Reverence, Respect and Restraint

by Chariji, November 1, 2005, Vrads Sande, Denmark.

So today I'll speak a little. I hear there has been some criticism that we are asking for money. It is, of course, to be expected, because when we say spirituality is free, it is true. But by spirituality, the Mission and my Master meant sittings, transmission. They are absolutely free for all without consideration of caste, race, colour, sex, et cetera. That's why we are here (about forty, fifty nations of the world) coming from distant places, near places, but all costing money. So we cannot belittle the need for money because it is money which brought us together under this tent, which is feeding you, and which is transporting you from wherever you are staying. And it is money which bought the ashram in Lausanne in Switzerland. It is money which bought this ashram, the one in Copenhagen. It is money which is going to buy an ashram in London, I hope next week. And it will be money which I believe Fausto needs to buy an ashram in Italy. We have been talking about it for years. A house costs money. Churches cost money. Heaven is free. So on earth we see everything costs money; and in Europe everything costs much more.

If I have one hundred euros in India, I can do a hundred times more than what I can do with one hundred euros in Europe. Everybody knows this. That’s why Europeans come to India and stay for a year on what they would need to spend for two weeks in Europe. Everybody knows that, too. So please don’t think we are asking for money to save it or we are always asking for money—which is not true. We are not always asking for money. Like you have to give your aged parents some money to run the household when you are earning yourself. They look after you when you are young, when you go to school, when you go to college, when you flirt with your first few girlfriends and boyfriends. It is the parents who pay for it. When you grow up and they are sixty, sixty-five, seventy, it is the duty of those same children to look after their parents. Unfortunately, in the Western culture this doesn’t exist, which is a shame. Shame on youth who are all seated before me, young, handsome, strong, virile, but with no care for the elder generation, no respect for them, and even less love. I say again very firmly that this is a shame that old people have to go to geriatric homes, die in isolation, lonely, unloved. I hope you all feel it when you are old. Because you may look beautiful today, handsome, no wrinkles on your face, everybody falling in love with you, bearded young men, all the girls after them. It looks nice. It feels nice. And that love is superb, wonderful. Love is a many splendoured thing. (There was a song in a movie.) This is not love. It is fascination. It is attraction. It is sex. It doesn’t last very long.

This morning as a joke, I said from my window that our cultures are there: you have your culture, I have my culture. In my culture, we marry and then love. In your culture, you love and then marry. I think because you love and marry there are so few really good marriages which are long-lasting, with real love, because once you have sex together, either you break away and say, “Damn it, one more girl, so what?” or you feel compelled to marry the girl because you have had sex with her, and then you hate her all your life. It’s not a good thing. Scandinavia set the lead, and I’m sure God has a special place in hell for Scandinavia. Yes, because this is a perversion of human values. It’s a perversion of putting the cart before the horse. And it’s a perversion because it corrupts marriage, it corrupts human relationships from young age to old age. So beware of your culture where you love and then marry. Get into the habit of marrying and then loving. Because after you marry if you have sex, there is now no more compulsion, you don’t feel obliged to marry her because you are already married to her. And it’s the men who are the biggest sinners, God help them.

I always speak the truth as I see it and I don’t care who says what afterwards. It is my duty as a teacher to tell you all these things. Those who accept it will be blessed. Those who don’t will remain what they are, and come back life after life to enjoy more sex in Scandinavia, more heart-breaks, more tragedies, more loneliness. And perhaps each individual will find himself on an individual ice floe with a polar bear for a companion. So that is the destiny of those who want freedom, you know, freedom, freiheit, liberté in three different languages, but all the same messed up human relationships, where there is no happiness in the young, no happiness in the middle age, and no happiness in the old age at all. Please think over all these things because the younger generation is in great danger, because what they think is a curse for their parents is surely around the corner for you all too. You cannot escape the destiny that you have imposed upon your parents as a penalty for bringing you up with love, care and money. It cannot happen. There is a natural justice which does not see whether you are young or old, but only sees to your actions and your thoughts. Sahaj Marg is very specific about this and also in the Bible: “Reap what you sow.” “The maker of the bed shall lie upon it,” et cetera, et cetera, you know.

So that is one part of what I have to tell you this morning because I feel very strongly—not because I am old. I am well looked after. I have a loving Indian family who would never dream of putting the parent into some sort of a prison, you know, which they call love because they pay money for it, or the state pays for it. Another great sickness in these countries, prosperous countries, is your so-called social welfare. You do everything you can to destroy yourself, and your government pays you for it. You break your leg skiing and there are half a dozen nurses cooing over you as if you are a great hero, then they pay you for six months afterwards. They pay you unemployment benefits, especially here in Denmark. You can exist all your life on the government dole, shamelessly. People who live on government doles have no sense of shame. The Western culture has lost all reverence and respect for the old, for the gods they are supposed to be praying to. That’s why they can, you know, sit with their legs out in church. They may even put their feet up on the altar of Christ. They say, “What’s there so wonderful about God?” Especially in the United States of America, that great powerful country. It is a country which has lost all sense of reverence, of respect, for anything. No respect for women, no respect for children, no respect for the aged. For them everything is the same. They put their dirty shoes into the same washing machine as their clothes. And when I asked somebody, “How can you do this?” they said, “But it’s the same dirt, Chari.” That is why you have so much perversion in sex in the United States. Everything is sex. It can be done any way you like, and it is still…well, all is fair in love and war. You know, I am tempted to say, “God damn these people and these countries,” but I cannot say it because I am supposed to be a spiritual guide. I must love you all whether you deserve it or not. I will transmit to you whether you deserve it or not. I must take you upwards whether you deserve it or not. That is my job. But just because I do it, please don’t mistake it that I approve of what you are doing. I help you in your spiritual life without having to approve of what you are doing. I help you in your spiritual life irrespective of whether you are virtuous or sinful. Irrespective of if you are good or bad. That is my job, that is my duty, which I have accepted.

So you are lucky. If you were in religion, you would have to go to church and you know, tell lies in that wonderful place called the confessional. “Lord, forgive me for what I have done this week.” And there’s an equally sinful priest on the other side of the curtain saying, “In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ I absolve you of your sins.” Something he has no power to do. No man on earth has power to absolve you of your sins except two people: one yourself, and one your God. In between there is nobody who can do it. That is why religion is useless, that is why religion has failed. That’s why you are all here, not in church. But please realise what a wonderful opportunity you all have coming here. Whatever you are, you are assured of a distant goal which anybody can achieve, even the biggest sinner can achieve, if only you are willing to change your life into something we call an abhyasi—not just by meditating and cleaning, but by changing your character. This is most essential. My Master said time and again, he said, “I give you from inside what I can, which is spirituality, which is transmission, but your character you have to change, you have to work upon yourself to change.” I have known people saying, “Oh, what a wonderful system this is, you know, I can still go to my girlfriend’s after satsangh.” Well, you can, of course, but should you? That’s the question you have to ask yourself. I can, but may I? Should I? That’s the question. Everybody can, I mean a saint can, a sinner can, what’s so wonderful about sleeping with a girl? Animals do it, birds do it, bees do it, according to an old song. So what’s the wonderful thing that you are doing which nobody else on the earth does? It’s an animal tendency. You let a cow and a bull loose, they are at it. And you let a boy and a girl loose from satsangh, they are at it. What’s the difference?

I would like to provoke you to such a degree that you want to come and beat me up, if you have the guts to do it, so long as it sets you thinking and makes you ask yourself, “Is all the pleasure I am supposed to be enjoying worth it?” You know? Because they think it is worth it, they have discovered the wonderful pill called Viagra where, when a man cannot perform even at seventy, he goes and buys a tablet for ten dollars. Expensive, eh? Ten dollars per shot. Almost the cost of a bottle of whisky, equally damaging, equally immoral. There’s a time for everything, you know. Your physical system is made to function in certain ways at certain ages, and you do that you’re okay. But if you want Viagra and I don’t know what else will follow, then you are perverse, anti-natural, and that’s why people have died who have nervous problems, high blood pressure, they have died while on the job, Viagra death. Don’t think that the young are not in danger because they are in even more danger than the old, because all this physical indulgence makes you old before you are even young. Most of you are washed out by the time you are thirty-five.

I make jokes at these Danes, you know. You have great, wonderful pictures of Vikings wearing horned caps, looking brave, looking like demigods. And look at today’s Danes, one metre ten, one metre twenty. Where are the Danes? Where are the Vikings? I am ashamed of my Denmark today—all because of physical indulgence. Excuse my harsh language but when I speak I must speak so that it teaches you something, and it must make you angry not with me but with yourself. “How dare this fellow Chari call us like this, and how dare he talk to us like this!” Then you must sit down and say, “Yes, but I deserve it. I am all these things that he calls me. And if he was not a spiritual person he would have cursed me in the bargain.”

I am no Christ, you know, to crucify myself on the cross for all of you. Do you think Christ was a wise man, that he became crucified so that forever and ever after humanity is absolved of its sins? I don’t think so. It gave you more license for indulgence. But after all, you have been forgiven two thousand years ago for what you are going to do today, what your children are going to do ten years hence, and so on and so forth. I don’t think he was wise. He left no room, no incentive for human beings to change, become moral, become spiritual. You are all happy, you see, that you had a Christ who got crucified. None of us weep for Christ. We are happy. “God bless him,” we say, which is another blasphemy. You need blessings, not Christ. So beware, you Europeans, strong, powerful, well-fed, rich, handsome. Ask yourself, “Quo vadis? Where am I going?” Don’t ask quo vadis Domini, quo vadis Thomas, quo vadis Jens, quo vadis Albert, Abraham, anything you like. Look into the mirror. Try to read a famous book called The Picture of Dorian Gray—I recommend it to all of you—where a young man like this handsome young fellow with the beard sitting in front of me, by evening became a womanizer indulging in every known sin and unknown sins. He created new sins as he went along. Somebody had painted a handsome picture of him in his youth—handsome, beautiful, you see. But as he went on living, the picture started changing. What he was, it became. He remained a handsome young man, so that he could continue to sin, enjoy life, damage women so thoroughly that they committed suicide; and day by day this picture got worse and worse until it became like a ghost by the time he was forty-five. One day he couldn’t stand that picture so he took out his dagger and stabbed the picture. Instantly the picture became that of a young man, which he was, and he fell dead looking like an old man of ninety. The photograph shows the outside. Your face shows your outside, very handsome, very attractive, very desirable. The inside is what the photograph became. I wish you could see yourself in a photograph like that. When you curse yourself you don’t need anybody to curse you.

I don’t want to say more because I think I have said enough. I can see some people are affected. Some people are smiling a derogatory superior smile, “What the hell does this Indian know? They don’t have any pleasure so they curse us. They don’t have the guts to sleep with women.” I assure you, you don’t know any more about sex than an Indian. The greatest book about sex on earth is the Kama Sutra. If you want to know more ways of spoiling yourself, of demeaning yourself, read it. But read The Picture of Dorian Gray without fail.

Now coming back to this seminar, I am happy it has been such a wonderful seminar. I think it is the largest ever seminar that we have held in Europe in all these years. I thank you all for coming here. I also congratulate our Danish abhyasis for the excellent work they have put in, very productive. Very productive, because it has produced nothing but joy. I have been watching you all for the last five days. There has been continuously a manifestation of a joyous atmosphere in the seminar. For that, too, I thank them. Thirdly, I thank them because without the Danes I would not be here.

And now for the Danes I have a very special message. My Master Babuji Maharaj always said, “Denmark will be the spiritual capital.” I have been waiting for the last twenty-five years for that to happen. It has been happening in a small way, but it has to happen in a big way. And the hope that I can help in achieving that goal of becoming the spiritual capital has brought me here.

So Danes, rise up to the occasion, forget that you are Scandinavians, forget that you have any sex. You are neither male nor female, you are angels. And to be an angel you must get rid of your body, of your sex, of the consciousness of these things, and work only with the heart. The heart is the same for a man and a woman—fortunately. So I urge all of you from all over the world who have come here: try to give up your body consciousness. Don’t pamper it. Eat a little less than you need. Don’t spend money foolishly. Don’t have sex lavishly. Just because you have a girl by your side doesn’t mean you have to do it. Restraint is the solution. If you can restrain yourself on one occasion you will find it easier to restrain yourself on the next. And in a week you would have lost interest. Then it becomes a natural thing, you know. It occurs whenever Nature decides that it should occur. Then you will enjoy it. You will not have sickness. You will not have a guilty complex. And most importantly you will not have sinned in your own eyes.

I pray that my Master bless all of you. Thank you.