ACCEPTANCE SHOULD CONTAIN THE FORCE AND THE POWER OF THE HEART
Acceptance of a thing is usually first created by the mind, where you accept a particular situation with the mind but not necessarily with a blind or biased mind. Acceptance should be done in its true form and with true analysis. Then only is the mental acceptance of any validity.
Anything you accept with your mind today, you can un-accept or reject the next day if there is no true understanding of the matter. So, it is not only the mind that is at play, but more important is the heart that is at play. Acceptance should not only be with the mind, but it should contain the heart’s force and power. It has to have that feeling that I feel; I accept this flower to be beautiful. Today, I might like this flower, and tomorrow, I will get tired of that flower. So what use is that acceptance? But if I thoroughly feel that I accept this flower to be beautiful, then tomorrow, that flower will remain attractive, and the day after, it will still be beautiful. That is true acceptance.
WITH ACCEPTANCE THERE MUST BE DETERMINATION
People often accept things not by strength but by weakness, like cowardice. They say, “Oh well, nothing can be done about it, so okay.” If I am selling a box of chocolates for £2 and cannot find any customer, I sell it for $1, which costs me, and I accept the pound. But there is no happiness in it because I know I have put in a lot of work, put in a lot of trouble, I have traveled around knocking door to door to sell my chocolates, and now because I need to feed my wife and children at home I accept the pound. I am making no profit, but I need that to take home some bread. It is also a kind of acceptance. But, with what feeling do you accept. That is the essential and crucial feeling that “Oh well, it is the will of God. I have done my best.” Then, that acceptance has some fruition. It has some value; otherwise, it is just cowardice.
It is a retreat. I lost my job or shop, but I did not want to. But because you are placed in such circumstances, you have no other way out. But in the beginning, if you accept the situation that I will lose my shop or my job, but I will work very hard to create another problem, a job that is better or a better shop, then that acceptance can bear fruit. So, with acceptance, there must be determination.
The entire India was ruined and is in poverty because of acceptance, a stupid kind of acceptance. They talk of Karma, “Oh, you know what is meant for me, you know will come.” That is absolute rubbish. The fields are left untilled; the agricultural products are not there—so much hunger. Factories are going idle, yet there are millions and millions of people there, but they will not make any effort, and that is not Karma. Karma means action. You do something about it.
Acceptance of the present situation is okay, but you have to be determined to better the situation. You do not go to sponge on others. But if you see that you fulfill your obligations, acceptance is worthwhile. Otherwise, it is a retreat. You are cornered in the street by a few hoodlums. So, what are you going to do? Stand still in the corner; you cannot get away and let those two hoodlums smash you up. No. You will fight. That should be the attitude. You accept that I am in a situation from which I cannot escape, but I am not going to stand still and let them bugger me up. I am going to fight.
A TRUE ACCEPTOR IS A HERO! A MAN, NOT A MOUSE
I had the experience as a young schoolboy where I was going through a lonely street, and there were two young hoodlums there who saw me coming up the road, and they would take off from me whatever few pennies I had on me. But when I saw them standing there, I would not cross over the road and walk on the other side. I put my hand in my pocket to make them feel I had some weapon, and I walked right through between them. And they never touched me! You accept a situation, and you do something about it. Otherwise, you are a coward.
I can give you another example. One Saturday afternoon, I worked late in the office until about 4 o’clock. There was a lot of work to be done. And I said, “Oh, I will leave lunch out today; I will have supper. The work must be done”. In Cape Town, the streets are bare on a Saturday afternoon, and the streets are empty. I had to walk through one road, which was empty. And there were three of these hoodlums and gangsters that saw me. I am always well dressed, and they thought well, here, we could get something. I had about thirty Rand in my pocket. So, they pushed me into a shop doorway and riffled my pocket. I said, “Take it”. They took it and started running off. Then I shouted to them, “Hey, you have forgotten my watch, you have forgotten my fountain pen. Why not take that also?” They came back, and one said to the other in Afrikaans, “Heer ist ein anderes souter mann” which means he is a different kind of man. And they gave me back my wallet and walked away. I accepted the situation, but I did something about it. Do you see how acceptance works? Otherwise, you just take things.
My child is naughty, so I will just accept the child is naughty. No! You acknowledge that the child is naughty, but you teach him. You teach him a lesson even if you must use your strap so he will not be naughty again.
So, there are many facets to acceptance. Not acceptance as a coward; a true acceptor is a hero! A man, not a mouse.
LOVE ALSO REQUIRES ACCEPTANCE
The same thing applies to love; I have made hundreds of tapes on love. I do not know whether I should repeat these things because, most of the time, the same question comes up repeatedly.
Love also requires acceptance. Initially, you accept a person because of their attractiveness and the compatibility between the mind and the spiritual soul. There might be some little spark, which is how you start with love. But, when you allow that spiritual spark to grow bigger and bigger until that spark merges with your Beloved’s spark or the flame, you know what love is about. Otherwise, it just remains a mental concept. You have to experience it; if you do not experience it, it is just on the mind level.
And as you know, the mind is a very, very cunning animal, the worst cunning animal in the world. Today it will say this, tomorrow it will say that. Today, you love a person very much, and tomorrow, you will start hating him if the person is a bit harsh. Then where is the Love?
IN TRUE LOVE, THE MIND, THE BODY, AND THE SPIRIT ARE MERGED INTO ONENESS
Especially me as a Guru. Sometimes, I am harsh to people. I might even show anger, but that is surface anger. It is not from deep down; it is just to teach. Even that harshness is to teach; from that, they learn for themselves to improve their lives. In the Himalayas at the Almora Ashram in the Mayawati Himalayas, instead of getting up at four o’clock, I was just fifteen minutes late, and my Guru came up and canes my backside. “Why are you late?” He was teaching me discipline. I learned from it. Not he! He knows he did not need to be taught. I was the one that needed to be taught. So today, you love somebody very much, and because he says a harsh word to you, you start hating him tomorrow. That is not acceptance, and that is not love. That is not dedication. In love, you have dedication. In love, you have devotion in its totality, where the mind, body, and spirit merge into oneness.
I have a very famous story that some of you might have heard on tape. This fellow went to see his girlfriend and knocked on the door. The lady asked, “Who is it?” And he says, “I am Mr Jones.” The door was not opened. The next night, he goes again, knocks on the door, and she asks from inside, “Who is it?” So, he says, “I am Mr Jones from Dublin.” The door was not opened. The third night, he went again, and he knocked on the door, and she asked, “Who is it?” So, he replied, “I am thee, my love,” and the door was immediately opened.
To find that oneness with another person, there has to be dedication, devotion, sacrifice, and feelings for the other person’s problems. That is how love grows and how oneness is found. We want to love for our purposes and our selfishness. That is not love. It could never be love. Love is selfless, where you forget yourself completely and are given over and surrendered to your Beloved. Then, it is love. Love is not something where you could say that I am loving this person for gain; it is not love. It is no sacrifice at all!
THE GURU TEACHES THE PATH BECAUSE HE HAS TRAVELLED THE PATH
When you really and truly understand love, you will understand what God is all about. People are very far from that, but the path is there, and the Guru teaches the path because he has traveled the path and knows the minds and hearts of people. He knows what path they must take and how to reach the goal. Because he has traveled the path, and that is why he is qualified to show the path. He not only shows it through words but also demonstration. It is not only the Guru’s words that are important. He gives you wisdom so your mind can think, but the spiritual force he pours out to everyone here is essential and alters your lives.
Every time you get a Mantra from me, by going into deep meditation, something like the Communion Practise, I have to go through all that suffering to reach the core of your personality, to see what you are made of, at what stage of evolution you are, your emotional state, your physical state, it is no joke, it is a job. I often have to sit for hours and hours to get in contact with another person’s inner spirit, hours and hours! Sometimes, I cannot do it in one hour today, so I leave it for another hour the next day. I can contact some people immediately, depending on their state of mind. That is Love. That is sacrifice. Within those same hours, I could have gone out and earned money for my wife and children to buy bread for them. But I do it because of my love for humanity. When that mantra is given to you, it is not just the syllables that represent your vibrations, but it carries that universal spiritual force that I gather from the superconscious level and pass on to you with that sound. That is love. Where you sacrifice all your time and energy, and yet your wife and children can be starving. That is Love.
When I left home, and I am going to be on tour for two and a half months, I have been away from home seventeen days already and do you know what I left with my wife because I do not have money, I went with her thirty-five Rand which is about thirty pounds. That is all. But I told her I had very good friends, “Look, I know that you will be running short, so go to my friend GB and ask him to give you a loan so that when I come back, I can repay him.” That is Love. A total sacrifice for humanity. What do they do in return for me? I do not care. Sometimes, you get hurt because you have to make ends meet. Living, home, and children cost me more than five hundred pounds a week. Still, I do not care. He is up there, and He knows how to look after me. He will. A little bit of suffering, so what! Take, for example, the sufferings of Krishna, Buddha, and Christ. I say, “Okay if those guys suffered, why should I not suffer too.” Most people can come face to face with Divinity and not even recognize it. If Christ should walk down the road here, the police will arrest him in his tattered clothes for vagrancy, that I promise you! That is the world.
It is a cruel, cruel world, but within the cruelness, I find so much love because I can only see love. I see nothing else but love. And even my anger, if I am angry with someone, that anger too is filled with deep love. There are many ways to express it. You spank your child with a strap; it hurts you more than the child, but you are teaching the child something. That is love.
REGARD THE WELFARE OF OTHERS TO BE YOUR WELFARE
So, to recap. Love requires dedication, devotion, sacrifice, selflessness, and total regard for the other, not yourself. Because of the welfare of others, you must regard it to be your welfare. It rebounds on you, in some way or the other, tenfold. I have thousands of letters in my files, and I can show you how people have benefited in every way if you read them. Terminal cancer cases have been cured through our practices and Gurushakti. So many blind people have begun to see and deaf people to hear what we call miracles. I do not call them miracles. I call them an understanding of the more profound laws of nature to which the ordinary human mind has not yet developed. Perhaps one day, that might come about; we do not know and do not like prophesies.
So, love has many implications. People talk of making love. Rubbish, you do not make love. How can you make love? A husband and wife are sleeping together. They are entitled to their physiological needs and biological needs. Still, it should be so that the woman totally disappears, and the man totally disappears, and a vast universal orgasm just remains. They disappear because they have disappeared into Divinity so that every sexual act becomes a meditation. That is Love. Otherwise, it is nothing but lust. A total mergence is required to know love.
… Gururaj Ananda Yogi: Satsang IR 1984 – 07
