Janujee, Author at FISU Meditation

The Validity of Belief: A Stepping-Stone to Wisdom and Inner Peace

Belief, Bliss, Divinity, Effort, Faith, Force, God, Guru, Happiness, Heart, Joy, Meditation, Mental Patternings, Mind, Peace, Philosophy, Religion, Scriptures, Wisdom

HOW VALID IS A BELIEF? Belief is a word that is not understood, and as a matter of fact, I do not support belief very much in its totality. In other words, a belief is not enough because one’s mental conditioning necessarily creates a belief that might believe that this chair is red when it meanwhile is yellow. A colour-blind person might go through the red robot light believing and seeing that it is green. So how valid is belief? The validity of a belief lies in the fact that it must produce a definite result in a person’s life. Belief also has its value. If you believe something strongly enough, you can make that belief materialise with your mental capacity and the force of thought generated by your power. If you think this chair can move independently and your belief is strong enough, your thought will assume a physical power, taking it from its subtle level to a grosser level of control whereby it can be moved. Therefore, most theologies say, “Believe.” In this modern age, belief is insufficient because with the advance of technology, with the accent put more on mind development, people tend to become more and more sceptical. A few thousand years ago, you could say, “Believe”, and people would believe. At that time, they were more heart-orientated because their belief was not subject to any form of analysis. Because once you start analysing belief, then belief ceases to be belief. Belief knows no analysis. Belief, in this sense, is synonymous with a feeling that wells up within you. You say, “I believe this man is good.” You might not even know the person, what the person has done, or the person’s background, and yet you would say the feeling wells up that you believe in this person, which applies not only to people but also to things. Most of the things that we do in life are done on belief. BELIEF IS ALWAYS ACCOMPANIED BY TRUST Belief necessarily has as its counterpart trust. All the most significant things in life are done on trust. You came to this Course believingly and trustingly that Gururaj will be here. The biggest business deals are done over the luncheon table. With the shake of a hand, there is trust. That we have discussed. The problems of the business deal and the contracts only follow a few weeks later when the typist gets to type it out. And signatures are appended. So, with belief, there is always trust. I believe my father is my father because I have been told that by my mother, and I trust my mother. So, belief always is accompanied by trust. How trusting are we? That is the question. That is the significant lack in the lives of modern man that he does not count. He wants everything to be proven to himself before he can trust. You tell a man, “Believe in God.” He might nod and say, “Yes”, but inwardly, he would say, “Believe in God? What is God? Who is God? Where is He? To me, He is non-existent.” Where is belief? But if some tangible proof can be shown in the various areas of life, then in this modern age, the person will start believing, and that is why I could come and talk and talk on philosophy or various practical subjects; they would mean nothing to people if they did not meditate and find some benefit from the meditation so that the theory that goes with the meditation would be firstly believed. After belief, there would be faith. TRUST IS ACCOMPANIED BY FAITH So far, we have three things. Belief is accompanied by trust, and trust is accompanied by faith. When we want to know about a person’s religion, we usually never ask what religion you follow. We always ask, what faith do you follow? In what have you got faith? So, the person might say, “Oh, I am of the Christian faith, or the Hindu faith, or the Buddhist faith”, but that is also done mentally. Because I was brought up in a Hindu home, or I was brought up in a Christian home, or a Muslim home, so, therefore, I am a Muslim. And because tradition has taught me this, I condition my mind to have faith in the things taught to me. That is not faith. That is just the primary step of belief. Because my parents, elders, church minister or priest have said such a thing, I assume that I have faith, while in reality, it is not. Faith can only be had by experience, and you have to have some experience to have faith. You can describe the heat in the fire, and you could even start believing that the fire is hot. But only when you are nearer to the fire and feel the heat, experience the heat, then you have faith within yourself that fire has heat. So, belief, trust, and then comes faith. But that is not the end and aim. WE STRIVE FOR THE WISDOM THAT IS WITHIN US These are but just steps on the ladder. The goal to reach is to know. To know and knowingness is not on the level of the mind because the mind does not know anything. There is a remarkable difference between acquired knowledge and wisdom. What we strive for is the wisdom within us, and once we know, faith strengthens, belief strengthens, and trust becomes an actuality and not just a conception or presumption. So man progresses – belief, trust, faith into knowingness, that is what we are after. When we find the deep peace within ourselves, having experienced the peace, we know there is that peace and that peace cannot be analysed. You cannot believe in peace until you have experienced it. So, the next stage is the experiential level. Belief has intellectual and mind levels, while knowingness has an experiential level. You believe that chilli is robust; it burns

The Observer Within: Meditation and the Path to Tranquillity

Acceptance, Awareness, Bliss, Brahman, Conscious Mind, Divine, Divinity, Eternal, Evolution, Evolve, God, Grace, Humility, I am That I am, Joy, Karma, Kingdom of Heaven within, Law of Nature, Law of opposites, Light, Love, Manifestation, Manifestor, Meditation, Mental Patternings, Mind, One-pointedness, Oneness, Peace, Purity, Relative World, Samskaras, Scriptures, Self, Spiritual Path, Spiritual Practices, Subconscious, Superconscious, The Absolute, The Three Gunas, Tranquillity, Universe, Yahweh, Yoga

RISING TO THE SUPERCONSCIOUS LEVEL, YOU BURN ALL THE SEEDS OF KARMA In many organizations, spiritual practices deal solely with the mind. This is good, but then there is one danger. You might be shifting energies from one sector of the mind to another sector of the same mind. But have you dissipated them? You cannot annihilate them. You can throw them off. And yet, if you are still amidst this chaos, the law of cause and effect will be in force. But there is a way where you can go beyond cause and effect, and all these practices we do are widening our awareness; they are methods that would remove the cause and the impact and reach the state of causelessness. And when the cause is gone, the effect cannot be there. You see the great hope the human has. I do not know how many humans we have here, but I assume there are some. Ninety-nine percent of people are ruled by the animal instincts from which they have just passed through. Children in Form 6 will always be influenced by the teachings found in Form 5. But this all has to be discarded, not discarded violently, for the more you try to discard, the more suppression occurs. Inhibitions take place, and they multiply forever. Like many institutions in America, people say that you have to live through all this. You have created specific causes, and you are subjected to the effects thereof. This is very true on a relative level, but you can rise above that, and by rising above that to the superconscious level, you burn all the seeds of karma. All the seeds of karma can be burned up instantaneously. The law of cause and effect is also a law of opposites, and once one goes beyond the law of opposites, once one transcends the “Three Gunas” and then performs an action, that action is non-binding. MAKE YOUR SUFFERING AN OFFERING TO YOURSELF BY ACCEPTING IT So, the question is, what are we going to dwell on? Are we going to think of the chaos in the world all the time? Are we going to wallow in self-pity of the chaos within us? When thinking of turmoil, chaos, chaos, you bring unto yourself all the chaotic forces of the universe. You become a magnet of chaos, drawing to you all the chaotic filings, iron filings, and chaos in the world. So “arise, awake, and stop until the goal is reached.” Vivekananda has said this. So, what is the solution? What is the solution to escape this whirlpool of chaos you are enmeshed in? Like the silkworm weaving, weaving, weaving, and getting entangled in the silk it has woven. You do not need to go through lifetimes upon lifetimes to reap what you have sown. You do not need to go through lifetimes to suffer the effects of the causes. Once you, through spiritual practices, find the secret of going beyond cause and effect, you are going beyond time and space, for cause and effect has validity only in time and space. When you, through spiritual practices, enter the realms of timelessness, then cause and effect vanish. As long as you are enmeshed in the chaos, cause and effect will be a reality, and you will have to suffer the consequences. Why not make that suffering into an offering? For there lies the secret that you offer yourself. To what? To whom do you offer yourself? Forget the God. None of you know who God is. It is beyond all analysis. You can only talk about it. You do not know it, and how can you offer that to someone you do not know everything about? So, let the offering be to yourself. Offer the suffering to yourself, meaning that you are accepting it. During this week, I said there is no suffering at this very moment. No one is suffering now. You are using the instances and incidences of the past, which are gone, and it is the memory you have of the pains and pleasures that give you pains and pleasures now. Otherwise, the projection of the past into the future, filled with expectations, makes you suffer. And yet, at this very moment, children of God, you are not suffering. You, children of Divinity, are suffering memories; memories make you suffer. So, in the stillness of meditation and spiritual practice, you are in the present, not in the past, and not in the past projecting itself into the future. CHAOS IS SELF-CREATED BY YOUR CONSCIOUS MIND AND YOUR SUBCONSCIOUS MIND This can be done through developing awareness. What is awareness? You are aware, only very limitedly, because what you have activated is only the conscious level of the mind, which is only 5 percent of your mind. Twenty-five percent is the repository of all the samskaras, all the impressions you have gained, and 70 percent is the area of the superconscious level of the mind. Like the iceberg, nine-tenths of it is below the water, and you only see a little above it. That is where we dwell. Through meditation and spiritual practices, you dive deeper within. You bypass the conditioning of the conscious mind; you bypass the memory box or the repository of the events of the entire universe since beginless time. You bypass that and reach an area where neither good nor bad exists. At the finest relative level, the superconscious level, which I have said before, the personal God, which is so clear and near the Absoluteness of existence, makes itself an instrument to reflect that energy without attributes. It reflects through the clarity of the superconscious level to overcome all the samskaras, impressions, causes, and effects that your conscious mind perceives and finds the world and yourself chaotic. You see chaos where chaos does not exist. There is no chaos—your interpretation, your conscious mind that is the chaos, and no one else. So, this is self-created by your conscious

Beyond Chaos: Finding Stillness Amidst the Motion of Life

Awareness, Buddha, Christ, Compassion, Conscious Mind, Divine, Divinity, Eternal, Force, God, Happiness, Joy, Kindness, Kingdom of Heaven within, Krishna, Law of opposites, Light, Manifestation, Manifestor, Meditation, Mental Patternings, Mind, Omnipresent, Peace, Philosophy, Purity, Relative World, Samskaras, Self, Spiritual Practices, Subconscious, Superconscious, The Absolute, The Three Gunas, Tranquillity, Unfoldment, Universe

THE ETERNAL CONTRACTION AND EXPANSION IS THE SEED CAUSE OF THE UNIVERSE You say the world is in chaos. Who says the world is in turmoil? Who is the sayer of these words that the world is in chaos? You say with your mind that the world is in turmoil because your perception tells you that the world is in chaos. With an altered perception through spiritual practices, you transcend the chaos. You go beyond the chaos where no chaos remains, and only peace remains. Essentially, there is nothing else but Sat-Chit-Ananda all the time. Total existence. Total knowledge. Total joy. But your mind is the factor that distorts this knowledge, and you find chaos because the mind is only capable of looking at the surface of things and not below it. You go to the seaside, and what do you observe? The waves are going up and down and up and down. And yet, within that chaos, there is a system if you look more closely. The waves are flowing to the shore and not away from the beach. So even if the mind perceives chaos and the turbulence of the waves, why can the mind not perceive that even in chaos, there is a system, a chaotic system? When things function within this so-called perception of yours, you will find that in that system, there remains a tranquil factor: precision. But the mind is so confused that it does not see the ever-onward flow of the waves, eternally coming to the shore. And there, the waves subside on the shore. Yet, when your awareness grows more, through spiritual practices, you will observe the surface waves and dive deeper to perceive the calmness that lies beneath. You talk of wars, you talk of pollution, you talk of miseries, you speak of unhappiness; who suffers this? Are you the sufferer? No, you are not. The mental formations and the patterns that you have created over the ages or even in this lifetime are the ones that suffer. Who is the one that suffers? What is the basis of its reality? How accurate is the sufferer, and how real is the suffering? That is the question that we have to ask. As long as man dwells in the conscious mental spheres of life, there will always be this conflict, and without this conflict, this world, as I have said, can never function. There will always be contraction and expansion; there will always be unification and diversification throughout eternity. For that very motion created by contraction and expansion is the seed cause of this universe. THROUGH MEDITATION AND SPIRITUAL PRACTICES, YOU CAN RISE ABOVE CHAOS But where do you place yourself in practical life? Do you put yourself amidst the chaos you observe around you, or do you set yourself within the center of yourself? Despite the chaos that your conscious mind observes, and within the limitations of the observation, you are beyond it all, where the accurate observer observes the small observer observing. There lies the secret of your tranquillity. This world will continue as it has gone on for ages and ages. Since primitive times, there has been chaos, and chaos is nothing but conflict: conflicting forces, opposing forces; where there is day, there will be night; when there is rain, there will be sunshine. They are two sides of the same coin. But why just observe the sides of the coin instead of taking the coin as a whole? Split the coin and go to try to buy a loaf of bread. You cannot. You could not take the heads alone or bring the tails alone. You have to take both. So, if the world is in chaos, does it mean you have to be part and parcel of it? There will always be chaos. It is unending. That is the honest Maya, the play of this universe; without it, this universe could never exist. The law of opposites has to be there, and the only thing you can do is go beyond the law of opposites, and that one does through meditation and spiritual practices. You will feel chaos when you are down here amidst the chaos. But when you rise above the chaos, there is no chaos. DO NOT CHANGE THE WORLD, CHANGE YOURSELF One of our meditators was telling me a story some while ago. She said, “Guruji, in my meditation, you and I were traveling through the Alps, and the mountains loomed so large, the pass was so narrow and slippery. I was driving, and I was thinking, “How are we going to get through the mountains?” And suddenly the view changed,” she said, “and we were in an airplane high up.” And then she asked, “Guruji, what are those little things down there?” “Those are the mountains and peaks that you were speaking about.” So, we have to rise above chaos and not be entangled in the web of chaos. You will have these factors forever existing as far as relative life is concerned. For relativity, the manifestation of the Manifestor creates this motion, and without motion, nothing could ever exist in the sense of what we regard to be existence. On the relative plane, everything is authentic: a toothache is accurate, a toothache is actual, pleasures are real, and pains are real to you. The three gunas control this chaos, which is part and parcel of the imbalance created through the non-tranquillity of the gunas, and this will forever be there. Many reformers have come: Krishna, Buddha, Mahavir, and Christ. And yet, despite their teachings, there is still chaos. There was chaos during those times; today, there is still chaos, perhaps in a different form. There was lust, greed, avarice, and covetousness; it was there and is still here today. So, it is not possible on a collective scale when people talk of getting rid of the chaos in this world. But it is likely on the individual level, where you reach

Acceptance and Love: Awakening the Heart’s Infinite Power

Acceptance, Attitude, Buddha, Christ, Devotion, Divinity, Effort, Evolution, Force, God, Guru, Gurushakti, Happiness, Heart, Karma, Krishna, Law of Nature, Love, Mantra, Meditation, Mind, Oneness, Path, Self, Soul, Spirit, Spiritual, Strength, Superconscious, Universal

ACCEPTANCE SHOULD CONTAIN THE FORCE AND THE POWER OF THE HEART Acceptance of a thing is usually first created by the mind, where you accept a particular situation with the mind but not necessarily with a blind or biased mind. Acceptance should be done in its true form and with true analysis. Then only is the mental acceptance of any validity. Anything you accept with your mind today, you can un-accept or reject the next day if there is no true understanding of the matter. So, it is not only the mind that is at play, but more important is the heart that is at play. Acceptance should not only be with the mind, but it should contain the heart’s force and power. It has to have that feeling that I feel; I accept this flower to be beautiful. Today, I might like this flower, and tomorrow, I will get tired of that flower. So what use is that acceptance? But if I thoroughly feel that I accept this flower to be beautiful, then tomorrow, that flower will remain attractive, and the day after, it will still be beautiful. That is true acceptance. WITH ACCEPTANCE THERE MUST BE DETERMINATION People often accept things not by strength but by weakness, like cowardice. They say, “Oh well, nothing can be done about it, so okay.” If I am selling a box of chocolates for £2 and cannot find any customer, I sell it for $1, which costs me, and I accept the pound. But there is no happiness in it because I know I have put in a lot of work, put in a lot of trouble, I have traveled around knocking door to door to sell my chocolates, and now because I need to feed my wife and children at home I accept the pound. I am making no profit, but I need that to take home some bread. It is also a kind of acceptance. But, with what feeling do you accept. That is the essential and crucial feeling that “Oh well, it is the will of God. I have done my best.” Then, that acceptance has some fruition. It has some value; otherwise, it is just cowardice. It is a retreat. I lost my job or shop, but I did not want to. But because you are placed in such circumstances, you have no other way out. But in the beginning, if you accept the situation that I will lose my shop or my job, but I will work very hard to create another problem, a job that is better or a better shop, then that acceptance can bear fruit. So, with acceptance, there must be determination. The entire India was ruined and is in poverty because of acceptance, a stupid kind of acceptance. They talk of Karma, “Oh, you know what is meant for me, you know will come.” That is absolute rubbish. The fields are left untilled; the agricultural products are not there—so much hunger. Factories are going idle, yet there are millions and millions of people there, but they will not make any effort, and that is not Karma. Karma means action. You do something about it. Acceptance of the present situation is okay, but you have to be determined to better the situation. You do not go to sponge on others. But if you see that you fulfill your obligations, acceptance is worthwhile. Otherwise, it is a retreat. You are cornered in the street by a few hoodlums. So, what are you going to do? Stand still in the corner; you cannot get away and let those two hoodlums smash you up. No. You will fight. That should be the attitude. You accept that I am in a situation from which I cannot escape, but I am not going to stand still and let them bugger me up. I am going to fight. A TRUE ACCEPTOR IS A HERO! A MAN, NOT A MOUSE I had the experience as a young schoolboy where I was going through a lonely street, and there were two young hoodlums there who saw me coming up the road, and they would take off from me whatever few pennies I had on me. But when I saw them standing there, I would not cross over the road and walk on the other side. I put my hand in my pocket to make them feel I had some weapon, and I walked right through between them. And they never touched me! You accept a situation, and you do something about it. Otherwise, you are a coward. I can give you another example. One Saturday afternoon, I worked late in the office until about 4 o’clock. There was a lot of work to be done. And I said, “Oh, I will leave lunch out today; I will have supper. The work must be done”. In Cape Town, the streets are bare on a Saturday afternoon, and the streets are empty. I had to walk through one road, which was empty. And there were three of these hoodlums and gangsters that saw me. I am always well dressed, and they thought well, here, we could get something. I had about thirty Rand in my pocket. So, they pushed me into a shop doorway and riffled my pocket. I said, “Take it”. They took it and started running off. Then I shouted to them, “Hey, you have forgotten my watch, you have forgotten my fountain pen. Why not take that also?” They came back, and one said to the other in Afrikaans, “Heer ist ein anderes souter mann” which means he is a different kind of man. And they gave me back my wallet and walked away. I accepted the situation, but I did something about it. Do you see how acceptance works? Otherwise, you just take things. My child is naughty, so I will just accept the child is naughty. No! You acknowledge that the child is naughty, but you teach him.

The Illusion of Belief: Finding Divinity Through Direct Experience

Acceptance, Belief, Bible, Divine, Divinity, Eternal, Eternity, Evolution, Faith, Force, God, Guru, Heart, Krishna, Love, Mind, Oneness, Spiritual Path, Universe

WHY BELIEVE? Non-believing has as its essence believing. You will never have a non-believer in this world anywhere, ever. Everyone believes in something. You think you will have a puncture and carry a spare wheel. You look at yourself in the mirror and think or feel that you look so pretty, and you might be ugly. So, you believe. Belief is nothing else but a mental conception. You always believe in believing, non-believing; you still believe in thinking. So where is the difference? No difference at all. But when you apply that word to theology, you say, “I believe in God” it is a different thing altogether, and the essence of itself is the same thing. I believe in God. How can I believe in God when I have not seen, known, or experienced Him? Is that not non-believing? Is that not just a mental concept conjured up in your mind into a fictitious figure? And He would be fictitious because you have not experienced Him. It is fiction, created by yourself and no one else. Yes, there have been your parents, your teachers and all the various churches or what have you. They say, “Believe, believe, believe, and you go to Heaven.” Do you go to Heaven by believing? I ask you this question. I believe in Heaven, okay, so because I believe in Heaven, I will go to Heaven. Yes, you will, fictitiously, in your imagination; because there is no Heaven and no Hell. What you make of life is all here. Heaven is here, and hell is here. And the other dimension after you leave this body has nothing to do with Heaven or Hell, but only that which you have created in your mind because of your belief. THE FORERUNNER OF BELIEF SHOULD ALWAYS BE EXPERIENCE The belief system is sound but not so much applicable to this age. In this time of high technology, everything has to be proven. If I tell you, “Believe me that you are not sitting separately away from me, you are attached to me, and billions and billions of atoms attach you to me.” You would say, “Guruji is talking rubbish.” But if I bring you a very high-powered microscope to show you all those atoms attaching us, you see with your own eyes. Then you will say, “Guruji, that is true.” For nothing is apart – everything is just a mass. I personally also have beliefs, but my beliefs are founded on experience. So, the forerunner of belief should always be experience. If you wear a size thirty-six dress, you will not go into a shop believing that it will fit you. You go into that dressing room, and you will try it on and see if it works well. Then you will buy that dress. If these things can be done in tiny little things like dresses, suits, pants, and shoes, why can they not be done on a higher level? Try it on. Try God on you. Experience Him as it fits you, and then take Him, and He does not charge any money, unlike Woolworths, Harrods, or any of those places. Try Him on, fit Him on, and He will fit so snugly to you because He is like these stretchable socks; you know that anywhere you can buy a pair of socks, and they stretch to the size of your feet. THE ACCEPTANCE OF DIVINITY IS BASED ON EXPERIENCE Belief is always constituted by one’s personal ideologies and personal conceptions of the thing you believe. The acceptance of Divinity is not dependent on belief. No, the acceptance of Divinity is based on experience. When you experience within yourself that Divine force permeating you, you can never deny it. After you have eaten and tasted honey, you can never deny the sweetness of that honey, and you have tasted it. Meanwhile, if it stands on a store shelf or in your kitchen unopened and you tell all your friends, “Ah, you know that is honey, it is very sweet.” But you that have not experienced the sweetness of the honey, what right have you to tell another that that honey on the shelf is sweet? And those are the false prophets that the Bible talked about. They have not experienced anything yet and want to speak of the glory, greatness, and beautifulness of love and God. Why did you not talk about cabbages, cauliflowers, or carrots that you have tasted and eaten, boiled, fried, barbecued or curried? Talk about that. Say, “Yes, I did a curry dish from vegetables, and I put in a pinch of garam masala and a pinch of all the other stuff that goes in it.” Talk about that. THERE IS NO ETERNAL DAMNATION Never talk about anything you have not personally experienced. That is the greatest mistake our churches are making. They say, “Believe in this and believe in that and you shall be saved. Otherwise, you will land up in eternal damnation.” Damn, those buggers. Because there is no eternal damnation. How can damnation ever be eternal? If damnation is eternal, then Divinity is also eternal, and how can the two co-exist? Divinity and damnation, how can they co-exist? Because there is only one eternity, and two things cannot exist eternally together. When it comes to eternity, there is only oneness all the time. That is the biggest mistake all our churches, temples, mosques, and synagogues have made. When they cannot get you in their folds with love, they try to contact you with the threat of eternal damnation. If you do not pay your dues to the church, synagogue, or temple, you are damned. You are damned. Now the word damned is perfect. To dam up water means the water cannot flow. It stays in the same place. There is no flowing, and you stagnate. It is only flowing water that does not stagnate; that is how the word “dam” or “damnation” originated. IN THE SPIRITUAL PATH, NOTHING

The Myth of Collective Enlightenment: Why Enlightenment Belongs to the Individual

Buddha, Christ, Conscious Mind, Devotion, Dharma, Divinity, Enlightenment, Evolution, Force, God, Guru, Incarnation, Krishna, Law of Nature, Laws, Love, Mind, Path, Relative World, Spiritual Teacher, Subconscious, Superconscious, The Absolute, The Three Gunas, Universe

AN AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT? Some Teachers have promised an Age of Enlightenment where the entire world will be enlightened. If we study known history, this has not happened so far, but these teachers saying there will be an Age of Enlightenment have not told us how many million years. There can never be a collective Age of Enlightenment, but there can be enlightenment for the individual. Our perspective or view of the continuity and this universe continuum is minimal. As the highly evolved beings pass off from this little section we are looking at, in the process of evolution, there are lower beings or people at a lower stage of evolution coming in this spectrum. It is a continuous flow, and this constant flow has to be there because an Age of Enlightenment on Earth would mean stagnation, and this entire universe will collapse. ENLIGHTENMENT CAN HAPPEN ON AN INDIVIDUAL SCALE ONLY There must be a motion to keep this universe going, for everything is in motion. As I have said, the universe is nothing but vibration, and vibration is motion. So those of us who reach enlightenment will pass this little sector onto another sector, but from the other end, there would be entering those that require the development and the evolution that those few have reached and passed across. So therefore, in this same motion, in this same cycle, all these various forms of energies entering from one end at a grosser level and leaving at the other end at a finer level will forever continue. So, enlightenment is there, but it can only be achieved on an individual scale, not collectively, where the world’s entire population will become enlightened. There will still be much more technological progress, but that has nothing to do with enlightenment. Enlightenment means becoming one with Divinity and one with Divinity you assume the form of Divinity, and up to now, this little planet has never contained all Gods. So, this cycle will forever exist. EVEN INCARNATIONS CAN NOT GO AGAINST THE LAWS OF NATURE According to the Sanskritists, there are three Gunas in this energy, Tamas, Rajas and Sattva. Tamas is inertia or darkness; Rajas is the activating force; and Sattva is light. This can also be termed the conscious mind, the subconscious mind and the Superconscious Mind. So, the duty of man in his way is to reach from the little conscious through the subconscious to the Superconscious, which is at the finest relative level of existence. So, when he gets the finest relative level of existence, he passes beyond relativity, meaning the Absolute. It is a fallacy to believe that this world will become enlightened in totality. There have been great men, like Mahavir, Mohammed, Buddha, Krishna, Christ, and Incarnations on earth if you wish to call them that, for they were that, and yet they could not transform this entire world and bring it to an Age of Enlightenment. Do you think they did not have the power to do that, a real incarnation represented in an embodied form, a representation of the entirety of the universe? Could they not achieve that? But even incarnations cannot go against the laws of nature. They can give it a bit of a push, fine, but they cannot go against the laws of nature because the universe has to function within its rules, and there are laws within laws, cycles within cycles within cycles. So, assuming that this entire world will be enlightened is invalid. But the man on his level can achieve full enlightenment and become one with the Absolute. And not only that, whilst still in an embodied form, he can experience all the levels of existence from the mundane, conscious, sensuous, or sensual level right through the subconscious and the Superconscious and infuse all that with the Absolute, the Absolute existence that Absolute energy. He can do that, but that happens on an individual level. BIRDS OF A FEATHER FLOCK TOGETHER When a person reaches that stage, he will automatically draw those of like mind to himself. A very highly evolved person will always draw to himself those that are also evolved to a specific measure that you can be very, very sure of. In one of the Eastern languages, there is a saying that the guru will only have chelas according to what the guru is like. So, you have some gurus, sham gurus, in this world, racketeers, business people, money-makers, and they draw to themselves like people. “Birds of a feather flock together” is another old saying. The point here is that if one person reaches enlightenment, he will draw to himself people that may not be enlightened but that are on the path and relatively near. They are well on the path or grounded, let us say that, and the enlightened man helps those. Did Jesus not have the power to have the entire world as his followers at that time when he was alive? Did he not have the power? Why did he only have five hundred very, very devoted chelas? Because those five hundred had a certain evolutionary status, they could be near him. And this happened with all the great incarnations in the world, all the true Teachers in the world. AN AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT WILL NEVER HAPPEN So, when a person reaches enlightenment, it does not mean the entire world will be enlightened. It is an impossibility. But those attracted with love and devotion to that particular personage are somewhat ready for a higher stage, and such a personage has to pay personal attention to everyone attracted to him. This attraction is not mental; it is a spark that comes from within that you cannot help. The filings cannot help being attracted to the magnet; it is a natural force. So, let us forget the idea of the whole world becoming enlightened at one time; that will never happen. That can never happen, or else the entire continuum will break, everything

The How of Life: The Path of Pure Consciousness

Acceptance, Attachment, Attitude, Awareness, Bliss, Buddha, Christ, Compassion, Consciousness, Divinity, Effort, Ego, Force, God, Guru, Heart, Krishna, Law of Nature, Light, Love, Love thy neighbour as thyself, Meditation, Mind, Philosophy, Purity, Religion, Scriptures, Self, Spiritual Force, Spiritual Practices, Strength, Surrender, Wisdom

PURE CONSCIOUSNESS IS THE ESSENCE OF OUR LIVES Pure consciousness is the essence of our lives. Pure consciousness is all life force, undying, never-ending and forever there. So, what do we want? Do we want to be tossed around from pillar to post, or do we want to stand still? As the Scriptures say, “Be still and know that I am God.” Pure consciousness is God, and we express it through love, right doing, right actions, and right thought. For example, the eight-fold path of Buddha gives you a guideline. Our Commandments give you a guideline. “Love thy neighbour as thyself”. But the trouble is, they do not say how. I speak about the same principle, but the major ruling factor in my teachings is the how. It is nice to say, “Oh, cook a beautiful cake,” but I must show you how to bake it. The how of life, how to do it. Forget the why and the wherefore, how it will turn out, and whether it will fall flat or not. Do not go for the results; go for the action. The Bhagavad Gita again says, “Act for the sake of acting, not for the fruits thereof.” Fruits will come. Plant and nurture the seeds, and the fruits will come; it is inevitable. I am not going to hanker after the fruit; that is what all people do. The first thing in their minds is what the fruit will be. They do not think of the work involved in planting. When a young man goes to apply for a job, the first thought he has in his mind is how much salary he is going to get. Forget the pay, do the work, and if the boss finds that you are a good worker, your wage will increase. Put in the spade work, so to say. WHATEVER HAPPENS TO US, WE FACE IT BRAVELY That is how, similarly, the result of our self-help and efforts will be pure consciousness. It is a beautiful, blissful world. I see all this terrorism around me, around the world – Nicaragua, the Middle East, Iran, and the Arabs and India – everywhere there is turmoil, trouble, and bloodshed. I look at it with compassion, but I say, “They have brought it upon themselves and maybe a lesson from which they could learn.” Not that we approve of it, but we can do nothing to help it. I wish I could go to stop all the fighting there in India, in Iran, Beirut and all those places, but you cannot; you just cannot. The best thing we can do is offer prayers, that is all, and send spiritual forces to them for some betterment. On the other hand, we must not be sad about all the happenings around us or in our personal lives. We take it as it comes, with the realisation that whatever is happening to us is for my good. No one has made it happen to me. I do not blame anyone else. I do not blame my wife, I do not blame my boss, I do not blame my guru, and I do not blame my God. I deserve it, and I will face it, but I will not face it like a coward. I am facing it bravely, come, wind, hail or storm, for that too shall pass. THE STRENGTH WITHIN IS PURE CONSCIOUSNESS This comes from the strength within oneself, which is the pure consciousness within yourself, unaffected by all the happenings. So, to find pure consciousness, one has to sublimate that ego. You cannot eradicate it, and we cannot destroy it, but like a piece of rubber, we can stretch it and make it transparent to see through it. All the Light that is within, the pure consciousness that is within, can shine through it into our daily living and lives. Many people regard philosophy, religion and metaphysics to be something up in the air, something to think about, mental gymnastics. To me, it is not so. If any knowledge or wisdom is not practised and brought into our daily lives, into our minute-by-minute living, it is of no value, and that does not mean that you must not enjoy life. No, it does not tell that, by all means, you want life but in a different sense. You make love to your wife; why, nothing stops you. You should. Every organ that man or woman is born with is not there to be atrophied; it is there to be used. You have eyes; you want to see. You have ears; you want to hear. A nose, you want to smell. A mouth, you want to eat, taste – feet, legs, arms. Every organ of your body is to be used, and when a man goes to bed with his wife, it should not be for lust because lust is a craving, and where there is a craving, there is attachment. You are attached to your desire, which becomes lust. But if there is no craving in lovemaking and just a flow of love where two people want to be unified and find a physical expression, it is very holy. The same thing is happening but in a different aspect, with a different attitude. AN OPEN HEART BRINGS A GREATER AMOUNT OF AWARENESS Like that in everything in our lives, life must flow and not be stunted by our mental aberrations, for because of our thoughts and preconceived ideas, we block that pure consciousness from flowing. Therefore, every action must be in such innocence, which is not difficult to achieve. Spiritual practices bring about that gentleness in you; it brings about that love in you, opens your Heart, and make you kind and compassionate. Because the Heart is opened, it brings you a more significant amount of awareness, where you do not see a particular act but all the circumstances that make a person perform that specific action. Because in your awareness, you can

The Householder’s Path: How Spirituality and Daily Life Become One

Acceptance, Attitude, Buddha, Christ, Consciousness, Devotion, Divine, Divinity, Duality, Effort, Enlightenment, Faith, Force, Grace, Guru, Gurushakti, Happiness, Heart, Impressions, Integration, Joy, Karma, Krishna, Love, Meditation, Mental Patternings, Mind, Omnipresent, Oneness, Path, Peace, Philosophy, Religion, Scriptures, Self, Self-integration, Spirit, Spiritual, Spiritual Path, Spiritual Practices, Strength, Wisdom, Yoga

THE HOUSEHOLDER’S PATH You cannot differentiate between the path of the householder and the path of the spiritual seeker because householding itself is a spiritual path. Being a spiritual seeker means one is on the path to achieving that total integration within himself. By total integration, we mean where the body, mind and Spirit function in unison, in oneness. To become a spiritual seeker does not mean that you have to be away from this world, that you have to indulge in any form of escapism, for, as I have said before, so-called spiritual seekers that want to find that Divinity and run away from this world might not do so because they are seeking something higher than themselves. If they were seeking something higher than themselves, that highness or Divinity is all-pervading. It is everywhere, and if it is everywhere, why can it not be in the householder’s path? In spiritual seeking, you do not need to become a recluse. Some believe that by being a hermit, you could focus all your attention on that search. That is very true, but how about looking at it from a different angle where all that concentration could be in the householder’s path, and the householder’s path is the easiest? You can ask any Psychiatrist if a person has no temperament of being a recluse, and if he locks himself up in a cave, he could very well develop dementia. I have come across many such seekers who thought that by just going away from it all, they would find what they are seeking, but this has very seldom worked out because, firstly, they are deprived of what they have been used to. They are thrown into a kind of loneliness, and they would indulge in certain practices for which their nervous systems are not ready, which could drive them to insanity. People who live in the world have specific patterns in life, and those same patterns make you and me what we are. So, we must begin from where we are and we are on the householder’s path. We have our responsibilities, wife, children, whatever. The first step in the search is to accept that responsibility. Suppose any responsibility is carried out to its fullest and done to the best of our ability. In that case, automatically, that becomes a stepping stone to stir up that within us. For in the responsibleness of life, you meet many challenges and without challenges there could be no search, you become complacent. When we have difficulties in life and attack them responsibly, we automatically develop the quality of acceptance. When we accept our position and become responsible, we start doing something to alter the adverse circumstances. We start acting in a way that would change the events and try to find opportunity in every adversity. I would wish that for people to progress faster, they must have more troubles. A SENSE OF RESPONSIBILITY AND ACCEPTANCE IS A PREREQUISITE ON THE SPIRITUAL PATH What a lovely wish, but let me qualify that to have adversities and view them in their proper perspective, for really speaking, it is not an adversity. For example, you have a job and earn one thousand pounds a month; it might be a lot of money, so what will you do? Perhaps you will have nights out at various restaurants and all the so-called mundane, temporary, pleasure-giving enjoyments. Now you come into a position where you lose the job. The job becomes redundant, not because you do not have the ability, but the job becomes redundant. So, you find another job. You have responsibilities with your wife and kids at home, so you take on a job for five hundred pounds to make do. What a blessing that is. It is a blessing because, in that blessing of making do with five hundred pounds, you are developing discipline that you will budget now, all those nightclubs will be forgotten, and you will not have a hangover the following day. So, responsibility, acceptance and discipline come about. Now, you discipline yourself and your mode of life so that it automatically becomes a search. These are the prerequisites on the spiritual path, a sense of responsibility and a sense of acceptance. Like the Serenity Prayer that you all know – “God, give me the courage to change the things I can, the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, and the wisdom to know the difference.” THE SUREST WAY TO RECEIVE IS BY DOING By exercising that discipline, you are altering the patterns of your mind, altering the old grooves that have been taking you downhill, and by this discipline, you are going up, up, up. That is a spiritual search in itself, perhaps couched in other words. You do not need to sit cross-legged in a cave and “Rama, Rama, Rama, Rama, Rama, Rama, Rama, Rama.” Ah! Idle repetition. When life becomes regulated, you will find that many physiological, biological, and psychological changes will occur in you. Because of that lot of money, you used to eat junk foods, you will now balance it by eating nutritional foods. No more of those restaurants, which are a waste of time; you do not know what goes on in the kitchens. Here you are forced to cook at home, and you will see that for your family, you would get the most nutritional food at a quarter of the cost, which the restaurants would charge, or even less. So, it helps you physiologically, and that, of course, is connected to your biological self of yourselves. Now you have developed an attitude of service to your family. Before, when the money was plentiful, that service to the family was not there. It was, superficially, but it never came from inside. Now you say, “I make do for my family”. You are a householder; remember that, and by doing that, what a tremendous psychological reward you are receiving that I am doing something. Now

The Master’s Gift: The Spiritual Journey with a True Master

Awareness, Chela, Consciousness, Devotion, Divine, Divinity, Duality, Effort, Eternal, Force, God, Guru, Heart, Integration, Karma, Law of Nature, Love, Mind, Non-Attachment, Oneness, Path, Philosophy, Samskaras, Scriptures, Self-Realization, Separation, Spirit, Spiritual, Spiritual Force, Spiritual Master, Spiritual Practices, Spiritual Teacher, Spirituality, Strength, Unfoldment, Unity, Universe

WE ARE BORN WITH A BURDEN To attain total integration of body, mind and Spirit, no one can do it for you; you must do it yourself. Do not let anyone tell you otherwise. No man can take your sins away from you. It is also said in many scriptures of the world that sins are taken away from you, but it has been misunderstood and taken very literally instead of the real essence of it. The real essence is that you follow these teachings, and your sins are taken away. It is not removed from you as if by a magic wand. I wish I could do that as if all your burdens were like a giant boulder on your chest, and I could just come along and lift it off, and all problems would be gone. I wish I could do that. But it is impossible; it is against all laws of nature. It is against the Divine will. It is against Divinity itself because man is responsible for his actions. Whatever you sow, you will reap. Then if a person says, “I died for your sins,” look at the contradiction; when, on the other hand, it is also said, “You reap what you sow.” These things must not be taken literally. There is a deep, beautiful symbolic meaning, and therefore it is said that “this is the life, this is the way,” and buddy, that is the truth. Philosophy is not something dry as dust. You can have a lot of fun with it. We have been born in this world with a load, a burden. Without the limitation of past samskaras or past karma, taking birth would not have been necessary. The reason why we take delivery is to unload the load that we created ourselves. The true guru shows the path and how one’s burdens can become less and less and less. Firstly, there are specific techniques involved, mental techniques, whereby the mind could be brought to a certain level whereby it could cooperate with the Heart. Here mental awareness expands, the mind expands, and simultaneously, the Heart expands. THE CONSCIOUSNESS WHERE EVERYTHING IS ONE Other systems and other movements in the world concentrate primarily on mind expansion because Western people are perhaps much more orientated towards mental awareness. That is very good. Nothing wrong with that. If the Western mind were not orientated toward greater mental understanding, they would not have progressed so much technologically. All the finest and most significant inventions that are helpful, perhaps constructive, or destructive to the world are because of this high intellectual and mental development and the ability to channel those energies creatively. But a greater danger could exist here because this ability can be misused for destructive purposes, as we have seen what has been done with the atomic bom In our system, a simultaneous development occurs where the Heart opens up, and the mind is extended to its full awareness. When we say “Heart”, we do not mean this little organ; we mean the core of the human personality, and at the core of the human personality resides that which we call Divine. We do not say spiritual development; the Spirit does not require developing; it is fully developed, it requires unfolding. Our practices are so designed that the mind achieves excellent awareness, and the Heart unfolds; one unfolds spiritually. The combination of mental awareness and the opening of the Heart creates that channel whereby all the energies of the universe are drawn to us. We use a photograph as you would use a cross or as the Jewish use the two inverted triangles. These are nothing but symbols. Photographs are symbols, and they are reminders. But the most important thing is the opening up of the Heart. When the Heart opens up in love and devotion without effort and without trying, you draw those forces of Divine energy towards yourself for your upliftment. Plenty of electricity in the river flows nearby, but you need the generator to harness the power of the electricity so that we can have light in the room. The guru acts as the generator. He is not the power; he is just the machine. The power is there in the water, that eternally flowing river with water here, there and everywhere. He is like the material that acts as a conductor. A generator that you can harness or get the electricity from the water. And that is what we do when closeness develops between Guru and Chela. Later, the development becomes so great that no differences or separation exists. The guru and the chela become one. When the lover, love, and the beloved become one. This is the purpose of life: to find that unification. All problems in this world are because of a sense of duality. When there are two, there is friction. But where there is one, how could there be conflict? Finding that consciousness where everything is just one is the purpose of life, which is called unity consciousness. THE GURU PASS ON A SPIRITUAL FORCE Even gurus, God, Chela, and everything around us is just but one, and that oneness is not of yesterday or tomorrow but here and now. By opening the Heart in that love and devotion, you are drawing a force to yourself to strengthen yourself, and by strengthening yourself, the problem becomes no problem. That is how it works, and it is so simple. It is always best to use a self-realised object as the channel. This, too, can be achieved through one’s husband or wife. If you can love your husband or wife deeply enough and objectively enough, you can see Divinity in your husband or wife. But people fail to see that because there is an emotional entanglement. While between guru and chela, there is a deep, sincere link and love and yet no emotional entanglement. You see the difference; you know why the teacher is required? You can ask

The Value of Symbols: Reaching the Absolute Through the Concrete

Awareness, Buddha, Chela, Christ, Conscious Mind, Consciousness, Devotion, Divine, Divinity, Evolution, Faith, Force, God, Guru, Gurushakti, Happiness, Heart, I and my Father are one, Impressions, Joy, Krishna, Love, Meditation, Mind, One-pointedness, Oneness, Path, Scriptures, Self, Self-integration, Self-Realization, Separation, Spiritual Teacher, The Absolute, The Abstract, Universal

REACHING THE ABSOLUTE THROUGH THE CONCRETE Everything can be valueless, and everything can be invaluable. There is a significant difference between the two words. Something can be invaluable, priceless, something on which a value cannot be put. At the same time, another thing could be valueless, of no use whatsoever. The infallibility of any object or the valuelessness of any entity is subjective. So, if it is a subjective matter, then the value of a thing is naturally an individual thing. You have a photograph of your wife, husband, father, or mother in your home, without sentiment attached, that reminds you how your mother and father brought you up. It produces within you a feeling of gratitude that it is good to be alive today, and if it were not for them, I would not be alive. You go to a Hindu temple, and there you will find a statue of Krishna or Rama, whichever Gods they would believe in. The idea here is not idolatry, as it has been misinterpreted today, the idea there is that through the teachings of that teacher, I can achieve a specific goal in life, or I am on the path of achieving that goal. So, through the concrete form, one reaches the abstract. The abstract is inconceivable to the human mind. The conscious human mind can only think in words and symbols, and its conceptions and perceptions are limited. The mind can only conceive or perceive things in a concrete form. So, to reach the Absolute or the abstract, one uses the medium of the concrete, which might not have any value in itself, but you can subjectively make it invaluable as a focal point. HOW TO GAIN ONE-POINTEDNESS OF MIND Most human minds are fragmented. All energies of the mind are pushing or pulling in various directions; they are not one-pointed. By using an object, one can achieve a one-pointedness of mind. Trying to concentrate becomes very difficult; when you try to concentrate on something, you defeat the purpose of concentration because you become too aware of concentration itself. When you become too aware of concentration, you add another concentration to the initial concentration. That is where confusion occurs, detracting from the power of attention itself. The proper practice would be gentle awareness of the object, and gentle awareness of the object-directed to the thing gathers one’s attention to the object, you go through the object, and that is how the abstract is reached through the concrete. This could be any object – it could be a piece of stone that you could use to gather all your mental energies because it is only by gathering one’s mental energies and becoming one-pointed that you can reach the pointless. You have to understand this very correctly. It is only by gathering one’s mental energies into a one-pointedness that one can reach that which is pointless, and by “pointless”, we mean that which is an invaluable point. I am so much opposed to the sense of the usual way to use the word “pointlessness.” That doing such and such a thing is pointless or of no value. This has inestimable value, that pointlessness that we reach, or in Buddhistic language, the state of no mind that we reach is all minds. THE VALUE OF SYMBOLS So, to gain the one-pointedness of the mind, we use an object as a focal point. If we follow the teachings of a particular teacher, Christ, Krishna, or Buddha, we use their specific symbols. In our movement, people use a picture of their guru to be able to remember certain teachings that are given to them and particular practices that are given to them. Every time that photo stares at you, you remind yourself, did I do my meditation this morning? It serves as a reminder. There are certain practices in our system called Gurushakti practices, which some of you might know about, and some of you might practice. In this Gurushakti practice, by using all your energies in a one-pointed fashion, you are directly linking to the outward personality you see in the picture, which means nothing; the face could be blank. Still, the awareness of the guru should be there. By creating this link, you use all your energies gathered through that channel to the universal forces everywhere. Here again, is the example of reaching the abstract through the concrete. A real guru will always teach moral principles and ethical principles. He will always give you an understanding of the values of life. To those intellectually orientated, he will explain how things work, for the mind, too, requires satisfaction. It is the nature of the mind to inquire, and because of its core, it requires answers. So, the guru answers the questions that are uppermost in your mind. That picture there reminds you that I had this problem, which is what the guru told me. Now let me mull over that, not accept it blindly. That would be very, very wrong. That is in a different sphere of faith. We are talking of just bare facts. The picture serves the purpose of having heard, having thought about, and putting it into practice. It is not the theory; in some communist countries, Big Brother’s watching you. No, this big brother does not watch you; he protects you. This protection is achieved by channelling yourself through a concrete object to all the universal forces that are there, and they are there at your command just for the asking. Fresh air is outside, but open the window; fresh air is always there. THE ENTIRETY OF DIVINITY IS WITHIN YOU If you do not open the window, how will fresh air enter this room? You would think that the divine, universal forces are so vast that how can you, as a little human being, contain it all? You do manage it all. You have the entirety of Divinity within you, which is everywhere and in everyone. If you open the

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