The Sword and the Lotus

CHAPTER 1

An individual revolution
15 January 1986 am in

Question 1

BELOVED MASTER,
YOU INVITED ME NOT TO GET ANGRY WITH BLIND PEOPLE. I’M NOT – HOW COULD I BE?
WHEN I SEE THEIR SADNESS AND THEIR MISERY, I ONLY BECOME INFINITELY SAD. THEY
ARE TIRED, AND I OFFER THEM A REST. THEY ARE THIRSTY, AND I OFFER THEM A GLASS
OF WATER. BUT THEY ARE SO AFRAID. WHAT TO SAY IF I INVITE THEM TO THE SOURCE?
BELOVED MASTER, HOW CAN I TOUCH THEM IN SPITE OF THE WALL OF THEIR FEAR?
THE SECOND QUESTION FEELS SOMEHOW CONNECTED: HOW CAN WE FORGIVE THE
PEOPLE WHO PUT YOU IN JAIL?

The world is sad, it is in misery. There is great suffering in the hearts of people. But you need not be
sad about it, for the simple reason that by becoming sad you join them, you create more sadness.
It is not a help. It is just as if people are sick, and you see their sickness and you also become sick.
Your sickness is not going to make them healthy, it is simply creating more sickness.

To feel for their sadness does not mean to become sad. To feel for their sadness means to look
for the causes of what is creating all their suffering and misery, and to help them to remove those
causes. And at the same time you have to remain as joyful as possible because your joy is going to
help them, not your sadness. You have to be cheerful. They should know that there is a possibility
of being cheerful in this sad world. They have completely lost hope, because everywhere they lookthere is sadness. They have accepted the fact that sadness is just the nature of things – you cannot
do anything about it, you have to suffer it.

And the religious teachers have only been giving them consolations, giving them some hocus-pocus,
hypocritical ideas. They have kept them miserable for centuries because they have made them
accept misery as part of life. Not only that, they have raised their sadness and misery to some
spiritual status. They have been telling them, ”Blessed are the poor.” So not only have they accepted
their sadness as just a simple fact of life about which you cannot do anything, but they have also
started feeling good about it, feeling it is something spiritual, that it is a test given by God to them.

Rich people are not going to enter into the kingdom of God; it will be the poor, the miserable – they
will be received with great joy and welcomed. All that they have to do is not to make any fuss about
their misery – accept it as a blessing in disguise. And if for centuries you go on saying such things,
you poison people’s minds. But it seems that they are not alone in their sadness; everybody is sad.
In fact, they will feel afraid to be cheerful in this vast crowd of sad people.

>   Downlod Book Here