Question: Maitreya, could you talk about the Sabbath, why it is good for us to observe and how it can create unity over the earth?

Maitreya: Human life is usually a series of work and rest. After any work we become tired and we like to rest to be revived.

So resting is a very important part of life, as working is very important. We have to be able to work and manifest what is necessary in our lives to take care of mundanity. If somehow we can create an environment where people can be in less mundanity, then we can probably use that energy for a greater purpose, like creating a newsletter or typing the Satsangs, giving Satsang or going to visit people, meditating, reading Scriptures, helping someone, etc.

Also, resting is very important to revitalize our energy. Resting is really not physical as much as it is psychological and spiritual. As we work and try to cope with the world, our psychic centers start becoming polluted. Even if we sit somewhere and do nothing, still at night we feel we want to sleep. Even if we didn't do much physical work, we feel we need to rest. The reason for rest is more spiritual than physical.

Sabbath is also kind of rhythmical. It brings a rhythm into human life -- six days of work and one day of rest. This one day of rest is designed for spiritual purposes, for keeping that day holy. So the focus will be more spiritual, than physical restfulness. When you bring your thoughts and energy to this level of keeping everything holy on that day, it focuses your mind to higher things. So it can become much more restful than just sleeping.

Rest brings greater cleanliness to the body. It was said that it's kind of a baptism. Every week you just rest and make that day holy. You clean your spirit. You probably go through your week to see what happened. If there was something you did or happened that you didn't like, either you clean that up, or you just release it to the universe and forget it. At the end of the day you become refreshed, holy and renewed. You feel you have been born again.

So the people who do keep Sabbath become reborn every week. They become a new person, a new Soul. They can really go through the nonsense that usually comes through. The Spirit cleans out their impurities and puts them away from themselves. Everyone is in a much higher consciousness at the end of the Sabbath. The community which is in higher consciousness will stay together because small differences between the members won't get in the way. They can feel the unity again, by keeping themselves in a much higher level of being.

God Himself rested after six days of work. After He rested He realized He created such a beautiful creation and He loved it. He admired the creation. Yet He had to come back and engage Himself again after that rest, because He had to teach Adam and Eve how to behave, work, and be. He had to teach them what is good for them and what's not good for them. So you see, He rested but He didn't rest forever. He rested only one day. He came back and also, once in awhile, He sits back and He looks at His creation and says, "How is the thing going?"

As we said, if you are out of the situation you can see things much clearer than when you are engaged in the action. If you keep engaged all the time, then you lose your perspective completely. You become a fighter in the very front lines of the battlefield of life. The only thing you see is a couple of other fighters on the other side. You have no idea what the rest of the battlefield looks like. Yet if you sit back and become a general, you look at it and say, "It's not that bad. Still the battle is fine. Life is not that hard. I can move this thing from here to there, or bring a new approach to my life and go this way, that would be better." Or, "It is not as bad as I think. Because I'm restful I can see things clearer."

As you go to the Spirit on the Sabbath you come closer to God. When you come closer to God, God knows everything, and then you also become clear like Him. You become closer to the King, to the General, to the One who knows everything. Also, you will become clearer in your focus. You become closer to God and you honor Him by keeping the Sabbath holy. That is why we are here, to honor the Spirit, to bring the Spirit in all levels of our lives. By keeping the Sabbath we are saying, Spirit, we honor you and we will try to bring you in all levels of our lives for that is what we want to happen.

That is why we keep this day holy. We keep this day restful. We keep this day a day that we can cleanse ourselves, we can think about God and become One with Him. It has many, many different cleansing aspects in it.

That's why we fast on that day. Fasting has many benefits, physically, mentally, and spiritually. All these things done on the Sabbath together will help us in our path. In the evening of the Sabbath you usually feel, "Wow, I am a new person. I didn't know it would have such an effect on a person, or could have such an effect on me." Yet you will see that it does have a great effect.

As more people keep the Sabbath, more people will feel the effect and the greater Spirit will be on earth, greater sharing, greater unity, better Communities of Light and the Kingdom on Earth.

Question: Could you give us some general guidelines -- what kind of things shall we do on the Sabbath?

Maitreya: First of all, we try to fast, that's one of the things. If you want you can also clean your colon, to get rid of any residue in it. That also has many benefits physically, mentally and spiritually. Meditate and try to be in an environment where there's not much talkativeness. You keep away from talkativeness.

If you can rest or sleep and meditate, do so. If you can't, read some inspiring literature that keeps you to the Spirit. Do the Reminder, pray. Do everything that is spiritual -- the things that keep you from the crowd, keep you from mundanity, keep you from physicality, keep you from too much mental stress and all those things. Then you will come closer to God and to the Spirit, instead of being mundane on the physical level.

You know, idle talk is from the first chakra. That's where speech comes from. Too much talkativeness will stimulate that chakra which we're trying not to stimulate. That's why it is always recommended to keep away from talkativeness. That's why on the Sabbath we recommend you stay as silent as possible. That brings greater oneness with the Spirit within you.

Question: When does the Sabbath end?

Maitreya: Usually the Sabbath should start at sunset on Friday and end at sunset on Saturday. So that's going to be 24 hours. It's good to begin the Sabbath with a spiritual endeavor, like Collective Meditation, dancing (kirtan), chanting and in that keep yourself in a good state. Then everyone can have a nice light meal together, in the group or in the community. This will start the Sabbath.

Probably it's not that much of a Sabbath on Friday night. You can spend Friday night pretty much in the regular way. On Saturday, it's good to start the morning in silence. Keep alone and keep very much immersed in God-consciousness and spiritual thoughts. Read good material, meditate, do the Reminder and rest.

It's your body, when your body rests, you let the Spirit free. See, you're "body conscious" much more when the activity of the body is greater and then Spirit is not present as much. When you rest, you're really resting your conscious mind and you let your subconscious mind come in. If you are meditating and your subconscious mind is dissolving away, you're letting the Unconscious Mind come in.

So the more you meditate, the better you can rest your physical body and the closer you come to the Unconscious Mind or Universal Mind. When you sleep, if you have meditated enough and you get rid of your subconscious mind, you go right to God. Then when you rest or sleep on the Sabbath, it's really not wasting your time.

Some people say, "Oh, you are wasting your whole day, you're doing nothing. You could have done so much." That's not true. You might have done so much nonsense, but you're not doing something constructive, effective and focused.

You see, it's not what you do, it's what you are. That's important! If you become more, you might do less, yet you will do it more effectively. The effect is going to carry itself to the end of the universe because it's done from the heart, it's done from the Spirit and Spirit carries it forever. Physical activities probably affect something around the house or earth. That's fine. That's great, they have to be done. Yet if you do them in the Spirit, then they carry themselves around the universe.

The things Esa did in three and a half years, the energy is still carrying on and on and on. Why? Because he was. He didn't do much, he was much.

So on the Sabbath also with the techniques, meditation and everything we give, the more we become Spirit, the more we be(come) Being, the more effective we will become. It will amaze us when we do something that seems so small, yet affects so many lives and so many people. Little by little we realize, that we can do things that bring people to God.

That's what we are here to do, aren't we? We are here to bring people to God. We're not here to brag about ourselves, we're this, we're that, or we're such great spiritual beings, which is OK, we all are. We are here to connect people to God, to bring them to the Spirit to save their Souls to God.

Of course, everything is three kinds. It can be from ignorance, passion or knowledge. Anything from passion and ignorance is a trap. Some, on their way to Spirit fall into one of those traps. They feel that it's joyful, it's powerful -- "I am powerful." So there are siddhis that people gain and they become trapped in those siddhis, "Oh I have so much power, I'm great."

To gain power is not the goal. The goal is not to be powerful, the goal is to connect people to God. All these things are to bring us to that point where we become a channel for God, we can connect people to God. That is the essence of a good teacher, a good teacher connects people to God.

Of course, our Mission is a little different. Not only do we have to connect people to God, we're also trying to bring the Kingdom Of Heaven On Earth. We cannot do that if we are not in the Spirit. Without His Grace, we cannot learn to become One with His Spirit. If we become One with the Spirit, then we become very effective.

Sometimes we don't have to do anything. We can just sit here and affect things around us, affect the whole universe around us, because the Spirit carries our thoughts. The Spirit carries our action. The Spirit carries our wish, to happen. That is why all these things have been given, to bring us closer to Spirit, to God.

Question: Could you discuss the ability of the center of The Greatest Sign for manifestation?

Maitreya: If you look at the very center of The Greatest Sign you can see there is an orange point there. Then you can see a lotus is manifesting out of it. It's an eight-petalled lotus. If you look very carefully, it's really two squares which have been put together one over the other with a 45 degree difference. A square, or four, is the number of manifestation. For instance, we build most houses with four sides. Four is the most permanent construction in the universe. That is why four is the number of manifestation. Two fours, or two squares, one over the other, is twice as powerful for manifestation.

The very center of The Greatest Sign is God. If you look at the very center of The Greatest Sign, it says Om. It's the very beginning of creation. It's the first sound in the universe, when the big bang started in the universe. Then this Om manifested itself in creation and became a lotus or Lotustica. So God, as the center of the universe, manifests Itself outward to the universe. So the Lotustica itself is the very creation of the universe.

The very center of The Greatest Sign is where there is no manifestation, that's the Pure Consciousness. That is where the calmness of mind and the unity of the whole universe exists. The moment you come out of that center, you enter creation and start being carried away from the center. You start being carried away from that calm center of the universe.

Just like the eye of a hurricane, the very eye of the hurricane is calm. If you can be in the eye of the hurricane all the time, you don't have to worry about the hurricane. It's not going to affect you because you're always at the calmest point of the storm. The moment you are out of that eye, you are going to fall into the hurricane. With constant meditation and prayer, we can be in that calm center within ourselves.

This relates to the previous question. Our endeavor is to stay in the eye of the hurricane, to be in the world but not of it. That's why we are trying to go to the very center of The Greatest Sign. The rest of The Greatest Sign is the manifestation. It comes from the center and expands itself to the creation of the universe, and the universe is still expanding itself, to more universes. The only place as calm as the center of the universe is the center within us.

Scientists are finding out that universes are being created all the time. They thought they had found the very edge of the universe but recently they found that there's more lights beyond that edge. They don't know what they are. The more their telescopes and their technology develops to allow a greater degree of infrared mapping of the universe, they realize that what they have already found wasn't it, still there is more. They know for sure that the universe is expanding itself. Yet they don't know if it's going to expand forever, eventually collapse back on itself, or expand and eventually stop expanding.

According to the Sages and great meditators, there are days and nights in the universe. The days are the days of creation, when the creation is created and stays for billions and billions of years. And there's a night of creation, when the universe collapses on itself and it returns back to the center, to God.

That's exactly how The Greatest Sign shows the manifestation of the universe from the very center, from the very point where God as controller is. It expands itself out to the creation of the universe. That is where we want to go, we want to go back to the center, back to the Spirit. We want to find that calm point of creation within ourselves.

There is a calm point in every atom in the universe. There's a nucleus in every speck. There's a center in every particle of creation. There's a center in every individual. When we find that center, we find God. Then we are centered. Then we can hear the call, we also know His Will and we are His Will, so we do his Will.

Question: When I sit in front of The Greatest Sign, or I look at it, or I meditate on it, it seems there are so many things that come from The Greatest Sign. Why is that? It just seems like you could sit and meditate on The Greatest Sign for lifetimes.

Maitreya: You could say that The Greatest Sign is a yantra. A yantra is a kind of a symbol, or a drawing, or a crystallized idea which comes to people who meditate. They can manifest what they felt or realized, into that shape. There is a yantra called the Shrii Yantra in Indian philosophy, which is composed of many different triangles. It is supposed to show the creation.

Many people have been trying to explain what the Shrii Yantra is and have written much about it. Many try to explain it but still, they haven't explained it completely. Every person finds something interesting and some realization from it.

The Greatest Sign really can be called the Shrii Shrii Para Maha Yantra. It means the greatest yantra. It really covers the whole creation. It's like you're trying to find out about the creation. You can think about creation. You can meditate on creation. You can realize creation. You can realize God -- and then realize Him more. Still the next day you realize something completely different. That's what they call the play of the Lord.

If you really become close to God, you are never bored because you have so much Joy. You can realize Him so much today, it makes so much sense. Then you realize Him more this afternoon and the next day you realize Him completely different. You wonder, I didn't know that part exists. That's why I used to say, God even surprises Himself sometimes -- I didn't know I had this part, that's great, I love that!

That's why people who are mundane and do not know God, drink or take drugs. They do these things because they haven't realized or felt the Spirit. They say to us, "What a boring life you have. You don't drink. You don't go to the parties. You don't do all these things." That is not true. God is infinite so you have infinite fun (Joy).

Actually they do those things because of that emptiness in them. Ego wants to find some answers. They drink because they feel empty, there's something they want that they don't have. And that's what God is. The problems about drugs, alcoholism and all those things, or the problems of humanity in general, are spiritual. Every problem has a spiritual base or reason.

So when you sit in front of The Greatest Sign, what you're actually doing is looking at the universe. You want to know the universe. After sometime being in front of The Greatest Sign, you start seeing more and more about it. If you remember, we used to sit and explain The Greatest Sign. Probably I explained it around fifty or sixty times in the first three to five years we started the Mission, and every time I explained it, it was something completely different than any other time. Each time it came out beautifully, it made sense. It was the same Greatest Sign, yet it was different and it was beautiful too.

That's why I wrote the more than eight hundred pages of THOTH, based on The Greatest Sign and still we could probably write infinite pages about The Greatest Sign and we wouldn't explain it completely.

So whenever you sit in front of The Greatest Sign, enjoy it. It's recommended to sit and gaze on The Greatest Sign. It is a beautiful practice. It brings you to the focus. It brings you to the realization. It cleans your chakras. It cleans your body, mind, Spirit and is a very powerful, the most powerful yantra.