Darshan with Swami Krishnananda during 1997

by Swami Krishnananda

5. Love and Hatred

(Darshan given on January 25th, 1997.)

An ashramite: Swamiji, if I don't love a thing or hate a thing, what is that?

Swamiji: Because you love a thing, therefore you are hating it. They are one and the same thing. Anything that you don't love is the object of hatred. Because you cannot love the whole universe, you select some portions, and what you have selected is the object of love. Anything that is excluded is the object of hatred.

Ashramite: That is not my point, Swamiji. Why do I love a thing?

Swamiji: Because you are weak in your mind. You think that you are a weak fellow, and you want to make yourself complete by thrusting something from outside. You have got no faith in your own strength, and so you want to import strength from outside. It cannot be done. The thing that you are loving will never come to you because it is outside. Anything that is outside you is always outside only, so every love is a futile attempt at getting anything. Whoever loves will have tragedy in the end because he is trying to get something which he cannot get. Already you have created a false notion of things being outside, and that thing knows it. That thing that you are loving knows that you are considering it as outside, so it rejects you immediately, and then you have a tragedy. So all love ends in tragedy because you have a double standard. You have cut off connection with it by saying it is outside, and it is not a foolish thing. It also knows. Even a wall has eyes. It will understand: “You are telling that I am outside. Then I will kick you out.” So all love is a misconception in the mind, and so nobody is feeling happy. Afterwards they will become…

Ashramite: What about affection?

Swamiji: That is love only. It is the other side of it. It is another name for hatred: love. That which you don't love is hatred. You don't like something interfering with your love. That possibility of something interfering is hatred, and you always keep a foot on it: “Don't come near!” But it is connected with this. They are like the right hand and left hand. You cannot have one hand only. There is only one object in the universe; one side of it is love, the other side is hatred. But you cannot have half of the universe, and reject half of the universe. The universe is not half . It is full. Half of it you want, and half of it you don't want. It is not possible. It is a total misconception right from the beginning itself. And also it is a kind of lack of faith in one's own strength. A weak person wants something else. If you yourself are complete, who can complete you? That which you want is already inside you, but you are not believing it. You think it is outside. If it is outside, it is outside forever. It will never come near you.

Everything has got eyes to see. There are no blind objects. Even a table – if you tell the table, “You this stupid thing, why are you sitting here?” it will understand: “This fellow is talking to me like this.” But if you say, “My dear table, how are you?” it will understand. You are thinking it has no eyes to see. Even the walls have ears, they say, and the walls have eyes also, not merely ears. Everything sees you. You are not isolatedly sitting. Even your thought is reverberating in the skies. The whole universe will know what you are thinking. There are no secret thoughts anywhere. What you are secretly thinking will drop there like a thunderbolt in an expanded form through the mind. There is a big microphone in the sky, and it will amplify even the silent thought of yours, so everybody will know what it is.

You cannot stand outside the universe; therefore, you are complete, and there is no meaning in loving anything or hating anything. The whole thing is finished. The basic misconception should go away. When you are alone, you must be absolutely happy, as if heaven has entered you. If you feel you are alone and miserable, and need to go to the market and shake hands with somebody, then you are a poor fellow. The more you are happy when you are literally alone, the greater you are. The more miserable you are when you are alone and want another friend to shake hands with and chat, the more you are a poor fellow. The more you are alone to yourself, the greater it is. Nobody should see you, and you should not see anybody. You don't want to talk to any person, and nobody should talk to you . At that time you feel immensely complete in yourself. But if you say, “No, no, it is not like that! I want to go out and talk to this man. I will go to the market, make purchases,” that means you are a poverty-stricken person, psychologically poor. That is lack of faith in one's own self, so how can you have faith in another person?

A visitor: I know someone who is very happy when she's alone, but she feels uneasy among people.

Swamiji: There are no people. They don't exist at all. That is your imagination. You are also people only, so you are also the same thing as another person. There is no difference among people. All are people. Everyone is like anybody else, so there is no comparison. If you don't like them, they will not like you, so it is complementary. Humanity is one mass. It is not segregated into I or you and all that.