Despite the group having been together for four months now, differences and petty quarrels persisted in the Nasik ashram. On the afternoon of April 13th, (1937) Baba mentioned this problem and explained the difference between needs and wants:
As I said this morning, “It is time we started dying.” Dying not the ordinary death, but the death of low desires. It is all bliss everywhere, but all people are miserable because of ignorance which forces them to fulfill desires. Yet the goal of each and every one is to attain the state of desirelessness. Is it clear? It is really all happiness, infinite unfathomable bliss when you desire nothing. Let desires die – but how?
You want millions of things. You say, “I want this, I want that.” If you were to keep an account of your wants – oh God! Needs are not wants. Everything beyond needs is wants. And wanting inevitably leads to suffering.
So try your best, your very best to want less and less of that which is beyond your needs. Try loving and loving more and more, and then you will want less of that which is beyond your needs and want more love. Try seriously. It will all be bliss if you do not want anything. But you must try consciously. The stone wants nothing, but wants nothing unconsciously.
Let us begin by dying! The more you want, the more miserable you are. If you think seriously for just five minutes of all the things you have wanted during your life, of what you have gotten, and what you did not get and today ask yourself if you are satisfied with life. All that you enjoyed in the past, is today nil! All you have suffered, today is nil! It was all illusion.
So, when it is our right to be happy, why try to be unhappy by wanting things? Don’t want, be happy. If you want, the wanting makes you restless. If you do not get it, you are disappointed. If you get it, after having it, you do not want it – you do not enjoy it.
Therefore, long and be restless for one big thing. Long and want the one thing that will kill all the millions of other wants. Long for union. How clear and simple. Try with all your heart. Do not say yes and then not do it. Begin seriously now.
You cannot love each other. All right, but try at least to give in to each other. But even this you do not do. Why? Because you are not honest. That is why I love the mad at the Rahuri ashram. They are honest in their insanity. You come from far away to love me and to realize me, but here you have turned into fighting cocks and hens!
I think I will have to leave you all and go to Nepal or send you all to the Himalayas. So begin by wanting less. Try to love more. Try to have more tolerance. It is sublime happiness all around and yet everybody is sad, miserable and suffering. So, do you all promise to begin dying?
Although different men and women definitely disliked one another, each in the group promised to try to live Baba’s words. Thereupon, Baba continued:
If I find disharmony and find you not prepared to die, then it is better that you all pack up and go. You have not come here for name and fame. I have so many disciples from the West. I do not need anybody. I am always alone and always will be until eternity. It is you who need me until you become me. But if you do not try, what is the use?
Therefore, all should begin to try now, or seriously I will tell you all to leave. Be honest in your trying. There must be harmony, love and peace. Real harmony, love and peace – not forced. Unless you are what I want you to be, I cannot give you what I want to.
Do not keep the doors closed (pointing to the heart). Keep them open so that when I want, I can enter. Every time I intend entering, I find the doors closed, all because of useless wants!
Begin dying by loving. Promise me. If you cannot love one another, how could you love those who torture you? Look how Jesus loved! He saw himself in all. See Baba within. If I say, “No!” do you get angry? When Norina says no, think it is Baba who says no. It is all want, pride, ego-satisfaction – all wants.
Someone asked, “How can we differentiate between needs and wants? Some claim, ‘I need all I want.’ What is the difference?”
Baba spelled out in reply:
If you are dying of thirst in the desert, you need water – not lemonade. If you ask for water, it is your need. If you ask for barley water, it is a want. Is it clear? But if you can get good water, it is not necessary to drink muddy water to kill your desire for drinking. Drink good water. Neither lemonade nor muddy water, but pure, simple water.
Lord Meher, Bhau Kalchuri, Original Publication, Vol. 6, pp. 2151 – 2153.