Maitreya:
Before we start anything I have two things to say here.
One is about the problem we have with the languages.
We talked about it before.
We really can do nothing about it.
What can we do, unless someone translates while we are speaking in
English?
Are there any suggestions so we can solve this problem?
Comment:
We can stay silent [laughter].
Maitreya:
Everyone can do the silent technique, huh?
She means silence is gold.
My suggestion is that those who really do not
understand what we are talking about, just feel the energy.
All these Satsangs are going to be typed.
Maybe they can then be translated into French.
After they are translated you will know what was said.
This way you can benefit both from the group
energy, enjoying it, and at the same time knowing that later on you
are going to receive the Satsang in French.
Of course, the better solution is to learn English.
I am not an American who is asking that
everyone learn English, because I had to learn it myself.
I am asking you to learn English because that is how you can know
the Mission better.
Second, there was a question about burning
incense while we are doing prayer and during meditation.
I know that this bothers some people when they meditate.
Probably it does not bother them if they are not meditating.
This is not the first time I have seen this.
I have seen a lot of people who cannot meditate when incense
is burning. So probably
it is a good idea not to burn incense while we are meditating.
Burn it before or after.
That was not really a question, it was more a request.
So I just wanted to share it with everyone.
Anything else you want to ask before we start
the questions?
Question:
I have heard that only God knows perfect truth.
Doesn’t our definition of God play an important part in
coming to understand the wisdom of Maitreya’s teaching?
Also, does thinking that we claim to know God, or that we are
be(com)ing to know God, reveal just a little ego?
Maitreya:
The question is that only God knows the perfect Truth.
That is true, only God knows the perfect Truth.
God is also everything.
God is vast. God
is infinite. God is the whole universe so we cannot imagine God.
But just like I always say, the universe is like a round
sphere and God is in the center.
And It has different shapes.
So when you look at God from different points in the universe, from
any point in this sphere, God looks differently.
If you are here and looking at God, He probably looks round.
If you are here and looking at God, He is not round anymore.
It is like a line or something.
That is why every religion, or every
individual who seeks God looks at God from that point where they are
at. From that point
they look at Him and say, “God looks like…” It is just like the five blind men and the elephant.
The first one hugged the feet of the elephant and said, “The
elephant is like a cylinder.” The second got hold of the tail of the elephant and said,
“No, it is not like a cylinder.
You are completely making a mistake.
The elephant is like a snake.
It is a long thing, like a rope or snake.”
Another took hold of his ears and said, “No, no, no, you both
are wrong, he feels like a leaf.”
The fourth one took hold of the trunk and said, “None of you found
him.
He really is like a hose.”
The fifth one had his tusks and said, “No, he is not like a
snake, or anything you all said, but he is a very hard thing, and
there are two of them.”
Which one was right?
All of them were right.
Yes, the elephant has all those parts but the whole elephant is all
of them put together and more.
That is how the realizations of the truth come
to humanity.
That is why in the Mission we actually do not explain
what God is. We never
explain what God is, we just hint, we direct, we show the way.
We said, “If you go this way, with His Grace,
you can have a glimpse of Him.”
After you have had a glimpse - - look at all the people in
the whole of history who had had an experience with God, and never
could explain their experience.
“God is this,” or “God is not this.”
But they never could explain what God is because God is
unexplainable.
You cannot explain something that is everything.
It is beyond the human mind.
You can only realize Him by going beyond human logic.
Even if you explain It, some people who have a
little experience of God then do not want to have anything to do
with It because It is such a vast thing.
It expands you in such a way that you do not want to have
anything to do with that experience anymore.
It is just like in the Bhagavad-Gita.
Arjuna always was with Krishna.
They were always friends who were chanting, dancing and being
together, etc, but Arjuna never knew who the real Krishna was. The most he had seen from Krishna was the four-armed Krishna.
That is really related to the Lotustica, the four arms.
Eventually, to convince Arjuna that He was
really God, He showed him His universal form.
Arjuna said, “Things are destroying.
Things are creating.
People are meditating, other people are killing each other.”
It is such a vast thing happening in the universe,
destruction and creation at the same time, that Arjuna could not
stand it.
He said, “No, no, go back to your regular form.
I do not want to see you in that form.
I do not want to have anything to do with it. I cannot stand it.
It is too much for me.”
So Krishna went back to his regular form, and then Arjuna realized
that realizing God is a very, very terrifying experience if you are
not ready for it, unless you realize that destruction is a part of
creation.
You cannot build a new house without
destroying the old one.
Can you build a new house when the old one is being run down?
What do you do? You first demolish the old house and build a new foundation.
Then you put the new house in the place of the old one.
Also, as I said, God is in so many different
levels and so many different people have different experiences.
Some people say, “God is Love.”
That is true. God is
Love. Some say, “God is Destruction.”
In some religions they believe that God is
very rude, God is a very destructive element.
It is just like that black goddess, Kali, in India.
She is the god of destruction.
She dances with the skulls and has blood all over her.
But she is a part of God.
That is the experience they have from her.
At the same time, Christianity says, “God is Love.”
Christ was the Grace and Love of God, which came to humanity.
So we can see that these experiences are all
related to God.
But which one is true?
That is why in the Mission we say, “God just IS.”
Now put anything in front of “is” and He will become it.
God is Love. God is Destruction.
God is Creation. God just IS. He does not have any polarity.
That goes very well with consciousness.
Consciousness does not have any polarity, but the creative
forces, the three gunas, have the polarity.
If consciousness falls under the power of destruction or negativity,
then consciousness becomes negative, and God becomes negativity.
If consciousness comes under the influence of the satva guna,
or positivity, then consciousness becomes positive and goes to the
higher level.
In a sense you cannot explain God, you cannot
describe God.
So we do not have any description about God in the Mission
at all. We never even tried
to explain what Pure Consciousness is. Pure Consciousness is probably the same concept as Nirvana
for example, or reaching God, or going back to Him, and all those
things.
But it never explains what It is.
It says, “When you get there you know it.”
When you can see God in everything in your life, in every
aspect of the universe, then you know God.
You know that God is working through you, that God is working
through your earth, through your children, through your spouse.
Then you can see that God is guiding you in every step in
your life.
Of course, we have a choice.
This does not mean that God is not giving us a choice.
God gives us all the choices we need.
Actually, sometimes we have too many choices we can make.
But when we choose to go His Way that is when we progress
toward Pure Consciousness, toward having a vision, etc.
The vision does not mean that it happens to
you suddenly, in a flash.
It could, nothing is impossible.
Everything is possible with God.
But also, realization means that little by little you can see more
and more God in everything in your life and realize the vastness,
the incredible Consciousness that is behind this universe.
Then you can realize about God on a deeper level.
So the answer to the question is, we really do
not have any concept in the Mission
about the meaning of God.
If I did not answer the question, whoever asked it can follow up
about it.
Did I answer it? I guess I did, the person did not follow up.
I am going a little faster about these
questions because there are so many of them.
I want to finish them by at least the end of the Feast.
Question:
What is your vision of the people from the Caribbeans,
colored, Americans, Africans, etc, and other people from the Third
World?
Maitreya:
Well, it has been said, “All men are created equal.”
I do not think that sentence says anyone is lesser, or
higher, or worth more, or worth less, than anyone else.
So all men are created equal and in that sense
it means all humans.
I do not think it means just all humans, it means all being
in the universe, even beyond our solar systems.
If we ever find any being somewhere else, they have the same
opportunity. We have to
look at them as equal with everyone else.
But also God gave us another sentence, “You
know them by their fruits.”
So although we are all equal, God looks at how much fruit we
give, how much effort we are putting toward God’s fruition.
He wants to make something to be fruitful.
He is trying to make something to give fruit.
The more a person gives fruit, the more, of
course, he is higher in the eye of God.
He looks at them and says, “Yeah, this child is giving a lot of
fruit, and another child is not giving fruit.”
But really He looks at how much you can manifest for God, how much
you love Him, how much effort you give to be with Him.
To Him we all are His children.
It is just like our own children.
If you have a couple of children don’t you love all of them? Yes, you love all of them.
You look at them, there is not that much difference between
them.
But some children are closer to you, they love you, they give
you attention and they give you love, etc.
You might love those children a little more, not really more
love, but you have a special feeling toward those children who give
you more of what you expect from them.
Another child is very rebellious and does not
want to listen to you.
Still you love him.
He might even leave your home and later on come back.
Actually, sometimes you even love that child more because you
thought you lost him or them.
Then he or she comes back home, just like that prodigal son.
You know about the prodigal son.
We had a Satsang about him at the Mission.
When the son comes back after a long time, what does the
father do?
He says, “Fetch the best sheep in the flock and give a big
celebration for my son who has come back.”
But that is how God looks at us.
Of course, if you read our teaching, you will
see that some blessings have been given to a special people, a
special nation for the sake of Abraham and his sons.
Those blessings were with these people all the way until this
revelation came to earth.
This revelation actually finished those promises given by God
to Abraham and his children.
So from now on more people will become equal,
and we can see the signs all over.
The Third World countries are becoming more indepen-dent and
more aggressive to gain more rights, and they want their rights to
be recognized, like in the Caribbean and the colored people, I do
not know what their proper name is. They are all becoming more and more independent.
They want to be equally recognized and they are being
recognized more every day.
If they want to be blessed also, they have to
do the Will of God.
The more they do the Will of God, the more they are going to
be recognized. They
will become a lot of heart and create Communities of Light.
They will become a part of the Kingdom Of Heaven On Earth.
They will meditate and follow the Eternal Divine Path.
They are going to become great people because the Eternal
Divine Path is the way to make great people.
That is what we have to become, great people.
Great people means the people who are just, who are able to
overcome their human tendencies to become more and more like God,
more and more compassionate, loving, and understanding, and they are
searching their Souls all the time, “Am I doing the right thing?”
That means righteousness, you become
righteous, to do the right thing.
Actually, we have a lesson on THOTH about, to
do the right thing. Fifteen minutes of it only says, “You have to do the right thing”
[all laughing].
It does not matter who judges us on earth
about what, the most important thing is how God judges us, how He
looks at us.
That is another thing, we have to transform ourselves beyond
the earthly concepts and earthly bondages, just like race, or origin
of birth, religion, and all those things.
That is why the Mission transforms you,
takes you beyond your own religion.
You are no longer a Moslem.
You are no longer a Christian.
You are no longer a Jew.
You are no longer a Hindu.
But you are a Divine person, you are striving to understand all of
these religions.
So you go beyond your religion.
Actually it enhances your religion because you
understand what Christ was talking about, what Muhammed was talking
about, what Krishna was talking about.
You go beyond these concepts and then still you have to go
beyond your race. You
have to go beyond your country or language.
You have to go to God.
That is where no one can identify you with any background.
You cannot identify me with my background.
I am from God. That is why when someone asks me, “Where are you front?”
I say, “I am from God, where are you from?” So they say, “Well, if you are from God, then I am from God
too.” Then we are all
from the same place, aren’t we?
There is no difference between us.
We have to transcend our concepts and teach
others also to transcend their concepts because that is bondage.
How long does humanity want to stay in this bondage? Do we want to stay in the category in which they put us?
The human loves to categorize everything.
The moment you meet someone they say, “Where are you from?
What language do you speak?
What is your religion?
What kind of job do you have?”
With any answer you give, they categorize you in their minds, just
like a computer.
Eventually, they put you where they want you.
They say, “Now we can relate to you.
We can look at this and say, he is this, this, this and this,”
because they already have concepts about what kind of categories
there are.
Each category, in their minds, warrants one kind of
relationship.
You have to go beyond that.
First of all you make yourself uncate-gorizable because you belong
to God.
You do not belong to any country, any anything.
Someone said, “You are asking us to go against our country or
our nation.”
No, it does not mean to go against your
country or your nation, but we are one in God and the Communities
of Light are beyond those boundaries.
That is why we have to go beyond that.
Then we are free. We no longer can be categorized as black, or white, or red,
or yellow. The only
thing, we can look at the other people as Souls.
I am colorblind.
When I look at you I do not see a Quebecian or American, or black or
white, or anything.
I just look at your Soul and say, “This Soul is beautiful.”
That Soul is wonderful, but it needs some work.
It has some edges that need to be rounded up a little bit, if
you want to.
If you do not want your edges to be rounded
out, I do not even try, I do not even touch them.
I say, “OK, I will not.”
I do not touch them at all.
But is you want to be rounded out and you say, “Yes, I want to be
rounded, I love you, if you want to round me up, go ahead and do
it,” then I get the hammer and start rounding them out.
If you say, “No,” I just do not touch them at all.
So that is the goal of our life also, we have
to go beyond all these categories the people are going to make.
I know it is not easy.
That is how it is out there.
Out there is a categorizing world, and they like to put us into
something they can relate to.
They just become so scared if they cannot
categorize you. They become really scared of you because they cannot put you
where they want you. If
you show things that are not the same as their categories, they
become completely unhappy about the situation.
But as I said, you cannot follow the Eternal Divine Path out of the
Communities of Light.
It is very, very hard.
That is why it is so impor-tant to create the Communities of
Light and create that environment where we can follow the Eternal Divine Path.
All of us are from God, and we open ourselves to that energy
and do His Will.
So it depends upon how much the people in the
Caribbean Islands, and black people in other parts of the West or
anywhere, really want to manifest God’s Will.
We have people in Nigeria, Africa, who are connected to us,
who are reading THOTH, and who are part of the Mission.
They are doing it, and eventually and hopefully they are
going to create some Communities of Light.
It is how they manifest individually as to how
much they are going to be accepted in this situation.
Of course, if the Kingdom Of Heaven comes and we create the bodies,
which we explained in The Plan, then there is an equality between everyone.
So that is the way it is and there is no doubt about that.
Question:
Please distinguish between distraction and attachment.
Maitreya:
Well, attachments are distractive to your Path, to where you
are going.
The body is just like a carriage.
I am in the Bhagavad-Gita tonight, I guess.
The senses are like horses, five strong horses carrying this
carriage.
We are the charioteer, the driver, and God is sitting behind
us and is just looking at this chariot that we are driving.
These horses are wild.
They want to go in all directions.
One of your senses says, “I want to eat.”
You go and eat. Another
sense says, “I want to go watch television.”
You go watch television.
Another sense says, “I want to go bowling.”
You go bowling.
Another sense says, “I need friends, I need a
companion. I have to work to get a companion.” Another sense pulls you toward becoming somebody.
“I have to get an education.
I have to get this degree, that degree, etc.”
Another sense says, “I have to go to the government, become a
politician, gain powers and be someone.”
It is all these senses that drive the human.
We are doing all those things because
something in us is telling us to do them.
Then anytime we gain something, we become attached to that
thing we gained, no matter what it is.
The moment we gain it, it becomes important, because we are afraid
that we will lose it.
That slows us down, doesn’t it?
It is just like, anytime we gain something, there is a weight put on
our back and we become a little slowed down.
We gain another thing, we gain children and we become attached to
them.
So it limits you more and more.
The more you gain, the more you are limited.
I am not saying that education is bad or anything like that.
Not at all. But
the moment we gain anything, we become limited more and more.
We become attached to a special kind of
consciousness and that becomes distractive.
It distracts us from our Path.
Not to be distracted is the path of detachment.
It means, I am not attached to anything.
It is OK to have something but it is not OK to be attached to it.
Really it goes back to being submissive and
surrendered to God.
Whatever God gives us we say, “That is fine.
Thank you God for giving those things to me, and I give
thanks every day of my life for whatever you have provided for me.
But if you take it from me tomorrow that is fine, I will
still thank you for taking it away from me because probably I was
attached to it.”
In that way we can just go on with our lives and continue our
progress, but we see God all the time in our lives.
First of all I take it that distraction here
is supposed to mean being distracted from reaching God, or in your
spiritual path.
You can be distracted from doing your work, or anything.
I suppose that is what the question meant, how you are
getting distracted from reaching your goal, to go to the higher
level or consciousness, and what is the relationship with the
attachment.
Also, as we teach in the Mission,
everything can be of three kinds.
Evan an attachment can be from knowledge.
When you are attached to God, it is a good attachment.
It is from knowledge.
It is not from ignorance or passion.
Your attachments can be from ignorance if you
are attached to something that is not good for you.
It is just like being attached to chocolate [all laughing].
You eat chocolate and it is not good for you. You know that but you just keep eating it.
That attachment is not good for you.
Attachments can be from passion, if you are
attached to someone because they provide for you.
You feel if you let them go you are going to lose whatever is
provided for you. That is from passion.
You are attached to that person, you are not really loving
them.
That attachment is from passion.
Attachment from knowledge is when you are
attached to God. You put Him first all the time in your life.
You become discerning.
A lot of people think the moment you say “God” or a spiritual
thing, you should not be a bright person, you should not be very
intellectual, you should not be able to understand things.
It is synonymous to being a little (or a lot) dumb.
Those who choose God or dogmas to escape the reality of life,
that is when they are escapists.
A real realized person is the most efficient in whatever he does.
A God-realized person is the smartest person
because god is smartest.
How can you not be the smartest when God is the smartest?
So you actually have to be more effective, more flowing, more
able, if you are really God-realized.
By being attached to Him, you gain everything you need for your
physiological and safety needs.
Then dedicate the rest for God.
So attachments from ignorance and passion
become a kind of burden.
They stop us right in our tracks if we are attached to
things, wife, husband, parents, children, etc.
Remember, we talked about the hierarchy of the
four beings in our lives, God, spiritual teacher, parents and
spouse. Each of them
can become a distraction in our path to the higher one.
For instance, some people came to the Mission and they
wanted to bring all their family to the Mission at the same
time.
Just staying in the Mission by
yourself, progressing, reaching higher consciousness, etc, is a
lifetime work.
Then you take
another burden and you want to pull everyone else with you to it.
Sometimes they become so heavy, you even fall back and you do
not make it. You go
back to your family, and your family becomes an obstacle in your
path.
They become your attachment in your path to reach higher
consciousness.
Some people just drop the family and
everything and say, “OK, I am going to go to God.
I do not care if they come or not.”
They let go of their family and later, little by little, this family
starts crawling back.
They say, “Where are you?
I want to be with you. You
are going too fast. We
want to join you.” Then
not only do you reach God but also you gain your family.
That is what attachment is, it is a burden, a
distraction. It is distractive to our progress.]
The path of non-attachment really is the path
of renunciation, that you renounce any attachment to the world.
That is really what is meant by renunciation, it means not being
attached.
So your path is going to be the fastest possible.
Question:
How can you know that someone reaches the state of Pure
Consciousness, and is it permanent?
Maitreya:
You do not know that you reached Pure Consciousness.
It is not a state that you reach suddenly, and that is it.
As we said, God is Infinite.
You realize God more every day.
You realize God today and say, “Wow, that was wonderful.
That realization was so great that I have to go to humanity
and tell them about it.”
But if you do not, the next day you are going to realize something
more wonderful.
That is why there are more teachers than students in the
world.
Every person realizes God in some level and
they say, “I realized God, now I can teach everyone about it.
God is Love. God is
this,” anything that people teach one another.
But the moment they do that, they are stopped because they do not
realize that God is Infinite.
No one can teach God.
The only thing they can do is to point out how you can get there.
That is why a lot of people out there talk
about God. They yell at one another about what God is.
On television there are more religious channels than other
channels.
In some places that is probably not true, but in a lot of
places there are a lot of channels and all of them say, “We know God
and we are going to teach you who He is.”
But you cannot teach God.
You can just show the way.
You say, “This is the way you go.
The Eternal Divine Path is the fastest path.
The end of this path is going to be wonderful.”
That is where you are going to go, and that is not something
that just happens in one or two days.
You realize God every day more, and more, and more.
That
is why it is such a wonderful thing to be with God because you are
never bored.
It is just not like you go to the television and watch a
couple of movies, and you get bored and say, “I do not want to do
this, I want to turn something else on and go do something else.”
You enjoy God today and you realize God today more, and you
enjoy Him more tomorrow.
That is what is wonderful about Him, because He is Infinite.
He is not something that you reach once and that is it.
Question:
Is Pure Consciousness permanent?
Maitreya:
God is everything. The highest realization of God really is, God is everything.
So if you can see God in the least mundanity in your life,
then the question of permanency is not there anymore.
Because what is permanent?
Permanent is I reach a consciousness and I stay there.
It sounds like, “I never get to mundanity anymore.
I do not wash my clothes.
I do not drive to work.
I do not do anything and that is it.
I reached that consciousness and I stay there.”
That is not true.
God is also the earth.
God is also the broom.
When you sweep the floor, that is God doing it.
When you drive to work, God is driving to work with you.
If you reach that point where you can see that God is
everything in your life, then yes, it is going to stay permanent, if
you can see this in every moment of your life.
But it is not going to stay permanent if your ego comes in, if your
lower nature comes in and you tell us about other things in life,
and you forget about God.
And that can happen, very simply and very easily.
We can forget about God very easily because
that is Maya.
Maya is as powerful as God.
We might reach the point where we do not want to have
anything to do with God because we are so self-centered and we
completely forget about God.
He is beyond us, so in that level of consciousness God does
not exist for us. He is
too much. He is too much trouble.
He is too demanding.
He is something that we do not want anything to do with.
Unless we reach a point where we see God in
everything we do and we do not escape our lives, there is no
permanence. We do not
go to the mountains and say, “That is the only place I can find
God.” How many people
in India escaped to the mountains?
How many people went to the mountains and are still meditating up
there?
And very few of them reach God.
Actually, greater than escaping the world is
realizing that your work is a part of His Work.
God is doing it through you.
We all know that we forget that.
We get engaged to the world and we forget about God.
So until you reach a point where you can see Him all the time in
your life, which is very, very rare, then it is not permanent.
It is temporary for most of the people, unless we create the
Communities of Light again, and create an environment that
focuses our attention back to God all the time.
At 6 o’clock in the afternoon, you drop
everything and you go do your Reminder.
Why? “Why should
I do that? I am very
busy right now.
I have a lot of things to do.
I do not want to do that.
I just want to get these things done.
There is too much work here.
What is this 6 o’clock Reminder stuff?
Who is this guy who is telling me that at 6 o’clock I have to
drop everything, go and do The Reminder?”
Hey, you forgot about God here, didn’t you?
Your work has become more important than God. To a lot of people, other things in their lives are more
important than God.
Our children are more important than God.
If our child becomes sick, do we think about, it is $100
extra, or a $100 less, or a $1,000 is going to affect us?
We do not. We
just drop everything and we spend that money to cure our child.
Then tell them, “Come to the Feast of
Tabernacles,” and they are going to have all kinds of excuses that
they do not have the $700 to pay for the Feast.
Which one is more important, the child that needed $700, or
God, that you come and have the Feast with?
See, our priorities are what?
Our priorities are worldly.
In the hierarchy of beings, as we said, God is first.
That is what we have to recognize, God is first, then our
spiritual teacher, then our parents and then our spouse.
Now if our parents do something that our
spouse does not like usually we drop the parents and we keep the
spouse don’t we?
That is not the hierarchy.
The hierarchy says the parents are before the spouse. If our parents tell us, “Do not go to that church,” or “Do
not go to that teacher,” when we know in our hearts that that
teacher has the truth that can reveal God to us, most probably we
are going to listen to our parents and we will not do it.
Again, our priority is wrong.
That is why we have to meditate on these
things all the time, to keep our priorities straight.
Otherwise our minds become very confused, very fast.
That is one of the characteristics of the mind, it becomes
confused very fast. That is why you have to meditate.
What is meditation?
What are we meditating on?
We are meditating on this teaching, this truth that, “God is first
in my life.
I will keep this truth in focus forever.”
If everyone kept God first, in the first place, then those
small little things would be taken care of by themselves.
So being in that state of permanency, being
with God is very, very rare.
But that is the goal.
That is what we are aiming for.
I do not expect everyone who walks into the Mission to be
permanently focused on God, that they put Him first all the time.
But that is the goal.
We reach a point where we see that we have to have our
priorities right and keep our focus on God all the time.
Then we see that everything is going to fall in its place even in a
greater degree.
But, of course, even seeing this tonight,
might not last forever.
It is not permanent.
Two months from now you probably will forget all about this,
but that is OK.
Just keep bringing your focus (mind) back to God until it is
trained to stay focused on Him forever.
Question:
What do you think of the sacred teachings of the Indians,
Native-American people, and Africans?
Maitreya:
They are too noisy [all laughing].
But seriously, that is why Haree Om Shrii
Hung has been given.
Haree Om Shrii Hung is a very good thing for the
people who like dancing and chanting. Just imagine in those black churches where they sing and
dance, etc, when they receive the Haree Om Shrii Hung and
start using it, and the Spirit gets to them.
They are just going to roll around and jump.
It is really going to shake their whole environment with that
because actually that is how the Haree Om Shrii Hung should
be danced, with the Spirit.
After a while you do not dance, it is the Spirit dancing for
you.
Let go of all concepts, etc.
That is actually a state of “let go.”
All the intellectual things, all the thinking,
all the feeling of, “Do I look good, is anyone looking at me, am I
doing it right, should I do it like this or should it be like that,
or should I clap or should I not clap, do I look good, etc.”
No. Actually, most of those religions are very emotional, they
are very connected to the Spirit.
They are not too much of a philosophy,
although they do have a very strong, deep philosophy, which is based
on the Mystical Paths. All of them are trying to connect with God.
It is just like the American Indians who have
the Great Spirit.
They have the Great Spirit instead of God.
They want to connect to Him.
They want to be with Him.
Also they have the spirit of everything else, the spirit of the
chairs, the spirit of the trees, animals, etc.
Which is true, everything has a spirit in it.
There is a spirit in that flower, in that chair.
Everything is God.
But, of course, they have categorized it into
small gods so regular people can relate to it.
It is easier to say, “The spirit of the chair is there so I can
relate to it. I can ask the chair to give to me whatever I want and it is
going to give it to me.”
It is really their faith.
You receive according to your faith.
If you have faith that this chair is going to do it for you, it is
going to do it. If you
really have faith, it is going to manifest.
I used to tell the story about a student.
There was a teacher who was an archer.
He would accept only twelve students every ten years.
He would teach them in such a way that after ten years they
could hit anything within a one-mile radius without even looking.
They could just meditate.
They would become so in tune with their environment that they
would do their process of their meditation right, you know, that
process I checked today [all laughing]. You expand yourself to the room and you see all the parts of
the room. Eventually
you become so intuitive, any place you go your memory becomes like a
photographic memory.
You remember everything right away.
You pick up everything with your brain.
Most of us are conscious of only around 5-10%
of what our brains really pick up when we hear, see, or sense
something.
That is why when people are put into hypnosis, they remember
things that they do not remember on a conscious level, because
humans pick up more than they can even imagine.
Then as they practice this meditation more and more, this ability
comes in a greater degree.
Anyway this teacher would only accept twelve
students for ten years, and there were hundreds of applicants.
Every ten years there were five, six hundred people who wanted to be
with him and become his students.
But he just picked twelve students and that was it.
He screened them from the rest.
There was this person who really, really
wanted to become his student.
He has such a desire that he really worked hard on it and he
became the thirteenth person in the screening.
The teacher said, “OK, that is it, I will take the twelve.
The thirteenth is not going to be with me.”
He became very disappointed.
He begged, he said, “Please, I want to be with you.
I would just love to do this work with you.”
The teacher said, “No, I am sorry.
That is the rule.
I take just twelve people and we have the twelve people.
You can probably wait until ten years from now.”
He said, “I cannot wait until ten years from now.
I want it now. I
want to get in.” And he was sincere.
The teacher said, “No, I cannot do that.”
So this person went and made a statue of the teacher, one
very similar to the teacher who taught the archery.
He started meditating on the statue and tried to receive the
instruction.
One day this teacher with his twelve students
were in the jungle and they were playing the drum.
And this arrow came right inside the drum.
Boof!
The drum was silenced.
Everyone said, “What was that?
We are the best archers in the country and who is it who is
destroying our drum with an arrow? Let us go get him.”
All the twelve started moving around.
They thought he was probably around 15, 16, or 100 feet from them.
So they spread out, but there was no one around.
They thought that was a stray arrow and hit
the drum by chance.
They brought another drum and started drumming.
And just then boof!
Again, they started going out one mile, two miles, three
miles, four miles.
Eventually they saw this yogi sitting there in deep
meditation.
He had a statue in front of him and he was meditating on it.
He had a bow right beside him and his arrows were exactly the
arrows that hit their drum.
They did not want to disturb him from his
meditation, so they went to their teacher and said, “There is such a
person there who is medi-tating, and we think these arrows are from
that person.”
They brought the teacher to him.
The teacher looked at him and said, “Yes, that is the student I did
not accept.” The
teacher said, “Where did you learn this?”
He said, “I just trusted in this statue that it was going to teach
me.”
So, really your progress with any teacher
depends upon your faith, how much faith you have.
If you have faith that this chair is going to teach you everything
and you really have faith it is going to do it, it is going to do
it.
That teacher taught to shoot for only one
mile, but this person was sitting ten miles away and he was able to
hit this drum because he did not want it to disturb his meditation.
He was meditating and these people were making noise with the drums.
Anyway, so Haree Om Shrii Hung can be
very helpful to those people who like to chant and drum and do
spiritual dancing.
So in answer to your question, I think they
are good. They are related to the Mystical Paths, the mystical part of
our teaching.
The mystical part of our teaching covers every
concept, so every philosophy, or every religion that tries to
connect man to Spirit, to God.
So it is a very huge category.
Actually you cannot explain any religion under it.
As I said, God is infinite, so there are
infinite ways of explaining Him and there are infinite ways of
mystically experiencing Him too. So those are the American Indians, Africans, Jamaicans, and
those places where their religions are based mostly on direct
experience with God.
Hinduism, Buddhism and all those religions,
and all those philosophies which try to explain that you have to
have an individual experience with God, fall into the first seal,
the Mystical Seal. The
rest of the seals, of course, are related to the other religions.
That is why, the first step is to meditate, to
meditate and awaken your spiritual forces.
So that is why we do meditation.
Also we dance and we chant.
All these exercises do not appeal to everyone,
especially the Kirtan.
Probably a lot of people feel silly, especially in the West.
When they want to do the Kirtan, they say, “What is this,
that I put my hands up, sing Haree Om Shrii Hung, go around
dancing, and all those things?”
But that is good for them because it breaks that barrier.
Eventually you reach a point when you can let
go in your Haree Om Shrii Hung, you just let the Spirit come
through, you dance with it and go with it.
Then you feel, “Wow, that is what they mean to go beyond the
intellect.”
