Holy Days vs. Holidays

A Satsang (Discourse) given by Maitreya on "Holy Days vs Holidays."

12/24/1988 Satsang (Discourse) With

Maitreya
 

Maitreya: Today is the 24th of December and tomorrow is Christmas Day. It's an appropriate time to talk some about Christmas. We can see the signs of it all over in the western world and probably some people are upset that we don't follow Christmas.

I found two things are very upsetting to a lot of people if you do not celebrate them: One is the birthday. They say, "We have to keep the birthdays." The other one is Christmas.

For the birthday we found an appropriate switch, a new way to have a birthday yet not really being a birthday. It's called Re-Dedication Day. On that day we remember that we've been born to be dedicated to God and His purpose. So on that day we can probably meditate, fast, chant and pray to God more, and thank God for giving us this opportunity to be here and to serve Him.

We can re-dedicate ourselves to him. That's a kind of a birthday but it's not celebrating the birthday. Because, why are you so happy to be born in this wretched earth? Everyone says, "I want to go to heaven," and then they celebrate their birthday. If you want to go to heaven, and you think heaven is a better place to be, why are you celebrating being on earth? I found human logic sometimes is pretty much twisted.

And about Christmas -- just ask anyone, Do you know what it is? And they'll probably give a religious significance. But when you look at the way they are following it, it reminds me of when the disciples of Esa (Jesus) went to Greece. The Grecians had all these idols, small clay gods and all those things. They had celebrations every day for each of their little gods.

The disciples went there and said, "Throw these gods away. They are no gods because the only God is the God that Esa brought to humanity. This is the invisible God, the incredible God. It is the Father, and we have to worship only Him." All these Grecians became angry at the disciples. They said, "What are you talking about? This is our tradition, we have been keeping this for thousands of years. You mean we have been wrong for thousands of years?"

But who eventually won? Eventually the true God won because the disciples were presenting a greater God than those small clay gods. And as we can see, even the Bible says, These pagans who ornament the tree and worship it.

What are we doing here? Aren't we doing the same thing, ornamenting the tree? We're putting a tree in the center of our attention, instead of God at the center of our attention.

And all this commercialization? Probably God tolerated this tradition so far because it brought a beautiful religious feeling to people. But now it's become more commercialized than ever before.

Also, this is the time of unity. As someone said, "If different cultures celebrate every birthday for every great personality in their culture and every little god's birthday, that brings separation again to humanity."

God clearly indicated what He wanted to be celebrated on His Holy Days. Now is the time to go back to the Godhead. Either you want God or you don't want God. If you want God, then He clearly says, "These are the days that you have to follow." If you don't want God, you want to follow your tradition -- even the Bible says, "Those who follow their tradition, not the words of God..." Then you don't want to follow God's Will, you don't want to follow God's Way. You want to follow man's way.

Actually Christmas, or the celebration of this time of the year, occurred because it was close to the longest night of the year. And because it was the longest night, pagans reasoned if they sacrificed and celebrated, then the sun would come back. They were afraid the sun would keep going away. They realized the nights were becoming longer and longer. And probably one of them celebrated close to this time and said, "If you celebrate, then the sun is going to come back, if you don't celebrate it might go away. So it's going to completely become night, we wouldn't have the sun." That's why they celebrated the return of the "sun," not the "Son."

Actually the first Christians celebrated the Holy Days of God for 700 years, until Christianity became accepted by the Roman Empire. The Romans were sun worshippers. Even their hair styles were like the sun. Also they had a god for every element in the universe.

So the return of the sun became the birthday of the Son of God, which is not the truth, because Esa wasn't born at this time. As we remember, the shepherds were in the mountains with their sheep then. In the East, people don't keep their sheep out in the desert in such cold weather. They usually put them in special stables to keep them warm. So the weather should have been pretty nice and warm that they had their sheep with them in the mountains. Most probably Esa was born either in spring or late in the summer or fall. There is no way that he was born at this time of year.

And I don't think he ever talked about Santa Claus either. Some of these ideas came from North Europe, like Santa Claus came from North Europe, because they receive less and less daylight. Actually they reach a point where the nights are very long and the days are very short. So most of the ideas of Santa Claus living in the North Pole and these myths came from the Northern part of Europe.

About having a white Christmas -- we're not having a white Christmas here. It's pretty dry here. These ideas all came from Europe. So if we make the people think about it, then they realize this holiday is not really related to any spiritual significance. It's all man-made.

But because we are so engrossed in our traditions, our countries or our religions, our concepts are so narrow that we cannot let go of them. "Oh, you mean we are not going to celebrate Christmas? We're not going to give presents? Or we're not going to put ornaments on the trees? It's such an awful thing, we cannot even think about not doing it."

They had the same type of celebrations in the culture I came from. They didn't celebrate Christmas but they had something similar. However, in order to create unity for humanity, in order to bring God into our midst we have to let go our traditions, our concepts, and our narrow views. We have to completely eradicate those kinds of feelings and go beyond them and say, "OK, I know where they come from, I have to forego them and I have to follow God, because that is the Will of God."

We talked about, "We are going to follow the Will of God. Oh, I want to follow the Will of God so badly." And then tell them, "Well Christmas is not a part of the Will of God." They say, "No, No, No, this I don't want. I just want this part but I don't want that part." You can't separate one part of God from the other. He's the whole package.

You want the ecstasy of God but at the same time you want to keep the worldly things. As Esa said, you cannot have two masters. Either you want God or you want the world. If you still want the world, then you have two masters. You have no choice but to despise one of them. And if your desire for worldly things is greater, then you have to despise God.

They say, "No, No, these things are not from God because according to my tradition, for 1,300 years we have done it this way." It is not even 2,000 years that these traditions have been followed, it's only 1,300 years. "Because we have done it this way, I'm not going to change and I'm not going to want to change."

A lot of people hear about our teachings in this lifetime and are touched. Probably that was enough for them for the time being. The next lifetime they come back, they are cleansed in the period when they haven't been on earth. When they come back they have already been touched by the Message, and they will come and become the champions of the cause and the Message.

But for us, those who really want to do the Will of God now, we have to be more discerning, more able to look at things and evaluate them. We cannot just accept anything offered to us but we must clearly look at it and say, "Is this really a part of God's Plan, is it really His Will, is it a part of what He has demanded us to do? Or is this just my ego, or my tradition, or my own way that I want it to be done?" As more and more we accept what He said, we see the benefit of it.

Someone said, "I never knew the benefit of the Ten Commandments until I followed them. After I followed them, they're beautiful! They freed me from a lot of my pulls, fleshly desires and the things that were tearing my life apart. Then I reached that peace of God where I knew that I am in control, because God is in control of me and my life. I am doing much better, am much more peaceful and am in control of my life because I follow what God demands of me."

That's exactly how the Mission is. We say this thing as a recommendation but really recommendation means, That's what God said He wants to be done. So on this night probably this is a good message to those who are still resisting to let their traditions go.

And not only this, I don't think Esa ever talked about an Easter bunny either, or many other holidays that many celebrate.

It's time for unity. It's time to let these go and replace them with God's Joy through celebrating God's Holy Days. We can have beautiful things happening even on Holy Days if we meditate, chant, dance and teach our children to be God-conscious instead of something that is not from Him.

 

Question: How about the person who respects Christmas Day in relation with Jesus' life, those who are really involved in the faith of Jesus and the Bible, and those who are not concerned with the commercial aspect and all that? They really believe in their Jesus and the Bible, so they really do it with great faith that this day -- or maybe it was not exactly this day -- and they remember the birth of their Prophet. What about this aspect?

Maitreya: As I said there was more tolerance before our Message came to the earth. Actually whenever God sends a new Messenger for a new era, the negative forces become strong too at the same time. Wherever there is light, there is darkness. You can see the negative forces are stronger probably now than forty years ago. And as I said, Christmas wasn't as commercialized even ten years ago. So those who really have faith and love for Jesus or Esa as their Prophet have to realize, What was his message? What was his mission when he came on earth? If they read THOTH and see that Esa had a special message as the Messiah to come and fulfill according to God's Will and according to the promise which was given to Abraham, then they will put him in the right perspective according to God's Will.

Again, it goes back to, Do you want to follow your will or God's Will? If you want to follow your will and say, "No, we don't accept what God wants but we accept what our dogma is," then you can keep your dogma and God has nothing to do with you. But if you want to see the truth and what God's Will was for the last 12,000 years, and how He brought us to this point, then you realize the Spirit of God has been working all this time behind all these great religions and each of them have a place in His Plan and Esa's place is in the third sign. Even the pagans were very sincere about their traditions and loved their ways.

Then again, either they have to celebrate the Messiah's birthday as he came again and again, or they have to say, "We don't want to celebrate the Prophet's birthday, we want to celebrate God's Holy Days." Then they have to forego birthday celebrations. If they want to follow God's Will, God says, "These are my Holy Days, you keep them Holy forever." Then they'll forget about their birthdays, holidays and Prophet's birthdays, and they will keep the Holy Days of God.

 

Question: How did we come to pick Saturday and particularly at 6:00 PM for the transmission?

Maitreya: The day of Sabbath has been observed even before Abraham. Eventually it came down to the Children of Israel and to the Jewish people. They kept Saturday as the Sabbath. Even if you look at the calendar today, they still keep Sunday as the first day of the week. And the seventh day of the week is Saturday. So, you reach this conclusion, that really Saturday is the last day of the week. So we keep Sabbath on Saturday.

About why at 6:00PM? As we explained in THOTH, usually the day starts at sunrise and finishes at sunset. That is the most natural way to keep the day. Sunrise and sunset are the best times to meditate too. They are the calmest times of the day. However, sunrise and sunset change every day according to where the sun is at the time. If you average when the sun rises and the sun sets for the year, it's approximately 6 o'clock in the morning and 6 o'clock in the afternoon. So in order to keep a uniformity so everyone knows what time to meditate together, 6 o'clock sounds like a pretty logical time to separate the day and night.

As I said, the most natural way is to accept sunrise and sunset as the beginning of day and night. If we accept 6 o'clock as an average for that period, night really starts at 6 o'clock at night and morning starts at 6 o'clock in the morning.

Another way to reach this conclusion is to consider noon. Noon is the middle of the day, when the sun is approximately at its highest in the sky. Then six hours before and six hours after make an average twelve hour day. The other twelve hours can be considered as night.

The system of starting day at 12 o'clock at night, when the sun has already set approximately six hours before, seems very illogical. You're in the middle of the night, midnight, and then one minute later you're one minute into the morning. It doesn't make sense, does it? However if you start night at 6 o'clock in the afternoon, then when you say it's midnight, it makes sense, you have six more hours to go until morning, and six hours have passed since night has started. So you are in the middle of the night "midnight."

Also, there has been a prophecy that the Roman Empire, which was at the height of intellectual development, will change the time. And they did. This is again a Roman influence, and humanity is still following it. We are following a timing that, if you think about it, there is no logic behind it. As I said, it's midnight and then one second later it's morning.

So that prophecy has also been fulfilled. The effect of that illogical way has been taken care of here with the Mission, and we are suggesting to bring it back the way it really should be. Start night at 6 o'clock in the evening and day at 6 o'clock in the morning.

Therefore, to answer your question, these are the reasons that we accept Saturday as Sabbath and 6 o'clock as the time to meditate together.

 

Question: About the Holy Days of the Lord, that you just referred to from the Bible -- there are 5 billion people on earth and there are many billions who don't even know the name of the Bible, like Chinese people or the people in India etc, so what about those people? How can you manage with all the people on earth to make them believe that this book exactly, this only one book, is the book where God asked them to respect His Holy Days?

Maitreya: Well, actually I don't think the Chinese don't know about the Bible. They know about the Bible. I think the Bible is one of the books everyone on earth knows about. God made sure it reached a position where no one is out there who doesn't know about the Bible.

Probably you're talking about some people who are at the top of the mountains who never studied anything, and they are not even interested in these things. Those kinds of people really don't care. If it is a Jewish religion or Christian religion or Islamic or Hindu or Chinese, they just follow any faith they were born in. Then the next faith comes and the central government says, "This faith is going to be the faith of this land from now on." Maybe the first generation doesn't give in easily but the second and third generation you'll see don't care. They have many other things to think about. They're struggling for daily life so they are not that interested.

But if you have even a little education you would know about the Bible and Koran, etc.

 

Question: You may hear about it but how can you make them believe that it's the only book where God asked for Holy Days?

Maitreya: So the first point is that the Bible is a very well known book all over. The second point is, that is the only holy book that God directly reveals what days He considers Holy. There is no other holy book that comes out so directly and outlines what He considers Holy.

The third point is that this is a part of our teaching, and our teaching unifies all the religions, even the Chinese belief and the Hindu belief and the Buddhist belief and the Jains belief and every other religion on earth. So if they believe in our teaching, then when we say, "This is what God's Will is," that is also a part of this whole package that has to be accepted.

The fourth point is that if you really believe that humanity wants to be united and to become one planet, one people and bring oneness to the whole of humanity as one, then you cannot go on and have many, many holidays all over the earth. If we want to accept every nation and every religion and their holidays, then we're going to have 360 days off. Nothing will get done. This is the practical reason for it.

So from God's point of view, from His revelation to humanity, from the Mission's point of view and from the practical point of view, this is something that eventually has to be accepted and followed.

Of course, this is not something we are really pushing right now. It is something that we are giving to humanity that they can discuss, look at, realize and if they want to follow God's Will, eventually also accept. This will become a tradition and the Will of God for everyone.

 

Question: Did I hear you mention that you'd like to have some kind of retreat on the Feast of Tabernacles next year? And could you tell us what you have in mind? That would be sometime in October of next year?

Maitreya: Well, I'm thinking it's probably a good idea. We have so many people right now and probably a lot of them are interested to participate in some of the activities of the Mission. We can create this opportunity for them to come to be with us, follow our diet, our meditation, our chanting, our dancing and being with us sharing Satsangs together, being with others of like mind, and so being inspired. At the same time this will show the kind of tradition that is the Will of God, because there are two weeks that God chose as His Holy Weeks. One is the week following Passover (week of Unleavened Bread) in spring, and the other one is the week of the Feast of Tabernacles. So we can have this kind of gathering twice a year.

For this, of course, we need some help to start it going. If we ever have enough manpower to do it, I'd like to see that we start this going. People can come and be with us, sup with us, share with us, sing with us, and be inspired. That will not only make their faith strong, but they'll be inspired and become messengers who are going to go out and touch other people. Probably it's going to add more people coming the next time, and soon it's going to have a kind of snowball effect.

I'd like to see that it's done in a very "first class" way. Let the people come and really be comfortable, and let's have a place where they really feel that it's well done and it's not just a shabby thing. I'd like to have it, as a friend was saying, as a "first class" thing. We can discuss how it can be done.

For those who we know are really inspired, who really love the Mission and want to be with us but cannot afford it, of course, we can somehow make arrangements.

However, as the Law of the Universe indicates, if you take more than you put into anything, you will drain Its resources. We would like people to put more into the Mission than they take. Then the Mission will prosper and the Message will go even further.

This is just a suggestion that I put out. Of course, it can be discussed to see what other opinions there are and what we can do about it. You think it's a good idea? [all agree]

 

Question: What about the solstices and equinoxes? The people all over the world respect this kind of feast, like the Indians because of the mother earth and all those things.

Maitreya: It is pagan and the base of it is mostly fear. They were afraid that their gods wouldn't let the sun come back, for instance. Or it was the beginning of spring, and it was the time of the plowing of the fields. It felt so beautiful and good, "Let's have a celebration." So that mostly is based on their own imagination and the fear of gods or feeling good about something. It is not that God said, "This is my Holy Day."

 

Question: Also there are other people, like New Age people, who speak about respecting the feast of the Christ. It's on the full moon of June and the Wesak festival on the full moon of May. What about those?

Answer: Did God say, keep the full moon of June as my Holy Day? He didn't say that did He? So that's out too. Now I have never seen any legitimate Scripture (of the great religions of the world) that said the full moon of June is the day or feast of the Christ.

 

Audience: That's the Alice Bailey teaching.

Maitreya: The Bailey teaching, as many others, has some truth in it but she was not a major Prophet sent by God. She talks about the hierarchy, the people in Tibet and things like that. We go for the Spirit of God. We have nothing to do with the hierarchy in Tibet. We have our own hierarchy, God and His angels. Probably there's going to be a big fight between us but God promised us that we are going to win. So I'm not afraid of them.

 

Question: Well, there have always been hierarchies in all major religions, haven't there? And they've always had to be broken down. Each time the Messiah came, he had the problem of pulling down that hierarchy, or allowing it to crumble and then the new hierarchy might come. Like Christianity 2,000 years ago, and it's just now beginning to go really strong, and in the open. So it has just always taken a lot of time.

Maitreya: Actually the two religions that are converting most people right now on earth are: Islam and Baha'i, the late coming ones. The Hindus are losing followers, the Jewish people are losing them as are the Christians. These are the first three seals, and they have reached their maturity. They have reached their peaks and now they are waning. Now is really the time of Islam and Baha'i. The Baha'i are receiving a lot of attention and things like that.

 

Question: But don't you think also the New Age people are getting more and more people?

Maitreya: Well, what does "New Age Teaching" mean? They are so scattered and confused. The first thing that the New Age teaching says is, "God is within you and you are God." That is the first lie that the serpent gave to Adam and Eve, that, "You don't need God, you are God yourself and the truth is just eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. You know good and bad, you don't have to listen to what God says."

So they confused even me for awhile when I started the Mission. They just flooded us. One was Helios, another was this, another was that. Each of them were channeling different spirits or gods, or they were being lifted up with the ships, and doing this and doing that. There were ten people and they were all channeling Jesus Sananda. Each of them was saying different things. And I said, "What is this? Something is wrong with these people. Something is not right."

I accepted them for awhile. I believed in them for awhile. But the more I listened to them, the more I saw they were confused. They do not have peace. They don't have any center, they don't have anything to focus on that they may manifest anything. Their energy is not focused. The energy is not directed toward a focus and that's why they are not going to go anywhere, so they are scattered. A lot of ideas are presented but none of them really take root.

However, they are a part of us, or they can be. They even have some truth. It is true, you are in the image of God. But being in the image does not mean you know everything. So I don't think New Agers are going to make it. Sorry to disappoint a lot of people. But we love them as we love all.

 

Audience: I think what they did is bring a lot of people out from the mainline churches, to think for themselves.

Maitreya: Right, it was necessary for that period. You see, if you want to make a new house, what do you do with the old one?

 

Audience: You tear it down.

Maitreya: Yes, you tear it down. The old age had become too dogmatic, had become too rigid. Religion and God are supposed to be very flexible and freeing. But humans replace dogmas for the truth that was revealed in the beginning. The dogmas are something that become rigid, "If you don't believe in such and such a dogma you are out of the church. If you don't follow such and such a thing you are not of us." That's when the new ideas or any flexibility is out. That is when a rebellious philosophy comes in.

So suddenly we see a sexual revolution, New Agers, drugs, etc. All of them came at the same time. There was a reaction. There was something suffocating the new ideas so they had to react toward it. But they didn't have the answers either. They knew they had to react to something, they had to revolt against something. Yet they didn't have the answers so they had to create some philosophies against the old ones, reactionary philosophies. They threw the past philosophies all out. That was their greatest mistake -- humans go to extremes!

However, their philosophies are backfiring. The sexual revolution ended up in herpes and AIDS. The "me" generation is realizing, "It's not all me, there are some other people out there too." So more and more people are realizing it is not working.

Just like one visitor was telling me, "If you had told me these things that you are telling me now, four years ago, I wouldn't even listen." But the people are now starting to listen. They say, "We need something more than that." They had to destroy their concepts so when the new wine came a lot of people had already emptied their cups. Then when the new wine goes into it, they say, "Yeah, that is it. I want to somehow be restricted but not suffocated. I want discipline but I don't want to be told something that doesn't make sense."

Discipline is not bad, just like what happens when you boil water. When you boil water, steam comes out of the water. If you keep the steam in the engine and discipline it, you can make a steam engine. Just by disciplining the steam there was a revolution, the industrial revolution. The steam was there for thousands of years, the only thing it did was it just evaporated into the air all the time because there was no discipline. It couldn't do anything.

You have a lot of good energy, you have a good mind but if you don't discipline it, it just evaporates all the time. However, if you discipline it and follow God's Laws you realize, "What a creative mind I have." And most of the creativity comes from sexual energy. Sexual energy is creativity. If you don't discipline it, you're wasting your creativity.