Cosmic Showdown

Satsang given by Initiator John Hampton at Guru Puja, July 30, 1977

Jai Satchitanand! Every time I am asked to give satsang I really never know where to begin. I just went through the darshan line; in fact by his Grace I was at the residence and came here with Guru Maharaj Ji, and I know many times premies ask, they say, "Well, what is Guru Maharaj Ji like? What is he like? What kind of things does he do? How does he act?" And I've been asked that question a lot. And I've never known what to say. Like most people, when you are around them, you can say, "Well, he's kind of like this, and sometimes he looks like this, and he acts like this." And then the other day somebody asked me, "What is Guru Maharaj Ji like?" And I understood something inside.

After being near him physically quite a bit over five years, I understood that you can't say what Guru Maharaj Ji is like. A question like that is like if somebody says, "What is the Holy Name like? What is this Holy Word like?" What can you say? We know it's always there, we know it's always with us. But yet sometimes we can be in our mind and it seems like it's not there. But sometimes we can just touch it, we can just feel it for an instant, for a second, in our day, in our meditation. And it fills us up. It changes us completely. It takes us. We open our eyes and we start to walk through this world just by touching that Holy Name. We walk through this world and it's completely changed. It's light. It's beautiful. We feel something. We feel Love. We feel the presence of Love.

I don't know - by Guru Maharaj Ji's Grace, what can we say? I look out here, and … so many premies. From the residence, Maharaj Ji turned on the video for a little while, and it's just so obvious that premies are beautiful; premies are different. You walk out on the street, you go to theaters, you see crowds of people, and Maharaj Ji has made us different, completely different than the. people of this world. And what is supremely incredible is he has only just begun. He's trying the best he can, just extending his hand, offering Love, offering Grace, offering to take us into such a clarity that we can see, that we can know why we have this physical life, why we are in these physical bodies.

And I know so often it is the tendency with men, with man in this world, with people in this world - they resist. They don't trust. And slowly, slowly, slowly I can see, just in the little traveling around that I've done, that premies are beginning to trust. They are beginning to trust Guru Maharaj Ji. They are beginning to let go of all of these preoccupations, to let go of what they think are their responsibilities, are their worries, are their doubts in this world. And sometimes I kind of feel we are so focused inside that we can't see, we really can't see how we are being changed.

It's so ingrained in the mind of man to come in this world and try to take all we can get, and I think Maharaj Ji last night was trying to make it so clear that you can't try to take this Knowledge. You can't just grab at Love and take it. And he's given us this beautiful way, this beautiful process: satsang, service, and meditation. He's given it to us so that by his Grace we might begin to let go, to let go of this thing in us that always wants to grab, always wants to grab even at this beautiful experience.

For example, there is a sister that I lived in an ashram with a few years ago. And I saw this sister over a period of time, and she was always concerned with helping her brothers and sisters, always concerned with serving Guru Maharaj Ji, just always concerned - trying to make sure that she was the one, you know; she didn't want to delay in attending satsang, she didn't want to - it was just like she was becoming a servant.

And servants are rare in this world. I would say servants are probably the rarest thing on Earth today, because you can't be a true servant without the Perfect Master. Because in serving the Perfect Master there is nothing in it for your mind. There is nothing in it for your ego. But what happens when we start to become servants, we start to become so focused on serving our Lord in his perfection, he takes our life in his hands and he begins … it's like we sing in Arti:

24    January/February, 1978

Bring him your heart, bring him your soul. And this is what I feel inside myself. You begin to serve and you begin to feel him taking you.

Like this sister - I've seen her a couple of times kind of break down, and she would cry and she would say, "I don't know what this Holy Name is." She was sitting and trying to meditate and trying to meditate. Sometimes she would come up. she'd say, "I don't know what the Holy Name is." But then that would go away. Like everyone, she had little problems once in a while. But what I saw was like, as a servant you're so focused on serving, you're so focused on serving your Lord, that your concern isn't with yourself. Your concern is like - something clicks inside, and less and less and less are you concerned with what's happening with you, the less you are concerned with what's happening with this thing that we think we are.

Maybe it's subtle. But it grows and it grows, and before you know it, it's just like you begin to get filled up. Your whole life, whatever you're doing - you're walking, you're talking, you're serving, you're giving satsang - you're focused inside and you're filled inside. And by Guru Maharaj Ji's Grace, through this process we become tuned. Because Love exists inside of us. He exists inside of us: greater, with more to give us, than we could ever imagine, than we could ever hope for in this life.

It's beyond the capacity of man's intellect, of man's dream, to even begin to conceptualize what it is Maharaj Ji is trying to open us up to, what it is he's trying to offer us. And I remember, Maharaj Ji called this sister I was talking about, I guess he called her up to be an initiator, and I heard that her reaction was, "There must be some mistake. Me?"

And that's just a little bit - that over the video, when the video was scanning the crowd, I just flashed on that. I see premies and maybe they have little troubles, maybe they have worries, maybe there's things we don't understand. But I know one thing: We've got the power of Almighty Lord waiting to help us, waiting to give us every answer, waiting to fill us up with something so beautiful. And he's doing it.

For me, over these five years, I've watched Guru Maharaj Ji. I've seen the things he's doing physically and I've heard the things that he has said. And I'll tell you, I've never heard him saying anything like he's been saying this year since these festivals began. I remember back in '72 and '73 he'd say things, and all through the years everything he says, down to the person, down to the circumstance with family, with the Mission, with whatever, he's always called it, he's always said it's going to happen. And it happened.

And I know once - this was maybe ten months ago in Malibu - Maharaj Ji said there has never been a Perfect Master that spoke so much about surrender, because the people weren't ready. The time wasn't right. And what's he doing now? He's offering the supreme opportunity. For me, I feel it's an opportunity that is so supreme, it's not just the supreme opportunity of human life, but I feel it goes beyond that.

Because there has never been a Perfect Master that has said he is going to do the things that Maharaj Ji is saying he's going to do.

Look at our numbers. As far as the world is concerned, they are small. Our numbers are just miniscule. But I'll tell you, the realization that is happening in our heart, I can just feel it. I know I can feel it when I open up to Guru Maharaj Ji, when I'm feeling that. I know that there is nothing that he can't do. And I know that there is nothing that he won't do for us.

But we've got to trust him. We've got to love him. We've got to love him with all of our hearts and all of our souls. Because if we don't, what else is there to love? What is there in this world to love?

I feel it's the beginning of a cosmic

January/February, 1978    25

showdown. We see the power that's controlling this world. The more we open up to Guru Maharaj Ji, the more we trust Guru Maharaj Ji, the more we surrender to him, the more it begins to be so clear what it is that is causing the suffering in this world and what it is that causes us to suffer. It's selfishness; it's ego.

I've been through my ups and downs, and I've been through times where doing services and things, I didn't understand why I didn't know what was going on.

But I knew one thing in my heart. I knew that Guru Maharaj Ji knew. I knew that Guru Maharaj Ji was watching me. I knew he was with me all the time in my heart, even if times were hard. I thought, "Well, okay, I'm in a position where you might say you sign on the line. I've dedicated my life." And I remember I used to think, "Well, hmm, how do people decide, how do people determine where to draw the line on dedication?"

And then, sometime last year I moved out of the ashram, and there I was. It didn't take very long. This world has always been pretty easy for me, as far as getting it together financially. And 1 had this money. I was making good money. I had it physically pretty well made. But I could see that, "Wow, this isn't what I want. I've done this before." And I really had such a strong question, like "What is dedication?" I really want to dedicate myself. And I just started going inside, going inside.

And that's what Maharaj Ji was saving last night. With every question, the answer is right behind it. And it's so beautiful that he is in there. When we stop spending our time asking our questions and answering them up here (head), when we just start - if there is a question, just start going inside. Maybe it takes a little patience. Maybe it takes a little trust. But the answer doesn't come to here. The answer comes in our heart. The answer comes in our soul. It comes in the form of spiritual experience. It comes in the form of knowing, of knowing in a way that you know.

How can you tell the people of this world what you know? How can you tell them Guru Maharaj Ji - he sits up there, and to so many people he looks like a human being, he just looks like a person. How can you explain to somebody that by his Grace, you know that that body is a focal point in this physical world, that Guru Maharaj Ji isn't limited to the physical body?

Because in your own life - what's happening to us? We're being changed. We're being moved. We're being taken.

All the analogies that are given, all the things that we say in satsang, we communicate with words and they are only trying to signify something, something that is happening so much greater than words, something that is happening so much greater than the power of mind to make these words and conceptualize. Maharaj Ji is taking us. He's changing us. He's bringing our awareness into him, into the consciousness of Love, into the consciousness of oneness, into such a trust that we can move through this world just now, being so small but knowing that our Father is Almighty Lord, and knowing that he is here to give. He's here to protect. He's here to take us.

This is Guru Puja. We come to worship Guru Maharaj Ji. Can we ever thank him? I remember after Orlando. after the Orlando Festival, I was in the residence and Maharaj Ji had just shown Power of Love, when it first came out, three times. And each time the message, it was obvious, was coming through Guru Maharaj Ji from such a place, by the third time he showed it all the premies there were just like gone. Just like, Wow! And I remember I asked Guru Maharaj Ji, I said, "Maharaj Ji, is there ever any way that we can thank you for giving us this Knowledge?" And Maharaj Ji, I can't remember his answer verbatim, but he just said something like, "It's not a matter of thanks: it's something that is rightfully yours." But he said you can say thank you anyway.

And this is the thing. Obviously, we don't know where we came from and we don't know where we are going, but like he says, if we are getting into it, we can feel it. We can feel it when we come together in these festivals. We can feel it when we touch his Lotus Feet. We can feel it when we go inside ourselves. And the more we do it, the greater it is, the greater the feeling, the more the trust, the more the surrender. And the more we move, the more he's able to take us away from mind, the more he's able to take us into a place where we are recognizing, "Guru Maharaj Ji, there's nothing you can't do in this world. There's nothing. And as a human being in a human body, by your Grace, you're letting me see, you're letting me see that I can - wow, I have this opportunity to just take what you give, to give you my life." And then we begin to experience our life isn't even ours anyway.

We can begin to question, like he's been saying in his satsang, that "This thing that I always thought I was, it's just ugly.

26    January/ February, 1978

I don't want any part of it. I want this beauty. I want the feeling. I want to move in this life, in the consciousness of your Love." I'll tell you, to just begin - I'm almost 35 and I can look at my life and I might as well not have lived, as far as I'm concerned, for those first 29 years, because I was lost. And now by his Grace, can you ever thank him? It's like, now he can send me wherever he wants and I know I'm never away from him. He's always with me.

It's not just a faith; it's an experience. It's beyond a doubt. He's there. His Grace is there working for me and working for his premies. And all he wants me to do is open up to it, just open up to it and watch it and feel it. How can you describe that, that in your life you're having a relationship with your Lord, with the power of creation? He's there all the time. He's there with us.

Last night, when he was saying that Guru Maharaj Ji was even there before we had Knowledge - he was, only we didn't know it. And I remember in '71 it was just kind of - I had Maharaj Ji's darshan. I went to a program that completely turned me off. I had a good job, went home, never thought about Guru Maharaj Ji until about a year later. But I remember I had his darshan. And about a week or two later, my life took a drastic change. I quit my job. I got on a sailboat, a big sailboat with a crew and we just started sailing to Mexico and Hawaii, and I picked up a scripture written by Vivekananda about the experience of Knowledge, and it blew my mind. It changed my life. I began to feel inside that maybe it was possible not to just believe; to know, to have the experience.

And how can I thank him? How can I thank him now that he took me and he's giving me that experience, and by his Grace that experience is becoming stronger and stronger and stronger every day, completely by his Grace?

And I remember the name of the boat. I never knew what it meant before. The name of the boat I was sailing on was called the Namsang, which I guess might mean company of the Name. And here I am. Almighty Lord heard me. Almighty Lord was there all the time guiding me along, like he's been guiding every one of us along, and like he's going to guide us along for the rest of our lives if we continue to make the choice, if we continue to open up to him, if we give him our life, if we give him our love, if we stay on his boat. This is the reality.

Guru Maharaj Ji is the Perfect Master, and he's come here to change this world.

And to do that he's got to change us. And all he's asking is that we let him, is that we surrender our mind, surrender ourselves to him, open up to him, let him free us, let him hold us. Because there is never a time when his Love is not. It's always there.

Sometimes Maharaj Ji plays a song, a popular song, on his stereo, and it says, "What do I have to do to make you love me? What do I have to do to be heard?" And it goes on. And Maharaj Ji is going to go on, and it's like he's giving us the opportunity to go with him. But the only way we can go with him is to go inside, because the only eyes that you can see the Perfect Master with are the eyes of this heart. The only way we can recognize and stay with Guru Maharaj Ji is if we listen to him and do exactly what he says. He's been saying it to us, telling us the whole time, and it's true. No matter how much resisting maybe some of us are doing, I know in our hearts every one of us knows it's true. One thing I can see in my life: Without going, without moving into this spiritual realization, our life is a waste; it's a waste.

By his Grace, I can see the only reason I have this body is to worship his Lotus Feet, and beg him with all my heart that he might give me the Grace to stay on this boat forever.

So thank you.

January/February, 1978    27