What does always come together with love?

Someone suggested that I talk about love and death – interesting themes, actually, because what does always come together with love? It is humility. Love and humility go together. When there is Love, there is humility and something dies at that moment. What is it? It is the pride, the egoism. In the presence of Love, there is no egoism, there is no pride. So the questions arise, “How can I be humble? How can I awake this love? How can I awake this humility inside?” Because we are hanging so much onto this big ego or pride, we always say, I, mine and me. Have you ever counted how many times in a day you use these words? If you were to count them, you would scare yourself. It’s a lot of times! It’s true that we have different I’s. There is the “I” of the ego and there is the “I” of the Self, but most often, what our mind first understands is the “I’ of egoism. And with this “I”, it’s very difficult to awaken Love. Even if Love awakens, it gets diluted with the power of the mind. The ego is so strong. It’s true that to achieve Realisation, to achieve God, we have to be humble, but there is one problem. Very often, when someone sees himself as humble, he starts to say “I am very humble.” These people are very proud people. What is this called? This is the ego of humility and the pride of humility. Actually, it’s very difficult to be humble, but it’s not impossible. Have you heard about a great Persian Sufi poet called Sa’adi? You should read about him. His poems are very beautiful. There is an incident in his life, which marked him very much and which made him completely humble throughout his life. One day, he went to the mosque with his father for an all night vigil. It’s when you pray the whole night. So, they were all sitting in the mosque with the Mullah and they were praying and praying. And, in the middle of the night, everybody dozed off. Everybody was falling asleep; even the Mullah was falling asleep. Then Sa’adi went near to his dad’s ears and whispered “Dad, only me and you are keeping vigil. All of them are sleeping.” At that moment his father became annoyed and angry with him and told him off, saying “It’s better to sleep and not to keep the vigil all the night than to judge others and consider oneself more superior than anybody else.” At that moment, Sa’adi realised that one has to always be humble and he took the decision that nothing should ever come between him and his humility. So, he became very, very humble. It’s easy to talk about humility, but sometimes difficult to practice, because we are so bound by our pride, which makes ego perceive us to be above everybody else. If we really want to change something, if we really want to let go of this pride, it will happen, but first we have to want it. We have to say “Yes, I want it!” and not superficially. Many people say, “Yes, I want it, Swamiji. I don’t want to be proud. I try my best to get rid of it, but it’s not leaving me!” But it’s not that it is not leaving you, but you are not leaving it. This is the difference, you know? When one is humble, one will not even care about putting oneself completely down and regarding everybody else higher. This is the beginning of how to learn to be humble, to learn to put yourself down and say that everybody else knows better than you. Keep repeating to yourself, keep reminding yourself of that and you will learn from everything and from everyone. That’s true humility.