How Do We Honour God? - 2nd October 2023

Yeah, something, something is perceived. Okay, one thought is perceived, one thought is there and there is a story going on, and suddenly there is a... into the...

Yes, but tell me about the witnessing. Who is that? And so, suddenly in that, who is witnessing? Are you aware of this perception?

No, I'm just aware.

You're not aware of this perception?

I'm aware of this perception. Something is aware of the perception. Yes, I'm aware of the perception and I'm also aware of the perception. Yeah, the same thing. Yeah, but it is like I can't describe it as...

But are you aware of the perception? Yeah, you are. So this 'you'—tell me something about it.

Can't say anything.

Why do you call it 'I'? If it's some distant, like some dark matter you can't say anything about it, then why do we call it 'I' of all things? We should call it some absurd abyss, void, sense of some 'it' is sitting over there, nothing to do with me. Why do we call it 'I'?

Because in that moment of 'I' as a person, then it feels as if it has attributes. Now, why do we call this witnessing 'I'? I am witnessing. On what basis we say? We cannot speak about it. I can't find any attribute. It is Nirguna.

But we are very naturally saying it is 'I'. It feels it exists, like 'I am'. Feels like—doesn't feel—it just knows. Something you know it somewhere. But is that knowledge perceived? Like, do you perceive this awareness as your Self? You perceive it? For perception you need what? Some attribute, some quality, some attribute. But you don't perceive it. Then are you just thinking it because you read it in the Upanishads or the Gita or something, Ashtavakra Gita? No. So it's not learned knowledge. It's not conceptual. It's not perceptual. Then what is it? Is there a third type of knowing which is the first act? Yeah, it's just intrinsic, you see. It's just there. I just know. I just know myself. What else do we know in this way?

Nothing. Nothing. Unconditional love is also known intuitively.

So, 'I just know' or 'it's original' or 'organic' sounds a bit lame. So that's why we call it intuitive insight, which sounds very nice. Nobody wants to 'just know,' but everyone wants intuitive insight. So intuitively, what else do we know? That you're here? Intuitively, actually, don't fall into the trap that you think that it's only awareness. So, 'I found out I am awareness, so that is known intuitively; for the rest I need my mind.' Can we live intuitively?

That's what... because this in the moment, it's so subtly the position is taken and there's no awareness about the position also until...

Go really slowly, because when we answer really fast, usually we're just going to learned knowledge. We're feeling a bit defensive, so we feel like, 'I want to produce the answer.' So if I propose to you that anything that is truly valuable, worth knowing, is known only intuitively, what could you say? This is the beauty of self-knowledge: that as we come to self-knowledge, which is intrinsic, inherent, intuitive, then everything that is on that side of perception, that side of attention—all guidance that we need about living in the world—is also known now. And that is why anyone who comes to the Self says, 'I don't know anything in my head.' They may just say, 'I don't know anything, but I'm not lost. I've found.' Nobody has come to self-realization, recognition, and said, 'But I'm so lost.' They're not running helter-skelter trying to find solutions to non-existent problems.

So your intuitive knowledge is called the—not just the intuitive knowledge, but the presence from which this knowledge is recognized or emerges is called the Satguru presence, or God's light, or Atma, or Holy Spirit. Whatever different cultures have called it, different names. So this is actually a very strange discovery. So I'm telling you that God's presence is within yourself. And note that I'm saying within yourself and not within your body. And but it's all right if you for the moment take it to be within your body, just momentarily, it's all right. There's actually a living being which is within yourselves, but most of us in our whole life live in a denial of that, as if this is not true. And this is the absurdity of Maya: that that which is the most obvious, most inherent, is neglected.

And I've been sharing that the trouble with using words like 'Consciousness'—you hear it like saying, 'There's magnetism inside you, okay?' or 'There's electricity inside you, okay?' And when we say 'awareness,' it's just like, 'Yes, it's like a force of nature, physical scientific discovery.' But what are we really saying? We are saying that the manifest aspect of that Nirguna—firstly, Nirguna itself is too much for the mind—but the manifest aspect of that Absolute reality, that one's presence is within you and can be found and can be relied upon to live life, to live in God's light. And I'm going to provoke even more and say that unless we live in His light, we are just living as if we are slabs of meat or food which is going to be eaten up by time. Like this glass of juice is going to be eaten up by time, same way this slab of meat will also be eaten up by time.

So to find this presence, which is an eternal living being, is the most important and urgent project that we can have. And I'm not saying to any of you that you must take my word for it and believe that this presence is within you. What are the attitudes that you must take? You can first take the attitude that, 'This one is stupid' or 'He's a con artist' or 'He's some fraudster' or whatever. 'I'm going to prove him wrong. There is no presence within me. I'm going to prove him wrong. It's all rubbish. There is no spirit.' And all spirituality, therefore, is just made up. First, that can be the attitude. Second can be that, 'I sense he's telling me the truth, but I don't have this discovery. I cannot see this authoritatively. So I must find this.' And therefore you can ask and say, 'How do I find this? Because I don't find it, and I trust you when you say that we haven't even started living unless we are living in the light of this presence. How can I live like that? How can I be like that?'

But either way, you must take one of these stands. And taking one of these stands, you will, with God's grace, with His blessing, you will come to the truth. But if for some strange reason you are able to say, 'Yeah, maybe I'll look at it tomorrow,' you see, then Maya is winning, you see. Because I'm telling you that the highest force in the universe is within you, or its presence is available within you, but the mind doesn't like that. It says, 'I have other important things to do.' But what else can be more important? If you realize that at lunch you swallowed a cockroach and that cockroach is within you, you would be much more concerned about that. You'd be like, 'Oh!' Or if you heard that some Casper the Friendly Ghost is within you, you'd be like, 'Oh, Casper is within me.' I'm not taking dire examples at the moment. So, but that seems a lot more concerning to us. Or if the one sitting next to us just looked at us and gave us a frown or was mean to us, said 'Shut up,' that would be much more concerning to us. But I am telling you that God is living within you. This is what? This is Maya. This is the delusion that makes the most important the least important and last priority, and the least important top of the pile. 'Let me deal with this person who was mean to me' rather than the fact that God is here.

So this whole battle is for time. This whole battle between the mind, which is the narrator of Maya, and the heart, which is the Satguru presence or the Holy Spirit within yourself, it's for time. And every day, even in spirituality, we postpone, we postpone. We're trying to deal with worldly, ephemeral, temporary Maya, which is not even real, and all our time has gone in that. So I'm therefore saying that, okay, start with the presumption that this one is foolish—this one that is speaking is foolish, you see—but at least prove the foolishness now. At least publish, like write something and debunk this whole thing about God's presence. The creator of a zillion universes—His presence is within you. That which is beyond time and space, and an infinite number of years and an infinite amount of space is nothing for that—His presence is within you. But what do we take to be more important? What happened in my relationship? What's happening in my bank account? What did my manager tell me? What is the state of my body? 'Oh, there seems to be a small lump here, you see. What could it be?' you see. I'm telling you God is living within you; that lump will get more attention. Not that you must not see doctors, I'm just saying that how do we prioritize? What is the basis of our giving importance to things?

The presence of the Saguna is within you. The Nirguna gives birth to Consciousness, which is the Saguna, the being, the unlimited being. Now, the Saguna also seems too far-fetched for us to reach—unfathomable being, boundaryless reality. And so therefore I like to say that God in His grace and mercy said, 'Okay, now it's too far-fetched for these children at the moment, so can I send them a lifeline? Can I send them a hand to pull them in?' But it should have the fragrance of God, otherwise it'll just become another feeling, you see. It should have something which is neither worldly nor completely out-of-worldly. So that is why it's called the primordial vibration at the cusp of Nirguna and Saguna, or unmanifest...

Unfathomable being, boundaryless reality. And so therefore, I like to say that God in His grace and mercy said, 'Okay, now it's too far-fetched for these children at the moment, so can I send them a lifeline? Can I send them a hand to pull them in?' But it should have the fragrance of God, otherwise it'll just become another feeling. It should have something which is neither worldly nor completely out of worldly. So that is why it's called the primordial vibration at the cusp of Nirguna and Saguna, or unmanifest and manifest. You can feel the presence of a holy vibration within you, which if you look at it, say it's unmanifest—because I feel it, I can't say it's unmanifest. But is it manifest? Can you tell me its color? No, I can't tell you, you see. So that is the cusp, you see. Bhagavan called it the Heart, and most of us experience it in the heart region as well, you see. So that is the hand of God, because that which is formless, qualityless seems too far-fetched. So we have this undescribable, unfathomable, and understandable presence within ourself.

So if you were just to ask ourself, 'Whose presence is this?' with openness and innocence. If you were to just ask, 'Who is here? Who is here right now?' If it is His grace, we may come to the discovery of God. But how important is this question for us? Is it important enough to bet our whole life on it? How many of us wish that that requirement was not there? 'Can I bet like a fourth of my life? Why does He say to bet your life on it?' All other spiritual masters are saying, 'Come to God, you will be peaceful, you will make money.' I met somebody the other day, they're starting a new Vedanta project. I said, 'What is the project about?' So she said to me that it is about how to use Vedanta for personal growth, how to use Vedanta to be better professionally, to be better in relationship, and all of that, you see. And I'm sure it'll do very well because everybody wants an elevation of the so-called self, the non-existent self. Nobody wants to risk themselves.

So if God is witnessing, God is the omnipresent, then God should be obvious, isn't it? God should be obvious to all of us. That is what the sage said: one God, one Govind, both Saguna and Nirguna. It should be obvious. But what really happens? Because we are full of ourselves, we are full of 'me,' there is no room for God. And it can sound absurd that if God is everything everywhere, then why do I need to make room for Him? But this is the fundamental play in this game. This is the fundamental thing. That's why the saint said the lane is too narrow. If there is 'me,' there cannot be God. If there is God, there cannot be 'me.' Therefore, spirituality is that seemingly most difficult project in the world, which is to become empty to ourself. If you can say that with integrity, then we made a fertile ground of the Darshan of God.

We may wish it was not like that, and in God's grace He makes many things possible. So it is possible. In His grace, everything is possible, you see. But I would not bet on it. It is possible but not usual. You may get a glimpse, you may get some extraordinary grace and recognize His presence, but it's very rare for that to become your life, to become your home where you live, unless you're empty of selfishness, empty of pride, empty of grasping, empty of wanting to win. The second in the two, which is 'me,' comes to a point. The more we live in insight, the more we live in the truth, it becomes more and more transparent, but it never becomes fully flavorless. Although the 'me' may become more and more transparent, I have never come across anyone, including sages—stories of sages from the past, beautiful sages which are presently gracing this world—we can all still recognize their condition, their flavor. It may have become very light, but you must never presume that in our case it is gone 100%. That one that presumes that is the one that must be kept in servitude and in love for God, because that one very quickly becomes special, full of pride, full of spiritual attainment.

So as long as this world appearance is here, some conditioning is bound to play out, which is unavoidable. Therefore, insight—which is to know, really know intuitively what my reality is, Atma Gyan—love, an unconditional anchor in our life which keeps us deeply rooted in God instead of immune, and servitude—which is to live in faith, humility, prayerfulness, gratitude, and obedience—is very important. So many times when we have insight that there's only the Self, there is only awareness, and presence itself is only a qualitative distinction playing out within awareness, we may resist the notion of servitude. Love nobody resists, but the notion of servitude, saying, 'But there is only one, who should be in servitude?' That one, you see? That's how you immediately catch it. The one who doesn't want to, that one. The one who knows Advaita Vedanta now, the one who's had spiritual experiences—he, that one, has not had any of this, but it's grasping at them. This is the tantra of the ego, the almost opaque but still got the germ, you see. So if you give the germ fertile ground, what's going to happen? It's going to reinvent itself.

Now, some of the worst spiritual egos that the world has ever seen, at the core of them was true spiritual insight. And if you go far back in history, maybe Ravan is the best example. So before buying into the notion that there is only one, 'Who wants to be in servitude? Why should there be servitude?' Catch this one, the one who says, 'But why should there be that?' That awareness is not complaining. That one as awareness has no problem serving itself. It's not a resistive notion for itself. God serving God, no problem. All this is God serving God. So who has a problem with head bowed down? Who has a problem? That one must be kept in servitude.

So let's clarify that there is awareness which is aware of perceptions, yes. Now you said there's an 'I' which wants to focus on that awareness. Which 'I' is that one? Is it existent? Is it true? The mind wanting to pay attention to awareness. But attention can go to only the qualities. Can attention go to the qualityless? Try to send attention to somewhere which has no quality. So there's a misconception. So we may feel like, 'I'm going deep within myself.' So that is the withdrawing of attention into one end of the spectrum, which may seem like just dark empty space, or it may seem like there's a luminous luminosity there, you see. But attention cannot go beyond this to that which is without any quality. So we cannot send our attention to awareness. So the mind's attempt to perceive awareness using attention is a failing project because awareness is Nirguna.

Do you see that there is a difference? What is the difference between awareness and perception? Also, there is perception. What is perception? Perception is just a fancy word we use to denote sight, sound, taste, touch, smell, imagination, memory, thought. Because we are lazy, we don't want to spell the whole thing out every time, we create a layer of abstraction like object-oriented programming and say, 'Okay, this is perception.' Perception means sight, sound, taste, and so on. But that which is aware of perception, is it like sight or taste or touch or sound, any of that? It remains itself unchanged. It doesn't have even the quality of sight or sound or taste. This is all perception, modes of perception. That which is aware of perception, see, so that is awareness. You cannot change it. It doesn't have modalities. It's just aware.

You will be aware of attentiveness, which means attention is at a single point, yes, or a diffused attention, which is you're thinking also, you're asking also, you're seeing the world also. So it gets diffused and everything gets a bit blurry because attention is limited, but awareness is not, you see. So I say, 'Okay, imagine a tree and look at this hand at the same time.' You could try and do it, but both will be a bit blurry because attention is limited. But that which is aware of the blurriness of both these objects of sight as well as imagination, that is not limited. That remains unchanging. So attention is like the phenomenal twin of awareness. So although it's very similar—it is qualityless, shapeless, sizeless—but it is limited. That's why I call it the phenomenal twin, because everything in phenomena is limited, but this is beyond phenomena. So that which is aware of the limitation of attention, that is aware of the blurriness as well as the one-pointedness, that remains unchanging, isn't it? Yes.

Now, that is who? Because actually we should be saying 'I am.' So any narrative about something happening to me, all of that you have to go to the mind. But you realize that none of that has ever happened to that 'you' in reality. You have just always been the witnessing, see, and never the object which the story is about. So the central protagonist in our story has just been made up, and empty of that 'me,' reality is apparent. What can happen sometimes is that we get to the insight—I was telling all the other day—that we come to the insight and then we still use the mind to interpret it. So don't do that, because it's just going to mess it up again. So remain with the insight. And if no words are coming, then no words are coming. And in the entirety of our life, if people think we're stupid and we don't know what to speak and you get fired from your job and all of that, it is still fine, but don't lose yourself.

What would 'lose yourself' mean? In actuality, you can never lose yourself, but losing yourself only means that when you buy into a wrong belief about yourself, when you go to the mind's version of you, then you've got the limited idea about yourself and then reality seems to get obscured. And it is again against, or to let go of the obscuring of reality, which is the whole job of avidya, that we come to Satsang to free ourself from. So be careful of this tendency to come to true insight but then to make positions about it from the mind. Just leave it, don't worry. Allow the presence to move your mouth to report about it itself. This one tip can save you many years. Then you get stuck in this, 'Huh, caught the insight, this is what it was, it was like this.' And then that can give birth to the spiritual ego. 'I know, I saw, it was like that,' you see, like that. Then you two may argue and say, 'Oh, but when I saw it was like this.' 'No, no, but when I saw it is like this, I feel this.' So then both make positions about it which are not needed.

The one who wants to own the spiritual knowledge and wants to be the claimant of it—'I came to awareness, I am having true insight, I am living in my presence'—the best antidote for that one is servitude, humility, faith, prayerfulness, obedience, and gratitude. What we've been saying about love. So love it, love the being, love yourself—not in the self-help type of 'love yourself' way. But shall we break down servitude a bit? Because I feel like that to allow ourselves to be in service to that is a very strong way of honoring it. So all these sound like very simple words, but each of these actually is a Satsang in itself, you see.

So if you look at faith, have faith in God. Does faith mean have blind, irrational belief in God? Blind, irrational belief in God, is that what it is? No, it isn't. It is to, especially in Satsang like this, it is to trust your own insight, which is intuitive, more than what your rationality or the world perceptions are telling you. Okay, so a question to ask over there is what I've been asking: Are we living as if God is real? Are we living as if God is here? So to not be so quickly shaken out of it, to not be so quickly shaken out of it by some tiny world appearances. So many reports I get: 'Yes, yes, the insight is apparent to me, but when this happened, you see, I lost it. My manager was rude to me or my partner said this to me, then I lost it.' All that is a lack of faith. We are giving this more reality than our true intuitive insight. So to live a faithful life is to trust our intuitive insight.

Are we living as if God is real? Are we living as if God is here? So to not be so quickly shaken out of it, to not be so quickly shaken out of it by some tiny world appearances. So many reports I get: 'Yes, yes, the insight is apparent to me, but when this happened, you see, I lost it. My manager was rude to me,' or 'My partner said this to me, then I lost it.' All that is a lack of faith. We are giving this more reality than our true intuitive insight. So to live a faithful life is to trust our intuitive insight more than what the world is showing us. It's not blind; it is to truly see with the right eyes. In this moment, are we living in faith? In this moment, are we living in God's light? Is God real? Is truth real? The truth that you came to, is it reality? Is it more real than this? Let's start with this. What, a coaster? God is more real than this coaster? Paka? What if it come and hit you on your head? How could you? Yes. So, I'm obviously not throwing this anywhere, but I'm saying that when life slaps us around, it seems very real. To live in faith is to continue to give reality to your intuitive insight, to what the Satguru within is telling you. Do we live like this? How many of us are living like this?

Some moments you go away, or some moments you live like this. We live like that.

That's the conditioning. So she's saying honestly that we live in some moments in faith. Yes, when suffering is squeezing our throat, then we say, 'God, God, God.' That reminded me of Jesus saying, 'You may say Lord, Lord, but I will not recognize you unless you followed the will of my Father.' So it is not enough when we have no other option left then to call on God. When we have every option available to us, then to be with God is true faith. Of course, when life is squeezing our throat, we still must; that is the only option we have. But then when His grace, by His grace, things get resolved—and they always do—then at least we must live in that faith, in that gratitude. But we forget. Then we again boom, 'God, God, God' again. That's Kabir Ji said, sorry, Kabir Ji said: 'Dukh mein simran sab kare, sukh mein kare na koy. Jo sukh mein simran kare, toh dukh kahe ko hoy.' Which means that everybody remembers God in suffering; nobody remembers God in peace time or joy time. Those who remember God in peace never need to go through suffering, you see?

And I've noticed the flow of this world and how it plays out. God doesn't immediately, like, push us from happiness and things straight into deep suffering. He nudges us a little bit, and then if we still don't listen—like a parent, no, saying, 'Come home, come home, come home.' Then when she's done calling and the child is just not listening, then the ear has to be pulled and pulled home, isn't it? So just like that, I feel like God in His love and mercy also operates like that. I feel like we are given the least possible suffering to turn us to God, to turn us to reality. But when we don't listen, then it gets amped up a bit, amped up a bit more. So in that poking, we must not just neglect it. We must not Advaita it away: 'Nothing is happening to me, I am the Self.' So that becomes then a denial. We must look and see: What is the pride I have? What is the shape that I've taken that is getting poked by this? And we must not amplify the problem by just using conceptual knowledge that we hear in satsang.

So that is faith. Then what else is important for servitude? Humility. Can you be a good servant if you're just like, you see, you're just treating God like the servant and you're like, 'Yeah, what do you want me to do?' So your word may be saying, 'I am at your service,' but actually you're hoping that He'll be at our service. Most of spirituality in the world today is like that. I'm praying, saying to you, 'God, please make this happen. Give me a good job. Make my relationship okay. Do all of this.' After praying for how long? Two minutes? You become entitled: 'But I prayed to you also.' So it is, isn't it, disguised servitude where we are wanting God to be our assistant? I am saying I am entitled. So we must notice this stuff.

The other thing is that we are constantly expecting to make sense of God's ways. But when a scientist says—so Neil deGrasse Tyson, he said, 'The universe has no obligation to make sense to us.' We're like, 'Yeah, that's fine.' But that which is the creation of God will not make sense to us; we are accepting that, you see. But that which is the light of this universe, we are constantly expecting to explain Himself. 'Why did you do this to me? I have prayed to you also. I'm devoted to you also. I'm such a good person. Why are you doing this? Why do bad things happen to good people?' Who are you asking for an explanation from? Who are we asking? The one who's playing with these trillions of stars bigger than the sun as if they are grains of sand? We are asking that one, 'Why do you do this?' What capacity do we have to understand His ways? This is pride. 'I pray to God, but He still didn't listen to me.' What have you made God into?

So it is said that God created man in His image, but actually what has happened in the world today is that man has created God in their image. So we must let go of all this foolish pride and come into humility. We must accept that we don't have any capacity, anything special at all about us. We think we are a bundle of food. We spend all of our life thinking that we are bundles of food, and you want to argue with God? You want to have one-on-one, see eye to eye with God, look Him in the eye and question Him, 'How could you do this to me?' He just isness. So our humility must be also authentic by the awe that we experience when we meet God. I'm more and more in awe every day. And so reverence, humility, all that come naturally because what is so worthy about this foolish man? This mouth doesn't even deserve to utter the word God. But in His grace, in His sheer love, He has made this one an instrument to share His light.

So that is humility. Obedience. To be obedient to someone, you have to meet them, isn't it? At least have some mode of communication. How can we be obedient to that which we have not met? So live in God's presence. The insight part has helped you to come to God's light. You must live in God's presence. And once you live with the Master, then the Master will guide you. Initially, the guidance will just be the organic movement which is happening to you as you are empty. You're just unfolding whatever you take yourself to be. Whether it is the universe—the universe is unfolding in His light moment to moment—or even if you take yourself to be the body-mind, then allow the body-mind to unfold moment to moment. That is to live in the no-mind, to remain in the unborn where already in our emptiness all our problems are gone. Life is no longer suffering. You see the world, as Buddha said, is suffering no longer when you are in the no-mind, empty.

Start with that level of obedience. Then you may notice that some guidance is coming. You may be talking to a friend and you may find your mouth saying something from a different place, and you may wonder, 'Where did that come from?' And all of us would obviously love that because who doesn't want to share satsang with others? But can we not follow our own satsang? So God can guide us. If God can guide others, why can God not guide this life? So there we go from organically allowing God's presence to move this life, which is the end of all trouble anyway, to truly becoming a servant by following His guidance in the heart. And that is why it's important not to look at consciousness as if it is some scientific force. Like, can magnetism speak to you? No. Electricity speak to you? No. But can God's presence speak to you? Of course it can. So remain empty and follow God's guidance.

But when He guides you, projects may not seem like they are the simplest. So like Hanuman Ji was given the most difficult projects: 'Go alone to Lanka and give Sita Ma message. Go get this Sanjeevani booti from the north of India, fly and do it.' And of course, the strength to accomplish the project will also come from God. But we must not wait for that first. The mind can make that into a block, say, 'Okay, if you're going to ask me, then give me the strength also.' That is also a lack of faith because is God not intelligent enough to know that if He's asking you, then you will need to be given the strength also? So in all cultures, all traditions, we have these examples of those who are guided by God to do the most difficult things. So whether it is Hanuman or it is Moses or Abraham or it is the Prophet Muhammad. So wherever you look at it, you find true servants of God. Guru Nanak Ji and especially also the later Sikh Gurus who went through a lot of torture.

I'm starting to see how true spirituality is worlds apart from the self-help type spirituality where we say, 'Oh, this practice is not working for me anymore because I used to find so much bliss and peace, now it's stopped.' All this egoic sort of idea of things. Whereas obedience should seem risky. Faith should seem risky. What are you risking for God? What are you saying? Where are you drawing a boundary for God, saying, 'All this is fine, you see. For you, I will come to satsang once a week, sit there for three hours listening to the ramblings of this man, but don't go beyond that. That's all I can give you.' What do you think will happen if you draw this boundary? Then you're saying, 'The rest of it, I'm on my own,' isn't it? So this wanting to be on our own, unmeddled by God, is the only hell there is. I feel separation from God's light is the only hell there is.

So where do you draw the boundary? Can we draw a boundary for the Creator, the Preserver, and the Dissolver of this universe and say, 'No, no, your scope is till there. My relationship, my money, my health, and my intellectual pursuits I will handle'? And then when we say, 'But I attend satsang,' then isn't that just like what we call in the corporate world a tick in the box? Like guilt alleviation, that 'I haven't really given up my life for that which I know in my heart to be reality, the truth, but I do attend satsang from time to time.' The idea of this is not to make anyone feel guilty or unworthy, but just to shake you up a bit away from a lip-service, big-words type of spirituality into a true lived spirituality from the heart, moment to moment.

The mind will make all this sound very radical, but actually it's very natural. If you truly love somebody from your heart, truly love somebody, then would your life not be fully dedicated to them, devoted to them? And then doesn't all the aspects of faith, humility, obedience come naturally when we're deeply in love, willing to do anything for the Beloved? But what is worth loving? That which is real. That which is giving light to this world. That which is gifting us our breath. Or prove me wrong and say, 'No, no, this is all biochemical reaction, the brain does all of this.' Then explain your life using the brain as the construct. Intuitively you have a sense that a long-lost friend is going to call you—brain, it does that? Intuitively you have a sense of what is auspicious to you, where you have to be, where you don't have to be. Something brings you to satsang in spite of the fact that your mind could be resisting so much. Is your brain doing all of that? 'I just happened to be at the right place at the right time. I could have been in a million other places and it opened up something for me.' Is that biochemical? Explain your life with all of its miracles, which once they happen we consider tiny, but if they didn't happen then we would say, 'Oh, my life is so miserable.' We are in so much denial about a living presence which is so clearly and apparently here.

So how to be obedient to God's will? Everyone has told us we must be obedient to God. I said often that the word Muslim itself means the one who follows God's will. Islam is to follow God's will. And the stories of Lakshman, Hanuman, Bharat, all of them are beautiful because they were so devoted to God that they would follow His will even at the cost of great danger, great risk. Abraham, Moses. That's why Kierkegaard, he said, 'No risk, no faith.' At first I didn't like it, but it's all the self. What is the risk? Where I truly dove deep into that state, the moment I realize...

We must be obedient to God. I said often that the word Muslim itself means the one who follows God's will. Islam is to follow God's Will, and the stories of Lakshman, Hanuman, Bharat—all of them are beautiful because they were so devoted to God that they would follow His will even at the cost of great danger, great risk. Abraham, Moses—that's why Kierkegaard, he said, 'No risk, no faith.' At first, I didn't like it, but it's all the Self. What is risk? Where I truly dove deep into that state, the moment I realized that just that one line can set fire to our—bring fuel to our spirituality from a comfortable lip-service spirituality to really potent, life-changing transformation. There it is not 'God for me,' 'What is God doing for me?' 'How can God help me?' to 'Me for God. I'm available to you, Father. What would you have me do?' And here, as a mere instrument of Your grace, guide this instrument as You see fit. And learn to trust His silence more than the highest pointing from the head.

You're very impatient with God. For years I've said we are more impatient with God than we are with Domino's Pizza. You order Domino's, you place the order, you wait thirty minutes, and sometimes you give them extra. Leave God—you say, 'I pray to God, nothing happened.' How long will you wait? Empty for a second? Because that's how much time God wants, like that. But this is about risking our whole life and accepting that silence if you have to, because that's what love means. It's unconditional. So we must get away very, very far from the popular notion of God which is a wish-fulfilling genie. Just like, pray to God, rub the lamp, genie will come: 'What do you want, my child?' It has to be the other way around by a much greater degree. Every moment be available to God. For that, you have to live in His light, live in His presence. How will you live in God's will if God Himself has been relegated to a concept in your head? No, it has to be a living presence, a living reality. So that is obedience and prayerfulness.

Now, most of us in Advaita have a notion that we can't pray to God for something, you see. But you are happy to sit and worry about that for a long time. 'I'm worried about my job, I'm worried about something, my children.' So we sit and worry, worry, worry. But because actually it is 'not good' to go to God to ask for something specific, 'I'll not pray to Him for that.' This is an absurdity which is a mental creation. So if you're going to sit and worry, you'd rather sit and pray. Because what do you think? That God is not noticing your worrying? That it's a hotline like, 'Oh God, I'm praying, so now He listens'? No, He is the light in which every moment of our life takes birth. What do we think we will hide from Him? What the mind can know about you is nothing compared to the One who is breathing you, who is birthing you every moment. So it's very good to have your head bowed down and pray to Him rather than sit and think fruitless thinking. Bow down and pray doesn't mean that you must always pray for something specific. You can pray for His grace, His love, His mercy, His guidance. And then your prayer, when it is truly authentic in your heart, becomes a communion. Not just a communication, but actually it deepens His presence.

When you remove the—okay, so we'll come to this point: how do we pray? You see, I'm also learning to pray over the last three, four years, you see, and I feel like I'm just scratching the surface. But how do we pray? Some of us pray very dramatically. 'Oh God, please hear my call!' you see, as if you're on stage performing some Shakespeare or something. He doesn't need—you don't need to pray like that. It's not like He can hear only Shakespeare and typed English. It's not true. You don't have to become like that. So that's one end of the spectrum where we become very formal and very like you're sending a letter to the Prime Minister or something like that; you become like that. And then other people, they pray like, 'Yo bro, why haven't you done this?' Yeah, you pray like that. There's a certain sweetness to it if it is coming from innocence, it's fine. But both of those are—I wouldn't recommend, although either of those are better than not praying. Either of those are still better.

I can just pray naturally: 'Father, I'm concerned about my child, and please guide him or her to make the most auspicious decision.' So, to pray without pretense. Because in our prayer itself, sometimes the pretense makes it like we're not really buying the fact that God is actually listening. We're just doing it because it may be the right thing to do, but you're not doing it as if, you know, we are talking to somebody who's sitting in front of me—and this is much more intimate than sitting in front. So before you have any other tactics for anything in your life, you can bring it to prayer. If you don't use tactics and you're open and empty, then that itself is prayer. But don't let your mind use that. Your mind can use that and say, 'No, no, you don't need to pray, you're just empty,' and then two minutes later you're worrying about it again. So be honest with yourself.

This is like golf. Like golf in the sense that you only compete against your own handicap. So nobody from outside needs to come and judge you and say you're not prayerful enough, you're not obedient enough, you're not honest enough, you're not prayerful enough. So you don't need to lie to yourself. If God's presence is a reality for you and He's here right now, rather than bringing it to your head, why would you not bring it to His presence? And don't let your mind convince you that this is not worthy to bring to God, this is not good enough, this you can handle on your own. See, that handling on our own is the original sin. Then we started to believe that we have the capacity to judge good and bad, right and wrong, to not live everything out of surrender to God.

Do you feel that Hanuman would have said, 'No, no, this I don't need to take to Ram Ji inside my heart, I just—this I'll deal with myself'? It is said about Hanuman that he opened his heart and there Ram and Sita were. What did that depict? Of course, we must take it literally as well, but he's talking about all of us. God is there in your heart. Why would we not live that way? So we must become prayerful. And if all of this is sounding like too much—'Oh, I'd rather just be open and I can't be this, this, this'—no, I'm just saying target any one of these. Target any one of these and the whole table comes closer. Pull at any one leg.

What else is servitude? Of course, reminded me about this and I feel it's very important: gratitude. We live in gratitude for what we have. Are we grateful for the fact that the heart is beating? You must drown all entitlement in gratitude. God has taken such good care of us in spite of our extreme foolishness. And this man here, of course, is extremely foolish. Silliest ideas we have, and yet God's grace doesn't leave us. They never abandoned us even when we've thought we were abandoned and we've complained. But do we spend a moment in gratitude?

There was a survey done in America and they said that the average Christian in America prays for ten minutes every day. And that number they were presenting as a very small number. And India is supposed to be the hub of religion and spirituality, but I feel like if you were to do a survey, our number will be much smaller than that. Do we unconditionally just love God for ten minutes a day? And I'm not saying the ten minutes is enough, but it is a start. Without wanting anything, just to deepen in our love for God. And that is the beauty of love. The beauty of love is this: that although we cannot produce it—you cannot say, 'I created this much love'—but you can actively love. Nothing can get in the way. If you want to love God, you can actively love God. And is that you loving God or is that God loving you? Nobody can say. It is the same. But are we going to go with our mind's objections? Just this man, foolish as he may be, is telling you: you can love God. Try it out. Try to love Him.

So servitude mixed with this love is Bhakti. There is no Bhakta who is not a good servant, and there is no Bhakta who doesn't love God beyond his own life or their own life. So that is how you honor. That is the answer to her question: how do you honor the insight? It is worth this honoring because what you are discovering by God's grace historically has been extremely rare. Sometimes we don't realize its value. We just feel like, 'Hah, awareness, okay, nothing's happening to awareness, it's just there.' Our Consciousness is just like a beingness. We use all these big words, but do we realize how many lifetimes people have struggled and what sadhana and tapasia has happened before this Darshan has been made available?

And the problem with simplicity is the mind can always come and say, 'What's there? Everyone has this, everyone is this.' It's very easy to use big words, but to really honor, as Guruji has said, to honor this discovery—why should we honor it? What is the need to honor? Everyone is awareness, who is to honor who? Don't let this—this one that is resisting in this Advaita mind, that one must be brought to—must become a Bhakta. Don't waste your life. Don't waste a moment. It is not too late today, but it will be tomorrow. Kabir Ji said, and this the other day I remembered, but I've just been listening to this and the singers at the Gurdwara also sang this: 'Avasar baar baar nahin aave.' The opportunity does not come again and again.

What is Kabir doing? Is he trying to use fear tactics and scarcity principle with marketing, spiritual marketing? No, there's no reason to doubt him like that. He did not want anything from us. Why is he saying the opportunity does not come again and again? Because if you look back at history, it's very rare. God-realization, Self-realization—growing up when we used to hear these terms, we used to feel that's one in a billion. It's only with the advent of internet and you can search satsang and Advaita Vedanta, which was supposed to be kept in secret. These are secret scriptures. Upanishads mean to sit close and to share like in secret. 'No, don't spread this outside.' Now it's fully available by God's grace, but the immensity of it should not be forgotten.

Because the mind will not give up. You may have an awakening experience, you may have ten, but how many truly become free? In being with Guruji so many years and being in satsang for more than a decade now, you've seen many awakening experiences, but how many have really become free? And what has been missing from that freedom? What is the inability to stay with the insight? It is because of the lack of servitude, the lack of love. To make it into more an academic endeavor or a scientific sort of 'Oh, I came to awareness, that is my thing' is very—who are we talking about? You're talking about the Absolute in which Consciousness is born. Don't just reduce that or normalize that or summarize that because we know these words. And entitlement we must throw out this instant. We must throw out because you could have lived the most sattvic life and still not have a right over God. Nobody can go to God with rights; they can only go head bowed down.

So nobody must ever believe that they were worthy of grace, they were worthy of entitlement, of enlightenment, and they were entitled to it because they were so good in their inquiry and they were so good in their love. Stay away from this pride, because this pride will turn off the fire and you'll become just parroting robots. Just parroting robots. What you hear in satsang, what you take to be true—there's no real authenticity if the fire is burnt out because of pride. And that's why I was saying the other day that don't gauge yourself, don't benchmark yourself, but if you're going to, then benchmark yourself on servitude. Have I taken God to be real or has it become all about me? It's a very important question. Have I taken God to be real or is it all about me? Am I living as if I am somebody and something? How do I recognize that nothing in the story of this universe—even this tiny universe—my role is not even that of a two-second extra? Nothing. One in seven billion, one in so many trillions. Have I used—

Don't benchmark yourself, but if you're going to, then benchmark yourself on servitude. Have I taken God to be real, or has it become all about me? It's a very important question. Have I taken God to be real, or is it all about me? Am I living as if I am somebody and something? How do I recognize that nothing in the story of this universe—even this tiny universe—my role is not even that of a two-second extra? Nothing. One in seven billion, one in so many trillions. Have I used the tools, the grace, and the Masters have made available to us? I prayed my heart out and not left anything for myself. Just pray it, pray it, pray it. And do I remember to give thanks for every day? A life is full of grace and miracles. There are only two things: miracles that we recognize and miracles that we don't yet recognize as being miracles. You may look down upon things, you may be ungrateful for them, but at the passage of time, we realize we're so thankful that that happened.