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Love Should Not Be Bartered With
When we meditate, thinking that, "We are doing something and he
is bound to give us something," we are behaving like labour and
management. My statement of demands - "Master, I have been meditating
one hour everyday regularly; I have been cleaning everyday regularly;
I have been devoted to you, I have loved you; where is my reward?"
It becomes a commercial transaction. Love cannot be a transaction. So
I asked Babuji, "If even love cannot bring something, then what
is the aim in loving that Master too?" He said, "You have
a right to love, you have no right to expect to be loved in return."
It applies to human love; it applies to Divine love; it applies to all
love. Especially our western brothers and sisters should note this.
The law says: "You cannot get what you give." You cannot say,
"I give you love, you give me love." Then, what are we doing?
We are just exchanging love, you see. "I give you a shirt, you
give me a shirt; I give you a shaving brush, you give me a shaving brush;
I give you a pair of chappals, you give me a pair of chappals."
What is this nonsense, you see.
And this is most dramatically expressed in a family relationship between
father and son. A young man becomes a father at a young age. He spends
all his life bringing up his children, educating them, putting them
in jobs, giving them his money. It is unnatural to expect. They can
only love him. Any father who expects, that his son should feed him,
give him hundred rupees a month and keep asking, "How are you daddy?"
He is doomed to disappointment, because the law says: "What you
give, you cannot get back." You will get back in some other way.
If you give him education and love, he will give you love and something
else. Like you take water from the river, you cannot give water back
to the river. You take water because you need it. Can you say, "Yesterday
I took two handfuls of water, today I am returning it to you, O Ganga!
Take it back." The river will laugh at you! Now what we should
do is to just pray to the Almighty. You give thanks to the Creator,
"Thank you, Lord, for looking after me and for providing me all
that I needed." In one short prayer everything is covered.
See, the greatest sin is the ingratitude for what we receive from the
Master. We receive so much and yet we say, "Sir! I have been meditating
for twenty years, I have felt nothing, got nothing." It is ingratitude
of the highest order, and spiritually speaking, it is the highest sin.
There is an equally big sin, and that is to love and expect something
in return. How foolish it is! The sun is shining on us. Suppose it says,
"Please shine on me!" Or the rain says "Please rain upon
me." The rains will be happy if your fields are ready and you make
use of the rain, when it rains. Varuna's [rain god] efforts have not
gone in vain. Similarly, Master will be happy, more than happy, when
His grace is received by us, in a tangible way, knowing way, alert way.
We make use of it to become like Him.
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