Discipline

A lecture given by Maitreya on, "Discipline; Does God Have a Will for us?" 

10/25/1987 Satsang (Discourse) with

Maitreya

DISCIPLINE

There are people who think that life is just a series of, "What I want to do, I should do whatever I feel like doing." They miss the point that if you do not discipline your energy, you cannot accomplish anything great in your life.

The very notion that whatever feels good is good, is really not wanting to be disciplined. For instance, look at steam. If you just put water on the fire and create steam, that doesn't accomplish much. They were doing that for thousands of years.

Eventually one man said, "Let's give it some discipline. Let's put it in a machine, confine it and then see what happens." What happened? They created a steam engine, and they revolutionized human life. Yet steam was there all this time. It is the same energy they have been using for thousands of years.

Everybody boiled water. But it was not disciplined. So that energy was completely wasted. It is just like dynamite. You blow off dynamite in the air. What happens? Nothing is accomplished. It makes a big noise. Probably it is going to disturb your ears. But nothing is accomplished. Confine the same dynamite under hard rocks and then defuse it. You can blow out those rocks and create roads, etc. By disciplining the same dynamite you are able to harness its energy to accomplish a great task.

If we do not discipline our lives, to follow rules or regulations that have been set up for us to follow by a Higher Intelligence or God, then what happens to us? We follow our own feelings and we associate those feelings to the Word of God or something that comes from Him. How many people are really directly connected to Him?

We were talking about the subconscious mind, a week or two ago. The subconscious mind can sometimes be very tricky. It can put on the cloth of God, and come to us and say, "This is what should be done -- that is the way it should be." And we take that as the Word of God. That is why God sends His Word in the Books -- in the Scriptures.

One time a man said, "I didn't realize the significance of the Ten Commandments until I started following them. Then I saw, they really work. They really fill me. They really discipline me. They really bring my energy to focus. They really make me stronger, more powerful in God."

Yet, how many people really like the Ten Commandments? They say, "They are no good. We have to do whatever appeals to us." Then what can God say? God already has sent the discipline for humanity to follow. They are not for God. He doesn't care if you follow the Commandments, or any discipline, or anything that makes our energy more useful for ourselves and others. He set these disciplines because He knows better than us what is good for us.

A lot of people who meditate don't follow the Ten Commandments or those disciplines, and they say, "We receive our guidance from within," which is OK, if you are 100% pure. Otherwise the slightest impurity will soil what you think is a guidance from within.

If you are l00% perfectly clear, you will hear He said, "Follow the Ten Commandments. Follow this discipline. This is given for you, which is good." And you realize it is good for you, because you are clear and completely one with God.

Moses didn't want to spend his time going to the mountain for forty days and coming down with something that was not from God. God did not give it to Moses' brother Aaron, or even Joshua; He gave it to Moses, who brought it back to his people.

So, if you follow only the guidance that comes from within you, it is just like everyone is Moses. But are they? Are they Moses? They can be.

Yet, God chose only one person, Moses, to go to the mountain and bring His Ten Commandments down. So we come to a place where a lot of people meditate. Also there are Scriptures and the Words of God which come through many Prophets, Messiahs or Saviors, or whatever you call them.

They bring the purer, more crystallized Word of God to humanity, to be followed by them, not for God's sake but for man's sake, because our happiness is only complete when we know God. For only God is infinite and there is a longing in every man for the infinite.

That is why when we replace that infinite longing with something finite, then we start longing for material things. We long for a house; we buy a house. Then we want a car; we buy a car. We want another car; we buy two cars. Then we want a boat; we buy the boat. We want a bigger boat. Then we want an airplane. We have the airplane, then we want to have all kinds of friends from higher places and parties and all these things, drinking, smoking -- and after awhile we feel, that is not it. We have everything but still that longing is not satisfied.

So what we are really doing is replacing that longing for limitlessness, with something limited. That is where unhappiness comes to humanity. Man does not realize this longing within which is for the Infinite, which is God.

This longing can only be satisfied with Him. Nothing in this universe will satisfy this longing of man for complete joy and happiness. Oneness can come by disciplining ourselves in all matters and watching ourselves all the time -- being watchful of our actions.

If you are not watching yourself, you do not know why your moods are swinging up and down, "Why do I feel good today? I did not feel good yesterday. I felt very good an hour ago. I'm not feeling good anymore. What happened?" It is because we do not know -- there are deeper things within us that are affecting us all the time.

Everyone affects everyone else. Everything in the universe affects everything else. All particles in the universe have an affect on each other. We know about the stars, how they affect each other because they are greater in mass. Yet even the smallest speck in the universe has power over other specks or other elements in the universe.

Being watchful means to be disciplined, to overcome the longing of the physical, mental, and ethereal bodies. There are not only physical longings. We have a lot of psychological longings. We were just talking about the subconscious mind.

The subconscious mind wants to be something, to be someone, or to be somewhere or to do something. And all these longings do not bring satisfaction. We go for them though. That is OK, as long as we are realizing this is not it -- these are not the answers.

But it is good to know that these will not satisfy the ultimate goal for which every Soul longs. The ultimate goal is God, the Divinity, the Oneness with the One. Again, this can be accomplished much easier in the Communities of Light, because the Eternal Divine Path is a discipline. The Communities of Light follow the Eternal Divine Path.

We always have to watch, are we following the Eternal Divine Path -- are we meditating, are we watchful, are we observant of ourselves and our environment, are we trying to create the Communities of Light?

Are we here to create the Communities of Light, or is it easier to take our individuality, and go and live alone? It is much easier that way. It is easier if everyone has a house and a few friends, goes to work a couple of hours a day to make some money, and comes home.

Of course, they have other dissatisfactions, such as the disadvantage of loneliness, of not being in an environment that supports you and all those things. So there is always a trade-off in physical life.

You lose something for everything you gain. It is impossible to have everything at the same time. You cannot have the world and God. You cannot have two Masters. So that is again another discipline. How much compromise do you want to make for what you gain? So you gain the world, fine, however you lose your Soul. You gain your Soul, you lose the world.

 

Question: Now, it is a question about discipline. I want to know if there is one way of discipline, one method, or everyone has to choose his own discipline. I mean, when you say you have to meditate, you have to control yourself and everything like this. Some people cannot do this but they can help in a spiritual way by doing things -- not just thinking about things -- they must act or they cannot just stay like that.
 

Maitreya: Well, in the matter of discipline, discipline means to be able to withdraw from acting when your lower nature says to act. It is easier to relax and to follow your desire, than to be observant of how your desires and actions, for instance, affect others or the environment. That is one discipline.

Many religions have given some disciplinary actions or some procedures to be followed for becoming observant. For instance, in Christianity the Sermon on the Mount is a discipline. If your eyes deceive you, pluck them out and throw them away. It really does not mean physically, grab your eyes and throw them away. It means, if you look with lust on a woman, you have already done adultery. It means that is a discipline, watch yourself.

If your eyes are lusting after flesh, watch yourself. That is a discipline given in Christianity. In Judaism all the elaborate sacrifice of animals and sacrifice of different things, was a kind of discipline to remember God or the Ten Commandments. That was a discipline.

In Islam, there are five times of prayer a day. That is a discipline -- that you withdraw from everything you do, put your attention toward God and do your prayer. So there are many, many ways which have been given for discipline.

For instance, we do the Reminder and meditation at least twice a day as disciplines. We also have the Fifteen Commandments. That is also a discipline which has to be read, understood, and start to be followed.

So these disciplines are for us to follow. But the question is about individuality. Each individual can discipline himself in different ways. That is very true.

In Hinduism it has been recognized that the temperament of individuals is different. Some people are devotional. They just love God. They do not want to have any knowledge about why the universe was created. They have nothing to do with the intellectual aspect of God -- they just love God. They have no knowledge of how He created the earth, what the miracles are, etc. They just love God. They are devotional people and their discipline is, to love their God with all their heart, mind, and being. They are Bhaktis; they are devotional. Bhakti means devotion.

There are people with temperaments that like to do things for God. They do things for Him, and surrender the results to Him. If you do something for God and then you become attached to the result, what happens? You say, "Look at me, such a great person I am, I am doing so much for God." You create a big ego.

Or you do a lot of things but nothing happens. Then you start feeling bad, "Oh, I am doing so much and nobody is patting my back, or nobody is progressing." You become discouraged. So do your best, and surrender the results. This is called Karma Yoga. Karma Yoga means action yoga.

The third kind is the Jinana Yoga. Jinana means knowledge. These people love to study and try to recognize God with their intellect. They want to know how and why the universe was created, who is God, who was first, God or the creation -- the egg or the chicken. They are just trying to figure out all these different ways of knowing.

Eventually both the people who seek knowledge and those who are Karma Yogis, end up with the Bhakti, or devotion to God. They just become lovers of God. They eventually reach a point at which the person who seeks knowledge realizes, such a wonderful, such a harmonious universe, has been created by God. After they acquire more and more knowledge, they start to realize that everything that happened, happened for a reason. God is just.

Everything that a human sees as awful and terrible, at the end is good because He knows where he is going and why it is happening. The knowledge of God results in devotion to God.

Those who are Karma yogis work for God, and as they submit to Him and realize He is the Doer not them, they become more and more a channel for Him. The more of God in them, the less of them there will be. This will increase the joy of being and becoming Him more and more.

So those who are of Karma Yoga create a great devotion for Him. They work for God because they always surrender the results to God, and eventually they become a channel for God -- they become One with God. Their bodies become carriers of His Will and that also creates devotion. So there are different kinds of disciplines for different temperaments.

 

Question: Is this a question of temperament or is this a question of being selected for being devotional, karma or other?
 

Maitreya: That is a good question because there is an essay in THOTH, our main book, called "Predestination or Choice." This essay explains that the universe is like a Kingdom and God is its King. Let us compare His Kingdom with an earthly kingdom.

An earthly kingdom has a king, a prime minister, and many different other ministers. Then there are different sections or departments within those governments, and then there is the department that works with the people. There are also people who have nothing to do with the king, going around and doing their own things every day. All of this is called his kingdom.

Let's compare a prime minister with a peasant, a regular person. Now which of these two has more freedom and has the choice to follow his own will? Yes, the regular person can make his own decisions easier than the prime minister. The regular person can wake up in the morning, especially if he's self-employed, and say, Well, I don't feel like doing anything today -- I will just go to the mountains.

Can the prime minister, if there is urgent work to be done by him for the king, say that? Can he say, "No, king, today I am going to the mountain and I do not care what the kingdom needs?" So, the closer the people are to the king, the less self will they have, don't they?

Now it is the same thing with God. The closer you are to God, the less self will you have, because His Will becomes your will. If you become His Prime Minister and He tells you, take and do this, you have no choice. Otherwise He is going to replace you with another Prime Minister.

Yet, at the same time, you have greater bliss. You have greater power and greater understanding of the work of the King because you are so close to Him. You know His temperament, His way of thinking, His way of working, what He wants for His Kingdom, how He wants it, how He is going to accomplish it and all those things.

A peasant, a regular person, has a lot of freedom for himself. He can follow his own will but he is not too close to the king. He is very far away from him. So that is how self will and the Will of God come in.

When you come close to God, you have very little will of yourself, but His Will is paramount.

 

Question: Do you think that God has a will for us?
 

Maitreya: There are two ways of looking at His creation. Either there is purpose in this creation, or there is no purpose in this creation.

If there is no purpose in this creation, there is no reason for us to be here. So we and animals are the same. Let's be like animals, if there is no purpose for human life!

Or, there is a purpose in this creation. If we understand there is a purpose in this creation -- purpose means to reach a goal, to accomplish something -- then there is something we have to accomplish.

So God has a purpose for us, to unfold to Pure Consciousness.

 

Question: Don't you think that God gives us all that we have and need, and the purpose is to become perfect, certainly? I do not think that He is so low that He cannot come and say to us -- if He minds really -- that is our will. We have things to do. For example, if I have an examination, I have the books. So that is for me to read them or not to read them. The professor is here to correct it, and if I did not read it so well I do not pass my examination and that is all.
 

Maitreya: The question is that God is not concerned with what you do? Is that your question? That He has given us the intelligence, eyes, hands, feet, body, everything we need to realize His Will?

 

Question: At the beginning He gave this and He wanted us to become perfect. But what we can do now, we will see the results in another life or in another time?
 

Maitreya: That is very true. You see, it is your decision which makes the result. It is your action, which creates the reaction. There is a Law in the universe, the Law of Karma. Any action has a reaction. So a reaction will be created in the universe for any action you do. This is also true in the law of physics.

And this reaction will remain in this universe, in the ethereal level, until you learn your lesson about your action. If the action is not according to the Universal Laws, it will create a negative reaction. That negative reaction is created, not to punish you, but just to give you a lesson.

The moment the lesson is learned, those karmas will be dissolved. So you see, there is a set-up, there are rules. There is a Law in the universe that works. And that Law is very unforgiving. You cannot break that Law, for usually if you try, you break yourself.

So, that is how God guides us. It is just like a path that we are trying to go through and reach its end. We are in the dark. On the two sides of the path there are walls of barbed wires. If you go to the side you will hit these walls, and if you go very fast you might even hurt yourself. Any time you go out of the way you will hit the barbed wires and you will return to the center, etc., until eventually you reach the goal.

It is very true, you have the choice. God gave all you need to make your decisions and choices to your perfection. So our choices make the reactions in the universe and we will receive what we deserve. "You reap what you sow."

 

Question: Yes, and the problem is that if it is like this, all the bad things that happen in this world, God does not want this just for a lesson or something? I mean, when there are wars and everything like that; this is the human being doing them.
 

Maitreya: You see, when those negative reactions are accumulated, they usually return as some upheaval on human life which eventually will end with the good lessons which we learn or that humanity learns.

 

Question: Will we see the results? Because 90% of human beings have to see the result to have a lesson. I mean like a little child has to touch the fire to know that he is burning.
 

Maitreya: Regular humans cannot see this truth clearly, so they do not learn their lessons. They continue making mistakes until one day they reach a point where they feel there should be more in life than their heedless cycles of misery. It is then that they are guided. It is then that they will seek for truth. When they reach this point, they will see these truths clearly. However, in this period of human existence, an intense situation has been created. He has created this situation that human progress be accelerated. For example, God has released so much knowledge to humanity. Why?

 

Question: Because He gave us curiosity?
 

Maitreya: No, God already prophesied that in the end of this era the knowledge will increase. See, He has all the knowledge we learn now and that has been coming to humanity all along. He knows about electricity. He knows about electromagnetics. He knows about atoms. He knows about all these things. But He kept them from humanity because He did not want to give it to them before. They were not ready for them yet.

Now, suddenly He released them to us. Why? Because it is time for a great leap of human evolution. At the same time, because this new knowledge is creating such a closeness among humanity, it is also stirring a lot of upheaval. A lot of old concepts humanity wants to hang onto, these old ways, are no longer appropriate.

So this is when these upheavals are created. This is the lesson humanity has to learn. This is One Earth. It is not like l0,000 or even l00 years ago, that something happens in Iraq and Iran which would not affect the United States. Or something happens in South America that would not affect Russia or Europe.

We are such a small and closely knit earth right now that we have no choice but come to this conclusion, that we are One Earth and One Family. And, there is One God for all of us. So that is why humanity is going through these birth pains. For instance, a lot of people oppose other countries. Yet, they are using their industrial products.

They have no choice; they have no escape. They say a lot of bad things about those countries but if they can get their hands on their cars, they do not mind at all. You see, they need those things. At the same time, the people who have this industrial power, have a mission.

For instance, the United States has been chosen for a mission. It has been clearly explained in THOTH what the mission of the United States is. And that is what it should accomplish, what it should manifest for humanity. If it does not, it will be in trouble.

Everyone feels there is something going on in this country. They want to enter this country. Why do so many feel like that? Is it something, some spirit here, that attracts people? Or even that person on television tonight was saying what? We feel the United States is our protector. Why? Why is such a feeling, such a spirit, there?

 

Question: But this is history. There have been the Greeks. There have been the Romans. Now there are the Americans.
 

Maitreya: There has never been a nation that has had such an influence on such a worldwide scale. And it is not only this, it has been prophesied that the vine of the Children of Joseph will flow over their wall. So their influence will go over their borders.

The people who came to the United States are the Children of Ephraim and they are the Children of Joseph. So see, we are looking at the fulfillment of prophecies. We have to expand our consciousness. We have to see God's Revelations, God's Predictions, God's Will.

What did He predict? That is why I said, you have to read THOTH. You have to understand the prophecies of God. He predicted all these things will happen and now they are beginning. I am from another country. I came here and God showed me all this Truth. Now I have to tell you people of the United States, "This is your Daharma. You have to do this."

Sometimes I feel, Well I probably should not say that, an American should say that. Yet, in another way, I do not feel I belong to any other country -- or to any country, not the United States, Russia any country in Europe or anywhere. I am from God, so probably I am in the best position to say what is the Daharma of every country and nation.

So you see, you should not look at the appearance of the things. We should look at the Will of God behind the appearance.