Prem Rawat (Maharaji) - Effort In The Right Direction

On 29 November 1976, during the conference in Frankfurt, Germany, Guru Maharaj Ji held a program for the local premie community. After satsang and arti, Maharaj Ji pulled his chair to the edge of the stage and the audience gathered around him for "casual" satsang.

So, how is the Frankfurt community doing? I see there are premies from Heidelberg here. How are the premies in general doing? Pretty good or pretty bad? Understanding Knowledge or having very difficult times? Very difficult times?

Make effort in the right direction. It's like trying to take pictures - you don't press the shutter, you press the rest of the camera and nothing will happen. You just have to press the shutter and you will have a picture. Same way, you make the effort in the right direction and you will get positive results. Make the effort in the wrong direction and you will not get positive results. I think premies in general are trying. They are. And I think with everybody's cooperation things are starting to move back again. The way I put it in Denver was like a big tugboat: doesn't go very fast, it just starts to go tug, tug, tug, tug, and slowly just starts to move out. You can barely see the whole ship that it's moving, the whole ship that it's pulling, but you most definitely after a little while see the result. It's nice.

Frankfurt premies are lucky that they are able to have this conference here, everybody was able to come together, have this satsang. That was really nice. Maybe the only thing that you missed was questions and answers. That was supposed to be scheduled, but ask me about questions and answers, I am an expert at that. For seven years, I am an

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No. 37, April 1977

expert in questions and answers, and the thing is that the more chance you have, the more opportunity is given to premies to ask questions, more craziness comes out.

But when it is just listening, when it is just understanding service and surrendering to satsang, it is much more beautiful, I feel. I feel a lot of premies get a lot more when they surrender and they listen to satsang. I think satsang is a lot more beautiful than trying to have so-called question and answer sessions. Because I used to have a lot of question and answer sessions, and the only benefit from those question and answers that premies would ever get, was the satsang that was given for the answers. So it is just much better to just listen to some satsang, and just try to understand, try to digest. Because you will be surprised if you read over the satsang that was given tonight, or satsang that was given earlier that you were present in. Three days later, four days later, two months later you hear the same satsang and it is completely amazing, completely surprising, because you read it, and it is completely amazing because you can digest it a little bit better. In terms of talking it is happening so fast, everything is going so fast, that sometimes it is hard to grasp all of the satsang. But then when you get a chance to sit down and maybe read the whole satsang or maybe get a chance to listen to it again it is a lot better.

Somebody asks if they can go to California to be with Maharaj Ji

California? Listen, you don't want to go to California. There is the San Andreas fault that runs from San Francisco all the way to San Andreas, Mexico. It is a fault, a geological fault in the land, and one of these days it is supposed to just split - you don't want to go to California. It's not where we are, where we are, you understand what I mean? It's not where we are in terms of country-wise or city-wise or whatever have you, it is where we are at, if you are at a nice place it's very beautiful.

Well, this kind of satsang hall trip hasn't happened in years. There's a lot of love. But also premies have to understand that 50,000 premies trying to do this, I'm pretty sure that somebody would get killed. Small programs like this, two hundred people here, doesn't hurt - except I almost got squashed against the stage. These security guys have got very bad names. They don't need bad names, they do a pretty good service. They try to do their best. Before it was a little bit crazy, I must admit: premies got thrown around everywhere. But now it's really beautiful, you don't get rushed through darshan. Before it was like, you either could do pranam or you could see me, but now you can at least do both, and have Holy Breath if you need it.

That's a lot of satsang, a lot of service. A lot of people say, "We want to do service, we got to find service, we got to look for service to do." Sometimes, you just have to find some service. If somebody can't give you service, you just have to find some service to do in your community, and there is a lot of service that you can do, a lot of satsang, a lot of meditation. We need to be strong, we all need to be very strong. Do you agree? We need to be all very strong, have a lot of understanding.

Someone says something about California

We are not trying to run question and answers here. We don't want to get into that.

It's the earth. There is a fault in the land, and the land in California is shifting underneath, it's moving. So if it moves, you don't want to be there when that happens. No, I had a dream that there was an earthquake and everything and the ocean came all the way up to the Residence and we had the beach on our front yard and nothing happened, by grace. I don't know, but I'm not counting on that dream so much.

Another question

Oh, I'm going there. What do you want to go there for? Well, if you are too much with me, then you become like these guys are, and these guys don't appreciate me. These guys don't care -they stay with me or they don't stay with me, they stayed with me for so long. They go crazy after a little while. I think it's nice to see you once in a little while. Most important thing is to practise satsang, service, and meditation, that's what I say. That's what my experience is, that's what you are going to learn from me. A lot of people think they learn a lot of things if they are with me: all these guys have learnt is to do a lot of service. Forget about everything else. They come down and have meditation and they have satsang - they go to sleep during meditation - they come down and they have service and they sit down and say, "Who is going to rake the front lawn today?"

It's really beautiful. Sometimes it fogs in, it's really foggy and the fog gets heavy enough so it drops below the level of the house. And it's like the house is on a hill and the hill is just rolling so you can't see the sharpness of it falling down. And the fogs will come all the way to the top of the hill just where the land goes down. So it's like all you see is just like a huge aeroplane, and it's just rolling, rolling with fog, and it's completely clear, crystal clear, bright sun, blue skies, deep blue. And you drive down and it's fog and it's raining and wet and drizzling. It's really beautiful, really beautiful.

Somebody speaks

What do you want to speak about? Sounds like Mister Mind has paid him a visit once too often. Which people should think about becoming initiators? Live ones. People who are live. Dead are no good. Well, I just started to give my opinion about what I really thought about it, it's a very serious service. A few people thought it could be a part-time service or something - that was the nuttiest idea I ever heard about. It is not a part-time service. It is a full-time service, because you have to hold your horses all the time, you have to keep yourself together inside all the time, otherwise how can you then give Knowledge? You have to be strong in the experience of Knowledge. You have to have a lot of understanding, a lot of love and a lot of strength behind you. We have not yet opened it to everybody, because we just tried the O.T. program and we got piles and piles and piles of applications. Some premies, I said, "Okay, you can be on O.T." and two days later they freak out - that's not the way it goes. Basic thing right now a lot or things are happening in premies' lives, a lot of things are happening in the organisation. There were all these changes brought forth, and I'm taking all these changes right back to where they belong. Taking premies to where they belong, taking everything and putting it back in its place. Right now it's just like a big mess, somebody really threw up and that was mind - it really threw up bad. And so right now I would just like a lot of premies to get strong in their experience of Knowledge. That's about it.

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