Nowhere in the world has a child been given so much freedom as recently in the West. During this century Western psychologists have been teaching people to give total freedom to their children. The result has been an unbridgeable gap between the parents and the child. In former days sons feared their fathers; in the West today, the father is afraid of the son. In the past parents were revered and respected. In the West today, the child knows no respect for the elders, not an iota of love or caring. What is the reason? It is only this: as the child grows up he begins to realize the harm his parents have done to him by letting him loose to do as he pleased. He should have been stopped when he did anything wrong. It was their duty to prevent him from going astray since they were experienced, and he was not. They should not have listened to him; they should not have given in to his wishes. This revelation comes but, alas, then it is too late.
Remember this: love cares! Love cares that your life should be good, beautiful, truthful, and attain the highest glory. Indifference is a sign that there is no relationship, that your being born to your particular parents is a mere coincidence for all of you. There is no give and take. There is no feeling of oneness or belonging, with the result that in the West all intrinsic relationships are breaking down.
Love can also punish, because love is so strong and so self-confident that it can bring about creation through destruction. The important thing is that the aim is always creation. If destruction is necessary, there is bound to be a creating aim behind it.
The guru kills the disciple – completely! He kills him outright – no father’s blows that fall only on the body. Just as water cleanses the body from outside, the father superficially cleanses the life of his son, but the guru hits hard and deep within. He bores inside you to your utmost depth, and will not rest until your ego is completely melted. Until you find such a guru, know that whatever master you follow you will never be able to forgive. Sooner or later it will dawn on you that this man has been wasting your time.
The mark of love is creativity. As long as you are creative in your relationships, you cannot commit sin. How can I sin when I am filled with love? The love gradually spreads and you find yourself hidden in each living being. Then whom will you rob, whom will you cheat? Whom will you deceive, whose pocket will you pick? As love increases you discover that all pockets are yours, and when you harm someone you find you have harmed yourself.
Life is an echo: whatever you do comes back to you. He whose love increases becomes aware that there are no strangers in this world. It is common knowledge that when you love someone, you feel one with him.
You will not want to harm your wife when you realize that by harming her you ultimately harm yourself; because when she is unhappy you also become unhappy. You would wish her to be happy when her happiness increases your potential happiness. One day you comprehend that the sorrow we give others makes us equally sad; the joy we give others makes us equally happy.
But we think in opposite terms – saving joy for ourselves and wishing sorrow on others. And we feel, perhaps, that in that way our own quota of happiness will be greater. The end result is that you find your own life filled with sorrow because whatever you give returns to you. If you have sown thorns for others, your own life gets surrounded by thorns. And if you go about sowing flowers unconcerned with what others are doing, your life becomes filled with flowers. You reap what you sow. But we do not seem to understand this formula of life.