4. SA78- 60 All knowledge whe re we transcend all knowledge and when we transcend all knowledge, then we start experiencing. But knowledge is a necessary tool. Knowledge is a necessary tool because it is by knowing this that you can get knowledge that you do not give the total importance to knowledge. So, when knowledge disappears, you gain wisdom. There is a great difference that wisdom which does not analyse, you are just it, you experience yourself as it. There is no other word for it but I-T -- huh? Good. Yeah, because if I try and define that life force for you, I would start labelling it and as soon as I start labelling it, I am putting mind forces to work, I'm putting the intellect to work, I'm putting analysis to work. Now, how can one analyse that which is beyond all analysis? So , there is only one way -- there is only one way and the way is to go beyond all knowledge and how do we go beyond all knowledge is to bring the mind and body to that required stillness is polishing the window, polishing the glass, cleaning the glass so that the real self shines out and when the real self shines out , you become one with the universe. There are so many Biblical injunctions which people do not understand and I have repeated this over and over again what Jesus would say, “I and my father are one”. Now, “I and my father are one ” does not require knowing that “I and my father are one”, it requires experiencing because you c an only experience oneness. The mind is incapable of experiencing oneness because the mind is a factor, is an obstacle between your real self and every external expression you might have of the real self. It is a filter that prevents that real self from shining through. So the mind could not know, mind could not know, it is experience we want, the experience that would join us, “I am the father ”. That is the experience we are after, and to gain the experience, we use the mind as a tool. The mind is an instrument. So, therefore scripture sa y, “Have faith, believe ”, but that today, the modern mind of man today does not want to believe, does not want to have faith. They do not want to have faith in something that is abstract, but if you show them that you can experience it within yourself, although it is abstract. Then from there, that faith and belie f will develop. That is the message for the world today. It was good to say believe and have faith a few thousand years ago, but today’s world requires the same message, but in a different way; in different manner and yet that experience is an activity. It is an -- it is an activity and normally I love calling it, “the act of love”. So, therefore scriptures would say, “God is love and love is God” because love is never static, it is an activity but so subtle, so refined that it excludes everything that is possessive. It becomes totally non-possessive. It becomes totally non- conditional. If my beloved should ask me, “why do you love me?” I can only say, “I don’t know ”, because if I try and translate the experience through the values of the mind, I will be minimising and distorting and misinterpreting the experience because it is incapable. The mind is incapable of interpreting that experience, but to have that experience, to

6. SA78- 60 So, what is the ego? The ego is the subtle body that differentiates you from the universal and that is why you experience yourself as an individual being, as a part from an universal being. Now, behind all this, you are the universe. You are the universal being, but because of the limitation of the subtle body which is a necessary must, you experience that universality as individuality. And individuality is nothing but the sense of “I” or the sense of ego. Now, when this subtle body which also too could never be static that in turn regulates your life. Impressions of this flower, you would call it a rose because you have seen a rose before. You would call it a red rose because you could associate redness with the colour red that you have seen before. So, the function of the subtle body is to evaluate but this evaluation is so limited that for man to know himself, he has to transcend the subtle body. Good. Now, the second part of your question, what experiences ? Good. That too can be divided into various categories. Now your subtle body is capable of experiencing, your gross body is capable of experiencing. Good. But those experiences are necessary limited. They are individualised and those experiences are conditioned by the impressions that has created in you the sense of “I” . Good. Now, the second part of your question, what experiences? Good. That too can be divided into various categories. Now your subtle body is capable of experiencing, your gross body is capable of experiencing. Good. But those experiences are necessary limited. They are individualised and those experiences are conditioned by the impressions that has created in you the sense of “I”. So, it is an individual experience. Two people or ten people might eat food sitting at the table. Eat food from the same pot. Yet, all ten of them would not experience the same taste. Generally, they would say “ah! it is very nice”, but if you could analyse it, you would find that the same food would not taste the same to everyone. Try it out, even invite some people. Okay, good. You can have five people witnessi ng an accident and yet all five of them will have a different stor y, a different interpretation to the accident. So, it is the subtle body which creates the sense of “I” that will differentiate the experience, but the true universal experience is uniform. Now, for itself to be uniform to every atom, what happens -- what are the mechanics would be that you have to become universal in order to experience the universal ? To really know this flower, you have to become the flower and that is what is known as self-luminosity where the self experiences itself. If anyone tells me that my mind experiences God, I would tell you immediately that your experience has been limited, but if you tell me that I have gone beyond my body and my subtle body which is the mind and God has experienced himself, I will say that is true. I will say that is true so the divinity within man experiences itself and not through the limited vehicles of the mind or body, because the mind and body having being conditioned and subjected to various experiences will have a different interpretation. When a mistake tells you of certain visions the mistake has,

7. SA78- 60 remember this that it is an individual experience. No two mistakes have experienced or have had visions for example that were alike, because in this experience the mind was used and it has been filtered through the mind. Good. If you take a crystal and pass red flower behind it, the crystal seems red. If you pass a yellow flower behind it, the crystal seems yellow and if you pass a blue flower behind it, the crystal will seem blue and yet the crystal is colourless and thus, we find every day we say water is blue. Now, who says water is blue? The reflection is blue. The water is not blue. Like that, we could use many -- many examples. So, the individual experiences a person has when they start meditating would necessarily be individual. Would necessarily depend upon the conditions that they have gone through and those in other words are called psych ic experiences and all psychic experiences are still of a far lower nature then the supreme experience because psych ic experiences are of your subtle body, your mental body. Good. Now, these experiences could be very joyful. So, that would mean that even your subtle body has its subdivisions. Experiencing something with mind only with the grosser level of the mind would be called the Manmaya Kosha in Sanskrit and then when you proceed further and have an experience which is so joyful that you would be experiencing that joy at the finest relative level, and yet within the frame work of the mind and then you would call it the Anandamaya Kosha. These are Sanskrit terms describing that joy , but what I am talking about when experience exists as an experience and the experience experiences itself without the aid of the mind or body. So, that means that you transcend, you go beyond the limitations of the body. You go beyond the limitations of the subtle body or mind and just bee in the pure field of existence. So, therefore many philosophers called god being, and what a big Capital bee filled with nectar. Yeah bee, honey, nectar (Laughs). Yes, so the experience experiences itself. Now the word experience is also a very inadequate word and where do we get the word experience from? It is invented by the mind to describe something. I experience heat, what “I” is experiencing the heat? I experience cold. What “I” is experiencing this cold? The limited body, the limited mind, yes. For that experience which I talk of is beyond all the opposites, all the pairs of opposites is beyond the laws of opposites. So that although because language is so limited, we use the word experience. We use the word “to be”, but mostly it’s always with people not to be (Laughs). But to be -- aahh -- that is beyond all definition. You can not define it. It’s inexpressible, ineffable. Any more adjectives? Come along (laughs) .Yes, now the experience also to recap has various categories. The experiences of the body which the subtle body recognises. Fine, and the subtle body in turn or the mental body sends messages that might <0:36:04.1> his aching, and then the body feel s the <0:36:07.3> aching and which if the mind is under control, it can not feel, it can help the body not to feel the ache. This is what happens in hypnotism for example, which is a very low form. Do not dabble in it, it’s -- it’s no good. When you hypnotise a person, and I have seen where the person is brought to a state where pins and needle are put through their

8. SA78- 60 hands and arms and they do not feel them, where a burning piece of coal is put in a person’s hand and the hand doesn’t burn and neither is the heat, the burning sensation felt because the hypnotis t has , through the process of hypnotism, made the subject of hypnosis believe that the burning coal is a piece of ice. So, it just shows how variable the mind is and how changeable the mind is and how unreliable the mind is, and yet -- and yet we subject everything to analysis. Now by all means everything can subjected to analysis but do not take that to be the sum totality of that experience, it’s a limited experience and the very experience as we sa id now in hypnotism where actual fire is felt as a burning coal, it felt as a block of ice. So, how far can the mind be trusted to really experience the experience? The experience must experience itself and that can only be done when we, through our meditation al practices, go beyond the mind, go beyond the subtle body, go beyond the physical body and just be. And once you just be, there is no turning back, there is no turning back. There is nothing that could be compared to the supreme experience, and once you have the supreme experience, then you know what oneness is. Then you know the oneness of divine existence. Many theists say God is one. Up to now everyone says that there is only one God. You have been conditioned to say that by your parents, by school, by the church. How? But have you experience the oneness? Really? You only believe that -- that there is one God, and at the same time, you say that God is omnipresent. Present every where. So where could the re be place for anything else if God is omnipresent? And here the conflict starts in the mind. Where on the one hand the mind says there is one God and he is omnipresent, and yet practical life shows all kinds of dualities. Where separation -- separation everything is seen through the eyes of separation and yet, within nature, there is an in visible force that is for ever trying to bring things together. If you study physics, if you study any of thes e disciplines , you find that this l aw of attraction is forever bringing things together. Forever in this very petal of this rose, how has all these atoms been bought together into that oneness of the petal? And how all these petals have come -- come together to form the beauty of the flower? So, it is not only the petals we are evaluating, it is not only the petals that has made this flower, but the beauty has made the flower. The invisible life force, the invisible quality, the invisible sweetness that nectar which is beauty. So simple, we understand (laughs). Yeah, yeah -- so, we are all striving consciously or unconsciously to find the unity in diversity. We start from duality where I and you are separate and we reach the unity where “thou and I art one ” and this has been described in all the scriptures of the world. “I and my father are one ”, in Sanskrit Brahmasmi, “I and Brahma are one” and Yahweh in the Irish faith, “I am that I am” now experience “I am that I am” and not through mental analysis because to know “I am that I am” is to know

9. SA78- 60 myself and by knowing myself, I experience myself. That is the supreme experience. Okay? Don’t go off into meditation now (laughs) love you.

1. SA78- 60 Guru: Ask three (Laughs) Public: This is < 0:00:04.7 > with teaching. Is there a quality to difference between Prana which we understand to be life energy and Shakti , which is also a life energy at its most basic form ? That’s question number one. Guru: Um -hmm. Public: Guess I’ll leave it, I’ll have to reform a second. Guru: Go ahead, doesn’t matter. Public: < 0:00:28.8 > Guru: It’s fine. Basically, the question means what is the difference between Prana and the life force or Shakti. Now the word Shakti is a Sanskrit term which means power, force, energy. Good. Prana is the vitality that is involved in this energy. Now, energy too has to be activated. Now we all know that energy could never remain static because it is the nature of energy to always be in a state of flux or in a state of motion. But, now what gives it the motion, what give it the movement and what activates it is the vital force which we call Prana. Now, Prana can exist in so many different categories of subtlety or grossness. So, where there is energy say, for example subatomic energy then it would require the vitality which is also subatomic and Prana, the very same Prana would assume the form of that very subtle energy that would activate. Good. Now, in a grosser machine, it would require a grosser energy, so the very Prana itself having the power of change inherent within its nature. It would assume a grosser form and thereby fill in where a grosser vitality is required. Now, Prana and Shakti being part and parcel of each other could be very hard to differentiate and we only differentiate Prana and Shakti because of explanation -- explanatory purposes because there could be no energy without Prana inherent in it. Now, there is misconception among people that Prana is brea th ing. Prana is only one form of breath. Now the breath again could be subdivided into grosser and subtle qualities. I have said before that a man’s life is not be measured by how many years he lives, but it is to be measured by how many breaths he take. So, through meditation and the various Pranayam exercises, we learn -- we learn to bring the breath down to a far slower rate. This is why the Yogis for example, you might have r ead of could burry themselves under the ground for 30-40 days and does not require breathing. But

2. SA78- 60 before they do this, there is a special practice how this is done, before they do this, they take in one deep breath and one deep breath alone contains so much vitality. They could keep the Yogi alive for those 30 or 40 days. So, what we are doing is we are taking in more breath then what is required through yogic practices -- through yogic practices, so much breathing is not required at all and when we breathe in, what we are actually doing is extracting from every breath the amount of vitality that is required by our system and the purpose of the requirements of our system is to keep us alive. Now you will find teachers of yoga or physical culturists, they lay great emphasis on breathing. The reason why you are required to do breathing -- to do breathing is because the system is not as pure as would be required, so the greater (vehicle noise) -- that’s life force -- so the greater the amount of impurities in our system, the greater the vitality is required to cleanse and to keep the system going. It is like your motor car, when the pistons are worn it will eat oil, normally one pint of oil might last you for a thousand kilometres or more, but if the pistons are worn and the machiner y is not functioning properly, your car will require much -- much more oil. Now this is the function of the life force, or Prana or the vitality that the human system requires. Fine. Now, when we learn a practice of Pranayam, the whole purpose there is to minimise the requirement of breathing, minimise the requirement of the vitality that is required and maximise what we draw from every single breath and that is how, and that is why Yogis can live a very -- very long life on the most minimum of food and the most minimum of breathing. Most of us and then you would all agree to this, we either eat wrongly or always stuff ourselves, which is not necessary. So, when thes e requirements of the physical body is lessened, then the input is also lessened. When the requirements of the subtle body which in turn activates the physical body is lessened, which is the vital force, then you require less breathing. Good. So, what it means is this that all the vital force, the vital force or life energy or life breath or Prana is existing everywhere. It has a universal existence. There is not a single square inch in the entire universe where this life force is not. In other words, this life force of Prana permeates everything, and this I would tell you that if science reaches a certain technological development, they will find that even a stone breath es . They have not reach ed the stage to find that even all mineral life breathes, they have reached the stage to plant life, where they know that breath and air is a necessary function for plant and animal and man, these things are very obvious and very -- very apparent. Good. Now, we said that this life force is existing everywhere and it is for us to use it as much as we want to or to minimise its use.

3. SA78- 60 Now, why should we minimise the use of this vital force? That would be the question. If all your energies are spent in trying to get the maximum amount of this vital force, then you would be lacking the energy to find self-integration, lacking the energy for self-purification, lacking the energy to sustain the subtle body that is within you. So, when you slow down the activity of the physical body, when you slow down the activity of the subtle body, then it has a greater chance. It is given a greater chance to find the integration which is so necessary to bring about a totally balanced person because the spirit within man and the mental body within man and the physical body has to become integrated to find total balance. There is a certain amount of integration. If that certain amount was not ther e, man could never live with the life he lives today. He could never exist; there would be no life force in him. But what man seeks today is to draw more from the life force, from its most subtle self and thus purify the subtle body, purify the physical body until he reaches a stage where he does not require so much of this vitality and we know ourselves that when we do meditation, our breathing slows down where so much oxygen is not required, the whole metabolic rate drops . The -- the whole process of metabolism is burning up and in meditation that process is slow ed down considerably so that the attention of the mind is not upon the body and is not so much upon the mind itself. So by bringing this quiet ude to the body and also the mind, you can experience the essence of yourself which is the spiritual self. So, in all spiritual practices the main aim is to quieten the body, to quieten the physical body of course, to quieten the subtle body which is composed of mind and feel the experience of that which is within you. A man can try very hard to find that quietude that stillness within him through the thought process, but it could never ever work. As much as you know today, and if you should know a thousand fold more, you will find that you know so -- so much less, the more man tries to find the secret of life, the more will the secret of life elude him because the mind is not equipped to understand the inner vital force of man and the inner vital force of man called Prana or whichever name you wish to give it cannot be comprehended with the mind. In other words, the mind or man’s subtle body is not subtle enough to know the subtlety of the spiritual self. So, what do we do? What is the answer? If knowledge cannot take us to those realms, then what must we do? There is only one answer, if you can’t know, then experience. That is the answer and all our meditational and yogic and spiritual practices is aimed at man for man to experience his real essential self which he will -- which will make him know himself and when man knows himself, then he has achieved the purpose of life and living, otherwise he is just on the surface , a surface superficial way of life without any depth whatsoever. What people normally term as depth or the machinations, the workings of the superficial mind and the emotions, all the fe elings of pleasure and pain and cold and heat, they are all very superficial. The range is still very vast, very transcend.

5. SA78- 60 experience the activity of real love, that is such an experience that up to now we have only tasted little tea spoons of sugar, but then we live in an ocean of nectar, what do you want little tea spoons of sugar for then? Okay. So, what we do we activate through Pranayama, we activate the life force that is in the Prana and that life force can also be called love. So simple isn’t it? ( Laughs) Good, fine. I think we’ve spent half an hour on that. Another question? Public: (inaudible) Guru: Would you like to come to mike? < 0:21:15.6 > to Mohammad. Public: That's okay, that’s fine. Public: Excuse me, what -- what does the subtle body consist of and we are -- where do experiences actually takes place? Guru: What does a subtle body consist of and? Public: Where do experiences take place? Guru: Aha, good -- good -- good question. What does the subtle body consist of? Good. The subtle body is a vehicle that connects the gross body to your spiritual body. Now last week I think it was that I give a talk of the importance of the subtle body, the spiritual body is of such fine nature and yet nature is the wrong word for it. It is of such fineness that to bring it to a grosser level of the physical, one requires the medium of the subtle body. Now, the subtle body is composed mostly of the mind. The mind plus the vital forces that are forever existing. In the subtle body , you have Buddhi, that’s a Sanskrit word which is the intellect, the power of evaluation. You have Manas , which is the carrier of all impressions, the store house. You have the Manas, you have the Buddhi and there are so many other categories where this very same carrier of impressions and the evaluator could be categorised, but yet when all these impressions of the mind has gained or the su btle body has gained through so many -- many life times, if you believe in that, there has to be a totality of all those impressions, totality within the limitations of your individual self. Now the totality and the limitations of your individual self is nothing but the sense of “I-ness” so that we call the ego which is also the part of the subtle body. So, the carrier of impressions which is Manas, plus the evaluation of those impressions, understanding of those impressions, appreciation of those impressions, the totality of that would form the ego.