First, we begin with ‘Om Shanti’—Om means ‘I am’, and Shanti means ‘peace’. When there is peace there is love, and when there is love there is peace. Within our relationships in the world today, there are three things that don’t allow us to understand and experience true love, and they are competition, corruption, and criticism.
Love means to have honesty. When I can understand honesty, then I can also understand what love is.
The more we live our lives based on values, the more we are able to experience love and give others the experience of that love. If you want to experience real love, then you have to know the One who is the Truth, God.
The love that we experience from God makes us truthful and honest; the experience of God’s love gives us so much courage.
God does not discriminate. He is everyone’s Father, the One who wishes benefit for all. My experience is that when there is honesty with God, the power of God’s love is able to remove all feelings of discrimination.
With realisation, let me free myself from competition, corruption and criticism. The illness of corruption is very bad—if someone gets some money as a bribe, they will do the work, otherwise, they will not. In competition, they push others aside or make them come down. I have to transform this bad habit and change myself. I have to have honesty and courage, no matter how many challenges I have to face. In my life, I have experienced that when a child has courage, the parent will help. When you are clean and honest within, then there can be no fear or worry.
When someone asks who God is, we say God is Truth and God is Love.
We have to know three things: Who am I? Who do I belong to? And what is it that I must do? First, let me accept who I am: I am a soul—a spiritual being. I am not this body; I am a soul in this body. I am not a Hindu or a Muslim or a Christian; I am not this body; I am not male or female. When I say I am male or female, then that means the body. Who do I belong to? I am a child of the Supreme. This is the truth. Then the soul has the connection with the Supreme Soul and there is light and I can be enlightened. When I know who I am, then I know what I have to do. In this world, I have to live with the power of truth and love, and I have to serve the world with such honesty and love that falsehood is finished.
The world has now become such that people become so occupied, engrossed and trapped in external things that they don’t have time to know God or believe in God, so they do not see the value of, or the necessity for, this. Perhaps, at a time of difficulty when nobody can help them, then they will call out to God. But it is only when we give time to know God that we can understand, experience and value what it is that we receive from Him.
The late Dadi Janki was the Administrative Head of the Brahma Kumaris.
