1. CAN 83-6 Gururaj. Rosemary, Namaste. Good. What shall we talk about this morning? Questioner. Guruji, would you speak to us about the nature of performing actions spontaneously? Gururaj. The nature of performing actions spontaneously. Now, one has to have the nature to be spontaneous. What is that nature? That nature is our personality and the more integrated we are, the more less we are mind orientated, the less we think or deliberate things, the less we pre-plan things, the more spontaneous can we be. Good. People have a habit of mulling over things before they perform an action. For example a housewife would wash the dishes ten times in their minds, before they would actually wash it, so they have used eleven times the energy, instead of just going to the basin and washing them. So you’ve washed the dishes ten times already in your mind. Now imagine the amount of energy that has been expended by doing that? For it has been proven by science that the mind uses eight times more energy than the physical body. So what loss? Now in spontaneity, one preserves energy. And one just flows whatever there is for the moment. So to be spontaneous, one has to be natural. And to be natural, is to be here and now. That is why for example, I don’t prepare any talks. Talks are just spontaneous. They just come out from inside somewhere and I am only dimly aware of what I am talking about. That is spontaneity. Everything we find in nature is spontaneous. The flower doesn’t think of its growth, the tree doesn’t think of its growth, the wind does not plan in which way it is going to blow. When an earthquake happens and a mountain shoots up, it does not plan what shape it will be, pointed or square. So everything just flows with nature, and if we learn to flow wit h nature, not getting away from nature and not hiding nature, but flowing with nature, then very automatically, you become spontaneous in every action. Now spontaneity must not be confused with impulsiveness. Impulsiveness is necessary in certain cases. But impulsiveness could be very negative as well. So, the integrated person, his actions would always be spontaneous and in the right direction. He would not impulsively swear at a person for example. But, spontaneously he would say some good words and yet rebuke the person, reprimand the person because there is no hatred in his heart. So spontaneity is also linked with the good nature that is within us, which has to be cultivated, spontaneously cultivated. And if we study our daily actions of the day, and if we reflect on it at night, before going to bed, we could easily discern that ‘Where was I acting deliberately? and Where was I acting spontaneously?’ You’d find a definite difference. I thought about this thing, I made effort to do this thing, and therefore I’m feeling so tired because of the effort I made. But the very work could have been done in such a way where it ceased to be an effort where work has become play and that play is spontaneity.

2. CAN 83-6 So, the mind interferes and it says ‘Oh, I have to study this text’, or ‘I have to do the cooking’. And those very, very thoughts that we have in the mind, a certain kind of disgust in ourselves is produced because of the thinking that I have to do this. I have to do the washing, or I have to go to the office and see so many clients. I wish I did not have to do i t. Those are the thoughts arises in the mind. And therefore, work becomes more arduous and it does not become pleasurable. While if one knows that look I have to go to the office and you just take it from there. It’s just something which I have to do, I can’t escape from it. And then the work you’d be doing in the office would be just spontaneous action, consulting with your clients and you’d find a greater effect upon the clients that you are to deal with, because you’ d be just so natural. And being natural is spontaneous, so where is the nature of spontaneity? Two words mean the same. You just are. And according to your ability or training you perform. It’s a work that you have to do. And then the “’erk’ disappears from ’work’ and the ‘w’ which is wonderful, is left behind. And that is to be just spontaneous. Impulsiveness comes from conditioning. When the person does a compulsive act, there is a background to it, there is a conditioning to it, previous acts that one has performed, or previous thoughts make one behave impulsively. For example, impulsiveness could be allied to many kinds of phobias or diseases such as kleptomaniacs. And we’ve read in papers where a person is a kleptomaniac, the person is not really a thief. It’s a disease and it sees something and wants to pinch it, impulsively. That is not spontaneous, it is a disease. The person is at dis-ease within himself, because his mind functions fragmentedly, and not integratedly. So the path to spontaneous action would lie in doing Spiritual Practices and becoming one’s self. To be able to look at one’s self in the mirror and know of one’s faults and frailties, an d correcting them. And once that is done, spontaneity is there. Where everything is just accepted as it is because you have learnt to accept your Self. And when you can accept yourself, you can accept the environment around you, the circumstances around you, and in spontaneousness, you form a unified whole between you and the environment. For nothing is separate from you. So outer circumstances does not bother you at all. And if it does not bother you, all your actions would naturally be spontaneous. Someone was talking to me about his sex life (man and wife – they came to see me). They say, the woman says that ‘Guruji, I am not a frigid woman’. And the man says ‘I am not an impotent man’. Husband and wife. But, funny enough, when we do get together in bed, we just can’t do anything. So after questioning them further, I found out that they were thinking of the evening or the night from the morning already. Oh tonight we’re going to be very close to each other. The husband thinks that, the wife thinks that. And when the time comes to go to bed, the spontaneity is lost,the flow is lost, because they are too self conscious of themselves. So I told the wife ‘Don’t think about these things at all during the day, get yourselves occupied in work or whatever you are doing’. These thoughts don’t arise in your mind. And when you are close to your wife, you just flow to her and she just flows to you, and whatever you want to do just

3. CAN 83-6 happens. So spontaneity is also a happening. For everything in life is just nothing else but a happening. And, they tried this, this young couple, and they were very successful. I say why plan for the bed early, what’s wrong with the living room carpet? So, preplanning something - I’m just giving you an example of the people I counsel and what have you - so, pre- planning detracts from spontaneous action. Because pre-planning could cause, in this case so many inhibitions, so many repressions. It could cause a sense of inadequacy, insecurity. So, you just let things happen, like the rain that falls, cooling the hot parched earth. It just flows down from the clouds not fall, rain never falls, it flows. Do you see the difference? They call it, ‘The rain is falling’, it is flowing down. There is a magnetic attraction the gravitational force , where the rain does not go up, but it comes down in the flow. And that is what people require so much in life, is the ability to flow in any circumstances. So, when a person finds the secret of being able to flow, then life would assume a different meaning altogether. It would become more harmonious, more joyous. And you will find that all the little things that seem so big to you, the petty little things, where you make a molehill into a mountain, that will disappear. The molehill will remain a molehill because the mind is a cunning animal, and a small little worry would put you off and you exaggerate it to such an extent, it becomes unbearable to you. There is a function given by the church, and the ladies of the church are asked to bring, bake a cake, bring a cake for sale at the church for church funds. Now she’ll be told this Sunday and the function is the following Sunday and she’ll start worrying what kind of cake shall I bake. So she wants to do her best. So she will go over recipe book after recipe book. A whole week will be consumed by that thought ‘I’ve got to bake a cake and it must be great, better than all the other ladies’. It must be better than all the other ladies’ cakes. Fine. So the whole week is spent going through all the recipe books and planning this and planning that. Why? Because you want to satisfy your ego and your cake must be better that Mrs. Smith’s cake or Mrs Jones’s cake. No, why do that? You have been used to baking cakes, and I’m sure some of the cakes you’ve baked have turned out to be really wonderful. So stop worrying about that cake and just bake the cake that you know how to bake it. Just do that one. Finish. And say if Mrs Jones’s cake is better, so what. I’ve done my duty, I’ve baked the cake. So a whole weeks’ worry would be gone, the concern would be gone and you’d be acting spontaneously and baking the thing that you know that you have to do. I tell this to the ladies to the various Courses I go around the world. The dear, kind ladies. You know what they do? A few weeks ahead, they start studying recipes ‘Will Guruji like this, will Guruji like that?’ They go to the shop and buy a whole half a dozen of Indian books, Indian cookery, Eastern cookery. They study, study, study, study. And yet they know Guruji is a very simple man, anything that’s offered on the table through the grace of God, through the cook, because Grace does not descend on its own, it descends via a medium. And in this case, the person that cooks is the medium for

4. CAN 83-6 God’s grace to flow. Because Grace is intangible, it’s a force, an energy, a power. It has to flow through some object, so in this case it is the lady. And she goes to all this trouble, trying to hunt up recipes and recipes. Put on the table things that you are used to making. Why bother. You see, man does not live by bread alone. But anything that is made, must be done by utter love, or else I suffer from gases. (Laughter) You see. Now all these little examples I am giving you is t o illustrate how spontaneous a person can be. Right. So you plan on making a certain kind of meal for Guruji today. You look through the cupboards and say, ‘Oh, I want to make this kind of meal but one ingredient is missing’. So, you jump into the car and drive five miles to the supermarket or wherever, to get that one little ingredient because you want to make that dish. Why not just scrounge around in the fridge and the shelves and say, ‘Ah, this is there, that’s there, that’s there, I’ll just throw this together, that together, that together’. It might even turn out better, who knows. Spontaneous action. It’s not impulsive, not deliberated. So spontaneity and deliberation of a certain thing or of what is to be done are two opposites. I take a walk and I see a lady pushing a pram, and ah, look at the baby, lovely baby, and just spontaneously, without a reaction I’ll kiss the child’s forehead, say a few nice words to the mother pushing the perambulator. Spontaneously. Spontaneity is related to love, which just flows. You can’t force love. You can’t cultivate love, it is just something within you that flows and the more integrated you are, the greater the flow. Talking of a perambulator, in short, in England we call it a ‘Pram’. Do you call it here as well? Answer. Baby Buggy. Gururaj. Baby Buggy. So, this old lady was pushing up this baby buggy up a hill, and, there was a Vicar standing around there and he saw this poor old lady pushing up this baby buggy up the hill and he felt sorry for her, and he said, ‘Madam, may I help you?’ So the Vicar pushed the pram up the hill for this old lady. So when they reached on top, ah, so she thanked him profusely, ‘Thank you very much for helping me.’ So he says, ‘I want a reward. Can I kiss the baby?’ says the Vicar. So the old lady says, ‘Baby? What baby? This baby buggy is full of my old man’s beer’. (Laughter) This other Parson, Minister, had to go to Vancouver city, and he couldn’t find parking space for his car. So he drove around, and when he couldn’t find parking he parked in the place where there’s no parking. So he wrote a note and put it on the windscreen or windshield and he wrote that, ‘I tried high and low to find parking without success, forgive us our trespasses’. Later on, a policeman comes along and he saw this note and then the policeman too wrote a note, the policeman wrote that ‘The sergeant will be around here in five minutes. Lead us not into temptation’. (Laughter).

5. CAN 83-6 So, spontaneity is a way of life. Spontaneity is a way of life. You cultivate the way, and spontaneity comes of its own. It’s like gardening. You take care of the garden, you cultivate the garden, and the flowers will grow spontaneously because all of the conditions of its growth has been prepared beforehand. So we do not plan things. A general outline must be made that from Langley we are going to travel to Vancouver. Fine. That’s a destination. Finish. Period. But as we go along the road, we might want to stop and admire the beautiful cows, so serene in the meadows, so we’ll stop for a few moments and watch them. Or we’ll pass a park with little children playing, stop the car and watch them play. I’m very fond of doing that. I could never pass a children’s park without stopping for a few moments and watching their innocent plan. That is beautiful. It’s one of the most beautiful sights one could see. And as you go along you might pass some gardens, some lovely homes. You stop, you look. Now these things were not planned. You see? The only plan you had in mind was to reach the Planetarium Theatre to listen to Guruji, he’s talking there., or the Robson Theatre, or whatever. But the thing is on the way you can enjoy, spontaneously, without planning that I am going to stop here or stop there or stop there. The only time people act spontaneously and stop their car is when they have a puncture. They are forced. Spontaneity requires no force, just to act, to flow with nature. For the very nature of spontaneity is nature, to be natural. To be yourself and do the things that just comes to you. Now this is no justification for a person with an evil mind, who’d say ‘Oh I just killed a person spontaneously’. No. He killed a person or stole, impulsively, and to be impulsive, as I said before, could be a disease. Another question, because I’ve been told we’ve got to leave here at half past eleven. Peter’s doing some photography. Questioner. You don’t have to go very deeply into this but I am a little confused, about the subject of evil. Now, one night you said that everything is perfect when really there isn’t any and yesterday you said that it would take Hitler a long time to get reborn because he’s so evil. And just now you did mention somebody with an evil mind, might impulsively kill someone. How do we .................. Gururaj. Reconcile. Questioner. Yes, and how do we live upon the evil that we heard about?

6. CAN 83-6 Gururaj. Ah, yes, now, now there is good and evil on the relative plane, on the grosser plane of existence where one sees the polarity of things, and one does not see the wholeness. Now, the two ends of a cane, a piece of wood has two ends, we only see the two ends, and forgetting that it is but one cane. So, in relative existence, there is good and bad. And by good and bad, what we mean is this, that something which is conducive to nature and other things which are not conducive to nature, and that makes it good. That which is harmful to others is evil and that which does good to others and ourselves, is good. But from a very higher angle, from the superconscious level, everything is regarded to be the same. For then you do not stand at the two ends of the piece of wood, you stand in the centre. So as a man develops more spiritually, as he unfolds more, to him everything is the same, and everything is perfect. For he realises that these opposing forces have to be there for the world to function. So he might say this action was not a god action, but he does not condemn the actor. His heart is filled with love for the greatest so-called, ‘sinner’ and the greatest ‘saint’, for, there is no saint that did not have a past, and there is no sinner that would not have a future. You see? So it is looking from two different angles. When we look at things from a very mundane, secular, worldly angle, we would definitely see good and bad. But when we rise above that, then good or bad disappears. We just see the neutral Divinity in everything. For even when a man commits a crime, what energy is there that makes him commit the crime? Isn’t it Divine energy? Everything is controlled and energised by this Divinity and it depends on the person’s state of mind that makes him use the same energy in a good way or a bad way. The good way would be evolutionary, progressive for him, while the bad way would be retrogressive. So, when one retrogresses, then one has to pay for it. You fall under the law of opposites, you fall in the law of karma, where you are bound by your actions. And then you have to pay for your actions. Good actions bring about good results, bad actions bring about bad results. You can’t plant potatoes and expect onions to grow and you can’t plant onions and expect potatoes to grow. But when a person has risen above worldly, mundane things, when he has reached that spiritual level, then to him everything is holy. Everything is good. He understands that this man has committed a crime, but it might have been necessary for him to commit this crime, to reap the punishment for it, which would better himself. For the forces of evolution are forever pushing you on and on and on. So life itself is a paradox. For, both the opposites are true. In the one case we accept the principle of good and evil, and from another standpoint you say there is no such thing as good, and there is no such thing as evil. I have told the story of Milarepa many times. Milarepa was a great Tibetan Yogi. He wrote, in one of his poems, that ‘When I was a young man, I used to do black deeds, meaning evil deeds. And when I had some knowledge, gained some wisdom, I did good deeds. But now I do neither’. You see? When a man reaches a certain height, a certain evolutionary height, he becomes a law unto himself. And whatever action he performs becomes non binding to him. No impressions are left, no

7. CAN 83-6 Samskaras are formed within himself for which he has to work out. He is fee, while the others are in bondage. To be good also produces bondage, and to be bad also produces bondage. Bondage in the sense that you have done good and that falling within the laws of karma, you will have good rewards. If you do bad, you will have bad rewards. But if you do neither you have no rewards. You see? So the other day someone asked me about the various planes of existences from a lower heaven to a higher heaven. So, those heavens as I said, exist in your mind. If you have done good, then naturally your mind would be attuned, your mind would project itself to a good environment after shedding this body. And, if you have done a lot of bad things, naturally it is registered there in the computer of the mind. And you, because the mind is fond of projecting, you will be projecting from your mind, a not very conducive atmosphere around you. That is hell. The other’s heaven. But to go beyond heal and heaven that is self realisation. That is total integration. For hell and heaven, as I said, are only projections of your own thinking abilities, and your own thinking mind. And the mind can play a lot of tricks with you. The mind can make you believe things that are not really there. And the mind can make you believe things that are really there, and it would seem to you, not to be there. Do you think I’m really here? No. I’m not. You’ll see this frame, you’ll see this body. But am I here totally? No. I am everywhere. The farthest corners of the universe. At the same very moment I might be speaking to another group of people in another body. You see? It depends upon our perceptive of things. For that spirit is infinite and universal and could never be confined to this little frame, this bit of flesh and blood. And they say, that ah, it’s chemical value is just about a dollar. But with inflation it could be a dollar and a half now. (Laughter) So there is good and evil on the relative plane of existence, and when one rises above that all, then there good and evil disappears. When night comes up, the sun disappears, does not mean that the sun is not there. It is shining on the other side of the world. It is there. And when the sun comes up, the stars disappear to our sight, but they are still there . So, both are true. All opposites are true. It depends in what context we speak and from what perspective or from what angle we look at things. Those two little girls were discussion their grandmother, who was about ninety years of age. And from morning ‘til night, she was reading the Bible. So the one girl asks the other little girl, ‘Why is grandmother reading the Bible so much?’ So the other one replies ‘Oh, she’s cramming for her finals’. (Laughter) You see the double meaning in it, see the double meaning? How things can be interpreted into different ways? The other little girl might be thinking that Mum is writing some exam, for cramming for her finals. Meanwhile grandmother knows that she is coming to an end, her life is

8. CAN 83-6 coming to an end, to the final. So she’s trying to worship, pray and study the Bible as much as she could. Do you see the perspective, the angle we look at things? Yesterday in Sunday the story of the Prodigal Son was told, so after telling the story, the Sunday school teacher asked, who was not happy at the return of the Prodigal Son. So one lad stands up and says, ‘The fatted calf’. (Laughter). Ah, yes. The poor thing had to give its life, didn’t he? Now this bishop was walking through the gardens and he was looking at the trees and the flowers, and he says, ‘Oh, look at the wonderful work of the Lord’. So here, one old monk that was on his knees gardening there and working away, he says ‘You are right Sir’, he says to the bishop. ‘You are right, your Holiness that it is beautiful. But you shoul d have seen it when he had it to Himself’. (Laughter) So the moral is this, that naturally Divinity makes things, everything beautiful, but we have to do something. The gardener has to do his work. And with the help of the Lord and his energy, the garden becomes very beautiful. We cannot allow things to wait, and the garden growing full of weeds. It would stifle the garden. We’ve got to put our hands to it, as we have to put some effort in life at first, to bring life to an order where we can act spontaneously. So, after the effort, like a child, a young man, like Peter, going to college, studying electronics. It’s hard work. I saw some of his books and when I opened one of them it all seemed like hieroglyphics to me. Fine. But after his study he knows to him this is play. Running these machines or fixing up this, that or the other. But hard work was required. Now he does it spontaneously, automatically. That’s another word for it. It’s like when we learn to play the piano. Through it the one finger, ping, ping, ping, ping, ping. And then, when you are an addict, an expert at the piano you could hold a deep philosophical conversation with me, and Lesley would still play his Mozart or Bach or Tchaikovsky, or whatever and play perfectly. It becomes automatic and spontaneous. Good. So, this businessman, he had three trays on his desk. One tray was marked ‘In’, the other tray was marked, ‘Out’, this was in ah, Chetan’s office. He has three trays on his desk. One was marked ‘In’. The other was marked, ‘Out’ and the third tray was marked, ‘LBW’. So I asked Chetan, ‘I can understand the ‘In’, and I can understand the ‘Out’, but I don’t know, what does this mean? LBW?’ So he tells me, ‘Let the blighters wait’ (Laughter) Yes. This elderly doctor, he had so much work. This elderly doctor had so much work, so he had to get a young partner. So when the doctor went out on his calls, he took the young partner with him, to introduce him to his patients. So they

9. CAN 83-6 went first to Mrs Goodbody, plump lady, lying in bed there. So the doctor put a thermometer, the old doctor put a thermometer in her mouth and looked at her temperature, but when he was handling it, it slipped out of his hand and it fell to the floor, the thermometer. So he picked it up, and When they left the house, the young doctor asked, picked up the thermometer and you told Mrs Goodbody that, ‘You mustn’t eat too many chocolates, you’d recover quicker if you did not eat so many chocolates’. So went they left the home, the young doctor asked - hey, that’s a delayed reaction, Rosemary – you’re laughing now (Laughter). So, the young doctor asked, ‘What made you say you must not eat too many chocolates?’ So the old doctor replied that, ‘When I bent down to pick up the thermometer, I saw chocolate wrappings under her bed, a lot of chocolate wrappings’. Fine. So, then after that, they made the next call to Mrs Loveday. Good. So the young doctor, it was his turn to examine Mrs Loveday and he put a thermometer in Mrs Loveday’s mouth and he, too, somehow or the other, he took thermometer out it fell to the floor, and the young doctor picked it up, and he advised the patient, Mrs Loveday, that ‘You must not be too interested in the church’. So, when they left the house, the elderly doctor was a bit surprised. He says, ‘Why should you mention the church to Mrs Loveday?’ So the young doctor replies ‘Well when I dropped the thermometer, and went to pick it up, I saw the Vicar’. (Laughter) Well I think Chetanji, you wanted half past eleven, - it is half past eleven now. Good. END