People have been told continuously to look at the positive and just ignore the negative. But by your ignoring, it does not disappear. It is there, and any moment it can explode. So you cannot have authority in this way – looking to those who are unfortunately lower than you in any area of life – because the superior ones are also there. They will make you inferior and you will feel hurt.

This is a sick kind of authoritativeness. It can even become aggressive. The politicians, the criminals, the generals – they become aggressive. They want to prove actually that they have authority. They can kill millions of people, but even by killing millions of people you don’t become superior. You remain the same, just you become the ugliest creature on the earth.

So first you have to understand all these nuances of authority. Yes, there is an authority which is not felt. That is the authority of love. But it is not felt, it is simply there. It does not dominate anybody, it is not superior to anybody, it is just enjoying the tremendous gift of life from the very sources. This authority will give you humbleness, not turn you into an arrogant egoist. These are the checking points: if your authority makes you humble, loving, a nobody.

And you are asking, “…a clarity about myself, and love for myself and others.” You are really confused. First you say, “Love is growing.” It is not a crop. It is just a diamond you find in your clarity, in your silence, radiating. Secondly, you are saying that the love that is growing is for “myself and others.” Love knows no division: “myself and others.” Love is an experience in which duality disappears. You simply feel one, in tune with the music of the whole.

“It feels,” you say, “like everybody is equal for me.” Now, I suspect something is hidden in this which is sick. “It feels like everybody is equal for me.” Nobody is equal. Equality is one of the most wrongly conceived ideas, which has created all kinds of communisms, socialisms, anarchisms. They are all based on the foundation of equality. Even people who are not communist don’t have the guts to say that equality does not exist. It has become almost ingrained in everybody’s mind.

I want you to know that everybody is unique, not equal. And uniqueness gives a totally different dimension. A rosebush is not equal to the bamboos reaching to the stars. In what way is it equal? A rose is a rose, a lotus is a lotus; there is no question of equality.

I am not saying that they are unequal, I am simply saying they are not equal. That is their dignity. They should rejoice, because they are simply themselves, there is nobody else to be compared with. These ideas of equality, inequality…all are comparisons. And in existence everything is so unique, you cannot compare. But I can see just between the lines…

You say, “It feels like everybody is equal for me.” Do you see the point? You want everybody to be equal to you. The president of a country, the prime minister of a country, the king of a country, the queen of a country – you would like them all to be equal to you.