Q. False accusation fills a child with a sense of shame, though there is no justification. A. Anything wrongly suggested has always a wrong result. Sometimes a person carries a sense of shame too far, but it has its own value when it is used rightly. Often people have done great things, beyond their ordinary power, taken hold of by their sense of shame. They get such a desire to amend that they are awakened from a sense of death, they make superhuman efforts, and they live again. Repentance is the outcome of shame.

When the sense becomes more living the person feels the lack in himself and so he respects the lack in others. So what he does is to cover the lack of another, instead of exposing it by criticism. When he develops further he sees other persons exposing their own lacking. So the pain of the wise and of the saintly souls is the pain they feel for others as being themselves. They feel it like a knife; spiritual life means to feel the life of another as one feels one's own life. It looks so cruel on the part of man to expose the lack of another. It may satisfy his vanity or bring him a moment's pleasure, but from the spiritual point of view it looks very cruel. One can overcome this by feeling the oneness of life, the same life in him and in me, so his pain, his sorrow, his pleasure I share, because his life is my life. So one cannot but be sympathetic to all in life. All have more or less love, but the difficulty is they do not know how to use it to their best advantage.

Q. Will you please explain from the lesson on "Shame" (Gatha III, No. 9 Tasawwuf): "The sense of shame is like a pearl in a shell." And further: "The price cannot be given in the marketplace. The place of that pearl is the crown of the king."
A. That means that a virtue like this is appreciated and understood and rewarded fully in its right place. That is why it is said, "in the crown of the king." A person with this virtue is not appreciated by everybody. The person who has not got this virtue cannot appreciate it. Therefore for a greater person a greater place is required.