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Love Thyself First
The beginning, the first step, I would say, is to treat others as if
they were you. Love them as much as you love yourself. Love first. One
who cannot love himself, cannot love others. This is not a joke, it
is the truth. All those who talk here about the inability to love the
Master, why love a Master, love a wife, love a husband, anything? Love
is love. The object may change. One who cannot love something cannot
love anything else, precisely because they have not love for the self.
So one who is afraid of mistakes will never do anything; one who is
afraid of the truth will never say anything; one who is afraid of love
can love nothing; not the Master, not his wife, not his brother, not
his sister - because he cannot love himself. So, if you say in the Divine
Realm everything begins with the Self, I dare say that in the human
realm also it begins with the self. If I cannot forgive myself, I cannot
forgive anybody else.
If you love life, life will love you, which means that for such a person
there is immortality, because his life will not want to leave him or
her. It is not enough that we love life. Life must love us to such an
extent that the life that is within me, should say, "I shall not
leave this fellow. I love him so much." But you say, "Yes,
this is corrupt," and He says "Don't worry, leave that to
me, you do your job. You get better and better and you become more and
more fit for me to exist in you." We have to make ourselves fit
enough for the Self within us to continue to exist within us. For such
a person, there is no death.
So learn to love thy Self - this is the first law of spirituality. Forget
the neighbour, because if you are able to do this - why only the neighbour?
The man in the next city, the man in the next country, the man in the
next planet, the man in the next galaxy, we will love. Then universal
love becomes possible, because I am loving that in me which is universal.
Not an individual, incremental love of one plus one plus one - but at
one stroke, I love Him who loves all, He is in me, therefore I become
capable of universal love.
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