Mind is Acting Like God – by Ishwar Puri

Mind is Acting Like God

Ishwar Puri

Welcome, friends, to this second half of the first day’s program in Singapore. And I will be now taking you through some exercises. Then after the couple of exercises we will do meditation. The two exercises I normally do before meditation is: one, to show how our attention can be moved inside our body, because normally we are moving our attention outside all the time. So, first exercise will be to show how attention can be moved in the body. Second exercise will be to show that the sense perceptions, which we think are on this body, actually are inside us and not on this body. After that we will do meditation behind the eyes at the third eye center.

The first experiment or exercise I call the orange juice experiment. So, we will now do the orange juice experiment. In this experiment, we will imagine that our body is made of glass. It’s a hollow glass, shaped like a body but inside is hollow. We will by imagination fill up that body with orange juice starting from the feet and all the way up, up to the top of the head, and in our arms, in our feet and hands. We’ll fill it up with orange juice. That in this body there will be valves attached to the fingertips, that we press the fingers, the orange juice will flow out from the fingers. When we stop, then orange juice will stay inside. Similarly, in the toes of the feet there will be valves, and when we press the toes the orange juice will flow out. When we don’t, orange juice will stay inside. Once you have done that, I will give you instructions when to press these valves. Okay?

Now, close your eyes and imagine that your body is made of glass and empty, hollow inside. With your imagination fill up this hollow body with orange juice. And since the body is made of glass you cannot shake it too much lest it breaks. Be very still during this experiment. Start from the feet and fill up all the body — the legs, torso, the arms and the head. No space should be left empty.

(Meditation session cut from the video.)

When you will be in a deeper meditation, to get back to the body sometimes you will feel it’s easy to rub your eyes, rub your face and your hands, so I do it routinely. Useful. How many of you were able to do successfully, this orange juice experiment? Very good, so many of you succeeded. What was the purpose of doing it? The purpose was that you could move your attention wherever I said, “Stop” and wherever I said, “Move.” That is the kind of attention we will need in meditation. It’s just to show you what is needed for meditation. Nothing else is needed except attention, which you just used, and concentration of attention wherever you need it. When I said, “Hold,” you concentrated your attention at that point. So, you learned both things in this little exercise — how to use attention and how to hold it where you like.

Okay. Now, the next experiment, before we start meditation, is the experiment where we will assume that the body is our house. It has many floors, this eyes is the sixth floor. We call it “sixth floor” because of six levels of energy centers, the chakras, six chakras. They start from the bottom of the torso and they go up, and the sixth one is behind the eyes. So, we will now imagine that this is a house in which we live and right now we are sitting on the sixth floor behind the eyes.

Now, you will look at the house, you can see the whole house below you, and you are in the sixth floor. There you will sit comfortably on a chair, comfortable chair like I am sitting here. You can take any chair you like. Today it’s free. You take your best chair possible, it’s imaginary. Sit in the center of the head, and on the side table — you’ll have a side table like this one which I have on the right side — you also on the right side have a side table. On that place a drink, any drink of your choice. Imagine you have a drink sitting there. Also have some flowers sitting there like these flowers or flowers of your choice, whichever you want. There’re flowers there, and there’s a drink there and on a plate, there’ll be a little snack. Keep these three things by your imagination on the right side on the table, and when I will tell you what to do with them, I will give you instructions.

So, close your eyes, go to the sixth floor of your house which is behind the eyes. The rest of the house is below you, and you can see there are steps that go in front to the lower floors, and there’s a elevator at the back along the spine. You have an elevator to go down and you have stairs, steps to go down in front, and the house is very comfortable, but you are on the sixth floor which is a very comfortable floor behind the eyes. Stay in the center of the house in sixth floor, in the room in the sixth floor, in the middle of the room. And take a nice chair and sit down comfortably on it. Then look on the right side and see the table which has a drink, has flowers, and it has a snack.

(Actual meditation session cut from the video.)

How many of you could successfully do this exercise? How many of you could see flowers? How many of you saw new flowers which were not seen before? How many of you could smell the flowers? How many of you could taste the drink? How many of you had a new

drink you hadn’t had before? How many of you enjoyed the snack? Snack was popular! How many of you found it was different than what you imagined? Very good. So, you see. How many of you still have the taste of the snack in your mouth? Very good. Now here there was no flowers, there was no s…drink, and there was no snack. But you were able to have the experience of all the five sense perceptions. It is just a experiment to show that sense perceptions through imagination are functioning without the use of what we think are the physical organs on our body. Also, sometimes the memory can recall these things, and we can still see them. Sometimes we can see things which we did not even see before. These…you just had some of these experiences today. So, the idea of these two experiments is that you can await to see beautiful things inside. And don’t think you only have to see things which you’ve seen outside, ‘cause inside there are many more things than outside. When you do meditation, you will see many experiences inside.

Okay, now you are all ready for meditation. Meditation is done effectively, usefully, only in the sixth-floor house behind the eyes. Doing it anywhere else does not give any results. I have visited my friends, they tell me, “We have a special meditation room in our house.” They take me to the room. It’s very specially decorated. It has incense burning, it has candle lights, and they sit there to meditate. Their attention is on the incense and on the candle and, at the most, on the room, special room they have. How will it go inside? How will your attention go inside, attention go inside when you have arranged everything to draw the attention outside? Some people buy a special mat, that “We sit on that mat. This our meditation mat.” But then you are always putting your attention on the mat. How will it go inside? Some people have a special chair to sit on for meditation in their house, and all the time the attention is on the beautiful chair on which they are sitting. Attention does not go inside.

If you want to have effective meditation, meditation that will take you in and show you things I was talking about in the morning, it should start from the sixth floor inside your head. That space inside your head should be the starting point. You first have to sit down there, then start meditating. Without establishing yourself behind the eyes, meditation is not so effective. I am telling you from experience. That is why it is not necessary to have any outside things to prepare. You prepare things inside. If you want to have a nice…mat for meditation, place it inside. You want a good chair for meditation? Place it inside. You want to have curtains in your meditation room? Put them inside. You want to decorate with candles? Put them inside. You want to burn incense? Put it inside. Whatever you want to do, think the starting point for meditation is our meditation chamber built by nature inside our body inside the head, right behind the eyes, behind the forehead. This area of the head is the only important area where you will get all the answers to all your questions and can journey right up to your true home.

This area below the eyes has energy centers. These six chakras below the eyes are all used for developing energies, using energies and creating the circuitry of energies to survive in

this world, to live in this world. If you concentrate your attention on these centers, you get very…strange experiences, unusual experiences. You get more energy, more energetic experiences, but you do not get more awareness of yourself. More awareness comes by staying behind the eyes and above. So, this area is energy, this area is awareness (points with His hands). Remember that. So, we should not go below the eyes in order to have higher awareness. Of course, if you just want to relax and want to have some experience of out-of-body experience, feeling the world around, being able to fly outside, then you can go to the heart center, you can go to the center, the Nabhi and other centers below it. But, if you want to have higher awareness and knowledge of who you are and want to go to the higher levels of consciousness, you must stay behind the eyes and above.

When we go to sleep at night, our notional position of where we are in the body, which we now think is behind the eyes — when we close our eyes, we feel we are behind the eyes because we are used to looking from the eyes — so when we close the eyes we’re still behind the eyes. But in…during sleep this position falls down. When we’re having dreams, our eyes, inside eyes, drop down to the throat. In deep meditation of the six centers these can be dropped down to the heart center.

Many yogis have done practice of those and drop their vision down below to different centers and had strange experiences. Naturally, each of these energy centers has strange experiences. I mentioned to you that the body has staircases and a … and a elevator at the back of the spine. People through yogic practices have been able to travel down to the centers. Our natural tendency is to sleep and therefore to go to the centers below. When you want to meditate on these centers, on your heart chakra or on your Nabhi chakra, or chakras below, it’s easy. You’ll find there is no res…resistance, the mind will not resist. When you want to sit here, the mind resists, because the mind has taken control and wants you to be in the energy centers below, does not want you to go up. But if you have to overcome the mind’s resistance, you must continue to stay here. Otherwise, the tendency to go to sleep is very strong. In meditation people often fall asleep because the tendency is to go down below. Now, this is a special thing to remember that we have to be alert not to go below the eyes. Supposing we are going to sleep at night, and just before sleeping you want to touch your eyes. Normally you can close your eyes, with your hands you can touch your eyes like this [Ishwar touches His eyes], you know where the eyes are. When you are about to sleep, try to touch your eyes, you’ll touch your nose, and you’ll think you’re touching your eyes. It’s already started descending, your notional position. And if you are dreaming and you could touch…supposing somebody said, “Touch your eyes,” and you are still connected with the rapid-eye movement in dream, you’re touching your eyes, you touch your throat and think you’re touching your eyes. This movement of our notional position continuously takes place. But when we go to higher levels of awareness in consciousness, we’ll move backwards rather than downwards, you know, backwards…at the center we’ll move upwards.

So, that the positions of those points where we get experience of higher levels of consciousness is all behind and above the eyes. It’s not below. So, I am mentioning this because the tendency to go down will be great, especially for people who have done yogic practices, putting attention on the heart center or other centers, those who have done Kundalini yoga, the reversal of the energy from the spinal side to the front, those who have done those exercises — and I have done them, so that is why I know what it means — then they…the tendency will be again to go down again and again. For them specially it is necessary to practice holding your attention here. Which means close your eyes, feel you are there, you are living there, and make this floor on which you place your chair as firm as possible. If it is soft, you’ll descend. So, make it hard and relax. It’s a very comfortable room but concretize it at the eye level and don’t let it go down. When you sit in the center, then you will meditate.

So, let us first practice how to sit in our meditation chamber behind the eyes in the head. So, close your eyes and imagine that your chamber for meditation is only behind the eyes, and make a nice decoration of this place. The way you set up now, you could keep it set up like that because every day you can meditate there. So, make your meditation chamber as beautiful, as attractive, as you like. You can put curtains and drapes around. You can put a carpet on the floor behind the eyes. You can put a nice chair there. You can place other furniture, but it should all be within that … within the area in the head behind the eyes. And imagine that you are sitting in the center. Don’t see yourself sitting in the center. Imagine you are there.

(Actual meditation session cut from the video.)

How many of you could successfully repeat and listen to the words in your head during this session? Quite a few, thank you. This is a secret of starting meditation. If you are able to… It’s only a sample, a few minutes. It’s not the regular time that we should give and then see the results. But if you give enough time to this, you should be able to hear sounds coming inside. How many in your short period were able to hear sounds coming inside? Very good. Eventually we all have sound coming inside from our own consciousness, from our own soul. That sound is an expression. It’s like a expression of the frequency vibration, resonance of our own consciousness. It comes from within ourselves. But before that we can also hear many other sounds. Those sounds are important because the repetition of words and listening to it will lead to that sound coming automatically because, as we gather our attention behind the eyes, the sound comes naturally inside. We will then start listening to the sound. Once we listen to the sound, the sound has the capacity to hasten, speed up our concentration and pull us to the center. The sound can also lift us up [to] other levels of consciousness. So, the sound is very important, and tomorrow we will do meditation on the sound.

Above the mind the sound transforms itself, as I mentioned in the morning, and love and devotion become necessary to move any further. So, we don’t have to wait till we go there. We start meditation with sound and love and devotion right from now. We will do tomorrow meditation on the sound and love and devotion. And that will be the highlight of tomorrow’s meditation, how far it can take you beyond the mind. If you are ready, you’ll get an experience as early as tomorrow. Right now, I pause from this meditation session and answer some questions if you have given any.

Q: I want to ask how to get a peace of mind as everyone is looking for it?

A: The peace of mind which we’re all looking for comes when our attachment and desires are under control. If you look at our life, what is it that disturbs our peace of mind? People and things outside. Nobody else disturbs our peace of mind. Mostly people, sometimes things. Why things? You lose something and disturb your peace of mind. You invest in something — no return? — you lose your peace of mind. You are…you are hated by somebody? Peace of mind is lost. You love somebody, they don’t love you back? Lost peace of mind. There is no peace of mind outside by trying to find it with people or things. Remember this. So long as you are looking for peace of mind from outside with company outside and with things outside, acquiring things, disposing of things, no peace of mind. But when you will withdraw your attention inside and say, “We are all actors, playing out our role, and there is nothing permanent here,” you will get peace of mind. The more time you will spend in meditation behind your eyes, the more peace of mind you will get. If you do it as a routine every day, not only will this be peace of mind when you are there, after meditation the whole day you will have peace of mind. Because you get into a habit of anchoring yourself inside, and then outside looks so natural. Also, you will start getting happiness as you get more experiences inside. It’s a very happy place. After tomorrow’s meditation session, you’ll find how much happiness one can get if one meditates on the sound with love and devotion. You’ll find that tomorrow. And then, you will find if you get that experience even for a short time every morning and every night, the whole day and whole night you will have peace of mind.

I once had an experiment done with people. I said, “If you are happy, does the world change for you?” So, I told them, “For one week” (it was a seminar like this), “for one week you pretend to be happy, even if you are not. Smile, laugh, be happy and look at everybody happily. And tell me after one week, what is your experience.” After one week we met again, and they all said, “We met all happy people throughout the week.” People have not changed, but that you are happy it spreads happiness. [When] you are happy, you are much closer to peace of mind than when you are unhappy. So therefore, the secret of happiness is inside, and if you really meditate like this, you get real peace of mind. And the ultimate peace of mind is when the mind is no longer yourself, because all disturbance is in the mind. You are not the mind. You are the soul. Soul is always at peace of mind. But when it identifies itself with the mind, thinks it is the mind, it loses its peace of mind. So, once you

are able to reach that point in your meditation when you can separate yourself from your mind, go beyond it and discover that you are the soul, you will always have day and night peace of mind. That’s the best way to get peace of mind.

Q: If everything is preplanned, then we don’t exercise our free will, won’t we end up with a messy life and not taking responsibility for our actions?

A: The beauty is what we think is free will is also predetermined. When we feel we are making an effort, we don’t know it’s predetermined, so it looks like we are doing it now. So therefore, when somebody says, “If everything is predetermined, why should I do anything?” Because whatever you are doing is predetermined including the thought whether I should do it or not do it. So, the confusing part is that we think some items are predetermined, others are not. That is not true. Even our thinking, even the way we seek, even the way we decide to do things, even the way we put effort is all predetermined. But we don’t know it. Therefore, we should put in the best…best effort so that we say, “This was predetermined.”

The truth is, of course, everything is predetermined, but it does not alter by our saying, “Okay, if it is predetermined, I won’t do this.” That means even that was predetermined if you say that. So, that is why there is no exception to that, but the experience is of free will. It’s not that the free will is real now, free will was real when it was made and determined by us. Today, it’s a free will of experience, and that’s useful because we can feel we are taking responsibility and making decisions. We can feel we are seeking. We feel we are going towards a certain thing. That feeling is important. And for the feeling of seeking, free will is important. But free will prevails everything, including the desire to say, “I have free will,” or “I don’t have free will.” This is sometimes questioned, “If I have no free will, why should I do anything?” Then what you just said was also part of your predetermination.

Q: Namaste, Guru Ji. Why is there a need for a Guru in our life? Can one-pointedness devotion to God give us enlightenment and bring us back to our real home?

A: Yes, if you have seen God, you don’t need a Guru, at all. Whoever has seen God does not need a Guru. But nobody has seen God. Ultimate God, in Sach Khand, nobody has seen, nobody can see. The only way to know that God is to become God, because if you can see God that means you are separate from God, and God is not separate from anything — it’s total. Nothing is outside of God, therefore, how can you see? The only way to experience God is to be merged in God, to become that. Therefore, to say, “I love God” who we have never seen, separating him is the very first error. When you separate yourself from God, you are not realizing what God is. God is total. God is everything. There’s nothing outside of it. None of us are outside of it. No individual is outside of it. No seeker is outside of it. God is totality of consciousness. And therefore, nothing can be outside. If nothing is outside, how can you say, “I am separate and looking at God”? When you look at something, you make your own God. We have all made our own Gods. And we say, “We are speaking to God in

our head.” Do you know who you are speaking to? To your mind. And mind wants you to think it is God. Because mind is acting like God. Mind is directing all our energies outside as if God is doing that. So, we are mistaking our own minds to be God by saying, “I can see God inside. I can speak to God.” It is mind’s pictures being made up, and nobody is there to tell us that it’s your mind.

But if you have a Guru who has gone above the mind in his own personal experience, he can tell you, “This is mind, this is not God.” Therefore, Guru is necessary. Without Guru, without a living Guru, without a Guru who can talk to us and say no, we are always being misled by our own minds. So, that is why, to avoid this big mistake of taking mind to be God, we need a living person, living person like ourselves, who can talk to us like we talk to each other, who can tell us because of the actual experience he is having of being beyond the mind, having merged with God, He is the one who can tell us, “This is mind, this is not God.” So, we need a real Perf…Perfect Living Guru in our life.

Q: When Master said that He will come back in 200 years as a monk, can you confirm?

A: I did not hear Him say that. (laughter) And why would He take 200 years? He is where there is no time. He is merged with that which is the totality of everything. There is nothing outside of it. Why would somebody…supposing you reach that same state, which you can. You can reach the same state. The difference between a teacher and a Sant Satguru is: A teacher teaches you something and does not own up that what he will do about it, he just teaches you a method. A Guru makes you like Himself. They say there is a philosopher’s stone. When you rub iron against the philosopher’s stone, it becomes gold. And they compare sometimes that maybe a Guru is a philosopher’s stone, and he is making us iron people into gold. That is not true. He’s making us iron people into philosopher’s stone, into Himself.

A Guru’s job is not to teach. A Guru’s job is to take you back home, make him the same as Himself and merge you into totality and make you part of God, which you originally belong to. So, there’s a big difference between a teacher and a Guru. So, that is why Great Master, He was a human being, like us. He was no different. He was born like a human being, had illnesses like a human being, ate food like a human being, and…went to bathroom like a human being. He did everything like a human being. There was no difference except His awareness that reached totality. And when He spoke to us, He was speaking from somewhere else. He was speaking from totality. And that’s the definition of a Perfect Living Master. He is exactly like us.

Supposing a master were not like us. Let us imagine that a master should be different from us. He should be doing things different than we do. Let us imagine that a master comes into this room while we are sitting here, and he is flying in the sky because that is…we can’t do that. And he comes flying up here. We will all look up at him. What will be our thoughts?

First, we’ll say that there must be some strings or ropes, that there is a trick he’s playing. We look around, if we can’t find any ropes, some of us might faint. Some of us might say, “What is happening here? There’s no voodoo stuff?” We will probably admire him, we might even worship him, but we will not love him. We will not be able to love such a personality. If he suddenly falls down, so many of us will run to help him, and we can have some love for him. Don’t forget, love is not with the extraordinary, love is with the ordinary somebody like us. Therefore, masters take care, Perfect Living Masters take care to come in life where they can be friends, where you can experience love with a person, human being, and not somebody that you’re loving an idea or something in your own head. And that is why these Masters come as ordinary people. And when you say, “Master can come again,” of course Masters can come again. They come again and again. How can you so…which is the Great Master who is coming again? Which is this master coming again? Because they have merged into totality, and they can come in any form again. We have been coming in many forms again, again and again. They can come in many forms again. So, this is sort of a myth we like to make because we love a particular master who came in his life and we say, “No, he will come again.” He will come again as a new Master. Why would he come as the same Master again? It’s not necessary if He has merged into totality and comes back.

So, Masters come again and again. Always a Master. There are sometimes many Masters. In this Iron Age age, Kali Yug, there are many Masters. At some time there were fewer masters. But there’re always at least one Master in this physical world, always. So, that is why seekers — they draw the Master down. When we seek, a Master comes into our life. Wherever there are seekers, Masters will come. No matter which nation, which country, which nationality, which culture, it doesn’t matter at all. Masters don’t come for any particular group. They don’t form groups. We form groups. Masters come for all seekers of all humanity. They do not make any distinction whatsoever what religion you belong to, what nationality you belong to. They have no concern with that. They come only for the seeker no matter what your belief system is, no matter what your religion is. They don’t say, “Change your religion.” They say, “Follow your religion.” In the foundation of all religion is the same message, that the truth lies inside you — go in and find out. That’s the basis of all religions, if you study the basic thing.

What we have done, we have converted the spirituality, the spiritual path the into religion by introducing outside ceremonies, outside rituals, and we give more attention to those outside things and make a distinction, “We are different from everybody else.” That is why I was studying at Harvard University in Ameri…in United States, and just because I had little extra time, I decided to study the history of religion, that “let me see how many religions there have been.” And I wanted to find out this common strand, “There must be something common in all the religions.” Now, when I studied about 13 or 14 major religions, when I was studying them, I found that their rituals were all different and therefore they were different. The message was the same. When I tried to find even if they expressed the

message clearly, I found even that was not the same. The only common thing in all those 13- 14 religions was, “We are the only true one, all others are false.” That’s the only common thing. They all claimed they were the only ones. I meet people, they say, “This is my guru, that is your guru, that’s their guru, and ours is the only real one, all others are fake.”

So, you see once we get into this kind of distinction, we totally forget that God is not the monopoly of anybody, the creator of all of us. And a Perfect Living Master does not come for any particular group, does not come for any particular people. He comes for all seekers. And He comes in different parts of this planet because there [are] different seekers at different times. He comes like a human being like us, lives like a human being, becomes a friend of ours first and a Master later. Therefore, if a Master is not a friend, we can’t have that kind of interaction which we need to travel together to our home. When we want to take a journey, even in this world with a friend, we like to chat on the way, we like to fly together, we like to do things. Wouldn’t we like to do that with a Master? How can you put a Master on pedestal, keep him very far away and say that “we are friends, and we are traveling together”? Masters come for seekers. They are their friends, and they are with them all the time. And through meditation they manifest themselves in their disciples and become their friends forever. So, that is why, these Masters, they don’t have to come again and again in the same form. They come in different forms as needed by the disciples.

Q: When we wake up in our true home, will we remember the worldly experience? Will that memory of experience…last forever?

A: Yes, that is what we came for. So, we can compare our state of bliss with the state of non-bliss and make the bliss even better. It’s only by the opposition, opposition, opposite experience of what we have had there that we can appreciate our true home. And we have come into this world of duality, pain and suffering…so much misery here, so many disappointments here, so much heartbreak here, so many things which make this look totally imperfect place. Nobody can imagine God could make such a place. People have doubts about God when they see so much pain and misery in this world. How could God create all this? They don’t realize God created an illusion of all these things, a shadow of all these things to make the real thing more appreciated. This is not real. He made it real so that we can appreciate the true reality better. So, that is why, when we go back to our true home, we do recall this. That is why we appreciate it better.

In a story, in a story form of creation written by one of the mystics, Kabir, in a book called Anurag Sagar, which means “The Ocean of Love,” in that book he writes how we have come into this world to see the misery of this world and make it real so when we go back home, we rejoice more than what we did before we were there. So, he calls those souls which left their home for adventure like us as “hans,” because we from crows we become hans on the way back. We get…get back with all the knowledge of our truth back again from the knowledge of ignorance which we thought was reality here. So, we are hans. And those

soul[s] that never left our true home are “bans.” Now, he says, when the hanses go back to their true home they dance and sing with great joy. And the others are already singing already with their bliss. They…the bans, they say to the hans, “Why are you singing so much, we are all in the same bliss?” And we tell them, “You don’t know what you are missing. You have never seen something other than what you have. We have. So, we are…appreciating our bliss even more than you.” So, that is why there is a purpose in coming here and the purpose in remembering this experience when we go back to our true home.

Q: Is karma action or rather choices you make via predetermined outcome?

A: Karma is a great theory. I could speak for an hour on karma alone. Because karma is created by the mind. Soul has no karma. Soul never had karma. In our true home there is no karma. Karma is created when we come into the world of the mind. The world of the mind has been created through time and space, through past, present and future. It’s a very big illusion. I’ll tell you why. When we say we are living in time, what do we mean “living in time”? This means we have a memory of past. We have a hope for future. And we are living in the present. Now, examine this carefully. If we are living in the present, how long is present? Is it five minutes? Is it one minute? Is it zero minute? You will find present has no time. The moment I say, “Now,” it’s past. Before I said it, it was future. Where is the present? And we all say, “Live in the now!” But we are living in the now — can we live anywhere else?

Somebody gave me a book saying live in the now. I said, “Where else are we living?” I can’t imagine anybody living anywhere else except in the now. We are always in the now and the here. We never go anywhere. There is no there, and there is no… any other time except now. And now has no time. Now this is the very big, strange kind of experience we are having, that we living only in a timeless now, yet we feel we are having going through time. How can we feel that there is time when we are always in now, which is timeless? The reason is that the short period just gone, which means actually memory of the few minutes gone…gone behind us, gone just away from us we call “present.” We calling the immediate past as our present. That is why it’s a mistake to think it is now, because it just passed. Every word we speak is already past. So, immediate past is now. Immediate past is present for us. What is past? What is gone already, what is already happened. How do we know that is a past? Only one way: memory. We can remember it. Supposing we did not have memory, there’ll be no past. And if there’s no past, there’ll be no present, there’ll be no now. So, the creation of past and the present is because of memory.

Now, think of future. What is future? Let us imagine that these three words — hope, fear, anticipation. They are really the same thing. They all are anticipation. A good anticipation is called “hope,” bad anticipation is called “fear,” “anticipation” neutral. Supposing these three words disappear from our dictionaries in all languages, future disappears along with

them. But you know, except for these three functions in our consciousness, there is no future. If we stop hoping, if we stop fearing, there’s no future, at all.

Now, when we hope for something, it is done in time in the immediate past. If we fear something, those fearful things in our mind are in the immediate past. The truth is that what we think is future is also past. So, everything is past. Future is past, present is past, and actually past is past also. The only way to recover past is through memory. But do you know that the life we are living here are memory capsules placed inside us and we are going through them and thinking we are living here in the present. The whole life here is a memory. Memory of what? How can you have a memory if nothing happened? So, it must have happened somewhere else. That’s how creation of the…this physical experience has taken place. The memory was created at a higher level at the astral plane. And we are playing it out and thinking that the past, present, and future are existing.

It’s a very wonderfully designed system how it has been so placed that we think like this. Within this system of past, present and future we have linked every experience with a cause and effect. Everything happens, there must be a cause. Our mind seeks a cause for everything. Anything happen[s], there must be an effect of that. This business of cause and effect is a mental thing which has created the law of karma. The karma says, “If you have a cause, there’ll be an effect.” Now what is a cause? A cause is an action following from your intention. If you intend to do something, that means you have used what is called free will. If you did not have the experience of free will, there will be no karma. Law of karma will disappear along with the experience.

So long as you have experience of free will, you think you are creating karma. It’s not being really created. You think it’s created, so you experience it. You think you have done something wrong — you are punished — you are experiencing it. It’s all being created by the mind through this system which is operating through our sense perceptions and our physical life, that we create with our intentions certain actions, and those actions then lead to reaction. Supposing you don’t act. Supposing you only have intention — it’s still karma. Karma is being made in the mind, not outside. Even if you don’t act, you’re still creating karma. So, karma is such a beautiful thing that you are creating it all the time, even by thinking about it. So, we create so much karma, and there is so much repercussion of that, so much result of that, consequence of what we are constantly thinking about — some good things, some bad things — they’re all adding up to karma, and then we must be here to bear the result of it, good or bad. Good karma: be rewarded. Bad karma: be punished.

And one can’t change the other. There’s no atonement in it. Supposing you are good today and bad tomorrow, you can’t say, “I will be good again, and the bad will be wiped out.” Today is good, reward; tomorrow is bad, punishment; day after tomorrow is good, reward. They both go together. Our life, human life, is mixed with both things. Nobody can be human without only good or only bad. If you are only good all the time, a very nice place

called heaven…Baikunth. And there are beautiful heavens, many of them in the astral plane. You’ll be there. That’s meant for people who are always good. If you are totally bad, there are places called hell, Narak, terrible places. If you are always bad, then you should belong there.

Only when you have a mixture of good and bad you become human. Every human being has good and bad. Every human being has two sides. We all at sometimes are doing good, sometime things come up, which [are] naughty and not so good. Our mind is like that. That is why we become human. Now, is it a good combination or a bad combination, to be good and bad? Normally, one would say, “Always be good.” Or, some people say, “Doesn’t matter, nobody cares, this is a dream anyway, we can be always bad.” People who think in extremes like this, they don’t become human beings. What is the importance of a mixture is we become human being. It is only in human being that we can have free will, only in free will you can have seeking, only in seeking you can get to the true home. See the beauty of having combination of good and bad? That is why never regret this, “Why am I doing some things bad and some things good?” Lucky you are doing this. That’s what made you human. So, this great combination that we are good and bad at the same time is the most fortunate thing.

We should look at it in a different way altogether, that we got this opportunity to be human. Sometime we are punished, sometime we are rewarded, and that is the state in which we can become human. That’s the state in which we can find our true home. It’s a worthwhile price to pay to have this combination. So, that’s why we are very lucky that this law is operating in a way that allows us to seek and to get out of it.

Now, karma is such that it, even with the best of karma, it has a time on it. They say that Krishna, the avatar of Vishnu, worshipped by millions of people around the world today, Krishna, when he was young he was a cowherd, he used to take care of the cows, and he has a friend, Udho, also helping him, taking care of the cows. As a young boy, Krishna goes and tells Udho, he says, “Udho, the nature of karma cannot be understood by people, because they think karma means do good to overcome your bad. That is not karma. Karma is, even if you do all the good in the world, get all the reward, one bad thing will make you be punished for that.” And as he was saying this, a little ant crawled by, and he told Udho, he said, “Udho, look at this ant. Can you see it going? This ant at one time was Brahma, the creator of this universe, one time was Indra, one of the highest heavens, he ruled over it. And today he’s an ant because of his karma. The fact that he has reached that high state because of good work could not prevent him from becoming an ant because of the bad work.”

So, karma does not atone itself, does not cancel itself. You cannot say, “I did something bad, now let me do something good and cancel it.” You’ll be punished for the bad, rewarded for the good. So many people who have live…led…led lives of extremes, extremely bad, evil

thing they have done and then become so changed and did very wonderful, beautiful things, they are entitled because of their actions to both hell and heaven immediately after this life. They get a choice. Now you have by your good deeds one month to stay in this heaven. Bad deeds, very bad deeds, one month in hell. The only last choice when you die is, which one do you want first?

I sometime wonder if we got a choice like that… Supposing you people got a choice that you have to spend a week in heav…heaven and one week in hell. Would you like to go to hell first or heaven? How many are in favor of going to heaven first? How many like hell first? Ma…majority are in hell. That is why Mark Twain says, “You should go to heaven for climate and hell for company.” (laughter) See how many people raised their hand for hell? I can understand it, because if you go to heaven first and you know you’re going to hell, you will make your heaven also into hell. But the other way is those who raised their hands for heaven first, they say, “Maybe in heaven we’ll be able to do something to avoid the hell altogether.” So, there’s a good case for both.

But the point I was making was about karma. Karma is predetermined, but we experience it as free will. Karma arises from the experience of free will. It’s not real. It’s only created and born by the mind. Mind suffers, mind enjoys. The soul is constantly seeking its true home, at all times. Our inside, most inside part of our consciousness is always wanting to get out of this mess. But the mind is trying…trying to get all the joys, pleasures and suf…suffer the sorrows outside here. So, there is a little division. By identifying ourselves with the mind we are suffering along with the mind. Otherwise, this karma is only being born by the mind. In meditation, when you will rise above the mind, you will watch the mind, the body, as actors. They are going through a stage play. You will watch apart from that as an audience. Look what this…they are doing in a combination…this very life. This very life will look so different because you can watch from that point of view of being a soul. So, that is why the karma, although it’s all pre-determined but we live through it like choice, like free will is also pre- determined, but we think it is really free. Karma also is experienced the same way.

Q. Is karma decided by the self, mind, and soul? If one thinks killing is right, does that mean he would not have bad karma for doing bad things?

A: There is a…. As I mentioned in the morning, there is a part of the mind which we called “conscience.” Conscience is that part which is dividing all actions into good and bad. It’s constantly doing it. And to say that if you start saying, “I am hitting because I am hitting, it’s right to do so,” and the conscience say, “That’s not right,” and you can argue with the conscience, but the conscience prevails for karma. Your conscience, the inner self that says, “It is wrong,” will prevail over your mind discussing and saying, “No, no, it’s right to do it.” Conscience still pulls you in. So, therefore we have automatically built in a system in our mind where no matter what we say, internally the message comes, “This is right, this is wrong.” Why does that happen? Because we grow up in a social environment. We grow up

in different societies. Societies have determined what is good and bad. There are two types of influences. One is the law of the land itself. All countries, all times have had laws to…to say, “This was wrong, you’ll be punished; this is right, you’ll be rewarded.” The laws itself provide. Then there is a moral law which church, temple, and those religious people they introduce. These two start right from our childhood. They build our entire system of morality right from childhood, and that is all stored in our conscience. No matter how we think, how we rationalize, how we try to reason out, that conscience always tells us. So, therefore, the willing mind in front of us does not override the conscience behind. So, even if somebody says, “No, no, I think it’s right, let me do it”— we all say that. When we‘re trying to do something wrong we try to rationalize. “No, it’s all right.” But the conscience pulls and says, “No.” It’s the conscience that determines the karma, the nature of karma — good or bad — and no matter what we think is right or not.

Q: Lust is a big problem on spiritual path. How to control? Will there be more temptations as we travel through inner regions?

A: Yeah, lust is a big problem, and we all know that lust has been a very big problem, the most difficult out of the five vices. And…and of course, it is not the last to go. Lust is because of a seeking of pleasure by the mind. That’s what it is really is. It starts from there. If the mind finds more pleasure in meditation, lust disappears. Because the mind seeks pleasure wherever it can get. The mind seeks variety of pleasure wherev…wherever it can get. Once it gets more pleasure inside, it begins to lose interest in the lust outside. On the other hand, you can be attracted to those pleasures inside, too, and be held up from further progress by the temptations inside. The astral plane, the first plane of sensory perceptions, is full of much more temptation than even this physical world. So, so many of us get trapped there, too. Just like we are trapped in this world, lust is just one of the things, we are also trapped in the astral world. There are so many seekers, so many initiated seekers of Perfect Living Masters who are stuck there because of the same reason. Therefore, when Master tries to be exceptionally kind to us, he blindfolds us. He blindfolds and takes us through those regions and says, “No need to see it now, you can see it on the way back when we’ve had something still higher.” So, that’s the way to control which Masters use with us when we find that we are likely to be held up.

But if somebody is a master, not a Perfect Master, and he has only taken us to a heaven or a hell, which is automatically in the astral plane and all the attractions are there. “This is beautiful, this is really heaven.” It’s heaven because it copies the same kind of pleasures of this world in a better way, in more intense way. So, the temptations are still very strong at that level, and that is why…but they take you away from the lust of this world, but they create a new lust in you for the next world. So, in order to really go home one has to wish to truly go home.

People have different desires and wishes, and our desires and wishes get fulfilled no matter when and how. So, if our desire is to have pleasures of this world or more pleasures of a higher world, we get stuck there. But if you don’t want to have that, some people say, “We just want to go to…to our true home. Please blindfold us. We don’t want to be interested in this thing,” they do skip that and go straight. This is a interesting thing the Master decide. Based…based upon how many desires we have had, they sublimate the desires, fulfill the desires either here or inside, and then take us. Each one of us has different set of karma. Each one of us has a different state of…state of consciousness right now. We have evolved through so many lives in…up to this point. The Master decide for each one what is the best way to go.

My own Master, Hazur Maharaj Baba Sawan Singh, had a Master whose name was Baba Jaimal Singh. Baba Jaimal Singh was following a Guru in Agra at a distance from Punjab whose name was Soami Seth Shiv Dayal Singh. He was popularly called Soami Ji. He was in love with his Master like all good disciples are. In those days there was no iPhones and no telephones and no system of communication. The only way was to write letters. So, once he was missing his Master so much, he was missing Swami Ji so much, he wrote a letter. He said, “My beloved Satguru Swami Ji, I am missing you so much. Please give me permission to come to Agra and have your darshan. I am missing you, having…haven’t seen you for a while and something is happening in my heart. I can’t stand it. I am feeling away from you.”

Letter went. Letters were very slow in those days. The reply comes after one month, and Swami Ji writes, “My dear son Babu Jaimal Singh, I have received your letter, and I am very happy to know that your soul is traveling in the higher regions of Khand Brahmand.” Jaimal Singh looks at the letter, he says, “My soul is going nowhere. This must be a mistake. Swami Ji meant to send this letter to somebody else. By mistake He has sent it to me.” So, he wrote back. “My beloved Master, I am sorry, the letter you sent me does seem to apply to me. My soul is going nowhere. And I am just missing you. I want to come there. Please give me time and permission to come and have your darshan.”

Second letter comes after a month, and Swami Ji writes, “My dear son Jaimal Singh, I am very happy to know your soul is going into higher…higher regions of Brahmand. So far as coming to see me is concerned, come next…next month on the first week.” Armed with these two letters Baba Jaimal Singh goes to Swami Ji and places these letters in front of Him. He says, “Master, these letters don’t apply to me.” Now Swami ji was sitting in His little ashram outside and about 10-12 people were sitting around Him at that time. When Jaimal Singh arrived and placed the letters, he said, “Master, these don’t apply to me. My soul goes nowhere. I was just missing you so much. And therefore, you called me. I am happy to have your darshan. I feel very contented with your darshan. I am not even interested in those higher regions.” Swami Ji laughed and said, “Let us go inside and sit in meditation.” So, they went inside the room for about half an hour. Then they came out. And, in the presence of those 10 or 12 people, Swami Ji says, “Now Jaimal Singh, tell me, when I wrote that letter to

you, was your soul going into higher regions?” He said, “Yes, Master.” Swami ji said, “I am not asking if your soul went into the higher regions in the half an hour we meditated now. I am asking, did your soul go into higher regions when I wrote the letters two months ago?” “Yes, Master, my soul was going into higher regions two months ago.” Then, Swami Ji talked to the other people sitting there. He said, “When the soul is going to higher regions for a person who is meditating, he is not able to see anything because he can get trapped there. Masters are preparing some people specially not to be trapped anywhere. Therefore, they put a blindfold, but when they remove the blindfold, you can remember you were there. And all that happened with him was he could not be missing his master so much, he could not be feeling that love for the master so much, if the soul was not ascending. Where was that coming from? It’s coming from the ascent of the soul inside.” And that is why Masters very often block this ex…experience. It will take them…take us higher and then bring you back to have experience and show us you had it when you felt you were only feeling missing the Master or you are feeling love for the Master. So, this is good to remember that Masters customize our path for us. If they were teachers, they would tell the same teaching to everybody. If they are Masters, they customize for each person and tell them exactly what they need at that time.

Once, I was sitting — I was young — we used to sit around the Great Master, and once we were sitting with 10-20 people. Great Master Baba Sawan Singh was sitting in His chair, and a man came and brought his young daughter with him. He said, “Master, my daughter wants to go college, and I think we should get married…she should get married. Why should she go to college? The children, the boys go to college, girls should run the household.” Master said, “No, what’s the difference between girls and boys? They’re the same. Let her go to college.” He said, “Thank you, master,” and they both went away.

Within five minutes another father comes with his girl and with the same question. He says, “My girl has grown up and she wants to go to college, and we think…we…she should get married. What is your advice, master?” He said, “What have girls to do with college? Get married and run a household.” Two different answers given within minutes to two different people with sim…similar problem at all — altogether similar problem. It shows that the answers Masters give is not a general answer from a book. It’s an answer appropriate for that person. So, that is why they customize our path. They know exactly what we need at that time. Somebody comes and says, “Master, I can’t do much meditation. My mind does not go.” “No, do more meditation. Sit more meditation.” Somebody else says, “Master, I have been doing meditation.” “Meditation won’t help much. You should just do love and devotion for your master.” Two different answers. Somebody says, “What is the secret of going to higher levels?” Master says, “More meditation.” Somebody else comes and says, “What’s the secret?” He says, “Grace of the Master.” Which is true? Grace or effort? Which one is a…correct? They give contradictions in the same book. You read about their books. Sometimes grace is more important, sometime effort is more important. It’s only when you

reach above the mind you find grace and effort are the same thing. You find without grace you would never put the effort. But when you are in a state where your mind says, “Without effort nothing comes,” they say, “Put in more effort.” When they say, “Read more books….” One man came and said, “Master, I’m very interested in this path.” He said, “Read more books. The more books you read the more you’ll understand.” Another person comes and says, “Master, I’ve read all the books. It doesn’t seem to be conveying the same thing.” He says, “Put all your books into the…in a bag and throw them into the river.” Two different answers.

In my own family, my father got married to my mother, and my mother’s mother, my grandmother on the maternal side, she was a great believer in worshiping little idols of Shiva, Brahma, and all those goddesses, Lakshmi, Durga. She had little imag…images, and she had made a temple in her house. So, she would sit there and ring the bell every day and put incense and make nice artis and prayers she would do to those little images. Then my father, who got initiated by Great Master, he saw these things are all superstition. They are not real. He tried to convince his mother-in-law. He said, “Mother-in-law, these are not gods, these are just little pieces of metal and wood that you’re worshiping. God is inside.” She said, “Stop it. You shut up and go and do your business. I know my gods. And don’t try to interfere. They are…they are such a divine people here, divine powers here, sitting here. They help me at everything. What are you going to tell?” When he failed to persuade his mother-in-law, ultimately, he went to Great Master. He said, “Master, I want my mother-in- law to also take advantage of what you have given me.” He said, “Don’t worry. I will visit her sometime. When I come to that city, I will visit her.” So, one day He came, and my father reminded Him, “Master, you said you’ll visit my mother-in-law.” He says, “Sure.” He went to the mother-in-law, and He said, “I understand that you have a temple.” “Yes, Master.” “Can I also go and pray there?” “Certainly, Master.”

So, He goes there, He takes the bell and starts ringing it. And He starts worshiping all those little images there, and my mother-in-law is so happy — I mean, my father’s mother-in-law is so happy. Grandma tells Master, “My son-in-law is a fool. He doesn’t understand. He doesn’t even know you. At least, he should know that you worship these idols here.” And Master said, “Yes, we have to worship wherever we see divinity because God is everywhere. God is in every stone. God is in everything. And you are seeing God here. It’s very good.”

So, she was very happy, and my father looked like a fool. (laughter) And he said, “What is Master doing here. He should be teaching the same thing he teaches in the dera.” So later on, he says, “Master, my mother-in-law is very convinced with what you did. But don’t you think you put her on the wrong track?” He said, “You wait a few days. She will come to listen to me now. She wouldn’t have come on what you were saying, and of course, she said, ‘The Master is real now. I have tested him out. He prayed to my own gods. He has to be real.’” So, she went and began to attend the satsang. To cut a long story short, after a few weeks she told Master, “Master, I find that the truth is inside, God is inside. What am I going to do

with all those gods and goddesses I’ve kept in my temple?” He said, “Do you have a gunny bag?” “Oh, where you bring the rice and wheat? Yes, I have an empty gunny bag.” “Put them all in the…that gunny bag, all those gods and goddesses, tie it up and, with a prayer, dispose of in the river.” She went and packed up all those gods and goddesses in a gunny bag and took it to the river Ravi in Lahore and immersed it there. Was very happy.

Now can you imagine that Masters do something according to the individual? They know that ultimately what will take us is love and devotion. That’s what carries us through. There was an instance where Great Master went to a Sikh temple where the people said, “If he is pretending to be a Guru…according to our Guru Granth Sahib…is the only Guru. We have the dictate. It says that after today only Granth will be considered Guru. The Sikh religion says so. He pretends to be Sikh, he is wearing a turban and having long beard, and he is not a Sikh, because he is pretending to be a Guru himself. The ten Gurus have been named in our Granth, and we…if this man tries to come to our town”— it was Rawalpindi in…in Pakistan now, at that time it was part of India — “if he comes here, we’ll kill him.” They went there, and they took out their swords, that “If he comes and tries to preach anything in this city, we’ll kill him.” So, His secretaries got very nervous who were traveling with Him. By the way, I was also there in that trip, and they were all so nervous, frightened. “Tomorrow they’ll kill our Guru.” But then, the tradition has been that Gurus have been killed. People who have been spoken the truth have been killed. So, the Guru didn’t seem to mind it, and we were prepared for a big tragic battle the next day.

Guru in the morning says, “Before I go and give a discourse of my own, I’d like to go to the temple, to the gurdwara.” They were all surprised that, “You are going into the lion’s den yourself.” But He said, “No, I have to go to the gurdwara first.” He went and…went to the gurdwara, bowed before the book, the Granth, gave five rupees from His pocket as a obeisance to the guru, is the Granth, the book, and sat in front. They were all stunned. They said, “We thought he’s pretending to be guru. He’s accepting our Granth as the guru.” Then He had a pathi, a chanter, who used to chant from the Granth Sahib in the dera also, he was accompanying Him. He told him, “Go and sit and take over the Granth Sahib and read the bani of the fifth guru, Arjun Dev.”

And then he began to read the shabad, which said, “Unless you can see the face of a Guru, don’t believe it. And the Guru when…if he can give you a hug, he is taking away so much of your vices.” He read that whole shabad. Now, it was clear that a book cannot do this no matter how big a Granth it might be. “Kanth laye avgun sab mete.” All those shabads, when they were read, they so affected, the…the people were so affected by this. They said, “This man has come for truth.” They put their swords back, and most of them became His disciples that day. We saw this miracle happen, that where their intention was to say…He said, “No, I believe. If you believe that Guru Granth Sahib is your Guru, then follow what it says. Just follow what your Guru is saying.” The Guru is saying the same thing that He was saying. So, therefore these Gurus know how they can act different situations for different

people. And therefore, they…they have not come to give a general teaching to everybody. When you meet a Guru, you feel such a close personal friendship. You’ll…you feel “the Guru has come for me only.” You get a strange feeling that “it is really mine, my Guru. And the others are just play, players around me,” this strange feeling He can create by His unconditional love. That’s the main secret, I tell you.

A Guru…Perfect Living Master’s love is unconditional. No judgment at all. He will never judge if you are good or bad. “Have you been good? Then I will give you something. Otherwise, I won’t.” Never! A perfect Sant Satguru has never said that. He wants to come and give. I give you another example of Great Master Baba Sawan Singh. He was sitting there, a man comes running and says, “Master, forgive me. You told me not to drink alcohol. I drank last night, lot of it. You told me not to eat meat, be vegetarian. I ate meat with all my friends. You told me don’t womanize. I did everything wrong. Last night was terrible. I committed all the sins that you stopped me from. Please forgive me.” Great Master says, “Okay, you are forgiven. Now, don’t do it again.” And he said, “Thank you, thank you,” and ran away. That upset all the secretaries of Baba Sawan Singh sitting there. They said, “Master, what is this? A man has committed so much sin, he has done so many wrong things, and you have just said, ‘Forgiven, and go’?” He said, “Yes, he asked for forgiveness, what should I do? I have to forgive him.” “Master, supposing he does the same things again and comes to you, will you forgive him again?” “I think I will forgive him again.” “Master, when will you punish him?” He said, “Don’t be…put me in the category of punishers. Let me remain in the category of forgivers.”

That’s the characteristic of Perfect Living Masters. They don’t come to punish. They come to forgive. And then He said, “Look, his mind is punishing him already. He’s already punishing himself. He’s being punished by the world. He’s punishing himself. You want me also to punish him? He is…he doesn’t know, he is in a trap. I have sympathy for him. So, I have to give him forgiveness.” Masters, these Perfect Living Masters show unconditional love, no judgment, and forgiveness all the time, compassion all the time. Characteristic. They’re ordinary human being like us…like us, and yet they have these characteristics in them which make them outstanding. And we can feel that unconditional love. We are pulled by that love more than anything else. Sometime we don’t even know what the teachings mean. Sometime we go to listen to them and don’t listen to a word except to look at them and feel that pull of love from them. So, that is why these Perfect Living Masters they give their teachings separately, they give their instruction according to what we need at that time in our growth.

I’m very happy to be able to take up some of these questions. I’ll take up the rest tomorrow. And we will have some interviews. The rest of you can go. Those who are in the immediate list of interviews, have told Tim Chan, I will meet them now, and the rest we will do tomorrow. I hope we…I’ll be able to see all the people who have asked for personal one-on- one interview, and if there is any difficulty completing the list, all those who have never met me before will be definitely covered in the interview list. So, thank you very much. Once again, I’d like to thank Tim Chan for the excellent arrangements he has made for us to meet.