The Beauty of Encountering a Sage - 10th March 2024

Because I keep telling some of you that, you know, every day the mind will give you something to get away from that light. It will say, 'This happened, this happened, but what about this? I have this,' you see? Then day goes, day goes, the next day goes, next, and every day will go like that. And do I really know what will give me a home at His feet forever? Do I really know? I don't really know. So because I don't really know, my job is to remain in His light to the best of my ability. So I don't want to sound scary like some of these Christian sages, but they've got a point in the sense that even if you say, 'Okay, take out all the scary stuff,' what do we actually know? We don't actually know.

So if there's a chance that I can live forever at His feet, and I have to trust His justice and His mercy fully—that with 100% justice and 100% mercy—I don't know what will be designated as my true, true home or how many times this play of separation will happen. If I don't really know, then what is my job? My job is to say that, okay, from this moment on I'm fully committed to loving Him, to living in His light. And because that's all that I can do. What else can we do? Unlike Him, for whom past, present, future is just like bricks, but for us in this play of life, it doesn't seem that way. Although my heart tells me in reality it is that way for that Consciousness which is here, but that doesn't seem to be our day-to-day experience.

So as long as in the human condition this arrow seems to go this way from birth to death, then I want to spend every moment deeply loving Him and not getting distracted by the things of the world and the offerings it gives me every day. Because drama leads to more drama, and that drama leads to more drama. This whole thing is like so... Shaker making drama and drama and drama. And the mind loves that. It always has something to pick on. 'Oh, today this happened to me, today this happened to me, today this happened to me.' And 'me' remains in the center of the narrative and God's light is forgotten.

That's why I feel that the words that came from my heart here, that 'Bless my heart with the light of spirit,' that is like oxygen. It's like oxygen for this life because without that light of spirit, what are we? What do we know? And what are we even doing? Without the light of spirit, it is impossible to recognize the absolute nature of your side because that is the Satguru presence which provides the light to see the unperceivable. But you sense the connection and the deepening and the disconnection with the light, and that gives you such a strong compass even as to how to be in the world. And that then becomes a source of kindness, compassion. True way to live comes from there because you sense that your heart loves it. Your heart loves it when you're being loving and kind and beautiful in that way.

And something else loves it when you're being like, you know, you're having fun with somebody's experiments or something like that, then something loves that also. But that... if you just stay with your heart and you notice that, you see the disconnection. Like sometimes they'll say something like meant as a joke but it will hurt someone. And maybe it's happened with all of you—maybe except some of you, I haven't, I don't recall those moments—but it's happened so many times. And something in my heart tells me that that hurt that one. I feel so... and hopefully I say it outside also, that I'm so sorry that I didn't mean to hurt you at all, it was just meant to be a silly joke. Yeah, you feel that contraction. And that heart is a great compass to guide us to say, are we being true to our heart? Without that, I'm lost. Like I don't have bearings without the heart guiding me. It is impossible to deal in this game without the heart.

So the blessing of... to be blessed with the light of spirit in our heart is such a gift. Because I remember a time that before that Atma, I was living completely lost. Before this light of being showed up here, in the eyes of the world a good person or good guy, whatever, but without this compass we are lost. So I think the prayer ones... like for those so many years I didn't know about its existence. I didn't know about its literal truth. So whenever I read about Atma or something, you know, yeah, it's like what leaves you when you die and what enters when you're in the womb, some idea like that. But then when later I saw that that is more the life energy and Prana actually, so then what is this Atma? You still try to capture it emotionally somewhere, but until you meet it, you are lost.

So my whole endeavor in this life in a way is to make sure that none of my children live without meeting this Atma within. But once you meet it, then your responsibility is greater because before that you have the excuse that you're lost because you don't know this light. The light of spirit is alien, it just sounds conceptual and it's just an idea. But once you meet it, then your job is to love it, to live in it, to deepen in it. Such a beautiful... that's why I'm so in love with this book, The Interior Castle, because I never heard it in this way. And I'm telling you that everything she's saying is true. She's saying is true. The way as you go along in the book, you notice that the way she's able to tell you that whether you're hallucinating or whether you're having a true vision, you see the way these things are defined, and they so ring so true in my heart.

And it's very inspiring because you get these visions just running in the path and seeing things which you can't explain. And like people say in Christianity also, people say about the throne of God and His courtroom and like that, but nothing that what our mind can visualize. Like the visions that you get are so astounding. So there is great depth in following the words of these sages. And you know what I do is I don't feel like I'm reading if I've not brought myself to the beginner mode. So every time I read a holy book like this, then I feel like I have to empty myself of the things I know. Because if I read it with a particular construct already, then I will not listen. Like I will just try to put it into my existing framework, and that has stopped my growth so many times in the past. So I don't want to do it again.

So then I pick up a holy book which is apparently holy—apparently in the sense clearly holy—that it just pulls your heart, you see? So if I approach it with the... 'Oh, but I am somebody who, you know, shares a Satsang and has so many children and they listen to and have had insights and things,' then I'm not going to get anywhere with it. I have to open it, I have to read it fully empty, like I'm just the first day of my spiritual search. I'm reading it for that. What a gift it is to read from a saint who lived in the 1500s and lived in a society where if she openly made those claims that, 'I, being a woman, have gone through, I've had Darshan in this way and visions in this way,' she could be hung or burnt on a stake.

So then a Guru, a spiritual director, commanded her to write it in a way that, 'I once knew this one who had these experiences and she told me it's like that.' You see, she is her. Because her early autobiography was banned in Spain by the Inquisition because... and they sort of gave her a warning that after this if you make any claim like that, you know, 'You're a woman, know your place,' like this. That's why in the middle you'll see something that, you know, 'The men can understand these things better, what do we women know?' and this kind of stuff. Because in those days, 1500s, 63 is already what like 90 is for us. If you get to 63, you've got to a very old age. Like the health of bodies, medical services available, all that was terrible. So at that very old age for those times, she included all that. But she's also giving like clues saying that a lot of those things I'm saying in this book may seem like... so she's, if you're reading very carefully, you notice where you put it in the right context, you see where she's coming from. And she's trying to be so helpful, you see, in spite of all this danger to her life at such an old age she could be imprisoned.

And age, so, like the health of bodies, medical services available, all that was terrible. So, at that very old age for those times, she included all that, but she's also giving like clues, saying that a lot of those things I'm saying in this book may seem like... so she's, if you're reading very carefully, you notice where you put it in the right context, you see where she's coming from. And she's trying to be so helpful, you see, in spite of all this danger to her life at such an old age. She could be imprisoned or she could be burnt. And these are literal fears, because living in today's modern world, you may sit here and say, 'Yeah, yeah, I love God so much, I can be burnt on a stake, I'm okay, I'll be fine. I can be crucified on a cross, I'll bear the cross like that.' But do we really know? Like, have we encountered a world... I don't know how old you were when your country went through a war and things like that, but have we? Like, I've never encountered a world where I could be burnt on a stake. I may be jailed for something, you know, those things may happen, but it's out of the ordinary to imagine this. So we can't really put ourselves and say, 'Okay, why did she bow down to this? Why did she do this thing?' I'm imagining myself as a sixty-three-year-old woman who's already lived more than usual in those times, and I have a threat of the Spanish Inquisition, which is supposed to be the most scary people who ever lived, maybe after Genghis Khan. But putting yourself in that kind of context, the kind of service she has done with a book like that is tremendous. So we must never get into any pride about saying, 'But why did she write like that?' If you understand the life of a sage, you will see that such beauty unfolds given the context.

And that's the beauty of encountering a sage, that you can't even think about yourself. You meet the life of a sage like Gautama, Tukaram, Namdev, Kabir, any sage from the West, East, anywhere. Their love for God is so astounding, you look at your life and you see what is so special about you? You can't even... you don't even feel like contemplating this question. It is like such a waste to think about 'me, me, me' in the light of the possibility of loving God so deeply. To have such beautiful inspirations available to us, and then to have like children sitting around this one, it's so absurd to me. So all I can do at best is to say, 'Yes, He is here,' and all the love and all the reverence is just as an instrument being passed back to the truly deserving one. You see the humility of even Teresa; she says that 'I'm just writing things which I don't know anything about.' And any of them, like you read Kabir, and he lived the life of a simple weaver in poverty. I'm sure if he wanted, he could become very rich. And he's just, if you read his works, he's just like sitting on the street side, like on the footpath of today's world, and saying, 'Brother, listen. You know, listen, listen. You're going your way, but have you ever looked into your heart?' So he's really calling out to people, and people are just going on their way.

You know, sometimes you see on YouTube, you see some evangelists who are trying to talk to people on the streets and they say, 'Have you handed yourself over to Jesus Christ?' and most people are like, 'No, no,' and just walk past like that. They don't want their day to get interrupted; they have a plan, they have meetings. And I'm not also saying that everyone who stops you in this way is genuine or really wants to lead you to God, I'm not saying any of that. But for a true sage to sit on the road and say, 'Oh, brother, listen, listen, listen,' like everything he said starts like that. So you can tell that it was not necessary that there were like so many people coming to meet him and he had a big Satsang hall or something. He was just struggling to get the point across to a few who were open to listen. And the strongness of his language, the bluntness of his language, was because probably he felt like, 'I have one opportunity to talk to this one, what can I say that will take them out of their worldly ways?' Stunning. And all these sages of Maharashtra, you just went from place to place with the instrument in the hand, you know, Ektara it's called, with the one-wire instrument, singing the praises of God. Stunningly beautiful, their lives. It's a beauty. With books, with these kind of remnants of those times, you get a window into lives of such beauty, and it leaves no time to think about 'me,' no time to really look at the... see, Guru, so many of them were just killed by the Mughals in the wars with the invaders. They never let go of God.

Even for Kabir, it was so dangerous because he's beating down everybody. He's saying, 'You Pandit, you don't know what you're talking about, you're just reading words. You Mullahs of the mosques, you are just saying the prayer, you have no idea of God.' Attacking everyone on all sides where they see corruption and egotism. And he said, 'You may be in the Ganges, but you will not find God. You may visit all the mosques and temples, but you will not find God till you look inside your heart. You will not find Him. What have you looked at?' Imagine living in those times; you could just be picked up and your head could be cut off in one instant. And having the courage, God's power in our heart, to say... we don't even want to ruffle feathers of like people we meet in the park. Let's not bother. Read his book; he says the Ramacharitmanas really gave that spiritual grounding, the power. It's very easy to sit here after seventy-something years of independence. We must not put down those; we've not lived in their shoes for a day. Look at the glory of God where He provides all this for those who truly turn to Him and are willing to die for Him. He provides that strength from inside.

She said, 'You must look at the humility of God.' I never looked at it like that. I feel like He must be humble, He's the Great One, but in what way can we say God is humble? In what way can we look at the humility of God? And I see that it's so obvious. If I had created this universe, you know, if I was literally like God, this 'I,' this ego had created this universe, I would want my photo, my thing everywhere. And anytime somebody doesn't remember me, I'd be like... but He makes Himself so humble and so like, 'Turn to me when you want to. I'm always loving you, my love is always here.' I don't feel like any of us would have been that way if we had created this computer game, you know? We'd want so much display and all of that. And for us, if we take one moment and turn towards Him, we feel like we're doing such a big thing. The humility of the Creator is astounding. We have so much pride.

How can He punish us if He's so humble? And what is the notion of hell and all of these things? Can we really understand? Like, can a child understand when they are being dragged away from a football shop or a cricket shop and the parent is refusing to get a cricket bat, and the child is believing that 'I have the worst father in the world'? Can the child at that point really understand the way of the parent? They can't understand. So we are much like... compared to God, we're not even like that child. And our pride makes us think that we can understand His world. I feel like to be an ant or something is better, because if you looked at ants, you become cut into two, one part will still go along its way. It doesn't wait one moment to lament the fact that 'this God did this to me.'

Yeah, I'm sure it experiences a lot of... when I ask you that same thing, it really wasn't, but it's very natural. But somewhere in my heart there's fear of, I mean, punishment. I mean, in that sense, for me God is so unconditional, but...

But even that can become a box. That's what I'm saying, that we try to make any framing, and it's a beautiful framing to say 'unconditional love,' but we can't restrict God to anything because we don't know. Like you just said, how do I know it was not out of love that you need? Yeah, how do we know that? Unconditional love is the highest thing, maybe, in this kindergarten of a world; He just exposed us to level one. Maybe there are things which we can't even fathom which are greater than even unconditional love. So at best we can say, in our human understanding and human life and experience, we can tell that unconditional love is the deepest, which carries the perfume of God and can lead you to Him. But can we really say that He has to be like that? Maybe there are things which are like a million times deeper than unconditional love. We don't know. All of us have to encounter these things. And then when there is like a dichotomy, right, you can sense when there is a tension in your system, that is usually because of the colliding constructs in your head. So you can pull them into your heart and contemplate them.

And I can't judge any of this step because I have asked these questions. I have said, 'How can God be like this? How can there be suffering in the world? How can...?' But somewhere, by God's grace, I learned that by just keeping it over there, it is not going to help. So we must use all of this to bring it into our heart and He will give us the answer. You see, He does explain everything if you just open. That's why the Book of Job is so beautiful. It's inexplicable what happened to him. A holy, devout man, all his children are killed, all his wealth is taken away, all of that is happening. And he has his moments of anger, tantrum, then he has his moments of returning to faith, and goes through that whole human thing. And then in the end, God just tells him that 'You don't know what all is at play here, you can't really understand.' That's where true faith comes in. But we must take all of this and just bring it to our heart and wait for Him to provide the answer.

Because my wish for all of you at every point of time is for you to deepen in your heart, to deepen in His love, because I see that in this world there is no other solution. There is no other solution than God. Nothing. And we could have had whatever spiritual experiences, we could be as nice, as good as whatever, but if we don't live in His light, it's not living at all. It's very important for me to see these interactions also, to hear all of you, because otherwise I just feel like everyone is doing so well, always living in God's light. I care. And sometimes it happens like that. I've been in Satsangs where in front of the Guru you have to just present yourself... you don't give them a sense of like... the Art of Living, the millions of people, and when I was there, there were thousands of people at least. So when you get the chance to be with your Guru, you can't tell them, 'No, no, this is happening, and what about this, and what about that?' You can't really discuss those things with them because you're getting a moment of Darshan. So you just try to fully imbibe it, and somewhere you're trying to impress the Guru with how happy you are and how, you know... because you're in that mode, right? You're in that childish naivety, but you haven't really understood what the project is.

So this is so much better because you kids can share with me. You can tell me openly, 'What about this?' and 'Why did you say it like that?' and 'I didn't like this,' or 'I'm just going...' If then the other thing is we take it for granted. The chopping also comes; when it comes, the heart takes care of it. Oh.