I scold you people from time to time, but I know that that method is only for temporary use. It is like going to an emergency room. In an emergency room, how many people are cured? So many people die while the doctors are operating. How much failure we experience in an emergency room! Again, sometimes we get results. The normal way is to take medicine, get injections and so forth; that is the real way to become cured. With that way you have got a solid base. But in an emergency room, how many people go to God while being treated!
In the spiritual life, if you really want to make your Master happy, you must not be afraid of your Master — no, no, no! The Master has not come into the world to strike people. That was for Julius Caesar, Alexander and all those military people. But sometimes I scold you as a last resort. In the Bhagavad Gita, before the Kurukshetra battle, how Sri Krishna begged and begged the Kauravas only to give five villages to the Pandavas! The Kauravas had the kingdom, but they would not give up those five villages. Three or four times Sri Krishna went to the Kauravas’ palace, but they would not listen to him. They said, “Without a fight, we shall not give to the Pandavas even the quantity of sand or mud that will fit through the eye of a needle.” A needle is long but the eye is tiny. How much can pass through that tiny hole? Then Sri Krishna felt that the situation was hopeless and said, “War is needed.” The war was a last resort.
Here also, as a last resort, I scold you people. Otherwise, I plead with you, with your heart, with your mind, with your vital, with your physical. So to all my disciples I am saying, do not be afraid of me, but be identified with my sufferings. To be afraid of me is a stupid, useless approach. To be identified with my sadness, with my tears, is absolutely the right approach.
Let us not take the fear approach. Let us take the love approach. When we have fear, then we will hide all our diseases. When some people have diseases, they are afraid, as if they have committed a robbery. They feel that they have done something wrong, so they have to hide. Is it not the height of their stupidity? If something is physically wrong with them, then let them go to a doctor. Fear they are cherishing, but again, they are not even praying. Fear is dominating their whole day and night. They have no time to pray to the Supreme. In them we only see fear, fear, fear. They feel they will be exposed. What stupidity! They can pray to God to cure them if they do not want to go to a doctor. It is God who gave those individuals the little capacity they needed to become doctors. They can pray to God, to the real Doctor. But they have no time to pray; only fear is killing them. Here the Supreme has sent a representative in the form of a spiritual Master. The disciples should say, “Let us go to him. He will be able to cure us.”
