The following is an excerpt from a satsang between the Gnani Purush A. M. Patel and a spiritual seeker.

Questioner: Surely adjustments in life cannot be just one-sided if we are to live and continue our worldly interactions in this world?

Dadashri: Proper worldly interactions are where you adjust so that even your neighbors will say, ‘Every household has conflicts but not this one.’ It is then that your interactions are considered the best. You have to cultivate your inner energies in situations where you cannot get along with a person; your strength is already evident in situations where you get along with the other person. Inability to get along is a weakness. Why do I get along with everyone? Your energies will grow in proportion with the amount of adjustments you make and your inner weakness will break by that much. Real understanding will set in when all worldly understanding is locked out.

The Gnani Purush will adjust even with a person who is being awkward. If you observe the Gnani and conduct yourself accordingly, you will learn how to adjust everywhere. The science behind this principle tells you to become vitraag (free from all attachment). You take a beating because you have subtle attachment within. People who reject and renounce without consideration of the complete situation at hand are considered as being awkward. If there is a need on your part, then you must appease the other person even when he is being awkward. If you are at a railway station and need a porter, you will somehow have to appease the porter even if it means giving him a few extra rupees; otherwise you will have to carry your luggage yourself.

Do not see laws; just settle all situations. Where is the time to tell people, ‘Do it this way’ or ‘Do it that way’? The other person may make hundreds of mistakes but just tell yourself that the mistake is your own and move on. Is there any point in looking at the law in this day and age? Everything has come to a head here, and very difficult times are coming ahead. Everywhere you look, people are running around, from one place to another. People have become entangled in a trap; at home the wife and children complain, at work the boss complains, and when traveling by train, we get pushed around in the crowd; there is no peace anywhere. Surely we need some peace? If someone fights with you, you should empathize with him and try to understand how agitated he must be to have so much anger. To become agitated is to become weak.

Questioner: Often I have to adjust with two people at a time over just one issue. How can I deal with situations like that?

Dadashri: You’ll be able to do so with both of them. You can even do that with seven people at a time. If one of them asks, ‘What about me, what will you do for me?’ you can tell him, ‘Yes I will do as you ask.’ You can say the same to yet another person. Nothing is going to work outside of what is vyavasthit, so avoid conflict under any circumstance.

It is because you label everything as good or bad that you are harassed so. Make both the good and the bad equal. If you call this good, the other becomes bad and it will bother you. But if you mix the two together, you will not be affected. ‘Adjust everywhere’, is a principle that I have discovered. Adjust with the one who is telling the truth and also with the one who is not. If someone tells me, ‘You have no sense,’ I would tell him, ‘I never had any to begin with. Why have you come looking for it now? You just discovered this today but I have always known this.’ If you say this, there will be no conflict. He will not come to you again looking for sense. If you do not deal with situations this way, when will you ever reach your home (liberation)?

I am showing you this simple and straightforward solution. It is not everyday that you get into an argument is it? It only happens when your past karmas come into fruition. And when that happens, you only need to adjust as much as the situation requires. If you quarrel at home with your wife, after the quarrel take her out to a restaurant and make her happy. There should be no scope for harboring grudges.

Adjustment is justice. Any form of insistence is not justice. I never insist on anything. We have a saying, “Use whatever water you have to in order to cook the beans. Ultimately you may even have to use the water from the gutter!” If you do not adjust and give in to a bandit who is holding you at knifepoint, he will hurt you. So you have to make a decision then adjust with him and get it over with. Ask him, ‘What is your wish? We are on our way to a pilgrimage,’ adjust to him. Do you fight with the sewer plant of Bandra when it smells? In the same way, when people smell; do you go to them to complain? Everything that smells is like a sewer and everything that has a nice aroma is like a garden. Everything that comes to you with a smell, pleasant or unpleasant, is reminding you to remain vitraag (detached) with it. This is worth understanding. Do not argue, just adjust everywhere