Significance of White Dress

Question: Swami, in your organization or your institutions, workers, students, teachers, devotees, and doctors always dress in white. Why?

Bhagavan: White symbolizes purity and cleanliness. A pure white cloth may be compared to a clean mirror. If dust gathers on the mirror, you will be unable to see your reflection clearly. Similarly, buddhi [intellect] is like a clean white cloth. It is only when you are pure that you will be able to find your own faults and apply your discrimination to rectify them. Today this is not happening. People are able to see clearly the mistakes of others but they don’t find their own faults. If you stand in front of the mirror, you see your reflection. But if you turn the mirror toward the other man, naturally you see his reflection. Isn’t it so? Similarly, the mirror of your buddhi [intellect] is turned toward others, and this makes you see the mistakes of others.

Even the slightest spot or mark is very clearly visible on a white dress. If you wear colored clothes, you don’t see dirt, dots, spots, marks, or stains. This is wrong. You should never hide and cover the dirt on your person. You should immediately clean and wash it off. You should share the good with others. Neither good nor bad should be in you. You should shed the bad in you and share the good with others. However, some of you keep the good to yourselves and distribute the bad to others. It is a mistake on your part to do so.

Lord Shiva [Lord of destruction in the Hindu trinity] offers you the best way by setting forth an ideal to this world. He kept and retained poison in His throat. So, He is neelakantha [the blue-throated one] God. But the cool and comforting moonlight from the moon over His head is distributed to others. It is for this purpose of sharing comfort with others that He kept the moon on His head.

Question: Swami, in the Mahabharata, it is a pity that youngsters such as Abhimanyu [Arjuna’s son] and Ghatotkacha [son of Bhima, another Pandava] were killed for no fault of theirs. It is justifiable if bad people are killed or punished. But how can we account for the death of these youngsters?

Bhagavan: The answer is simple. Let Me give you a small example to make you clearly understand the answer to the question. When you have a large number of mosquitoes in your house, what do you do generally? You spray some kind of insecticide like Flit [brand name of an insecticide] all over the house or use DDT [another insecticide] to kill the mosquitoes, don’t you? You have to take note of one point here. Spraying poisonous insecticide kills all the mosquitoes. However, only one or two mosquitoes must have bitten you. But all those mosquitoes that have not bitten you also died as a result of your spraying operation. Likewise, many innocent people die in a war. This is to be expected.