Prem Rawat in Hawaii 2010-05-18

Well, hello everyone. Aloha, that's right. So, we have this chance, I was going through here. Thought, well, we'd do an event. Miracle of Modern Technology. Last Saturday I was in Malaysia doing an event. And then here. So, what is there to be said of all the things that get said? And there was an analogy that I gave in Malaysia that I'll give here. I think it's very good. So, I just asked people, I said, you know, if you were a mother and you lost your baby, what would happen? Wouldn't you look for the baby? And if somebody came to you and said, well, we can't find your baby. But here's another one. Would you be happy? Would you be satisfied? Because logically speaking, one could find a baby that was born on the same day. Approximately looks like your baby. Same weight, same tan. But would you be happy? Would you be content? Would you be satisfied? And, you know, men might be sitting here and say, well, that analogy doesn't concern me. I'm not a mother. But as a father, if you lost your child, would you be satisfied with another one? There's absolutely no way. There's absolutely no way. And so, what is the point of this analogy? Of this example? There is a baby. Not a baby, but a baby. And this baby is that power that sustains you. That is within you. Within you. And would you be satisfied knowing all the powers, but not that one? Is it possible? As that mother needs to be with her real baby.

Same way you need to be with your, not communal, God. There are no such things as communal babies. Are there? I mean, one baby you just kind of pass around. Monday, it's your turn. Tuesday, it's your turn. Wednesday, it's your turn. And you look in this world. And they have taken that God that is within, inside every single human being. And made that God a communal God. And so you wouldn't be satisfied with a communal baby. You cannot be satisfied, content, with a communal God. Because you have a need in you, just as that mother does, to be with that baby. I can understand a communal doll. But when it comes to that living, growing, breathing aspect of knowing, there are no substitutes. None whatsoever. Deprivation. You have to be careful. There are people who diet. And in their dieting, they deprive themselves. They think they are depriving themselves. But all they deprive themselves is of foods that they would like to eat. They're not depriving themselves of food. They're actually eating more healthy food than if they were not on the diet. So a lot of people think, well, deprivation is good.

It's not. You deprive yourself of water, you will die. You deprive yourself of oxygen, you will die. You deprive yourself of food, and you will die. So these things we know. But what happens when you deprive yourself of Knowledge? Of knowing? What happens when you deprive yourself of knowing this God that exists inside of you? Do you know what the consequences are? You give rise to ignorance. And there is no greater darkness than that ignorance. So why would you be concerned? I mean, after all, darkness is darkness. Isn't it natural? I mean, what is so wrong about darkness? There is one thing that light allows you to do that darkness does not. And that is to be able to see. Choose. Choose. Where do you want to go? When it's dark, you don't have a choice. A few days ago, I was in India. And I don't remember now where it was. But I remember I got up and I had to use the bathroom. And I ended up against this wall. Tapping on the wall. Trying to, like, where am I? Where is that? What I had to do was find back my way to the bed. And then go around the bed and find the lamp. And turn on the lamp. And then I could reorient myself. What and where. Which door I wanted to use.

How I wanted to go in. Did I want to go in? Didn't I want to go in? All these choices were available to me only because there was light. These choices were not available to me when it was dark. So then the question becomes, do you want to be able to choose in this life of what it is that you accomplish? You know, it is easy to cite examples of sheep. And I have seen many people do that. But it is not funny when the sheep itself is citing the example of sheep. Doing exactly what the sheep is saying shouldn't be done. I don't find that funny. Because they who are citing the example of the sheep are themselves sheep. And not knowing any better. Because it is easy to pass judgment. But very hard when you are in the darkness and you don't have choices. What do you do? What do you do? What do you choose? Somebody. I met in India. He came to me. And he said, I was looking for this all my life. I wanted to experience this inside of me all my life. I joined many groups. Read many books. Did this, did that. And then finally, somebody introduced one of his colleagues, who was also a doctor. Introduced him to my videos. And he became an aspirant. Received Knowledge.

And he simply wanted to thank me. Because he said, now I found it. And I remember so many people who have said that to me. Looking for this. But you were looking in darkness. So even that, see that's the problem about ignorance, about the darkness. That even if you find what you're looking for, you wouldn't recognize it. Because you have to have an eye. You, if you want to live in this world, you have to have a ear. What kind of ear? Ear that is tuned to that voice that touches the heart. Eye that can recognize the lit lamp. No point in taking your lamp to other lamps that are not lit. But you have to have the eye to recognize. Do you? People say, I'm searching. Searching for what? Are people honest enough in this world to say, I don't know? I was talking to somebody about Guru Nanak Dev. The first guru of the Sikh lineage. And I said, tell me, how many people at that time recognized him? I mean today, millions. Millions pictures of him all over the place. But don't you think it is incredibly important to know how many recognized him then, when he was alive. Because this would give you some clue. There isn't anybody who isn't waiting for a messiah to come. Believe me, from North Pole to the South Pole. Every religion, every group of people. And it behooves to reason that things are not so good.

So you would go, okay, somebody is going to come and fix this. And this goes everywhere. There isn't a place on planet Earth where this doesn't apply. India, you go to Delhi, and they're building a rapid transit system. Mass rapid transit system. Trying to modernize the freeways. Trying to do this, trying to do that. Trying to start a culture where people don't spit and urinate on the side of the road. And you go 15 minutes out, and none of it exists. I had to drive, and the first time it took four hours and 30 minutes. And the second time it took five hours and something. And I had to drive to Jaipur. And I tell you, what I felt was, if you have coronary artery disease, where you've got plaque, just get on one of those freeways in India. And just the shock of the blood rushing through will clean anything out. Because you're driving 160 kilometers an hour. There's no speed limits. You're driving 160 kilometers an hour on a freeway. And a truck is coming at you at the wrong side. And it is a four divided lane highway. And so this guy isn't going on the other side. He's coming at you. And the only thing is, the only little sanity is he's got his headlights on. And this is it. And then you're going 160 miles an hour, and a truck is going across all the four lanes.

And he waits till he sees you coming is when he makes the dash across the road. I mean, this could clean your heart right out. I mean, just supply extra blood to kidneys. You name it. So all these people in this world waiting for somebody to come and fix this problems And supposedly when one of these did come, the question becomes, right now they have a lot of followers. But did they then? And the answer to it is no. Quite the contrary. Who is he? Today you see pictures of so many saints in India and they've got light behind them and so on and so forth. And I say, you know, how could you miss that? How? Possibly. I mean, that's like a giveaway. All of a sudden you're walking around on the back of your donkey. If I was on the back of a donkey walking away and I saw somebody sitting under a big beautiful banyan tree with this big light in the back, I'd fall off my donkey. But these people didn't even stop. So what in the world was going on then? Where people make it look so simple now. Look, isn't that it? You have to have the eye. Some did. And who did have the eye? They can recognize. Many people heard the words. Most discarded them. More nonsense. But some had the ear. Do you have the ear? Do you want to listen? To what is important? To your well-being? You know, we talk about happiness. We talk about bliss. We talk about joy.

These are the fruits at the end of the cycle of well-being. People talk about peace. But what is peace to me? After you find God, then you smell the aroma of God. The perfume of God. And that's peace. That's peace. Not all the other ideas that people get caught in. What is truth? What is truth? Do you have the ear to hear the truth? See, the thing is, you don't need to define what the truth is. The question is, do you have the ear to hear the truth? To tune a piano takes two things. One is mechanical know-how. You've got to know where to put the key and turn. This anybody can do. Anybody. So far you have a hand. Just even one that kind of works. You can do this. The other one is much more difficult because the other one requires the ear. You go boom, boom. And tune, tune, tune, tune, tune, tune, tune, tune, tune, until it is perfectly tuned. So you need the ear to hear what the truth is. Because if you have the ear, you will recognize the truth and you will be fulfilled. You have to have the eye to see, to understand what the meaning of this light is. The light gives you choices that explanations don't. In the most beautiful garden, I can give you instructions.

Go a few steps forward and turn left and turn right and this and that. Or, turn on the light. And when the sun shines, the light comes. Do you need those instructions? Four steps forward and left, right, this, that? No. You can go wherever you want to go. Whatever you find attractive, you can go there and check it out. That's the choice. So people get caught in concepts and theories and ideas and they're all reading instructions. They're all reading instructions. Mouths are salivating because they're reading recipes. And not a pot exists in the kitchen. Not a vegetable nearby. No different than being stuck in a desert with nothing, with nothing around. And the Master comes and the Master says, you know, there's no difference between you and a person who's stuck in the middle of the desert. And they go, how can that be? I'm in this beautiful kitchen. Yeah, but there's not a pot. There's neither a fire, nor a vegetable, nor salt, nor pepper, nor water, nor nothing. And you call yourself being in a kitchen when you don't know anything about cooking. So go on, salvate. Read and salvate. Enjoy that because there's nothing else you're going to enjoy. And people go, well, that's enough. That's okay. That's where the story comes in of the two frogs.

One frog said, my well is as big as it gets. The other one said, no, there's something bigger. How can that be? Well, if you don't want to believe it, fine. But it is about knowing. And those people who have the gift of Knowledge have the possibility not have to speculate, but to see and choose. Walk and be fulfilled. What does it take? The oldest thing in the whole world. Love. You have to love Knowledge. Don't love Knowledge. It's not going to happen. A lot of people say, you know, when I first came to Knowledge, it was so wonderful. It was this, this, this. And now I don't know. I don't find that. So what's the difference? That's the difference. When you were young, you used to really enjoy candied apple. Now you are 95 years old and you can't eat a candied apple. And you wonder what's wrong with the candied apple. There's nothing wrong with the candied apple. You've lost your chompers. And you can't gum a candied apple to death. It's going to be really, really hard. It's love.

That's what was there. It's a freedom. Do you know love brings freedom? When you fell in love with someone, the first time, you feel free. When you get caught in protocols of love, you feel enslaved. Because love has no protocols. When you first came to Knowledge, you didn't care about protocols. You cared about Knowledge. You cared about the Master. What he's saying, what this Knowledge is. This is a gift. It's beautiful. It's good. Then you got caught in protocols. And that became more important than that freshness of Knowledge. If that's going to be the case, you can't gum a candied apple to death. You can't eat it. It's as simple as that. Being in love. Being in love with Knowledge. This has to happen every day. Otherwise, how do you recognize what is the importance? Thirst. Brings sweetness to water. Thirst. Why? Not because it's sweet.

But quenching the thirst makes that water sweet. This is following. This is exactly what falling in love is all about. When you're in love. This is one of the things I was saying in Malaysia. When you're in love, you think about that person. You think about that person day, night, lunchtime, dinnertime, whatever. Writing on the wall, I love you, I love you, I love you, does not do it. Making a carpet, custom carpet, I love you, I love you, I love you, doesn't do it. When you are in love, you didn't need the carpet. You didn't need the wall sprayed with I love you. Because it was written somewhere else. Here. In your heart. This is where love comes from. For Knowledge. It's not logic. It's the heart. It is the domain of the heart. Knowledge, satisfaction, fulfillment, peace, God. It's the domain of the heart. That's why there are people who logically look at it and say there is no God. And they're still alive. I mean, how long do you think a marriage would last between two people if the wife stopped acknowledging the husband? Or the husband stopped acknowledging the wife? Not very long.

Maybe history. Same thing with your dog. Same thing with your cat. When it is the domain of the heart, it is not the domain of the logic. Anybody trying to comprehend the truth, anybody trying to comprehend peace, anybody trying to comprehend joy through logic will never fathom it. What do people say? What do people say? People say, how could there be a God? Look at this condition of this world. And if there was really a God, then how could he stand this? And they think that that's a very valid logic. That's stupid. The state of the world is not created by God. It is created by us. And we don't blame each other. No, no, no, no. We don't blame each other. Here we've got a flag of this country. Oh, we are patriotic and we are this and we are that. We're the ones who messed it up. Because none of these ideas that we have had till now as human beings, not one of them has actually worked. But you know there is a disease in psychology. When you hog everything and can't get rid of anything, it's actually a disease. And the human beings have the same disease. They hog everything. And they hog and they hog and they hog and they hog and they hog. Somebody has said, well, you're more superior to everything else out there. Then the next thing you know, the human being goes, well, then I can do anything I want to.

Then not only the human beings suffer, but the animals suffer. Everything suffers. Why? Here there are people and they look at their scriptures and they go, this is all word of God. Why do you keep changing it? You get to decide what God said. You get to say, oh, that's not true. A master comes despite of what exists. Because despite of what exists is no good. No good. Upanishads, some of the oldest written structures predate Moses. What do they talk about? They talk about heaven being here. Not after death. The purpose of your life on the face of this earth is to find your heaven and be in heaven whilst you are alive. You must realize that these texts are not written in context of religion. These come later. People are now taking different bits of this and that and write the Vedas and now it is getting into the rituals of various forms of religion. But these texts, the Upanishads, they're not in... This is just what people observed. What people saw. Heaven is here. Not Hawaii, but here on planet earth. And where is it? Inside of you. You need to find it. That's where there's Knowledge. That's where there's the practice. Not the logics.

Not the protocols. One of the clearest examples of the protocol is, well, I need to practice for an hour. So I need to set aside an hour. But I can't find an hour to set aside. So I don't practice. You got caught in protocol. Love has gone out the window and protocol has come in. How will you find an hour for something you don't care about? How? You will find an hour to do a crossword puzzle. You will gladly take a 15 hour flight in which you are a captive person buckled to your seat. You realize that's 15 days. 15 days of sitting and practicing one hour. And to do this you will get in line and then add other hours to it so you can spend the 15. But if you are in love, none of these are the issues. When you are in love, the questions go away. It doesn't matter. Somebody asks you, why are you in love with that person? I don't know is a perfectly logical answer to you, not to the other person. The other person is like, you've gone crazy. Yeah, that's what it is called. But when there is that love. Love for this breath. Love for this life. I talk about the breath. A lot of people don't pay attention to it. Some people do.

They like to hear about it. They don't pay attention to it like you should. To them it's like so insignificant. It takes so many of them. It just keeps coming. It's all automated. Do you know what that is? Do you know what breath is? Do you have any idea what breath is? As small, as insignificant it may seem to you. It is the only thing between life and death. If it wasn't for that breath it'd be over. Your whole world, your colors, your relationships, your ideas, your thoughts, your definitions, your likes, your dislikes, your memories. There's one little thing that's driving a wedge between the inevitable and existence. This is dirt. This is where you came from. And dirt is what you're going to become. No question about that. But there's only one little thing that's driving a wedge, keeping them apart. This is breath. Think about that. You go home. Sit down. Think about that. Nothing else. Not your concepts. Not your religions.

Not your relatives. Not your house. Not your pride. Not your likes, dislikes. All those things. None of them are doing that. There's only one thing that is doing that. One thing and one thing alone that is doing that. And that is the coming and going of this breath. And that is the blessing. That's it. That's the blessing. That's the blessing. If you understand that, that that's the blessing, you realize how blessed you are. People say to me, Oh, Maraji, give me your blessings. That's what you want, my blessings? What do you want my blessings for? The most supreme power has blessed you. And just continues to bless you. What do you need mine for? Or anybody else's for, for that matter? The Master, the real Master, that's the blessing you want is, allow me to see the blessing I have. Give me the tools to see the real blessing I have. Because you are blessed. There's that beautiful couplet from Ramayana where Ram is explaining that this is the vessel to get across this ocean of ignorance.

The coming and going of this breath is my blessing. The coming and going of this breath is my blessing. Whenever I remember that couplet, it's like it's so obvious. So real, so obvious, so true. So wonderful. I need to see that. I need to see that. I need to feel that every day. Because nothing inspires that love more than when I feel that every day. I have to look out the window every day. I have to make that effort every day. I have to appreciate it.