Q: In the book Face to Face it is said that anger cannot be totally eradicated, but greed can be totally eradicated. Please comment.
PR: Master has said that kama and krodha, that means love and anger, these are divine attributes. But moha and lobha, as they are called in Sanskrit, that is, desire and greed or avarice — they are our own creations. One aspect of the fundamentals of Sahaj Marg, is that we should destroy our own creation. Therefore, desire and greed, which are our own creation, we should destroy. My Master has not asked us to destroy divine attributes. And when we speak specifically of anger and love, they are very necessary for us in dealing with our existence. And what is the purpose? I asked Master once. He told me that without love there would be no idea of going back to our Home or reaching our Original Maker. Because it is love that makes a son go back home in the evening, or a wife go back home in the evening, and it is that love that will finally take us back to our Original Destination, our Home, as we call it, too. Therefore, we are all born with the capacity for love.
It is also said, that we are born because of love, and we should die in love of God. And in between birth and death, it is love that guides our life. So love is a very necessary thing, it guides the entire creation, let us say. The word creation being used in its widest possible sense, that is, as representing the entire universe, manifested and unmanifested universe. And Sahaj Marg and my Master, they teach us that therefore, love is very necessary, but it has to be guided in the right direction. And this is what we are trying to do in meditation, constant remembrance, cleaning and all these things.
People who are concerned with things like crime, violence, even they today understand that it is misdirected love that goes around all these. And therefore, like all the powers of nature, love has both its constructive and its destructive aspects. So it is the purpose of a spiritual way to refine our existence in such a way, that the constructive force is used, and the destructive force is eliminated. We have the same problems in harnessing the powers of nature, harnessing the inventions of science and technology, and when we come to human nature, we have the same problem.
So that is in substance the idea that love is a necessary thing, but it must be refined and goal-oriented to enable us to achieve the purpose of our existence. Therefore, love should not be destroyed, and fortunately it cannot also be destroyed.
As far as anger is concerned, what is the need for it? Master's answer was that anger in its pure sense, not to be confused with rage or other violent ways of expression, I can't find the right words for it — it provides what can be considered the motor-force in cleaning up all that is wrong. That is, in its pure form, anger functions against all ungodly manifestations in nature. So anger should not be used against each other for destructive purpose, or things like that.
I can give you a clarification. When we become violent, we say we are angry, but it's not correct. Violence is violence, it has nothing to do with anger. A man can be coldly violent, you know, like a man who determines to murder somebody, and without any excitement, without any rage, without any anger, like some of these psychopaths, you cannot say that they destroy in anger. But they are violent, nevertheless.
So anger in its pure form need not result in any action, in physical action, it's a pure — like love, you know, in a pure form. I have said so many times that love need not be expressed, should not be expressed. I'll take that up next! We have seen in Babuji, as in all spiritually developed persons, that both love and anger are there, but you never see them. Of course, I expect all of you to say, "No, you are wrong, Chari, because we have felt His love." Precisely; we feel, but we don't see! So these things are not to be seen, they are only to be felt. So when we become angry in the right way, that is why it is called righteous anger, the effect of it should be felt, but it should not be seen as violence or violent behavior or unseemly behavior or things like that.
What is the way in which righteous anger manifests and what we call violent anger manifests? Righteous anger leads to reformation; violent anger leads to revolution. The same thing happens when the anger is against ourselves. If it is right anger, we proceed to develop ourselves, change ourselves in the right way to become better and better. But when the anger of the self against the self becomes a violent thing, it can even lead to suicide, for instance. As an example, we can say, when the power of the atom is harnessed in the right way, you can illuminate whole cities, manufacture energy for whole cities. But when it explodes, it destroys whole cities.
So to sum up the whole discussion, anger is a corrective force to be used for correction; love is a creative force to be used to take us to our goal. Therefore, they are both necessary in our existence.