DISCIPLINE
There are people who think
that life is just a series
of, "What I want to do, I should do whatever I feel like doing." They miss the point that if you do not discipline your energy, you
cannot accomplish anything great in your life.
The very notion that whatever feels good is good,
is really not wanting to be disciplined. For instance, look at
steam. If you just put water on the fire and create steam, that
doesn't accomplish much. They were doing that for thousands of
years.
Eventually one man said, "Let's give it some
discipline. Let's put it in a machine, confine it and then see what
happens." What happened? They created a steam engine, and they
revolutionized human life. Yet steam was there all this time.
It is
the same energy they have been using for thousands of years.
Everybody boiled water. But it was not
disciplined. So that energy was completely wasted. It is just like
dynamite. You blow off dynamite in the air. What happens? Nothing is
accomplished. It makes a big noise. Probably it is going to disturb
your ears. But nothing is accomplished. Confine the same dynamite
under hard rocks and then defuse it. You can blow out those rocks
and create roads, etc. By disciplining the same dynamite you are
able to harness its energy to accomplish a great task.
If we do not discipline our lives, to follow
rules or regulations that have been set up for us to follow by a
Higher Intelligence or God, then what happens to us? We follow our
own feelings and we associate those feelings to the Word of God or
something that comes from Him. How many people are really directly
connected to Him?
We were talking about the subconscious mind,
a week or two ago. The subconscious mind can sometimes be very tricky. It can put on the cloth of God, and come to us and say,
"This is what should be done -- that is the way it should be." And
we take that as the Word of God. That is why God sends His Word in
the Books -- in the Scriptures.
One time a man said, "I didn't realize the
significance of the Ten Commandments until I started following them.
Then I saw, they really work. They really fill me. They really
discipline me. They really bring my energy to focus. They really
make me stronger, more powerful in God."
Yet, how many people really like the Ten
Commandments? They say, "They are no good. We have to do whatever
appeals to us." Then what can God say? God already
has sent the discipline for humanity to follow. They are not for God. He doesn't
care if you follow the Commandments, or any discipline, or anything
that makes our energy more useful for ourselves and others. He set
these disciplines because He knows better than us what is good for
us.
A lot of people who meditate don't follow the Ten
Commandments or those disciplines, and they say, "We receive our
guidance from within," which is OK, if you are 100% pure. Otherwise
the slightest impurity will soil what you think is a guidance from
within.
If you are l00% perfectly clear, you will hear He
said, "Follow the Ten Commandments. Follow this discipline.
This is
given for you, which is good." And you realize it is good for you,
because you are clear and completely one with God.
Moses didn't want to spend his time going to the
mountain for forty days and coming down with something that was not
from God. God did not give it to Moses' brother Aaron, or even
Joshua; He gave it to Moses, who brought it back to his people.
So, if you follow only the guidance that comes
from within you, it is just like everyone is Moses. But are they? Are they Moses? They can be.
Yet, God chose only one person, Moses, to go to
the mountain and bring His Ten Commandments down. So we come to a
place where a lot of people meditate. Also there are Scriptures and
the Words of God which come through many Prophets, Messiahs or
Saviors, or whatever you call them.
They bring the purer, more crystallized Word of
God to humanity, to be followed by them, not for God's sake but for
man's sake, because our happiness is only complete when we know God. For only God is infinite and there is a longing in every man for the
infinite.
That is why when we replace that infinite longing
with something finite, then we start longing for material things. We
long for a house; we buy a house. Then we want a car; we buy a car. We want another car; we buy two cars. Then we want a boat; we buy
the boat. We want a bigger boat. Then we want an airplane. We have
the airplane, then we want to have all kinds of friends from
higher places and parties and all these things, drinking, smoking --
and after awhile we feel, that is not it. We have everything but
still that longing is not satisfied.
So what we are really doing is replacing that
longing for limitlessness, with something limited. That is where
unhappiness comes to humanity. Man does not realize this longing
within which is for the Infinite, which is God.
This longing can only be satisfied with Him. Nothing in this universe will satisfy this longing of man for
complete joy and happiness. Oneness can come by disciplining
ourselves in all matters and watching ourselves all the time --
being watchful of our actions.
If you are not watching yourself, you do not know
why your moods are swinging up and down, "Why do I feel good
today? I did not feel good yesterday. I felt very good an hour ago. I'm not feeling good anymore. What happened?"
It is because we do not know
-- there are deeper things within us that are affecting us all the
time.
Everyone affects everyone else. Everything in the
universe affects everything else. All particles in the universe have
an affect on each other. We know about the stars, how they affect
each other because they are greater in mass. Yet even the smallest
speck in the universe has power over other specks or other elements
in the universe.
Being watchful means to be disciplined, to
overcome the longing of the physical, mental, and ethereal bodies. There are not only physical longings. We have a lot of psychological
longings. We were just talking about the subconscious mind.
The subconscious mind wants to be something, to
be someone, or to be somewhere or to do something. And all these
longings do not bring satisfaction. We go for them though. That
is
OK, as long as we are realizing this is not it -- these are not the
answers.
But it is good to know that these will not satisfy
the ultimate goal for which every Soul longs. The ultimate goal is
God, the Divinity, the Oneness with the One. Again, this can be
accomplished much easier in the Communities of Light, because
the Eternal Divine Path is a discipline. The Communities
of Light follow the
Eternal Divine Path.
We always have to watch, are we following the
Eternal Divine Path
-- are we meditating, are we watchful, are we observant of ourselves
and our environment, are we trying to create the Communities of
Light?
Are we here to create the Communities of Light,
or is it easier to take our individuality, and go and live alone?
It is much easier that way. It is easier if everyone has a house and a
few friends, goes to work a couple of hours a day to make some money,
and comes home.
Of course, they have other dissatisfactions, such
as the disadvantage of loneliness, of not being in an environment
that supports you and all those things. So there is always a
trade-off in physical life.
You lose something for everything you gain. It
is
impossible to have everything at the same time. You cannot have the
world and God. You cannot have two Masters. So that is again another
discipline. How much compromise do you want to make for what you
gain? So you gain the world, fine, however you lose your Soul. You gain your
Soul, you lose the world.
Question: Now, it is a question about
discipline. I want to know if there is one way of discipline, one
method, or everyone has to choose his own discipline. I mean, when
you say you have to meditate, you have to control yourself and
everything like this. Some people cannot do this but they can help
in a spiritual way by doing things -- not just thinking about things
-- they must act or they cannot just stay like that.
Maitreya: Well, in the matter of discipline,
discipline means to be able to withdraw from acting when your lower
nature says to act. It is easier to relax and to follow your desire,
than to be observant of how your desires and actions, for instance,
affect others or the environment. That is one discipline.
Many religions have given some disciplinary
actions or some procedures to be followed for becoming observant. For instance, in Christianity the Sermon on the Mount is a
discipline. If your eyes deceive you, pluck them out and throw them
away. It really does not mean physically, grab your eyes and throw
them away. It means, if you look with lust on a woman, you have
already done adultery. It means that is a discipline, watch
yourself.
If your eyes are lusting after flesh, watch
yourself. That is a discipline given in Christianity. In Judaism all
the elaborate sacrifice of animals and sacrifice of different
things, was a kind of discipline to remember God or the Ten
Commandments. That was a discipline.
In Islam, there are five times of prayer a day. That
is a discipline -- that you withdraw from everything you do, put
your attention toward God and do your prayer. So there are many,
many ways which have been given for discipline.
For instance, we do the Reminder and meditation at least twice a day as disciplines. We also have the
Fifteen Commandments. That is also a discipline which has to be
read, understood, and start to be followed.
So these disciplines are for us to follow. But
the question is about individuality. Each individual can discipline
himself in different ways. That is very true.
In Hinduism it has been recognized that the
temperament of individuals is different. Some people are devotional. They just love God. They
do not want to have any knowledge about why
the universe was created. They have nothing to do with the
intellectual aspect of God -- they just love God. They have no
knowledge of how He created the earth, what the miracles are, etc. They just love God. They are devotional people and their discipline
is, to love their God with all their heart, mind, and being. They are
Bhaktis; they are devotional. Bhakti means devotion.
There are people with temperaments that like to
do things for God. They do things for Him, and surrender the results
to Him. If you do something for God and then you become attached to
the result, what happens? You say, "Look at me, such a great person I
am, I am doing so much for God." You create a big ego.
Or you do a lot of things but nothing happens.
Then you start feeling bad, "Oh, I am doing so much and nobody
is patting my back, or nobody is progressing." You become
discouraged. So do your best, and surrender the results. This is
called Karma Yoga. Karma Yoga means action yoga.
The third kind is the Jinana Yoga. Jinana means
knowledge. These people love to study and try to recognize God with
their intellect. They want to know how and why the universe was
created, who is God, who was first, God or the creation -- the egg
or the chicken. They are just trying to figure out all these
different ways of knowing.
Eventually both the people who seek knowledge and
those who are Karma Yogis, end up with the Bhakti, or devotion to
God. They just become lovers of God. They eventually reach a point
at which the person who seeks knowledge realizes, such a wonderful,
such a harmonious universe, has been created by God. After they
acquire more and more knowledge, they start to realize that everything
that happened, happened for a reason. God is just.
Everything that a human sees as awful and
terrible, at the end is good because He knows where he is going and
why it is happening. The knowledge of God results in devotion to God.
Those who are Karma yogis work for God, and as
they submit to Him and realize He is the Doer not them, they become
more and more a channel for Him. The more of God in them, the less
of them there will be. This will increase the joy of being and
becoming Him more and more.
So those who are of Karma Yoga create a great
devotion for Him. They work for God because they always surrender
the results to God, and eventually they become a channel for God --
they become One with God. Their bodies become carriers of His Will
and that also creates devotion. So there are different kinds of
disciplines for different temperaments.
Question: Is this a question of temperament
or is this a question of being selected for being devotional, karma
or other?
Maitreya: That is a good question because
there is an essay in THOTH, our main book, called
"Predestination or
Choice." This essay explains that the universe is like a Kingdom
and God is its King. Let us compare His Kingdom with an earthly
kingdom.
An earthly kingdom has a king, a prime minister,
and many different other ministers. Then there are different
sections or departments within those governments, and then there is
the department that works with the people. There are also people who
have nothing to do with the king, going around and doing their own
things every day. All of this is called his kingdom.
Let's compare a prime minister with a peasant, a
regular person. Now which of these two has more freedom and has the
choice to follow his own will? Yes, the regular person can make his
own decisions easier than the prime minister. The regular person can
wake up in the morning, especially if he's self-employed, and say,
Well, I don't feel like doing anything today -- I will just go to the
mountains.
Can the prime minister, if there is urgent work to
be done by him for the king, say that? Can he say, "No, king,
today I am going to the mountain and I do not care what the kingdom needs?" So, the closer the people are to the king, the less self will they
have, don't they?
Now it is the same thing with God. The closer you
are to God, the less self will you have, because His Will becomes
your will. If you become His Prime Minister and He tells you, take
and do this, you have no choice. Otherwise He is going to replace you
with another Prime Minister.
Yet, at the same time, you have greater bliss. You have greater power and greater understanding of the work of the
King because you are so close to Him. You know His temperament, His
way of thinking, His way of working, what He wants for His Kingdom,
how He wants it, how He is going to accomplish it and all those
things.
A peasant, a regular person, has a lot of freedom
for himself. He can follow his own will but he is not too close to
the king. He is very far away from him. So that is how self will and
the Will of God come in.
When you come close to God, you have very little
will of yourself, but His Will is paramount.
Question: Do you think that God has a will
for us?
Maitreya: There are two ways of looking at
His creation. Either there is purpose in this creation, or there is
no purpose in this creation.
If there is no purpose in this creation, there is
no reason for us to be here. So we and animals are the same. Let's
be like animals, if there is no purpose for human life!
Or, there is a purpose in this creation. If we
understand there is a purpose in this creation -- purpose means to
reach a goal, to accomplish something -- then there is something we
have to accomplish.
So God has a purpose for us, to unfold to Pure
Consciousness.
Question: Don't you think that God gives us
all that we have and need, and the purpose is to become perfect,
certainly? I do not think that He is so low that He
cannot come and say
to us -- if He minds really -- that is our will. We have things to
do. For example, if I have an examination, I have the books. So
that is for me to read them or not to read them. The professor is
here to correct it, and if I did not read it so well I do not pass my
examination and that is all.
Maitreya: The question is that God is not
concerned with what you do? Is that your question? That He has given
us the intelligence, eyes, hands, feet, body, everything we need to
realize His Will?
Question: At the beginning He gave this and
He wanted us to become perfect. But what we can do now, we will see
the results in another life or in another time?
Maitreya: That is very true. You see, it is
your decision which makes the result. It is your action, which
creates the reaction. There is a Law in the universe, the Law of
Karma. Any action has a reaction. So a reaction will be created in
the universe for any action you do. This is also true in the law of
physics.
And this reaction will remain in this universe,
in the ethereal level, until you learn your lesson about your
action. If the action is not according to the Universal Laws, it
will create a negative reaction. That negative reaction is created,
not to punish you, but just to give you a lesson.
The moment the lesson is learned, those karmas
will be dissolved. So you see, there is a set-up, there are rules. There is a Law in the universe
that works. And that Law is very
unforgiving. You cannot break that Law, for usually if you try, you
break yourself.
So, that is how God guides us. It is just like a path
that we are trying to go through and reach its end. We are in the
dark. On the two sides of the path there are walls of barbed wires. If you go to the side you will hit these walls, and if you go very
fast you might even hurt yourself. Any time you go out of the way you
will hit the barbed wires and you will return to the center, etc., until
eventually you reach the goal.
It is very true, you have the choice. God gave
all you need to make your decisions and choices to your perfection. So our choices make the reactions in the universe and we will
receive what we deserve. "You reap what you sow."
Question: Yes, and the problem is that if
it is like this, all the bad things that happen in this world, God
does not want this just for a lesson or something? I mean, when there
are wars and everything like that; this is the human being doing
them.
Maitreya: You see, when those negative
reactions are accumulated, they usually return as some upheaval on
human life which eventually will end with the good lessons which we
learn or that humanity learns.
Question: Will we see the results? Because
90% of human beings have to see the result to have a lesson. I mean
like a little child has to touch the fire to know that he is
burning.
Maitreya: Regular humans cannot see this
truth clearly, so they do not learn their lessons. They continue
making mistakes until one day they reach a point where they feel
there should be more in life than their heedless cycles of misery. It is then that they are guided. It is then that they will seek for
truth. When they reach this point, they will see these truths
clearly. However, in this period of human existence, an intense
situation has been created. He has created this situation that human
progress be accelerated. For example, God has released so much
knowledge to humanity. Why?
Question: Because He gave us curiosity?
Maitreya: No, God already prophesied that in
the end of this era the knowledge will increase. See, He has all the
knowledge we learn now and that has been coming to humanity all
along. He knows about electricity. He knows about
electromagnetics. He knows about atoms. He knows about all these things. But He kept
them from humanity because He did not want to give it to them before. They
were not ready for them yet.
Now, suddenly He released them to us. Why?
Because it is time for a great leap of human evolution. At the same
time, because this new knowledge is creating such a closeness among
humanity, it is also stirring a lot of upheaval. A lot of old
concepts humanity wants to hang onto, these old ways, are no longer
appropriate.
So this is when these upheavals are created. This
is the lesson humanity has to learn. This is One Earth. It
is not
like l0,000 or even l00 years ago, that something happens in Iraq
and Iran which would not affect the United States. Or something
happens in South America that would not affect Russia or Europe.
We are such a small and closely knit earth right
now that we have no choice but come to this conclusion, that we are
One Earth and One Family. And, there is One God for all of us. So
that is why humanity is going through these birth pains. For instance,
a lot of people oppose other countries. Yet, they are using their
industrial products.
They have no choice; they have no escape. They
say a lot of bad things about those countries but if they can get
their hands on their cars, they do not mind at all. You see, they
need those things. At the same time, the people who have this
industrial power, have a mission.
For instance, the United States has been chosen
for a mission. It has been clearly explained in
THOTH
what the mission of the United States is. And that is what it should
accomplish, what it should manifest for humanity. If it does
not, it
will be in trouble.
Everyone feels there is something going on in
this country. They want to enter this country. Why do so many feel
like that? Is it something, some spirit here, that attracts people?
Or even that person on television tonight was saying what? We feel
the United States is our protector. Why? Why is such a feeling, such a
spirit, there?
Question: But this is history. There have
been the Greeks. There have been the Romans. Now there are the
Americans.
Maitreya: There has never been a nation that
has had such an influence on such a worldwide scale. And it is not
only this, it has been prophesied that the vine of the Children of
Joseph will flow over their wall. So their influence will go over
their borders.
The people who came to the United States are the
Children of Ephraim and they are the Children of Joseph. So see, we
are looking at the fulfillment of prophecies. We have to expand our
consciousness. We have to see God's Revelations, God's
Predictions,
God's Will.
What did He predict? That is why I said, you have
to read THOTH. You have to understand the prophecies of God. He predicted all these things will happen and now they
are beginning. I am from another country. I came here and God showed me all this
Truth. Now I have to tell you people of the United States, "This is
your Daharma. You have to do this."
Sometimes I feel, Well I probably should not say
that, an American should say that. Yet, in another way, I do
not feel
I belong to any other country -- or to any country, not the United
States, Russia any country in Europe or anywhere. I am from God, so
probably I am in the best position to say what is the Daharma of
every country and nation.
So you see, you should not look at the appearance
of the things. We should look at the Will of God behind the
appearance.
