1. ES 77 - 03 -1 Gururaj: -- Swirling around. Why do they swirl around? They can’t swirl around on their own? It is life that makes them swirl around. Yes, yes, so as our awareness expands, then our perception widens to see the essence of things. And one day when the awareness is expanded enough, we will say that everything is one and when everything is found to be one, then it is all love. Only when there is two there is hatred because of friction but when men realises that all existence, this table, this flower, me, you, it is all one, then being one there's no friction. No friction, no problem, that is love. So simple and love is god. You see, that is the secret, that is the purpose. The purpose of life is to know, is to ask who am I and the n to know who I am. Yes, yes, I answered that question before when I used the analogy of water vapour and ice that it is all a difference of degree, but essentially the same. I want to tell you a translation of a Persian poem – Persian, yeah Persia, Iran today they call it Iran yeah, I will give you a rough English translation okay? A lover went to his beloved – a lover went to his beloved and knocked on the door and she asked, “Who is it?” and he says, “It is Mr So and So.” The door was not opened. Next day he go again and he knocked on the door, and she asked “Who is it?” and he answers again, “I am John Jones.” Door was not opened. The third day he went again and he knocked on the door and she asks “Who knocks?” And he says, “I am thee my beloved,” and the door was opened. You see – you see that is love. When we find separation, it is not love. That is why you were born. That is why you are human, that is why divinity has given your mind to think, that is why divinity has given your heart to feel. So combine the two and realise that I and you are one. I am a lover. (Laughs) yes, a lover of life. I am love. Okay, next question. You got some questions in your pocket or is this interesting? Translator: Yes, he says that yesterday when we finished, he wanted to make a question and you said – Gururaj: Yes, yes, yes. Si – Si – come, mike. What? She said ten minutes left. (Laughs) What is the problem? Translator: The problem is that I don’t quite catch – yes, I think what he – he wants to know about – I am afraid I will not very – be very accurate, but more or less what he wants to know about is if family is an everlasting structure or as some people think today, it’s something that has to be left – destroyed because very often it doesn’t work. I'm not very accurate so I'm afraid, but more or less what he is worried about is about the family as an institution. Gururaj: Are you worried about your family? If it is personal, then he can have private interview with me. Translator: Yes, he says that he wants to know about family in general. Gururaj: Oh in general?

2. ES 77 - 03 -1 Translator: As in a structure. Is it in an everlasting structure or – or maybe in the modern times it should be abolished and -- Gururaj: Good. Translator: More or less -- Lady: I was just giving a lecture on how to <0:10:00.9> Gururaj: Oh is that your subject today? On marriage? Is it? Lady: <0:10:08.1> Gururaj: I see yeah, what -- what we have arranged so we don’t want to repeat things, what we have arranged is this that this afternoon I want to give private interviews to people so while I'm giving private interviews to people, Amrit will give a talk on marriage so that will contain the basis of family structure. Okay? Okay and then tonight I will speak again. So Amrit’s time is what time? Lady: 5:00 p.m. Gururaj: 5:00 o’clock on marriage and my time too – Lady: 5:00, 5:00 to 6:00 guruji. Gururaj: Yeah, five? 5:00 o’clock Amrit? Right. Lady: 5:00 o’clock. Gururaj: 5:00 o’clock right. And then my – my lecture is at what time?

3. ES 77 - 03 -1 Lady: 10:30 Gururaj: 10:30? Yes, okay. I want to introduce Amrit to you. Now Amrit is a spiritual name. He is Professor Walter <0:12:15.5>. Right he was lecturing in psychology and philosophy at the Barkley University America. Yeah, fine. Now he is with me full time and is the national leader for England and also helps me in international affairs, my son. ?(laughs) good so he will discuss this afternoon the basis of family structure and marriage because that is the lecture he had in mind to give so its so sense repeating one thing two times. Good? Okay. Is it lunch time now? Half past one? Half past one? Lady: <0:13:36.8> Gururaj: Oh oh oh, yes. Where – where will be the notice? On that door? Lady: <0:13:49.4> Gururaj: We’ll work out that. 4:00 o’clock the notices will go up till then that I am busy going through the forms and I will want to see some people, so 4:00 o’clock on this door, the notice will go up with the time and the names and they can please come to room number? Lady: Guruji they could wait <0:14:12.1> Gururaj: Yeah, yeah right yes. We’ll put the – on the notice where they must come okay? For private interviews, please tell them. The time – for private interviews. Okay? So I am busy at the moment going through all the forms, okay? I would like to see every one personally but time is so short you know. But I will do my best to see as many as possible and of course the important matters first. Good. If anyone has any physical problems or ailments, then please bring it to the notice of Matilda and we can do some healing. Okay? Right, fine, good. We’re good now. <Another audio starts> Amrit: We were initiating some people into some advance practices and the time we just couldn’t leave at the – at the moment and the lecture started. Okay. So without further ado, lets get into the talk for today. Now I thought it might be nice, arrangements were made for me to talk about marriage, in actual fact the idea that I had in mind originally was to

4. ES 77 - 03 -1 spend some time talking about what a guru is. So perhaps we could talk a bit about both. Okay, maybe starting out by talking about what a guru is. Okay, does this meet with your approval? Okay. Now it’s very very important to understand that a guru is an ordinary human being just like any other human being on this planet. A guru has a personality, a physical body and a mind which is in no way different from the body, mind or personality of any human being that lives on this planet. The difference is that a guru has, because of his level of spiritua l evolution, has attained to a certain ability to act as a kind of channel for divine or spiritual energies. Now all human beings, all human beings have the capacity to be channels for spiritual energies. The difference is more difference in degree rather than a difference in kind and when each human being reaches a certain level of spiritual evolution, they will eventually reach a point where their capacity to channel divine energies becomes that of a guru’s, but – but this takes time and a certain amount of effort on our part to mature and develop and we don’t want to pretend to be gurus before we actually reach the point where we’re ready to be so. Okay. Now let me begin today by telling you a little bit about gururaj’s background where he’s come from, what he’s done in his life and so forth. Gururaj was born December 12 in 1932 in a state called Gujarat in India which is on the north eastern coast of India. He was born into a – what’s called a Kshatriya family, it was a very well- to -do business and farming family. Okay. From a very –very early age in life, Gururaj showed remarkable spiritual awareness and – and interest. For instance, at the age of five, he ran away from home for the first time to seek god. He was actually away from home for four and a half months wandering throughout India visiting temples all over trying to, in some way, achieve communication with the divine. At the age, after the four and half months, his mother finally found him wandering ragged and barefoot, he was found in a village several hundred kilometres from his home. When his mother asked him what he had been doing, he explained he had been seeking god but that the gods in all the temples were silent and wouldn’t speak to him. Obviously after this incident it was clear that this was a very special child and would require a very special kind of education and upbringing. So Gururaj was very thoroughly trained in the spiritual tradition of his own country and also spent a great deal of time studying the scriptures from other religions, particularly say from china – from the Chinese and Christian religion. But all of these study between the age of about five and fifteen only serve to further awaken his thirst for the direct experience of divinity, for the direct experience of union with divinity. So once again, at the age of fifteen, he left home and he ran away from home and ran off to the Himalayas where he began seeking for that spiritual teacher, for that master that would be able to guide him to the experience of union with divinity. During these years he visited many ashrams, was taught by many different spiritual teachers and literally practiced literally hundreds of different kinds of meditation and spiritual practices. In addition he underwent certain austerities, for instance he fasted for 30 days at a time

5. ES 77 - 03 -1 without food or water. Finally at the age of 18, Gururaj found his master, his teacher whose name was Pavitra Ananda, if any of you have ever read Yogi Ananda’s autobiography, The Autobiography of a Yogi, you’ll remember how Yogi Ananda met his teacher, his master. Yogi Ananda was walking through a village street one day and suddenly he saw the grey haired man who was to be his teacher and he tried to walk past him but it was as if an actual force gripped him and dragged him back to – to face his teacher where they actually began a conversation and it was immediately obvious that this was the master that he had been waiting for and so it was that when Gururaj met his teacher, there was an immediate and extremely powerful sense that he had come home, that this was the person that was there to guide him to his experience of union with divinity. Finally, sometime between the age of 18 and 20, one afternoon it was a hot summer afternoon, Gururaj actually for the first time went into the state which was sometimes called Nirvikalpa Samadhi. I will explain in just a few minutes what that Sanskrit word means. First let me give you a little bit more background about Gururaj’s worldly activities. When Gururaj left home at the age of 15, he originally went to Bombay where he – where he entered a university and started studying. Though his family was very wealthy, during these years at university, he supported himself by doing various kinds of work which he acquired in Bombay. His first job for instance was spent washing dishes in a restaurant several hours a day for which he would receive his food. Meanwhile he would sleep under – under one of the tables at night. So Gururaj has experienced the extremes of living in actually great wealth and also in living in great poverty and a good portion of the time when he was at university was that period of time when he lived in great poverty. Now each summer when – or every vacation when he was away from university which was somewhere around a third to a half of the time in India, so on all of these occasions he would immediately go and spend his time in the Himalayas and when he found his master at about the age of 18, thereafter every waking moment when he wasn’t actually at university, he was with his teacher in the Himalayas and it was sometime between the age of 18 and 20 when he had the experience of what I call Nirvikalpa Samadhi and now I will define what that state is. Okay. Now in all the eastern and the western tradition, there are two stages of god realisation which are very clearly illustrated in the lives of the great saints. There are two stages of god realisation which are clearly seen in the lives of the great saints – in the great saints. Translator: I don’t remember the last part.

6. ES 77 - 03 -1 Gururaj: Oh that there were two stages of god realisation which can easily be seen if one studies the lives – in the first stage which is in Sanskrit called Savikalpa Samadhi, the individual experiences a direct perceptual and emotional aware – or a perceptual and feeling awareness of god’s presence but the individual is still separate from god and recognises his or her separateness from god. Usually at this stage one experiences god very intensely, but in the form – but in the – through the mode of some specific form, so for instance many of the great saints could evoke a vision of god in the form of Christ, of the virgin Mary, of Krishna, of Buddha and so forth which will be extremely blissful for them to experience and so in this state one would experience god as something which has an actual form or structure in the form, perhaps of their, their great spiritual leader, but at the same time one would be separate from god. There will be a sense that one was separate from god and one would not see god in everything. So one would not see god, for instance, necessarily in a flower or a tree, but just in that visualised object which is one’s closest, we could say, form, the most perfect form that one sees god in. Now that’s Savikalpa Samadhi. Now in Nirvikalpa Samadhi, one experiences union with the divine but beyond form, beyond all forms. This is the state where we, where the person in the state of Nirvikalpa Samadhi becomes like a drop of water which has merged into the ocean. One experiences oneself as completely immersed in the godhead, in divinity. In this state, everything that one looks at, everything that one touches, everything that one smells, everything that one hears is a manifestation of divinity t o one. Divinity radiates forth from a flower, from a tree, from a rock, from a cloud. This state then is union with divinity beyond and permeating all forms and this is the highest state called Nirvikalpa Samadhi. In the Christian tradition, Meister Eckhart was one of the great mystics who obviously achieved that state. Now when Gururaj was between 18 and 20, one hot Thursday afternoon, meditating with his teacher in the summer, he went into the state of Nirvikalpa Samadhi. He went into meditation and completely was lost in the total infinity of divinity and for two hours he was in meditation and had no idea how much time had passed. Now when he emerged from the meditation state, his entire consciousness was completely permeated by the most delicate gold and when he opened his eyes to look at the environment, everything that he saw was completely bathe within and without in a golden radiance. The radiance from within was extremely ecstatic to experience. Okay and this is permanent. This has been his state since that day between – somewhere between the age of 18 and 20. After having had this experience, Gururaj was so full and complete within himself that he felt no need to continue in the world anymore and he wanted to just be a monk and go into some Himalayan cave, but nature – but divinity had – divinity had other plans in store for Gururaj. His teacher, Gururaj's teacher Pavitra Ananda insisted that he must become a householder so that he could experience all of the joys, problems, all aspects of the life of a householder. So that when he

7. ES 77 - 03 -1 began his work as a teacher, he would be able to relate directly to all of the things which a householder needs to know and understand. So Gururaj completed his studies in commerce and accountancy at about the age of 20. You might also be interested in knowing that Gururaj is a very fine poet and that – and when he was about 15 years old, he won one of the highest awards for poetry for all of India. A book of his poems will be out within – will be published within the next year. In addition, he’s a – he is quite a fine musical composer, he composes of course Indian music, not western music and he has done several compositions where musical expression in the form of poetry was set to music. Anyway, at the age of 20 he left India to go to South Africa where at that time there was opportunities for Indians to emigrate. He arrived in South Africa with 10 shillings in his pocket. When he arrived, he immediately decided that he was going to start in business and did not want to depend upon the – the family fortune back in India – in India to live upon. So gradually he started an accounting business, first he worked as an accountant for someone and then started doing private accounts in the – for individuals in the evening and then gradually had so many private clients that he could start his own business. Okay and gradually over a number of years, he built up a very, one might say almost a financial empire, that is he became a very successful businessman in South Africa. In fact he was once of the Board of Directors of 26 different corporations at the same time and this included a different types of work such as films, finances, textiles etc. Okay, when guru – Gururaj also was married and raised a family of three sons. His eldest son presently is about 22 years --