Maitreya:
Good evening everyone. I hope John and Dustin have enjoyed
their week here with us.
With tonight, seeing me
in Satsang, you have seen everything in the
Mission
and have seen me in every capacity that I work in the
Mission.
You saw me this afternoon, after the Sabbath gathering meeting.
That is when I sit as a judge. I talk to you in the library; I
am your friend. I talk to you upstairs together; I am your
confident. I initiate you…
When I sit in this chair
up here, it is the time of Satsang and it is the time of the Spirit
of God to come to earth in full capacity. So when we give
Satsang here and I am sitting in this chair, the Father and I are
really One. That is why the questions come. When I
answer these questions up here, that is when His Spirit completely
comes through.
I wanted you to also see
how the Satsang is performed and what it means. It means that
really God is giving you your answers in complete perfection.
So you can see that that goes very well with the different colors
that you see in my picture in the website. When you look at
it, there are so many different capacities.
Of course, all of us are
like this. We act as students. We act as sons or
daughters. We act as workers. We act in different
capacities in our lives. We act as mothers. We act as
children. So, every time you act, you have a different kind of
energy or feeling of where you are. It is the same thing with
God and His Revelation.
That is why Christians have such a hard
time to explain what the difference is between the Father, the son,
and The Holy Ghost. They have been discussing it for 2,000
years. Why? How can the Father and son be One? And
what is The Holy Ghost doing in the middle of the Father and son?
We can see that we
explain it very well here. The Father is a Spirit; God is the
Spirit. He cannot just come and talk to everyone because most
of the people are not connected to God. They cannot hear Him.
They are absolutely engrossed in the world. So, He had to
choose a body to come to humanity.
In order to do that, what
does He do? He prophesies for hundreds and thousands of years
that such and such a being is going to come. It is just like
when Christ came, when Muhammad came, and when Bab came. When
that person comes and fulfills the prophecies, God comes through
that body so the Father and son become One. The Holy Ghost, of
course, is the Spirit that comes through that person and is full of
Grace and knowledge.
So we can see that all
three can be one, and at the same time they are separate, they are
different. When I am not here, but instead sitting down there,
I am probably also a man, a regular man, who does the regular things
that every man does, eat, sleep, walk, and talk, and whatever the
regular man does.
One time Christ said, “I
am the way and the truth. No one goes to the Father but
through me.” Another time someone called him good Rabbi, and
he rebuked him, “Why did you call me good? The only thing good
is God.” What happened? You just told us that you are
the only way, and now we call you good, and you suddenly do not
accept even being called good.
It was because in that
capacity, in that feeling of being connected, he was One with the
Father, and he was the Way. There was no other way but him.
But the other way, as a man, he was just a man. He was just
like everyone else, and he was not good. The only thing that
is good is God. That is why it is called God: God is
Good.
So now we are here, God
is with us, and we will go to the questions to see what is asked.
Question:
What is the best way to maintain constant meditation on the mantra?
Maitreya:
Well, your mantra is your secret connection to God and the energy
that is invoked in you. You probably realize it for the first
time in your life when you receive initiation. You will be
with it from then on. It is not going to leave you. It
is a part of God’s energy in you that constantly moves, and you know
it by hearing it within yourself and becoming more and more familiar
with it.
When you meditate, the
mantra and the whole process is to realize that stillness and
movement in your meditation. So, you start repeating your
mantra, going through the process, and realizing that movement.
After awhile, after you realize that movement, you do not even have
to repeat the mantra anymore but can listen to the movement within
yourself.
You can even do it in the
Universal Mantra. That is why the Universal Mantra is given to
everyone. When you breathe in, Haree Om Shrii Hung, you
realize the pause, or stillness, between breathing in and breathing
out. You will feel that energy is released from the lower
chakras to the higher chakras. The energy that is released is
the energy that you have to realize is within you, is in you, and is
always with you. It is never going to leave you.
When you breathe out,
Om Nam Kevalam, again you realize that stillness between Om
Nam Kevalam, breathing out and breathing in, and you realize
that the energy released really comes to the higher chakras and goes
to your body and to your brain. You should eventually become
one with that movement.
So, after awhile, you do
not even have to repeat the mantra any more. You can hear the
movement going on all the time. You can be with God while you
are doing your job, when you are studying, when you are talking,
when you are reading, when you are walking, and when you are
awakening
from sleep. From sleep you say, “Oh, God is still with me.
He has never left me. Oh, I left Him. I fell asleep.
I forgot about Him, but He never left me.”
It is like people who are
totally engaged in the world and become so attached to the world and
worldly things that they do not realize God and they do not feel
God. Have you ever seen someone cry, “Where are you God?”
You now have the option to say, “I know where God is, let us listen.
Oh, there He is. He is with me. He never left me.”
So God never leaves you.
He cannot. How can He? He is us. He is one with
us. There is no separation between God and us. The only
separation is our illusion of separation, which is Maya.
That is really what Maya
means. It means to have the illusion of separation.
Illusion is what? Illusion means it really is not true.
Illusion means that we are deluded. We are in an illusion of
separation, but separation really does not exist because that “I” in
us is the same as the Universal Mind and God. So He cannot be
far away.
The people who cry,
“Where are you God? Why are you not with me?” in that moment,
at least, have forgotten that they are one with God. A lot of
people do not know that they are one with God. A lot of people
do not know that God is within them.
Even the Bible
says that, “You are in the image of God.” What does that mean?
What is image? Image means likeness. So we have all the
capacity and likeness of God within us.
Now, how can we hear that
sound and vibration more and stronger, and meditate all the time?
That is why all the purifying techniques are given to you through
the
Mission.
These techniques include all the meditations, Satsangs, service,
your diet, etc.
We recommend a satvic
diet. But we are not dogmatic about it. We do not say
that you have to become a yogi, go to the mountains, and eat bird
food. No, we say a balance. A balance is the best way to
go. Eat a lot of vegetables and satvic food, but if you crave
meat once in awhile it is OK. It is not a sin to eat meat or
to not eat satvic food all the time. But be aware of how it
affects you. Some people cannot even
eat meat. We have some members here who become sick if they
eat meat.
After awhile the movement that
you feel in the meditation is with you all the time. If you are turned around, if you are baptized, you are going
toward God.
What does baptism mean?
It means to turn around. As long as you are going to the world, can
you hear that energy, can you feel the movement? Can you feel
God is with you? No, you cannot.
Some people come and are
initiated, and they leave. Or they go to the world and the
world gets to them. It is just like Christ said, “Some of the
seeds fall on the stone. Some of them fall in the bush.
Some of them fall on the road, and people walk over them and destroy
them. Some of them fall on good solid ground, and they give
fruit.”
So giving fruit is the
most important thing. It is not having experiences. It
is not thinking that you are the big teacher in the world and
sitting up there and having a big ego, but the important thing is
giving fruit. If you do not give fruit, have you heard The
Word? Has The Word rooted in you? You can see that
giving fruit is the greatest spiritual achievement.
As long as you are going
toward God, that energy, that movement, should become stronger and
more powerful. One day you are sitting there, and you hear
such a strong movement of the mantra and that energy that you have
no doubt who is with you. You know it is God. You are
one with Him.
How do you go toward God?
As I have said, the more you do the
Mission,
the more you turn around from the world and go toward what God has
chosen you to do, the more you go toward God.
We have all been called
here. No one is here who has not been called. If you
have not been called, after awhile you are going to fall away from
the Mission and go away, or it does not feel good any more.
If you are here, you are
stuck with it, you are sticking with it, and you have no choice,
then you have been called. So the sooner you turn around from
the world and come toward the Mission, the
more and stronger you become in The Word.
That movement is very
steady. It is very powerful and that energy does not let you
go too high, and it does not let you go too low, unless, of course,
the world gets you and you go down. Then suddenly you do not
feel God, you do not feel the meditation, you do not feel the
energy, you do not feel the
Mission,
and you go away. Then you will completely fall into the
Maya.
There is a reason for
everything that has been given. That is what I have said many
times: the
Mission
is a package. It is not, “Oh, I like this part but I do not
like that part.” “I like Maitreya but I do not like the
teachings.” “I like the teachings but I do not like
Maitreya.” “Oh, I like to do
The Reminder but I do not like to do the
Samgacchadvam, or the
Haree Om
Shrii Hung, Om Nam Kevalam.”
It is a whole package.
It is a lifestyle.
I had a Persian lifestyle when I came here.
You had an American lifestyle. Our lifestyles were different
because they were two different cultures. But here, this
lifestyle is neither Persian nor American. It is God’s
lifestyle.
Even in this we are
unified because what are we following? We are of the same
culture. Our culture is the culture of God. When all of
us follow the culture of God, will we become One? Of course we
will.
There is a beauty in
every culture. They are just like beautiful flowers. A
bouquet is more beautiful with many flowers in it than just one
flower only. And so are our teachings and the unification of
all religions, taking up from all the different religions and putting
them together as a bouquet.
Of course, no one can sit
down and put them together; it has been put together all along.
It is just that God sent them at different times.
We can see again the more
we turn around, the more we do the Mission, the more we
realize that we are universalists and we belong to the universe, we
are both men and women, we have both energies in ourselves, and we
are here because we are God’s children, the more we are unified.
That is why when people
ask me, “Where are you from?” I usually answer, “I am from God.
Where are you from?”
After a few minutes, they
say, “I am from God too.”
I say, “OK, see, we are
from the same place. There is no difference between us.”
And that is exactly where they are from. We are all from God,
and we are His children. Then we are One.
See, we have to become
one with all these little gems. It is not something
intellectually understood but to spiritually be here. After
awhile, as there are more people who feel like that, are people
going to say, “Oh, you are from that culture and that religion; I am
from this culture and this religion, so it is OK for me to kill you,
or to be opposed to you?” No, they will not. They
cannot.
That is what the hope is,
that eventually we should reach a point to teach humanity these
things and to make them look to the God within each other instead of
looking at, “Oh this person is from this culture and has this
religion, so it is different than me.” The consciousness is
low down there somewhere. The lower the consciousness, the
more conflict is going to be there, and the more separation we will
see from each other.
So all these gems and
teachings are given to you so that your mind eventually reaches a
point that it is connected to God all the time and you completely
free yourself of all this narrowness of the mind and destructive
things that are plaguing human life. We can see our earth
needs these things, this teaching. The earth needs to
understand these gems. Eventually, as we have 10% of humanity
to join us, we will be strong enough to change the tide to God’s Way
instead of the human way.
So, watch your diet.
Watch your environment. Another thing, who are you dealing
with? Who are your friends and the people you associate with?
Try to bring them to this consciousness. But do not let them
take you to where you used to be or where they are. If you
cannot take them to where you are and they can take you to where
they are, avoid the situation. Go somewhere else.
Find a new environment
that supports you. Create the Communities of Light
wherever you are so that after awhile you attract the same kind of
consciousness. Otherwise, you are going to go for the
consciousness that is not as high as yours, and they are going to
affect you and drag you down to where they are.
All of these things
matter. You have to become more observant, more watchful of
your life, your lifestyle, where you are, what you eat, who you
associate with, and what the Mission says. Follow the
Eternal Divine Path, and work toward the creation of the
Communities of Light. So all of them are going to help
you.
Do your meditation as
given to you. If you have the Universal Mantra, meditate on
the Universal Mantra. It is as powerful as any other mantra.
If you have been initiated, meditate on your initiation mantra and
go through the process. So bring God to humanity.
It is an all-out
awareness of your life and of yourself: Who you are, what your
talents are, what your weaknesses are, what your problems that you
have to solve are, where you are, and who the people you deal with
are. How can you handle them? How can you make the
situation turn around; instead of going down the drain, start going
up together?
All that comes with
meditation, deep thinking, and becoming compassionate, loving, and
understanding. And love them as the Spirit, as the beautiful
beings that they are, not as the shortcomings they might have.
Does that make sense?
So it is to become
meditative all the time.
Another thing is the
environment, of course. We have to create Communities of
Light. Don’t you feel God more here in the Mission
than if you go out there somewhere? [nodding their heads] See,
the environment is very important.
Next question?
Question:
What can we do to stimulate the higher chakras?
Maitreya: You do not mean using crystals, for example? I knew
someone who used to put crystals on his chakras at night. He
would tape them on his different chakras overnight so the crystals
would purify his chakras. Of course, once he hurt himself
because he rolled off the bed and fell on them [laughter]. So
you are not talking about those things?
Dustin:
No. More actions that we can do.
Maitreya:
What you can do to stimulate the chakras is to follow the
Thirty-Three Virtues. For example, “Fearlessness.” Pick
one day to be fearless. Fearlessness does not mean not being
wise. A blade is coming down from the machine and you say, “I
am fearless,” and put your hand under the blade. That does not
mean fearlessness at all.
It reminds me of a
disciple who was listening to his teacher. The teacher said,
“Look at everything as God. Just see God in everything.
Do not let the lower things bring you down.”
He left the teacher and
he went out, looked at the tree, and said, “Oh, this is God.”
He looked at a child and said, “Look at that child, he is God.”
He looked at a mother carrying a child, and he said, “Oh, that is
God.”
While he was in this
blissful state of seeing everything as God, someone yelled, “Mad
elephant! Mad elephant! Get out of the way! Mad
elephant!” He saw the mad elephant coming, and he said, “Oh,
that is God.” He just stood there, and the mad elephant came
and put his trunk around him, and threw him into the bushes.
He was all bruised, broken, and everything.
The disciple stood up and
said, “What? I am not going to listen to this teacher any
more. He does not know what he is talking about because he
told me, ‘God is everything.’ Why did I get hurt if God is
everything?”
He did not go to the
teacher for a while. Eventually the teacher saw him one day
and said, “What happened, you did not come any more to see me?”
He said, “Well, it was
the story. You told me that everything is God, and then look
at what this elephant did to me.”
The teacher said, “Didn’t
you hear the man who was calling, ‘Mad elephant?’ That was
also God.”
So, we bring wisdom to our
teaching also. One of the things that you can do is to follow
the Thirty-Three Virtues. Some of the people here in the
Mission pick up one each day, and they practice it. For
example, “Forgiveness, today is the day of forgiveness.” If
someone did something that I did not feel good about, I feel bad for
a while but at the end I say, “No. I am going to forgive that
person. I am not going to let what they have done to me affect
me. I am going to completely forgive them.”
Or to be in contentment,
where nothing affects you that day. Be in a very peaceful
mind. These things are going to eventually affect your chakras
and help you to overcome your lower nature.
Another thing is to
recognize, what is it that is affecting your lower chakras?
What kind of food did you eat that stimulates them? What kind
of environment affects you?
Again, the whole thing
probably is to become more aware of your life, become more aware of
the things that affect you in your life, and avoid those things.
Go toward the things that are affecting you less, and are not
bringing you down to your lower nature, making you angry, making you
unhappy, or making you depressed, and all of that.
Again, meditation and
awareness of our lives makes us go more and more toward God and open
the higher chakras and higher self, instead of following the lower
nature.
At the same time, do not
be attached to, “Am I in the higher self? Am I in the higher
chakras? Am I getting there? Did I make it or not?”
Many times I have said
that it is just like putting a seed in the ground. Every day
you go, pick it up, and say, “Are you growing up?” and you put it
back. After awhile, that seed is going to wither away, and it
will never grow up. So just leave it there and nurture it.
Nurturing it means being
aware of the things that affect that seed. It is what
we were talking about this morning, about the mustard seed is the
smallest seed among seeds. But if you really nurture it, if
you become aware of what affects you and takes your faith away, it
will grow.
For example, you have
faith and if someone comes and makes you forget about your faith,
then avoid that. Bring your seed back to the place that is
good soil so it can grow up. It is a battle.
Actually, meditation in
Sanskrit is called Sadhana. Sadhana means struggle.
Struggle means that you have to work on it, and you have to be aware
of it. Sometimes, just like a good surgeon, you have to cut
some things completely out of your life. If there is a tumor
in the body, it is a knife that the surgeon uses to cut the body.
It really hurts, doesn’t it? But at the end what happens?
It heals you because the tumor is out.
Knowing about psychology is another
thing. Study about psychology and how it affects you.
Analyze your dreams.
When I was in college, I
picked up a book called Self-Analysis. One of the
things it suggested is to put a pencil and paper close to your bed.
If you have a dream, when you wake up, write down what the dream
was. Then break it down into different sections and start
analyzing what that dream meant.
Of course, we have three
kinds of dreams (I do not know if you know that). With the
dreams that mean nothing, probably you just ate too much and went to
bed with a full stomach. That dream really does not make any
difference. There are dreams about our day-to-day life that
are trying to give us a message that will help us to realize what it
is. And there are the dreams from God, which are very strong
and powerful. You just cannot shake them. They are going
to stay with you until you really understand what that dream meant.
It is a calling or something that God is trying to convey to you.
It is like the dream of
the Egyptian pharaoh about the seven years of plenty and the seven
years of drought. He could not shake it; he just could not get
rid of it. He had to call Joseph to interpret for him what
that dream meant. Of course, it was part of Joseph’s mission
to interpret that dream, bring the Hebrews to Egypt, etc.
So we can see that our
lives are not disconnected, lonely, individual lives that we are
connected to nothing. We are all connected to the universe,
and God is very concerned for each of us.
As I have said many
times, when I had that incredible vision when I was in Colorado
Springs, God knows even the smallest fish in the ocean and what it
does. Can you believe that? He is even concerned for the
smallest fish in the coral reef somewhere in the ocean. He
knows exactly what it needs, how long it is going to live, and what
kind of food it is going to eat today.
So we are not alone and
lonely. We think we are here and no one is connected to
anything, but that is not true. Realize these things and
again, become more aware of your environment, your food, your
responsibility, and the Words of God.
What are the Words of
God? The Words of God are that we have to create
Communities of Light based on pure couples. What does
“pure couples” mean? They are couples that marry with the
intention of bringing God into their relationship.
When God chooses two
people together, that is for life. When they say, “Until death
we do part,” God really means that. He does not mean that you
just stay together for six months and then, “You go your way and I
go my way.” It means a strong marriage and family environment.
The whole community is
based on the family. And the Communities of Light will
become the base of the creation of the Kingdom Of Heaven On Earth.
So all these things
should happen. Oh, probably there are hundreds and thousands
of things I could refer you to, how to help. But the more you
become aware of the Mission, the more you become aware of the
teaching, the more you rely on the Words of God, the more you go to
the higher chakras, the more you will create wisdom, you will create
patience, and you will create an ability to affect the people around
you and make them better people.
They teach you to become
a better person too. It is not a one-way street. It is a
two-way street. You teach them, and they teach you.
Does that make sense?
Is there any follow-up? No? All right.
Question:
Can you please explain the paths of knowledge, karma, and devotion,
and what one should do when a path is selected?
Maitreya:
In general,
according to the Hindu Philosophy, there are three paths for an
aspirant. The path of devotion is what Christ said, “Love your
God with all your heart, mind, and spirit.” That is the path
of devotion. You just love God with all your heart. You
do not care about all the philosophies, who created God, where we
are going, who was the first, who was the second, and all these
intellectual explanations about who God is. The person just
loves God. They sing about God, they praise God, they feel the
ecstasy of being with Him, and they giggle sometimes at the same
time [laughter]. You have no idea why that happens but you
feel good.
Don’t you feel good when
it happens?
John:
Yes.
Maitreya: That is the energy of just being with God or
feeling Him. It just bubbles in you, and you cannot control
it. And it is beautiful. You have no explanation. There is no need for intellectual
ceremonies or long talks. They just love God. That is
it! That is the path of devotion or Shakti. They just love God.
As I said, this path is
very short. It is the shortest path. You do not study
anything. You do not need any books. You do not need
Scriptures. You do not need anything. You are just right
there with God.
But, it is a very
dangerous path at the same time, because sometimes they do not feel
God. They are not with Him any more, or they cannot be
connected to God all the time, and they feel very depressed,
unhappy, disconnected, miserable, and all of that. Does that
happen to you too? No? That is good. To some
people it happens.
When they fall from that
connection, they have nothing to hold onto because that is it,
either they are with God or they are not with God. There is
nothing in between. So it is the fastest path to go to God and
to feel God. There is no question, you know that God exists
and you are one with Him or one with Her, but at the same time, you
have to be connected all the time.
The next path is the path
of Karma. Karma means action, a person who loves to do things.
They like to serve God in the capacity they can. They look
around to see, “What can I do to improve God’s situation, or
improve, for instance, this Center?”
A lot of love has gone
into this Center. Many people have put a lot of effort,
energy, and work into it, because they love to make this house the
most beautiful place for God to manifest Itself.
They love to do things,
and then they feel, “I have not done anything. God has done
through me.” So the path of Karma is to do things and realize
that you are not the doer. God is the Doer.
What happens then?
If God is the Doer, who am I one with? I am one with God,
aren’t I? So you can feel God while you are doing it without
thinking, “What am I doing here? I am sweeping this floor.
I am better than this. I am a great guy with a lot of
knowledge about God. They gave me this broom and told me to
sweep this floor. I do not want to do that.”
But if you say, “Oh, I
can do that. This is the House of God. God is trying to
clean it so He can make it more beautiful so He can manifest Himself
in a more graceful way.” Then sweeping becomes a Oneness with
God. It becomes a Oneness with the Spirit.
That is the Karma Yoga.
That is the path of action. Some people love that. They
do not feel God. They do not become bubbled up or giggled up,
or feel the energy or Oneness with Him. But when they do
things, they say, “Yes, I am doing something for God. God is
doing it through me. I am One with Him.” So that is
another way to feel the Oneness with God.
Now if they fall, if they
do not feel God any more, do they still have something external to
look at? They can say, “Oh, I swept that floor, and I did such
a good job. I remember that God did it through me. I am
not feeling God any more but I can see I did a good job here.”
Therefore, it is easier for them to go back and feel the Spirit of
God, because they have some external manifestation of their action.
So the path of Karma is
to realize that God is doing through you. You love to do
things for God, feel that He is doing them through you, and become
One with It. After awhile, you are not the doer any more.
Actually, in the Indian Philosophy they
say that God is like a bird watching another bird. As long as
the other bird is doing things, eating and everything, He just
watches. He is an Observer. He is just the Witness
Entity. He enjoys watching that bird enjoy the fruit.
However, the moment you
say, “No. I have had enough of this life. I want You to
become the Doer. I will just become the observer,” then who is
the enjoyer? You become the enjoyer. And God becomes the
Doer through you.
Of course, when God comes
through you and does things, does He do bad or make mistakes, or
does He not do a perfect job? God is perfect, isn’t He?
If God is perfect and He is doing it through you, is He going to do
a perfect job? Yes. He is going to do a perfect job.
But if you are saying,
“Oh, God is doing it through me,” and you are not doing a perfect
job, is God doing it through you? No. Still your ego is
in the way. When we let God do through us, we do a perfect
job.
You cannot say, “Oh, I am
going to let God do through me but it was not perfect.” No.
No. It was you still there present in the doing. So that
is another path.
The third path is the
path of knowledge. Some people love to know about God.
They like to read books, to analyze them. For example, in the
eight-fold path in Jnana Yoga, it teaches you what each fold is, how
each affects each other, and how you can follow this way or that
way, or if you follow this way what happens. It is very
intellectual, and a lot of people also love that one. That is
the way they can realize God and see how it works for them.
So that is the path of
knowledge. You want to know about God. You want to
analyze the universe. You want to know how He created the
universe, what is the spiritual progress, how the chakras affect
you, how they work, and what kind of tendencies they have.
See, the Shakti or the
devotional person does not care too much about those little
nitty-gritty explanations of all these little things. The only
thing is, he loves God. That is all he needs to know.
In Karma Yoga, the only
thing you have to do is to let God come through you. But in
Knowledge Yoga, he has to analyze it, know it, read it, discuss it,
and even become frustrated because it is so hard to understand God
intellectually because God is beyond intellect. That is why
that is the hardest path and the slowest path probably because you
cannot analyze God with the intellect but by realizing Him.
So you have to go beyond
intellect, Para. Para means beyond. Become a Paravipra.
Vipra means intellect. Paravipra means you go beyond
intellect. That is why you meditate. Not only do you
read THOTH but also you meditate to go beyond the
intellect to the feeling and Oneness with God.
Also, eventually some people do reach a
point in the path of knowledge that they say, “Yes, that makes
sense.” The thing that they analyzed or studied, also makes
intellectual sense. In that case, our teaching is very helpful
to intellectual people. It is very helpful because it teaches
that God said that He was going to do these things, and He did them.
Intellectually it is very easy to understand that because if a being
said, “I am going to do these things,” and he does them, does he
exist? Simple!
You might not feel it here, giggle and
bubble, and you might not have that feeling of Joy for Him but
intellectually you say, “Where is He? Show me God.” And
there He is. He said He was going to do these things, and He
did them. Does He exist?
You see? Even the
intellectual can say, “Oh yes! I have no choice. I do
not feel Him but intellectually I can accept that He should exist
because He said He would do these things, and He did them.” It
is very helpful to them to at least accept that God exists. It
is very hard for intellectual people to even admit that God exists,
because they want to analyze intellectually.
So that path is the path
of knowledge, and it is the hardest and slowest path. But if
you ever fall in your faith, you have so much know-ledge accumulated
that you have very good solid ground to fall onto and eventually
find your way back to God again.
In the Mission, we
have combined all these three paths. That is why Bhakti or the
devotional practices of singing, dancing, meditating, singing
Samgacchadvam etc., were given. If you are devotional, that
singing of the Samgacchadvam is beautiful and puts you in a very high
state of devotion. Even the Kirtan, the dancing is devotional.
A lot of intellectuals have a hard time with that. They come
here, someone starts dancing, and they say, “I do not want to do
that! What is that, I put my hands up and go side-to-side?”
But a devotional person just loves it and enjoys it that he just
jumps around and gets into the Spirit and starts talking in tongues,
etc.
So you can see that it is
trying to break the intellectual to a more devotional state.
If the intellectual people, because of the love of the other things
of the Mission, even force themselves to do Kirtan a few
times, they eventually will feel the energy and the Grace, and they
will say, “Oh, I never felt like that before. I never saw that
beauty and energy that flows in people.” So that is the path
of Shakti, of devotion. They are the devotional part of the
Mission.
Then there is the path of
karma. We have service, to give fruit. What does that
mean? You have to work, to give fruit. You cannot just
sit there, meditate, and say, “My fruit is meditation.” No,
you have to write, you have to teach, and you have to sometimes
sweep the floor. You have to go on a tour and spread the
Message, create the website, or whatever the Mission is
asking you to do. But who is doing it? When you say,
“Oh, I am tired of making this for the Mission,” remember,
Oh, are you the doer? Then you say, “I am sorry. You are
right. God is doing it through me.”
So we also follow the
path of karma. That is when we manifest but we realize that God is
really manifesting through us. Because if we think we are
manifesting anything, what is going to happen? We will be
attached to the manifestation, and we will say, “Oh, look at me.
I am progressing. I am doing so much good. I am the
person who is doing all of this for you.”
And also, you expect
something from me, because you think you are doing it for me.
You are not doing it for me. I do not owe anyone anything.
You are doing it for God. So I am free also with that.
Since you are doing it for God, and I am free, I can go on with the
Mission. We are all here to serve the same Purpose, and
that is creation of the Communities of Light and His Kingdom.
So that is the path of karma in the Mission: Service.
Then there is the path of
knowledge. THOTH is the path of knowledge.
You read
THOTH, you listen to Satsang, you read the Satsangs,
and you create knowledge about the Mission. Much has
been given to you to see a lot of beautiful things have come to
humanity through this Mission that they can analyze for the
next couple of thousand years and still probably, they will realize
more about it. That is because it is so compact. I have
always said that with every sentence of THOTH, you
could write a book about it. You can just put one sentence of
THOTH and write many, many, many books. So you have
a lot of material for intellectuals also to read, analyze, and see.
That is why our Path is a
combined path of devotion, karma, and knowledge. Again, it
should give everyone who wants, a part of any path they want to
follow, but at the same time, it brings more balance between all of
them together.
We do not choose just one
path. Actually if you are devotional, we would like you also
to become a Karmic yogi and a knowledgeable person at the same time.
If you are a knowledgeable person and you do not have devotion, we
are going to guide you to dance the Kirtan [laughter], listen to
Samgacchadvam, and create some devotion. So you will become a
more balanced person.
If you study the Hindu
religion, you will see that somehow it is not that balanced because
very devotional people exist that they just love God, and that
is all there is into it. There are some Karmic yogis who do
service, and they become very dry. There are intellectuals,
just like Jnana Yoga, who are very set. That is the way, step
one, step two, and step three.
But ours is again to
unify them together. That is another unification, another
thing that you can see. This path is not just Jnana, or Karma,
or Shakti. It is a combined path of balance.
Question:
Does it matter where my hands are when I meditate?
Maitreya:
All right. The hand movements are called mudras. Mudras
are the different positions of the hands, which are supposed to
invoke different kinds of energy in you.
If you see Maitreya’s
picture on our stationery in the Mission, He is sitting
in this position [hands held in a mudra position]. It is
called the knowledge mudra. So he is imparting the knowledge
to humanity.
In the beginning of a
meditation, it really does not make that much of a difference.
Some people say, “Put your hands upward” [showing the hands on lap
with palms upward and thumb and index fingers touching]. Or
they put them down, or close their hands, or just leave them open.
After you meditate for awhile, you will feel by putting your hands
in different positions, a different kind of feeling.
So your hand position
does have an effect on you but after awhile you can feel the way
their position affects you. Some people put them in the front.
Use the one that is more comfortable for you. After some time,
you will probably feel that your meditation is much deeper or calmer
if you put your hands in a different position.
Sometimes you become
tired of that position, and you can probably change it to something
else that makes you a little more aware of the different kinds of
effects the different positions of your hands might have. Just
experiment with them.
But, of course, it is
much nicer when you meditate that your hands also have a nice mudra
position that you feel you are receiving an energy when you are
meditating.
So there is not a set
motion or set way of doing it in the Mission, and we do
recognize the mudras. We do acknowledge that the movement of
your hands does have an effect on your consciousness. But it
is not written in stone. You can experiment with them to see
how they best affect you.
Well, I do not like to say “goodbyes.” I never do. I
will just say, “So long,” to you. May God be with you.
It was good having you here, and I hope thousands and thousands of
others come and join us, and we can unify all of humanity with our
teaching.
Sal-OM.
