09/22/02 Satsang (Discourse) At The Feast Of Tabernacles
By
MAITREYA
Maitreya: We welcome you all to our Feast and Mission.
We are glad that we have all of you here. This is the Feast, and this is the time of celebration. This celebration is actually the celebration of the coming of the Christ, or Gods Spirit to humanity. Of course, many humans still do not know that God really exists, and they are still fighting over religions instead of the Godly way of knowing Him.
The only way to know God is to have a direct relationship with Him. As long as you do not have any direct relationship, you have a religion. You do not have God-realization.
That is why we recommend for everyone to meditate. When you meditate, eventually you will have some experiences with God, and in most cases, He will reveal Himself to you gradually.
So the Feast of Tabernacles is one of the seven Feasts that God commanded us to follow. Most of the Feasts that God revealed were very much related to the cyclical timing of the year. And most of the people were farmers. So by this time of year they had harvested all their food, they had put it in the barns, the winter was coming, it was cold, and probably they did not have much food then to eat. So the Feast of Tabernacles was a Feast of using all the grain they had, make a great Feast, and make beautiful food.
It is just like the food that we have here, which is very good. The people here are cooking some fantastic food for the Feast. I am sure everyone is enjoying them. Are they good? Yes, they are. They are fantastic.
They go to the Internet, and they look for the recipes from different cultures. They add their own way of cooking the dishes, and then they put some spiritual names on them. Hopefully, one day we are going to have our own cookbook. We can give it to the people.
What are some of the food names?
Audience: Bhakti butternut squash [laughter].
Maitreya: After a while, even the cookbook becomes universal instead of having just one culture in there.
So this Mission is the expansion of the mind. Apparently, we have been at it for many lifetimes, and now we have come back together again to bring this Mission to humanity. We have been called to see what a fantastic work God has done. Actually, this Mission is to glorify God. This is the Mission of glorification of God because He said He was going to do all these things, and He has done them.
We heard two wonderful lectures today. This morning we heard a lecture on the prophecies, and we can see that God did not leave any doubt in any mind of what He is going to do. He did it, and He now reveals it.
If you cannot see that God really is behind this Mission, there is something wrong. I really believe there is something wrong with that person who cannot see that the Spirit of God is behind this Mission.
God has fulfilled the prophecies. As we said, He said He was going to do these things, and He has done them. Even if you cannot relate to God heart by heart, you can relate intellectually because when He said He was going to do something and He did, does He exist? He exists for sure.
But the difference is...it is just like you are asking the mirror, Does the mirror exist? The mirror says, No. What is mirror? I should look for mirror. Where is mirror? Is it in the sky? Is it underground? That is because the mirror cannot see himself.
But if you put another mirror in front of the mirror and say, Look at that mirror, he says, Oh, yes, that is mirror? That is me. He says, I was looking for the mirror all over the world and I could not find it. Now I find another mirror and I look at the mirror and say, Hey look at me. That is me.
That is what God is. God is me. God is within me. I am one with Him. I have been looking all over the place for something that I am it already.
That is much better than the God sitting up there, is angry all the time, and creates all these religions, dogmas, and little dogma that if you believe you go to heaven, if you do not believe you do not go to heaven and you are an infidel, we are going to chop your head off. Or, you are not saved. Or, you are not the chosen one.
That is not true. God is you. God is within all of us. There is no separation there. If we recognize that, is there any separation between man and woman, male and female, this race and that race, from this side of the earth or the other side of the earth? No, that Essence is in every person that we encounter.
Therefore, how can we look at each other as anything else but as the manifestation, as the Essence of God? If we do that, do we have any political upheaval, or destruction that is coming to earth? No. We will see that God indeed is unifying, is unified.
We have to teach this to humanity. We have to create an environment also that the political system does not have any power over them. Give the power back to humanity.
And that is the Communities of Light. The Communities of Light will give the power back to humanity and will empower them to rule themselves and also become brothers and sisters, and recognize that they are from the Same Source.
Actually, most of the people get along with each other no matter where they are from. It is mostly those who are on a power trip who do not get along with one another.
If we can create an environment that everything comes from the Communities of Light, then we actually have given the power to people. And they will create an environment that we will not have these problems that we have on earth. We can see that our teaching goes from the basic understanding of how to live our daily lives to absolutely how we can bring the Kingdom Of Heaven On Earth.
There is such a range of Revelation there that we can all meditate on them and become one with what God is telling us and see the benefit. Of course, if you do not follow them, you do not see the benefit. It is like the doctor tells you that you have to use the medicine in such and such a way. The medicine is good, and it will help you. But you do not follow the instructions.
THOTH is an instruction manual for a good life, for bringing the Kingdom Of Heaven On Earth. Are you going to read the manual? Are you going to follow the manual? If you do, you benefit. If you do not, you do not. It is as simple as that.
So it is not dogmatic. It is not, Oh, just believe in the name of Maitreya and you are saved. Well, there is truth in that, but also it is beyond that. It is a package. You cannot just believe in Maitreya and that he is really a representative of God and Gods Mouthpiece but, what does he say?
As I have said many times, if you get stuck on the bridge, you will never go over to the other side. The bridge is here to take you to the other side. If you get stuck on the bridge, you will never reach God. Of course, you do not destroy the bridge. If you destroy the bridge, again you will never get there. So you have to keep the bridge in place but at the same time go over to God.
We can see that this Revelation, these things that the Mission is presenting to humanity, and these lectures, are fantastic. There is so much truth.
Actually, there was a Bahai this morning asking about why I came so early after Bahaullah. The person who was giving the lecture this morning was explaining the exponential timing of Gods Revelations. It became faster and faster, so now, at the end, it only needed around one hundred-fifty years for this to happen.
Baba came forty years before I did. So the coming of the last Revelation only took forty years.
As I said, Abraham came six thousand years ago. Then Christ came two thousand years ago. Prophet Muhammad came fourteen hundred years ago, Bab came one hundred-fifty years ago, Baba came forty years ago, and then it was just shorter and shorter and shorter. So that was his answer that your formula works, except for Prophet Muhammad who came 600 years after Christ.. It could be looked at as an exponential way of happening, and that is why it happened so fast.
We have a great Revelation here, and I hope you are all reading your THOTH, understanding it, listening to it, listening to Satsang, and having a lot of questions for me. If you do not, that is OK. I can just go ahead and say the same things over and over again. I feel mostly that I have said everything that has to be said. But, of course, people still come up with the questions that we have never answered before, and answers come out well. But there is nothing really that I have not covered. Is there anything that I did not cover in the last twenty-two years? So I have covered everything that had to be covered.
I can see how fantastic this Mission is, and I hope you all see it as well. I hope you will see this more in my lecture tomorrow.
So if you have any question now, I will open the floor for questions or we can go ahead and talk. We can see how you are doing and how the Feast is going. If you have a question in PalTalk, raise your hand. If you have a question here, also raise your hand.
Go ahead, Kelleth.
Kelleth: Hello everyone, I am going to jump right in here with a question that I just had pop up in my head. I was thinking about a consciousness and how it is crudified down to like, rock. I was wondering what happens when the universe is going to end? Like they say that in fifteen billion years the universe will end. There will be many who have reached Pure Consciousness. But humans will still have to live on all these planets, which means these planets are still crudified consciousnesses.
So what will happen to those crudified consciousnesses, because they have not even come close to reach Pure Consciousness, but it is working to guide the consciousnesses ready to reach Pure Consciousness to the goal? So what happens to all the crudified consciousnesses that will not have made it by the time the physical universe ends?
Maitreya: Those who do not reach Pure Consciousness are going to stay in a very dark place and frozen space for billions and billions of years. That is what most Prophets are talking about, gnashing of the teeth, destruction, and darkness. Being in hell means that they did not make it. Instead of going and listening to the Scriptures and God, they listened to man, they listened to television, they listened to the radio, they listened to this, and they listened to that person. Instead of going to God they went toward the world.
Of course, in that state they have not reached Pure Consciousness. Therefore they will stay in darkness, in ignorance, and in tama guna. And probably, if their minds still exist, their minds are full of desires, attachments, and wants, there will be suffering in a greater degree for billions and billions of years before the next creation comes and again we come together and say, Come humanity, we are calling you to come and let us go back to the Father, back to God, and come to Pure Consciousness. Maybe some of them are going to be saved, or some of them will not.
Actually, you can probably relate that to what the Tibetan Buddhists call, Bardo. I do not know if you have heard about it or not.
It is the state, they say, at the time of death that the dead person goes through. At that time, it depends on how good a person you were or how terrible you were, you have to go to that state. There are people who are specialized to take you to that Bardo. And because your mind is in turmoil and has a lot of desires, wants, and attachments, therefore, it is going to be a scary place for the people to go.
For those who have purified themselves, have overcome desires, attachments, wants, and have reached a point very close to Pure Consciousness, Bardo is not such a scary place. They are already in Pure Consciousness. They just die. They just go to the Father and that is it. That is the end of the story. They become one with the Father, and their death is not as terribly taxing on them.
So you can see that if you reach the end of the universe, when the universe is finished, and you are not in Pure Consciousness, your mind is still there. Your individual mind has not overcome. You still have your ego left. There is no computer, there is no Satsang, there is no Feast of Tabernacles, there is no Revelation, there is no Bible, or Koran, or other books that can guide you to go to God. Therefore, you will be left alone in that state for a long, long period of time.
That is what the concern of the Prophet is. They come here to take you God. Their concern is for you to follow the instruction of God and to go to Him. Otherwise when the time comes, everything finishes, and you will be left alone.
According to our teaching, that state will come around a thousand years from now because this is the beginning of the creation of the Kingdom Of Heaven On Earth. The Kingdom will come for a thousand years. After a thousand years there is going to be upheaval again for a short period of time, and many will reach Pure Consciousness.
Of course, you can say that Gods thousand years might not exactly mean a thousand years of the human. It might mean that every day of God is a thousand years. Or, it might mean every year of God is a thousand years. But there is going to be an end time for sure. There is going to be a time that it is going to finish. If you did not make it by then, you are going to be in trouble.
What happens to the stones and planets? Probably they are going to dissolve to a state different than what they are at now. They will probably become more back to the Essence that they were before, but not Pure Consciousness because they still have not reached complete awareness and detachment.
But those who have human minds and have not reached Pure Consciousness, their minds are going to continue to live and probably think and desire and are going to be in what is called hell. Probably it is so indescribable that they had to create a word for it and attach so much suffering into that word that it scares you to death. So you'd better get on with the Work of God.
But that is the truth in that explanation as hell. Of course, we do not believe in a hell with that guy with the two horns on his head, the red clothes, and the pitchfork is going to be there. It is your own mind. It is your own creation. Probably even the devil is the creation of a tormented mind that created such a being as we look at him as the devil. The devil is nothing but our own ego, our attachments, our desires for the external world, and not knowing ourselves.
The fastest way to Know thyself, is meditation. Close your eyes, quiet your senses, go within yourself, and look at yourself squarely in every problem that you have.
Again, this is your doing. You have to do it. You have to meditate. You have to squarely look at it. Your spiritual teacher can point out to you how you can improve yourself. But if you do not listen to him, even he cannot help you.
If you do not listen to God, even God cannot help you. That is why He sent the Scriptures.
Why does He have to send the Scriptures? He had to send the Scriptures, as I said, as a manual telling you that if you do those things, if you purify yourself, if you do those things that I told you, you will be purified and you will know yourself in a deeper level. But if you do not look at yourself, if you do not listen to the spiritual teacher also, or God, God says, OK, I cannot help you. I can show you the way but you have to walk it.
The Eternal Divine Path is a Path. You have to walk it. It is not something, Oh, I am in the Mission of Maitreya, I am saved. No, you have to walk the Eternal Divine Path. You have to meditate.
If you do not meditate, if you do not use the mantra, if you do not close your eyes, if you do not come to the Satsangs, if you do not come to our church in PalTalk, or come to the Mission and learn how to meditate, if you do not come to the meditation classes and go through the process of meditation, you will not progress.
It is very good for everyone to know that process before they ask for initiation. Before this time, a lot of people asked for initiation and they did not remember what the process was. That is why I released it so that you can teach it to people over and over again and eventually many people will know the process so it is easier for them to be initiated here. It is a teaching of action.
We can see that God has already given the manual to you, to everyone. The manual is the Eternal Divine Path. The Eternal Divine Path is the base and the essence of the fastest way possible to reach God.
If you do not meditate, if you do not close your eyes, if you do not put the effort to know yourself, you will never know yourself. You will make the same mistakes over and over and over again without being able to look at yourself. But if you make a mistake again and again and then you look, you sit, you meditate and say, Why am I doing this? Why this pattern that is happening to me over and over? But you have to do it. If you do not do it, you are not going to learn.
So you do meditate. You see the pattern. You progress. Then you say, OK, it is very hard to meditate in this environment out there. This is crazy. I cannot meditate.
Everyone says, Buy this. Go here. You need this. You have to do that. You have to have television, radio, bulletin board. Everyone tells you about everything but God. So you are going to go and fall for them, and you are not going to go to God. You are not going to go to heaven, Pure Consciousness.
You say, I have to live in an environment where people are Godly. They talk about God. They talk about the Eternal Divine Path. You say, OK, I need to live in the Communities of Light. I need to either live in a Community of Light, or I need to create a Community of Light." If you have the ability, have the power, have the knowledge, and have the essence in it that you can do it, sure, go ahead and create Communities of Light.
But it is not an easy job to create the Communities of Light. I am telling you right up front, it is hard work. It is a long process and struggle You have to create a lot of wisdom, you have to know yourself, and you have to know people. It is a lot of work.
Actually, many people have tried to create communities, not even Communities of Light. There is a newsgroup in the Internet, and there are a lot of frustrated people in it who have tried to create communities. They are frustrated. They just did not make it. They were not able to do it.
Why are they frustrated? The reasons is because they are not surrendered and submitted to God. They think they are the doer. They want the results.
Fortunately, in this Mission we do not. We do not become frustrated very often. And anytime we become frustrated we remember, OK, God, it is not really me. Whatever is done is Yours. So let us not be frustrated, let us continue with what we are doing. Eventually it will catch on. Eventually, people will come."
Also we realize that the people who love the Mission or a part of it, see it, and love it. They just see the Vision right away. And those who do not, will hesitate. It has been proven through me and Sarah-ji (we have been at it for the last 25 years) that people come, they love the Mission, but the moment they hesitate, it falls apart. They cannot make it anymore.
So, you awaken your spiritual forces. Then you desire to be in the Communities of Light because you know that is the fastest way to go to God. You cannot be out there by yourself and follow all the pulls and punches that the world gives you and at the same time, Oh, I am in the Eternal Divine Path. I meditate fifteen minutes a week. I am doing just great. I am doing fine. No, you are not going to make it.
But if you mediate twice a day regularly (a half an hour every time), you do The Reminder, you do chanting and dancing in that environment, little by little by little you see, What is happening to me? I am much calmer. I am much more centered. I am much more open. I do not need all that 'junk' out there that they are offering me. I do not want them. I want to be in this state of quietness, purity, and beauty that surpasses anything this world offers me.
So we can see that it is something that you have to decide to do again. It is not something that you just accept and you become it. Then, of course, the community you join, you have to sacrifice, and you have to be a part of it.
You cannot say, I am in the community, everyone just listen to me, or do everything for me, and everyone listen to me to see what my needs are. No, everyone needs to be considered, and sacrifice should be a part of it, of course.
And then you should not be attached to the results. It is just what I said, a lot of people tried to create communities but they became frustrated because it is not an easy job.
I am telling you up front, it is not an easy job to create the Communities of Light. But, if we reach a point that we have a lot of people in the Mission, they have been in the Communities of Light, they spread out, they create their own communities, and connect to the Center, little by little our numbers are going to be increasing to a point that it is going to become easier and easier to do.
It is just like a sheet of plastic under water and you want to try to raise it. You start putting bubbles underneath this plastic, little by little. There is a point that if you put one more bubble, it rises.
That is how the Mission is. It is big. It is huge. This Mission is a huge Mission. It has so many things in it. But you put one person at a time underneath it and little by little by little we will come to a point that if we put one more, that is it. It is going to rise up, and the Mission is going to start going.
So that is how you do not get frustrated, by surrendering and submission to God. You surrender the results and say, I did my best. I did my work as much as I could. I put my effort 100%. But do not put 99%. Do not put 95%. Do not put 90%. Put 100% into it. That is how you will benefit 100%.
If you put 90% into it, you benefit 90%. If you put 80%, you will benefit 80%. If you put 5%, you will benefit 5%. That is the Law of the universe. There is a reaction for any action you do.
If you put 100%, God will give you 100%. That is the way God works. So you put 100% but if it did not work you say, Fine, God, I put really 100%, 110% actually. I put that effort. The result is yours. I am not attached to it. It is your result. And you go on to another project.
Or, if this way did not work, use another way. Just experiment, see what works, what does not. That is why God sent so much education for us in this time. We have been educated to research, to understand, to see what things work and what does not work.
We are not living 100 years ago that everything is Spirit and trust only in Spirit, and everything is going to work. If it did not work in the Spirit, the work was the Spirit. No, we have the ability to experiment and know, and know what works and what does not work, and progress.
After all this progress, you have to become a universalist. You have to shatter all the narrowness of the mind, any prejudices, any separation, anything you hand onto which is against your progress. I am not saying that the people in the world are all nice, good, fantastic, and you should love them with all your heart, mind, and spirit. They have problems too. They are not realized people.
But at the same time, you are a realized person. We have to create a system, a way to educate them too that they should realize that they should not kill each other. When you kill someone, that other person has the Essence of God in them, and you really kill that Essence in them. So you will create Karma. And you will pay for it.
This is the Law. This is the Law that every human has to understand, that you cannot go ahead and do things to each other or others and then say, We are doing fine. Nothing is going to happen to us. It is going to happen to you. It will. You will pay for any action you do to others, maybe not in this lifetime. But you will.
So if really we understand these things then we have no choice but to become good people. I am not going to hurt anyone because if I hurt another person, what am I doing? I am hurting myself. So I will not be a hurtful person. I will consider all the time my actions, how they affect other people, how I affect my environment, how I affect the community. Am I really hurting the community, or am I helping the community? Am I hurting the community? Is it really hurting them or am I hurting myself?
So we can see that more and more if we become universalists, then we shatter all the narrowness of the mind, and we know that God is everything. There is nothing which is not God. If we love God we have to love everything in it because there is nothing which is not Him (or Her or It), whatever you call Him.
We can see with that you have no choice but to become an Elect, and you have accelerated your progress toward Pure Consciousness. And I guarantee that you will not be in that darkness at the end of the universe. You are going to be in a wonderful place with God, you will be in Pure Consciousness, where you will enjoy the joy of being one with Him.
So if you made it, you are very sorry for the people who did not make it but God sent them Messengers. He sent them Revelations. He sent them Scriptures. He told them, This is the way to Me. This is the way to avoid the hell, or whatever that state is. I do not even want to know because I am planning to go to Pure Consciousness. I am planning to be in that place with God. I do not want to be in that darkness.
But there is that darkness, there is that place that those who do not listen to God, His Revelations, and His Scriptures will end up. There is no doubt about that. So the Eternal Divine Path is given to you as a Path, a way to avoid that destiny.
After your become a universalist, you become an Elect. You become a person who shatters all the narrowness of the mind and frees himself from attachments and is willing to work for the Communities of Light, and create Communities of Light, or live in the Communities of Light and will meditate and, Know thyself.
I do not see any other faster way to God but the Eternal Divine Path and the creation of the Kingdom Of Heaven On Earth, which brings the peace and unity to humanity. It even accelerates in a greater degree the progress of the human to Pure Consciousness.
Go ahead, Kelleth.
Kelleth: I want to know, will there be a time when all unit consciousnesses reach Pure Consciousness? That means all the crudified consciousnesses, every single thing, like all the rocks, the wind, the water, and all that stuff? And when all that does reach Pure Consciousness, if it does, then what is the result?
Maitreya: Well, that is the hope of the universe. That is why God put so much effort in sending the Revelations, the Prophets, and creating the creation that eventually everything will return to the state of Pure Consciousness and balance, and they will have the experience of not doing this again. And even if it happened it would not take as long as it took this time.
The goal is every time that creation is created, more people will reach Pure Consciousness and will go to God. And, of course, this process is going to continue. But it is going to take a long time. It is almost an astronomical number of how many universes have to be created again and again.
That original energy that created this universe will exhaust one day. Even though the original energy always was fantastic energy, was released, which they call the big bang and they say that still the effect of it is expanding the universe, eventually, it will stop one day.
When the universe stops, that energy is finished. Then is the time for everything to collapse back. That is why the end is. That is really the end, until the next creation comes.
When the center of the universe has enough energy accumulated, again the big bang will happen, and again the taking over the left behind universe comes and this continues over and over again until, of course, every unit consciousness reaches Pure Consciousness. Also, every time someone reaches Pure Consciousness, one more worker will be there. One more person will be added to the number that they become workers to help the universe.
So there is an accelerating process that is happening. The more people reach Pure Consciousness, the more they will help the ones who have not reached Pure Consciousness to reach Pure Consciousness. So the number will increase and reach a point that if half of the universe becomes Pure Consciousness and the other half has not, each unit consciousness has a teacher to take them to Pure Consciousness. So there is much more acceleration that will happen in this process.
Hopefully, one day we will have everyone back to the Godhead and we will all be One as the Spirit, not separated at all (ego). And we will be in the joy of God, Ananda, that every mystic desires to have that experience with God.
So yes, it eventually will, but not in this creation. That is because in this creation the number of people in Pure Consciousness, compared with the people who are not in Pure Consciousness, is very, very low. The number in Pure Consciousness is very low in comparison with the people or part that are not in Pure Consciousness. Therefore, we need many more teachers and those who have reached Pure Consciousness to be able to accelerate the process to the end. But at the end, yes. At the end.
But there is still that element of choice that is always there. You have to choose not to go to God. Even if we have 99% of the universe in Pure Consciousness and 10% is not, and that 10% refuses to follow the Eternal Divine Path or go to God, still that 10% is not going to make it. They have to wait for another creation. If they refuse again, they have to wait for another creation. If they refuse again But, of course, the possibility that that happens probably is very slim, and eventually we will reach Pure Consciousness.
Go ahead, Kelleth.
Kelleth: Say that everyone, or every single unit consciousness, reached Pure Consciousness, does that mean that the three creative forces...? That is all there is, is the three creative forces and Consciousness, which is what there was in the very beginning? Is that the goal, to get back to the way it was before that desire arose in the Consciousness?
Maitreya: Yes, the goal is to go back to that balanced state of being. A lot of people have tried to explain what that state is. Eventually, the best answer is, it is the state of the unexplainable. It is not possible to explain God.
They say that if the whole universe becomes paper, and all the liquid in the universe becomes ink, and all the trees and whatever your can write with become pens and you write all about God and finished all the paper that the whole universe has created, you have not even begun to explain what God is, what the state of Godhood could be.
That is why we have so many explanations and so many people who think they know God who come and say, Yes, I know God. I can tell you who God is. They explain God, and we still see a lot of people still are not satisfied with their explanations because God is not explainable.
It is something that you experience. You do not explain God. You experience God. If you experienced It you say, Yes, I know God. I know infinity. It is possible, as she was saying in the lecture this morning, intellectually you can think, Where does this universe finish?
It has to finish somewhere. When it finishes, whatever it finishes with is something that has to finish somewhere else. If you went all the way to the end of the universe and there was a wall, now that wall itself has to end somewhere, doesnt it? And where that wall ends, what is behind that wall? And where does that end?
It just keeps going. Eventually your brain stops and says, I cannot think any further, doesnt it? Mind cannot explain infinity because mind has limitations; it is finite.
Mind is the fastest thing in the universe. If you want to be at the end of the universe, you are at the end of the universe. Mind is faster than light. Light is 300 miles a second. Mind is infinitely faster. It takes at least a couple of seconds to go to the moon with the speed of light. With the mind, you think you are on the moon, and you are on the moon. That is it. The moment you think it, you are there.
So you can see that the mind is faster. Still, it is impossible for the mind to fathom infinity. But the moment you experience God, and the human experiences infinity he says, Oh, yes, it is possible. I understand now. Yes, the infinite exists.
Now if someone comes and asks you, What is infinity?" you cannot explain it to them. You cannot tell them what infinity is, but you know. It exists.
So God is an experience, It is not an explanation. And when you experience It, the only way to experience It is through the Eternal Divine Path, meditation, creation of the Communities of Light, being able to give from yourself to the Communities of Light, surrender and submit to God, and become a universalist. Hopefully, one day you are sitting in your meditation, you experience God, you just jump of joy, just grab everyone and say, Can you see God?
And they say, No, we cannot.
You say, Oh God, how can you not see It? It is so simple.
So if you reach that point then you have experienced It.
Go ahead, Ram Dass.
Ram Dass: Sal-OM. Well, I was going to ask you the question about how come when you reach Pure Consciousness that you are not able to explain the unexplainable, or is it just for regular human beings that it is not explainable. But you almost already answered the question without telling us that you know that you are there, this is why you cannot explain it. Am I right?
Maitreya: Yes, Ram Dass. Well, your English has improved, for sure. You speak very well, very good. Yes, that is exactly how it is because if you have experienced God and I have experienced God, we know each other. We look at each other and say, Yes, Hi, how are you? Hi God. And they say, Hi God. And you just know that the other person has experienced It. That is good enough for you. You do not have to explain to that person what Pure Consciousness is, what infinity is. That person knows, you know. And you absolutely understand. You do not even question.
When you ask the question of, What is infinity? because as I said it cannot be explained...how can you explain infinity? Where does this universe finish, where does that finishing of this universe finish, where does that finish?...and etc.
That is what I was doing when I was a kid. When I was six or seven years old I was thinking, Where does this universe finish? And then I was thinking, Wherever it finishes, there has to be something that it finishes with. Where does that finish? I eventually gave up and said, Oh, I just cannot fathom infinity, where eventually this universe will end.
That is what intellect is. Intellect tries to explain, has a lot of questions, and asks questions that only can be experienced. That is why all the great teachers, Prophets, everyone has directed you to, Know thyself to know God.
It is within you. You know It. You just have forgotten It. You once knew, but now you do not because you are in amnesia. You have forgotten where you were and where you came from. But if you do what Great Masters, teaches, and Prophets have recommended for you to do, you eventually realize, Yes, that is infinity. Yes, that makes sense. Yes it is, but I cannot explain it because you have to put it in words."
It is just like The Word. When The Word is revealed to you, you say, It is there. I already knew. It is within me. I heard it. I knew it. Yes, I can hear it.
But tell someone, OK, tell me what it is? They cannot tell you because The Word is something within you. It is not something that you can intellectually tell, Oh, this is the sound of here, it comes from there and goes here. I can hear it.
You have to hear it within yourself, and then you can say, Yes, it exists and it is there.
So that is exactly what God is. You cannot explain God.
You can explain dogmas. That is probably why the human likes to create dogmas because dogmas are explainable. They appeal to the human mind, to the human intellect. They say, Oh, yes, dogma I understand. This is explained. Therefore, I accept this religion because I understand it. But God...?" you have to be a Mystic.
Matrix, it sounds like you have a question. If you still have a question, go ahead.
Matrix: Hello, yes, thank you. Well, it an honor to listen to you. I will first of all state that I am an atheist. But I think one of the most benign religions is the Buddhist teaching. I think there is a lot of wisdom to that. I am not sure what your background is but you sound like a very wise man.
The one thing I like about the Buddhism teaching and the type of teaching that you are saying is, the concept of consciousness, rising to a consciousness level. That is because I believe that in our individual lives we have the potential of evolving, and on a societal level we all have the potential of evolving. And so I was wondering if you have any suggestions of ways to raise your consciousness, as you would call it, I guess I would call it evolving, aside from meditation.
I went to meditation meetings for about three years and all that usually did for me was I just ended up falling asleep along side the old Indian men next to me, which is fine because I like their company.
What would you say to an atheist, what is the way to raise your consciousness? Thank you.
Maitreya: Yes, sure, Matrix, actually, you are an atheist because you have not found the true religion, or the truth. You are probably an atheist because someone gave you a bunch of dogmas, told you to follow them, and you said, Well, they do not make sense to me. I am not going to follow this.
That is exactly what happened to me. You can say I had an atheist background as well because the religion they were teaching me was not satisfactory to me. There was a God up there called, Allah. And I said, Why? If you can show me God, I will believe in Him.
Of course, God eventually showed Himself to me and I believed in Him. One of the things about our teaching, even atheists can benefit from it because if you read our teaching it says that God said He was going to do these things, and He has done them.
Historically, scientifically, and spiritually it is proven everything in THOTH that has come through something that God said would happen, and it happened.
But God is not a person. God is not someone sitting on a throne up there and everyone around him sitting there with Him. God is Consciousness and the three creative forces in the universe. That is what God is.
You can relate to that easily because it is based on science. We had a lecture that was given here, about creation and history. You will see how creation and history are explained in the Mission. It is logical.
Even the creative force, now they have come to realize the three forces in the universe, the strong force, the electromagnetic, and the weak force that have created most of the things in the universe. Without the material to use to create things, you cannot create anything.
Therefore, we need consciousness to use as a material with these three forces to create, which of course, has the ability to create the gravity. And gravity is the accumulation of the consciousnesses.
So if you read our teaching you will see, really God exists, God, which is consciousness. And It is within you. It is you. It is not up there away from you. And you will probably say, Yes, I am not atheist anymore because I can see that consciousness is God.
That is exactly what happened to me. Eventually, it made sense. God is everything. It is consciousness. It is the creative force. It is logical. It is very viable. It is scientific. Therefore, my mind accepts it.
To have a suggestion for spiritual progress or going to higher consciousness, or whatever you want to call that, is the base of our teaching. It is based on the Eternal Divine Path. It covers five steps which start with the first step, meditation.
You also said that you fell asleep when you were meditating. You should not lie down when you meditate because the body is lazy. The flesh is weak; the spirit is strong. So you fall asleep. When you fall asleep, you really are meditating, but you are not aware of what is happening. You are asleep.
Really, meditation is a sleep, at the same time being aware of what is happening. You meditate when you are sitting up so you are not really falling asleep. You have to be aware of your sleep, of your dreams, of your consciousness, of what is happening within you. You look at them and see how your mind works.
The moment you close your eyes, your mind starts taking over. It says, Oh, no, he is meditating. He is going to be knowing what I am doing to him so far. The moment you do that, they are going to come and say, Hello, do you remember what you ate last night? Dont you want something to do? You are busy you cannot do that. Come on, you cannot do that. You have better things to do than sitting here. It is silly. Why are you still sitting here and meditating. All these things are going to tell you, Do not do it. We do not want you to meditate at all.
But if you continue with your eyes closed and bring your attention back to your meditation, little by little they will give up. They will say, Oh, this is silly.
No, it is not silly. Mantra, Haree Om Shrii Hung, Om Nam Kevalam. Haree Om Shrii Hung....
What did you eat last night?
Oh yeah Oh, I am going away. No. Haree Om Shrii Hung, Om Nam Kevalam. The Goal Of The Life Is To Be(Come) Divine, That Divinity (God) Is Everything.
So we can see, little by little, by little, your mind is going over; you bring it back. It goes there, you bring it back. Little by little you get the strength over your mind instead of them.
Do not lie down. Yes, you will fall asleep because that is what they want you to do. They want you to fall asleep because when you are asleep you are not aware of what is happening in your consciousness. They want you to fall asleep, not to become strong in your meditation.
Therefore, do not lie down. Sit up somewhere. Do not even put your back somewhere that it is comfortable. Sit in a way that there is no support for your back so if you fall asleep, you will fall and you will wake up. If your back is against something you are going to fall asleep. You have a support behind you. You are not going to fall off.
That is why it is recommended that you sit in a lotus pose. Of course, sitting in the lotus pose is not easy. You have to practice a lot of yoga exercises to get your body flexible enough to be able to sit in the lotus pose. But if you cannot sit in the lotus pose, with nothing behind you, you will meditate. And then you will not fall asleep.
That is still the first step. You have not even started to follow the Eternal Divine Path. Then you have to create an environment that it helps you to meditate more, to be more in touch with God, with your spirit.
Then, of course, you have to be in that community, help that community, bring greater unity to that community, and sacrifice in the community.
Meditation and awakening of your spiritual forces are related to the Mystical Paths, which are: Hinduism, Buddhism, etc.
The Communities of Light are the Old Testament, which is Judaism, and the Hebrews.
And sacrifice is Christianity.
After you sacrifice, you surrender and submit to God, which is Islam. You become a universalist, and you see that God is everything. So then you will progress in a great, accelerated way that you have never thought was possible.
But you have to do it. That is the point in the Mission. You have to do it. You have to get on with it. You have to go for it. If you hesitate it is not going to work.
So go to our website at www.maitreya.org and read our teaching. If you really delve deep into it, you will find that even atheists will see that what we are saying is logical and scientific, and is proven historically and scientifically, that they will look at it.
God is a logical God. God is not a bunch of dogmas. God is you. God is your logic. He is your intellect. He is your Consciousness and creative force in the world.
So I suggest that you go to our website and study our teaching. If you have a question, there are places you can ask your questions. Send an e-mail to us. If you want further explanation, we will do that.
All right, Ram Dass, it sounds like you have a question. I saw your hand for a while and then you left. You are back. If you have a question, go ahead.
Ram Dass: Yes, I have a question. You were speaking about creation, many universes, and also the big bang. I was wondering if all those creations like those ones we see with the Hubble telescope are not just in our minds and just not Maya. Isnt it Maya too?
Maitreya: Well, Maya is the delusion or illusion of separation from God. Those galaxies that the Hubble telescope picks up, are they separate from God, or just looking at them is Maya? I do not understand what you mean by, Are they Maya, or our pursuing them is Maya?
Ram Dass: Well, I will try to clarify my question. When we look at those galaxies, all those nebula, black holes, and speaking about the big bang and those creations, isnt it Maya, all those material worlds? I mean, is it not just in our minds that we see it in the telescope? Is it just a projection of our mind, of our spirit?
Maitreya: Well, remember, this universe is not an illusion. If you are talking about this universe is Maya, is illusion, we do not teach that. We do not say this universe is illusion. We say it is a relative truth. It is not absolute truth but it is a relative truth. It is not the Essence. It is something created for us to progress.
That is why a lot of people think this universe, the created universe, is the truth, is the reality. They are so delusional into it that they believe that they have to have as much as they can. They have to have power. They have to gain more and more and more, and then they die in ignorance and illusion.
This universe, those galaxies, are not illusion. They are not Maya but they are a relative truth. But if you believe that those are the reality but they are not a relative truth, then you have fallen to the Maya of illusion of separation from God and taking this universe as the ultimate truth. Then you are in Maya.
But this universe, is not Maya itself. If we realize that then we can live in it without becoming attached to it. Maybe that was your question that if we believe that these things are truth then we are in Maya, then you are correct.
But are those galaxies Maya? No they are not. They are a part of the creation, and they are a relative truth. They are not absolute because they are not the Essence.
Anything that is not the Essence is relative truth. The only thing the Essence is, is Spirit; is Consciousness and three gunas.
OK, I guess our time together ends here. We had a mini Darshan here also with everyone in the Mission. I hope you stay with the Mission, stay with the lectures. It is very important to come to the lectures. A lot of good information is going to come out. We have good lecturers here. And they are going to give us a lot of beautiful things about the Mission.
There was a lecture about the prophecies this morning that covered fantastic things that even I did not know when I started the Mission. Now I know [laughing]. It is truly God that has revealed to the point of exactly the address where the Revelation was going to come. Even, as I said, to the city. The only thing it did not say, it did not say the number of the house and the street, what number it is. Otherwise, it has given the exact address where this Revelation is going to come.
We are going to talk about that tomorrow. There will be a lecture that we will have about the Seven Seals tomorrow at 9:30 AM. We will discuss that.
Also John talked about that we gave the system. There is going to be another lecture on the system. It will be given by Radah. She knows that system inside and out. And we will probably enjoy it very well. Probably it is good to come to all of them. The schedule is there.
The only thing you cannot participate in is the food. Otherwise, everything else in the Mission you can participate in.
Well, of course, if you want to participate in the food too, then come over [laugher]. Plan for next year. Come here and enjoy the fantastic environment and the food that is made here too.
So we have the food of mind, food of spirit, and food of the physical body all in one place. We unified that too [laughter]. We combined them together.
I leave you to God. Sal-OM everyone.