There is a beautiful story in the Puranas. It’s a mythological story. In the abode of God, there were two gatekeepers. And the gatekeepers did not allow entry to some devotees who wanted to barge in. The gatekeepers stopped them.
So when the devotees were stopped, they got angry. They got angry at the gatekeepers, cursed them and said, “You go and be born in the world!” And when God came to know about it, he pleaded with those devotees. He said, “Please forgive my doorkeepers.”
This is very beautiful that God is pleading with the devotees for the gatekeepers.
Because devotion is so much higher. It’s very precious. Even God loves devotees. He runs behind the devotees, it is said. Because of the devotion the devotees had for God, because the very presence of God made them complete, all their anger vanished.
God called the two gatekeepers and asked them, “What would you like? Do you want a hundred lifetimes as a friend or three lifetimes as an enemy?” And they choose three lifetimes as an enemy, as long as they could be liberated. Then God told them, “Okay, you will be born, you will have intense anger towards Me. And in that intense anger, you will think about Me all the time. Soon I will be with you. You will be liberated. Because when you have such intense anger towards me, I will occupy your mind constantly. And so you will be liberated.”
It’s very beautiful. This principle is, when you’re angry at somebody, that person is occupying most of your consciousness very strongly.
See, when you get a blister from your shoe, you don’t get angry at the shoe, do you? The shoe doesn’t occupy your mind, though it has caused a blister on your foot. But if somebody else did something to you, that somebody occupies your mind all the time. So whoever you are angry with, they occupy a major part of your life. So it is better to direct that anger towards God. Because in reality, God is responsible for all the different emotions in different people. And God is the charm behind every life. If somebody is very charming, if they look very charming, what is behind that? It’s the Divine that makes them charming. So, if you see the Divine behind them, if you see a charming person, a boy or a girl who stirs your mind, then you say, “Behind this is the Divine.”
In this way, constantly the Divine rolls in your mind— through the lust, through anger, through arrogance. If you feel proud, be proud of the Divine. Be proud of one thing— that you are very dear to God and you belong to the Divine. Thus, you can integrate whatever is happening inside you into one whole, without feeling bad about yourself or bad about anybody else.
