So these two qualities, they come together- this quality of humility and the quality of being able to develop love of God. It is not possible to develop love of God if there is no humility in our hearts. So we see that a person who is proud, how can he hear? His ears are blocked because he is overwhelmed by his own ideas that he cannot even hear what everyone else says and just only when people sort of confirm his own ideas, ‘Yes, yes’ and otherwise, ‘No I don’t agree. I totally don’t agree with this. How can you say this?’, because one’s own idea is so strong fixed in the mind, that one cannot even hear anything. But if one is humble, then one can think, ‘Yes, I need the mercy.’So a humble personality is eager to hear and by being eager to hear from superior personalities,this brings about also a special dynamics that…when people are eager to hear, then the mature vaisnava who will speak and opens his heart, he will automatically, by the eagerness of the audience become very enthusiastic and he will find that there are so many realizations in his heart that he didn’t even know he had! He may say things that he never thought and he himself will be amazed at what is coming out. Because in the relationship of the vaisnava’s, the mood is very intimate and close and one of deep friendship- a mood of acceptance. An envious person cannot accept.
Envious person will always find some reason not to accept others, he’ll always find some quality in someone that’s not allowed, something wrong: ‘you can’t sit like that, you can’t look like that, you can’t speak like that, people that speak like that- unacceptable, people that come from a certain place- unacceptable’ and so on and so on. Just on some external feature, an envious person will reject so many and basically ‘anyone who’s not supporting me, adoring me, recognising my greatness, such person is undesirable!’ So humility is the quality where one is ready to see good in others and not only see the good in others but therefore also recognises that everyone can make his contribution and one can appreciate. So amongst vaisnava’s, there is an atmosphere of appreciation.
