Inner Tranquillity brings Peace into the World

by Chariji, December 10, 2006, Manapakkam, Chennai, India.

Dear Sisters and Brothers—I won’t say from all over the world because, for me, brotherhood and sisterhood does not need to be defined by which country you are from. We all belong to the human race. And it is also a pity for me that we need an organisation known as the United Nations. It is like a family which has, let us say, twenty-five children and has a department for United Family Affairs: one representative from the daughters, one from the sons, one from the daughters-in-law, one from the sons-in-law, and the mother representing the main family. Does it look as if that family has love in it, or brotherhood and sisterhood in it, or unity in it, or just even affection in it? No.

You know there is an old adage, political adage, which says no government is the best government. It has two possible meanings. A country which has no government at all is the most peaceful, most harmonious, and which enjoys peace, security of life and happiness. Of course the other is the more cynical meaning, that no government has ever been the best government. We are always looking for better and better governments, and therefore governments have limited terms. We have elections, we have political parties, we have all this fuss and expense and political tension, religious tension, racial tension, which are all supposed to exhibit democracy, democratic spirit.

To me, as a human being who looks upon everybody else as a human being and who should all be sharing together nature’s gifts, God’s gifts and our own gifts—[but] we need a department of human affairs, a department of economics, departments of politics, defence departments! This is not only between countries, between nations, between colours, between religions, and between houses—compound walls. I think when human beings were called primitive and were living in the jungles of the world eating from nature’s wealth, drinking from rivers which were everybody’s, we were more human than today when we are supposed to be civilised, when our civilisation consists in our power to destroy, to divide, and to diminish human values. I feel very strongly that a world shouldn’t need all these things. I am ashamed that we should have politics at all. I am very sorrowful, I am very sad when I see how we have built walls around ourselves. First between our countries, then between our states our provinces; using our language, our religion, our customs as instruments of dividing ourselves from each other rather than uniting us.

I hope if this message ever reaches the Secretary-General of the United Nations, they would do their best to disband the UN within, say, two days which is my desire, within two years which would be your desire, within twenty years which may be the American desire, but at least sometime which all of you will desire. I don’t think such organisations promote welfare, security, health, happiness, or even distribution of food. You have United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation. You have UNDPs—development programmes, which depend on your classification of what is a dependent nation, which is a developed nation, what is an under-developed nation. I have heard the common complaint year after year since I was twenty, (that means for the last sixty years), that the more profitably employed nations, developed nations, are very reluctant to share their wealth with the other poorly developed nations. The truth of this can be verified. Even worse, rich nations supply arms, ammunitions, arsenals, missiles, atomic massive power, destructive in its extreme, and make money out of human misery, destruction of life. And after fifty years of that devastating bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they now say, "I am sorry we did it." I don’t know how the world accepts this as an apology. Because it’s easier to destroy and apologize.

It is shameful that we have to have departments for the welfare of females in this world. It is an absolute shame and a scandal when newspapers talk of the right of a woman to fight when she is raped. Don’t you think you are all demeaned by these things? And we are now taught and trained to read the newspapers and say, “How wonderful! The United Nations is going to protect women.” The men who are going to destroy the women in the poorer nations, and even in the rich nations, don’t come from the United Nations. They are your neighbours, your friends, your relatives, your so-called well wishers. Who will protect you from them?

So you see we depend too much on our own governments, on the departments of justice in our countries, on the departments of health in our countries, on the departments for distribution of food and whatever it is in our countries, only because we don’t want to take individual responsibility to ensure that these things are established on God’s earth. If human beings would behave as human beings and say this is my job—a fair distribution of wealth, or to put it in blunt terms, a fair distribution of food in my home, in my village, in my city, in my province, in my country is my responsibility and the government is only a collective responsibility we create. We create our governments. Therefore there is this old adage, ‘you get the government that you deserve’.

So every time the government has more power, you have less power. Why? Because you have ceded your power to look after yourself into somebody else’s hands. And the absolute absurdity of this is seen when we make robots to be servants in the house: to run the wash basin, to open the bath, correct its temperature with its hands which are also thermometers. Beep, beep, beep to tell you, “Boss, it is ready.” Another robot comes with towels. Third one with a back scrubber. Fourth one with a front scrubber. They all lift you up together, lead you by hand to the dining table for breakfast. And here comes something; here comes something.

I saw a picture about forty, fifty years ago, a Charlie Chaplain movie, where he is sitting and a robot comes and puts a napkin. Another comes, jabs a fork into a bit of fruit. From here comes a napkin. That was fifty years ago. And we are seeing it now. And when it attains perfection there will be a robotic doctor who is measuring our pulse and our heartbeat. It will [say] cheep, cheep; that means we are dead. And six robots will come to lift us up, put us in the coffin, nail it down, and down it will go into a chute. And it will culminate in that wonderful science-fiction way of dealing with dead bodies—something will open, pshhhh, you will go out into the universe and disappear as a spot of light. From there to today we are still achieving that perfection which science wants, technology wants, because this is what a technologically advanced society is all about—denuding us of our human powers more and more, giving us powers at the press of a button: to destroy an enemy, to switch off the electricity, to set off a missile somewhere in the world 8000 miles away.

So, you see, more and more United Nations, more and more powers in your respective governments, more and more power of money, more and more leisure, more and more sitting in chairs. More and more destruction. The destruction starts here [pointing to the heart]. I have no heart because I have no human beings to surround me. Robots. Everybody is a menace to me because they are after my beauty, or my money. In our Dharma Shastras, in Hinduism you know, or rather I should say, Vedic literature, it is said that beauty in a woman and riches in a man, wealth in a man, are curses. Yet every woman wants to be beautiful; every man wants to be rich and powerful. We are drawing to ourselves curses.

Now you are all going to receive some training here I hope, which will help you more and more to become human—human in the sense that we are people with hearts. Because the head is only a better and better computer. No Microsoft will ever make, no Dell Computers will make, no IBM will ever make a computer to match this [pointing to the head]. Because the computer is given its values by you. This [pointing to the head] gives values to you [pointing to the heart], from inside yourself. What is right, what is wrong, this decides [pointing to the head]. To do or not to do, this decides [pointing to the head]. To take or to give, this decides [pointing to the head]. But Babuji Maharaj my Master said, my Sensei said, this is a false idea. Because this [pointing to the head] can only tell you like a computer, how to do it. Whether I should do it or not, only this [pointing to the heart] can tell.

So you are all from societies which are heavily oriented with the intellect. I know many of you will come to India thinking, “What am I doing in India? Underdeveloped nation, filthy country, dirty habits. Can’t keep harmony even with their own brother in Pakistan. What am I doing here?” I mean Salman Kureishi must be thinking, you know, “Hum kahaan pahunch gaye? [Where have I come?]” Do you see? Don’t start off with this prejudice. Because, like a diamond is made from coal under heavy pressure of nature deep down in the earth, millions of tonnes of pressure per square inch. Diamond is only charcoal, you know. This is the black form; this is the glittering, dazzling, seductive form. Carbon has two forms. We want always the seductive form of carbon. Everybody looks at your diamond and says how pretty she is.

So let us look at India as a potential diamond, and try to see what we are trying to establish in this much misunderstood, much disliked country. Disliked for one reason: that Indians tend to preach and never follow, they never practice. We are great preachers in India. Tell the truth, we thunder in the United Nations. Where others give half an hour speeches or one hour speeches, we have had marathon speeches with people like the late Mr. Krishna Menon who spoke, I believe, for twenty-eight hours at a stretch. That was thirty years back. So what we lack in practice we make up with preaching. The other countries of the world are no better. They don’t preach, but they don’t practice either. They are happy to be ignorant and say, “God does everything for us, you know. Who am I that I should do anything? I am a humble person. If I have to do something, God must give me the power to do it.”

See, it’s how we cheat ourselves, how we fool ourselves. How we escape from the responsibility that we accept when we say, “I have to do it.” The moment you hear this and you accept it, you are yourself condemning to obey it—condemning, because the need to obey is either there or not there. If it is there, it has to be morally right. If it is morally right, it has to be done. If it has to be done and I cannot do it or will not do it, I feel guilty. I don’t want to feel guilty, therefore I will not hear [covers his ears]. Therefore Jesus says, "You have ears but you don’t hear, you have eyes but you don’t see.” Isn’t it?

We see poverty?—United Nations Day, eradicating poverty. Put into the box, something. The hand goes into your pocket with generosity, comes out with meanness. Everybody takes out his purse to give ten dollars and brings out fifty cents. Like the Scouts in schools, I have done my duty. One good duty a day, one good deed a day, I have done. “Daddy, I gave fifty cents.” “Well done, son. You are after all a Rockefeller, you know.” How are you a Rockefeller? He gave. Every hand goes into every pocket wishing to give everything it had and comes out with a fifty cents or half a rupee coin, puts it, feels happy and guilty. Feels happy for having done something, feels guilty for not having done everything it could.

And so we build upon ourselves burdens of guilt, more and more guilt. Therefore we have to go to temples, churches, wherever you know. "Father, forgive me, for I have not done what I could do." Jesus said, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” We have to say “Father, forgive me for I have not done what I could have done.” If I had done what I could have done at every stage of my life, I don’t need religion, I don’t need spirituality, I don’t need prophets, I don’t need anything. Because I am living that life of harmonious, brotherly well-being, of sharing, of common concern, of care, which are all the foundations of love, which is God’s kingdom. God is love. If God is love and I am in a state of love, we don’t have to say anything more about it, you see.

So, brothers and sisters, younger ones, you have an opportunity before you to live a life wisely lived. A life may be lived poorly, harshly, in countries like Kazakhstan, or Minsk, in bitter coldness, minus forty-two in winter, or in the Arab countries, in deserts, with plus sixty. Matters not. It is not what circumstances you live under that makes your life, but how you live your life. Can we at the end of our lives look at the mirror and say you have lived your life well? No. Can you do that? That is what we hope to train you here to do.

People would say, be concentrated: concentrate on your lessons, on your classes, on your literature you have to be given. Listen to your lectures with concentration. Concentration means to me only one thing: where my body is, my mind must be. We have people here from Australia, from Brazil, from Pakistan, from Russia, from Japan, China, but if your body is here and your mind is there, you might as well be there.

My Babuji Maharaj, my Guru used to say it is better that your body is at home and your mind here, rather than your body here your mind there. So I hope you have brought your minds with you, will keep it here with you throughout your stay, and you will go back and see how much better you have become as a human being; not more educated. They will give you a certificate. I don’t know why; certificates have no meaning. I have no certificates on my walls. If I had, I would be less of a human being than what I am today, because I am relying on them, and not on myself. I am suspicious of doctors who have twenty certificates at the back: University of Edinburgh, University of Leeds, University of Glasgow, University of, I don’t know, America. So I have to look at them first, “Oh, oh, oh, better and better and better and better.” So why should he have so many certificates on the wall? I tend to be suspicious of certificates. Because when a man has to say, “This I am,” I am suspicious. Why I should say, “This I am. This I am.”? Don’t you think so?

So, sisters and brothers, ladies and gentlemen, I never had a scholarship in my life to do anything. Sometimes I feel a little, you know, ashamed to appear before future scholars. And I also tell Babuji Maharaj, “What is this? You know, you are putting a guy like me in front of so many people who have come to learn." Who will learn, I hope, and who may be in a position to teach me in the future years.

You know like every father wants his son to be like him and when he grows up to even exceed him. Only the human being is different. Fathers don't like their sons—not many fathers—to be better. They become slightly jealous. Human being, you know, we live on selfishness, on fear. Fear that if he becomes bigger, I am smaller. I say no. You are what you are, he is what he is. This coconut tree is only ten metres, the next coconut tree is fifteen metres. The smallest coconut tree does not go like this [bowing his head], it is proud. “I am what I am.”

In the Old Testament of the Christians, the so-called God says, “I am what I am. I cannot be described. To the poor I look rich, to the rich I look poor.” Because they say, “I have twenty-seven billion or fifty-eight thousand millions. What has God?” And God smiles and says “My son, remember, I have nothing, but yet everything you have, I gave." That is God. He has nothing, but can give everything. He has no power but can give all power. He has no knowledge but can give you the highest possible knowledge you can ever have. If in this we believe, we are spiritual. If we just believe in God as a religious figure, we are cheating ourselves. We cannot cheat God because He is what He is, whether we know it or not.

I must learn when I look in the mirror that is myself I see. You know there were many societies in former times which had no mirrors and were afraid to look in the mirrors, because they thought the mirror took away a part of their essence. Until fifty years ago there were tribes, societies, where photographs were not allowed because every photograph took away part of you.

And to end it with a humorous story I am told of an old couple, a very old couple, very reverenced couple—old man of eighty, his son of forty, the mother a revered old lady, seventy-five, daughter-in-law, and then the son’s son and his wife. In those days they had no mirrors. They had to move their house from one village to another village. And in the new house where they went there was a well. So, you know, one day the mother (eldest grandmother) was not willing to move, because people don’t like change, they like stability. She went and looked into the well and saw a face, a lady’s face. And she started weeping. I know now why my husband has come here. He is keeping another woman there. And she went and told her son, “You know why your daddy, old man of eighty-five, has come here? Go and look in the well. This is why he has come here.” So the young man went, looked into it and saw a very handsome male face. He said, “Mummy, Mummy, I don’t see anything much there. There’s only another young male.” Then the daughter-in-law went. She saw a pretty face. She said, “Mummy is right. It’s not only a woman he has got, but a pretty young woman!” Then the old man said, “I must look into this.” So he pulled his beard, you know, went and saw, and he said, “That is a saint who is living in this house. Blessed are we!”

This is an old, old story with much wisdom, because you see yourself under all situations. If you are happy, you think the world is happy. If you are a crook, you see a crook in everybody you see. You understand? We only see ourselves, reflected again and again in persons, in places, in things. So remember this, it’s a very important thing to remember, that there is no evil in the world, there is also no good in the world. I see what I see which is in me. As we change, the world will change. Then you can be sitting, you know, peacefully, and see the world go by. “Is it good, Sensei?” “It can be good, my son.” “But father, there is so much evil in it.” “Yes, my son.” “But I don’t see anything.” “Neither do I, my son.”

I hope all of you will achieve this state of existence, where inner tranquillity brings peace into the world, inner knowledge of the Self brings knowledge into the world, inner harmony brings harmony into the world. Because he who is fighting himself or herself can never create harmony or peace in this world. May it be so.