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is supposed to live. Naturally, the wife could not tolerate him. She has lived like a queen, and she was one of the richest women in Russia.
But Leo Tolstoy was a Gandhian, you will be surprised to know. Although Gandhi came later, in the last days of Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi and he had written a few letters to each other. And Mahatma Gandhi declared that he has been under three masters; one is Leo Tolstoy, another is Henry Thoreau, and the third is a Jaina monk, Shrimad Rajchandra. These three people impressed Mahatma Gandhi.
Mahatma Gandhi was working in South Africa but he was very much impressed by the lifestyle of Leo Tolstoy. His wife was so angry that they were not even talking to each other. Talking meant always a fight. They had different natures. Tolstoy was trying hard to make his wife live a simple life, the life of poverty because, "blessed are the poor." He was a fanatical follower of Jesus Christ. Literally, he was living a poor life -- and the wife was feeling absolute repugnance. She wanted him to live like a prince, as he really was. They quarreled their whole lives, both trying to make the other be according to his ideas, or her ideas. This is an extreme case, but this is the story of all families: nobody is allowed to be himself -- people go on manipulating.
Maneesha is writing a book about her experiences with me. Just the other day I heard that her mother from Melbourne, Australia, has written a very angry letter, "First you made me condemned by the Christian society here in Melbourne, and now you are trying to write a book, I hear. That means you would expose it to the whole world, and particularly in Melbourne where I will have to suffer."
And it is not any exception. Devageet has received a letter from his mother saying, "Stop writing the book," because he is also writing a book. Now these poor mothers are in great anxiety. What are these people going to write about them? -- that must be a deep fear. Secondly, they will expose that Christianity is no longer relevant, that something new, something basically discontinuous with the past is needed. And that's what sannyas is. So they must be afraid of the crowd,
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