Is spirituality about loving everybody equally? || (2018)

Questioner: Acharya Ji, I just heard you talk about ‘love’.

I have withdrawn dependence from others, have set them free, but I have no sameness of feeling of love towards everyone. Am I loving, or partial, or selfish?

Acharya Prashant: (Addressing the questioner) ‘Love’ is not about loving everybody samely or equally. You are a person, you are a body. You are a woman who was typing this question a while ago with her fingers, right? Do you know that you will be able to love everybody? How can you love everybody? It will be very difficult.

Eight hundred crores of just human beings are there, and then you can add the fish and the birds, and the insects, and the other planets and galaxies. It is a little too big a number to love everybody, isn’t it? To love everybody?

But that’s the kind of image that has been promoted, circulated that – ‘The one who loves, loves everybody equally’. No, that’s not true. When I talked of Love, I said, “ Ram prem pradhanu (the Love towards Ram, towards God is the First priority)”. And spiritually, truly that is the only Love you can have.

The mind has to have a deep Love, a constant attraction towards Peace, towards Realization, towards Rest and Understanding. That’s what Love is. The love that you commonly talk of as something between two people, or four people, or two hundred people is just a pale shadow of the Real thing.

Are you getting it?

When one is in Love, when one Loves the Truth deeply, then his conduct has certain mystical fragrance about it. The eyes can have only limited vision, the hands can reach out only to a few people, but still very mysteriously the very presence of the loving one can help the entire universe very mysteriously.

But that help cannot be a deliberate or a conscious help. You cannot say that you have to have a sameness of behaviour towards everybody.

First of all, you cannot reach out to everybody. Secondly, when people are different, how can you have sameness of behaviour towards them?

Love does not mean that you have to display the same kind of attitude, or feeling, or behaviour to everybody. In Love you heal, in Love you kill as well. In Love you go north, in Love you can go south as well. It depends on the situation. In Love sometimes you console, and in Love you sometimes condemn as well. In Love you have to sometimes bring somebody close to you, and in Love sometimes you have to distance yourself as well.

So, there can be no sameness of behaviour, first thing. And it is impractical to talk of sameness of behaviour towards everybody. Everybody, is just impossible.

Thought flies, but even thought is incapable of surmising how you can love everybody. Do not think of Love as being kind and polite towards everybody. I know that the stories of this kind of loving behaviour exist, but reject all those stories.

The smiling missionary, you know, who just wants to give, and give, and give everybody. What if somebody snatches all the goods and runs away? Then? What will you give to the others?

Love is not a particular kind of behaviour. All that is social morality. More often than not, Love will require you to be ruthless. And yes, great ruthlessness is possible only in Love.

So if I smile at you, you will say, “Ah! What a loving Teacher.” But I am very prone to scolding as well. Then you will say, “The Teacher is bitter, he does not love me.”

And the Teacher’s behaviour is not the same towards everyone. And I also don’t get to talk to everyone. But in some inexpressible way, what is happening through me today is helping the entire mankind. I will not be able to know how, but it just happens.

But I remind you, warn you, not to try it. It is not something that you can try and do. It happens on its own.

On your own all that you can do is – be devoted.

You cannot take care of the entire world, you mind your Love. You see what it is that you are longing for and rushing towards. Be clear about that. And do loving justice to all those you can reach, you can touch.

And ‘loving justice’ does not mean uniformity of behaviour. You get the word ‘justice’? People are different, so they deserve different treatment, different behaviour. That’s what Love is about.

Love and Truth are inseparable. Aren’t they?

So, you must have Love for Truth. Love is not blind. Love sees in the clearest, in sharpest way possible. Then how can there be sameness? When you are looking at a world full of distinctions, how can there be sameness?

The only indistinct one is Truth, Ram, remain dedicated towards Him. Towards the world, be just. And what does ‘justice’ mean? To ‘Yellow’, respond as you must respond to ‘Yellow’, and to ‘Red’, respond as you must respond to ‘Red’.

That is Love.

So, you see that Love in the world and Love towards the Truth are different things. And that is why classically also, they have been given different names. Para-prem (Love towards God) and apara-prem (worldly love), Ishq-e Haqiqi (Love towards God), and Ishq-e-Majazi (worldly love), because these two are not the same things.

Love towards Truth, Love towards Ram (God) is unconditional, but your behaviour towards the world has to be conditional. You have to look at the conditions and respond accordingly.

So don’t try that meaningless image of ‘Unconditional Love’ in the world. And there are just too many people preaching that. They say, “You must have unconditional love towards everyone.”

Unconditional love can be had only towards the One who is beyond all conditions. And who is beyond all conditions? Only the Truth.

Towards the world you can only have an appropriate response, a just response. So, I said, “Loving justice.”

Towards God – Unconditional Love. Towards the world – the right response, the just response. And when you are responding rightly to the world, that is the mark of great Love for the world.

And the next thing – when you respond rightly to those in your vicinity, then somehow you are helping the entire universe.

Don’t try to help eight billion people.

Be just, be right to those you can practically reach, and you will find that even the little bird in Africa is receiving your help.

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