Illusion or Reality – by Ishwar Puri

Illusion or Reality

Chicago – February 8, 2013

Friends, welcome to this short-notice meeting. I know it is bad weather outside.

You had to brave slippery roads and a lot of snow. I am glad you were able to

make it here. When I drove in, I thought that at least the scenery was beautiful. It

looked like picture postcards, winter wonderland. So I said there is some

compensation when you have bad weather—it can be beautiful bad weather also.

So I saw this combination that how the good and the bad go together. Suddenly I

thought of an email I received today, this morning, from New Zealand, from

somebody who was initiated by a master many years ago and who was practicing

his meditation with due diligence, got beautiful results in meditation, saw the

radiant form of his master and was very happy and had other inner experiences.

After all that beautiful experience, he ran into another video and a book by Baba

Fakir Chand. Now Baba Fakir Chand is one of the saints who claimed that he will

do nothing. In fact, his biography published is called The Unknowing Saint, and he

claimed that the masters know nothing. Everything you get is from within

yourself, that the masters do not even project their radiant form in you. You

project the radiant form yourself. And he gave an example…Baba Fakir Chand

gave an example of his own life when he was in the military, and so were some of

his disciples. And there, one day, three of his disciples were suddenly surrounded

by the enemy on all four sides, and they knew they were going to be killed, so

they sat together and prayed: “Baba Ji, this is the time when we are going to be

killed by the enemy. As a last resort, we want to pray to you. Please take care of

us and take us to Sach Khand as soon as we die. Please help us.”

At that time Baba Ji appeared almost in a physical form standing right in front of

them, and he said, “Don’t worry. You are not going to die today. Don’t worry.

There is behind this small tree a little bush. Under the bush there is a tunnel. If

you go in the tunnel, you will go behind the enemy lines and just escape. Go and

take the tunnel and come out, and I will see you,” and then he disappeared.

They marveled at the power of the master that he could do this. They looked

behind, and under the bush there was a tunnel. They went through the tunnel

and escaped, were not killed. They were so grateful to the master for sparing

their lives. They ran to him and said, “Master, thank you very much for saving our

lives.” He said, “What happened?” They said, “You came and you told us about

the tunnel, and we came.” He said, “I know nothing about it. I was not there. I

was myself very frightened of being killed myself. What are you talking about?”

They said, “Master, you yourself came to us. We saw you. All three of us saw you!

Not only we saw you, you directed us to a tunnel nobody could have known, and

you saved our lives. Don’t be so humble and pretend you don’t know.” He said,

“The truth is I don’t know. That masters know nothing.”

Then he made general statements that masters really come as projections of the

self, and the whole secret is in the self. Whatever you will find you will find within

yourself. Even the radiant form of the master that you find is within yourself. And

therefore, why masters appear outside is to generate the kind of faith that you

can discover who you are and go within. Therefore, he said, “I know nothing.

Masters know nothing, and if a master says he is doing everything, he is no

master.” He made such dramatic statements which led to a lot of controversy. Do

masters really have any power or are they mere shadows of the self and they just

are projecting themselves to take you inside—and the whole secret is inside?

This question about Baba Fakir Chand, who people say was the only honest

master because he confessed that he knew nothing. All others claimed that they

have all the powers of a master. They say he is the honest master, but then they

question, “What about all the other perfect living masters who initiated people,

and the people saw their radiant forms? And didn’t they really see the radiant

form of the master? Didn’t the master have any hand in it?” As it happens, I have

met Baba Fakir Chand personally several times. He was our neighbor in

Hoshiarpur. My father was teaching there. He was a good friend of my father, and

we met him several times. And we even discussed this incident with Baba Fakir

Chand personally, so I have some personal knowledge. And he explained why he

said all those things. He said, “The reason I say this is because, when people begin

to follow masters, they don’t do any meditation. They think just following that

person is good enough.”

Therefore, he overemphasized the fact that the truth lies within yourself. Even

the master lies within yourself. After all, all this creation that we see outside is a

projection from inside. If the whole creation is a projection from inside, surely a

physical master is also a projection from inside, which means the truth is that the

perfect living master we talk about is inside us, not outside, but we cannot see

him. If we close our eyes, we see darkness. Therefore, the projected master who

appears outside functions exactly like the master inside. And yet at the same time

he is just a shadow of the master inside. He is not only a shadow; he is a very

active shadow because by listening to him, by following what he says, by getting

initiated by him, we find the true master within ourselves.

Therefore, at all times the true master is within us. He emphasized this point that

he knew nothing just to make a point that, “Don’t follow human beings just

blindly. Listen to what they say. Follow what they are saying,” and you will find

the truth inside, including the true master, because the radiant form of the

master is the master who takes you back home, and that radiant form of the

master is inside us, not outside. But he resembles the one outside so much that

we can have a link. Why does he resemble so much? Because he is outside. He is

the projected form outside. Therefore, it’s very difficult to say, “Which one should

we follow—the outside or the inside?” The fact is we should follow the inside.

Can we follow the inside without the outside? No way! Then it comes back to the

same thing, that we have to follow a physical living master outside who can talk

to us, who can teach us, who can answer our questions, who can guide us, who

can tell us when we are wrong and when we are right on the path, who can tell us

all the details of the journey we are going to have, who can encourage us to go

within, who can time and again help us with the means to go within, but after he

has done all that, we find that the master who will be with us for all time and is

permanent is inside us. And that’s the radiant form of the master we find within

Ourselves.

So there is a role for the master outside, and there is a role for the master inside.

And because it’s a projection, actually it is the same. In fact, one perfect living

master has said, “[quote in Punjabi],” which translated means, “The inside and

the outside are the same.” That’s what I learned from my master. Do not think

that the outside is separate and you run away from it, and there is a created

world outside sitting objectively and we have to run away from it and go

somewhere else inside. The outside projected world is also being projected from

inside and is an inside world that we see outside. But it looks so real outside. It

has all the elements of external reality. It becomes physically real. Therefore, in

the physical reality which our mind accepts, that the world outside is real, we

have to search for something very abstract, something very unknown inside. Since

we think like that, therefore the outside world becomes a reality for us, and we

search for other realities inside without ever leaving the notion that the world

outside and the physical body here is the only reality we know. And that is why,

because we take the outside world as real, we have to take the outside master

also as real, although the outside master is projected from inside and is working

exactly as the inside master is doing. There is no difference between the two.

So this is a very strange kind of enigma for people, that while we take this physical

world to be real—and we can’t help it—we have no other reality to compare it

with. This is the only reality we know. Of course, when we go to sleep we create

another temporary reality called a dream. A dreamland is also a reality while we

are dreaming. It is no longer a reality when we wake up. This physical world,

which we are taking as the only reality, is a reality while we are here. When we

wake up, it is no longer reality, as unreal as a dream, and we discover it! When we

awake to a higher reality, this physical world becomes completely unreal, and we

know it was created in the same way as a dream while we are awake and go to

Sleep.

So, therefore, it is important to remember that while we are here and this is our

only reality, the only master who can teach us what to do is a master who is in a

physical form in a physical body outside. And therefore he teaches us. But once

he is able to help us to go within and discover his own true identity, his true

reality inside, the inside master is with us for all times. The outside master will

die. He is a physical body like ours. The law of physical existence is that nothing is

permanent. Nobody is permanent here, none of us in our physical bodies, and no

master has been permanent. So many perfect living masters have come and gone.

Where are their bodies? They all went away. Nobody lives here forever.

Therefore, it is important that while we have a perfect living master in our life, we

follow what he says, get instructions from him, understand what he is saying,

follow his instructions to the point that we can manifest his real form inside us,

because the real form inside us will not die, even when the physical form of the

master dies.

My master, Great Master, used to tell me, “The most important thing a disciple

should do while his master is alive is to find out the radiant form inside, to

manifest the radiant form of the master inside before the master dies. In that

case, when the master physically dies, he will never feel he has gone, because

master will stand right in front of him and say, ‘I am not dead. I am here.’”

Once you establish the radiant form of the master, he never goes away. He is with

you all the time. He can be in different places. He can be sitting beside you, and

you see him like you see the physical master. You drive your car, he is a passenger

sitting there, and you see him. You can talk to him, and sometimes you feel like

talking physically in the physical voice. Then you say, even if you think, he can

understand and answer. It is a great friendship. It is a friendship that has no

comparison with any other friendship that we have. And that radiant form of the

master who can appear physically, he can not only appear physically beside you,

he can overlap you. He can say, “Okay, you are not different from me. Ultimately

we are all one,” and he can give you that experience while you are in a physical

body. He is in his astral radiant body, and he can jump into you and merge and

show you, and you won’t know whether it is you or him or the same.

These are experiences which you cannot get by any other means that I know of.

Therefore, do not underestimate either the power of the physical form of the

master or the immense experience you have with the radiant form, the astral

form of the master. The astral form of the master, of course in meditation, he is

your companion all the time. If you fly in your astral body, he flies with you. He

chats with you, jokes with you. He does things he would never do in a physical

form. Therefore, it is a great friendship. Once a perfect living master has initiated

you, he will never leave you until you go back to your true home, Sach Khand. He

will be there for all time.

If you like to spend some time on the way to your true home, and a lot of people

like to because there are so many attractions on the way, even more attractions

than you have in this world. We think this world has all the distractions and once

we get away from these distractions we shoot off to our own home. It is not like

that. In the very next stage of consciousness in the astral plane, where we have

astral bodies, which are very similar to these bodies, which we get automatically

when the physical body dies. It doesn’t matter if you have a master or not. It

doesn’t matter if you are initiated or not. Everybody who dies, he dies in this body

and finds that another body is right there. The astral body, our astral body, has a

much longer life. The same astral body has been born in different forms in the

physical bodies over a period of several thousand years, so therefore the astral

body is more permanent and the astral life in an astral world has been going on

much longer than the physical world. And you will find that there are more

distractions there than even here. There are such wonderful distractions and

attractions there that a lot of people would like to just spent all the time there. A

lot of people when they reach that stage they think they have reached their true

home. All the heavens are there. Some hells are there, too, but they think that

that is a place which was the origin of everything. It looks like that. Therefore you

get stuck there, and very often a perfect living master who wants to take you back

home, who is with you and says, “Let’s go home.”

I was telling you…there was a young girl, a very beautiful young girl, a British girl.

She came to Great Master, and she was so pretty. I was very young. I was younger

than her even. I was a teenager. She was so pretty I was attracted to her face. In

the discourse, in the Satsang, Great Master was having, I was looking at her

instead of the master. I was hoping…you know, when you look at somebody they

get a feeling somebody is looking and they turn around. So I was hoping that just

by my look she would turn around. She was so beautiful, but she did not turn

around at all. Her gaze was on the white bearded man sitting giving a discourse.

She was looking at the Great Master with almost moist eyes, and the love that she

was showing…it overwhelmed me to see that a young person at that age…she was

only 18 years old…could have that kind of a feeling for a master.

So I had great respect for her after that event. And then she got initiated the very

day she came. She came with a British colonel who was posted in India, and some

way they had come to the dera. She did meditation in the dera and when she

went back did meditation and wrote a letter to the master. The master gave that

letter in English to a few people who used to answer letters for him in English.

One of the people who used to answer letters was my grandfather, and my

grandfather was Bai Bishan Das Puri. He gave this letter to Bai Bishan Das: “Take

this letter, and I will give you an answer what to give.”So my grandfather, although I was so young, he said to me, “Ishwar, you read thisletter and keep a copy.” I have no idea. He never gave me any other letter. Henever showed me another correspondence of Great Master, only one letter hegave me, and I read it. And that girl said that she had achieved great success inmeditation. She said, “As I told you before I left the dera, that I had alreadyreached your radiant form, and I know that you are taking me up home, but mymind was do distracted by the beautiful things I saw on the astral plane that I

didn’t want to go any more. It was more distracting that even here, and I am a

very aesthetic person. I am touched by beauty, and the beauty of the astral plane

was more than I could imagine. I didn’t want to go. I know you allowed me to stay

there for a while, but then you told me, ‘You have to go.’ You pulled me up, and I

know you took me beyond all these distractions. I would have stayed there

forever if you had not taken me up, and I know I am now near the great void and

you will help me to cross it.” Beautiful letter describing her inner experiences. I

had respect for her.

She returned to England, back, and I met her there, and she wrote a beautiful

book also after that on her experiences with the master without writing anything

about her inner experiences.

So there is so much distraction there that we might think that we have only

distractions here. Once we pull our attention from here, get detached from here,

we go shoot straight back to our true home—that’s not so.

But even if we take thousands of years, thousands of physical years on the way,

the same master whose radiant form appears and after which we never get a

physical birth, the same master will stay with us for thousands of years. He never

leaves us. He will stay with us until we reach back home and merge into only one

with the master and you and the creator are all one. That is our true home. Our

true home is where there is only one total consciousness. There is no division

there. There is no separation. The idea of separation does not come until we get a

mind. The mind separates us. We think we are all separate. We think we are even

separated from God. We think we are separated from our inner self. All this

separation is a creation of our own mind. If our mind is taken away, the

separation will finish, and we will be all one.

It is amazing that one little instrument, installed in our consciousness, which we

call the human mind, the thinking mind, can create this kind of strange situation

to create the many out of one, to create a separation, and to make a separation

the basis of all our experiences. Today what is our experience with the world? It is

based upon separation. You want to love somebody because he/she is separate.

You love things because they are separate. You love this world because it is

separate. You love God because it is separate. You worship God because it is

separate. Nothing is separate! Yet the mind makes everything look separate. It is

amazing that one little instrument…I don’t even call it anything else other than an

instrument like a computer, a little computer installed in our own consciousness

and getting all the power to function from our own self! The self is the soul.

Consciousness itself is a unit of consciousness, our soul, and powers the mind,

powers our senses, powers the astral body, powers the physical body, powers all

experiences we are having. The soul is the power. It is life! It is the life force! This

gives power to all these things, and yet the mind can create such a drama of

Separation.

The mind is the creator of time and space. Time separates us into past, present,

and future, makes things happen earlier than later. Nothing is earlier than later in

reality. It is all one, but the mind makes it look as separate. It creates space.

Things are different. That is so far away. This is near. This kind of experience of

space and time and then separation is running this whole universe. The truth is

not that at all. The truth is there is only one. And who is that one? We are that

one! We, all of us, are that one. Everything we know of is one. When you will

realize by going to your true home, everything that you have ever experienced

will be pulled back into the one, and you will see how it devolved from stage to

stage, into different levels of creation, different levels of consciousness.

Therefore, you saw the separation occurring in the three worlds of the mind, and

these three worlds are now being run as a permanent universe, unending

universe, unending life for us. We are reborn again and again. How could you be

reborn if there was no time? If there was no next life or previous life? The

separation is creating rebirth. The separation is creating the need for karma,

because when you have separation in time and space, you create events. You

create something here and something there, something now and something then.

When you do that, you create events. When you create events, you connect the

events, and there you get cause and effect relationship, and you create the law of

Karma.

Karma is totally unreal in our true home. It is only created by the mind. Karma is a

mental projection that makes us go, but we take it real and get caught up in it.

Our experience in this devolved world, in the world in which we have been

separated, becomes almost a permanent one that we keep on moving in circles in

the same place over and over again and forget that this is not our reality. If there

was no cause and effect, if there were no events, we would be back home now.

We are just trapped by this time/space causation, which is the characteristic of

the mind.

A philosopher, Immanuel Kant, said, “Mind is not something that is a separate

substance. Mind is merely the experience of time, space, and causation.” That is

what he says. When you experience time, you experience space, you experience

cause and effect, you are experiencing the mind. If you go above the mind, none

of these three exist. So, therefore, if you go above the mind, karma doesn’t exist.

If you go above the mind, rebirth, you do not take this—you go home.

So, therefore, this experience which was created just for our entertainment,

adventure…we wanted to have a new kind of experience—we are having it! But

we never thought that experience should tie us down and should keep us here

forever. We thought that experience is good, we would enjoy it, go back home.

You want another experience? You can have another adventure, go back home.

What happened? We got so tied up with experience here that we do not even

know where our home is. We do not know how to go back home. Fortunately,

some of us who were afraid…not really afraid but just anxious not to be lost in the

experience, not to be caught up in the experience forever, but we should come

back…made a little arrangement with ourselves. The arrangement was that if we

get too engrossed in the experience and we don’t know how to get out, we

should have some key with us, and that key should be there to open the door

inside. Today I can tell you the key is a perfect living master who comes into our

life. That is the key we ourselves arranged before we left our true home. We

brought the key so that we should not get lost forever. If we have to get back

home and don’t know how to do it, we should have a key to open it, and the key

is the appearance in our life here, even in the very unreal—but looking real—life

here, the key that should take us back home, and the key is a perfect living

Master.

Now when I say perfect living master, people are asking me, “Why do you say

living master? That is only perfect master. Why living master? What about the

masters who are perfect and not here but their teachings are here? We can

picture them. We can imagine them. We see their statues. We see their pictures,

and we can imagine them and have faith in them. What is the difference? Why do

you continue to say living master, and the force on living is not on living in spirit

but living physically? What is the big deal about a living master and a non-living

perfect master?” The answer is very simple. A living, physically living master is the

one who can say, “No, that is your mind.” The other master will go with what your

mind says. It’s that simple! If the mind is the one that is creating the separation, if

mind is the one that is trapping us here, how can we follow a master that is

speaking to us through our mind?

People will come to me and say, “You know, we have masters, ascended masters

sitting in the Himalayas.” I have traveled the Himalayas a lot personally. I have

met the saints and the yogis who are sitting there. I have not seen ascended

masters sitting there guiding anybody in the United States. But they believe. If

they believe, who are they believing? They are believing their own mind. If

somebody says, “A bird comes to me every morning, sits on the window and

teaches me all the truth. I love that bird. The bird is my master, and the bird

speaks.” Do you know who speaks when a bird speaks? Who interprets what a

bird is saying? The mind. Don’t we realize that if we follow a bird, an animal, a

picture, an imagination, a statue, an idea, it is all our own mind? So either we

listen to our mind or we listen to somebody who is obviously definitely above the

mind. There the choice comes in. Therefore, the emphasis is on a perfect living

Master.

Who is actually a perfect living master? What are the characteristics of a perfect

living master? He is just like us. There is no difference. Potentially we are all

perfect living masters. Potentially we have everything that a perfect living master

has. There is no difference whatsoever. Every human being has all the equipment,

has all the experiences built into it which a perfect living master has. Only

difference is he has seen it, experienced it, knows it, and we haven’t. That is the

only difference. Therefore, since he has had that experience, he has personally

experienced a state of being above the mind, therefore, when he, even in a

physical body, is in front of us and speaks to us, he is not speaking just like a

person. He is speaking with experience beyond the mind. Therefore, he can guide

us on how to go beyond the mind. He does not rely upon his mind nor on our

mind. He goes direct to the source of power and consciousness which is our soul.

He speaks to our soul. He does not speak to our mind. But our mind wants to

listen to him. Therefore, sometimes he uses his mind to play with our mind. He

teaches us methods which our mind likes. He says do meditation like this. The

mind likes this. He says work hard. The mind loves to work hard to get anything.

He doesn’t say, “I’m telling you a lie,” because he is dealing with the obstacle in

our life which is our mind, and he is telling us things to do. Eventually we find that

the only thing that mattered was his coming into our life from beyond the mind

and pulling us beyond our own minds and finding the reality. Because these three

worlds of the mind are the only traps that are here. If the mind could be kept

away from our path, we would all go home immediately. It is simple as that. There

is no other obstruction.

Nothing is coming in the way of our journey to our spiritual home except our own

mind. Our own mind is creating thoughts. Our mind is creating images. Mind is

creating desires. Mind is creating attachments. Mind is creating a continuous

circulation of events because of these desires and attachments, and we are

trapped here. It is all a function of the mind. And who is powering the mind to do

all this? We! We are doing it. Our soul is doing it. So, therefore, it is a big catch 22

that here a perfect living master comes in, and we want him to teach us according

to our mind’s aspirations and our mind’s thinking. He says, “Okay, I’ll go along

with the mind for a while until you discover that the mind is not what is to be

taught. There is no teaching required. We just have to control the mind, keep it

out of the way, keep it not coming in your way, you will be back home.

So the whole principle of the spiritual journey, of the spiritual enlightenment, is

really a journey of how to overcome the mind’s obstacles in our way. The mind is

the only obstacle, nothing else. Our own mind, nobody else’s mind. Everybody

else is functioning according to their own mental experiences, and that is how

these events pile up. These events that have been created by the mind, they pile

up, and we go through the consequences of our events because of the mind, and

we think we are trapped forever.

Every time a person does something and says, “Oh, that was wrong,” do you

know what that means? If a person does something and says, “That was wrong. I

should not have done it,” first it creates guilt. What does the guilt do? The guilt

perpetuates in the subconscious of that person that, “I have done something

wrong,” and he does not want to face it, and he pushes it down, and in the

subconscious it is held as guilt. Then he feels that, since he did something wrong,

the law of punishment and reward must operate. We built it into our system, and

then we wait for the punishment to come, and punishment comes. We anticipate

1. We built it. And then we do something very nice. “That was a good thing I did.

Very nice. That deserved a reward.” Built into us, and we wait for the reward to

come, and the reward comes. This system of carrying with us our own morality, a

system in which we are continuously judging good and bad for ourselves, a

continuous judgment on ourselves and on others, this is what is leading to

punishment and reward. And we are all creating our own morality. It is not that

there is a standard morality lying somewhere. What is good for one person is not

good for another. What was good for us one hundred years ago is not good for us

today. People change their moral codes all the time. There is no standard morality

ever laid out by anybody. It has been changing all the time.

Therefore individually, of our own conscience, which is part of consciousness, our

own conscience builds the system of judgment, that we judge this is good, this is

bad. Once we judge it, we are embedding in ourselves the seeds of punishment

and reward. And this system is called the law of karma. Karma, nothing else.

Karma is our own actions that we embed in our subconscious and wait for the

consequence to come. Therefore, the cycle goes on. We do things which are

good, do things which are bad, and we keep on getting rewards and punishments.

We do good things and we get high and feel very good. Then we do bad things.

There is a saying in India, “ [quote in Punjabi],” which means that when you do

good things, meditation included, tapa included, when you do that, the next time

you are rewarded for it and you become a king, you become rich, you become

powerful. And then when you are rich and powerful, you do all bad things, and

then you go to hell. In hell you say, “Oh, no, never again, never again.” And you

again go back to tapa and do meditation. Then you get a reward and become king

or wealthy. This cycle of these three stages goes on forever, and we perpetuate

the law of karma.

So this karma is entirely a creation of our own mind. But it traps us. It traps us

into an ongoing continuous experience over here from which we cannot get out.

And when we try to worship, when we try to worship without a living master, we

are worshiping our own mind. There is no way out of it. You can think hard about

1. Whoever says, “You know, I had a conversation with God,” I can prove to him

he has had conversation with his mind. The conversation was within his mind. All

conversations in the head are taking place with the mind. There is nobody else. It

is you and your mind. You are powering the mind. The mind is thinking, and the

mind can think anything. It can think prayers. It can think anything. It can get

rewarded for its prayers. It can be punished for bad thoughts. It all works like

that.But the person who is not you at this time in the physical world, who is separate

from you and is not speaking from his mind but is speaking from above it and is

not addressing it to your mind but addressing to your soul, we call that person a

perfect living master.

A perfect living master does not appear in your life just like any other ordinary

person. He shows some aspects of living which are quite different from all other

people that we know. What are those basic differences that you will notice? One

is that knowing that all judgments that you make are because of your own mind,

he will never judge. You will never see a human being who we call a perfect living

master who has obtained the state of being beyond the mind ever judging

anything, unless he is a judge. If his role is a judge, then he will pass judgment.

But if he is not a judge on a bench, then he will not judge anybody. He will not

judge any action. When he sees people and we tell them, “That person is bad,”

how does he look at it? He says, “Sorry, that person is caught up in his own

conscience. He is caught up in bad and good, and I am sorry for him. I have

compassion for him. I have love for him.” If you say, “That person is very good,”

[he will say] “I am glad that person has put himself, but there is a danger. Today

he is good; tomorrow he can be bad. It is a judgment call.” He will never judge.

Now that is an exception which is very rare to find. All of us are liable to judge,

give judgment all the time. We have options all the time about people, even go on

gossiping. Where nothing will matter by what we say, we will still gossip negative

and positive about people. A perfect living master never does this.

The second characteristic, which is even more amazing, is that the perfect living

master is not looking at our body. He is not looking at our mind. He is not looking

at our karma. He is looking at our soul. Therefore, he has an innate, built-in love

for us. That love is so visible and so strong. That love cannot be compared with

any other love. How to compare it? It is unconditional. A perfect living master

never says, “Now you better be a good boy; otherwise I will not love you.” Never!

He will love you if you love him. He will love you if you don’t love him. He will love

you if you hate him. He will love you if you kill him. He is a living being. He is a

human being like us, and yet his love is unconditional. Completely unconditional.

Why? Because he is not operating from the physical self. In the physical body, he

is operating from the spiritual self and is addressing your spiritual self. The feeling

we get when we get to know a perfect living master after a while is he is not really

talking to our body or to our self. He is talking deeper than that. He is touching

something in us which we have never felt. He is touching our soul, because that is

what is happening. So therefore, this unconditional love of a perfect living master

is a unique thing, and you cannot find normally in this world.

Of course, there may be people who are highly advanced spiritual beings. They

also have the same characteristics. In fact, there may be people who have the

same level of experiences as the perfect living master, but their role is not to be a

master, but they have the experience. So there are people like that. They will

show the same characteristics also, but we call them gurumukhs. That means

those who follow their master and have reached that stage of identification. The

others we call manmukhs, those who follow their mind. Most of us are

manmukhs. We follow our mind. There are some who live their entire life

following the master. They are the gurumukhs. So there are people whose role

may not to be a master. And therefore they have that highest awareness and

highest consciousness, but they are not come to teach or to take anybody. They

will have the same characteristics of not being judgmental and having pure love.

Also there are some little vicious things we do which we are calling vices, but I

don’t know if you can judge, even put judgment on that. Like anger. We all get

angry. We get angry. We get attached. We get greedy. These kinds of negative

features that we have, which are also born from the mind and are practiced by us

every day, and we sometimes don’t seem to have control over them. These

negative things—lust, anger, greed, attachment, ego—these five so-called vices,

which we all have, which are indeed very necessary—in order to do what? To pay

off our karma, which we created with our mind. We use the negative things in us

to pay off a karma which we created. It is amazing that negative things are

needed to continue to survive in the law of cause and effect and the law of karma.

That is what we are doing. Yet you will find that if you went above the mind, none

of these things bother you at all. None of these will bother you. You will not have

the lust. You will not have the anger. You will not have the greed. You don’t have

the attachments, and you don’t have the ego. Your humility is genuine. That’s

another sign. In a perfect living master, who is an ordinary human being like us,

you see these qualities and you feel there is something different about a person.

So the characteristic that you can see in a perfect living master, even in a physical

body, in a physical being, are so unique and so different from everybody that it

tells us that he has reached some stage which is not governed by the mind, and

that is exactly what it is. He is not operating from the mind. He uses the mind as

needed. He can use the mind to develop language and talk to us. He can use the

mind to give us an argument or an explanation. He can use the mind for

communication with us. But he is not used by the mind. The mind doesn’t tell him

what to do. He tells the mind what to do, which we are all supposed to do.

The mind was not given to us to tell us what to do. The mind was given to us so

we could instruct the mind what to think, what to do. It has become the opposite.

Today the mind is guiding us what to do. Not only that, we have reached a point

where we are being guided to continuously by the mind—we think we are the

mind. People say, “I am thinking. That’s me, thinking.” We don’t think. We make

our minds think. But we don’t separate ourselves. We don’t realize we are

consciousness per se, the ability to be aware, and we are using a machine

installed in our consciousness called the mind, which thinks. We don’t realize that

our consciousness makes the mind think. Therefore, we should use the mind to

think what we want it to think and not go by what it wants to think on its own and

we follow it. That is what has gone wrong. We put the cart before the horse. We

should have put our self as the director, as the pusher to tell the mind what to do.

Not that the mind keeps on thinking and telling us what to do, and we keep on

blindly following, not doing enough what the mind is saying. The mind has

inadequate information on its hands. Most of it has sunk into the subconscious of

the mind, and the mind puts up some little pieces, has little information and gives

us direction, do this, and we start doing it. The mind comes and says, “Oh, I didn’t

know that,” and we say, “Sorry, we made a mistake.” Another karma.

What kind of life is that? A life led by our mind is not the life that was intended for

1. We didn’t come into this world for that. We came in this world equipped with

the best equipment to have a great time. We had the equipment of a thinking

mind which could communicate, which could reason, which could make sense of

things any way we want. We came equipped with a mind that could create sense

perceptions, and we could then divide our perception into seeing, touching,

tasting, smelling. We came into this world equipped with a physical body in which

those senses could be embedded, and they would operate as if they belong to

this body. What else did we need to have an adventure? What else did we need

to have any kind of experience? Any show could be held with these means we

were given, these tools we were given. What did we do? Instead of having an

adventure with these, we began to misidentify ourselves.

First, we thought the mind was our self. The mind thinks, and we say, “I think so.”

I and mind became one. Terrible mistake! Then we said, “These senses are mine. I

am seeing. These are my eyes to see.” Terrible mistake! And equipment glasses

given us to operate, we call even them our self. Then on top of it, a temporary

cover, a temporary cover of a physical body given to us just to have a physical

experience in a materially created physical experience of the world, we said, “This

is me. This is my only me, my physical body.” We made three big blunders! The

blunders of misidentification with covers upon ourselves which were designed to

give an experience, we began to think they are our self. And our self sitting inside

giving power to all these three, the life force, the consciousness, the soul, the

spirit which was inside, which created and ran these three things, is lost inside.

We don’t even know who we are, and we think these covers are our self. Even

when we lose these covers, the internal cover becomes our real self. How do we

get out of it? If there was no perfect living master to tell us these are all covers

upon our self, if there was no perfect living master, we could never get out from

1. I can’t imagine any way that our thinking could have ever taken us out. Because

thinking would have kept us within the domain of the mind, and all these three

levels of experience are being created by the mind. Therefore, we were in bad

trouble, but we got the key. Thank God some of us brought a key! Those we

brought the key, that we don’t want to get trapped in case there is a trap there,

and there was a trap. And we said, “We have the key.” The key was the

appearance during this experience in the physical world of a perfect living master

in our life. That was the key.

The perfect living master came, developed love, and we were pulled by his love

more than by his teaching. We first thought it was the teaching because the

teaching was addressed to our mind. All teachings are addressed to the mind. We

thought the teaching was good, very perfect, looks good. The mind was drawn

towards it. Therefore, the mind was partially taken away from the distractions of

the world towards the teachings, and then there was a feeling that there was

something more going on behind these teachings. And then gradually, gradually

we discovered it was not the teaching that was pulling us—it was love, an

unconditional pure spiritual love of a master pulling us, and there was nothing like

it we had experienced before. That love alone pulled us back. Now how can love

pull us back above the mind? I want to tell you this. The mind has its own functions, and the soul can perform some functions entirely on its own without using the mind and without using anything else. The functions that the mind uses are sensing, which means picking up the sense perceptions of the seeing, touching, tasting, smelling—these sense perceptions. It picks up and then it makes sense of them, because if it doesn’t make sense…if you saw this yellow color here, they don’t become flowers unless the mind makes them flowers as a perception. As a visual perception, these flowers sitting on the table are merely blobs of yellow color in certain shapes. How do they become flowers?

The mind makes them flowers, so there is one function, a very important

function. It gives meaning to our visual and other perceptions, all the sense

perceptions. It converts them into meaningful things, and they becomemeaningful things for our thoughts. Then we can think about all these things which the mind senses.

There is a second thing it does, which it does continuously, is thinking. It can think

in words. Mostly it thinks in words, and sometimes it thinks in images. But it

thinks all the time. The thinking of the mind is so important it is like the heartbeat

of the physical body. If the heartbeat stops, the physical body stops functioning.

Similarly, if the thinking stops in the mind, the mind stops and then everything

falls below it. So therefore, the mind will think continuously, and what does it

think about? It thinks about the perceptions it has picked up and made sense of.

The third function of the mind is to draw conclusions logically. The logic is the

third function. “Because of this and this, now this is the result.” It does deductive

logic and inductive logic. Deductive logic is, he says, “Oh, this is one yellow flower.

The other one behind must be a yellow flower, so it yellow. I see all of them are

yellow. This one is also yellow.” That is deductive logic. That means I see

something big, and I know the part is also like that. That is the definition of

deductive logic.

It also does inductive logic. That wall is white, and I can’t see that far, but it must

be white. That is inductive logic. Inductive logic has uncertainty in it. You can

never be certain. Deductive logic gives us no new information, so we are working

with the same information over and over again, and that is a function of the mind

and the mind keeps us very busy in that.

These three functions all take place in time and space. You cannot think even a

single thought, even the smallest thought, without time. You cannot have any

image without time and space. You cannot have any deductions except from the

senses, which are in time and space. The total functioning of the mind is confined

to time, space, and cause and effect. It doesn’t go beyond that.

Now there is something that happens beyond these three, and that happens

straight in our soul and our spirit. One is love. Love doesn’t come by thinking.

Love comes from the soul directly. It comes all the time. It comes automatically.

The mind throws it back, kills it! The mind kills the love, doesn’t create it. You can

think and say, “Oh, is it real, is it unreal, this feeling I have?” But the feeling of

love is not coming from the mind at all. It is coming directly from the soul. Beauty.

We can see these are flowers. The mind can say these are flowers, but the mind

cannot say they are beautiful flowers unless the soul says they are beautiful

flowers. There are some functions which are purely…and to be able to see beauty,

you do not need time and space. Beauty by itself is a spiritual function. Love is a

spiritual function. When you feel love for somebody, you don’t say, “It took me

three minutes or three seconds to feel the love.” Love is instantaneous. It doesn’t

need time and space. Beauty doesn’t take time and space. Intuition, a gut feeling,

intuitive knowledge does not take time and space. It is not a mental function. It is

a spiritual function. So just like the mind has three functions, the soul has its own

three functions, and they are separate.

When I came to this country people used to just mix up mind and soul as if it’s the

same thing. They said, “You know, whatever this conscious thing, the mind/soul,

whatever you call it…” They would talk to me like that. [I would say], “How can

you mix up the mind and the soul—they are so different. One operates in time;

the other does not. One operates within certain big limitations; the other is free.

How can you mix them up?” But they had no idea. Even we have no idea. We

have our self thinking we are the mind. We have forgotten we are the soul, and

the soul is functioning. It is functioning all the time. It doesn’t function when you

go to a higher plane of consciousness. It is functioning now. It is functioning in the

physical body. You have experience of love, you have experience of intuition, you

have experience of beauty right here every day. And yet you also experience

rationalizing, thinking, making sense every day. You are doing these things

through these machines which are installed in our consciousness every day. But

when you function from the soul, love is one of those things which comes directly

from there.

A perfect living master operates from the soul. His main method of taking us back

home is not the teaching. His method is love. He will draw you with his love.

Eventually you will find that what pulls us beyond your mind is the love that he is

extending to you which you never experienced before, because it is pure,

spiritual, and very powerful. That is what it is. But while we are still busy

understanding him, using mental powers to grasp what he is saying, he’ll give you

the teaching. He’ll give you not only the teaching, he’ll give you that to struggle

with. Why? Because we have been taught over centuries that you get nothing

without struggling for it, without working for it. We have been trained. Our mind

has been trained. You don’t get anything without working for it. We have to

struggle for it. All right, struggle. Do more meditation. Work hard at it. Do all this.

And we do it until we get tired, and then we find that was not the way. What

were we doing? But until we got our own experience, we still believe that we

have to work hard to get anything.

There was a very beautiful disciple of Great Master, and he was a judge in one of

the states in India. He was a finance minister of that state, and he was also a very

beautiful man. He retired, and after getting initiated he retired and came to Great

Master. He said, “Master, give me any service. I will do it for you. He said, “Oh,

you’ve been a judge. You’ve been an advocate. You have been this. You do can

many things.” He said, “No, if you don’t mind, can I ask for a special job?” He

said, “Okay, what do you want?” “I want to be your doorman.” Master was as

surprised as everybody. Great Master said, “Okay, be my doorman,” and he was a

doorman all his life. After that he was a doorman for Great Master, just standing

outside his door letting people come in or go out. He enjoyed that. He wrote

some books. One was called “Heaven Upon Earth,” and so on. He wrote a number

of books. Now that man enjoyed his stay there. He appreciated the love of the

white bearded man so much. He said, “This is the greatest thing I could ever get.”

Yet one day a thought came to him. “I have been so happy here serving this

master, and I enjoy it, but I did never my meditation. I missed out on something

so important. How will I go to my true home? How will I go to Sach Khand? I am

just having my good time over here.” So he knew that the master goes to a hill

station every year during the summer. It was very hot there in India, and in the

summer the Great Master would go to a hill station. One year the master decided

not to go, so he came to the master, and he said, “Master, I understand you are

not going to your holiday resort in the hills.” Master said, “No, this year I am not

going.” He said, “Can you give me the keys of your house, so I will go and I will go

and meditate there. Three months I will do nothing but meditate. I’ll catch up

with all that I missed. I missed meditation in my life. I have enjoyed life with you,

but I don’t want to miss out on meditation.” So Great Master said, “Here are the

keys. Go!” He wanted to let him have the experience, so he went to the hill

station called Dalhousie in India and opened the door of the Great Master’s

house. He sat and said, “What a beautiful ambience here! Great Master’s

vibrations are here. He comes and stays. This will be the best meditation of my

life, and I’ll catch up with all the lost time.”

As soon as he started to sit for meditation, somebody knocked on the door. “Oh,

I’m glad somebody is here. I’m the plumber. I’ve been waiting for somebody to

come and repair this.” So repair started. The next day another person came. He

found there were more distractions during those three months than even

elsewhere in his life. He could not meditate at all. He felt so bad. He came back to

Great Master, returned the keys, and he said, “Master, I failed. I am sorry. I tried

but I failed.” Great Master said, “No, you didn’t fail. You succeeded!” He said,

“How can you say that? I could not meditate.” He said, “That is exactly how you

succeeded. That meditation would have given you nothing. What takes you to

the highest regions is love and devotion. Meditation is only for the mind. The

mind wants to work. You tried. If you had not gone and failed, you wouldn’t have

known this. Therefore you succeeded, you passed.” He was shocked that this was

the truth.

This is the truth! That the power of the soul rests with beauty, intuition, love.

Those are natural functions of the soul that we have, that is inside us, that has

given us life, and those functions do not belong to the mind. The master pulls you

with those functions. He gives you intuitive knowledge, not always rational

knowledge. He says, “Read the books, and then throw the books away.”

One man came from another country, not the United States, another country to

Great Master. He said, “Master, I have understood what your path is, and I want

to really practice it.” Great Master said, “You have to read a lot more books. Go to

the library and read. This is a very difficult path, and you have to read more

books.” He went and spent months reading those books, and then he came back,

and Master said, “Okay, I will initiate you. You have read enough.” Another man

came, and he said, “Master, I read all the books, and I want to read more. I

believe you have many in the library.” He said, “First, go and throw away all those

books into the river. Then you come and get initiation.” He knew exactly where

we stand. This thing…I’ll tell you my own family experience.

My father was the first one to get initiated in the whole family, and then

everybody got initiated one after the other but my father’s mother-in-law, my

maternal grandmother—she was a worshipper of these little idols. “This is

Brahma, this is Vishnu, this is Shiva, this is goddess Parvati, this is goddess Durga.”

She had all those little images made of wood or made of stone or something, and

she had a temple in her house. She used to worship that temple, worship all the

gods and goddesses and used to use a lot of nice incense. They burned the

incense, and she would burn the incense and had a bell which she rang when she

did the worship. It was a great atmosphere she created during the morning

prayers to the gods and goddesses. She loved her gods and goddesses. She said,

“Everything I get from my gods and goddesses.”

So my dad, after getting initiated from Great Master and finding out that the truth

is inside us and not in these gods and goddesses, they are just pieces of stone and

wood, went to argue with her. He said, “Mother-in-law, what you are doing is not

the right thing. You should come and meet my master. He will tell you right where

to go within. You can get initiated, take Naam from him. Go inside. You will find

the truth is inside, not in these little toys that you are playing with.” She said,

“Shut up. You have no idea. These are real gods and goddesses. They hear my

prayers. I have tried all my life, and they do hear my prayers. What I want, they

give me, and I like to worship them. They give me happiness and joy. What does

your master give you? You are as angry as you ever were. I never saw a worse

son-in-law than you! What are you talking about? You go to your master. I am

happy with my gods and goddesses.”

Eventually my dad said, “This is a very tough nut to crack. What should I do?” He

told his master, Great Master, “I want my mother-in-law also to follow your

teachings, but she is worshipping these gods and goddesses like most Hindus are

doing in India. They go to temples and worship these. She is also caught up in the

same racket, and I want her to get off from there and go and really worship the

real god inside.”

He said, “Don’t worry, Lekh Raj”—that was his name, my dad’s name—“don’t

worry, Lekh Raj. I’ll come and meet her.” He was very happy that master will

himself come, so he told his mother-in-law. “Great Master is coming to see you.”

“Oh, welcome.” So Great Master went to her house, and she said, “Master, this

son-in-law of mine is giving me wrong ideas, and I am glad you have come. You

will understand me.”

He said, “Yes, ma’am, what can I do for you?” She said, “I have a beautiful

temple.” “Oh, really? You have a temple in your house?” “Yes.” He took off his

shoes. “Let’s go to your temple,” and he sat down along with Granny. He rang the

bell, and he worshipped those gods. She was so happy. This man knew that these

were real gods and goddesses. The son-in-law knew nothing! So the Great Master

made her so happy. She said, “I knew the Master is right. You never follow your

master. If you had followed your master, you would be worshipping the same

gods and goddesses.”

My dad was puzzled. “What is this master doing? I thought he would go and tell

her this is not right, and he himself started worshipping these little toys.” So the

Great Master made her very happy, and he said, “Ma’am, it is very nice to see

your temple. I have had a great time. I feel very happy, and I am glad to see you.

Come and see me some time in the dera.” She said, “Sure I will come!” She would

never have gone but for that experience, and she went there, enjoyed one

discourse, two discourses, three discourses. She said, “You know, I understand

what he is saying is right. The truth is inside. I was worshipping something

outside. I think I had better ask him for initiation.” She asked him for initiation.

“Certainly!” He gave her the initiation. She began to do meditation, and after a

month she went back to Great Master and said, “Master, I have a little problem.”

He said, “What’s your problem, ma’am?” She said, “You know, you saw all those

gods and goddesses. They are still sitting in my temple, and I don’t need them. I

don’t know what to do with them.” He said, “Oh, do you buy wheat in a big bag?”

“Oh, yes, in big gunny bags, brown bags, I buy my wheat.” He said, “When you

have an empty bag, go and put all those gods and goddesses in the bag, tie it up

and throw it in the river,” and she did exactly that.

We can never know how these masters perform their functions. They come to our

level. They know where we are. They don’t say, “We’re going to teach you from a

pulpit from somewhere high up, from a pedestal.” They come to our level. They

develop love and friendship. They pull us with their love more than anything else,

and we discover that they can do these things.

I’m telling you another story of Great Master. He went to another place called

Rawalpindi, which is now called Islamabad in Pakistan. There was a big Sikh

temple there. The Sikhs believe that their holy book is the master. They had ten

masters, whose names they list. The tenth master, they say, said there would be

no more masters, and therefore the book should be taken as master. They claim

that he said this, although I have studied and find he never said it, but that is a

different matter. Somebody else said this, but they claim the gurus have said that

the book is now going to be the master forever. So they treat the book like a

master. Not only that, they feed the book, they put some food into the book.

They carry the book on their heads, and while they are doing their prayers, they

make sure the book does not have any flies on it, so they wave a little flier on it.

They do all the things like it is a human being, because all the ten masters whose

teachings are in the book say you have to have a human being as a master. They

all say that, and yet, therefore, they have to treat it like a master, a human

master. They are treating the book like a human master.

Great Master visited that city and was going to give a discourse very close to

where the temple was. Those Sikhs said, “How can a man claim to be a master?

We must kill him.” Because they could be violent, too, if it comes to religion, like

most religions. Religions can…they teach you peace, and people sometimes

practice violence. It is very amazing contradiction in religion. Religion says love

everybody. All are created by the same God. Every religion says that and

propagates the theory of love for everybody, and yet so many people have been

killed in history in the name of religion, in the name of the same God. It is very

amazing how this could have happened. It does happen.

So when Great Master visited there, these people said, “How dare he claim to be

a guru. Only the ten gurus were gurus, and now the book is the guru. If he comes

out to pretend to be a guru, we will kill him. We have our swords to kill him.”

They all carry swords. Here when they travel they carry little swords, but there

they carry big ones.

So the next day was the Great Master’s discourse. People found out that there

was a plan to kill him, and they advised him. There was a meeting at night. By the

way, I was there, too. I was young, but I was still there in that group. I remember

all this hush-hush meeting and discussion. “Master, cancel your tour.” “Master, it

is too dangerous.” “They are going to kill you tomorrow.” “We can’t afford to lose

you.” “Let’s go back tonight before they can do it.” Master said, “No, satsang will

take place tomorrow. The meeting will take place tomorrow. Don’t worry. Don’t

worry. Leave it to the master. Leave it to my master, to Baba Jaimal Singh.” He

claimed his master was powerful and he wasn’t. He never claimed to be a master,

and he gave all the credit to his own master. He said, “No, Baba Ji is there taking

care of me. Don’t worry.” They were all frightened.

The next day Great Master said, “Before I go to give my discourse, I want to go to

the temple, the Sikh temple.” So instead of going to his discourse place, he went

to the Sikh temple. All those people were waiting with swords, drawn swords. I

actually remember. He went to the temple, followed by some of his people, like

us, and we were waiting to see a massacre or something. There he goes in, and he

bows to the book and gives five rupees, their currency, five rupees to the book

and says, “Thank you,” and sits down in front of the book. They all say, “We had

the wrong information about this man. He worships our book,” so they put their

swords back. And then he asked his own chanter who had come from the dera,

Bon Singh, his name was Bon Singh. He said, “Poti Bon Singh, come and chant the

fifth guru’s verse so and so,” so he was also dressed up in proper Sikh attire with a

turban and all. The man who was sitting on the book who was reading, this man

went and pushed him aside and took over the book. The man went, and he

opened that page and began to read. “Unless you can see the face of a master,

you get nothing from a master. Unless the master can hold your hand and give

you something, you get nothing.” This is all in the book!

So he read that book powerfully, and Master was just sitting like this. Everybody

was wondering what has happened. They said, “Oh, this master worships our

guru, but he is just a follower of the same teachings. He is teaching from our

book.” So Master got up, went to give his discourse and said, “Give the discourse

from the same book,” and all these people with swords came there to hear it. He

gave a discourse what the book was saying. He interpreted that without a living

person, a person who can…the fifth guru’s teachings, which are very explicit. That

is why I like that song which sometimes Tiki sings. It says, Jo mange thakur apne

te, soi soi deve. That says, Kanth lae avguna sab mete –if he gives you a hug, he

removes so much of your vices and your karma. Now they should know the book

cannot give you a hug. Only a human being can do it. The book is saying all these

things! So that is why when the Master gave that discourse, they couldn’t do

anything. He was giving a discourse from their book. To cut a long story short,

most of them became his disciples, those who had come to kill him.

So we never know how a master operates, how he can do things. He can come to

our level and do things which create, not a feeling of a student-teacher

relationship—it is not that feeling with a master—it is a feeling of a true

friendship, feeling of somebody when you have experienced real love which has

no condition attached to it. It is a very great feeling.

That is why I say it is nice to know the spiritual path, but don’t forget the spiritual

path is not what looks on the face of it. The spiritual path is a path of love and

devotion eventually.

I wish all of you great spiritual adventures inside. Like you came for the physical

adventures here, have greater spiritual adventures. Use all your methods to reach

there, but don’t forget eventually only the pull of the unconditional love from a

Perfect living master will take you beyond your mind.

Thank you. We will have a break, and I believe I saw some pizzas coming. I know

pizza is a weakness of mine. I was attracted when I came to this country by Ye

Olde Shakey’s Pizza, and I thought that I might have lost my spiritual power

because when I tried to meditate, I said, “Ye Olde Shakey’s, Ye Olde Shakey’s.” So

you see, I said I am getting distracted by pizza only. No, if you have a master’s

radiant form, a master inside, nothing will distract you. Don’t worry. Thank you.

Well, we have a little time for a few questions and answers. Does anybody have

any question to ask? I think they have asked the questions already in their

interviews, but he didn’t have an interview, so he can ask a question.

Q: (Inaudible)

A: Very good question. Thank you for asking it. He is asking this basic question,

“Why has this world been created when we were so happy and blissful in our true

home to start with? Why did we have to come into the three worlds of the mind

with all negativity when we were living happily?”

It appears from the records we see that the bulk of souls that were created,

almost 90 percent of those souls, never left. They are still having a good time

there. And who are we—10 percent—sitting here and elsewhere in these three

worlds? What was the big purpose of coming here? Now that is a good question.

Why did we come here? What is the purpose of creation?

The reason is that our reality is consciousness. Our true home is a sea, ocean of

consciousness, and the building blocks for all experiences at every level is

consciousness. Consciousness is a power by which you can be conscious of

anything that you are conscious of. So it is an innate power. That means that if

you want to have an experience of anything, consciousness can be conscious,

which would create that experience, it becomes real, and then you have the

experience. The vast large number, an uncountable number of souls that were

created in our true home itself was itself an activity within the totality of

consciousness, to have multiple units so that the experience of the many and the

one could be taking place at once. It is still happening in our own world, in our

own true world where there is no pain, there is no suffering, there is nothing at

all. So now we are describing what the nature of our true home is, from where we

need not have come here, and most have not come here. What was the purpose

of creating other worlds, lower down here, these lower creations, especially the

creations of the three worlds of the mind? The purpose was that consciousness

operates on the basis of being able to experience what is and what can be.

Otherwise there would be no creation. If consciousness says, “I can be conscious

of something” and is conscious of nothing, it is no longer consciousness.

Consciousness is an experience. The consciousness subsists on something to be

conscious of. Therefore, the creative power of consciousness is always at play. It

can create the experience of the many within the one. That is the first experience,

and that is happening in our true home right now. But then it finds that when you

have these opposite experiences, the one and the many are opposite experiences.

The one is real; the many is not. But the many makes the one more real. You

distinguish between the many and the one. The distinction between what is

created and what the creator is, makes for the experience of consciousness.

Therefore, the more you can create situations in which there are more opposites

created, the more valuable the experience for the one. Now to put it in a more

physical terminology, because this is not physical terminology I am talking about,

to talk of the power of consciousness to be one and many and thereby having an

experience of consciousness, it does not make sense to us here. Here we say we

have so many of us, okay, we are many. Our reality is our soul, but we have many

souls. We are a select number of souls who chose to come here. The experience

here is completely opposite of the experience in our true home. We have come

into a negative experience. How will that experience become positive if there is

no negative experience at all? You would not have any experience of positivity if

there is nothing opposite to that.

Therefore, the whole principle of creation right up to here is based upon pairs of

opposites. So this principle of pairs of opposites, which is called duality, the

principle of duality prevails throughout creation, and nothing can be experienced

unless there is an opposite of it. Look at the experience right here in this world.

We see light. Supposing there was no darkness, would we see it? Nobody would

ever see it. Imagine light would become invisible if there was no darkness.

Supposing there was a certain amount of light which, whether you close your eyes

or you open your eyes, it is always there. You would never see it. The whole

principle of experience is based upon having an experience of the opposite.

Supposing there was no hatred in this world. Would you know what love is?

Supposing there was no unhappiness in this world. Would you know what

happiness is? If you have no opposite of anything, you would not have the

experience of the opposite. This goes down to the very molecular level of creation

where you find that if the positive and negative of an atom were not there, it

does not exist. If both are negative, they disappear. If both are positive, they

disappear. It is the negative electron running to create matter around a positive

positron or a neutron. This principle goes down to every level of every type of

creation at all levels of creation right up to our true home. The pairs of opposites

is the greatest principle. The question is that in the world of the three minds, it is

a world of pairs of opposites, it is all a world of duality. But our true home is not a

world of duality, because there is no time and space to separate it. Then how do

you experience there when there is no duality? How do you get the experience

there? By the creation of a world of duality here, that becomes the opposite of a

world of no duality. The principle of opposite even applies there now.

So the purpose of creation of the three worlds of the mind, the lower creation, is

really to enhance the experience of our own true home. You cannot have that

experience unless you have had the experience opposite to that. That is why in

Anurag Sagar, Ocean of Love by Kabir, they explain that the souls that have come

down we call them hans, and souls that never came down we call them bans.

When we go back to our true home, it is such a great delight to have that

experience. They are all singing and dancing, taking it natural. All the bans souls

are singing and dancing, and when we arrive there, we are so ecstatic. They say,

“What is so special about you that you are dancing better than us? What is so

special?” We tell them, “You don’t know what you are missing, because you have

had no chance to see the opposite, so we have seen the opposite and we

appreciate what is there more than those who are always there.” Therefore, this

is a great principle on which this whole creation has been based so that we can

have these experiences of this kind here and go back home and intensify and

greatly enhance the experience of where you always were. That is the real reason.

Any other question?

Q: (Inaudible) _____ for darkness and what the experience was like, but why

would totality of consciousness allow for that?

A: The more intense the negative experience, the more intense the positive

experience. The more intense, then why should we take the trouble of creating a

real terrible torture situation if we are going to just use that terrible experience

just to intensify the positive? The reason is the positive is real always. This is

created illusion. For example, you go to sleep, have a terrible nightmare, very bad

dream. You are tortured in the dream, you feel bad, and then you wake up. You

say, “Thank God, it was just a dream!” That is exactly what we say when we go

back home. “Thank God, the whole thing was dream-like!” It was just created to

make the experience of wakefulness more intense. This is so wonderfully

Arranged.

We like to have a real experience. We don’t want shadows. We can see a shadow.

A shadow is never like us. How can somebody talk to a shadow and have a feeling

of love and devotion and all that? How can a shadow do anything for us? A

shadow cannot unless we make the shadow alive, make it like ourselves. If a

shadow becomes like us, we fall in love, and then when we put up and say, that

was just a shadow? Why did we do that? So that we have a more intense

experience where there is no shadow. It is a remarkable way…People say this

creation is illusion, dream-like, and I say this creation is a creation of reality for us.

It is a process of illusion being used, the process of dream being used to create a

reality. We don’t feel it’s a dream. We feel it is real. Not only do we feel it is real,

we feel it is the only reality. Now to be able to create only reality, it is a great

marvel of consciousness that you can go into a dream state and make a dream

real, which happens every time you go to dream. While you are dreaming, it is

real. So long as the dream lasts, we are not aware of where our body is sleeping.

We are moving around in a different body called a dream body. The real body, the

physical body, is sleeping on a bed. We are moving in the dream. The dream is

real. Even if you say in the dream, “This is a dream, this is a dream,” and

sometimes we do that, we are still taking that to be real and we are telling

people, “Come, I tell you it is a dream.” If you knew that person doesn’t exist,

when you wake up, we never tell anybody to go back to tell them it was dream

because we create the reality. The principle by which you can shift a level of

consciousness to a different level and make it real, that is the most beautiful

miracle that could ever happen, and we are doing it all the time. That we can shift

our consciousness from a wakeful state into a dream-like state and make it look

absolutely wakeful, and we can go to sleep again in the dream, have a dream

within a dream, and still make it like it is real and wakeful. That is a wonderful

Thing!

Consciousness has that power and is doing it all the time. That is how we are

here. Even if I knew you are all dream creatures, why am I talking to you? Because

I am taking you to be real. If I am enlightened and I know this is all a dream, I

wouldn’t be speaking to you. Yet I speak to you in your dream and my dream.

Why am I speaking to you in my dream? An answer was given by a famous swami

of India. His name was Vivekananda. He came more than 100 years ago to

Chicago, and he addressed the World Congress of Religions in Chicago. He was

picked up by a lady who was just sitting somewhere, and they did not know that

he was able to speak English, but when he spoke, for two days he spoke in that

conference. On the third day he said to the audience, “I have been telling you all

these three days that this world is illusion, is maya, mithya, unreal, destructible. It

will go away. When you die, it will disappear with you. I have been saying it is

unreal. If this world is unreal, so am I unreal! If I am unreal, why am I talking to

you? What am I telling you about?” He says, “There is a difference. The rest of the

dream, the rest of the world, which is maya, is keeping you here. This part of the

dream which I am, am pulling you back into reality and making you wake up.”

So there is a little difference in the element of the dream also. In the dream we

can have elements that wake you up and the elements that keep you sleeping

more. So what is the role of a master? A Perfect living master comes into our life.

He is that part of a dream, of our own dream. We create him. We create him to

wake us up quickly. He is working somewhere else too, from where he is making

us up. It is just like a man who is sleeping. In his dream he thinks he is carrying his

horses, sees a farmer with horses. He is taking his horses back into the barn,

carrying the horses. That is a dream. He is lying on a bed while he is having a

dream. His friend wants to wake him up. The friend is awake. This guy is sleeping.

The friend comes in and gives him a nudge. “Get up, get up!” Now he can feel the

nudge in the dream, and he can hear his friend’s voice in the dream. He says, “Get

up, get up.” He says, “Who will take my horses?” Can you imagine? The friend’s

nudge is real, and the horses are real also at the same time. He says, “Who will

take care of my horses?” The man who is nudging him says, “Don’t worry. Wake

up! I’ll take care of your horses,” and he wakes up. He never says, “Were you a

liar? Where have you taken care of my horses? You know there were no horses,

and yet the horses were real while he was dreaming. It is the same situation here.

At every level of consciousness we have the same experience, that we take this

as reality and somebody awake, more awake, appearing in our dream in our state

is nudging us from there. Wake up! And we say, “What about the problems here.

Will you take care of them?” Oh, yes, I’ll take care of these problems too.” You

wake up and find there were no problems. It is such a remarkable way this is all

set up.

I once thought when I was very young, “Maybe if I am given a chance to redesign

creation, I’ll do a little here and there and make it better. I would remove these

tortuous things and do something better than this. I would remove some of the

negative things. When I saw the grand picture, the whole thing, I could do

nothing. I saw perfection. Only when you see the entire creation and the creator

together, you find perfection. You don’t find perfection less than that, otherwise

imperfect. If you see part, it is always imperfect. So it is remarkable the way it is

set up. Then what is the beauty of it? What I am telling you is achievable to us in

this dream, while we are in the physical body, without leaving the physical body,

without leaving the physical universe. Within this physical body, we have points in

the body which can throw us out of the body and give us experience outside of

the body.

It doesn’t mean a person who has had out of body experience has left the body.

He is still alive and kicking! He can get experience. These lower chakras have

given people…the heart chakra has given people out-of-body experience, yet they

were alive in the body. They never left the body. The experience was they left the

body and gone out. It is possible just like the experience of out-of-body

experience, attached with kind of a cord, silver cord that can pull you back into

the body. Many people have had that experience. Similarly, within the head

behind the eyes, right behind the eyes to the middle of the head and then

upwards, there are points just like those points. These are energy centers below

1. Those are centers of awareness. When you touch your attention there, they

open up something that exists not in this state at all. It exists in the wakeful state.

That is an amazing miracle by itself, that within a physical body in the physical

world that you have these points within the head that, when you put your

attention there, you are awake to another world without dying here, without

leaving the physical body. What a great miracle! How could you improve this? I

can’t understand how we could improve the system they set up. System enabling

us to wake up to the highest level to the totality of consciousness, sitting right

here in our physical body. How can I not praise the physical body? And this is only

in the physical body you have this. Because in order to put the attention on those

points, you need an experience which does not exist, the experience of your own

individual self having a free will. Since the whole design has taken place in totality,

free will has been built into totality. All the things that have to happen have

happened without time and space and then spread out into time and space, so

when we say that this is something that is touching us there, how do we go there

in this experience? We seek, we meditate, we use our free will. We say, “Yes, it is

my choice to be there,” and when we go there, a new world opens up which is

more real than this. There we go farther up, another world opens up and we see

all that we were doing was already recorded there, including our seeking,

including our free will. But unless we feel we have real free will here, we can’t

have the experience.

That’s another strange contradiction, that you should have no real free will

because the whole thing is known to totality of consciousness, and yet you

experience complete free will when you are here, not only feel complete free will,

have to use the free will to find that you have no free will. You can’t even find it

without employing what looks like real free will here. It is such a beautiful mixture

of opposite design. It is an opposite that you should feel you have real choice, real

free will, and necessary free will even for spiritual seeking, and then find out it

was all prerecorded, that there really no free will. It’s exactly an opposite of each

other. The whole principle of opposites applies throughout in every kind of

experience, a physical experience, a mental experience, the experience of

seeking, experience of thinking, experience of choice making, in everything the

principle of opposites is operating. That is a great principle on which we intensify

our experience everywhere. What would happen…now this is going in reverse,

that we have the negative experiences here and we go back home and will

intensify our positive experience.

What about the other way around? Supposing now we are sitting here, and we

go there, have a dip through the points inside the head and see our true home

and then come back because we have not left the body. Then what happens

here? We intensify our experience here again, even though it is not real and yet

we are enjoying it. Both ways it intensifies. You come here, you go back, you have

a bigger experience of joy, bliss, and whatever they call it. They use so many

languages to experience the bliss of that place. The great joy, upheaval of an

experience in consciousness. When you come down, if you are coming down with

knowledge, you have the same experience here. That is why these enlightened

people have the joy inside and the joy outside all the time. They are intoxicated

inside when they go there, intoxicated outside, and we call them mastanas,

intoxicated ones. So this is such a…the total layout, the total way of constructing

these experiences of the world is remarkable. I can’t praise it enough! The only

thing we say is, “Thank God it was a dream!” When we look at all the negative

things and wake up, “Thank God, it was just a dream.” It looked so real, so real, it

affected us. It affects us! It is supposed to affect us. If it doesn’t affect us, how

would we have the opposite experience? It is supposed to affect us as if it were

real. If it is not a real experience, then there would be no effect. It is again a

shadow then. A shadow doesn’t affect us; only real things affect us. So we create

successive layers of reality, and yet they are successive layers of illusion, but

illusion, the word illusion is very misleading.

There was a famous dancer in India, Sarabhai. Her name was Sarabhai, a very

famous dancer. She had a dance school. Once she invited me to…I was in an

official position to visit her and to see the dance school. She was also a spiritual

seeker. She invited me after the dance for dinner, and she asked a very

interesting question. She said, “I want to understand how enlightened people

who come to know that this is all illusion, this is maya. They say it is maya, mithya,

maya, destructible, unreal, illusion. How do they live here? How can they have a

good time if they know these are shadows?” And I explained to her that’s not a

correct definition. The maya does not mean only illusion. It means much more

that. What does it mean? It means that here is a cup of water, and I am going to

drink this water. Tasted good! Now when I go to the higher stage, the cup has

disappeared, water has disappeared, the taste is still with me. How come? I had

the taste of the water; that has not gone. It is still in my memory, but the glass

has disappeared and the water disappeared. The taste of drinking water, the

experience of drinking water is still there with me.

In a dream you have a very pleasant dream and enjoy it, then you wake up. There

is nobody there. The pleasure is still there. The joy is still there. How come? How

come? There is a remnant of something that stays with you even when the rest

disappears. Maya does not mean that this glass is unreal. Maya means what you

see as a glass is unreal. The experience of the glass is not unreal; it is real and will

stay with you even after the glass disappears. It is a very tough definition of the

word maya. It is not pure illusion. It is an illusion that we have things, material

things with us, and they are giving us the experience. They are material people

with us. They are giving us an experience, and when we wake up, they are not

there but the experience is still there. The experience still stays and the things

disappear.

On the other hand, we think while the reality of a particular level of consciousness

is there that things are real giving us experience. We find out the experience is

not connected with those things. If we go still higher into deeper levels of

consciousness, we find it was experience of drinking water that made the glass

and made the water. It is the opposite exactly of what we thought. We thought

that the things here, people here, they give us all the experience of the world.

When you go to the top and see, the experience was built in first, and to have the

experience, people were made and things were made. The cause and effect is in

the exact opposite way. But we can’t see it here, but we can see if we go and

touch the right spots in your head through concentration of attention there. It is

remarkable. What else can you ask for? I say for a spiritual seeker who wants to

find the truth, what else can he ask for? That somebody can tell him there are

spots in the head and you put your attention there, withdraw the attention from

everything else, put it there, and it will open up those doors. It will open those

perceptions and open up reality for you, open up a higher reality for you. That

exists in all of us. There are no special people who have this; we all have it.

Everybody has the potential to be a perfect living master and have all the

experiences in this lifetime to go to the top.

Why doesn’t everybody go? We tied ourselves. Just because things had to look

real for us to enjoy them as reality, we took them as real and just got drowned in

them. We don’t even think that there could be anything else. The world is our

only reality. Only place to find love, only place to find pleasure, only place to

attach ourselves, only place to have desires for, and we attach ourselves and

never find out that there is something inside our own body which can open up the

doors. Therefore, it is very lucky that somebody can come in our life called a

perfect living master who is speaking to us from direct experience and not from

reading what he read in books. We can read the books, too. The difference

between a perfect living master talking to us and anybody learned person talking

to us is that a learned person has learned from books, from teaching some other

things which he relates to us without knowing what he is teaching, whereas a

perfect living master is talking directly from the experience he wants us to have.

He is not cutting it off. He is not shutting off those experiences in order to come

and be like us and talk to us. A perfect living master is aware of all these levels at

all times. He speaks from all levels. Not only that, he speaks to several people,

several souls who are at different levels at that time. He does not only speak to

us; he is doing his work on many levels. So different! A perfect living master looks

like an ordinary person, but I tell you, don’t be mistaken. He is not that ordinary.

Looks ordinary, functions ordinary, does everything ordinary like us. In

consciousness, in awareness, totally different. He is constantly aware of the whole

show. He sees the whole grand picture at all times. So his work is very different

from the work of a teacher. I keep on telling people that he is not a teacher. A

Perfect living master is not a teacher. Then who is he? How will I define him? I

will define him as the best true friend, as the best beloved and lover that you can

ever find, the best person where you can experience pure true love that takes you

right back to your home. This is a different kind of person altogether. Very lucky

that we find perfect living masters still in this state of the world. The world is not

in a great state; it is in a very negative state. To be able to find reality through this

process of a perfect living master, enabling us to use our so-called free will to seek

and find, what else can you ask for? I congratulate all of you as seekers of the

truth. I know you’ll find it. 

Thank you very much.

~ Ishwar Puri

Ishwar Puri is the founder and principal speaker for the Institute for the Study of Human Awareness. For more than forty years he has conducted lectures, workshops, and other events

 on the nature of consciousness and human awareness. His lectures and teachings have been recorded and transcribed into numerous books and other materials. Each of his many lecture presentations is founded upon his own unique experience and he expresses himself with humility and love as his guide. His broad range of lecture topics include science, art, religion, philosophy, human relations, education, health, human awareness, and consciousness.

Ishwar Puri attended Harvard University prior to retiring from service with the Government Services of India. He later established citizenship in the United States of America. He continues to serve as a consultant, board chairman, and senior advisor to a number of corporations worldwide.

Ishwar Puri is a devoted disciple of the Great Master Hazur Sawan Singh Ji. The Institute for the Study of Human Awareness provides a venue by which Ishwar Puri can carry on his work by way of speaking engagements and the dissemination of educational materials.

Published by ISHA. All rights reserved. This English transcript of a YouTube talk by Ishwar C. Puri is published under a CC BY-NC-SA license, which means that you can copy, redistribute, remix, and freely distribute sections of the transcript, provided that any derivative works or new resulting creations are not used for any commercial purpose and as long as you give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original. License details: creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ Copyright 2019. Attribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA). 

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