Friendship
Excerpts
The only worry I have, if I have any, is this: that My children should love each other. So I talk about friendship. It is to have a friend. If we have worries, we always tell to our friends, but not to persons of acquaintance. If you have problems, we will never tell it to somebody who we just know by-the-way, but to our friends, and so friendship. Even if you are a leader, you are a friend of the people.
Friendship is such that you could share your secrets, you could share your problems. You do that with Me. And why not with each other? It is a question of understanding that Sahaja Yogis are all really friends to each other. I think the relationship of friendship is even higher than any other relationship we could think of because there is nothing to be gained out of our friendship. It never ceases and you just enjoy the friendship, that’s all. Then you can pull each other’s legs sometimes. You could be little joking with another person, making fun of another person. It’s all right. It’s friendship. But this is the purest form of understanding – our relationships with each other. And a friend is the one who is always, for no rhyme and reason, concerned about his friend. Before Sahaja Yoga, you could have only one friend or at the most two. Three meant a crowd. You cannot have three persons as your friends. But in Sahaja Yoga, we are all friends – pure friendship. The friendship of a very beautiful nature – that you enjoy the joy of another person. In vibrations you do. If you feel the vibrations of another Sahaja Yogi, you really enjoy.
I have seen this kind of friendship when we were young because at that time people were more open-hearted, as my father had his friends. He was a very orthodox Brahmin, a friend of his and he was the chairman of an organization all over the country. And the school that, one of the schools where I was studying, that organization was running. So he was the big boss in that school. So My father had to go for a case far away and he took all his family and he sent Me to the hostel. He wrote to his friend that “I’m going away and my daughter has to appear for her final exams. But I’m sorry I had to go, taking my family with me. But this is a nice chance.”
So the friend wrote, “All right, doesn’t matter. You can go away. I’m going to look after your daughter.”
He came down and he stayed in the hostel. Took a room there in the hostel. We all were there. He was a Brahmin. He would not touch an egg. He was a Brahmin. But he knew that I eat eggs and I am a non-veg. So this was about summertime had started. But he would still put on his overcoat or a raincoat and walked out. I don’t know from where he used to get eggs in the morning, bring it in his room, because it was a Brahmin school, and secretly cook the eggs for Me. And then he would call Me and give Me the eggs to eat.
I said, “I don’t need them.” “No, no, no you have to have. You know, Your father has gone away, I have to look after You.”
So sweetly – and he was the head of heads there, breaking his own rules and regulations for Me that he was making non-veg food. And then he would take all the, see, shells of the eggs in a paper, put it in the pocket in a big overcoat, walked out and throw them somewhere. Then he would come with Me to leave Me for My exams. Evening again, he was there, waiting for Me. He was such a big man, such a great man, very much respected. I mean, he was the head of the heads.
And every day I was very much surprised at this friendship.... They had nothing in common as such. It was just friendship. My father was a literary person and this one was a social worker..... My father would go to jail, so his friends would come and take us away to their houses and their wives will look after us, give us a bath. No difference – I never felt any difference between their children and Me. Moreover, we felt that they were looking after us more than their own children....
In friendship, one can really enjoy. You need a very large heart to be a friend, a very large heart. If you look after your own child, support your own child, then you are a gone case for Sahaja Yoga, but if you have that kind of a largeness of friendship....
In this world, we have thousands and thousands of friends everywhere we go. And this is what we have to know within ourselves, that we have to be ourselves very, very friendly type, very friendly. There is an openness between one friend and another friend. There is no closeness. There is no tension. There is no formality – and reliance, so much so that you can talk to them about what you want, what is your need and what problems you have.
I hope you understand that love means complete freedom to yourself and to others. If you love someone, then there is complete freedom and understanding. But this love has to be very, very pure – complete understanding. You have to feel that friendship. And you will feel very proud that you have so many friends – and real friends. You have so many friends who are real friends. You will be feeling a thing as if you are a great personality, that you have so many friends in this world. You are not alone.
Imagine before this what we had – so many saints, so many great souls were born and they were treated like singular people and tortured, killed, poisoned. They were alone. But you are not. You are all friends to each other and the greatest friend you have is the Divine Power, which is looking after you and doing everything for you. If you have that kind of a relaxed, beautiful alertness within you, you are going to enjoy life. You are going to enjoy Sahaja Yoga and you are going to get many, many more people in Sahaja Yoga. (1989-07-09)
