Guru Maharaj Ji's birthday satsang at Malibu, California, December 10, 1977
Dear premies, this is really wonderful. It's really beautiful. This is something that we used to talk about a long, long time ago. I have a list in front of me of all the places that are right now simultaneously listening to this satsang through the phone hook-ups. And, just in the United States, we got Boston, Minneapolis, Columbus, Gainesville, Texas, Seattle. San Francisco, Atlantic City, Miami, Honolulu, Toronto, Denver, Missoula, Montreal. Kansas City. And then around the world we've got England, Denmark, France, Sweden, Venezuela, Austria. Germany, Holland, Madrid, Switzerland, Tel Aviv and Mexico, Chicago*, New South Wales, Melbourne, Rome, and Milan.
So, this is something that we have come a long ways to now. I remember a long time ago we used to talk about this: That someday all the premies would be hearing satsang over the telephone or over the video. And just inside I was talking about the video we could have had if we had proper arrangements: A video setup here that would be via satellite being transmitted to all these countries. But I don't sec that that day is too far. I think it's very, very close.
It's just like such an incredible thing is happening to all of us, to all of us in our lives. And this incredible thing really is this Knowledge. It really is Guru Maharaj Ji. It's really his Grace. 1 mean, you can talk about your unsensitive, idiotic mind, try to rationalize what this really is, what this is all about. People have so many explanations about this. And yet, if you truly look at it, not from one side or the other side, but really truly look at it in the sense where it really is, as it is, it's only one thing. And it's this Knowledge, and it's Guru Maharaj Ji, and it's that Grace that is just making the something happen that we have never even dreamed about, that we never even thought about, that we never even expected to happen in our lives.
Actually, when I was taking off from Rome, we took off in this airplane and all of a sudden one of the engines quit. And, it was incredible, because before the
1978,
has a real
nice ring
to it."
engine quit, the airplane made a really nimbly noise, and everybody looked at each other. And Claudia was sitting there, and Claudia said. "What is that?" And I turned around to Bill Bach and I said, "What is that?" And he said, "It's the gears going up. It's the flaps going up." And I said to myself, "Flaps don't sound like that. They make more of a high-pitched noise."
Then Bill went into the cockpit to find out what was going on and they looked at him and they said, "Well, one of our engines is just gone." And then he came back and he was going to tell, but he told the captain to tell everybody that the engine was gone. And he came over the radio and he said. "We just lost an engine."
And in one way it was so incredible because there were these people sitting in the hack of this airplane who didn't know what was going on. They didn't understand what "the engine went out" meant. And then they looked at these other people, these other premies, who knew what that meant when an engine goes out, and their faces were sort of white. And yet, you can really see that it's so incredible. There's so much Grace. Because we were pretty maxed-out on the weight of that airplane and we took off, and just after we had taken off, just a few minutes after it: rumbly sound, and the engine is out.
And you look at it. And then I came back here - that was just an incident that I wanted to talk about - but when I came back here, there was this globe sitting in my office and a green line running across it: the route that we were going to take to Rome. And there's a green line from Los Angeles to Rome. And then there were so many other papers and brochures about the hall. And then it just flashed to me: Before I left here, how hard we were trying to try to make that Hans Jayanti festival manifest, to make it happen. And there were just so many things that were going on. And then it just flashed on me for an instant. It was like, every day, every day, every day, as it got closer, it just got harder and harder and harder. It's just like a squeeze.
And then I still know that there was a lot of human effort that was involved. But at the end of the whole Hans Jayanti festival I said, "You definitely cannot give credit to the human endeavor, because it didn't exist. It was purely by Grace that the whole thing manifested."
And it's purely by Grace, really in our lives, that the whole thing happens, that everything manifests. And by Guru Maharaj Ji's Grace - I mean, that's again a Grace, that we are here, that we are alive.
It's just like we talk about life, and life is something, a prospect, a thing that's so common to us. We live it. It's sort of like that.
"What's life?"
"Well, life is something that you live." And it's such a common thing to us: life. And yet, what we have to understand is that the reason that life even was given to us right now is to really go back inside to Guru Maharaj Ji.
I know that to a lot of people, Guru Maharaj Ji, the Grace, the Knowledge, is a foreign thing. But it's not foreign. Everything else is foreign. Everything else is an alien except that satsang, service and meditation. Because if it was an alien, if it was that way that it wasn't really supposed to be there, then when we came back to it, when we hit satsang, service, and meditation, why did it all of a sudden feel so good? Why all of a sudden such a miracle happens in our
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lives? Well, I know why! And that was because we were coming back home. That's the feeling of coming back home.
And to all the premies around the world who are listening right now, this is an experience that's just going to grow and grow and grow. It's not like in Prem Nagar where premies used to come up to me and say, "Well, Guru Maharaj Ji, what is Knowledge? What is the experience of Knowledge?" To them it was like this: the front gate, then a little road, and those campers up there. You open the front gate, you start walking on the road, you hit a little white railing, then you go up, make a left, and you go up, and there's the campers. That's Knowledge. To them. that's the way they figured it was. It's a trip. It's a company of life. And that is a new question that has been added to the IDP files, to the IDP application: "Does Knowledge become a part of life, or does life become a part of Knowledge?" And it's a very good question.
To people who thought that's the way Knowledge was, Knowledge was an objective. Knowledge was a thing that was on top of the hill. You climbed, climbed, climbed, climbed, and one day you will get this Knowledge. You will get this experience, and that's it. And then after that you don't have to bother about anything. To those people, you see, they were trying to make Knowledge a part of their life.
It was like life was not going to be altered. It was just another tributary being plugged into a river to become a little bigger. To make the life a little more expandable. To give it a little more leeway, to give it a little more sponge. "Receive Knowledge, kid; it's another thing. You need to do it. The guy with the shaved head and saffron clothes told you so, and that's what you believe in, don't you?" I mean, that's the thing. That's the attitude. And yet, is that really true? No. It's not true!
Knowledge is not something that's just sitting up on the hill that you can just climb up to and grab it. You know why?
become a
part of life, or
does life become
a part of
Knowledge?"
Because it's not sitting up on a hill. It's sitting within inside of you. If it was sitting on a hill you could do that. But Knowledge is not sitting on a hill. It's sitting within inside of you. And so therefore, how deep are you? What is the conquest? At what point are you going to reach the power, the conquest, that feeling of conquering, the emperor, the thing that we all try to imagine in our lives? Never! Because it's infinite.
So what was really happening is somewhere between our eagerness, in our wanting, in our desire, in our thirst, we were looking for an infinite thing. That infinite thing we sandwiched between a very finite thing. We took finite and finite - our concepts of Knowledge and ourselves, both very, very finite - and tried to sandwich the Knowledge in between those two things: ourselves and our concepts. And it can never work! It can never work! It's impossible! But by Guru Maharaj Ji's Grace …
I receive so many letters and so many cards and so many things. And what premies are really experiencing now is beautiful. Because all the time in our lives, since we were little babies, all we think about is "Go, go, go, go." And then all of a sudden somebody comes up to you and says, "Listen, you don't have to go anywhere. If you just sit still, if you become who you are, if you become one with you, you will go forever and ever
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and ever into that wanting, into that real thirst, into that thing that you really want to go to. But if you have the desire to go and go and go and go, this 'materialisticness,' physical, this absolutely idiotic desire to go and go and go, you're not going to go anywhere!"
And so premies, to me it's just purely by Grace that we are getting to that point of where we're realizing that's all within inside of us; that experience is - can you imagine? To me this is very clear. I would never want that Knowledge experience, I would never want the experience of Knowledge to be that way: It's sitting on a hilltop. So I make a little effort. I get on top. I grab it. And that's the end of it. No! It's so vast! It's so incredible! It's so infinite, that when you get there what you seem to have - that concept - there's another arrow pointing right back down saying "Detour."
Here's your concept; here is your idea: "Okay, this is it, man. This is it up there. This is where I'm going to go." And everybody says, Guru Maharaj Ji says and mahatmas say, initiators say, "Go up there. Go up there. You want to go up there." And then you really say, "Okay, I gotta go up there." And maybe in some sense you take going up there, generally going up there, take a pick. You know, make a pick. It's like somebody wants to climb Mount Everest, so they say, "I'm going to climb a mountain." So they pick a little hill, twenty-six foot hill in Florida, and climb it. By climbing that you have not climbed Mount Everest.
So in our concepts we pick a little destination. "Okay, some day when I'll be able to sit down in meditation pose and fly, I've reached it." Or, "Someday when I can do this by my will power, I've reached it." Our little stories.
And yet, when we get there, there's a detour, a sign saying, "Kid, right back down you go." And then you crawl way back down. And then, when you come back down, you see this place. You see this destiny. You see this most incredible thing right there and you become so happy and you become so blissed out, and you become so incredibly happy, because you have reached what you wanted to reach. And then you turn right, just for a second, and you see that that's exactly where you started from.
So that Knowledge, that experience that we are trying to actually have in our lives - and it's only possible by Guru Maharaj Ji's Grace, by Guru Maharaj Ji's infinite Grace.
I got up this morning and it was like, okay, today's tenth of December and I'm twenty years old. And there's going to be a lot of things happening today. And then Marolyn came up to me and she said, "How does it feel like to be twenty?"
Well, how does it feel like to be twenty? And it's just like a good question. It doesn't feel like anything to be twenty! And yet, to me, I feel twenty? No. What I feel is just a lot more Grace than when I was sixteen years old. A lot more incredible - this thing that has happened, or is happening, or was destined to happen. That's all I feel, is a lot more of it at twenty years old.
Because at sixteen I remember just sitting there. It was in the Queen Mary. And they were all just - it was full of premies. And then, of course, there was Bill Bach, who crawled out of this cake; had a bikini on, red lipstick, you know. And it was like that. It was really beautiful in one sense, because as we were walking through the Queen Mary and the guide was just - I mean, to me it was like, "Okay, let's just go along. Everybody wants to see Queen Mary."
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Because Marolyn kept saying, "Let's go see Queen Mary. Let's go see Queen Mary." I said. "Okay, let's go see Queen Mary!" We went on Queen Mary, and I guess … well, I'm pretty sure now - positive - that premies had talked to her, just told her how to handle things. And then she brought us into this hallway and she said, "Be really, really quiet, because I'm not really supposed to bring you through this hallway, because there's a surprise party arranged for somebody here."
And I said. "Okay." I was really quiet, sort of tiptoeing along. And there was this door open and there were a few premies. I'm pretty sure those premies who were standing on the front door are here right now. And I was really, really quiet. It was really incredible because as soon as I got into the door, all the lights went on and everybody started yelling, "Happy Birthday," and to me it was like, "Oh boy, I blew it! These people think that I am that person that they had this surprise party arranged for!" So I backed off! I wanted to tell them, "It's okay. Just shut off the lights and be quiet."
And then still, in the party, there were so many faces. So many faces confused, so many faces wondering, so many faces looking at you. Premies. Just trying to struggle the wrong way. 'Frying to take off - that joke about how many Polacks does it take to unscrew a bulb from the ceiling? Well, it takes five. One to hold the bulb and four to turn the ceiling around. It was that kind of a joke, trying to struggle the wrong way, trying to do things the wrong way. (That's supposed to be a joke, yeah. It's nothing personal.) But it's just - that's the concept. I mean, it's not the concept, but that's the reality of premies struggling the wrong way, doing things the wrong way. Instead of letting go, even hanging on more and more and more and more and more and more and more to it.
And so, premies, it's just so incredible. It's just so beautiful. And premies around the world, the time here is 3:33 and we have a little chilly weather.
According to yesterday's newscast, it was the warmest place in the whole country. And we have light blue skies, nice wind from the ocean. Balloons hanging here, a lot of premies standing in the driveway, and - obviously you can hear them laughing. There's Hansi right next to me. There's Claudia; there's Marolyn. And it's beautiful. So, thank you very much and it's just been an incredible day. And all I can say is that I hope that we can just celebrate these birthdays more and more and more.
And maybe the next time, maybe somehow by Guru Maharaj Ji's Grace, it'll be even possible to - well, to have a thing that travels so fast that within an hour you can cover all the countries. You can do it on the same day. And I know that well, someday it's going to be all possible. It's not an impossibility.
We used to talk about a lot of things and those things are just manifesting. It's almost like clockwork, you know? The way it's happening; the way it's just manifesting. So timely. So incredible.
And premies, keep on doing that satsang, service, and meditation. Don't let go on that. Because as soon as you do, the moment you do, you're going to fall so hard that you wouldn't know what hit you. Don't let go, whatever happens. Don't let go of that satsang, service and meditation. And so far as you keep on trying that satsang, service, and meditation, so far as you keep up with it. well, the Grace will be there. And it will be just what can I say?
It's like a story of a huge B-52 with eight engines. And if one fails, you just reach over and pull the plug on it and you just drop it, because it doesn't matter. It's just like so much power, so
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much power, so much power, so much power that Grace has. It pulls you right through it. And sometimes we don't even understand it and sometimes we don't even realize it. And it's just so beautiful. Because, I mean, look at it.
In one way it's like, okay, that engine failed and we went right back to the residence. And it was like, "Wow! Man, I wanted to get back there, and I have to get back to Malibu. And I want to celebrate my birthday there, and why did this happen?"
And yet the pilot said that if that one engine would have failed in the middle … because we were going to go to Azores and from Azores we were going to go to Bangor. And if that engine would - there's a gap. There's a period in between Azores and Bangor, and if that engine would have failed anywhere between that gap, we wouldn't have enough fuel and power left to go back or to go on forward. And it would mean ditching in the water.
I mean, it's the same exact thing like the example I gave you in Hans Jayanti. It wasn't an example. It was the real thing that happened. We had to take a commercial flight. And it turned out okay. It wasn't the greatest. And then when we came back it was a beautiful flight, smooth. It was really, really smooth. We came back and it was just beautiful.
So I know that the Grace works - well, to other people, and to a lot of people, Lord works in mysterious ways. But if Lord works in mysterious ways, He only works through one thing, and that's His Grace. And Grace works in very, very strange ways sometimes, but it's beautiful. So let it flow. Let that Grace come into your lives, and let it really manifest, and just really do satsang, service, and meditation.
Next year, 1978, has a real nice ring to it. And it's going to be a year where there's going to be a lot more programs. And it's going to be just incredible. So, thank you very much and I hope I'll see you all soon.
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