Passover

A Satsang (Discourse) given by Maitreya on "Passover, its meanings, etc."  It can be read on the first night of the Passover to remind us why we should observe it.

 
04/09/1990 Satsang (Discourse) by

Maitreya

The First Night of Passover

Audio: Male     Female 1     Female 2

Maitreya: It's a good night for us to go over the significance of the Passover, how it relates to us, and what is the symbolic meaning of the story of Passover for humanity.

Is Passover only for Jewish people and only they have to follow it?  Or does it relate to the Children of Israel?  The Children of Israel means, the "Children of Light."  Israel means, "he who struggles with God."  This means not to struggle against Him, but with Him.  When you struggle with me it means we're struggling together to accomplish the same goal, the same purpose.  If you struggle against me, we are opposing one another.

So when they say, God called him Israel, that means, "he who struggles with God."  He doesn't struggle against God, he struggles with God.  They both struggle toward the same goal.  Also the Children of Israel means, the "Children of Light."  That's why we are the Children of Light, we are the Children of Israel.

The Passover also has a symbolic meaning for us.  The term "Children of Israel" doesn't really relate to a race, it relates to those who have the light in them, those who struggle with God, those who are chosen to be His Children, His Workers, His Channels.  That's why there is so much symbolic meaning in the Passover and the story of the Children of Israel that relates to every person who struggles to purify himself, to spiritually become close to God, and become a Child of God, or become the Children of Light.

We see that God chose Abraham as the person who started the story of the Children of Israel.  And eventually it came to Israel himself.  He was Jacob and the name was changed to Israel which means, "he who struggles with God, the Light Bearer."  Then his children created the twelve tribes of Israel.

What is a tribe?  It's a community, isn't it?  The number twelve, for the twelve tribes of Israel, is similar to the base of twelve in the community, or the number twelve in the twelve disciples.  Who is the thirteenth?  The thirteenth is God Himself.  Christ came with twelve disciples.  Who was Christ Himself?  Christ was the number thirteen, wasn't he?  Twelve plus one makes the thirteen.

That's why in the Communities of Light also we base the community on twelve people, six couples.  Who is the thirteenth?  God!  When they sit around the round table, each couple representing one sign, who is in the center?  God is in the center.  So they always have God's presence in their endeavors, in their decisions, in their unity.  In whatever they do God is with them, and their decisions are based on His guidance.

These twelve tribes didn't receive the land that God promised to them.  But what does that land symbolize?  It symbolizes reaching Pure Consciousness.  Isn't that the promise given to all of us, to reach Pure Consciousness?  Isn't our potential to be(come) Divine?

Are we already Maitreya, all of us?  No, we're not.  We're promised that we can be(come) Divine, we can be(come) God.  We haven't reached there yet, but the Promised Land is already promised to all of us.  We are the Children of Israel.

See, they had been promised that but they didn't receive it right away.  What should they do?  God already told Abraham, I'm going to put your children in an incredible struggle before they receive the land that I promised them.  He promised Abraham, when Sarai hadn't even conceived Isaac yet, I'm going to give this land to Isaac.  Isaac, in that time, had a hard time to stay alive.  Poor Isaac had to run from Egypt, go back to the Promised Land, go back to Egypt, etc.  There was famine in the land.

They had to go through a struggle.  See the promise is there.  We are promised to reach Pure Consciousness.  That is our inheritance.  God has inherently created us to go to the Promised Land, to Pure Consciousness.  But we're not there.  We have to go through a struggle.

What happened to the Children of Israel?  Their numbers increased but they still didn't have any land.  The land they had was barren, and the famine came to them.  But, of course, God sent Joseph to Egypt and eventually he became the second most powerful person in Egypt, because God was with him.  And because God was with him, though he was just a Hebrew who no one knew very well, still he was raised to the second highest position in the land of Egypt.  And Egypt was probably one of the greatest kingdoms on earth then.

So that's why Joseph could bring the Children of Israel from where they were, support them in Egypt, and make them prominent citizens in Egypt.

So you see, the moment you start progressing spiritually, you will receive some blessing from God.  You will receive some good portion of His Kingdom.

But after Joseph died and he no longer was in power, or the high position, the Egyptians started opposing the Hebrews.  Eventually it reached the point that they became slaves of the Egyptians.

What is the significance of that?  They had to purify themselves.  They had to really work hard to get away from the yoke of the world, the worldly yoke that was put on them.  Eventually they reached a point where they had no rights.  They became completely the slaves of the Egyptians, and they fell into mundanity.  Actually they became more mundane than they were before.

The only thing they kept for themselves was their faith, their faith in God that He was going to help them.  No matter how bad the situation became, they had one thing to hold onto, and that was God.  They couldn't count on anyone.  They couldn't count on the Egyptians.  They couldn't count on their neighbors.  They couldn't count on any other race to help them.  The only thing they had was one thread, that God had promised, You're going to reach Pure Consciousness.  This is the land God has given to you and that's going to be yours.

So they knew they were going to reach Pure Consciousness, that no matter how bad they were, or how terrible an ego they had, or how many problems they had, or how many desires, attachments, and the things that bring out the mundanity, God promised.

How did they become slaves?  They became slaves of their desires, or attachments, their minds, their judgementality.  They had very judgmental minds.

We judge everyone around us.  If we find someone is a little down, we judge them right away, no matter how much they help us, or how much they give us.  The moment they are down we start judging them.

So that's the same thing, we are the slaves of our desires and our mundane minds, and the Children of Israel were the slaves of the Egyptians.  It's very similar, isn't it?  They were completely enslaved by the Egyptians, as we are the slaves of the creatures within ourselves.

What is our hope then?  Would we have to give up and say, OK, we give up, we don't have any hope, we're going to be slaves for the rest of creation?

No, they didn't give up.  There was one thread, God promised our father Abraham that we're going to have this land, we're going to become a nation, we're going to reach Pure Consciousness.  God promised us we're going to reach Pure Consciousness.  We're going to become the Children of Israel.

So they struggled in such a way.  But they also knew that eventually God was going to send them a Messenger, someone who God chose to take them away from the Egyptians, to freedom.  That Messenger came in the form of Moses.

Of course, Moses came, and you know all about this story.  He was put in a basket, and was found and taken in by the Egyptian princess.  He was raised in the king's house.  Even if you don't know the story, you have seen the movie [all laughing].

So eventually it comes to the night of the Passover.  What is this night?  God said, If you believe in Me, kill a lamb and put the blood on your lintel and two side posts.  Kill an unblemished lamb, a lamb that does not have any defect, a perfect lamb.  And then put the blood on your door.  I'm going to pass over your house.  That's what the Passover means, pass over.  The disasters coming to humanity don't stop in your house, they pass over your house, your communities, etc.

The lamb is the symbol of purity.  The lamb has not fully grown yet, it's a little innocent lamb.  It's innocent and perfect.  When you put the blood on your door-posts, God says, This house has the blood of the lamb, so we pass over this place and go somewhere else.

We can see that that lamb eventually comes in the form of Christ himself, and his blood is shed.  That's why we don't need to put the blood of the lamb on our doors any longer, because the blood of Christ has already paid for that lamb.  We don't even need to eat lamb any more, because the symbolic meaning of having a lamb and putting the blood on the doorposts is no longer valid.

In that time the Children of Israel were bringing a kind of symbolic meaning to humanity, through the struggle with the Egyptians.  Eventually they won the struggle with evil, as do we with our desires, or with whatever we're enslaved.  Again we're not talking about the race of Egyptians, it's a symbol of what is within ourselves.

They eventually came to the point where they realized that they had to purify themselves and really believe in God in order to overcome those evils within themselves.  That's why they trusted in Moses, and Moses was able to guide them out of the land of Egypt and help them to come away from those enslavements.

So the Children of Israel, or the Children of Light, have to go through the same struggle.  That is why we also keep this night symbolically.

If you study the Children of Israel, you realize eventually that the ten tribes in the northern kingdom were completely lost.  The only tribes that remained were the southern kingdom.  Actually they were the people of the tribes of Benjamin, Judah, and some of the Levites.  The rest of the ten tribes, or northern kingdom, completely vanished.  Most of the people don't know what happened to them, but as we explained in our teaching, eventually some of them moved to the northern part of Israel.

Actually there was a kingdom northwest of the Caspian Sea which was called Khazar.  These people said they were also the Children of Israel.  They were Jewish people.  They had the Jewish religion.  Some people say they picked up the Jewish religion because on the West they were pressured by Christians, and on the East there were all Moslems.  So in order for them to become a neutral zone between these two and at the same time survive, they said, No, we are Jews.  So they were neither Moslems nor Christians.

But actually you can say, maybe they were a part of the ten tribes of Israel, which went north.  Or they might not have been.  But the important point is that those ten tribes of Israel eventually went to Europe, to England, and came to the United States.

Even in the Book of Mormon we read that some of the people who came from Israel eventually reached the United States where they were killed by the American Indians.  According to the Book of Mormon, they were the Children of Joseph.  Joseph was the person who was given the prophecy of the birthright, the prosperity.

According to our teaching, the people who eventually reached the United States are the same people, the people who came from the Children of Joseph.  So that prophecy that he's going to have the prosperity of the vine and the vine is going to go over the wall, etc, was fulfilled through them.

But the people left, who eventually were called Jews, were mostly from the tribe of Judah.  They became Jews, Judah and Jewish.  The first time you hear about the Jewish people is in the 21st chapter of II Kings.  Never in the Bible are they called Jews until then.  And there it explains they were the Children of Judah, the southern kingdom.  Actually they were in war with the northern kingdom, or the Children of Israel.

So we see that if you really want to find out who the Children of Israel are, as a race, it's very hard to find them any longer.  Most of the Jews actually came from that Khazar kingdom, because they are the people who eventually became a part of Russia.  Most of the Jews who came to the West and Europe, and eventually ended up in Israel, came from Russia.  See?  So they are really from that kingdom of Khazar who were called the Jewish people.  But it's very hard to find out what is the real race of the Jews.

See God again is working here, mixing everything up together so we realize that what He really meant by the Children of Israel were the Children of Light, the people who want to go to Pure Consciousness.  It is not a race.  It is the people who struggle to get to God, to Pure Consciousness, to the Promised Land.

The Promised Land is not the Philistines.  It's not a physical thing.  As above, so below.  So that physical thing is symbolic for the higher thing, the spiritual thing.  The Children of Israel are not a race, they are whoever goes toward the Light, toward Oneness with God, to Pure Consciousness.

Now we again are reviving the night of Passover, not by putting blood on our door but by putting the HOSH sign on our door, because the lamb has already paid for us.  Christ already died for us.  If we believe in Christ, his Grace is enough that God is going to pass us over, because we have the Grace of God, we have the Grace of Christ with us.

Also by symbolically hanging the HOSH sign on our door, we are putting a symbolic sign outside, as, this house is blessed with the new teaching, with the Eternal Divine Path.  We are going to the Promised Land.  God is going to pass us over.  No matter what tribulation is going to come and be, no matter how turbulent it's going to be in the next ten years or seven years, we have God's Promise.

Everyone, even the economists, scientists, socialists, etc, are now coming to this conclusion: There are going to be real disasters, real problems on this earth.  They're predicting more and more that this is inevitable.  It's coming up.

Who's going to really make it?  Those in Communities of Light.  How?  By being One and by helping one another, by supporting one another and being helpful to one another.  Only these small communities who are completely one in God can survive these shock waves that are coming on earth.  How?  By helping one another, by understanding one another, by realizing and being productive members of the community.  If we can create such communities, we don't have to have any fear of what is coming.  It will pass us over.

We saw symbolically, tonight, as one of our brothers was telling us, that this candle was supposed to be lit when the tribulation started, when the end of the world was going to come.  We lit this candle tonight as part of our keeping the Passover.  Now we are keeping the Passover.  At the same time it is going to start now, and we're telling God, pass us over.  We are keeping Your Passover.  We put the HOSH sign outside.  We don't have to put the blood of the lamb outside anymore, so we put the HOSH sign outside as a symbol to God that we are with Him.  We are the Children of Israel.  We are the Children of Light.

We are not a race.  We are from different races, from different nations, with different languages, but at the same time we are one.  Still we are the Children of Israel, we are the Children of Light.  We want to go to the Promised Land.  We are struggling for it.  We don't want the "Egyptians" to enslave us any longer.  We want to be free of our desires, attachments, and all the things that are keeping us as slaves on the earth and putting the yoke on our shoulders.  We don't want that yoke anymore.

At the same time we're not attached to the worldly things.  The Children of Israel were.  They asked their Egyptian friends, give us your gold, we're going to use it for our ceremonies.  And then they went to the desert and eventually took the gold with them.  Of course, not all of them did.  Probably only a few did.  We hear that all of them did this, that is exaggerated.  They didn't all do that.

Most of them wanted to go to the Promised Land.  They didn't care about the gold.  But some of them did.  Probably the more rich in the Children of Israel did, the ones who were close to the Egyptians, who had Egyptian friends, or had higher places in the tribe of Israel.  A few were there who reached a point where they had a relationship with the Egyptians.  They were not really that enslaved, and they asked their friends, Give us your jewelry and your gold.  They were friends, so the Egyptians said, OK, take the gold.  You're going to bring it back when you come.  But those Jews took it with them when they went.  Not all of them did this, only a few of them did.

But what happened to that gold?  What did they use that gold for?  Do you remember?  They built the golden calf.  The very gold they had stolen and were attached to, became the very thing that made them fall.  You see?  They used the gold to make the golden calf, to make a god out of it.

So we're not going to do that.  We're not going to ask anyone to give their gold to us, so we take it and be attached to it, and eventually we fall with it.

What happened to them?  They were the ones who didn't continue to follow Moses.  They always thought they had an option besides being with Moses.  They had their gold, their earthly treasures.  They weren't following Moses in the first place.  The whole thing happened so that there was a sundering process.  With their mouths they were with Moses but in their hearts they were not.  When Moses went up to the mountain and stayed there forty days, they started murmuring, Where is this Moses?  He brought us to the middle of the desert and just left us here?  Where is he?

He had opened the Red Sea, [well it was actually the Reed Sea] but it was a miracle anyway.  Something happened.  They saw that God was with them.  But the moment he wasn't there for forty days, they said, Where is he?

They weren't ready for it.  They couldn't go to the Promised Land because they weren't with him with their hearts.  They were with him only with their mouths, but not with their hearts.  That's why the moment he was gone they started murmuring and creating tension.

But eventually they won.  They used their gold.  They made the calf and started worshipping it by doing the same kind of an orgy (sexual orgy) celebration that the Egyptians used to do.  And what happened?  Moses came down and said, I just left you for forty days.  All those promises God gave to Abraham, all this struggle you went through with the Egyptians, it's all gone and forgotten?

You see, even after Passover still there were people who weren't yet ready to go further.  And Moses said, Who is with me and who is not with me?  The people who had already made the calf couldn't say any longer that, We are with you.  They were already ashamed of themselves, and they couldn't say, We are still with you.  They couldn't do lip service anymore.  So what happened?  They were sundered.  They went down to the earth and the rest stayed with Moses, because their hearts were with Moses.  They wanted to go to the Promised Land, to Pure Consciousness.

Even then they weren't ready.  They reached a point where God said, This generation is still not ready.  This generation has to wait forty years and just wander in the desert, and their children are going to be able to go.  So reaching Pure Consciousness is not an easy work.  But it is the Promise that is given to humanity.  It's given to us.

Now we kept the Passover tonight and God will pass over us.  But let us have the hearts pure.  Let our hearts be with God, not only be with Him by lips but be with Him with our hearts, really mean what we say and say what we mean.  It doesn't matter how much we claim with our mouths, but our actions and our hearts betray us.  God is not a God of the lips.  He's a God of the heart.  He doesn't look at what we tell Him, He looks at our hearts, how much our hearts are with Him.  And that is how we can be one-pointed toward Him.

We can't fool Him.  It's impossible to fool Him.  If we think we can fool Him, we are fooling ourselves.

You realize God with your mind first, then with your heart, and then you proclaim Him.  But the proclamation comes from your heart.  Christ said one thing to his disciples, Go and say, We have found the Messiah.  One thing only, just tell them, We have found the Messiah.  They were with him for three years, a long time.  They might not have been with him for three years, but for some time.  The only thing he did to them was make them realize who he was, and then told them to go, because they realized him with their minds and their hearts.  Then it was time for them to claim what they had realized.

As Christ said, If you're ashamed of me, I'm ashamed of you.  If you're ashamed to claim that you found the Christ and the Christ is here, God is ashamed of you.  That is the second step of realization in this process.  You've realized his presence and his teachings with your hearts and your minds, now with your mouths you proclaim him.  If you cannot claim that you found the Messiah, then your heart hasn't found him yet either.  But your heart and your mouth should be one.  You can't say it with your mouth, without your heart really realizing it first.  And you can't know it in your heart and not proclaim it.

So in a sense they were with Moses, but their hearts weren't with Moses.  Their mouths only were with Moses.  Therefore they had to struggle.  They had to go to the desert for a long time before they could raise children who could reach the Promised Land.

We can see this whole Jewish history is a spiritual experience, a spiritual symbol for the whole of humanity.  The Children of Israel, or the Jewish people [they are mostly called the Jewish people now, no longer are they called the Children of Israel] are bringing a tradition, a story that doesn't belong to any race.  It belongs to every man.  It's a story of struggling to reach God, a struggle to reach Pure Consciousness, the Promised Land.

So from this night on we start the Passover, we start our struggle.  We start our going toward the Promised Land, toward Pure Consciousness.  Let's examine our hearts, our minds, and our mouths that, is our heart really in this?

Do you really believe this is the unification of all religions of the world?  Is it the prophecy that everyone is looking for and waiting for?  Do you really believe in your heart?  Do you really believe that this individual is the channel and the Messiah?  Do you really believe that?

Are we able to go out and proclaim that we found the Messiah?  Can we do that, or are we ashamed of doing that?  Can we all, with hearts, minds and mouths be totally with the Mission, and completely able to accept this Mission as our own Mission?

God doesn't go for a lukewarm heart.  You can't stay lukewarm.  What does God say He's going to do with the lukewarm person?  He's going to spue him out of His Mouth (Rev. 3:16).  So He doesn't go with lukewarm hearts.  He just wants those who are 100% with Him.  That's why He put the Children of Israel through all these tests, to find who is lukewarm and who is not.

So the journey toward the Promised Land starts tomorrow morning at sunrise.  It's time to pack up, take all our belongings and household possessions, put them in the carts and start going toward the Promised Land.  This tradition is going to be continued everywhere, and these words are going to be heard every year.

Every year we have to renew ourselves toward the next journey.  Every year we have to discern ourselves, and look at ourselves.  Am I really 100% for God?  Am I really 100% wanting to go to Pure Consciousness and toward God?  See, this is our examining ourselves.  This is a night of examination.  This is a night of really looking at ourselves.  Am I ready to become a Child of Light, a Child of Israel?  Am I 100% with this process?

And no one else can do it for you.  You can only do it yourself.  We think we can fool other people but really we fool ourselves.  We have to be 100% for God, or we can go ahead and pretend that we are, and not be.

So this is the night of examination.  This is the night of Passover.  This is the night of starting our journey.  And maybe it is the night that the tribulation really starts.  The signs came out, didn't they?  This is the night that we saw we lit the candle that was supposed to be lit at the beginning of the end of the world.  We'll see in the next six months.

As I said, Only God knows the future.  I never predict the future because it's my Father who knows, not me.  If He tells me, I'll tell you.  But He doesn't tell me the future.  He already told how to bring the Kingdom Of Heaven On Earth, in the Scriptures.  We don't need anything else.  Why do we need to know the future?  But also He gives hints.  He gives signs to us sometimes.

On the night of the Passover He brought tribulations to the Egyptians.  He killed the first sons of every person who didn't have the blood on the door.  He didn't pass over them.  Their first sons died.  What was that?  That was tribulation, wasn't it?  That was a disaster which came to earth.  Christ was the first son too!

Now tonight, again we have the Passover.  Well, maybe there is a tribulation.  Maybe there is a disaster coming.  That's why we have Passover tonight, so it's going to pass over us, pass over all the Communities of Light.  Not this community alone but all the Communities of Light are going to be passed over.

But what happens to those who are not in the Communities of Light, those who are not the Children of Israel?  The prophecy is very clear what happens to them.  It's time for them to fall into Maya further and deeper, and probably not be incarnated for a long time.  And only the Children of Israel will be incarnated for the next 1,000 years.  The prophecy says, Those who are not ready will not enter the Kingdom.  They will not be of the Chosen Ones.

So the journey starts and all the signs say that this is the time.  It is the time for us to really start the building of the Communities of Light, spreading the Message, spreading the Mission, spreading it to every corner of the world, and let everyone know.  It is time to welcome all those who want to join us and become a part of the Communities of Light.  Hopefully they are one with us in mind and heart and mouth, all three, so they don't build a golden calf and create disunity among us.  Let us be aware of those who like to build the golden calf and create disunity in the Children of Israel.

All these things are symbolic for all of us to consider, to think, to meditate upon and understand what they are, and why God created them.  The Children of Israel, Jewish people, are a symbol for humanity.  God chose them as a symbol, as an example.  So we can learn from them.

Setting up and observation of Passover