Prem Rawat (Maharaji) 1980

MAKE THAT LITTLE EFFORT

So premies, I guess this whole tour has been just like a very wonderful dream. I remember when it started and here we are: the last program on this tour.

And to be able to take that step in, to be able to go a little bit deeper, to be able to experience Guru Maharaj Ji more in this life, to be able to have that opportunity to share some satsang, to have some satsang, to be able to understand what effort we have to make in our lives - and going from one place to another place, just seeing the premies - it's been really beautiful. Because you can feel that everybody wants to make an effort, in one sense.

But when it really comes down to it, something happens. When it just comes so close sometimes - so close that you know that you are there, that perhaps even just one more step and you would be there - and then something happens, and "clinkety-clang," all the way down back again, to start all over again.

So first of all, the most important thing is that we all have to have faith in Guru Maharaj Ji. If we don't have faith in Guru Maharaj Ji, then we can't go anywhere. Because Guru Maharaj Ji is the one who has to guide us. Guru Maharaj Ji is the one who's goingSometimes, in all our activities, in all our little concepts, we feel we can hide in the corner and Guru Maharaj Ji won't look at us, won't notice us. And the thing is, it's quite contrary to that. It doesn't matter where we try to hide. How can we hide? Do we ever even try to figure out whom we are trying to hide from? And can we do that? We have our little nests. We go back in our little nests and figure we can do whatever we feel like doing. We figure that this is some place perhaps where to take the darkness away. Guru Maharaj Ji is the one who's going to bring that Light in our lives.

And to put that faith in the right place, to concentrate that faith in Guru Maharaj Ji, is such a beautiful experience, is such a joyful experience. To make that effort towards Guru Maharaj Ji - there is nothing more pleasureful. To sit down and to listen to Guru Maharaj Ji fulfills the purpose of these ears. To see Guru Maharaj Ji fulfills the purpose of these eyes. To be with Guru Maharaj Ji fulfills the purpose, almost, of why this body was created.

And to make that constant and to make that alive is where our effort has to come in. To make it real. Guru Maharaj Ji is always there, ready to respond.


Prem Rawat (Guru Maharaj Ji)
New Orleans, Louisiana - October 22, 1979


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Guru Maharaj Ji will not see whatever mistakes I made.

You see, Guru Maharaj Ji comes for every individual person in this world. Guru Maharaj Ji shows, Guru Maharaj Ji brings, that relief. Guru Maharaj Ji brings that love. Guru Maharaj Ji brings that joy in every individual's life. You just have to imagine as though this whole world didn't exist. The only thing that exists is you and Guru Maharaj Ji. You have to imagine that the meaning of this world - I mean, you don't have to imagine that the meaning of this world is useless. Look at it. Look at where it's constantly been trying to go.

You see, even though everybody knows for a fact that someday everybody is going to die - even though we all know this fact, that one day there is going to be no world anymore - we still rely on this world. We still believe in this world. We feel that living in this world, existing in this world, existing for this world, will bring us that joy and happiness that we all seek.

What is this world? I mean, so many people live their whole lives for this world. And what does this world give them in return? We have societies. What has any society ever done for any one individual? Time after time after time we live in our concepts. Don't you think Jesus was quite capable of giving Knowledge to this entire world? Every Perfect Master that has come, that Master that has demonstrated that power to every devotee, every human being who comes to them - and yet it's so obvious that we, interlocked in our concept, lose that goal, lose that end.

And when we get tied up, when we get caught up, when we believe, when we see, only this world -"my husband, my wife, my car, my children, my this, my that" - when that's the only thing you can see and that's the only thing you can look at, then that's it.

There is a song. I mean, people always have great love for their sons or for their daughters - whatever. And it's like, they can only go to a certain point. That's it. After that, everything has to be left behind.

One thing Alexander always tried to demonstrate was how powerful and mighty he was. He always wanted to demonstrate that. So he would go out and conquer everyplace and he even built this immaculate palace where everything that was inscribed in it represented the faces of different kings bowing down to Alexander. That was it. That was his dream, his everything. That was his life. When he went to Persia the Persians were so strong, were so powerful, they said, "Well, we don't even have to bother about this guy." And he was so determined. In one way I feel that, okay, maybe we are not Alexanders and we don't have our armies, but we are like little Alexanders and our army is made out of our little concepts. And we try to conquer this world by our concepts, everything that we feel is the way it is.

Look how many trips there have been in America. First of all, all there was in America were the Indians - American Indians. Now this guy, sailing a ship, had his vectors all crossed up, had his bearings all crossed up. And instead of ending up in India, he hit shore in America and discovered America.

And then somebody decided, "Well, too many taxes in England. England is not a place to live. We are being suppressed." So they all came to America. They took a ship - the Mayflower - to Plymouth, docked it there and everybody came.

And consistently there has been this problem. Okay. In America there was the Gold Rush. America is a relatively young country. The problems have been consistently like that all around the world. In India there were kings who didn't like each other. They constantly fought with each other. Everybody wanted everybody's gold. Then the Moguls came and all these guys came to India and they wanted to capture all of India. Well, finally one guy almost did. And then came the British. They went through everything to capture India and then one day they split, just left.

You look at all these examples of getting entangled in the world. Perhaps we are not like British viceroys or British troops or perhaps we are not like Columbus. And yet all they did was somehow tried in their lives to manifest a dream they had. To pursue. The thing was, the king of Spain told Columbus, "Listen, the Earth is flat." And he wanted to prove the Earth is not flat, the Earth is round.

It doesn't even make sense when you go back to everything. Nothing makes sense about how this world came into existence. This one guy gets really puzzled about it. Everybody has their concepts. And then this one guy called Darwin goes around figuring out how this world came into existence. Then he looks at this creature and he looks at that creature and he looks at this little being that transformed itself and kept transforming itself and kept transforming itself and then he came to a conclusion: "Well, that's the way this world was."

Not one single thing that is done in this world is for the benefit of the human. I mean, science is coming to the age where you see this TV show where this guy has an electric arm and he can lift up things. That is not unfeasible. That is true. They have developed arms which are electronically controlled. There are pacemakers. They have devices that can make you live on and on and on. They can do things to you. They can give you a face-lift. They can change your hair if you are not bald. They can put hair on you if you are bald. They can take those hairs out. You name it and it all can be done.

And for such a long time - for everybody who is involved in it - to them, that's the answer, that's the solution. Cancer is a big disease and they have all these campaigns. "Give to the cancer society so we can fight cancer." So even if they can conquer cancer, what difference is it going to make? The suffering of mankind has been even before I think cancer ever came alive. The suffering has been from zillions and zillions and zillions of years back: the quest to know, the quest to understand.

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Prem Rawat (Maharaji) with Lotus Feet on Pillow, 1980

There has been nobody - absolutely nobody except the devotees of the Perfect Master - who has been able to document that they had satisfaction. Oh yeah, there have been explorers and there have been scientists and they have created things and discovered things and what have you. And yet only those who had the Grace of Guru Maharaj Ji, who had the blessing of Guru Maharaj Ji, have been ever satisfied. That's it. To them, that's the only thing that has been.

All I'm trying to say is that the world that we pursue so dearly with our lives or with our whatever is a dead end. And the thing is, you keep walking every day of your life, thinking it's not a dead end. Can you imagine anybody thinking that life is a dead end? Nobody thinks life is a dead end. It just keeps going on and on. Every morning you wake up and it's the same exact thing. Just get out of your bed and go look in the mirror, look at yourself, and it's the same old you.

What is life? One pimple here and you squeeze that one out and there's another pimple here. You squeeze that one out - little morning minor changes. Sometimes you don't shave. One initiator has this theory that once in a while he has to give his beard a rest. And it's like, little minor changes here, little minor changes there - and that's life.

And that's fine. You can live like that. There are thousands of people who live that. There are millions of people who live that. Look at this Superdome. What is this all about? There are guys in there who are packing up chairs right now. They're the poor guys who just brought the chairs out there. Now that the game is over they have to pack up those chairs again. Somebody else is going to rent the hall. They're going to pack it up again. Thousands of people come. Thousands of people come into this hall and they sit down and they look at this game. There's this threehundred-foot strip down there and all these lights, these big projectors, on the ceiling. It's incredible.

This place is supposed to be so big that you can put the Astrodome inside of it. And that one Palace of Sports in Italy - the Astrodome is supposed to be so big that you can put the Palace of Sports inside of it. And what else? I just remember the stories that I had been hearing that this guy lived in the Astrodome - the guy who had designed it. Because to him it was such an achievement that he wanted to live inside of it and look at it every day. To him it was the most ingenious, most incredible thing he had ever done in his life. Well, there goes his life, as soon as they made this one. This is even bigger than that. And then somebody is going to come up with something that's even bigger than this.

There is no end to it. It's a geometric progression. One "idiocity" leads to another one. They're just going to keep on going more and more and more. And they're just going to keep on doubling.

Because we have so many things that we take for granted. It's incredible how Australia was started. There were these British kings and queens and everybody, who took their criminals and said, "Let them be sent so far away that they can never get to us." So they took them and shipped them to Australia. Big deal. They made a place better than England was. There is a place in Australia which is an identical replica of London. It has Oxford Street and it has Hyde Park. They're even named the same things. And it's a park and a street. They just built this place and now there is Australia and all grand splendor and what have you.

To us, nothing changes. There is this place in the Pacific which is incredible. It's just a little island and they don't have a single prison in the place. What they do is that if you commit a crime, they'll take you to another island a few miles away and put you there. That's it. You can't swim back. There are too many sharks there. And it's too long to swim, anyway. And it's incredible, because there is only one main street in this whole country, and there was a girl who called up the United States of America and said, "Hey, you don't have any consulate here. You think I could be your consulate here?"

And the Americans said, "Sure, why not?" Nobody even knows about this place and it's like this incredible, tiny little town where everybody is just doing their little things and that's it.

Then they took the camera over to this island which was supposed to be the prison. And there was this guy who had killed his girlfriend in this town. So they took him to the so-called prison. And in this prison there are all these criminals and there is a society. They all roam around free. They get food two times every day. There are all these trees and fruits there and they eat and … I mean, this one guy said he'd never been happier in his whole life! He said, "I don't have to bother about my job. I don't have to do anything for eating. These natives here give me whatever they have to offer."

So there. That's this world. That's this creation. What is it all associated with? What is going to happen in this world? There can be the biggest quakes. While we were in Los Angeles, there were three or four quakes right then.

Because life, to a lot of people, does not have a destination. And because life doesn't have a destination, the obstacles are only minor. If life had a destination, then there could be a fixed path. And if there could be a fixed path, then there could be obstacles in that path.

But since nobody has a destination for this life, there is no pleasure and there is no path. If a little problem comes, you just go around it. Nobody could ever conceive that there was going to be time when there was going to be so much pollution. So big deal. In Japan - now I have never seen this - but even when I was in Japan, people were telling me that people walk around with oxygen masks. They've adapted to it. That's it. That's a little obstacle. "Go around."

Americans decided they were going to end the war, so, "Drop a bomb in Hiroshima." They dropped one.

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Prem Rawat (Maharaji) 1980

Ruined the whole place. But it was "just a little obstacle." They rebuilt the whole place. Maybe the place was tabooed. Why build it there? But no. They built a place. Got everything. And they even had the trams running only a few days after the bomb was dropped there.

So when there is no destination, we wander. We wander and we wander and we wander. It's like this. When you don't know where you are going, how can you get lost? For your sake, you can be standing where you want to be.

And that margin of error always exists. There is no happiness. Nobody is happy in this world. Everybody's frustrated. Everybody's mad. It's really something else out there.

And then you just turn everything around and you see Guru Maharaj Ji. And Guru Maharaj Ji gives us a purpose. Guru Maharaj Ji gives it a definition. And from where we are absolutely lost - so lost that we can't even get lost - Guru Maharaj Ji brings us to a place where we are completely found, where we are completely saved.

So premies, make that little effort towards Guru Maharaj Ji. Remember: Guru Maharaj Ji will take three million steps for you, providing you take your three steps. Now that's a pretty good deal. Three million to three: that's a great deal. And it's even not like that. That's only a matter of putting it like that. You take your one little crawl with your toes - just creep up - and Guru Maharaj Ji will take those millions and millions of steps towards you.

So premies, thank you very much. Blessings to all the premies.

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