Hatred?! What kind of call is this! At such an admon­i­tion every head jerks up, for good moral coun­sel is not usu­ally worded like this. All the calls so far, and all those still to come, speak politely and gently, but here a very strong word appears: hatred. This is an exclam­a­tion mark, a warn­ing sign: some­thing import­ant is com­ing! Clearly, here too the point is not to nur­ture and prac­tise this immensely neg­at­ive feel­ing, hatred, but sternly to reject a most harm­ful kind of beha­viour, to cast off arrog­ance. In other words, this is the stern­est stand against the wili­est of adversar­ies.

Arrog­ance? Now there is a for­mid­able adversary! It not only deceives the man who strives spir­itu­ally, but brings almost every man under its power. Man can be proud of any­thing: if he has some­thing, of that, and if he has not, then of that. Arrog­ance is a false atti­tude, for it is very hard to be under­stand­ing and com­pas­sion­ate when one is led by it. But the self-infla­tion born of ground­less pride bursts soon­er or later.

Hatred, this com­mon human feel­ing, is in fact a dis­tor­ted way of see­ing that betrays some inner dis­order. Plato said even of sin that it is dis­ordered love, but the ques­tion is, would he have spoken as calmly of hatred? At the same time, hatred is also an immensely intense way of know­ing, much as love is. A man exam­ines the one he loves or hates with sin­gu­lar intens­ity, puts him under a mag­ni­fy­ing glass, as it were, and notices even his non-exist­ent qual­it­ies. True, this yields a dis­tor­ted pic­ture, yet a love-dis­tor­ted know­ledge of people is still dear­er than a hate-driv­en one. Try to recall how it felt when you hated someone. Anger, res­ist­ance, bit­ter­ness, a rising body tem­per­at­ure, a quickened pulse – men­tal and physiolo­gic­al symp­toms appeared in you whenev­er he came to mind. The hated per­son settles over your whole con­scious­ness, you can­not free your­self from the thought of him, and each time he comes to mind you find ever new jus­ti­fic­a­tion for why you are right, why the other is to blame, and why hatred is the only prop­er and pos­sible response on your part. Mean­while, thanks to your intense med­it­a­tion, you see ever more deeply and in ever finer detail every trait of the fel­low man you have chosen to hate, even those that no one else sees, or that exist nowhere at all but in your own dark con­scious­ness. Even if the delu­sions that hatred breeds do not over­power you, this con­stant dwell­ing on him still amounts to a truly intense study. Know­ledge just as intense comes from the hatred of arrog­ance too. By this intense way of know­ing you can learn and see through its every detail, every move, all its cun­ning work­ings.

In other words, the emphas­is falls not on hatred but on arrog­ance. It is best avoided at all costs, for neither hatred nor arrog­ance is a qual­ity that can be trans­formed, and both are obstacles to learn­ing and growth.

In the midst of death life per­sists.

In the midst of injustice truth per­sists.

In dark­ness light per­sists.

Hence I believe that God is Life, Truth and Light.

He is Love. He is the Supreme Good.

(Gandhi)

The key to the gate of heav­en is humil­ity. Hence the unusu­ally sharp call: hate, for ground­less pride shuts one out of the heav­enly world. That is why this strong call stands here for a basic moral stance rather than a mere emo­tion­al reac­tion. What is more, arrog­ance must be hated without revul­sion, that is, rejec­ted on the grounds not of emo­tion but of reas­on.