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Grihastha Life - Make It A Temple Of Love
A family requires parents and children and, in a family, they are all
united very naturally by the bonds of blood. It is a blood connection.
We call ourselves blood brothers, blood sisters, things like that. In
human society, in human life, the blood connection has enjoyed very
considerable support and strength. We normally think of love as a merely
personal thing, something uniting two, perhaps three, sometimes four
persons. But here is a concept in Sahaj Marg in which we have to replace
blood by love, and this love is both personal and universal at the same
time. It is as if the two extremes of a magnet are brought together
to meet in the centre and produce what, in science, they say is impossible
- a unipole! Such a love is directed towards one and simultaneously
towards all. In other words, such a love is a unity and also a multiplicity.
In a sense, this is also the definition of God that he is one and he
is many; that he is the creator both within his creation and also outside
his creation! How something can be inside and also outside the same
object, is something which defeats our imagination, but the coexistence
of such extreme opposites is only possible in a spiritual pursuit.
It is only in a spiritual family that we can have love united with discipline;
where we can have love uniting people of many races, many tongues, many
professions, because there is the silk thread of love that runs through
us and holds us together! In the Gita, one of the descriptions that
God gives of Himself is that He is the thread that goes through the
string of pearls and keeps all the pearls together without falling off!
The human beings or the family of human beings need something together
to form a grand necklace around the neck of God himself, if that is
possible. According to Master this can be done only by love.
So if a couple wants to keep this divine, delightful flame of love burning
through marriage too, one technique is to stop making demands on each
other. Because only that which is present can make a demand. So it is
another aspect of love that when we stop making demands, love grows.
Because love does not depend on which level of evolution we are at.
It is a universal thing. Not only universally human, but universal in
the real sense. So if that lesson is learnt properly, then there is
no presence and no absence. Love becomes truly eternal. The Beloved
becomes truly present all the time whether he is there or not, and we
begin to realise that his love for us is also eternal whether we are
here or not. So this is what we should try to bring into our lives as
a veritable truth, and experience it in our lives, by His grace.
I have often advised prospective mothers who are bearing the child in
their womb to speak to the child with love. Speak to it as if it is
already there. It is there. Welcome it, love it. But on the contrary
we have only hatred, attempts at abortion and that child grows up knowing
it is unwanted. It is disgraceful. It is hated.
What is the prize in grihastha life? It has a prize. You know there
is a beautiful story I once read of three brothers who were sons of
a king. Young people you know, youth and when their father died, the
nobles just threw them out of the empire, because they were too young,
and took over. They were probably 12, 10 and 8. The 12 and 10 year old
boys went off somewhere, the eight year old just crossed the border,
went into an inn and with his few copper coins in his pocket, he managed
to eke out an existence. And then slowly he got into the heart of the
owner of the inn; one day he married the latter's daughter and after
20 years he owned the inn. He had a nice wife, a comfortable life. He
was in every way a contented, balanced person.
One day he saw a huge mass of dust to the east and, surprisingly, a
few hours later, he saw another huge mass of dust towards the west.
And as the evening approached, the clouds of dust came closer and closer
and he saw this was a huge caravan, hundreds of horses and camels, fully
laden, and a man with a highly caparisoned horse, richly dressed himself,
got off and he was the owner of that caravan, a multimillionaire. And
he sought accommodation in this small, cheap inn. And then the other
dust cloud approached and it was an army of hawkish, well trained persons
mounted on the most beautiful Arabs, and the two met. And they found
that this rich man was the eldest brother and the leader of the army
was the second brother, and here was the third fellow, standing at the
gate of the inn, wondering what to do. "Here are my two brothers
both with huge entourage with hundreds of persons here and thousands
of persons there, and I have a small inn with 2 ½ rooms and 2
½ kids on my hands. What should I do?" Anyway he managed
to put up his brothers.
The next morning the miracle happened. The two brothers confessed that
the rich man had been plotting all night how to buy off the other army
with his wealth, kill the brother and assume command of both the army
and what was left of the wealth. And the second brother had been plotting
all night how to murder his brother or use his army to plunder the whole
caravan and take hold of all the wealth. But when they saw the youngest
brother in the doorway, with his wife by his side and his 2 ½
kids with him, so content, with bliss on his face, they said all this
is a mirage, a waste, you see. So the next morning the rich man used
all his wealth to pay off the army of the other fellow, disbanded it
and sent it away, and so all settled at the inn.
See, one epitomising power of raw or physical power, the other epitomising
the power of wealth, opposed to each other-misery, bloodshed, vice,
corruption; and here the power of love, nothing but a simple man's simple
love for a simple woman creating a simple family in simple circumstances
with unbeatable bliss, unbeatable contentment. The essence is "seek
a simple life, don't look for ecstasies, it doesn't exist". All
the erotic literature in the world is produced precisely because there
are some people who expect fantasy in these excitements, or in drugs
for instance or in alcohol. But if life is lead naturally, there are
no peaks, no depressions. There is only a blissful calm, a sort of a
level curve - it is not a curve any more. It is a straight line.
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