AUM — Vol. 2, No. 9, 27 September 1975

Talk at the Yoga Center, called _Aum Center for Self-Realization_¹

YOU DO NOT KNOW

I DO NOT KNOW

You do not know, he does not know and I do not know. Do you know who God is? Does he know who God is? Do I know who God is? No. You positively do not know God, he unmistakably does not know God and I absolutely do not know God. Now, why don’t we know God? You do not know God because you love your body-consciousness infinitely more than you love God’s Body, His Reality-Consciousness. He does not know God because he loves his own vital pleasure, his vital self-indulgence, infinitely more than he loves God’s universal Vital. I do not know God because I love my mind, my doubting mind, my judging mind, infinitely more than I love God’s transcendental, universal and eternal Mind.

Let us know the difference between God’s Body and your body. Over the years you have gained a certain height, let us say five feet eight inches. Here your height has come to an end. But God’s Height is endless. He is infinitely tall. In your case you have reached your maximum height. In God’s case He is eternally growing, because He has discovered the secret of self-transcendence. He knows what self-transcendence is, so He is constantly transcending His own inner and outer Height.

Let us know the difference between God’s Vital and his vital. His vital is like a tiny drop and God’s Vital is like the infinite ocean. He cherishes and treasures this tiny drop. He feels that it is special. He feels that he does not have to increase the size of the drop; he does not have to grow into a larger drop. No, he is self-sufficient. But in God’s case, although He is an infinite ocean, He still feels the necessity of increasing His own Infinity. Always God wants to grow, glow and flow. There is constant flow in God’s movement, constant everlasting Life.

Let us know the difference between my mind and God’s Mind. My mind is like a tiny streak of light and God’s Mind is like the vast sun. But it is not like the planet sun. The planet sun, according to the scientists, has already lost some of its warmth and power, and it will lose even more. Who knows, in the bosom of Eternity it may disappear. But the inner sun, which God is, will perpetually shine. And not only will it shine, but it will offer to humanity, to God’s creation, Light, more Light, abundant Light, infinite Light. God the inner Light, the inner Sun, will perpetually shine and illumine the ignorance and inconscience of the world.

You do not know where God is. He does not know where God is. I do not know where God is. You do not know where God is precisely because you live in the temptation-world. He does not know where God is precisely because he lives in the indulgence-world. I do not know where God is precisely because I live in the thought-world.

You do not know, he does not know, I do not know. But there are some people who have discovered who God is and where God is. Some people have got their Master’s degree and Ph.D., whereas there are many who have not got even a high school diploma. Just because we do not have something that does not mean that others cannot have that very thing. They can have it, and a day will dawn when we will all have that same thing. Right now those who have seen God, realised God and who are in constant communion with God tell us something quite significant and momentous. They tell us on the strength of their own realisation who God is. They tell us that God is our own yet-unrecognised infinite capacity. They also tell us that not only do we need God, but God also needs us equally. We need Him to realise our own height. He needs us to manifest Himself on earth in and through us. For self-realisation, we need Him; for God-Manifestation, He needs us.

These God-realised souls tell us something more: they tell us where God is. They tell us that God is everywhere, but there are two places where He is noticeable most of the time. These two places are inside our heart’s mounting cry and inside our soul’s descending smile. Just as a person stays during the day in his living room and kitchen and at night retires to his bedroom, God also distributes His Presence. When we are soulfully crying for Him, He presents Himself inside our inner mounting cry. And when we are soulfully smiling, He grants us His Reality in a visible form in our soulful smile.

In order for us to realise God, these God-realised souls tell us something more. They tell us that the first and foremost necessity is peace of mind. If we do not have peace of mind, God-realisation will always remain a far cry. How can we have peace of mind? There are a few ways. If we decrease our earthly needs and increase our heavenly needs, then we can get peace of mind. Also, if we do not expect anything from anyone or from anything except from God, then we can have peace of mind. As long as there is expectation, human expectation, earthly expectation, we cannot have peace of mind. Again, we cannot have peace of mind by positive or negative renunciation. Only by affirmative acceptance can we have peace of mind. We accept the world, we accept the real Reality in the world, the real Reality of God. With our inner cry, with our aspiration, we have to create receptivity inside our body-consciousness so that we can welcome God the Supreme Beloved and God’s boundless Light and Delight.

In order for us to realise God we also need purity, especially in our emotional vital. When we purify our emotional vital, we see and feel God’s Presence. Then we have to establish clarity in the mind. When we establish clarity in the mind, we will be able to see God very intimately. Then we have to commune with God all the time. In order to commune with God all the time, we have to create the supreme necessity inside our heart. This necessity has to be our psychic necessity. When we have created a psychic necessity to commune with God all the time, we shall without fail see God, talk to God, grow into the very image of God and participate in God’s cosmic Drama. At that time we shall not feel that God is only in Heaven, that here on earth we are without God.

God is where His children are. His children are the exact prototypes of His Reality; therefore, wherever we are, God is. But in order to realise this supreme truth, we have to return what we have borrowed from this world: darkness, ignorance, bondage, limitation, imperfection and death. We borrowed these things because we felt that they would considerably help us, but now we have come to realise that they are real obstructions. So these things we must return. And the things that we eternally have in the inmost recesses of our being — Peace, Light, Bliss, Truth — we have to increase. We have to bring them to the fore, for they are the real Reality of our existence. Things that eternally are we have to claim and we have to offer to the world at large. If we do this, you will know who God is and where God is, he will know who God is and where God is, and I shall know who God is and where God is.

Devotion

Man loves. He expects love in return. A devotee loves. He loves human beings for the sake of his sweet Lord who abides in all. His love breathes humility, spontaneous joy and selfless service.

A devotee sees a circle, which is God. He enters into it with his soul’s cry. He then silently goes and stands at the centre of the circle and grows into a sea of ecstasy.

A child does not care to know what his mother is. He just wants his mother’s constant presence before him. Similar is the approach that a devotee makes toward his Lord. Many are there to help him in his life’s journey. But he looks to none for help. God’s Grace is his sole refuge. The endless torture of hell is too weak to touch him while he is within God. His life there is a life of perfect bliss. His suffering knows no end in Heaven without God beside him.

Unlike others, a devotee sincerely feels that he has nothing else in his possession save his desire for God. His desire is his jewel. God’s Grace is His Jewel. In offering his jewel to God, the devotee binds God. In giving His Jewel to His devotee, God fulfils him.

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Devotion

That pulls us toward the ecstasy-height,

What we truly are:

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Devotion

Devotion in the heart

Of our Divinity’s real life.

Is the fastest speed

Devotion is the strongest magnet

Delight.

Detachment

To break the cosmic harmony is not detachment. Real detachment is to be aware of God’s operation in and through each individual and to cry for God-manifestation in God’s own way. Detachment is not to say, “I have nothing to do with you.” Detachment means “I have everything to do with you but I won’t be attached to your physical, I won’t be attached to your vital, I won’t be attached to your mind. I won’t be attached to you, but I will be totally devoted to the Real in you, which is God. Outwardly I shall not throw in my suggestions. I shall not try to control your life. Inwardly I shall become one, absolutely one with God’s wish for you, and I shall serve you in His own way. Real detachment is not negligence in any way or form. It is allowing God’s Will to operate freely in other human beings.

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Detachment

Detachment

True detachment means

In and through each individual.

Not to try to influence the world,

Or guide the world

But to allow the world to grow

For in each individual

Let divinity act

Seeker or non-seeker —

How to operate

Forgiveness

God, out of His infinite Bounty, forgives us immediately precisely because He feels that if He gives us another opportunity we will be able to run, we will be able to fly and dive within. He does not forgive us out of negligence or carelessness or in order to avoid the issue. Far from it! He feels that each time we commit some Himalayan blunder, if He does not forgive us, then our progress comes to an end. Each forgiveness is an opportunity He grants us when we make a mistake. But in the name of justice, morality and so forth, we torture ourselves so that we cannot move ahead. God forgives us, but we just stick to our wrong action in the name of perfection in nature. Finally it is we who are the losers.

The disciples' love-power

The men and women were very happy to listen to their Master’s advice. But sometimes the women became jealous of the men or the men became jealous of the women. At those times the Master gave a long discourse on whatever the subject in question was.

One day the Master gathered a group of his men disciples together and said, “I have been hearing from people that you men are making deplorable and false accusations. Whether it is unconscious or conscious, you feel that your wives or any woman can love me more than you can because I am a man and it is spontaneous and natural for a woman to offer love to a man. You feel it is a feminine love, and that a man cannot have this kind of devotion.

“I wish to tell you that you are totally mistaken! It is not true that women can offer love to me because it is more spontaneous for them. Disciples who are all love for their Master love him because he is their Master, not because he is a man. Sri Chaitanya’s dearest disciple was all love and he was a man. Ramakrishna’s closest disciple was Vivekananda, a man; Sri Aurobindo’s dearest disciple was a man; Sri Krishna’s dearest disciple was Arjuna, a man; the Buddha’s dearest disciple was Ananda, a man. All men!”

“How is it that they conquered the hearts of their Masters?” one of the disciples asked.

The Master smiled and said, “Through love, through devotion, through surrender. When you say it is difficult for you to offer love to your Master and that it is easy for your wife to offer love to the Master, you have to know that you have the same power to love that your wife has. Love is not the monopoly of women. God has also given men this quality of divine love. The only thing is that a man ignores this divine quality in himself while, at the same time, he demands it from others, especially from women. You don’t use your love-power, your heart-power. You use more of your vital power aspect — your ego — than your love aspect. That is why the women are making faster progress.

“When I was much younger,” the Master continued, “I lived in the ashram of Sri Ananda. I had a few sincere, absolutely dedicated admirers among the men. They were all ten or twelve years younger than I, but I tell you, the love that they showed me then, that they show me even now, is beyond your imagination. They are Sri Ananda’s disciples in this incarnation, so they can’t accept me as their Master. But if they could, I assure you that their love and devotion would show you that your belief in this matter is absolutely false!”

“Guru, did the men and women mix together very much when you were at Sri Ananda’s ashram?” another disciple asked.

“Not at all! I didn’t have any friends at all among the girls. I didn’t have anything other than my life of aspiration and inner discipline. My sisters can’t believe it now when they see me talk to women. They say, ‘Impossible! Here you stayed for twenty years and you didn’t speak to any girl.’ Even with my sisters I would not speak except on rare occasions. I wouldn’t even walk with my sisters in the street. Only during the last three or four years before I left did I speak to them freely.”

One of the younger men listening to the Master then asked, “Do disciples in some of your ashrams in other countries have more love for you than we do?”

The Master said, “At my American ashram in Puerto Rico I believe we have five or six girls and about thirty young boys. If you go to Puerto Rico you will see what love is. You ask Manju. She visited there just last year and saw how those young boys — twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two years of age — have such love for me. She has seen how her Puerto Rican brothers and sisters love me unreservedly. Ten months of the year I stay here with you and hardly two months I stay there. What makes those young boys stay on our path? It is their love for me.”

“Why do we find it so difficult to love you, Master?” one of the older disciples asked.

“Why? If you go to the root you will have the answer: obedience is lacking. Those who have no obedience will never love me. If you don’t have inner and outer obedience, you will never be able to develop love for me. If you don’t have any love for your Master, then you have to feel that you are a failure on his path. My path is one of love, devotion and surrender. If you people don’t have love, how can you expect to be able to follow my path? If you can’t step on the first rung of the ladder, how are you going to step on the second rung, devotion, and on the third and ultimate rung, surrender?

“If you obey me and listen to me, you have to feel that this is what the divinity within you wants and needs. I knock at the door of your inner divinity, but it doesn’t come to the fore; it is still fast asleep. When I try to open the door, a tremendous reluctance, an unwilling, obstinate feeling is what I receive. So, my sweet children, please try to cultivate your love aspect, your devotion aspect, for it is only through love and devotion that your own inner divinity will be awakened. And inside your divinity the Supreme, who is your real Guru, is looming large.”

Exposed in the inner world

One evening, about twenty disciples were at the Master’s house when one of them asked, “Guru, when we quarrel with another disciple, does God get displeased with us?”

“Oh!” said the Master, “as if God has nothing else to do! When we have quarrelled with someone, God says, ‘I am still pleased with you, even though you got angry with so-and-so.’ But you know, Mula, very often when we get angry with someone, we get angry with God as well. We say, ‘I have been praying and meditating for so long! How could God allow me to get angry with this particular person?’ Or worse, we feel, ‘I am angry with so-and-so because he is an unbearable fellow. Why did God create such a rogue and why does He allow him to bother me?’ At that time, we become a destructive force.”

“Do people really think that sort of thing, Master?”

“Certainly. They also feel this way about spiritual Masters. Just the other day it happened to me. For three months two disciples had been angry with each other and one of them finally got very angry with me because I am supposed to be perfecting their nature. Also, he got angry because I am allowing the other person to stay in my ashram. In another ashram I know of, two of the disciples who had been very good friends became the greatest enemies. One of them wrote to the Master, ‘Since you are leading that person to God-realisation, I don’t need that kind of realisation. And furthermore, if you are taking him to the same Goal that you are taking me to, I definitely don’t want to go to that Goal.’ And so he left the Master.”

“Master, do you know when we are inwardly angry? Do you know what we are suffering from at every moment?” asked another disciple. “Do you know what causes our depression?”

“Certainly,” replied the Master. “I know what you people are suffering and going through just as well as you know it. But if I ask some disciples about their suffering, they will categorically deny that anything is wrong. They simply say, ‘Everything is fine, Master.’ Somebody is sad and depressed, but he will say, ‘Oh, no, I am fine.’ Somebody is jealous of someone, but when I ask her about it, she will say, ‘Oh no, I am not jealous.’ Somebody is cherishing doubt, real doubt about me, but he will simply say, ‘No, no, I have all faith in you, Master.’ Out of a hundred people, ninety-nine percent will deny it when I ask them about their inner problems. So what am I to do?”

“But aren’t we sometimes really unaware of what we are doing?” another disciple asked.

“For a few days you may be unaware. But there is not a single one of you whom I have not approached in the inner world. Occultly I convince you and you know it, but outwardly you deny it flatly. I give you people warnings hundreds of times by making you feel what you are doing against my Mission, against me, against the Supreme. I do make you feel this. So if you say that you are unaware of what you are doing wrong and how you are acting in the inner world or outer world, then it is not true. I have exposed you inwardly.”

The disciples looked puzzled. After a brief silence one of them asked, “Master, what do you mean when you speak about the way we act in the inner and outer world? Could you explain?”

“Certainly. In the outer world people stand right in front of me with folded hands. But in the inner world, at two o’clock in the morning when I meditate on them, some of the disciples would simply kill me if they had more vital power. I go to them at that time to feed their souls, but they are displeased with me because I have been paying attention to somebody else. Fortunately, in the vital world they are weaker than I am. Even in the physical world I am stronger. If they tried to strike me, I would use my occult power and prevent them. But they come devotedly with folded hands in the outer world, while in the inner world there is such resentment, anger and hostility. Now do you think that I don’t bring this to their notice? In the inner world I expose them. I make them aware of these feelings they have. But even now, there are some of you right here who are doing things like this, and who know they are doing it.”

The disciples were shocked that even in this intimate gathering their brother and sister disciples could cherish such behaviour, and one or two protested. But the Master continued, “If some of these disciples’ resentment, undivine thoughts and undivine vital were accumulated together, you would see a real ocean, another Pacific Ocean. But God’s Compassion for us is fortunately much larger than the ocean.”

One of the newer disciples asked, “Master, why do they act this way?”

“Some people think that if they do this, perhaps one day I will surrender to their wishes. They think that if they are so bad then I will let them have their own way. At times, just to achieve a kind of peace, some Masters make a compromise. But that is wrong. If I allow someone to increase his imperfection by allowing him to have his own way, then that person’s wrong vibration will increase in the ashram.

“On the outer plane I may remain silent. I go on and let these people run according to their capacity. But if someone tries to run while carrying a heavy load of doubt, he will not be able to run; he will just stumble and fall. If another has willingness to run without the heavy burden of doubt or jealousy or anger, then I shall be able to lead that person faster. And if one has total consecration, love and surrender, then that person will run the fastest.

“In the beginning, when we first started our journey, I thought that everybody would run the fastest. Then I saw that some people do not have the capacity. So everyone goes according to his own speed. If you can run, I will run with you. If someone else can only walk, I shall walk. If he stumbles, I shall also be there to wait for him. This is what a spiritual Master does.”

Interview for _People_ Magazine

Question: Could you tell me about your childhood?

Question: When was that incarnation?

Question: Do you miss India?

Question: Do you expect to go back someday?

Question: What do you remember as being a difficult problem you had to overcome on the road to God-realisation?

Question: What do you think will happen when you have left the body?

Question: Would one of them become the Guru and lead the services?

Each of my Centres has a president or a leader. I have taught them how to conduct the meetings in my absence. But when it is a matter of real inner guidance, unfortunately they have not been able to attain the spiritual stature for that. While I am alive if one of my disciples attains God-realisation, then naturally I will say that he or she will succeed me. But right now I see that this is not likely to happen, and in that case there will be a good leader conducting everything, but he will not be my spiritual successor.

Question: How many first-class disciples do you have?

Question: Have you ever lost any students altogether?

Question: How do you explain the popularity of Eastern religions in this country?

Here in the West when children grow up, immediately they see that their parents have a different life. They don’t have their vision inside their children anymore. When they are absolutely little children, the parents think they will grow up and bring name and fame to the family. But when they are six or seven, the parents just give the children to the babysitter and go to clubs, movies, or other entertainment. They lead their own lives, and the babysitter becomes the parent. But why should she take responsibility for other people’s children? She thinks all the time of her own life. Then the children will also have their own life — a frustrated and undisciplined life — because nobody gives them the love and concern that they need.

Then, in the church, most of the priests are preaching spiritual truths, but they do not practise what they preach. Sometimes they do not really understand it. They tell what the truth is, but they do not or cannot live it; therefore, they are unable to inspire their students deeply.

Question: Did you ever think of getting married and having children?

Question: You were an athlete in your youth. Could you explain the relationship between athletics and the spiritual life?

Suppose early in the morning I want to meditate. It is time for me to meditate and I want to get up, but my body is weak. I have a stomach upset, a headache, a backache or some other pain, so how will I meditate? The best thing is to meditate for half an hour and then practise sports. The body is quite important. We can’t deny it; we can’t discard it. It is like a house or a temple. Inside the temple is the shrine. If there is no temple, then the soul will have no place to live.

Question: What forms of exercise and diet do you advise?

Question: You don't do complicated yoga exercises?