Who Is in Your Temple? - 1st November 2023

But what's happened in the world is that even spirituality has become about the false one. How to make our temple for the ego better, how to give the ego a better life—it has nothing to do with spirit. So what a trick of the mind it is that even spirituality has been made empty of spirit. It's more a 'me-ity,' 'ego-ality' in the guise of being spiritual. Because to replace the 'me' from our heart altar and truly replace it with God, at one level, is the most difficult endeavor that you will ever embark upon. And you did not come to spirituality for difficulty; you came for ease and peace and love and bliss. But the project is very difficult, and you may run for many lifetimes before you truly embrace this project. But I'm telling you that you may run for lifetimes, but you would not have lived in those lifetimes.

Therefore, the question is: who is in your temple? Who is the ruler of your life? Not just conveniently when we are in trouble or we are suffering, then we say, 'God, God help me, Krishna help me, Jesus.' That is the time we want to make the switch over. But the rest of the time we are happy to be ruled by the ego. And to live in service to God, to live in obedience to God, sounds like an oppression. You wanted a God-assisted life, and now you're being told that it has to become a God-dictated one. But we don't realize that a God-dictated life is the highest privilege, versus a life ruled by the mind, which is the suffering of hell.

And the symptoms are all there for us to see. How is it possible to resent one another? How is it possible to hold grievances? How is it possible to be proud? It's not possible in God's presence. At least for those who are deeply in love with God, these things are not possible. To live in fear is not possible. To live being attached to things which are going to die, which are ephemeral—here today, gone tomorrow—or to live in the desire of that which is not being presently perceived, all of these are not symptoms of life which is a true life. This itself is the fire. We don't need to be roasted in some other fire of hell. This itself—both heaven and hell are here. God's presence is here and the play of separation from the presence is here.

Is there anyone in this room who doesn't know that God is here? All of us know that conceptually at least. But how do we live? If you recognize that God, the highest, the only being in the universe was here, would you live like this? So to live head bowed down would be very natural, because to have your head bowed down in the presence of God is the only natural way to be. Can a grain of sand consider itself to be something in front of the sun itself?

Now I'm going to talk about something which is a little subtle and very tricky, so see if you can hear it carefully now. The best gift that can be given to this grain of sand is to make it recognize this reality of oneness with the sun, you see. To recognize its reality of oneness with the sun is the greatest gift. But if that gift is taken by the identity of the grain of the sand, then we may think that it is the greatest gift, but actually it is an avoidance truly of the gift. So okay, let me simplify. Maharaj said, he said that those who think they understand come here for the words, you see. Those who think they understand come here for the words. Those who actually understand come here for the Bhajan. And Bhajan is not necessarily just singing. Bhajan is to be with God, to live in His life, to praise Him, to chant His name, to remember Him.

So he said those who think they understand come here for the words. So I don't know if you all know, but Maharaj used to have two Satsangs every day. So one was for the western—I don't know whether it was really Indian versus Western, but most of the westerners would come where a lot of the words were being shared. And there was in the morning a Bhajan session where a lot of the ones with devotional temperament would come. So one asked him, 'What is the difference? Which is better? Which is better?' So he said—and obviously it was to break the pride of those who are listening to the words—that those who think they understand come here for the words, but those who truly understand come for the Bhajan.

You can create the best Advaita Vedanta encyclopedia in your head, but if you don't learn to live in the way of the heart, in the presence of God, in the light of God, it's all useless. You can become a great debater of religion and spirituality; you may even share discourses about it. That 'Apara Prem,' that love for God—if you don't find that, then it's all pointless. So let's take another example. So in Vedanta it is said: take the world to be unreal because it is ephemeral. Anything that comes and goes is not real. Take it to be unreal. Can you do it? Cannot do it. You will just label it as unreal because that is the first thing that is told to you in Vedanta, and that should be the end of the story—just take the world to be unreal. But we can't do it. We pretend to do it only in the unreality itself. In the world itself we may go say 'unreal, unreal.' That in the unreal we are talking about the unreal. We cannot do it till we come to a recognition of a greater reality.

Like a bird will not leave its nest till it finds a better place to build a nest. So till you meet the reality of God's presence in your heart, you come to Atma, you come to Atma, then the words about the unreality of the world are just going to be words. And they may help you believe that you have understood something very great. Now you've cracked the code of life, but it's nonsense. It's just conceptual understanding. So what happens? Everyone knows—let's take another example. Everyone knows that in the present moment there is no problem. 'The Power of Now' came out at least two decades ago and it just told us that live in the now, there is no trouble. And we've experimented. When you are in the now, now, now—no trouble, no identity, no ego, no nothing. But just upon hearing that, who has been able to do it? We've known it for how many years. Are we living in the now? Can't do it.

So in spirituality there is no way to avoid God. Whatever tactics we may come up with, till you come to the reality of God's presence, everything is on the surface level. Feel-good conceptual bombs or worldly sort of solutions. There is no stability in your spirituality till you come to Spirit itself. I mean, that should be obvious. I should not even need to say it, but I need to because even in spirituality God has been forgotten. To the light of your life, if you remain in denial of that and you want to lead a true life, how is that going to be possible? So whatever practices you do, whatever spiritual endeavors you have, make sure that they are pointing in the right direction to get you to the Darshan of God and to bring your life in service to God.

Like the words in the Guru Granth Sahib which have been put here now. You may think and think and think a hundred thousand times, but thinking the best thoughts is not going to make you free. You may do all the practices, you may sit in silence in a cave for fifty years, you may get all your desires fulfilled, your stomach may be full of the best things and your head may be full of all the smartness. You may be able to argue with and win every spiritual debate, but none of that is going to help you. So then they asked Nanak, 'So then if none of these things—if it is not silence, if it is not practice, if it is not fulfillment of desire, if it is not any tactics that I have learned even in spirituality—then what is it? What is going to free me from this veil of delusion?' And he said, 'Hukam rajai chalna nanak likhiya naal.' It means follow the command of God, the will of God. That is what Nanak has written.

So how to follow the will of God? Just presume—there are some presumptions we can make, isn't it? Number one presumption we can make is everything is the will of God. Everything is the will of God. Then what happened to Nanak Ji when he wrote this? He forgot, is it? He forgot that all the—he said all the smartness will not help you.

To free me from this veil of delusion, and he said, means follow the command of God, the will of God. That is what Nanak has written. So how to follow the will of God? Just presume there are some presumptions we can make, isn't it? Number one presumption we can make is everything is the will of God. Everything is the will of God. Then what happened to Nanak Ji when he wrote this? He forgot, is it? He forgot that all the—he said all the smartness will not help you, all the practices will not help you, all the experiences will not help you, and all the thinking will not help you, but you must follow the will of God. But he must have had a memory lapse at that point; he must have forgotten that everything is the will of God.

When Christ said, 'You may say to me Lord, Lord, but I will not recognize you unless you have followed the will of my father,' Christ also must have forgotten everything is the will of the father. Who has not followed it? What's the big deal about Hanuman Ji? No big deal. He was serving Lord Ram with everything that he had. So what? Everything is the will of Ram. Whether Hanuman served him or not is also Ram's will. So what's the big deal about Hanuman? Forget who a true Muslim is: the one who follows the will of God. The name itself means that. To be a Muslim means the one who follows the will of God. So what's wrong with everyone then? What's the big deal? Everything is the will of God. That's where it becomes subtle, and too subtle for your mind to grasp.

It is important to come to God first before presuming that all these great sages were mistaken. If you've been told that you have to follow the will of, let's say, Mr. Ganesh—all of us have to follow the will of Mr. Ganesh, all the sages have told us—and I'm not making any metaphorical connection, I'm presuming we are in South India where we have a lot of people named Ganesh and Ram and all of this. So to follow the will of Mr. Ganesh, how will you do it? No, one way to do it is just presume what he'll want. 'Oh, Mr. Ganesh, so he must be a follower of Ganesha, so maybe I should start by doing, you know, Ganesh Puja in the morning.' Let's just presume. Why do we need to find him? We just presume based on the name only. Or maybe others will have told us, you know, this is how he is; he's even given us some commandments, so we can follow those. See, why go meet him? What do you say? Absurd.

If it is absurd, then let's take a look at our life because nobody really feels that they're not following the will of God. This is the veil of delusion. Everyone believes that they are the Adam before the fall, the Adam before taking the bite of the apple. You're not. You're following the will of God, but have you met God? And if you've been told that to meet God you have to be empty of me, have you gotten over yourself? Or is it that even our spirituality is me, me, me? 'Am I peaceful? Am I happy? Am I joyful? Am I this?' 'I surrender' so that we can feel better, or is it in obedience to God?

So this is the most important project. Do you really want to lead a life where you've never met God? Especially now that you met at least one strange one who is telling you that it is not a rarity, it is not an impossibility; it is a complete possibility for each of you. And he's also telling you that if it can happen for a foolish, inconsistent spiritual seeker like this man, then it is definitely possible for each of you. Because I look at all of you and I feel like, wow, all of you are amazing. But you spend most of your life involved in worldly and human things. Inwardly, outwardly, this body seems to live in the world, so it will be involved in worldly things and there's nothing wrong with that. But inwardly, how are you able to waste time on nonsensical, ephemeral, temporary things in this dream when you've been informed that God is a reality and a possibility for you to live in His light?

And that is where faith comes in. Are the words of satsang just some nice spiritual-sounding blabber, or are they like a roadmap for you to live your life in a true way? Do we live as if God is here? Not just here in satsang hall, but here every moment of your life. So that is the Vivekananda, isn't it? Because this example really hits home when I say, okay, Krishna is sitting on that couch over there, then you would not be able to take your eyes off him. Forget about everything: who you fought with, who's been rude to you, which things you have to fix, how much money you have in your bank, what is the health of your body, what is the meaning of life—all that will be forgotten if you have so-called sakshat darshan.

But what is Advaita Vedanta 101? That which is perceived is not real; that which is unperceived is reality. So you don't trust your intuitive insight. It points you to the presence of God within yourself, but if it became perception, then you would say yes. So faith is to trust that which is intuitive more than that which is perceived. So you may say, 'But truly I have not found God.' You may say that, and I would appreciate that honesty because at least then we can meet it really. That if you have not found God, then I'm not going to let you waste your whole life without finding Him. Relentlessly pursue you, pursue the literally the hell out of you so that you can come to the heaven of His presence.

No other project is worthy of you. And God has also given you this reassurance that if you keep your eyes on Him, all your other projects will be fine. Not according to your mind, but according to what is good, because He is the only determinant of what is good, not your mind. And what choice do we have? I do say to me, 'Ananta, you're full of nonsense. My life is not a zombie life without God; it is full of life, full of reality.' Then I won't bother you. See you in the next life, maybe. Then I won't bother you. But if you say to me that, 'Yes, I trust your words, I want to meet God,' and it doesn't smell to me as if you are lying when you say that it is possible, it has happened for you, and you want to infect all of us with that infection—the most beautiful infection—but then you have to follow what is being shared.

Get over yourselves. Don't think your ideas are so great. Become empty for God. Let go of pride. I used to think that all that is, it is an awakening experience. Once you have an awakening experience, finished. So let's chase that beautiful moment where you see that there is no me and there's only oneness everywhere, finished. But it's not true, because over the years I've seen so many of you having awakening experiences, and so many who are not here, but did their life really change? They made the awakening also about me, the me, the ego. So the me took a new birth then in the form of the spiritual ego.

And we've seen so many videos, beautiful satsang where people are very obviously having awakening experiences where they cannot find the me, and some spontaneous laughter is coming, some spontaneous crying is coming. All these things are happening authentically; they're not faking it. Let's not presume they're faking it. Authentically. And then what? You see them a week after that. 'I had this experience a few times.' I saw one beautiful interaction in satsang with Guruji and I met this lady and she was lifeless and she was saying, 'Can I talk to you? And you know, I've heard that you're really meeting what Guru is sharing quite closely. Can I ask you some questions?' I said, 'But aren't you the one from last week? And you saw that there is no me, and you saw that the reality of yourself is awareness.' And she said to me, 'Don't talk to me about that.' I said, 'But I saw it on video, I saw it.' You see?

Then I started to realize that it doesn't always work like that. The me doesn't give up just because you had an experience. A spiritual experience before is really important, and then awakening may of course do a very good cleanup job for the temple in your heart. The sacredness that is needed to build a vibrant temple for God in your life maybe given as a gift of grace through a beautiful experience. But if you start to fill it back up with me, me, me, me, me—and now a special me because it is now the awakened me—it is not going to help till we don't leave this me. Then it's just spiritual work that we're having nice conversation. 'Me is awareness.' It's a continuous process.

It's a continuous process.

It's a continuous process because if you actually—let's stretch the metaphor a little bit—so if you actually built a temple, to clean the temple you have to do it every day. Have to do it every day because we are in this Leela. The play happens in this Leela where everything, everyone and everything is telling the me. Everybody is referring to you as a separate one, as an individual entity. And it's a holy thing. It is not oppressive. The continuity of letting go of the false is joyful. Meeting God fresh and alive every moment is joyful, which is actually the same thing.

Mm.

So you may say, is it not enough to just meet God once? Like in Amarkatha, you pray, pray, pray, do sadhana for a thousand years on one leg or upside down, then God gives you the—you ask for your boon and God says, 'Tathastu,' finished. But reality is different from that. If you met Krishna, would you say bye? You would not say bye. 'How can I meet you every day? How can I be with you?' He says, 'I can live—your whole life you can live with me.' You say, 'No, no, I just want you for like ten minutes every day. I've got other stuff to do.' Would you say that? In that way it is continuous.

So therefore to be empty of me is also continuous because the mind doesn't give up. So nice it would be if you had an awakening experience and you had manonasha at the same time. But I can tell you that from what I have seen, manonasha is just a concept. This mind continuously may lose its power, so that which seemed like a wrestler beating you, like Papaji said, becomes a twittering bird, then becomes like a pestering mosquito, but doesn't fully vanish. And the mahamantra of the mind will always be: 'What's in it for me?' That will not change. This Leela will not change its parts. That's why even Papaji said, 'Vigilance till my dying breaths.' Why such a great sage? Why vigilance?

Guruji says, 'Keep your head bowed down. Say thank you for everything.' Why? You've seen you're one with God, why head bowed down? Because of the possibility of the spiritual ego. There is a part of us which would love nothing more than just becoming so special because of our spirituality. Become God-like because of our spirituality. Does seem like, 'Wow, what a wonderful life I have. A pedestal, people falling at my feet, all these beautiful things.' And then when I say actually to share satsang is a contract with you and your Satguru, at least if not the whole world, that you are all right if everything that afflicts them at any level of their being—body, emotional, physical, mental, everything—all afflictions you are happy to take on to yourself. 'I'm fine.' That is really what it is.

Because a Guru is father, mother, best friend, beloved, everything. So will a father ever say, 'Oh, let my child have that affliction, I don't want to take it from them'? Or just like lip service. And we may also say all of these things from pride. See, we may say all of these things from pride. But what is true for you in secret when there's nobody else that you're performing for, that is what is most important. See, that is when it smells true, rings true in the heart. And for you to be okay with that, to be happy with that, needs you to be humble like a beggar, servant. For you to recognize that the world for now may be giving you a pedestal to sit on, but really you're nothing more than a servant at the feet of God. And because the servitude has been forgotten by most, that is why all the strange, convoluted things are happening in the name of spirituality. A teacher said something very beautiful. He said, 'I shared with a set of people and after that they all started talking about how great I am and they were not talking about how great God is. What a shame.' And in the spirituality of today's world, we are full of a world where teachers are like...

Actually, you're nothing more than a servant at the feet of God. And because the servitude has been forgotten by most, that is why all the strange, convoluted things are happening in the name of spirituality. A teacher said something very beautiful. He said, 'I shared with a set of people and after that they all started talking about how great I am, and they were not talking about how great God is.' What a shame. In the spirituality of today's world, we are full of a world where teachers are like this. They don't realize—they don't realize that it is not about them; it is about God. What will happen with any of that? And I'm speaking to all of you as future teachers or even present teachers. What will happen with any of that? You'll plant and plant all these beautiful things here, and then you're going to die. Your name will no longer be yours. Your fame will no longer be yours. All the credit goes to somebody who's dead.

There is a story of Bulleh Shah—I'm not recollecting it fully—but the point of that story was, in the farm, he tells the farmer that in your true life, you have to uproot from here and plant there. Uproot from here. Don't be so attached to things here because this is Maya; it's not real. But plant there, in God's house, in the temple of your heart. Not your heart—make your life sacred for God. Love makes it sacred for God. Unconditional love, not the business of love. Love deeply. Love Him deeply even when you think you can't. Trouble yourself—why can't you go through that thing? But love Him. Love Him deeply and be available to serve Him. Be faithful, be humble, be prayerful, be obedient, be grateful. These are flowers we can lay in the temple. And never replace Him with 'me.' Don't build your life for you; build it for Him. Don't live your life for you; live it for Him.

Then to be a teacher of God is natural because your life is already a temple of God. And those who need to feel His presence, who are longing for Him in reality, will naturally come to you. Grace will create the situations. Grace will create the situations. But make it about Him, not about you being a good student or teacher of God. Otherwise, what will happen? Without realizing, you'll just get caught up in some performative spirituality, like Marin was telling us the other day about somebody who is just in a sort of performance spirituality. They can speak a lot of beautiful things from scripture and nice anecdotes and stories and things like that; maybe give beautiful discourse. But do they really bring people to God, to an eternal Atma, to the holiness of God's presence?

I would not wish that kind of life even if I had an enemy. I would not wish that kind of life on an enemy. It's acting spiritual; it's acting spirituality. It's a performative spirituality. You'd rather be a foolish worldly person chasing material things. Trying to get the same material things and material benefits in the guise of spirituality—at least it is authentic. It is not your mouth and your life being contradictory. But if you get into a space where your mouth is 'God, God, God' but your heart is 'grasp, grasp, grasp,' it's a terrible life. Fame, money, devotees—it's all dead. Hear me, please, that it's all dead. Never chase any of this stuff. The only one alive is in your heart.

Integrity, I feel, is also very important in servitude. Integrity means you speak from your heart. You're speaking from what is your true inside. You're not speculating, you're not impressing, you're not emotionally, psychologically, or mentally manipulative in any way, and you're definitely not exploitative in any way. Because if you get caught up in any of this stuff, you're going to contaminate your life. And it may look outwardly for some time that you're winning in this life. Look at how much fame you have. Look at how many people are coming to you and bowing down. Look at how big your ashram is. But what you sacrificed is the only thing which is valuable to you: the sacredness of your life so that it can be worthy of God. Don't try to win here. Uproot from here and plant there, as Bulleh Shah said.

Like this, when God's presence is pulsating through your life, through your words, then you realize the beauty of being a servant, the beauty of obedience. Then your life is not clouded by the mind, and the inquiry into what is your reality—who is aware of even this presence of God—will seem like the most basic question. Your reality as Nirguna Brahman, as the absolute witnessing, will be so simple. So the other day we started from that end and then this end is simple. Today we started at this end and this end is simple. So it doesn't matter which way we start, which way we go, as long as we make God central. Whether we start from servitude or we start from inside, it doesn't matter. But if the 'me' is central, then servitude is out of the question. Insight, at best, maybe for a moment, and then we rely on our memory of that moment.

Then we start to speak from the mic. For quite some time now, we've been talking about the presence of God, servitude to the presence. But I realize that very unconsciously, when you say the presence of God, because of how we've been probably brought up and the stories that we've been told, I always tend to personify God as something that I can perceive, either as a Krishna or a Rama or whatever form. And I also realized that a lot of the idea of the presence of God comes from these stories, or what people have told me, or what people have shown me. So I'm kind of confused about—is my willingness to submit to the presence of God actually me submitting to another thing that I can perceive? And so I'm kind of lost in that space.

I love this question. It's got many layers and the answer is not straightforward. So let's dive in and see what emerges. So I would say, compared to no servitude—compared to no servitude where you don't believe in your head having to be bowed down at all in front of anyone, you see—compared to that kind of arrogant way of life, it's all right as a starting point to defer to some imagery and start with that if that helps. You see, that can be the form of the master; it can be the form of an imagined form of Krishna, Ram, Jesus. You see, whatever may be appealing to us. So it's a good starting point to allow us even to go, if you need to, to a physical temple and to keep our head bowed down and say... and maybe that physical temple then becomes embedded in our memory, or something shows up in our imagination and we start to bow down to that and make ourselves available in this way.

So at least we're starting to replace the primacy of the 'me' from our life with even a construct of God. You see, which God understands your intention, your feeling, so He's not going to hold that against you. But as you go deeper, then you're right that constructed imagery, if you become too attached to that, may become a block to a true meeting with the holiness which is here—the holiness of your heart, the holiness of the presence. That is why at a particular time I have told some of you also that forget about that which you're imagining or what you're thinking to be Ram, Krishna, Jesus. Leave that so that you can come actually to a true meeting with God, to a meeting with Ram, Krishna, Jesus. Because no matter how beautiful our mind may construct something, it will not match the beauty of your inner recognition of the holy presence.

So if this question is arising for you, then just let go gently of predetermined imagery and allow God to reveal Himself freshly to you, blindly to you. And your devotion to even the imagery of the past will be helpful to you; it is not going to hurt you because it is your intention which is important. Your intention was to bow down to God, you see, and God recognizes that intention. So for a while it may seem a bit strange, or wobbly or unclear—is this really the presence? Is this really God? But allow yourself to remain empty in that way, and then you come to the holiness of your Atma, which is both the entirety of God and the essence of God. These words will not make sense to the mind. Your Atma is both the entirety of Brahman as well as a spark from the flame of God. So we don't have to get into any determination about the part or the whole. It's both. But the beauty is that it is God either way.

So when you come to this Atma within, then allow the Atma itself to reveal. It may play with the play of imagery; it may keep it completely empty of that. But allow it to move your life, every element of it, especially the prayerful element of it. So we learn to live from there every moment. So then you allow God to move you or to guide you. So what does that mean? It means that as we make ourselves available in servitude to God, we are no longer following the pings of the mind. We allow the presence itself to move this life. And I recognize that that is why all of you come to satsang—not necessarily for just the words, but to come to the company of that which is being moved by God. You recognize that God is moving this mouth. There is no plan about what to say and what is going to be shared. And if all this can come from there, the rest of our life can also be lived in that way, you see.

So in this way, God's presence runs our life. And as we get used to living like that, we also start to get instructed by God. So we may, quote-unquote, 'hear' His guidance—not necessarily in an audible form, but very apparently from the heart you will be guided. And we must follow His instructions 100%. You see, that is the meaning of servitude. We must follow the will of God, as easy or as difficult as it may seem to our mind, please.

So what you're saying effectively, I recognize that it is landing in a very different way, and I just want to report that. So when you say that you will be guided by God and by God's presence, again very unconsciously, the way it is landing is so that it can be good for me—the 'me,' the small 'me.' It's very subtle, but I just wanted to report that.

Well, it's both true and untrue. I'll tell you how. It is not 'God for me.' It is not 'God for me' where 'me' is central and God is God because God helps me. Is it? So it is not that God is now in service to me, or God should help me, or God has an obligation to help me or make sense to me or anything like that. But if you look at the question even deeper, what is the determinant of what is good for you? One is our mind's idea of what is good for me. God's will has nothing to do with that, and hopefully it'll be contrary to that, is it? But if you were to say truly what is good, is there any other determinant of what is good in our life? Even if there was this 'me,' what is good for that one except God's will? Okay? So what is good is if it is God's will. They are equal. That's why I said it's both untrue and true.

So to follow God's will is the only good for our life, even though the whole world may oppose that, our mind will oppose that, our loved ones may oppose that, everyone may oppose that. But you recognize that if God is guiding you, what else can be good then other than His guidance? Because He is the source of the intricate intelligence of even this manifest universe. So that which gives birth to this—what higher intelligence can there be than that to determine what is good? So this is very, very subtle actually, because the original sin actually is to determine what is good for ourself, and everything else is derived from that trouble.

So our life must become like a plant. What happens for a plant? The leaves of the plant, they naturally move towards the sun. Do they have to think about it? Do they say, 'No, no, if I go too much towards the sun I may get burned,' you see, or 'I'm liking the shade of my body right now, the greenness of the leafiness, I don't want that to change'? No. If the sun moves there, the leaf moves there. There is no filter like that. There is no filter like that. So our life has to become like that. Where God moves us, we go. We don't filter it through our mind and say, 'Is this good? Is this right? Is this better for me? Will this work out? What's going to happen?' To live like this...

If I go too much towards the sun, I may get burned, you see. Or I'm liking the shade of my body right now, the greenness of the leafiness, you see. I don't want that to change. No, if the sun moves there, the leaf moves there. There is no filter like that. There is no filter like that. So our life has to become like that: where God moves us, we go. We don't filter it through our mind and say, 'Is this good? Is this right? Is this better for me? Will this work out? What's going to happen?' To live like this is a constant work in progress. So I'm not going to say to you that I'm living like this 100%. I'm still foolish, I'm still stupid, and I still relax on my mind's terms on many occasions. But the endeavor is to become like that plant—just move as managed by God, just move as moved by God. No filter.

How satsang is shared mostly—and I hope I'm speaking with integrity when I say that—in satsang at least 99% is just heart to mouth. But is my life fully 100% like that? No. And I don't feel like it will ever be 100%. And for me, the only definition of sin is to go with my mind's terms instead of being truly moved by God. And therefore, I don't mind admitting that I continue to be as resistive as that term is to the thetic mind. And like half of you have reported that you do not like that word in the prayer, but what is sin? It is to determine what is better for us in our minds rather than wait for God's about to move us or to guide us.

So these are, at some level, very subtle things. And if you really look at your life moment to moment, you'll still find moments where you're just rushing, you're just presuming. You just presume that, 'Okay, this is the best thing to do.' But can you wait for God in every situation? Are you truly a servant of God or are you just part-time? Have you made categories in your life where you say, 'No, no, work I have to do. It is the rest of it...'? And some of you may say, 'Work I have to do, family I have to do, all of that. In satsang I can be with God.' That's not true servitude. Your life is not a pie chart. True life is constantly to live in God's light.

And I'm telling you that only to follow God's will is good, not your ideas of what is responsibility or irresponsibility, not your ideas of right and wrong, good and bad. It is pride to consider that you can evaluate better than God's judgment. How is it that we may be prodded by God in a particular way, but we may say, 'Nah, I don't think so'? It's like a drop on top of a wave saying, 'I don't like the way the ocean is going, you know, so I'm going to dance to my own tunes. The holy ocean is pushing me left way? No, no, I think right is better. The beach on the right is much better.' Now, all this sounds absurd, but this is our life. This is the story of our life. We are nobody, we are nothing, yet we think we are so special and cool and we can decide.

And I'm including myself in this completely. But if God is there—if Krishna, again to make it more clear, if Krishna was sitting in front of you, you see, and Krishna says, 'Go left,' you say, 'No, nice suggestion, thank you, but I'll go right.' This is the absurdity of our life. All of you are saying you met God, then why don't you follow Him? Then you say, 'Okay, now I want to follow Him, but He's not telling me anything.' Follow that. You ask Krishna a question. Krishna is sitting smiling, not answering. Will you just say, 'Okay, don't answer, I'll do what I want'? Not like that.

So it is your lack of faith in your own inside about God's presence which allows us to be that way. Somewhere you don't actually have faith that it is God. You may feel like it's some biochemical reaction happening in you that makes you feel present. It's not really Atma, it's not really the Satguru presence, the Holy Spirit. All these traditions and cultures—all wrong? It may just be biochemical? This is the absurdity. And if you haven't come to that, then make that your number one project. If you can't truly with integrity say for yourself in secret—you don't have to expose to satsang, not to me, nobody—but if you cannot admit it truly for yourself that God's presence is actually here and apparent, then you must work on your pride. You must become humble. You must make your life sacred for His presence to become apparent in your life.

Or are you going to keep living like zombies? Reason, denial... for this project, leave everything else out. Inwardly, outwardly it may continue to happen, but make nothing else as important as this. Don't give anything else any inner space. The outer space God itself will allocate. Some work will happen, some things will be managed; all that is not so important. But don't give your inner space to anything but God. Anyway, what happens when you give it to anything but God? You suffer, no? It's not that I'm asking for some great sacrifice. When you give it to anything else, you only suffer. So to let go of suffering is to keep yourself empty of these things anyway.

So the sacrifice which is asked for in satsang itself is freedom from suffering. But because suffering at some level is equal to pride, which we may not see yet—we cannot suffer unless we are proud—then we may feel that when the Master is telling us to keep our inner space empty of our own projects and ideas and plans and tactics and concepts and constructs of life, then your pride may get hurt because you may feel like you've invested a lot in that stuff. Like you have your own way. But your own way is rubbish. My own way is rubbish. Finish. Recognize that fast, because we don't recognize these things as pride because they seem very normal in the world. Everybody has a plan for themselves or their lives. Everybody's ideas of good and bad, right and wrong... you don't realize that in front of God these are worthless trivialities that we are wasting time on.

So be empty for God. This is what you have to be empty of: everything. Empty. Keep your space sacred for God. Keep your space sacred for God. Can you keep it sacred by putting up your photo everywhere? 'I'm making a temple for God: me, me, me, me, me, me.' Can it be like that? That's what we do. We don't realize. 'If I do this, God will help me like this.' So God is secondary; the 'me' being helped is primary. Me, me. Then you invite God: 'Please come, please come. This is a temple for You.' Got my photos everywhere, but don't mind that. It's like inviting God for dinner: 'Please come, God,' but all the seats are full of me—a physical me, a mental me, emotional me, spiritual me. All me, me, me. There's no place for God to sit, and you say, 'Come.' He's come for them.

These are quite literal things, and I'm of course exaggerating to make the point—I don't even know if it's an exaggeration actually—but I'm creating these metaphors so that we can just spot these things. Just a lip service to God is not going to be a spiritual life. You have to be truly willing to let go of yourself, truly willing to get over yourself. That's why the theme of today's satsang has been: Who is in your temple? And I hope the point is setting home more and more now. Whereas initially it may seem obvious that it is God, only you see how you contaminate your sacredness with selfishness. And just because selfishness has been normalized in the world doesn't make it acceptable. Just because the world says, 'But that is the way to live,' doesn't mean that it is true. Is that how God is telling you to live? Is that how the Guru is telling you to live?

So what to do when you feel that God is not guiding you, not moving you, and you don't have any answers? Then go to your Master and say, 'Please guide me because I'm not able to hear God's voice. I'm not able to feel His prompting. I'm not able to follow His prompting.' And the Master may play that role for you provisionally. He may tell you to keep quiet and sit. Don't rush. Because that is how he will be prompted from his heart. He can also not predict what guidance will come for you. And the fact is that our lack of patience in hearing God is astounding, actually. Astounding.

If you wrote to your favorite cricketer or movie star and he replied to you after three years, you would be still happy with that—that he took the time out to write to me. No? But God? No, no, He should be instant like Domino's. 'I pray to You, why are You not replying to me? I prayed to You so much.' Special we think we are, that we should be able to determine His timeline also. It's a very, very upside-down world and mind we've given value to. If you had to spend 10,000 lifetimes waiting for God's reply, it would still be worth it. Sincerely I'm saying. But we can't wait ten minutes. We can't keep ourselves empty for ten minutes. We start to doubt, we start to get frustrated, irritated, throat ants. Patience is very important. It's only a pride that makes us this way. We think we are somebody.

Let's take the metaphor even further. So what is another mistake we can make in making a temple for God? 'Okay, I won't put up my photos everywhere, but let me put up all the great things I know, all the spiritual concepts I have. At least those are beautiful.' Okay, so don't give value to your spiritual concepts too much. Don't put up your knowledge on the walls of the temple. Because your mental knowledge, your learned knowledge, your secondhand knowledge—it's not worth anything at all. Don't be attached to it. Don't be proud of it. The truth reveals itself to you in its entirety moment to moment. The truth reveals itself in its entirety moment to moment. This is a beautiful contemplation. Like, you can never meet yourself, you cannot meet God and not know everything about everything.

But whether that knowledge translates into a surface-level conceptual understanding or words that reveal themselves through your mouth or not, that we cannot see. That is why in the presence of God we feel fully found. We don't feel lost about anything or confused about anything. But it's not a hack or a cheat code of life saying, 'I want to discover the equations for some quantum entanglement or something like that, so I'll just go to God and I will get it.' You may get it, but that is up to the will of God. So what comes up on the surface of the ocean is up to the intelligence of the ocean itself. But you never meet God halfway. You cannot meet God halfway. You meet the entirety of His intelligence as you meet Him.

Everything about every universe and every past and every future and every lifetime is known to you, but it's not a cheat code for life. It may not reveal itself to you as images or words. And this is the conundrum: when you meet your Master, you see that they know everything, but many times they'll just tell you, 'I don't know,' because it's not coming to their surface. They actually don't know, but the presence which is apparent to them is the all-knowing. It is the substratum of the universe. It is the author of every single story that has ever been written. Every single moment, every heartbeat that you have lived, God knows. Every sound of every heartbeat that you ever had, God knows. He knows you much better than your mind does. Nothing is hidden from Him.

You meet the one who knows everything, but 'I don't know everything.' Yeah, but the one who knows everything may not reveal it. Although He knows everything about every life that is ever lived—He has been the life of every life that is ever lived—He knows whether it is good to reveal that to you in that moment or not. That's why you may have some beautiful revelations when you're with Him, when you're dedicated to Him inwardly. A lot of things may reveal themselves to you, or a thing may reveal itself to you. And those things you don't value because what is most important to you is to be with Him. Because that is also a trap. Many then start using that to then predict the future and to then look at people's faces and say... it's nonsense. It's just the life of a drop in the ocean. How is it so important? If God is sitting with you, why is it so important what is going to happen in the future? In these things, trust Him to reveal whatever needs to be revealed.

A thing may reveal itself to you, and those things you don't value because what is most important to you is to be with him. Because that is also a trap; many start using that to then predict the future and to then look at people's faces and say it's nonsense. It's just the life of a drop in the ocean. How is it so important? If God is sitting with you, why is it so important what is going to happen in the future? Trust him to reveal whatever needs to be revealed. As a personal preference, I would prefer this movie to have no spoilers. I would really enjoy it fresh, moment to moment, without being informed about what is going to happen. It is only our fear that makes us clamor for these things. You want predictability because we are scared. We are scared because we don't live in God's light. In his presence, we can't be scared if God is with us—literally, not just as a concept.

Very nice. Krishna's flutes are showing up. Sorry, how is it that suffering is pride? I get it at some level, but let me take an example. Suppose I pick a fight with, let's say, somebody in this room—no, he naturally pointed to her, it's okay—I pick a fight with somebody. Then I know I'm probably making that person feel bad using words or by action. Then I know I can probably do something about it; I could have been calmer or I could have been this way. But I'm taking a worse example. Let's say you pick a fight with somebody—I know that I'm not in control of that person or the third person in that equation—but I'm suffering because, you know, there's a bit of... you suffer because two other people fought? What I mean is, in some sense, like Israel-Palestine. We hear about it, but we don't really have control of it, but just hearing about it saddens us. Is that suffering also pride at some level?

So, sadness or pain is not suffering necessarily. It's a sign of our compassion. Some grief may come; that is not suffering. You see, these things are very natural. Salt and sugar of life is there in every life in the right amount. The Master Chef is making the perfect dish out of our life, so we can trust the amount that he has given us. Is it the additional stuff that we add on to it by ourselves that is called suffering? You see, which means that this is just a version of that famous thing, which is: pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional. You see? So pain will happen. Some grief will come. It's natural to feel. Why Israel-Palestine? If somebody falls off their bicycle in front of you and they get hurt and the knee is bleeding, you still feel pain. You see? So that is a very natural part of human existence, and you all feel that, and that will get amplified as you start to live more and more in God. The sensitivity will mostly get more and more amplified, so you will be able to empathize and feel another's pain even more, but you will not suffer.

So what is the suffering? It is that which we then take on mentally and say, 'Why does this happen? If there is a God, then how can this be fair?' You see, all this trying to solve things which are much bigger than us in our mind, in our conceptual understanding. 'Why does this always happen to me?' And let's be honest, most of suffering has 'me' only at the center. Right now you may be taking nice examples, but we are like, 'Why me? When will I be over this? When will I be free?' So suffering takes a lot of hard work. The organic pain, organic grief, organic emotions are very natural for us to taste in the human experience. One of my teachers told me that anger is very natural to experience for a few moments, but to make anger into resentment is unnatural. But for that, you have to go to the mind. You see something and suddenly some anger comes just like that. But then if I resent you and say, 'Oh, this boy is like this, you know, he always says like that,' that is a lot of mental work and things like that. That is suffering.

How do you stop it?

You learn how to become open. You learn how to become empty. You see, how do you start it? Let's start with that, no? So the way we do it will tell us how not to do it. So suppose that you don't like something I say, so you become angry about it. Suppose this itself—you're not liking this conversation—so you can be angry about it and say, 'I'm not liking what you're saying, Ananta. I don't know, I'm disappointed I came all this way.' It can last a few moments, like anger lasts a few moments and then gets over. But then how will you make resentment out of it? Let's go really slowly on this. You see, so if there is no thought arising about this later, is it possible to be resentful? Suppose we had the fight and then you did not think about it after this at all, can you be resentful?

Yes. That's also beautiful. Thank you for reminding me.

So if the thought didn't come, you see, then it's not possible for us to be resentful or even remorseful. Any of the 'full' stuff is not possible. But in the arising of the thought, if it was automatic that we become prideful or guilty or remorseful or resentful, then we are stuck because we don't control which thoughts come. We can't say, we can't predict what the next thought is going to be. But when the thought comes, are we hostage to it in the sense that we take it to be our reality? Can the thought itself force that? You see, that is very beautiful contemplation which should be normal for us to teach our children, but very few actually explore this: that yes, I cannot predict or create the content of my next thought, but is the production of that thought equal to my taking it to be true?

And if it was equal, then when the Zen master said, 'Thoughts are visitors; let them come and let them go, don't serve them tea,' then what was he talking about? So that serving of tea is to give it belief, and that belief cannot be forced. Although your attention may go to the thought—and it will take a super mahayogi for them to not give attention to any thought—to not give belief is very easy for all of us, actually. But because we are conditioned to want to be right, you see, that's why we do not exercise the power of not serving it tea. It's that classical example: if I say, 'Don't bring your attention to an orange right now, or a banana, or a pink elephant'—that is the famous way to say this—then naturally it starts showing up. Now you can't really help it. 'Don't think of an orange, don't think of an orange'—the orange comes. Before that, you were not thinking of an orange at all. You see? So attention is very difficult to manage. It usually does the reverse of what we want, and you may become a sadhu and live in a cave for a hundred years and you may still not get mastery over your attention.

But if I say, 'Don't believe you're an orange,' that's easy. So don't believe what the thought is telling you. It's easier than attention. But if that belief has been conditioned so much in the past, you've nurtured it so much in the past that 'this is only true, it is like this only, it is like this only,' so when it comes, then it seems more attractive. Then it seems like we need more strength to keep our hands from grasping at that. But know one thing: that when the Buddha said grasping is suffering, this is the grasping that he was talking about. He was not saying about this or that; it translates into this many times, but this is the grasping that you are seeing. Zen, of course, is derived from the Buddha himself, so they made this very clear. So when I say remain open and empty, this is what I mean. Allow all things to come and go. Don't attach.

Then anger will be met as anger, but it will never become resentment. Then you live your life in pure perception, just open, just empty. This is the only way to live in the moment. I don't know if you were there in the beginning of satsang, but we talked about the fact that everyone knows that we must live in the now, ever since Eckhart shared his books with us at least. But nobody's been able to do it just on the basis of that, that 'I have to live in the now.' Many people keep saying, 'I have to learn to live in the now, I have to learn to live in the now,' but in twelve years of sharing satsang, nobody has come and said, 'I have learned to live in the now.' It doesn't happen because we are still attaching to thoughts. So the only way to live in the now is to become open and empty. And I don't feel it is possible even to remain open and empty without attaching ourselves to God's presence within us. Then at best, open and empty just becomes a tactic that we try to use to make our life better, and then the tactic leaves us when it's most needed.

It is our devotion, it is our love for God which can make this life stable. There are some magic words I could speak and you could let go of the 'me.' Kabir Ji said, 'Maya mahagugni,' and then he takes examples of where Maya can hide. The examples are beautiful. He says many times Maya will hide even in the devotion of the devotee. It can be made about 'me.' It can just insert itself anywhere and seem quite natural and just waiting to grasp on things. It can feed on making 'me' so special, the 'me' so right, 'me' so justified. And then we also make the claim that this 'me' is non-existent, it never lived, or it's so surrendered to God and Guru. 'I'm so surrendered, I'm so in love with God,' but so easily we revert back to 'me.' 'I'm so happy I was right.'

It's sad that in the human condition, you may have heard only ten percent of what I've said, and you may have heard the ten percent which you already think you know. That is how confirmation bias works. 'Ah, this part is good, I already knew this.' So then you don't hear the rest. You love it if I'm confirming your beliefs. 'This is what I felt also, yeah, yeah, right, right, right.' That is the time we switch off. Strange, isn't it? Even intellect or logic would tell us that if you already know something, you don't need to hear that; you need to hear the rest. This is how the mind keeps us limited and caught up in our own constructs of what we think reality is. And it's basically fear, because we are scared to meet a reality which is much beyond what our constructs can manage.

I've talked about the immensity of God, but if you hear it only through the lens of your belief system or what you take to be true, you make God into a construct also. Same 'God for me' stuff. We just have to keep trying. Monday, Wednesday, Friday. At times it can feel like a death almost, but as Maharaj said, it's very important to go through this experience of a personal death to be free from identity. As we move away from unreality to reality, that which is just worldly and constructs of the mind, they will feel like they're dying, and some sadness can come with that. But God is worth it. God's presence is worth it. In fact, it is very important, at the cost of whatever, to be with God. If God said, 'Give me everything that you think you have and then you can be with me,' would we take the deal? And here we are talking about the living presence of God, the living being which is present within ourself. The presence of Consciousness, the beingness, is a living presence. He is literally here. The path to God at one level is the simplest; at another level, it is the most difficult.