GET AWAY FROM DIS-EASE AND BE AT EASE WITHIN THE PEACE THAT WE REALLY ARE
If you cannot find the Kingdom that is within yourself, then that means that you are not functioning in totality. You are functioning fragmentedly. Through spiritual practices, we transition from fragmentation to integration. We integrate the body, the mind, and the spirit. For they are not things apart from each other. It is a wholeness; it is a continuum, and only by knowing the continuum can you see the peace that is your inherent birthright.
We are looking for the peace that is within ourselves. Dis-ease is the opposite of peace. So, let us get away from dis-ease and be at ease within the peace that we really are. It is so simple to lead the mind to that area, the Kingdom of Heaven within, where peace resides, and draw it out so that it can be infused into all our daily actions, thoughts, and way of life.
MAN, KNOW THYSELF
To find that peace, we have to penetrate ourselves, and by going there, by using the direct hotline, we can find that peace. But the trouble is, we do not want to dial the number, although the line is open. Through a methodical approach, individually prescribed spiritual practices, we reach that area, and then we start knowing ourselves in an integrated state, rather than a fragmented one. And when you know yourself in the integrated state, you will be living that beautiful injunction in the scriptures, which in every religion says, “Man, know thyself.”
No religion says, “Man, know God.” It says Man, know thyself, and automatically you will know God. For it is said, “I and my Father are one,” and who said those words? Jesus, the man did not say those words. But Christ said those words, and Christ is that universal consciousness that is within you, too. He talked from the level of that consciousness. He did speak of that little frame of a body which was named Jesus. Consciousness is always present – just waiting for you to lead your limitedness to that which is unlimited. Why be like a fish swimming in the water and yet dying of thirst. That is? What we are doing. Do you think you are alive? You are dead. You think you are awake. No, you are asleep.
WHEN YOU REACH THE GOAL, YOU WILL FIND THAT THE PATH AND THE GOAL ARE BUT ONE AND THE SAME
Through spiritual practices, we find wakefulness, and by seeing that awakening, that wakefulness, you will say that the conceptions I had of bondage were but a dream. I was dreaming. I have been free all the time. I was free all the time, and now I know that that bondage was but a dream which is not the nature of myself. I am by nature free, and not by nature bound.
It also means that by feeling yourself to be in bondage, you are not using your total potential, and that is why you are asleep. That is why you are dreaming and not fully awake to the beauty of life. How many times do you walk through your beautiful parks here or through the lovely trees in your city? How many times do you pass there and notice and listen to the beautiful symphony of the wind blowing through it? How many times do you see the blades of grass swaying there in a divine dance? How many times are you with your beloved and feel the very throbbing of her heart or his heart melting away into your heart and finding the rhythm of oneness? You do not. Because of fragmentation. An integrated person would see that, for there is nothing ugly in this world. Everything is filled with beauty. Therefore, we say, “Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder.”
We want to become the beholders of beauty, and all ugliness and all bondages to disappear. So, arise, awake, as Vivekananda would say. “Arise, awake, and stop not till the goal is reached.” Oh, lead thou me on, kindly light, even if it is one step at a time. But you have to start – you have to start, and if you are in Sioux City, you cannot begin from Chicago. You start from Sioux City on that beautiful, joyous journey, and when you go along this path and reach the goal, you will find that the path and the goal are but one.
You have come from nowhere and you are going nowhere, and then you experience that which I experience, the isness of life.
Blake said something like “Eternity in an hour.” I say eternity is now here, in this very moment. It is just turning your attention.
GOING BEYOND THE LAW OF OPPOSITES, ONLY THE JOY OF EXISTENCE IS LEFT
JOY REQUIRES NO ANALYSES, JOY IS IN THE AREA OF EXPERIENCING
The search in modern technology and in the world’s mind today is to go out, to find things outside themselves. It is to go outside themselves; the search is forever outside. You want to see some pleasure, so you go to the movies, you go to the nightclub, you go to the dances, you go to whatever entertainment there is. Why? To find pleasure. In other words, you are trying to escape from yourself into some kind of pleasure. But know this for sure, that if you have pleasure today, tomorrow there will be pain because you are fluctuating within the law of opposites. If there is a day, there must be a night. If there is heat, there must be cold.
But there is this other area which goes beyond the law of opposites, which goes beyond the pain and pleasure, and that area is joy, absolute joy. Indefinable by the left hemisphere of your brain, which is analytical, but experienceable. So, joy requires no analysis; joy is a matter of experiencing. Analysis is the root of all problems. You analyze this to be good, and you analyze this to be bad. But by going beyond both, what could be left? No good or bad is left, only the joy of existence is left.
WHEN YOU CAN LOVE YOURSELF, THEN YOU CAN “LOVE THY NEIGHBORS AS THYSELF”
I think it was Descartes who said, “I think, therefore I am.” But I think he is wrong. I am, therefore, I think. I am, Yahweh. I am. This knowledge cannot come from books, because books, teachers, and the like can only bring you to the state of acquired knowledge, like a donkey with a whole lot of books on its back. But let us proceed further from acquired knowledge to the area of wisdom, and wisdom comes from experiencing one within yourself, where you start knowing yourself; man, know thyself. And when you really know yourself, you will start loving yourself. How many of us here can genuinely say, “I love myself.” Truly say that. No one is satisfied with himself, and that is why you cannot love yourself. You can love yourself if you become more and more integrated. Then you can love yourself, and when you can love yourself, you can truly practice the greatest injunction given to man: “love thy neighbor as thyself.” If you cannot love yourself, how can you love your neighbor?
SERVE MANKIND BY MAKING YOURSELF BEAUTIFUL
Do unto others as you would expect to be done unto you. You have read this over and over again; it has been preached over and over again. Do unto others as you expect to be done unto you, and you know this very well in what form? In wishful thinking. Because you do not want anything bad to happen to you, it will hurt your pride and ego. But what are you doing? Are you increasing the beauty of the environment? I always say it is the nature of a flower to be beautiful, but that is not the only thing a flower does. It also enhances the beauty of the garden.
What greater service can you perform by being born as a human being than to increase the beauty of your environment, and that is the service of God. By serving humanity, you serve humanity by making yourself beautiful, which has no motivation. It happens spontaneously.
You go to look after Auntie Mathilda, who is ill. You go there for a couple of days until she is well. But then a month or so later, there might be a little argument with Auntie Mathilda, and then you say to yourself, “Gor blimey” or “aw shucks, she does not appreciate me. Look what I did for her. I spent three, four, five, or six days nursing her and looking after her, and she does not appreciate me.”
So, did you do well? No. You were just boasting about your own ego. Adding on to the feeling that “ah, I was of service.” You were not of service to Auntie Mathilda. You were just flattering yourself, flattering your own little ego. E-Go. Go, go, go. But you say, “Come, come, come.” Yet this ego self is indestructible; it has to be there to maintain a human form. You still have to have an ego. The most realized person, one who has become one with God, who has learned and experienced that I and my Father are one, still has to have a small percentage of ego. One or two percent ego is necessary to exist in this body. Otherwise, you will lose all consciousness. You will not be able to eat; you will not be able to sleep. You will not be able to go to the toilet. However, the opaqueness of the ego could be stretched like rubber and made transparent, allowing the inner light to shine through in its most whole glory.
A GURU CAN GUIDE YOU, BUT YOU HAVE TO WALK WITH YOUR OWN TWO FEET
Many of these Eastern teachers who come here tell you to annihilate the ego, destroy the ego. Nothing is destructible, but you can make the ego transparent so that the divine light within you can shine through in its most whole glory, and in turn, be reflected in the actions of everyday living. You will then feel that joy and that peace, that peace which passeth all understanding.
A guru can only guide you. He does not shine the light upon you. He shines the light upon the path. But you have got to walk with your own feet, and no one can do it for you. So, when these gurus come around and promise you God, self-realization, and Divinity, and so on, do not believe them. You have got to do it yourself.
BY NATURE, YOU ARE DIVINE, YOU ARE NOTHING ELSE BUT JOY
To find yourself, you have to do it yourself. These gurus and spiritual masters can only show you the way, the life, and that is the truth. So, what we need most desperately in today’s world is integration and not fragmentation. With greater integration, you will know what life is all about. You will awaken yourself to the beauty, to the joy which is Divinity. For the nature of Divinity is joy, and the nature of Divinity is beauty; it is not bound. So, your nature is boundaryless, boundless, and never in bondage. You create bondage for yourself by your own thoughts, which have no reality of their own. But thoughts produce the effect of impressions upon your mind, patternings after patternings after patternings, and as these patternings become more and more, you become more and more miserable. You are denying yourself of what you are, and by nature, you are nothing else but joy. You are Divine. To repeat, if God is omnipresent, then every cell of your body is Divine. There is no place for anything else.
IT IS ABOUT TIME THAT WE CHANGE OUR ATTITUDE
You go to a movie, and you see things happening on the screen. If it is a tearjerker, you will find yourself pulling out hankies and experiencing quite a few sniffles, yet you know within yourself that what I am seeing is not real. It is projected onto a pure white screen. You know that, and yet you start crying, and that is what you are doing every day in your daily life.
If you fully realize that this is just a picture that is happening, and there is nothing that I can do about it. Whatever is taking place on the screen is taking place. I can do nothing about it. Why must I cry? Why must I get involved? It is a story. Why do I not realize that the screen is pure white, pure white meaning purity? And yet you get so involved in that little story: the man slapping the poor woman or whatever, or the child, and you say, “Oh dear me….”
So that is how we are living, and it is about damn time that we change our attitudes. By doing spiritual practices, our awareness grows, our awareness expands. We look at life through a tiny segment, and not in its wholeness. To me, wholeness is holiness. Whole-ness — w-h-o-l-e-ness. Holiness, H-O-L-I-N-E-S-S. Same. To be holy is to be whole.
… Gururaj Ananda Yogi: Satsang US 1982 – 50
