05/12/2025
If you take that view, whether they are pleasant or unpleasant, and they are good or they are evil, you say that all belong to God, and then you ascribe many terrific qualities to God. We are forced to do it anyhow. He is the giver of death. Can you deny it? When a mother loses her child, you could not by any stretch of imagination say, well, what a wonderful thing has happened to it. You couldn't say either in regard to the mother or to the child. The child couldn't live to accomplish anything, and what an agony it is (the death) to the mother. You couldn't say anything. But that if you have to say that if there is one cause, the cause of all causes, an ultimate source from which all things proceed, you have to say that this also proceeded from God. What can you do otherwise? Here a new approach, a new attitude of mind is called for. The attitude is this. I say--"Lord, I do not have any preference. I have no likes or dislikes. I do not say I like this and I dislike the other thing. I have given up my preferences." All strong souls do that. When you are asked, you are a captain, your general has called you,--"captain, you will have to take so many people and go and land there. But I warn you, it is a position of great danger." What does the captain say? Does he say, "is that so, then I won't go there." He doesn't say that. He will just say, yes, sir, and he will go on. Souls become like this. Whenever souls have become strong, souls have given up all preferences. I like this, I don't like this, I shall do this, I don't know--all things are given up. If you say, if all things are given up, is goodness also given up? Goodness in a relative sense is given up. In a superficial sense is given up. But when you no longer have any preferences, then you rise above both good and evil. And there is a transcendental goodness which cannot be understood in the terms of good as we understand in the relative life. And it is that which becomes manifest in us.
