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It is necessary to become happiness itself. Happiness alone can welcome and accept happiness. Do not we observe that a miserable mind can search out miseries even where they hardly exist? The tortured one finds out torture. The depressed one finds out depression. In fact, they select with what they have affinity. Whatsoever is inside is selected; and the same is thrown out and installed in others. whatever we are, we search out. The world and its conditions are a mirror in which, from different angles and in different forms, we can see ourselves.
Whatever I give, is myself. Whatever I receive is also myself. Except my own self, I have no existence and no experience. It is not possible to go outside it. That is the world, that is salvation, that is pain and that is pleasure; that is violence and that is non-violence; that is poison and that is nectar.
I am reminded of a discussion held on the gate of a temple. The flag of the temple was fluttering in the morning breeze. Seeing that flag flying, in the golden rays of the sun, to monks were discussing between themselves whether the stir was in the flag or in the wind. A third monk passing near by, said: "Friend, the stir is in the mind."
True! All agitation is in the mind and of the mind.
If I do not forget, Mahavir, who said: This soul is the enemy; the self itself is the friend."
The pure development of soul is non-violence; the impure development of the soul is violence. That is not an indication of behaviour but mainly of the spirit. There is lot of consideration given to purity of behaviour. That grasp and reach, as I see, is wrong. We have to achieve the purity of spirit rather than that of behaviour. Behaviour can change on its own. It is the follower of spirit. If the knowledge is changed, behaviour also changes. Knowledge is the base and the centre; behaviour is the reflection of the same. The former is the life; behaviour has its throb. Socrates has said: "Knowledge itself is character". The meaning of knowledge is not the 'information' or learnedness; the meaning of knowledge is: realization received from the perception of intellect, spirit and existence. This knowledge,
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