Beasts, birds, worms and beetles –

all that could flee, fled.

Horses, donkeys, rats, sheep, dogs and cats, wolves –

all ran for their lives

and the paths and tracks were full of them.

As they fled, this multitude saw

two vultures sitting on a wall by the road.

Brothers! they cried to them. Flee! At once!

Man is on the warpath again.

The vultures just smiled. They knew!

One said: Since time immemorial man’s wars

have been good news for vultures.

Our ancestors have said so, and so too our scriptures.

It is also our own experience.

In fact it is for the benefit of vultures that God sends man to war!

God has made man and war just for vultures!

This said, the two vultures flew off towards the battle –

and in the next moment were blown to pieces by falling bombs.

If they had only known how things

can change over thousands of years.

But does even man himself realize this?

127. Love.

I received your letter.

Don’t be afraid of sexual desire

because fear is the beginning of defeat.

Accept it,

it is and it has to be.

Of course, you must know it and recognize it,

be aware of it,

bring it out of the unconscious into the conscious mind.

You cannot do this if you condemn it because condemnation

leads to repression and it is repression that pushes desires

and emotions into the unconscious.

Really, it is because of repression

that the mind is divided into conscious and unconscious,

and this division is at the root of all conflict.

It is this division that prevents man from being total –

and without integration there is no way to peace,

bliss and freedom. So meditate on sexual desire.

Whenever the desire arises,

watch it mindfully.

Do not resist it,

do not escape from it.

Encountering it leads you to unique experiences.

And whatever you have learned

or heard about celibacy –

throw it once and for all into the dustbin,

for there is no way other than this

of reaching to brahmacharya.

My regards to all there.

128. Love.

Be like steel – clay will no longer do.

To be a sannyasin is to be a soldier of God.

Serve your parents – even more than before.

Give them the joy of a sannyasin son.

But don’t relent,

keep your resolution firm;

it will bring glory to your family.

The son who compromises with a thing like sannyas

shames his family.

I have complete trust in you,

that’s why I have been a witness to your sannyas.

Laugh and go through everything.

Listen to everything and laugh.

This is your sadhana.

Let the storms come and go.

129. Love.

In sannyas, sansara is just a drama;

to know the world as a play is sannyas.

Then no one is small,

no one great,

no Ram and no enemy, Ravan,

and everything is a Ram-leela, God’s play.

Whichever part you are given play it well.

The part is not you

and as long as we identify with our part in the play

self-knowledge is impossible.

And from the day that this identification is broken

ignorance becomes impossible.

Play your part

but know well it isn’t you.

130. Love.

I have received your letter.

There is a great difference between love and pity.

There is pity in love

but there is no love in pity.

Therefore it is important to know things as they are:

love as love, pity as pity.

To take one for the other

is to create unnecessary worry.

Ordinarily, love has become impossible

because as he is man cannot be loving:

to be in love the mind must be completely empty