Anybody who is powerful has to be humble and non-violent. Mahatma Gandhi used to say, “What is the non-violence of the weak?” A weak person has to be non-violent. That’s a policy or a kind of a proection that he has.

So a weak person has to be non-violent because he cannot face, he cannot protest. But non-violence of the powerful is the sign of real non-violence. Those who are powerful, if they are non-violent, that means they are quite confident of their powers. Those people who are confident of their powers, why should they aggress others? They just stand. “All right, come along. What do you want?” Even saying that, people run away.

So those who are violent, angry, hot-tempered, jump at everyone, torture everyone…. Their character is weak. If their character was all right, then they would not have done all these things. That’s the sign of a person who is either possessed and under the influence of that position … or he’s too weak and he’s possessed by his anger because he doesn’t have that much power to bear anything.

The most powerful thing is the Mother Earth because She has a power to bear…. So the power of a person lies in bearing things - how much you can bear, how much you can undergo without feeling it….

If you are in a palace, you are happy. If you are with this colour or that colour, if you are with this race or that race, if you are with this kind of life or that kind of life, you can bear it….

A person who wants all the comforts, a person who wants to live with all the luxuries, but not with any kind of defects or any deficiencies is a person who is a beggar, I would say, in every sense of the word.

Shri Mataji, 1987