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others; sometimes you are cruel with yourself. These are the ordinary categories into which the whole of humanity can be divided. Rarely does a man come who is neither cruel to others nor to himself. That is the man I call the man of God, the Godman.
It is very easy to change from one extreme to another. Ordinarily, people are cruel to others: violent, aggressive. Then that violence towards others, that cruelty towards others, has to be paid for deeply, because when you are violent to others, they will be violent to you. You cannot go on being aggressive to others, the violence will return back. It is dangerous, it is costly -- even an Adolf Hitler or a Napoleon has to pay for it. They die a death of sheer violence which is returning back to them, falling upon them.
You spit in the sky and it falls on you; you dig a ditch for others and someday you fall into it yourself. Cunning, calculating minds understand the fact that to be violent with others is very costly and dangerous, but they want to be violent and they want to be cruel. Cruelty is deep down in their bones, in their animality, so what to do?
The best and the most diplomatic way is to be violent with yourself. Then there will be no revenge taken. So the ordinary man is violent towards others, and your so-called saints are violent towards themselves. They are simply more calculating. They are cowards, escapists. But they are violent towards themselves.
Do you know that there was a sect of Christians -- they still exist; they are not so prominent now, but they still exist -- who used to flagellate themselves every morning, beat their own bodies? Blood started flowing -- that was their prayer. As if God was hungry for their blood, as if God was thirsty for their blood. What type of God did they have in mind? Some murderer? Some murderous power?
No, they were sacrificing themselves. They were trying to show God: "Look, we are not happy, we are very unhappy. Have mercy on us." That was their prayer: "We are so sad. Look, blood is flowing. We are in such deep misery. Have mercy on us." But I tell you, God's mercy is available only to those who are happy.
Jesus says one
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