Maitreya: The first question, Is God-realization the highest thing in everyone's life?  As we know, the very meaning of Haree Om Shrii Hung -- Om Nam Kevalam is, The Goal of The Life is to Be(come) Divine -- That Divinity is Everything.  So according to this Universal Mantra that has been revealed to the Mission of Maitreya, the very goal of life is to be(come) Divine.

Some people might question, What does that mean, to be Divine?  Divine is a word so vast and with so many explanations.  So what does it mean?  To be Divine means to become One with the Father and to know the Mother, or to become One with both of them and know them in their universe.

Father is Pure Consciousness, the witness entity, Omnipresent, Omniscient.  He is not explainable; neither is the Mother, which is the creative force in the universe.  It creates, it generates, it operates and destroys.  God -- G O D -- Generator, Operator and Destroyer.  Mother, in the Highest Form, is The Grace or that feeling of well-being and that all is well.

We know that God is FINE, because we know God.  We are so close to Him.  All these are still explanations.  We really cannot explain It.  That is why there are so many different ways of saying who God is, what God is, where God is, and how God is.

After thousands of years of explanations, religions and mystical experiences, still God has not been explained completely.  That is why He is called Omnipresent, Omniscient, God, the Universe, Everything, Nothing, Nirvana, Samadhi, etc.  It is unexplainable.

Whoever realizes who He is and what It is cannot explain it to other people.  The only thing that one can do is just help others in their path to a little higher consciousness, so that they can experience or have a glimpse of who they are.

We lack an explanation, and we are in a bind -- we have to explain It.  So that is why we call It, The Goal of Life.  That is the Divine.  To know God, that is the Goal of Life.  That is the priority in everyone's life.

We were driving today and somebody was asking, Why are people not happy?  I answered, Well, it is very simple, because every human is longing for limitlessness.  They are longing for God, and when they direct this feeling toward material things which are limited, they never will be satisfied.

If we have one house, we want two.  If we have two bathrooms, we want three.  If we have four rooms, we want five or six rooms.  If we have two houses we want three.  If we have two cars we want a better car besides the cars we have, then an airplane or an RV. It goes on and on.  Even if we have all of these, we want to be known.

It is like Onassis, who was a very rich person.  He had an island of his own, and was the man who owned the most ships in Greece.  Still it was not enough because nobody knew him.  So, when he found an opportunity to marry Jackie Kennedy, he felt that was the only way he could be well known, because Jackie was so well known.  He wanted to be famous.  He wanted to be Onassis, the person whom everyone knows.

So you always want something else.  You are well known, then you want power.  Everone wants to put others under their control.  When everyone is under one's control, they want to control the whole earth.  This goes on and on.  For even then you are not happy because that emptiness is still there.

Probably you would start feeling bad about yourself, "What a dictator I am, or how fat I am," and all those things.  It is not going to satisfy you.

So, if Onassis was not happy with everything he had, or the many people in history who had many riches, then you can reach this point where, "Well, there is something lacking in my life."

Saul was the king of the Hebrews and Israel, yet David had to go and play music for him so he could feel that spirit of David, who God was with, to be released from his pain.  And he was a king.  He had all the power he could have in that nation.  Still did any of these give him the feeling of oneness with God and that feeling of completion?

Sometimes, we can look at a person in a small village somewhere in a backward country and see that person is so joyful.  He is so happy.  He does not care for the rest of the world, and he does not want riches.  He does not want to control anyone.  He does not want to be famous.

When you go deep inside that person, you realize that he has such a great faith, and he is so filled with the Spirit of God.  He does not want anything else.  All things are provided.  All he needs is a little food and a place to put his head, and he is happy.

You also see, all through history, nations that have become rich.  Because they lost the sight of God, they lost the spirit in them.  And again, all through history, that usually becomes the very fall of those nations, and they are destroyed.

God always showed this process in the Children of Israel.  When they were with God, they praised God, they fasted, they went with God, and they always were successful and prosperous.  When they left God, they forgot about God, they were downtrodden, and they were destroyed.

The same goes for individual life, of course.  It is not that God is an egoistical being sitting up there and saying, "You should only worship Me because I have such a big ego."  He wants you to be focused on Him because when you go toward Him, the Spirit of God can guide you to your best way of being.  You will be in Spirit instead of flesh.

For whatever is done in flesh, is from flesh.  And whatever is done in the Spirit, is Spirit.  It doesn't matter what it is.  If it is from the flesh, it is not going to prosper, it will not help you.  But if you do it in the Spirit, even when you are offering a small glass of water, it is going to prosper.  It is going to bring a lot of Joy to everyone.

So the goal is to know God -- to know His Love, to know His Ways and to go toward Him.  That is the most important thing and that is the only satisfying thing.  Of course, we are not teaching that you should not be prosperous or you should not have a house or car or airplane, etc.  They are secondary and they also have to be used for God.

If God gave them to you, fine, enjoy them and thank God.  If He did not give them to you, still enjoy them and thank God.  Always do what God has asked you to do.  That brings prosperity in all levels of the human: in Spirit, and in the mental and physical levels.

So to answer the question, if knowing God is the highest goal in life, yes it is.  That is actually the only goal in life, to know God.  The rest is secondary to that goal.

The second question about respecting the parents, we have an extensive explanation in THOTH about the important beings in everyone's life.  As we just explained, God is the first being and He is the most important Being in our lives.

The second is the person who takes us to the goal.  The goal of the life is to be(come) Divine, to know God.  So the person who takes us to that goal, helps us to go to that goal, is the highest person in the physical body on earth for us.  That usually is our spiritual teacher, a real spiritual teacher.  There are a lot of teachers who are proclaiming they are the spiritual teacher, they are the path, they are the way, they are the shower of the way to God.  Very few really take you to Him.  The goal of the spiritual teacher is to connect you with God.  If you find such a person, he is the most important being in the flesh, in the body, to you.

After him are the parents.  Parents are the people who have given you this opportunity.  God chose them for you, or you asked for such an environment.  They go through all the headaches, pains and everything that you might have this opportunity to know God, to come here and progress to the higher level of consciousness.

So they are very respectful beings for you.  You have to respect them all the time, no matter who they are, what they are, or what they do.  But of course, they are separate beings.  They have their own ideas, their own egos, their own way of doing things, and their own ways of knowing things.

They might not always be higher in the Spirit than you.  So although they have to be respected, if they become an obstacle in your path to be(come) Divine, you have to gently let them know that you are a separate being and you are here to know God.  Even if they are not helping you in that level, you have to respect them with the utmost possible respect.  Love them and help them as much as you can, yet gently just pass them by and go to God.

You have to provide for them, comfort them, and give them whatever is necessary for them to also realize that the goal of the life is not to have, but to be.  It is not to compete with other people or other children or anything like that.  The goal of life is to become One with God.

If the parents also become the teacher that connects you to God, then they provide two places in the hierarchy of beings for you on earth.  They become the spiritual teacher and the parents.  So they become the highest beings in anyone's life.  Such parents are the most respectful beings on earth.

After the parents, of course, is the spouse, your other part, your wife or your husband.  This fourth being has a great relationship with you.  They are your partner.  They are also your comforter.  They are your companion.  Also God provided them for you to generate children and for your family which is the very basic block for creating society.

A couple is very important in God's creation.  That is why God said to Noah, Take animals to the ship, take male and female.  We can see this in the story of Noah.  When He was instructing Noah, God always emphasized, take male and female, a couple, so there can be a generation after them.

In the human level, of course, couples are very important because they create the base for the society.  If the couples are Divine, then they can manifest God to the highest in the family and society.  We can praise Him, bring Him to our families, to our communities, to our countries and in our activities.  We can make Him feel that His creation is not worthless and that He created beings that have the companionship and Love of God.

The relationship between the pair is very, very important.  Yet if a spouse makes you become disrespectful to your parents or becomes an obstacle in your way to do your duty in human form toward the other two foremost beings in your life (God and your spiritual teacher), that being is not doing his/her best.  A spouse always has to be a friend, work close with the other, and be one.

Couples usually represent the two aspects of God, male and female.  So when they come together, they have to create and manifest God's qualities through themselves.  I said usually, because it is not always like that.

Sometimes one or both of them are already complete.  In that case they do not need any other part.  They have been put together for other reasons.  Each of them manifests God's qualities and together are even more powerful in manifesting God's qualities.

So couples are very important for many, many different aspects of human life.  They create the family, and the family is the base of society.  If the relationships in the couples are not strong and powerful, that society is not strong, because if the family units are not strong, that society is based on very unstable and shaky ground.

We can see societies that have been destroyed but have been able to build themselves up after the destruction, because their family unit and the community feeling was strong, just like the Hebrews.  They have been here for around 6,000 years.  Hebrews have gone through many different disasters.

Yet in the end, they came out victorious.  Why?  Because their family unit is very strong.  The mother and father are the center of the family.  The family has great love and respect for them.  Also their society has been destroyed from the top, yet the base has always been there.  So they could build on that family foundation all the time.  The foundation was not destroyed.

It is just like a house.  If it has a good foundation, even if a tornado came and lifted up the house, you still have the foundation.  You can buy the materials and build it over.  So if you have a good strong family foundation in society, that society will survive disasters.

In the hierarchy of beings, next comes the children and the rest of humanity.  The children are not yours, they are just entrusted to you.  So really, you are just their keepers.  You have to do your best to help them grow and guide them toward God-realization.  Of course, there are many pulls.  Different people have different ideas of how the children should be guided.

If the children realize that the very guidance in their lives is first their parents (especially if the children find that the parents are spiritual and that they are going to guide them to God) and/or their spiritual teacher, that is who they have to listen to, because there are so many pulls, especially from close relatives, friends and those who are closest to us.  We should strive to find God's Ways, not man's ways!

It is great to be born in a family that is spiritual.  It has been said that spiritual parents usually do not have many children because there are very few Souls who are high enough to come to such families.  As more families become spiritual, hopefully, in the Kingdom, greater Souls will enter the earth.  We will have a greater quality of the Spirit on the earth.  The more quality, the faster the progress.

The rest of humanity are your struggling companions, who have to help each other in the Spirit to try to lift each other toward God and bring them to that level.  Any other relationship is not the goal!

Question: Talking more about children, it seems as you watch a child grow, when they first come to the earth, they are still One with God, One with the universe.  Then as they grow, they become more and more like a separate being.  Why is that necessary?

Maitreya: When a child is born, he is still not completely one with his physical body.  He is more spirit then flesh.  He is still in heaven.  But ego is necessary because we had died with ego.  We still have our ego from the previous lifetimes.  We have not yet learned those lessons.  So that ego still exists even in Heaven.

Most people do not even have time to meditate once in their whole lifetime.  They really have a lot of things that they have not had a chance to look at in their whole life.  When they die, they have no choice in that state but to meditate deeply.  Death is the most perfect and complete state of meditation.  In that level we have no choice but to look at ourselves and what happened in our lives.

So when you come back, you have seen in a deeper level what happened in your lives and that you have not yet learned your lesson.  When you return, you have just come from Spirit.  The body is yet a very uncomfortable place.  You have not become completely used to this new vehicle which you have not used for some time.

So that is why, after awhile you see, the child starts to notice his or her physical body.  He sees that he has a hand.  He views his hand and looks at it, "What is this?  Well, the thumb of it moves."  He sees this but still does not have any consciousness of what it is.  He does not have the consciousness of, "This is my body."

Between four to six months he usually realizes he has a body.  He still does not have any ego, as mind or the complete separation.  He still is one with the universe, with everything around Him.

This process continues and eventually by five years old, he becomes completely adapted to the body and he develops his ego in completion.  That is why it is recommended that children or humans start to meditate and learn the process of withdrawing from the crowd or withdrawing from their day-to-day activities after the age of five.

That is why there are walking mantras.  For instance, when the child walks, at the same time he/she would think about Haree Om Shrii Hung.  They can then withdraw their minds from becoming too attached to the external world or to themselves, and direct their consciousness to the higher things and relate to the process within themselves.

Although their ego is completed, yet it is not polluted.  They can easily master the process of withdrawing from the world, so they can see the world in a much better prospective.  They can learn to go away and become a witness entity, instead of becoming a player and engaging in the play.  When you are engaged in a play, you do not see the whole view.  But when you are sitting back and looking at that play you can see much clearer.

For instance, when you are playing football, the person who has the ball and is going to throw it, only sees the ball and the receiver to whom he will throw the ball.  The rest of the players are trying to do their thing which is very confusing for the person who has the ball.  Everyone is hyperactive.  A lot of players do not know what is happening in that moment.  Sometimes they even throw the ball to the opposite team instead of to their own.

The reason is, they are in the middle of the play.  If you are sitting back and looking at the game, you can see the game and the field much clearer than the players.  You know where the receiver and each player are, what each are doing, even what is the best way to play.  That is why people sit and watch the game and yell, "Hey, you should have thrown that way."  Of course, you are sitting here comfortably with no pressure on you; you are not in the middle of the game.

So learning to withdraw and become a witness entity is very important.  Then you can look at life in its fullness.  Sometimes we can even go through the process, through meditation and think for instance, "I want this (anything) so badly."  Instead of going and buying or gaining it, and then realizing, "Well, that was not it either," you can meditate on it, "I want this so badly.  Why do I want it so badly?"  Go through the process. "Suppose I will have it, what am I going to do with it?  I am going to do this with it.  Is it really worth it?"  In meditation a person can say, "Let's consider this and go through with the process of having it and using it."

When you are finished you might think, "Well it really is not worth it after all.  It is not that important.  I really do not want it.  So I can concentrate on other things."  You may go through the process and find it is necessary, it is good, it is right, it is from the Highest.  Yes, the Spirit says, you need that.  So you go and obtain it.

If children learn this process from a very early age, they can always fall back on it and go back to this witness entity.  Still though, until the age of five, their psychic centers have not yet developed completely.  They are still not complete.

Usually their psychic centers become complete around twelve years old.  That is why it is recommended that at the age of twelve, they start doing formal meditation and also yoga postures or asanas, if they want to, and also develop their psychic centers and clean them up.

So they have to have ego to come back to learn the lessons.  Sometimes of course, the ego is given to a person who has learned all his lessons, so that person could go through a life remembering all the lessons they have to know and are necessary.  Later on they remember all the lessons were necessary for the mission they have and all the things that God has given them to do for Him.  So that is the reason for the ego for that period.

Question: During a traditional wedding ceremony, the Scripture, "A man must leave his parents and cleave to this wife" is spoken.  We notice that, in life, so many males are quite disconnected from their families after they are married, not in a disrespectful manner.  They just seem to move toward what the wife's family wants to do.  The wife stays very close, as a rule, to her family.  When a man marries, does that alter in any way the priority of beings:  God, the spiritual teacher, parents, and then the spouse?

Maitreya: One way we can look at that Scripture is, man in the Bible has been used for man, the human.  It does not mean man, the male.  It refers to both of them.  So the Scripture was intended for both of them.  It means man, or human.

To understand further, if you realize that when the Bible refers to Adam, it refers to an androgynous being that was male and female.  Then God separated them.  As the Scripture says, Adam fell asleep, and God took his rib and made woman.  They became separate beings.  They still were human but they were no longer androgynous.  And also at that time, in the Bible, not only is he called Adam, which is androgynous, he is also called man.

He made man to fall asleep and took the woman from his rib.  So see, we are using the word Adam and man interchangeably.  Adam was androgynous; man was androgynous.  So it is not trying to say man as male, but man as human, as Adam, as male and female or either of them.

When He says, "Man has to leave his parents and cleave to his wife," it means, when a couple marries, they have to become independent.  They have to create their own family unit.  They become the base of society.

So by marrying, that hierarchy of the four beings that we mentioned, would not change.  It does not make any difference about the man or male or female.  For both of them God is still the most important being.  Second is the spiritual teacher, the real spiritual teacher.  Third are the parents, and fourth is the spouse.

We also can see that a lot of males become disconnected from their families and come closer to the wife's family.  The reason is the male is usually more independent anyway.  Also females have very close relationships to their mothers.  They still want to stay close to their families.  Another thing is that females probably have more influence for bringing the male closer to their families than the male trying to bring the female to their families.

So it is not really a matter of spirit, it is more custom or tradition.  We can see in some cultures, for instance the Indian culture, where the female has to be taken care of by her parents until she is married and after marriage, the female has to be taken care of by her husband.  After the husband, she has to be taken care of by the sons.  In a strong cultural influence, that always kept the woman closer to the male family.

It does not say that parents have to take care of the son.  So the son is more free.  He can go anywhere he wants after marriage.  He does not really need anyone to take care of him.  Yet you see, this is not as prevalent as before.  We can see most of the couples marry and go away from the families.  Neither of them is really close to any of the families yet stay independent.

Maybe there is another reason for it.  The female can make the man more independent when they marry, if they can withdraw from the parents.  The best is that both of them should be very close to both families yet stay independent.

The male is so much closer to the wife's family because she is closer to her family and has greater influence in disconnecting the male from his family.  Males are more independent in that respect.  From the spiritual point of view, both still have to respect their parents.  If the wife is an obstacle in that area, a spiritual person would not stand for that relationship because the parents are very important in God's Plan.  And they are even more special if they are spiritual.