Innocence can be taken advantage of...

The roseflower is beautiful, full of fragrance. The rock is almost just the opposite, but the rock can kill the roseflower very easily.

So one thing has to be understood: the higher you go into silence, love, beauty, the more delicate you become, more fragile. The lower you go -- violent, murderous, criminal -- the harder you become.

Your heart has both the possibilities: to become the rock or to become a roseflower.

The second thing to be understood is: the rock has a certain kind of strength, but that strength is of death. It is not in the service of life; it is in the service of destruction and death. The roseflower also has a certain strength, but it is in the service of life, love and beauty. These are different kinds of strength.

Certainly, you cannot make bullets from roseflowers. That does not mean bullets become more important. You cannot kill somebody with a roseflower. That does not mean the arrow -- a poisonous arrow -- is more powerful than a rose. But it appears so.

The arrow is dead; hence you cannot kill it anymore. Do you think that is strength? Then all the people who are in the grave are stronger than you; they will never die again. You will be dying.

Would you like to change places with the people in the graves? They are, in a way, stronger than you, because death cannot happen to them. But they are dead. What is the point of their strength?

Life is fragile. The higher you go, the more fragile. The tree is not so fragile as the flower. The fragrance is even more fragile than the flower -- just a small breeze can take it away.

This is true, that you see innocence and lovingness all over the place in this commune. Naturally, the question has arisen in your mind that why did something like a fascist calamity happen to you?

Innocence can be taken advantage of. Lovingness can be exploited.

But no harm has been done to you! Fragrance may be fragile; it may exist only for a moment, but that moment is eternity. The rock may exist for eternity, but that eternity is not even equal to a single moment of fragrance.

The people who tried to exploit your innocence and love, your trust, have not destroyed you; they have destroyed themselves.

This is the beauty of the power of love, the power of trust, the power of innocence.

What harm has been done to you? No harm can be done to you. Even if you are killed, your loving being and your trusting being and your inner innocence are eternal. And you have seen the whole drama, that the people who were powerful but in the service of destructiveness had to escape finally.

Love is victorious.

And wherever they will go, a deep feeling of guilt, of inhumanity, of having taken advantage of trusting people, will follow them. They will not have a single night of peaceful sleep.

This is a fundamental law of life: your every action is followed by its result automatically.

The flower releases fragrance. These people have released poison, but the poison has not affected you at all. It has poisoned their own beings, their own growth. They have missed a great opportunity, and perhaps they will have to wait for lives to find it again.

I am not against power. All that is needed is that you should remain aware, more aware than before. Powerless you can afford to be unaware, but when you have power you cannot afford to be unaware. And then power can be of immense help -- to help you to destroy the Nadirshah within you, the Adolf Hitler within you. And if you can come out of power unscratched, then you will have an abundance of love, compassion, beauty, truth.

They have their own strength, but it is of a totally different dimension.


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