Informal Conversation
by Chariji, January 26, 2007, Tiruppur, India.
Q: But, Master, sometimes due to our weakness, some abhyasis go back. No?
PR: Why are you worried about that? You see everywhere there are things which happen like that. Many boys come to school. Some want to go back home, they are not happy, they dont like to study. If it is too difficult to keep them, we let them go because it is for their good. But they must realize its for their good. Isn't it?
Q: Yes. So weakness is always there. In abhyasis also, weakness laziness, these things
PR: In life there are two qualities always positive and a negative in everybody, in everything. In a rock there is hardness, but it's also good for houses. You can't make a house of cotton, you know. Similarly there is night, there is day. There is dry season, there is wet season. There is hot, there is cold. We have to learn to use the best of both. Isn't it? Suppose you are afraid of night (many people are afraid of the darkness) and God said, Twenty-four hours you'll have day. Can we live? So the negative side is necessary to have the positive side also. You cannot have one without the other.
Q: Just to balance in a sense
PR: This is the first law of nature. So in every person there is fear: no fear courage. There is love: there is no love. There is wisdom: there is foolishness. It is for us to see how we use this and remove this. And if you are in a panic, suppose you get afraid, like a driver driving a car, you know. Suddenly two cars come from both sides and he doesn't know how to control the steering. He presses both feet, you know, accelerator and brake both together heaaanh. And then in hospital he says, ‘I don't know, you know, I was I panicked.' So you must always keep this [pointing to the heart] active. No panic.
Q: Okay. Still, as for heart, Master I can't express but I am not satisfied with this heart.
PR: The heart is okay. God gave a good heart. What have you done with it?
Q: I would have shared it with others.
PR: No, but you have put your own desire in it, your own love and hate in it. You have decided to make a choice where no choice is allowed. Suppose a lady has a baby, you know, and she wanted a nice strong white boy. And the baby is born short, dark, you know. Can she throw it away?
Q: No!
PR: Why? My baby, you know. So these are my people. How can I choose?
Q: This is one way.
PR: This is the only way!
Q: Master, one thing Suppose now I am near-by you. It's okay that I am with my Master and I am happy and these things... Now suppose you are inside and I am outside, physically I can't see you.
PR: No, it is not necessary.
Q: These things Master, why I don't know, it never satisfies me.
PR: Have you ever seen happiness? It is not visible. You have seen people being happy. You see somebody having an ice-cream and very happy. So you eat an ice-cream but you are sad. So the happiness is not in the ice-cream. You see another man happy with his girlfriend, you get your girlfriend but you are not happy. So happiness is not in the girlfriend. Where is happiness? Inside! So Babuji said, Look inside; you will find your happiness. Look outside, you see all the dualities: tall and short, black and white, man and woman, you know, courage and fear, everything you see there. Then you become affected by that. But [if] you look inside, you see only the purity, the light, and what? divinity. I am there. Even if I don't see my Master, I am with Him.
Q: This thing, Master I want this condition, Master. Everyone should have this condition, Master.
PR: They will all have it. At times they have it. Otherwise they wouldn't be here today. Why do you think they are all here? A man has just come from Canada travelling what, thirty hours or more. And there are people from Germany, from France, from Italy, from here: Tiruppur. Why do they come? Because they have felt it. Otherwise they wouldn't come just for nothing, spending money, spending time. So somewhere they have felt it. And their heart says go. If you have felt it, you will feel it again. It depends on you.
Q: So Master though it may be foolish, but don't mind, please, suppose if I am very far away, if I remember you, you means Master
PR: If you remember it's enough.
Q: Do you feel it? I am not suspecting, Master, please.
PR: See, now the sun is shining, we are all enjoying it. Does the sun know? It will not know. There is a powerhouse which gives us electricity. When I switch on my lights, does the powerhouse know? No. It knows power is going, but it does not know where and why. Suddenly there is a lot of power going and it is dark, so it knows now it is going. We are taking water from the pipe. Does the reservoir know that you are taking water or she is taking water? Water is going. So God knows you see, something somewhere is using; if it looks, it can find. See, suppose there is a government agency which wants to see who is using power, and how; they can monitor each consumer. So if the sun has the feeling and the ability of the mind, it can also say, Aha! This young man is sitting in the sun, enjoying me. But it is there only to be enjoyed. You have a pot of jam on your table, apricot jam. Three people eat apricot jam, one fellow puts achaar, you know, pickles. The apricot jam does not have to know that you like it and she doesn't like it. Because if it did, it'll say, Oh, why he likes and she doesn't like? Damn these women, they don't like apricot jam. I'm depressed. And the bottle of apricot jam goes to a doctor and gets anti-depression drugs. Is it foolish?
Q: Yes.
PR: So we are here to give. Those who take, take. We are only trying to make it more and more easy for you to take. Satsangh is to make it more and more easy for you to get what you have come to get. If you resist, you don't benefit. So it is your resistance that is the problem, you see. Otherwise every satsangh is the same.
Q: What about the prayer, Master? Someone prays with the heart means you respond.
PR: Let us put it this way. There is a tank of water and we say, ‘O God, let there be water in my tap.' And the water comes only if it is in the tank. Now if the tank is a small one, twenty litres, in no time it is finished. So spirituality says, connect yourself to an infinite tank which is never empty. You call it God, you call it Master, you call it anything you like. You understand? Very logical.
Q: Master, one thing actually I wanted to ask you, actually before all the abhyasis [Inaudible]
PR: No, no, you talk.
Q: Master, your eyes! Please tell us the secret of the moisture in your eyes.
PR: Babuji used to have always moisture in his eyes. And I have seen many religious people, priests, mullahs, nuns in the hospital-they have eyes like glass. I asked Babuji, ‘What is the difference? Why here there is moisture, there it is?' He said, ‘There is no soul there.' No heart. I said, ‘But they are doing good service.' The nuns are always praying for the good of the world, for the good of humanity, but they have glass eyes. He said, ‘They are doing it as a ritual.' Very sincere, dedicated. Unfortunately this sincerity and dedication is a waste. Why?
Q: There is an ego behind it?
PR: There is no love. Here, Babuji said, ‘Where there is real love for human beings, there must be moisture in the eyes.' Because love means compassion and therefore there is always moisture. What is happening to them? Why are they like this? no thought of yourself. I want to go to nirvana,like you know, it's not like that. If you read the life of the Buddha, after he attained the final emancipation, Mahaparinirvana, he decides to stay in this world. He says, ‘What is the use of my attaining nirvana, if I am to see all this world full of misery and suffering?' So he says, ‘Until the last soul is liberated from this misery and suffering of existence, I will remain here.'
Q: ‘I will remain here'? That means he is here?
PR: To help them.
Q: Is he here?
PR: Well you see, was the sun there before I was born?
Q: No.
PR: It was, but you didn't know it! Will the sun be there after I am dead?
Q: After I am dead? May or may not be.
PR: It will be. So we are only talking of what we have in our experience, you know. So suppose I say, ‘Do you know Kitplyplum?' First question you will ask is, ‘Who is Kitplyplum, or what is ...?' because without knowing I cannot answer. Now if you don't know Buddha, how can you say whether he is here or not? So we have to know. So one who feels the Master must have known the Master; without ever knowing the Master, just meditating and saying, ‘No, no, today was very disturbed, and you know' Once you know, you cannot forget.
Q: But it is also said that Master cannot be known until we have become Master.
PR: That is, knowing what a Master is. You see, you are the son of your father. You have been angry with him many times. Even sometimes you may have wished, Let him die! This man, you see, so troublesome.
Q: This I don't know.
PR: There have been.
Q: Okay!
PR: But when you become a father yourself, when you marry and you have your son, then you know what a father is. Then you understand why your father behaved like that with you. That is necessary for you to know what your father was in reality, because now you know what he was, because you are feeling the same thing. But until you feel, you know the father but you don't know what being a father is. So to understand the role of the father (why he has to discipline, why he has to love, why he has to sometimes punish) until you have been a father yourself, you cannot understand. Every time he gives you something, ‘Oh Dad, I love you!' Every time he takes the stick then you know, ‘Chi, I hate you.' So real understanding can come only by being. But that is a very high level.
Q: But still we can understand the role of Master. That is more important.
PR: You try to understand only one thing, that he is there for your good, and everything that he does or asks you to do, is for your good. If you start with that real understanding in your heart, everything comes. Obedience comes, love comes, you know? Then you are there like a rocket. But if every time you question, like these ladies you know sometimes, Why not? They don't ask, ‘Why? No, no, Yasmin, you don't do this. Chariji, you are always saying don't do this, don't do this, don't do this. When will you tell me sometime, Please do it? I said, When you do the right thing, I will tell you. And then they get more angry. Do you mean to say I am doing wrong? You are judgmental. You know this is a common European reaction to everything, you see: judgmental, How can you judge? I said, I am not judging, I am advising. Don't cut your throat with a knife. Why not? All right, try it. [laughter] How can you say such a thing? Arre, I can't say this, I can't say this, then what should I say? Suppose your Master had told you to cut your throat what would you have done? I said, I would have done it at once. Don't you think that was silly? I said, No, because anything the guru said would have been for my good. Oh, but how can you believe such a thing without proof? I said, What proof? What proof? Suppose you say that when a man and woman sleep together, they can have a baby: prove it to me. All over the world is proof. Where are all these people coming from? Big, old, white hair, black hair, tall, short Where did they come from?
So in our philosophy it says, from love the world has come - not sex, from love. So you see the proof is here in front of us, but we are always asking for proof. Then they will ask you know, suppose one lady is not able to have a child, Yes, but Chariji, why I am not having a child? It shows you are wrong. It doesn't show I am wrong. It shows you are wrong somewhere that you are not having a child. How can you judge? You are so cruel. You are so judgmental. And then half a dozen women get together, of course all Europeans, and they weep together and say, Chariji is a pig, he is a thisschweinhund, in good German. So we remain silent.
Q: So, Master, we were coming from the topic of moisture in the eyes. So it means every spiritual leader
PR: If he is spiritual, there must be moisture at least in one eye.
Q: At least in one eye?
PR: Yes. I will tell you another secret. Babuji had one eye always looking here [pointing towards the heart]. So I asked Babuji why one eye is always? And in my meditation I used to see one eye. I said, Why I don't see two eyes? He said, Are you not happy with one eye? He said, Is it not enough that one eye of the Master is always looking at you? I said, I am very happy. But why is one eye always He says, You know this eye is always looking to the heart for verification. And this eye is looking for study study the world, observe.
Q: So for us, Master, to develop this moisture it should not be superficial, but
PR: No, no. Superficial is emotion, that is what the whole world has. Oh honey, why are you going to work? I want you today. Wife telling the husband, You don't love me. Work, work, work. But he says, Darling, money has to come. The bed we sleep on comes from that money I earn. The mattress, I have to earn it. The bed sheets, I have to earn. The pillows, the curtains you make, everything I have to earn. And if you tell me, No work? Yes, but you are always arguing with me. Today I need you. But you don't need me, your body needs me. You see, there is a difference between your body needing and you needing. Generally only the body needs.
Q: So, Master, you mean to say that this love should come, only then moisture will come?
PR: Without love how will moisture come?
Q: So it means everyone who can create that love in his heart or her heart is
PR: No, no, the love is always there. He has to remove the hatred, the dislike, the prejudice.
Q: Actually, Master, I used to look in the mirror
PR: Whether there is moisture or not? [laughter] It's a good idea. Why not? You are in the right way. Don't bother.
Q: But, Master, this laziness, and this I am not sincere, Master. This thing you know, Master, really it hurdles
PR: You have one scientific experiment. In your bedroom, you make a small machine. A bucket of water on top (a nice small plastic which won't kill you), and it is tied to a motor, small electric motor which is tied you know, just at that height. In the morning you set your alarm for half-past five. When the alarm rings, this motor will be on, the cold water will be on your head [laughter]. It is a very simple thing to make. And you will find in three days, you cannot sleep after that.
In the old days, I have read in Canada and in America, when they had a toothache, they didnt go to the dentist. They tied a bit of twine to the tooth and to the door knob: and tadang! I have read in stories. Very simple, cheap. Now we go to the dentist. They put on white clothes, mask, gloves, you know already twenty-five dollars to the bill for them to get ready. Then they come, Where is the pain? I say, Here. They say, Good, I'll come back. They come back twenty minutes later. Where is the pain? I told you, here. Oh, it's here? Okay. He goes away, and he comes back after fifteen minutes. Nurse! You say, No, no, doctor. Here! Oh, this tooth, is it? Oh, I am sorry. Forty-five minutes gone; forty-five minutes of anxiety, more to calculate how much per minute this fellow will charge.
When I was in the Molena ashram in the US, I had a toothache. So they took me to a place where there is a nice big grass lawn of about fifteen, twenty acres and a central building with all specialties. I went in. So they made me sign the form in triplicate, immunity, that I will not hold them responsible for anything that happens while I am there, including possible burial charges. Very encouraging, you know! So I went. They said, Sit down here. There's a small cubicle like this, like this chair you know. Then two pretty nurses came, with legs [looking] like space suits. What is your name? They are verifying the form. I said, My name is Rajagopalachari. Uh, okay. You are the gentleman. How did she know? She can't pronounce my name. When I say Raj. Okay. What is your age? Seventy-two. Okay, the doctor will be here in a few minutes. Okay, I wait. Doctor comes. Ah, hello young man, how are you doing? I said, I am seventy-two, doctor, I am not young. Anyway I'll accept your compliment. Well, you look young, you know. Well, for your age. I mean, ha ha ha. Which tooth? It starts- And after four times going in and coming out and one injection you know, he put his mirror here, put his mirror there, had a word with his nurse and said, Where you from? I said, I am from India. Oh! From India? How long you staying here? I said, Maybe a couple of weeks. He said, You know, Mr. Ra okay, mister, I suggest you go back to India and get this attended to.
This happened! I thought you know, I am good for twenty dollars at least. And I said, Doctor, where do I pay the bill? he said, Oh there is a desk in front as you go out. You know how much they charged me? Hundred and seventy dollars! This happened to me personally in Molena when I was in the ashram. I said, For heaven's sake they said, Well, you know, dentistry is very expensive in the US. I said, I have first hand experience of it now.
Another time, I don't know if Kamlesh was there, Santosh was there, I had a toothache again. So this time we drove fifty miles along some highway, and came to a dentist in US, of course. All good things happen in US! I went up, they made me wait twenty-five minutes, then they called me in; three Indian doctors. So Santosh introduced himself, I am from India, I am from Gujarat. Oh hi, okay. You are from India, huh? Okay. And then they went out and had a big laugh and came back. This time all three looked with mirrors, tapped here and here and they said, Oh, you need a new set of teeth. I said, Yes, I need a new set of teeth but God gave me one. It is good except for one or two here and there. He said, Yes, but you know God makes mistakes sometimes. I said, Yes, obviously you know, looking at nowadays people, you know, here and there. They didn't get the joke or they got it and they became very angry. They said, Well, I am afraid we can't do anything for this. It's better you go back to Bombay and get it done. Hundred and fifty dollars! Without touching me. And the system, you can't say, I won't pay. What have you done for me? I cannot say. So the Indians have become Americanized.
So the danger is why satsangh is necessary? Because slowly you become that which you are, you know like when you get into a lake, you'll become wet. If you get into fire, you'll burn. If you get into satsangh, you will become like everybody here. You put the same man in America, he becomes an American. He takes a tissue, Kleenex. ‘Yeah, but why do you waste? ‘But, Chariji, they are meant to be used. Yes, but this box is what, three dollars ninety-nine? No, no, I got it from a sale. I got three boxes for the price of two. I said, They are trying to throw it away, you know. Why did they give it to you like that? In my country if it was good, the more you buy, the more you will pay. Here the more you buy, the less you pay. They don't think, because they get too much money, too much leisure. All my Indians in America are like that; until they are converted slowly, thanks to Sahaj Marg.
There was an Indian. He is here, right here. He was new. He was a student in America in 1972 when I went with Babuji Maharaj, my Master. He said, I have enough place; as many as you can, you bring. We took him at his word, we went in three cars. We started from New York at about six, in New Jersey we stopped for Babuji to have some mushroom soup, he was very fond of it. And then we reached his place by about twelve' o clock midnight. There he was standing on the crossroad waiting for us. And then he waved us, we went. He had a room of what, about eight feet by seven feet? Well, nine feet by seven and a half. There was a couch here, and a sink there. And the floor could have held four people sleeping side by side tight. And we were about twenty two people.
Q: I had a bedroom inside.
PR: Yes I know! I know all about you. I said, Ramakrishnan, where do we sleep? He said, Um, we can manage. I said, Put one on top of the other? So Babuji slept on the couch. I don't know where he slept. And he was busy phoning till two o'clock in the morning, to park us in different places. Next morning we come. He has tea. I mean the traditional US breakfast -plastic spoons, plastic forks, plastic knives. He is a student. I said, You don't have good cutlery? No, no, these are very cheap. And I went down to his basement, and he had big cartons like this, I think six cartons of spoons, forks and knives in plastic. I said, What would you do with so much? He said, Oh, we just throw them away. I said, You don't wash? You have come here to be a student, you are spending your father's money, or whatever money you are spending, and you can't use these? Oh, nobody washes them in the US. I said, Even their bottoms they don't wash. So what will you do with your bottom? Not wash it? They don't. He's ashamed to say it.
I went to a Brahmin house; they are supposed to be very clean. I had to stay two nights. There was nothing but toilet paper in the bathroom. I looked for a mug, you know, I shouted out, Do you have a mug? What for? They wanted to know what for! Now I could not tell them I need it for a very intimate purposeunspeakable. They said, You know you can't get mugs in the US. I said, Come on the land is full of mugs, what do you mean you can't get a mug? So I had to use a soap box cover, you know, to do what I had to do.
Good Brahmins from South-India they pride themselves on their Brahmin-hood, their purity, and they had a toilet roll dispenser this big, six of them on top, one on top, and you pull out one and the rest drop, because they are cheap. Chariji, if you buy one, it is I don't know how much-ninety-nine cents? And if you buy a dozen, it's only six dollars, so you buy a dozen. And then there is a bigger box containing, let us say, twelve dozens, which instead of being seventy-two dollars, it is only sixty- five dollars ninety-nine. So they buy that. And they try to use it by going to the toilet whenever they can! And now we have you know, rose toilet paper, blue toilet paper to match your décor. Blue curtains blue toilet paper; pink curtains pink toilet paper! And most appropriate, they even have perfumed toilet paper [laughter]. I am not joking. This all I have seen, I have experienced, I have lived with in over twenty years of visiting the US. And yet they are sophisticated people, they are white, they wash their hands with soap you know, though they have done nothing with it. I have often asked,Why do you wash your hands? Nothing has happened. No answer. They are puzzled, I am also puzzled. Now this is the state of the world.
So satsangh is important, because when you come here, you tend to become like us automatically, without your wishing, without your wanting, without your doing anything. That is why satsangh is important, is necessary: and the more of it, the better.
Q: This attachment, Master, our attachment with anyone, is it due to samskara?
PR: Attachment is not good. Attachment is selfishness.
Q: What is the reason for attachment?
PR: Selfishness. That is why I have said so often that men and women don't love each other. They are only attached. I need you, you need me. I told you, you know, Don't go to work, honey. I need you today. What is that? She doesn't think of his good, their common good that he has to go to work if money is to keep coming. She needs emotional, physical satisfaction and she's so selfish that, I must have it. He should not go to work. If he goes to work he doesn't love me. If he doesn't love me, I have a right to love somebody else. You see?
Q: But Swami Vivekananda has said that we should have attachment only with God, not with others.
PR: Swami Vivekananda was wrong. He should have said love; or you have read wrong, you see. There is only love for God.
Q: I have read this.
PR: Maybe, but he may have used the wrong word in a moment of, you know One cannot be having attachment to God. We all say, I love God. Do you love, really, God? When you are afraid you love God. When you are a beggar you want a god. So for us God is a need, not something we love. Babuji said, We pray He said, Excuse me, he said, I am using a bad example, Babuji said. We pray like when we have to go to the toilet. We rush. You cannot hold it. And some people say, Where is the loo? And the Americans have a beautiful phrase for it; in American life there is nothing dirty. Where are the restrooms? Restrooms!
And you know in America, they have advertisement for all these burial homes. They advertise plots: We make it easier for you to enter the heaven! Big placards! These nice hundred acre lawns, spic and span like golf clubs. You can go in, book your plot, book your casket. Do you want it oak or walnut? We can even offer you mahogany, thousand dollars. If you want a silver thing on top with your photograph and love to my family before I leave. They tell you everything, you know, That will cost you only two hundred dollars extra. So you book your plot, you book your casket, you book whether you should be shaved or not, what perfume you like on your after-shave. Everything done and they give you a note: Congratulations for taking care of your future. That is the American way of life.
[Receives a phone call.] I am here with a big crowd around me. If you sit in meditation I will give you a sitting right now. Okay? All of you can sit. Oh, you are in a hurry to go to school? No, no, just sit for fifteen minutes, it's enough. Okay? All the best. Bye, bye.
Now how can you do it? one mind thinks. The blighter is talking to us, he is joking with this fellow. He is criticizing the Americans. How the hell can he do everything at the same time? People are thinking, you know. Somebody says, Oh, you know, he's a great guy if he can do all this together. Commander Mishra says, Of course on the wireless we can send simultaneous messages everywhere. It's possible. And this Sanjay you know, he is a rich man in the, what do you call it, information technology field. He'll say, Well, it's simple. You just frame the text on the computer, and put all addresses and punch send. Voila!
They are all thinking how it can be done, why it cannot be done, is he telling a lie, is it the truth, will they feel the transmission, are they really feeling transmission, or just because he said, they pretend they feel it. Now how many questions come out of this!
I went to Paramjeet's house (she is our preceptor in London) twenty-five years ago. They were all full of suspicion, because they are all North Indians, Sardars. Babuji was a North Indian, Hindi-speaking man; here comes a Tamilian, you know, from South India. All big turbans on their heads and half of them went to the gurudwara [Sikh temple] after they saw me. They said, Known God is better than the unknown devil, not the other way round. Generally we would say, known devil is better than the unknown God. It happened. Ask her if it did not happen.
I was in a house in America. I stayed there one night and I conducted satsangh. Very cool, all of them North Indians you know. All of them, Babuji, Babuji, I said, Yes, of course he is my Master. And forty-five minutes I gave them sitting. They all got up and went away; into the kitchen, into the lawn, some to smoke. Then seven o clock, they all went for dinner. Nobody called me, nobody. Of course I am not going to say, I am hungry, give me food. I depend on Him, no? So that day this fellow was coming, Tom Whitlam. You remember I came to pick you up at the airport? Dallas, Ft. Worth. So at the airport I had some sandwiches and we came back. Then one girl of sixteen or fifteen, she came and said, Uncle, uncle, Master, you didn't eat anything. I said, Oh I had. You smell my hand.
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