side of the coin one day and be the poorest, most miserable person on earth. That’s the way it works. You may say to me, “My neighbor never has any problems. It’s like he fell into a pot of gold. Everything he touches turns into money. He’s as happy as a horse. He’s got a beautiful wife, a big house, everything he could possibly need, and look at me! You know, that guy’s life hasn’t changed for forty years.”
You’re making your own conclusion. He has earned this karmically, and if he doesn’t pull away from it, he might spend his whole life in goodness, human goodness. But then he will be drawn back again by the law of karma, which is in his mind and he doesn’t know it, and next time he will be a homeless person. Whatever he does, he won’t be able to make a dime. He’ll try his best, but he’ll always be poverty stricken. He won’t be able to earn a dime no matter how hard he tries. This is why we should never judge. You have no idea what your neighbor’s going through. Never say he or she has a wonderful life and look at mine. Why am I poor, why am I sick, why am I this way or that way. The idea is to wake up, not to look at yourself, not to feel sorry for yourself, not to compare yourself with others, but to awaken.
When you awaken, something happens that is unexplainable. There are no human words to explain it. When you awaken you just understand, you know, you feel—and these words are inadequate—you become Divine harmony. You are no longer fooled by person, place or thing. You no longer react.
As an example, someone tells you that you won the lotto, you won fifty billion dollars. You do not become a slave to that. Someone tells you that you lost fifty billion dollars. Same thing, same reaction. You do not become a slave to that. What happens in the human life does not matter. When you know who you are, you do not say it doesn’t matter. You simply exist. You exist as yourself. You’re at peace. No one can ever take the peace away from you no matter how hard they try. You are not fooled by things.
What you do is deal with yourself. You can give of yourself because you become your living self. Therefore, you can give yourself away and you’re still there, for you’ve become the Infinite Self, the Divine Mother, Omnipresence, Total Oneness with all things. So you can give of yourself, and yet you’re always there.
When Ramana Maharshi was being robbed, his devotees wanted to attack the robbers, and he said, “No, no, no. It’s our dharma to be what we are, and it’s their dharma to be what they are. We should not interfere with their dharma, therefore give them what they want.” That’s very profound. We are spiritual people. The world is not. We act in accordance with spiritual principles.
What this really means is that we, as human beings, become last, not first. That’s what Jesus meant when he said, “Those who go first will be last, and those who are last will be first.” You have to develop great humility. Do not long for anything. Do not want to be rich, or famous or great, and do not say, I want to be poor and have nothing, either. They’re both wrong. Just be yourself. When you are yourself, you will be amazed how the universe takes care of you.
It’s like the body with vitamins and medicines. Your body is a natural healing factory and able to heal itself. When you start taking too many vitamins, when you start taking medi- cines too much, the body says, “Well, you’ve made that into your God, so now you have to depend on it.” Then you have to keep taking vitamins for the rest of your life or you get sick. Think about that.