jesus was a frail, sickly man also. Why? The story that physicians heal themselves first is false. The Physician who heals himself first is more interested in himself, while these great Masters do not care about themselves because their minds are always for others. Their love is not flowing for themselves, but their passion is flowing for the benefit of humanity, for the upliftment of humanity. This Ramakrishna we spoke about, he said, “If there is only one man I could take to self-realisation, then my mission in life has been fulfilled.” Because it is the path of heroes – it is a path where you go beyond likes and dislikes. They are two sides of the same coin, like the hate/love relationship. There is an excellent dividing line; only the man of intense spiritual force could keep love as love and not cross that thin dividing line of hate. Naturally, disliking involves hating. “I do not like this about that, so I hate that.” There is an element of hate there. Once you have these elements, your spiritual progress stops. You have a guru; he might be a very, very ugly man. Are you looking at his face? Or have you got the strength to look at his inside? What great power he yields, and most of the time, even without saying a word.
THERE ARE SO MANY SUBTLE LAWS GOVERNING PEOPLE’S LIVES
So many things happen in their lives for their upliftment. There are so many things that people would call miraculous. But there are no miracles at all. You just have to be able to understand the finer and finer laws of nature, as I have said many times. A hundred years ago, if you told someone that a machine weighing several hundred tons could fly through the air, they would say you were mad. Or that you, in a moment, could speak to someone ten thousand miles away, and they would tell you you are made. But today, it is a common thing. We hear many aeroplanes flying and phone South Africa, America, England, Denmark, Spain, and wherever. Just like that, pick up the phone, dial the code and dial the number. Fifty or a hundred years ago, they would have been regarded as miracles. But they are not. Through their research, people have found finer and finer laws of electromagnetism and radio waves; there you are; it is a reality.
But other kinds of realities work in a much more subtle form. I will give you one example of a story I heard this morning. Anne Stockdale. She gave Susan a massage, and while we were chatting up there in the quadrangle with people, I said, “Hey Anne, you promised me a massage” because I had got a bit stiff travelling on the plane. So, she gave me a massage. She was in Rajesh and Jasmini’s room and lost an earring. So, she returned to my room and looked around; there was no earring. She went into Suzanne’s room, but there was no earring. Jasmini’s room had no earrings. When she went to her room, she heard my voice distinctly saying, “Look under your bed,” and the earring was there.
What law has been invoked there? The law was straightforward. When she was hunting for an earring, what was the sense of having a pair of earrings and losing one? You might as well throw the other one away. So, when I heard about it yesterday, I just sat and thought she must find it and see it. I do not know the law yet how she listened to my voice. But there it was. So, so many subtler laws govern people’s lives that they are unaware of.
WE MUST TRY TO RISE FROM LIKING A PERSON TO LOVING A PERSON
There are specific subtler laws that also produce likes and dislikes. You often meet someone, and you just do not like the person. You often meet a stranger, and you just seem to like the stranger. So, what happens here is that when you are just like the stranger, there are specific evolutionary standards in you or certain thought formations, certain thought patterns in you which are compatible with the thought patterns and evolutionary standards of the other person. So, an immediate attraction takes place.
Then you could find, say, someone disliking their guru, would be that the guru’s too high and the person might be too low. They cannot look up. They have a sore neck. But the main principle is that we must never dislike anyone. We must try to rise from even liking someone to loving someone, and love asks no questions. Sometimes, when you see a couple walking down the road, you find a beautiful woman walking hand in hand with someone who is very, very plain-looking. You can call it even ugly. There is no such thing as ugly. But then you wonder what she saw in him. You do not need to see. You feel that beauty in the person, and there is beauty in everyone. “Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder,” as the saying goes.
“JUDGE YE NOT THAT YE MAY NOT BE JUDGED”
So, I will not make you like me; this is an erroneous idea. If it comes to the push, I will kick your backside for your benefit. That is true. Not for my benefit, it will hurt my foot. I will give you a hard kick that you will remember for life. That is how a teacher teaches.
I do not know if I told you the story of the guru sitting around the fire with many of his chelas. Then he suddenly took out a burning ember and dabbed it on one of Chela’s arms. Everyone was aghast. He says, “Guruji, why did you do this? You burnt this chela.” So, they pestered him. He did not want to answer them. But they pestered and pestered him. So, he says, “Okay, I will tell you why. The future of this person was to be burnt alive, and I have averted that by just singeing his arm.”
So, if anyone pretends to understand a guru, become a guru first. Reach his level of spirituality; then only will you know him. How many of you can appreciate Krishna, Buddha or Christ? None. Because you have not reached that level. How can you see on top of a ten-storey building if you are not standing on another ten-storey building? You are standing down here, and the ten storeys are high so you will get a distorted view. And then you will start interpreting it according to your little stupid mind. Therefore, it is said, “Judge ye not so that ye may not be judged.” And likes and dislikes are judgements. I dislike X, Y, and Z because I have made judgments about him, which is why I dislike him. If I did not judge him, how can I dislike him? So, it is the weakness of our little minds. There is an element of faith. There is.
YOU CANNOT TRY TO LOVE. YOU JUST LOVE
You start with faith. Everything in this world runs with faith. You go to a restaurant, and food is served to you. You have faith that the food is not going to harm you. How do you know that the food is not poisoned? You drive in your car and have faith that your vehicle will take you home tomorrow. How do you know that you will not have an accident or a puncture or that your car might collapse? How do you know? You have faith. How do you know your husband or wife is faithful to you? But you have trust because faith and trust go together. How do you know your father is your father? You have got no proof of that. Your Mum might have gone for a walk. This is the truth, but you have faith in your mother. You trust your mother, and she tells you, “This is your father,” and you regard him as your father.
Some statisticians have found that hundreds of thousands of children in this world regard their fathers as fathers, and they are not their birth fathers. Statistics have proven this. But you have the faith. So, because of that faith you have in that father, who might not be your father, you have a beautiful cordial relationship with your father, and you have respect for your father. And as far as a guru goes, you have that faith, you have the respect. Many things are demonstrated in your life, which you experience for your evolution, and then your love begins for the guru. That here is genuinely a man of God. I am not trying to love him. You cannot try to love. You just love. It is that simple.
THE INTERNAL GURU WITHIN YOU IS THE SAME GURU THAT STARTED YOU OFF
Later, you develop a knowingness. Before, I used to say that my job as a guru was to awaken the internal guru within you. But I left out the most important sentence, which I thought I would tell later, as people develop more. My job is to create that internal guru within you. Still, when that internal guru is fully developed within you, you will never be able to discard me because you will find that the internal guru that is awakened within you is the same guru that started you off. It is one. The power is one. The love is one. Divinity is one.
EVERYONE IS CONNECTED SPIRITUALLY AND EVEN MATERIALLY
Reading and going through many people’s Progress Forms is heartening. I think I mentioned that tears welled up in my eyes when reading some of them. It is so beautiful to see the flowers growing. So lovely. So, even if I should drop down with a heart attack tomorrow, I shall have no regrets because many a flower has grown so, so beautifully, and many, many a flower is developing still to become beautiful, and that is what the gardener wants. Not for himself, he is dead, but let all the others share the fragrance of those flowers which the gardener has planted because everyone is connected spiritually, and they are even connected materially.
There could never be a vacuum at all. With you sitting here and I sitting here, there are millions and millions of atoms that you cannot see with the naked eye; it is connecting us. We are one solid mass. There was this older man planting a mango tree, and it takes about seven years for a mango tree to bear fruit. This man was about eighty-five, nearly ninety. So, some young men were passing there. They said, “Old man, why are you taking so much trouble to plant a mango tree? It takes about seven years to bear fruit.” So, the old man says, “I am not planting these mango trees for myself. I am planting it for others so they may enjoy the fruits. I would be dead, I know.” And that is the attitude, the love that goes beyond liking and disliking.
WE DO NOT WANT ABSTRACT GODS; WE WANT LIVING GODS
When you use dislike, you only negate the word like by adding a “dis,” prefixing it with a “dis.” It is liking. Remove the “dis” because that “dis” will lead to disease. All disease is a disease. So, do not feel disease, like everything, and let that be like, because like is something on the surface. If you like a pretty picture, you want a lovely hall, you like a pretty flower, that is liking, but that is a step to lead you to love, and when a person really and truly loves, totally unselfishly without any reward, without any expectation of any reward, then know that you are practising God. You are a living God. Because God is so abstract, and he can only be concrete by how much love you have in you. Dante said, “The greater the man, the greater his love.” So simple.
We do not want abstract Gods; we want living Gods. All great Masters serve one purpose only: not only are they God-realised people, high spiritual beings, but they are there in concrete form so that our minds can become concentrated. That is the reason why we worship Krishna, Buddha, and Christ. That is the purpose. The human mind needs something concrete to focus all its energies on, which is why we say Krishna and God are one. Jesus and God are one. We see that people who use a picture, statue, or an idol, as some call it, are not worshipping the idol; they are just using it as a focal point. They are not worshipping the idol, but they are worshipping through the idol to that which is abstract. It is used as a tool, as an instrument only, and that is how gurus are used as an instrument, as a focal point to that Divinity. That is how it works.
… Gururaj Ananda Yogi: Satsang UK 1984 – 18
