Curriculum for Peace (12 March 2008, Gargi College, Delhi) - Track 7

When you cook there is a chemistry of cooking, the different elements come and only because they fight with each other cooking becomes so good because of fighting, that is to say the different elements when they come together, they should interact with each other. Even embrace can be called a fight in the metaphysical terms even embracing my friend is a fight. That’s why wrestling for example as a sport is a good fight, it’s quite good.

Question: How is embrace a fight?

Answer:  You ask lovers when the embrace there is a real pain and yet there is a great happiness. You want to bite the object of your love; satisfaction comes by a real uniting. Fighting is only the intermediate stage of union, complete the fight it is union. Therefore any fight which is a process of union, it’s a good thing.

Comment: So that’s why people fight with God?

Also, for example: we are talking to each other now and I am fighting against many ideas which may be present in your minds, it’s a good fight. You have certain assumptions, I have other assumptions. Your assumptions and my assumptions are clashing now, there is a quarrel between the two, they are fighting as a result such a great happiness. At the end I’ll say you are enriched, I am enriched, how nice it is, perfect. So that’s why I can say that we are all now smiling because it is so good because of a good fight. You may not call it fighting if you like. coming together, comingling of the elements is a good things, you use the word fight only when there is this element of envy, domination, it is this we normally define as fighting but when that is absent this is all good, we must. In fact all interaction is fighting and interaction is all life. All life is nothing but interaction, all comingling; it’s a constant meeting, isn’t it? Milte hai bichar jane ke liye, so all the time we are meeting together and separating and again meeting together and separating. Whole life is nothing this process, it is good. When we teach peace it is not that we are not teaching fighting. Secondly we are not teaching to remain quiet when there is injustice. It’s a beautiful message which Mother has given to all the children: Make us hero warriors, that is the title. Make us the hero warriors that we aspire to become, you should aspire t become hero warriors, not weaklings which have got no capacity of understanding injustice and not fighting with injustice. It’s not meekness, its strength, strength to meet, to wrestle, to unite, to enjoy the real embrace. This should be the aim of our life. So when we teach peace we have to be very careful, it’s a very subtle subject. While teaching peace don’t make people meek and weak and remember meek and weak people can never be peaceful, they will be all the time in envy. It’s only the weak people who are envious. Those who are really strong they hardly envy at all. The real conquerors always embrace each other nicely. The king meeting king like king, royally, so we should have personalities which are very powerful and for whom this envy is such a pitiable thing, shouldn’t exist at all, should be able to laugh pitiably against envy. But fight against what, warrior against what? Mother has said: against all the forces which are striving to keep the old, which are preventing the new to come, it is against then that we must fight and you must fight resolutely, powerfully, make all of us as a result of this fighting which is going on now, ultimately all should feel we have gone to the fundamentals of peace.

Question: This fight also doesn’t it happen also within us? Fight with our own ego?

Answer: That also should happen, yes, you are right because so much of conflict within ourselves. We have to realise that there is not one ego but many egos, not one ego but many egos and each one is in fight. Our physical ego, vital ego, mental ego, spiritual ego, ego of my will, ego of my desire, ego of my passion, so many egoistic pressures in my being and I am constantly fighting all the time envy at every stage in my being. So to be infinite is to get rid of all these complexes. Totally peaceful individual, who lives in infinite consciousness all the time, completely at peace within himself and peaceful without that is samatvam yoga uchate that is the equality which is reached.

 Question: We are fighting against something which won’t be resolved; we are helpless and still fighting so how do we establish peace?

Answer: It’s a very interesting question – fighting a losing battle. Be sure first of all that you are fighting against injustice. If you are doing so, even if you are going to lose, you should say: I will fight on, I’ll lose it, you will lose in yourself. I have weakness; I cannot resist the taste of jalebi. The moment I see jalebi, I have it eat it at any cost, I have to fight against it, I have got diabetes and I should not eat it. I know I am going to have a losing battle, I should try my best even though ultimately I will eat it and confess, I must do my best to fight against it, losing battle but I must do it not that in any case I going to lose so let me eat now right from the beginning, don’t do that. Do your utmost right up to the end, fight, fight up to the end? Then you will see that you have got strength. All strength is something that is brought out of losing battle and that should be the spirit of everybody. Take for example the big story of Baji Prabhu. Sri Aurobindo wrote a beautiful poem called Baji Prabhu, if you have time, you must read out this poem to everybody. Story was that Shiva Ji was constantly chased by Mughals and Muslim invaders; he was the enemy number one of all of them. So people were constantly on watch where is Shiva Ji, where he is moving out from one fort to the other.