Divine Times - October 1976 Volume 5, Number 9
After months of beating around the bush, we've finally decided to go ahead and make a few slight changes in the old D.T. Still no name that really hits the mark has materialized, but we all agree that this new format is more to our liking - more flexible and easier to handle.
3On customs such as pranaming, Maharaj Ji felt that one culture was no better than another and stressed that we do not want to indoctrinate people in another culture's form of reverence for Maharaj Ji, and yet at the same time we do not want to devalue the importance of Maharaj Ji. In each culture we have to find a natural way to present our respect and understanding for Knowledge and Maharaj Ji: "We have to stay where we are at and mold ourselves so that the society can accept us, so there can be a fundamental basis of communication between us."
6So many steps are being taken now to insure the positive growth of the premies that it's really difficult to explain them all in a letter. So, this is just a short note to let you know that I decided this time to tape a message as a means of developing more communication with all of you. This message was taped on September llth here in Denver and will be available to all of you very soon. The questions I addressed in the tape came from premies all over the world and I hope that you will all listen to the responses I gave and that it will help everyone have a better understanding of our purpose. So as always, keep on truckin' in satsang, service and meditation and be assured that I am looking after you.
7Maharaj Ji, how should we feel about the life-style you live? As I said, it's only a spiritual connection. Don't feel anything about it, because see, this is purely mind. Sometimes mind says, "Wait a minute. Guru Maharaj Ji's married; maybe I should be married too." That's got nothing to do with it. What I am, I am. What I have to offer is something else. Accept what I have to offer, not what I am, or who I am. Because if you want to become the way I am, or who I am, you'll have to die and get born in India again, to get this kind of pigment. And then, of course, we're shorter, have black hairs, and the works, see? Whatever I am, I am. You just try to follow what I'm trying to say, and that's all you've got to be concerned about. However I live, whatever I do, it's up to me. You're premies. That connection wasn't there before, that connection isn't there now. The only connection there is, is of love. The only connection there is, is that I'm your master and your teacher, and you're my student, and I would like to teach you something. Not my life-style, but something more important. So learn that, accept that. And that's that. Next.
16A Growing Awareness An interview with John Horton, M.D.
Maharaj Ji spent a long time talking to us, giving us a lot of direction, some of it very specific about how to start up, some of it very general in terms of the whole aspect of health care as a means of propagation. When we started out, we were trying to do adequate medical care in order to get people involved enough so that we could give them satsang. It was like a front for proselytizing. That lasted for about six months and then we got so much feedback, it was really a bad scene for a while. "We want medical care, we don't want to hear about your trip. It may be very nice, it may be very real, but give us the option of not being a captive audience." Most of our patients, even now, are not premies. They're just people from Bethesda, Maryland.
20For a long time, my approach to Knowledge was one based on spiritual concepts and guilt. Practicing Knowledge to me meant attending formal satsang four or five times a week, sending in my 10% to Denver each month, practicing the meditation techniques for two hours a day at all costs, and telling people around me about my guru in hopes that they, too, could be "saved." My failure to do any of these things resulted in extreme guilt. Yes, I went on practicing Knowledge based on my understanding at the time, but I was neither happy nor satisfied, though I would never admit it - even to myself.
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