Prem Rawat in Chennai 2010-05-09

Today, we have an opportunity to listen, to hear. Most importantly, to understand something so this life can be more pleasant, so this time that we have on this Earth can be more pleasant. After quite a few events that I have done, getting a chance to speak in English, it's a little bit different. But, what I want to say today is about understanding our nature. Everything in this existence has its nature. And when we understand the nature of whatever it is, the nature of water, then we can take that water and use it for our benefit. If we understand the nature of rock, there's many kinds of rocks. Some rocks you cannot do construction with because if you do, they will crumple. Some rock, very hard. Some rocks, very beautiful. And even becomes more beautiful if you polish it. And we understand these things, we understand the nature of these things. That's why so many temples are made with marble. So many kitchens have granite. We understood the nature. Because we understood the nature of these elements, steel, aluminum, we were able to create huge buildings. But do we even try remotely to understand our own nature? By understanding the nature of water, human being was able to take it and use it for his benefit, for her benefit. Understanding the nature of steel, the human being was able to use it for the benefit of people. But if we don't understand our nature, how are we going to be able to use this life to benefit us? So the question really becomes, do we have a desire? Do we want to know our nature? And then if we want to know our nature, what is our nature? Somebody comes up with the explanation. We want to know. We want to know. Why is there pain and sorrow in our life? So somebody comes up with an explanation. Lost lifetime. We don't understand it.

We accept it. Okay. In my last lifetime, I must have done something really bad. And because of that, I'm having to suffer the consequences of it. We accept it. That's why things are wrong. Now do you remember what it was that you did that was bad? Because if you know what was bad, then you can correct it in this lifetime. But if you don't know what was bad, you will do it again. Who defines what is good, what is bad, what is right, what is wrong? Who defines it? Do you define it? Or the society defines it? Do you define it? Or your relatives define it? Do you define it? Or predetermined priests decide? Who decides what is good, what is bad, what is right, what is wrong? Do you have any control over it? Do you? Who do you live for? Who do you live for? People say, a human being should live for the good of others. It's a generally accepted statement. Okay? The best thing you can do, the best thing you can do, is to give your breath to somebody else. Could you give somebody a bigger present than that? Could you, could you do a more charitable deed than giving your breath to somebody else? I don't think so. So do it. You can. Impossible. You cannot give your life to someone else. You are living your life. There is a joke, and it goes something like this. One time, there were these two old ladies in a car driving. So they went through one red light, and the passenger was very alarmed. Oh my God! Went through another red light, and the passenger said, this is terrible. Went through another red light, and the passenger went, Lakshmi, you're not paying attention. And Lakshmi said, what do you mean me not paying attention? I thought you were driving. Who is driving this car? Because the driver thinks it's the passenger, and the passenger thinks it's the driver.

Who is driving the car? Who? Who is in charge of making sure that every moment in this life is spent consciously? You are. Nobody else. You are. Who is responsible to make sure that every moment is spent in that joy? Who is responsible for that? You are. And when? This is part of understanding that nature, that when you are fulfilled, when you are fulfilled, whatever you do, when you are fulfilled, whatever you do will be a good deed. Look, a unlit lamp cannot light another lamp regardless of how much effort it wants to make. The lamp has to be lit first before it can light an unlit lamp. Understanding your nature, are you lit or are you extinguished? Because if you're not lit and you're trying to light, it will never work. If you are unconscious, because the act of doing something good for someone requires consciousness, and if you are unconscious, how can you do anything that is good for anyone when you yourself don't have that consciousness? In this life, in this life, any master that has come on this earth has again and again talked about now. Now. And it becomes, for most people, they don't understand what that means. Why don't they understand what that doesn't mean? A man came to a master once. He was very critical. He came, sat down, and he heard what the Master had to say. He raised his hand afterwards, and he says, you know, you have talked about all these things being inside of me, that the joy I am looking for is inside of me, the happiness that I am looking for is inside of me, the God that I am looking for is inside of me. All these things are inside of me. If they are inside of me, how come I don't know? How come I don't know? Master said, fine, I will answer your question, but why don't you rest, and tomorrow we will go and find an answer to your question. The guy could not wait. All night long he was thinking, what will the answer be, what will the answer be? Got up the next morning, took his shower, was ready, and the Master said, let's go for a walk. Took him for a walk. And the Master took him to a place where all the people who were blind from the village, used to live, used to help each other out. And he picked out one blind person, visually challenged, from birth, and he said to the man, he said, do you see all of this around you? Do you see the village? Do you see the trees? Do you see the sky? Do you see the sun? Do you see the clouds? Do you see the birds? Do you see all of this? And the man with the question said, yes, I see. He said, do you believe in all of this? Do you believe that the sun is shining? Do you believe that there is a tree there? Do you believe that there is a bird there? Do you believe that there is a hut there? Do you believe there is a river there? Do you believe there is a road there? Do you see all these things? Do you believe all this exists? And he said, yes. He said, so now make him believe all this exists.

And so the man started describing. He said, there is this thing, it's called a tree, it's got branches, it's green on the top, brown at the bottom, and the blind man just sat there quietly. And he said, now do you know what a tree is? And the blind man said, no, I've never seen a tree in my life. All your description didn't make me see a tree. And even if I try to imagine a tree, I truly cannot because I don't know what brown is. I have been blind since birth. I don't know what green is. All I see is nothing. So the man scratched his head and goes, well, this is very difficult. I mean, it's obvious to me that there is a tree. It is obvious to me that it is brown, that it is green. It is obvious to me that there is a sky and it is blue. It is obvious to me because I can see. And this blind man cannot see and the more I try to describe, the more confused he is going to become because he has no reference. When I say the color brown, I would think that that would evoke in him the understanding of what brown is. But he has never seen brown, so how would he know what brown is? So the man said, okay. He said to the Master, he said, okay, I understand. But how does that answer my question? The master said the same way. To you, all that you can see is obvious, but he's blind. To him, it is not obvious. Same way, what is within me, I see and it is obvious to me you are blind. To the world inside and therefore it doesn't really matter what I say to you, how much I describe it to you, there is no common frame of reference just like that blind person. You are blind and until you can be given the sight to see what is within you, you will not know what I speak of. You will not be able to understand that yes, your God is inside of you.

You will not be able to understand that the joy that you are looking for is inside of you, that what you seek in your life is inside of you. Then, the man understood. He said it's the same way. How can you try to describe to somebody who is deaf from birth what music sounds like? No frame of reference. We too are deaf to the inner voice. We too are deaf to that inner music. We too are deaf and until we can be given the power to hear the inner feeling, we will not know. This is what you have been given. This is what Knowledge is. Knowledge is the sight for the blind to that world that we were blinded to to be able to open our eyes and see that beauty inside. The ears to be able to hear that what is going on inside of us. When I talk about the magic of this breath, it is the same. A person who is dead does not understand anymore what that magic of breath is. To the world inside, we too are dead. When we receive the gift of this Knowledge, that is the day we begin to say, ah, my breath, my existence. So, I'm talking about our nature. And our nature is to be content. And the only way a human being can be content is when the heart of a human being says so. Contentment is not a definition. Contentment is not a light. Contentment is not a statement. Contentment is not a scale. Contentment is a feeling. Quenching of the thirst is a feeling, not a scale.

If somebody says one glass of water will quench your thirst, wrong. If you are thirsty for only a quarter of a glass, then that will do it. If you are thirsty for two glasses, one won't be enough. Who decides, who dictates how thirsty you are? Can you predict? Can you predict how thirsty you are? Sometimes, I might not even be thirsty. Somebody brings me a glass of water and I completely drink it, and they go, you want another? Okay. Drink another. Cannot predict. Will one glass do it? Will two glasses do it? Will three glasses do it? It is not a question of quantity. It is a question of what the feeling is. Do you? Because this is your nature. This is how you are. You have a mind. But you don't think it is limited. You think it's unlimited. It is very limited. It can think of incredible things. I'm not saying that it can't. It can think of incredible things. But can it always think of obvious things? What's obvious? Not always. Not always. Mind can dream about tomorrow. Mind can remember all those things that happened yesterday. But can mind actually help you live in the moment called now? It can't. It's not capable.

Its job is to go either backwards or forwards. Its job is not to think of what is now. There is only one thing in you that can understand this moment called now and it is your heart. Not your mind. Your heart. That's why you have a heart. That one place from where questions don't come but inspiration does. That one place from where questions don't come but inspiration does. That one place from where reasoning doesn't come but gratitude does. Gratitude. And understanding that gratitude. Not reasoning. Mind likes to reason. Mind likes to reason. Mind likes to gloat. You know what gloat means? Maybe not everybody is familiar with the term gloat. There are people in this world and I just saw one a few days ago on television. And this person was gloating. And what is gloat? It's not like a goat. But it's a gloat. Gloat means he was so into himself that he was unbelievable. Talk about ego. His ego thermometer didn't have a red line. It just went beyond heavens.

And it was amazing. It was amazing. Human beings like to gloat. Reasoning. When something bad happens, we reason. It bad happened because of him. Good happened because of me. Isn't that how you operate? What does God do? What does God do? In India, people believe God does nothing but test, test, test, test, test. So I ask you a question. Is the God who tests, does this God know what the result will be or not? You think about this, okay? People say God is testing me. So if the God is testing, therefore it would imply that the God doesn't actually know if you will pass or fail. Because if God already knows, right? If God already knows you will fail, what is the point of testing you? If God already knows you will pass, what is the point of testing you? But you think God tests you. If you think God tests you, then this God that tests you doesn't know. And why would you like to be tested by a God that doesn't know? There's a big hole in this theory of God tests you. God is testing you. This is your period of test. Big hole in the logic that God tests you. God does not test you. You allow yourself to be tested. The test, who gives you the test? The society gives you the test. The friends give you the test. The relatives give you the test. They are the ones who are testing you because they don't know. Why would God want to test you? What would be the reason? It is quite the contrary that every human being is blessed.

The blessing already exists. To understand this, that the blessing already exists, that's why you need Knowledge. Because nothing shows it clearer every day that you sit down to practice it. Nothing shows it to you clearer that the blessing has already been given to you. Nothing. Nothing delights your heart more than to sit down and practice this Knowledge. The prashad, the gift of God is not wealth. The gift of God is not wealth. The gift of God is not better promotion. The gift of God is not more children. The gift of God is not more land. The gift of God is not more food. This already God has done. The gift of God is peace. If anything that can be given that is truly worth giving, then it is the gift of peace. And when you sit down and practice this Knowledge, that is exactly the gift you are given. The gift of peace. But see, we're so caught up because we don't understand our nature. We think our nature is to excel. Yes, it is to excel. But at what? Human beings, we all pride ourselves. We gloat. We're human. But do you know that a dog has infinitely better smell of sense than we do? When we smell daal that has been cooked, we smell daal that's already cooked.

When a dog smells daal that has already been cooked, the dog can smell the daal, the turmeric, the garlic, if it has onions in it, cumin. Whatever is in that daal, the dog can smell every single smell separately. That's why they use dog for security. Because even if it is in a suitcase full of bananas and apples and oranges, and there is something that shouldn't be there, the dog will be able to smell it. We will only smell the combination of oranges and apples and everything else. But the dog has much, much better smell, sense of smell, than us. We pride ourselves on inventions. We have cell phones. And we go, listen, look at this, you know, cell phone, I can talk around the world. A whale can do that. A whale can talk around the world. We are very, very proud. We have airports and we have airplanes. Whales go around the world all the time, all the time, all the time. Tourism for whales is one part of the world. They breed in one part, they eat in one part, and they raise their babies in one part. Traveling, traveling, traveling, traveling, traveling, traveling, traveling, traveling. Sometimes when I look at the numbers of how much I have traveled, I begin to gloat. I travel this much, I travel that. Nothing compared to the whale that will travel much, many, many, many more miles than I can even ever imagine. Little birds. They know they will go down, for the winter they will go down south and for the summer they will come up north. Some little birds travel from the tip of Africa all the way to Europe, all the way to Europe and back. Amazing.

And these birds don't gloat at their ability. The whales don't gloat, I went there, and I went there, and I went there, and I went there. No. Dogs don't gloat, I can smell better than you. You smell bad. I know what you ate for lunch. I know what you ate for breakfast. I know what you ate for dinner. I know what you ate yesterday. But we gloat. Because we're not doing what we are meant to be doing. What we are meant to be doing is enjoying this existence in the realm of that peace. Celebrating, this is what we are good at. Celebrating with gratitude this existence, this time that we have. Delighting in the existence of our heart. Delighting in what that heart has to say to us. Delighting that there is something that isn't about reasoning. That there is something that isn't about questions. That there is something that isn't about ideas. There is something that isn't about just all the things that people have sat down and all the ideas, all the ideas, all the ideas that have accumulated over the period of years. It isn't about education. It isn't about learning, but it is learning of the self. Look at it. Today, in this world, there are more schools than there ever were.

Today, in this world, there are more people who are educated than there ever were. In this day and age, there is more books now than there ever were. Do you know that? Do you know that right now, there are more books today than there ever were? More educated people than there ever were. More education institutions than there ever were. And there is more crime now than there ever was. And more wars, killing more people. More differentiation between the color of skin. More apartheid in action now than there ever was, than there ever was. Unless you know about the self, all these other things mean nothing. They only begin to mean something when a person knows about what this life is, the true nature of a human being, a true nature of the existence. If I say to people, your breath, it's important. What does that mean to you? What does it mean to people out there? Breath? It means nothing. But the day you don't breathe, you'll be dead. The day you don't breathe, you will be dead. What does breath mean to you? It is everything. And it's so beautiful. It's so beautiful, as it's been described, that the coming and going of this breath is my blessing. You talk about nature. That's the nature, that this is the vessel that will take you across ignorance. That's the bhavsagar. A lot of people get confused. What is the bhavsagar? Don't be scared of bhavsagar. All it is, is ignorance. Ignorance.

What is the opposite of ignorance? Knowledge. Knowledge. A gyan? Gyan. The lack of gyan, lack of Knowledge, is ignorance. That's the bhavsagar. Without the light, you will run into things. With the light, you will know where to go. So, for me, for you, understanding our nature. This is what this can do very well, is get you across. Get you across this ocean of ignorance. That's what it's good for. It can generate, it can make, it can create, it can dream cellphones, but that's not really what it's really good at. You know, the whole world is gloating. The world gloats. Look what we have invented. Look what we have invented. What we have invented. What we have invented. People are going to laugh at you. In year 3011, people will talk about 2010, and go, did you know people used to carry these things called cellphones? People used to travel in these metal cars that go, called trains. People used to travel in these noisy tubes called airplanes. They used to take huge part of their towns, take prime space, and dedicate it to these birds that they could then land and take off. Of course. As we laugh at them, how do we show, how do we show the old cars? You know, we show them as jokes.

Trains, jokes. In America, some of the steam trains have become, I mean, they're so rare that they have actually put out another steam train. And it's one of the old steam engines. And they take people for a whole tourist ride so they could experience what it was like for people to be traveling 60, 40, 50 years earlier. And people pay money. Much, much more money than they can for the same journey. Because it has become a novelty. All of this will become a novelty. What will this become? This will become dirt. What will remain is some abstract thought of who you were. Today, you are today sitting in this hall. Don't you think other people pass through the same space before you? Many, many, many, many more times the people that this hall can actually hold went through here, back and forth, going to their village, going to the ocean, going to their village, going to their ocean. Where are they? Were they not human beings? Of course they were. Were they not fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles? Of course they were. Did they not want to be happy? Of course they were. Who knows, maybe there was even a tree here, somewhere in the middle where the hall is right now. Maybe there was even a tree and who knows, maybe people even sat under that tree and talked. Unknown to them that someday there will be a hall here and there will be 3,800 people or whatever could sit in this place and they would also talk. That's what happens. If you don't know your nature, you are a lost passenger. On this planet you are a lost passenger and the consequence of that is going to be, doesn't need to be many consequences, only one is enough that you will not have peace in your life. But when you can have peace in your life, then you are no longer a lost passenger on this planet earth. This is why you have Knowledge. This is why you have Knowledge.

Practice. I don't know if you practice or not. I don't know. And I don't want to know. I don't want to know. I pray that you do. Because I know that if you do, your life will be fulfilled. How do I know this? I have seen so many people who do practice this Knowledge and in their thanks, they say, thank you for fulfilling my life. To me, prosper. This is prosperity. Peace, dignity, prosperity. Prosper. Be fulfilled. I pray, you know, every premier who has this Knowledge prospers. Prospers. It's up to you. It's not up to me. It's up to you. You can prosper. If you want to prosper, you can prosper. You have the most incredible tool to be able to prosper. What is the tool that you can prosper with? You have the ability to have peace in your life. Without peace, nothing can prosper. Nothing.

Nothing. Nothing can prosper. Nothing. And I can show you people who have no money but have peace. You have that opportunity in your life. Practice. Whatever you can practice, practice. Help with propagation. Whatever help you can give, give help for propagation. And it had been a long time since I had come to the South. So this was a great opportunity. Somebody had actually asked me, are you going to come to Chennai? I said, yeah, I think I will come to Chennai. I'm on my way to Malaysia. There's events there. I'm looking forward to, at least there's one event there. Looking forward to going there. So it was very nice that I could come and you could come. You could say what I wanted to say. Understand your nature and fulfill your nature. You know, you can try to dress up a monkey with a hat, with a jacket, pants, wristwatch, cell phone, eyeglasses. But at the end of the day, what's going to happen? He will take off the hat. He'll throw away the sunglasses. He'll get rid of the jacket. He'll get rid of the pants. Because that's not part of his nature. Monkey understands monkey's nature. Human monkey should also understand human monkey's nature. And when you don't, problem happens. Problem happens. Understand your nature. Your nature is to be fulfilled. Your nature is to be in the peace. You have the gift of Knowledge and how beautiful that is. How fortunate you are. Don't look at your problems and say how unfortunate you are. No. You have the gift of Knowledge. This makes you the most fortunate. And so, enjoy this gift of Knowledge.

Sabkudwas salaam.