Friends and Relatives

Q87: Swami!  We have on one side the most invaluable spirituality while  on the other, we have also friends and relatives diverting our attention towards the world.  No doubt, it is our fault to pay heed to their words.  Yet, we face the conflict.  What is to be done?

Bhagawan: Today there are no true friends to anyone.  Who are the friends of today's world and of what sort are they?  After all, your friendship lasts for two or three years until you complete your studies here and leave the hostel.  Later you separate from each other and go your own way.  So long as you have money in your pocket and your father is in a good position, everyone would come to you and say "hello", but the day your pocket is empty and your father retires, you will be left with none even to say "goodbye".  Can you call anyone your friend?

Friendship in Sanskrit is known as "maitri" pronounced as "my-three".  Here three represents the harmony in thought, word and deed.  Are there friends with this purity?  Nowhere!  Who is your true friend then?  God is your real friend.  God is the only friend for you as He is always with you and in you.  Don' consider anyone else a friend of yours.  Further you should be very careful with people or your company.  It is said, "Tell me your company, I shall tell you what you are."  So all and sundry can't be your friends.  A warrior of outstanding stature and an expert in archery, Karna fell into disrepute because he was in bad company and so he is branded as one among the wicked, four, the "dusta catustaya", Duryodhana, Dussasana, Sakuni and Karna.

Next, who are your relatives?  In what way were you related to them before you were born?  All of them come in with the passage of time and pass off like passing clouds  Is it not so?  Relatives come up to the main door as one dies and the members of the family at the most follow one's corpse to the cremation ground.  None follows the departed soul.  It is only God who is with you during  your life and even after your death.  So God is your real friend and the only relation.  These worldly people shouldn't be taken as friends and relatives.

Your life too is short.  But God is awareness and existence.  He is there before, during and after your life.  He is the eternal truth.  So follow him catch hold of God with your right hand as it is the right thing and catch hold of the world with your left hand as it has to be left behind sometime or other.  It is thus the right thing  to remember God always

(From: "Satyopanisad" Vol. l by Prof. K. Anil Kumar)