The marriage of courage and fear

Once the King asked the minister to bring him two persons — the bravest person and the most cowardly person he could find. The following day the minister brought only one person to the King. The King became angry. “How is it that you have only brought one person?” he shouted. “I wanted to see two different persons with two different characters.”

“Please don’t be angry, your Majesty.” said the minister. “You wanted to see both the qualities. If I can show them to you in one person, will you not be satisfied?”

“Certainly I will,” said the King. “But it is impossible for one person to be at the same time the bravest and the most cowardly.”

“No, it is not,” said the minister, “and I will prove it to you.” With that he presented to the King a young and beautiful woman.

“You are cutting jokes with me!” exclaimed the King. “I can see that this woman may be the most timid person on earth, but how can she be the bravest?”

“I will tell you in what way she is very brave and in what way she is very timid. This girl will walk miles through a thunderstorm and pouring rain on a deserted road at midnight in order to visit her boyfriend. No man would dare to go where she goes alone at that time of night without a thought for her own safety. But when this girl is at home with her husband, if a tiny mouse makes a noise, or a little cockroach crawls by, she will be frightened to death. She will stand on a chair and scream until someone chases it away. So you can see that she is both the bravest and the most cowardly person in one.”

The King was satisfied with his minister’s choice.

Spiritual comments

Necessity makes the person strong or weak. It was her necessity to go to visit her boyfriend. Necessity will make even the weakest person strong. But when there is no necessity, immediately one becomes weak. You know that in competition Mangal throws the javelin very far. But if his wife asks him to take out the garbage, he has no strength. If she asks him to bring her a piece of bread from the kitchen, he can’t bring it. He’s tired; he’s exhausted. Strength comes only when the feeling of necessity is there.

In the spiritual life also, where do we get strength from? It is from faith. If you have faith in me, in your spiritual Master, immediately you become the strongest man. If you have faith in me, then you can do anything I ask you. But when you don’t have faith, then you are helpless.

With a strong faith you can climb the Himalayas. And without faith even if you see an ant you will be afraid. The ant will not necessarily bite you, but just because you know that it can bite, you are half dead with fear.

Look at the strength of faith. In India it happened that a child heard many times from his mother that tigers kill people and devour them. Then, when he saw a picture of a tiger on the wall, he immediately fainted. He had great faith in his mother and she had instilled tremendous fear in him. If a spiritual child can have this kind of faith in his spiritual Mother and Father, he will make the fastest progress. If you are told that you will realise God if you pray to a picture of Krishna and if you have tremendous faith and you look at a picture of Krishna and pray, you will realise God.

Faith can work either in a positive way or in a negative way. But if there is no faith either in the positive or in the negative, then you will be the weakest person on earth.