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a high quality of intelligence, is more dangerous than anybody -- because the intention is blind. Gandhi thought that he was teaching nonviolence, but in fact he was teaching people to be violent to themselves.
This cannot happen to my way of life. Reverence for life does not exclude me: if I am full of reverence for life that is all around, how can I be irreverent towards my own life?
In deep silence there is no mine and no thine.
Life is simply life; it is one flow.
We are joined together with invisible threads. If I hurt you, I hurt myself If I hurt myself. I am hurting you all.
I want the distinction to be clear. It is delicate. The man who believes in non-violence will be very careful not to be violent to anybody -- too careful! But because he has not experienced reverence for life -- it is only an ideology; rationally he has concluded that this is good, that this is the right path -- he is going to be very violent to himself In fact his violence towards others will turn upon himself The proportion will remain the same.
I have experienced it in people, for example hunters, who are violent people, killers. Just near my university, two hundred miles away, was a forest reserve -- one of the most beautiful forests in India, Kanha Keshali. For hundreds of miles, all kinds of wild life -- you could find every kind possible, imaginable. Hunting was prohibited except for special guests of the viceroy, of the governor, and later on, of the prime minister, the president, and the chief minister. For special guests hunting was allowed, otherwise it was completely prohibited.
Whenever I had time I used to drive to Kanha Keshali; the rest house in Kanha Keshali was in such a beautiful place, on a vast lake, surrounded by greenery as far as you could see. And for days you would not come across or see a man, but you would see thousands of deer passing in the night. And in the night the deer's eyes become almost flames. A thousand or two thousand deer passing in the night... if it was a full moon night you could see thousands of small lights moving in line. And they had to come to the lake in the night to drink water. All the
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