Love And Sacrifice Are Two Sides Of A Coin

We have a saying in Hindi, "Love! That is to say, be loving! It doesn't matter how you show that love." To a child, we bring a toy, to a guru, we carry a gift of what, a fruit, a flower. To the beloved, we may take something that pleases her. It is all an expression of our love. So in the oriental tradition of taking gift, it is to find out how to express this love. It need not be expensive, it need not be wrapped up beautifully. It must be able to express my love for him to whom I am carrying something. My Master once told me, "When your dog comes to you wagging its tail, it brings you a bone from the garden. To the dog, the bone is the most precious object. It loves bones." Now if you say, "No, no, I am a Brahmin, I am a Hindu, I won't touch a bone," you cannot react with the dog. Accept it, throw it and make the dog fetch it again. And the dog's day is made, your day is made.

So you see, all gifts must be gifts of love. I was profoundly influenced by a story I read long ago, The Gift of the Magi. I don't remember who wrote it. It was about a young couple in love, very poor, living in an attic, with an attic window through which they could see the stars. She had lovely, long, golden hair, and she used to see in the shops a pair of combs which she craved for. He had a lovely watch, and he used to see a fob, a golden chain which he wanted for his watch. Christmas was approaching and between the two of them, they had two and half pennies. They needed thousands of such two and a half pennies to buy the gifts that they each wanted to buy for the other.

On Christmas eve, they both went that morning to work, came back in the evening, and both were shocked. The girl had cut off her hair and sold it, and she gave her beloved a present. He opened it and found the chain for his watch, the fob. He packed it up nicely and put it away. She said, "Why don't you put it on your watch?" He said, "Darling, we will do it later." She said, "Why not now?" He said, Because, if you open your package, you will find out." In the package were the combs she had wanted for her golden hair. He had sold his watch to buy the combs for her, she had sold her hair to buy the chain for his watch. Then they fell into each other's arms, wept together in joy, in love, at the sacrifice that each of them had made.

Sacrifice means giving up myself for the sake of some other person, some other self. Now when Babuji came to us He was very ill, He was very old, but he sacrificed His comfort, His home life, so that He could come to Europe and be with us for our benefit. That can rightly be called a sacrifice. So sacrifice really means giving up my own needs, necessities, comforts, even my existence, for the welfare of others. This sacrifice is essential in spirituality and this is the sacrifice that Sahaj Marg, my Master, everybody, speaks about. And when Babuji said love and sacrifice are necessary, it is an extension of this thought.

Three types of sacrifices: It is my opinion that love and sacrifice are two sides of one coin. Because where there is no love there cannot possibly be any sacrifice. Because we only sacrifice for either persons we love, or for places we love, or for ideals that we love. Three things you see. For persons we love, it is very common - a mother sacrifices for her children, a father sacrifices for his children, brother sacrifices for brother, this is a very common idea, it need not be explained. For the places we love, well, the most common idea is patriotism. We are prepared to sacrifice our life for our country. Why? Because we love our country. I wouldn't sacrifice my life for some country which doesn't belong to me. I wouldn't like to die for something in Nicaragua or Uruguay. But if there is an attack on India and I have to fight and I die, people would say he sacrificed his life for the love of his country. But if I die for my house nobody calls it a sacrifice. So there is a distinction, you see, the place must not be such a small thing that I died for my home, that I sacrificed my life for my home. So behind the sacrifice of life for a place there is a vaster concept than something which I possess, which I own; it's an idea, and that is patriotism.

That brings us to the third thing, sacrifice of our life for ideas or ideals, and this also is very common. People have given their lives, let us say, for their religions. We know the wars which took place in the name of religion, and everybody thought he was sacrificing his life for his religion. Those on the other side also thought they were sacrificing their life for their own religion. Here I would suggest there is not much the element of love behind that sacrifice as fanaticism. It is a group frenzy which is created by a few people. They say, "Oh, we must rise up in arms to save our religion from the infidel," or whatever it is. I don't think anybody loved his religion so much that he would sacrifice; but it is a group frenzy, a group manifestation of some sort of madness leading to violence. But nevertheless, it is recognised as a sacrifice and very often rewarded by society. One of the greatest sacrifices, according to the religions, was the crucifixion of Christ. He is supposed to have voluntarily accepted death on the cross to uphold the truth, the necessity for truth, sticking to one's ideals of mercy, charity, compassion, upholding the truth and things like that. It could be construed as a sacrifice of his life for the ideal of freedom of thought, that a man or a woman should be able to worship in the way he chooses, what he considers to be the truth, the way, the light.

Now we find a certain difference, that when a mother sacrifices her life for child, society does not reward it. You don't give medals to mothers for dying for their children. Why? Because it is considered natural. After all, we love our children, it's a very natural thing and when we die for them or make enormous sacrifices for them, it is, I think, a very just idea that whatever reward we should get for that sacrifice we have got already by the fact of our loving them.

Now to sacrifice one's life for one's country, obviously, judging from society's reaction to such a sacrifice, is not so natural. Not everybody is willing to die for his country. Therefore, those individuals who die for their country are rewarded. They are given some meritorious activity medals, or something written on a piece of paper and signed by the president, or a pension for their family, things like that. In such cases, the reward is not because the sacrifice is really a sacrifice, but because it is rare. It is the rarity of the sacrifice that is rewarded.

Now when we come to the third idea, the highest; dying for an ideal - if the ideal is big enough - the reward is not conferred by society but by humanity itself. Such a person is revered through hundreds and thousands of years by humanity without distinction. That is the reward, that such a person gets.

So we see the various ways in which we can think of sacrifice. Essentially the people who die, die because they have such a reverence for the ideals that they cherish, that they are willing to give their life for it, and this arises out of the love for that ideal - whether it be a child, whether it be a nation, or whether it be the highest ideals of freedom, mercy, charity or things like that. That is why I venture to suggest that love and sacrifice are but two sides of the same thing, they are not two different things. But for the understanding of us, ordinary human beings, they are separate, so Babuji said love and sacrifice are necessary for spirituality. That is why we do not expect sacrifice where there is no love and we know that where there is sacrifice love must exist behind that sacrifice.

This brings me to what I consider an important aspect of life: that where we cannot sacrifice and feel that we have sacrificed something, perhaps it in some way interferes with the flow of love itself - because the highest expression of love is the ability to sacrifice. Therefore when a rich man gives two hundred million dollars for a charity, well, we just say, "O.K., good, he's a nice fellow." But when a man gives his life for something - he gave his life so that we may live hereafter. And what is a life worth? If you go to the Orient, a man's life is no better than a dog's life. But yet, when you sacrifice your life, it has some meaning, because what else can you give which is higher than your own life? Therefore giving your life is the highest expression of your love for anything that you love.

Therefore we love our Master so much. When He came to us we knew that for Him His life had no more any meaning; it was placed at our disposal, and that if He lived, it was only to serve us, if He ate and went to sleep, it was only to serve us. And He had to be forced to eat, otherwise He was willing to sit with us and talk with us. He had to be compelled to go to bed, "Babuji, it is eleven o'clock." He said, "Yes, I will sit with you ten more minutes." So this is the way we felt His love. Now in the normal human love we expect to be loved, but that is too ordinary and too low a manifestation of love, that a person who loves - loves. It's like saying, water is wet, therefore I am grateful to water. Well, it is only expressing its naturalness. But when that love manifests as a concern for you and not for Himself, then we are able to talk of the highest expression of love, where we like this idea of sacrifice with it. To put it very simply, He did not love us in the way we understand love, but we felt His love for us in the sacrifice He made for us. So that was the secret of His love and that was why we all felt His love because it was not individualised. As I said love should not be individualised, it has to be universalised.

Now that brings me to one other point, a last point, that the idea of sacrifice must go. I don't think Babuji had ever ideas that He was sacrificing His life for us. It would have been unnatural. Therefore our love for Master is expressed in the only way we can express love: giving him flowers, sweets, some donations. His love for us is expressed in the highest way: a human being can express love - in sacrifice. Very often abhyasis ask me how to know whether their love is growing for the Master. There's a very simple index. If your love has gone beyond the ordinary expressions of love and is now involving sacrifice on your part for the Master, your love is growing. And when a stage comes that you are also prepared to sacrifice your life for Him, then your love is total.

Now I would like to say three expressions of love. The first one, when everything we do, out of what we call love, benefits only myself - it is totally selfish. I love, not for your sake, but for my sake. The second expression of love, where we have a genuine love for the other person, not out of selfishness for myself, but out of regard for you - we can call this selfless human love. The first is selfish human love, this is selfless human love. The third is the love that the Master has for us - a divine love. It doesn't know anything of itself, it sees only us, our needs, our requirements, and dies in trying to fulfill these things.

This is about love and sacrifice, and unlike, or in someway different from, what we normally understand by love. We think love is expressed in loving. Yes, of course, in the beginning it is expressed in loving ourselves, then it is expressed in genuinely loving others, but the ultimate expression of love is not in love, it is in the ability to sacrifice. That is why from two things it becomes one thing ultimately - that love is sacrifice, sacrifice is love. This is the evolution of love itself; love beginning as loving, to love ending as sacrifice.

So you can say that even love has an evolutionary course to run, and this should apply not only between the Master and His disciples but even in our own personal relationships, between husband and wife, between father and sons, between brother and brother. Because without sacrifice at every stage of our association - it may be small sacrifice, it may be the ultimate sacrifice of life - true love is not expressed. So if you are conscious of love, it is not love. Because when it is universal love, how can you be conscious? When it is individual love you can be conscious, "I love him. I hate her," like that you are conscious. But when it is universal… rain doesn't know it is raining here and there and there, it is just raining.

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