What you do to others you are doing up to me......

Saint Bishoy from Egypt was a great ascetic who was doing lots of penance in the desert. One day there was an old man who was very filthy, very dirty who came to him and he said " Oh, please, for sure you have been walking in the desert for a long time. You must be very tired. Come let me give you hospitality. Let me look after you." So he, Bishoy, took this old man. He carried him back to his cave, or whatever, and there he started washing the feet of this man. As he was washing the feet of this man he was crying with Love. He felt so much Love, he was crying so bitterly that he was washing the feet with his tears. When he looked at the feet of the man, he didn´t see the feet of the man, he saw the feet of Christ with the Stigmata inside. Like that there are so many saints, you know. This shows that what Christ said "What you do to others you are doing up to me. What you do good - when I was in prison you visited me, when I was hungry, you gave me food. When I didn´t have clothes, you clothed me. When I was thirsty, you gave me drink." This fulfilled that what you do to others, you are doing it to Him. The same thing - when you do good, you are doing it to Him, but when you are doing bad, also, you are doing it up to Him. You are not doing it to the person. Don´t think only good things go to Him, but the bad things that you do, also, to other people come to Him. So this reflects this quality that God pervades everything inside of everybody.

Who is yourself in reality?.....

.... It’s just Him! In the Gita, Krishna said: Everything is me. In the Bible, Christ said: Give what belongs to Caesar, to Caesar. And what belongs to God, to God. But what belongs to God? It is your spirit. It is your true Self. Make your prayer like this, “Lord, do whatever you want with me, whenever you want with me, and however you want with me”. And in your mind don´t ask any questions. This is a poison, because the mind always doubts. The mind always thinks it knows best. And when you surrender this mind to the Divine, bhakti will arise, devotion will arise. And when devotion arises, the purity of Love will also arise together with it. It´s not a love where we just say “I love you, I love you”. It´s a Love where when we say “I love you”, there is no condition in it. It is not “I love you because of something. I love you because of your body. I love you because of your wealth. I love you because you are beautiful outside and if I pull the skin from your body, I don´t love you anymore”. But it’s because when you say “I love you” you love Him the way He is. And that´s the purity of Love, the Unconditional Love, the way God loves, the way your heart knows how to love. That´s why you do feel Love, but the moment you start to put conditions to that Love, it fades. But when you stick to this purity of Love, and make this Love grow, it will grow. Because Love is like a seed, which is inside the heart of man: the seed has to grow, has to blossom, also. It has to germinate and grow big; the seed can´t just stay like that. That´s what Christ said, also. There are so many similarities between Hinduism and Christianity. Christ said: If you plant a seed on a stone, it will never grow. But if you plant it in the heart of man it shall grow.” And this is the Love in the heart of man, when real Love is felt, when real Love starts to grow. It grows in six different stages, which are called: Sneha Prem, Pranaya Prem, Mana Prem, Raga Prem, Anuraga Prem, and Maha Bhav. These stages of Love - of course, I will now not go to detail about it - grow when this purity is there, which leads you to complete surrender to the Divine. But first, what is in regard to normal life, is to calm the mind and let Love itself start to grow inside of the heart. Only through this Love will you know who you are. And this is not up to me to tell you, it’s up to you to make the first step.