Part I

Love me or hate me, but don't ignore me¹

The Irish have a saying, “Love me if you will; hate me if you must; but for God’s sake, don’t ignore me.” I wish to address this saying to God. There are three significant ideas here: to be loved, to be hated and to be ignored. I wish to discuss these from the spiritual point of view.
“Love me if you will.” Where human love is concerned, sometimes we expect love because of what we have done and sometimes we receive love without making any actual effort to be loved. And, of course, sometimes we don’t get the love that we feel we rightly deserve. In the spiritual world, it is not like that. God is constantly standing right in front of us with His all-fulfilling Love. He is All-Love; He cannot be otherwise. Very often an ordinary human being has to make a conscious effort to try to love others. But in God’s case, He does not have to will or desire to love us. Love is God’s very essence. It flows from Him eternally. An ordinary person sometimes feels that he is wanting in the capacity to love others and he tries to cultivate this divine quality in himself. But if a person is already endowed with a few divine qualities, then the love which is most essential in our human world and in our divine world, he will have in boundless measure.

God’s Dream and God’s Reality go together. He does not separate His Dream from His Reality. If, in His Dream, love looms large, then we can rest assured that in His Reality also love looms large. God’s potentiality and His expression go together. Love itself and its power of expression can never be separated in God’s case. And those who are consciously aspiring to be godlike will have this capacity. Divine love and the expression of this love will be one and simultaneous. Love is the quality and the expression of love is the capacity. So the quality and the capacity can both be achieved if one soulfully aspires for a better and more fulfilling life.
“Hate me if you must.” God can never, never hate us. A man who has even a little wisdom cannot hate his fellow beings. Why? Because he knows the reasons that one hates another. One reason is that an individual feels inferior. Another reason is that an individual is afraid of someone. A third reason is that a person feels that his oneness with the other person is not complete; his real identification with the other person is lacking and there is a feeling of division. That is why he starts hating.

But how is it that sometimes one hates oneself? It is quite possible. Sometimes you get angry with yourself. You have done something wrong or you wanted to do something wrong; that is why you hate yourself. You want to do something, achieve something, but unfortunately you are not able to accomplish this. That is why you hate yourself. What do we actually observe in this hatred? We observe that our soul is separated from the physical mind and physical consciousness.

When we are living in the soul, we realise that we are not the doer. We are only an instrument. Also, when we live in the soul, we do not care for success. We care only for progress. It is our job to listen to the dictates of the Inner Pilot. Then it is up to Him whether He gives us the experience of success or failure. So if we live in the soul, we can never hate ourselves. Only we love the divine in us, the Supreme in us, who is also in the world.

If we care most for the soul, then when the soul comes to the fore, it acts like a pilot. The outer physical being can easily be shaped and moulded by the light of the soul. We cannot do it the other way around. From the physical we cannot take light and transform the soul. That is absurd. But very often we think that if we go deep within with our physical capacity or vital capacity or mental capacity, then a time will come when the soul and the physical, the vital and the mental will meet together and together establish the divine Truth on earth. But it is not possible. It is the soul that has to be brought forward and it is the light from the soul that has to inundate the body, the vital, the mind and the heart. From inside we have to come outside; from outside we can’t go inside. That is wrong.
“Don’t ignore me.” Who ignores whom? It is when there is no love, no hatred, no concern — when there is nothing between us and someone else — that the question of ignoring others arises. But we have to know that God can never ignore us. He Himself is manifesting in and through us, so He cannot ignore us. When God knows that we are His instruments, His chosen instruments, how can He ignore us? We are His children. He cannot ignore us just as we cannot ignore our eyes, our hands, our feet. Nor can we ignore God, for He is our higher part. God is man yet to be realised; man is God yet to be manifested and fulfilled.