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Love And Discipline
Unless one's total life in existence is in discipline, we are
lacking in discipline. Hatred needs no discipline, but love must
have discipline. And the more you love the Master, the more you must
have discipline. Discipline, not because we are going to lock the gates
or put barbed wire fences, but because there is an open door, into which
I must not enter, unless I am called in. In my opinion, in my experience,
open doors are the most forbidding of doors, because they invite, while
saying no. It is like flashing a green and red light simultaneously
at the oncoming car. He doesn't know whether to go or stop. What should
tell you which light to obey? Your heart! Refer to your heart. Does
it mean that the door is open for me? Where love is, there must be humility.
Everybody wants love, but they do not want the discipline.
But if you think on the lines of the old Vedic instruction
in India, love cannot exist without discipline. Is it possible?
What is love combined with discipline? It is marriage. When
you seek love outside marriage without the discipline of
marriage, it is called lust, it is called vice, it is called
so many things. When a child is born from love, arising
out of the disciplined conduct of the love life in marriage,
it is a legitimate child. But if the child is born without
the benefit of marriage, without the sanction of society,
without the sanction of moral laws, the child is called
a bastard. So the oldest teaching of India is that love
and discipline are two sides of one coin. This must be very
clearly understood. Because for the ordinary human being,
we all want love, but we do not want discipline.
Love and discipline go together. We have a saying in Tamil
which I would like to translate in English, that "The
hand that beats is the hand that hugs." Why I am saying
this is, that love and discipline are really two sides of
the same coin. What this saying in Tamil means, that the
hand that beats is the hand that hugs, should be clear -
that only one who loves will be bold enough to also discipline,
correct. And in a person or in a society, when this ability
to correct is lost, that means love is also lost.
Without this basic structure of love supporting discipline
in guiding a new life through its course, that life is a
wasted life. When the mother conceives, she has to be disciplined.
She must not smoke, drink, or take drugs. Because there
is a child growing up in her, a new life. If you love that
child, if the child is born out of love, you will discipline
yourself. After all, by your actions you are protecting
the child which is growing in the womb. Is it not logical
to continue that protection and guidance after the child
has become independent of you physically, but not emotionally,
not in a life-living way?
If you want to correct other people, the foundation of
that ability to correct, that willingness to correct, the
love alone that can make you correct others, is to discipline
yourself first. Otherwise it will not work. Absolutely.
So we come back to the purpose of Sahaj Marg: that if each
one of you here is not willing to correct yourself, you
have no right, no authority, to correct others. You have
no moral right to correct others. You lose the ability to
correct others. You lose the ability even to correct yourself
- you have already lost it. He who would help others must
help himself first to be strong. If I want to cure sick
people, I must be able to be a doctor myself first. If I
wish to give money in charity, I must earn money first.
If I want to teach people, I must teach myself first. Always.
It is love alone which can give the ability to correct,
the ability to teach in the right way, and the ability to
discipline. And such love comes out and shines only when
it is backed by self-discipline of the one who is giving
this corrective discipline, because that alone gives you
the moral courage, the moral faith, the moral right to discipline
others. So, there is no use if there is love not backed
by discipline. Authoritarian discipline is easy to enforce
but difficult to uphold, whereas discipline growing out
of love is self-maintained, self-created. We are not disciplined
by the outside, but we become disciplined ourselves. We
accept it as a necessity with which to guide our lives.
It is the love that God has for us that is transmitted,
and it is that love which makes us grow. And that is why
there is no compulsory discipline in Sahaj Marg; because
love cannot demand or force; love must evoke. Therefore
even the Ten Maxims tell us only what to do and leave it
to us to do it when we have developed sufficient love for
the Master and for our Goal.
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