1. UK 80- 15 Gururaj. There again the ego cannot exist without reality. So believing cannot exist without the basis of reality. No what... Questioner. Gururaj, if one becomes increasingly aware of the elusive nature of personality and through this begins to realise that I can achieve nothing which is not Thy will. How can one then discriminate between ego games and guiding intelligence? Gururaj. A beautiful question. How can one discriminate between ego games and guiding intelligence? Now first of all, the ego is a game. It has nothing else but a game. The ego is in reality non-existent because the ego is an idea which has been formulated by various thoughts that we have been thinking over the ages. Now thoughts do have a tendency of leaving its essence behind. Now the essence of a thought would mean the totalness of that particular thought and what impressions it has created on what we call the mind. So what we are today is nothing else but a collection of the seeds of those thoughts that we have thought. Now this creates what we call for explanatory purposes, the ego. Good. So the ego does not have a reality from the standpoint of the absolute, for there is only one thing that is real and that is you, th e absoluteness or the life-force that is the only reality. So if that is the only reality, then the ego is necessarily a illusion. Good. Now the goal of man's life is to get rid of the illusion because illusions are also governed by laws of nature. It is also governed by the laws of opposites. So wherever there is reality, there has to be illusion and that illusion in this instance, is the ego. Good. What do we do with ego then? For a veil - illusion is illusory yet it has a basis of reality to it. The underlying factor that puts force into the ego has to be real. So there again the ego cannot exist without reality. So illusion cannot exist without the basis of reality. Now what creates reality? Does the ego create reality or does reality create the ego? That is the question. In this instance we can look at it from both angles and both angles would be valid. For the reality would have to manifest in some way or the other and when it comes to human consciousness, the dominant manifestation is the formulation of the idea of 'I' and that is ego. Now you could ask the question 'Do I really exist?' Now the senses and the mind will tell you that you exist. Yes. But if you go beyond the senses and the mind, there is existence then except the existence of reality. So here are thought forms condensed into matter, which form what we regard to be real. And yet what is matter? Matter is also just the condensation of this very fine subtle energy that permeates the entire universe and even beyond the universe.

2. UK 80- 15 But now our problem is this, how to conquer the ego, how to get beyond the idea of 'I'. And it is only by going beyond the idea of 'I', that what we know as Divinity or creative intelligence can have its full force. When it comes to discriminating, for example, who is deciding on what course to take. Someone wrote me a letter saying that, ‘I have developed the powers of discrimination’. I on his report form wrote back, ‘Who says you have the powers of discrimination? What part of you says that you have the powers of discrimination?’ Is the ego not deluding itself into thinking that it has discrimination, while real discrimination comes from that creative intelligence which comes up spontaneously, where as we talked about the other day, analytical thought is not necessary. For the ego being limited and bound by the various thought forms and experiences that the ego has gone through, that in itself has perpetuated the ego. So it is swirling around within yourself all the time, this sense of 'I' and that sense of I' is the ego which perpetuates itself within itself. And after doing that, it tries to extend itself in the form of imposition on the environment. Man has no right as far as his ego is concerned to impose that on the environment because he is only imposing his own personal experiences that are confined in this limitedness of the ego. And those experiences are not complete. For every experience has its opposite counterpart. Good will have its bad and love will have its hate and that's how it goes on. And it is just the working of the ego. So as we are all sitting here, what are we? We are just egos. This ego, this very fine thought form has crystallised itself into its biological and physiological counterpart. It has crystallised itself. So, who is the ego? The thought form that has accumulated in the mind, the sub-conscious self and the conscious self and that is pervading every cell of our body. So even the body is an ego. The body is ego, the mind is ego and all that is contained within the mind is ego. That is why we say in simple terms "Oh, this is my hand and this is my toe and this is my head." So the first thing ego produces is this sense of 'Me' and when this sense of 'Me' is produced, the sense of 'Mine' automatically comes about. Now this is the greatest stumbling block for the creative self of man, the creative intelligence, pure consciousness to flow through that acts as the door that is shut. Now the ego also being a manifestation, for nothing can come from nothing. Nothing can come from nothing, everything has a cause and every cause has its effect. When we talk of causes, then the cause too will have a cause and that cause will have another cause, ad infinitum. So how far can we go? You have to stop somewhere or else you will find causes behind causes, behind causes, behind causes. Now every cause has to react as an effect. Now what we will find as we study the ego more deeply? We will find that there is not difference between cause and effect for the cause is within the effect and the effect is inherent in the cause. It is like the great oak tree being within the acorn and the acorn is in the oak tree. So all the seeds are there an d created by us. Created is a wrong word but put together by us, that constitutes our present ego. Now this has been an

3. UK 80- 15 automatic process. Millions of thoughts are thought and the seeds of those thoughts come together and they form various groups in the mind. And then a particular circumstance, circumstance turns up, then a particular condition comes about, when we draw on that particular group formation that is within the ego. So the ego contains millions of these groups. Now ego does not necessarily have to be bad. There one could embark on the laws of karma, where karma means action and good action will have good effects, bad action, bad effects. As the old saying goes there, 'Whatever you sow, that shall you reap'. So that ego is filled with that which is called good and bad on the relative level. On the other level of the absolute, there is no such thing as good or bad. So here we have the human ego which comprises the body and the mind and it draws power from the spirit. Now the power it draws from the spiritual self of man is not real spiritual force. It is a reflected force. Like a mirror where you shine a torch in a mirror and you take the mirror to a certain angle and that very mirror will reflect the light to another part of the room. So what we are doing in keeping the ego alive is not drawing the reality which is within us but we are drawing reflected reality. If we draw reflected reality then how much is that mirror worth because it cannot produce that light. It has to be dependent on reflected light and therein lies the dream, the falsity of the ego. So nevertheless we are stuck with it. Good. What to do with it, that is the question. So let me repeat again they're certain points that have to be driven home so that we could understand the context, the finer subtler meaning of the talk that the ego is not only the mind, its not only the sense of 'I', but it is also the body and the outer senses. Good. Right. Now the ego is necessary in the relative sphere of existence to create individuality, to give a person a sense that 'I am'. Now this sense of 'I am' is also a reflection. It’s a reflected 'I am' from the true 'I am'. Now this ego that has been created not necessarily by us in the beginning, for we had flowed within the confines of manifestation in a more spontaneous natural flow but when that particularised atom reached the stage of man and he started developing a consciousness, he became aware of himself. Now as he became aware of himself, primal man when he became aware of himself, he was first aware of the real 'I am'. But because of self-preservation, because a body had been formed, a mind had been formed, he had to preserve it. And that is why he went hunting for food and then later as he developed, he grew into an agricultural community but this was all for self-preservation of the body and the body is, also constitutes the ego. Now with this action that started in a very simple manner just to fill the stomach, just to have sustenance, he became more and more aware of himself. And he became so much aware that they had to invent mirrors to prove to himself 'Ah, this is me.' You see. But as this grew, his consciousness grew with it. As his needs grew and you know what needs are, they tend to multiply all the time. So instead of his consciousness that was growing, being led to the real 'I', the real spirit within himself, it took an outward turn because of his growing needs. And as it took an outward turn and as his needs

4. UK 80- 15 grew, his consciousness also grew because he became more aware of the things he needed. And that is how and that is how awareness started growing. So the awareness in its very growth, instead of being aware of his real self, he started becoming more and more aware of his needs and his outer self and his environment. Now this combined and re-combined and it computed itself, permutated itself and that created still far greater needs. Now, all this has resulted in the build-up of that which we call ego. That is the wall he was building, brick by brick and he shut himself off from what he really is. So as his needs grew and man became more sophisticated, he stopped realising who he really is and his attention centred around his body, his emotions, his feelings, which are constituents of ego in its limited form. So then, so then he started feeling various emotions. If you look at primitive man and the sophisticated man, the primitive man will have less suffering than the sophisticated man. Because of this grace of awareness, a greater sensitivity grew, a greater sensitivity developed. So if you, in the relative sphere of love, if you can love very deeply with the ego then remember you can be hurt just as deeply because you have developed this sensitivity. And that is the price one has to pay in evolution. Man is in a stage of transition. He is standing at the brink to merge into Divinity. He has all the tools, which are not really used. Now as this ego started accumulating the debris of modern day living, he ignored who he really is. But then as that awareness grew further and because of that sensitivity, he started feeling pain. Now there is one thing for sure, that pleasures are soon forgotten but pains are long remembered. You have a good evening, you will forget it soon but if you have a bad evening, a very painful one, you will remember it much longer. So when this started happening, he started enquiring within himself and he started asking, 'Why? Why? Why?' He does not want to admit that he is responsible for it all. No one has inflicted anything upon him. He is responsible of inflicting himself with the pains and miseries and sufferings and whatever has come from the outside. It is also he that has attracted it. So no one is to blame except himself. Fine. But this factor he refuses to recognise. Now when he refuses to recognise this factor, it emphasises or rather amplifies these sufferings that he goes through. So therefore in this world there will always be suffering. There will always be misery. Why? Because we seek pleasure. And once you seek pleasure, be very sure that pain is following behind. Now there are solutions to it. There is a way out. No hope is lost. Now when this ego accumulates all these experiences and as I said a moment ago, you are the net result of all your experiences which you have created yourself and experienced yourself. You are the totality of all your varied forms of existences. Good. And I also said that we are on the brink to experience the real 'I'. Now being on the brink to experience the real 'I', the first question that would come to mind would be 'Who am I?' 'Who am I?' So when

5. UK 80- 15 man starts enquiring 'Who am I' and goes through various logical processes, starts understanding things, realising things, helped by his meditational practices where the mind cannot reach, because the mind is limited and the mind is within the confines of the ego, so it will just swirl around within itself. And the only, the best it can do, is move around energies t o replace some energies from point A to point B but it cannot destroy those energies. So the ego will forever exist, and pain and pleasure will always be in this world. As I said in some talk that in this vast continuum, we are just a small sector an d we all have to pass through this transitional stage to a higher stage. Now as evolving beings come into our framework, there are those that are highly evolved, will pass out of this framework. It is coming in from one door, going through all the experiences in this room and then out of that door into another form of existence. Now what shall we do? We want firstly the awareness. Now by awareness I mean awareness of totality which includes the ego. Man must be able to discriminate and which he would, when his mind cannot discriminate, he relies on that creative intelligence or that intuitive force that is within him to be able to discriminate between the real self and the ego self. Now this is not so difficult. When the ego self wants to do something then he will always have 'me' and 'mine' in mind. That is a very easy form, a very easy formula. When I think, I ask myself "Is this for me?" And if the answer is "Yes," then that very thought or action is ego-orientated. I've had questions put to me - he says "Guruji, you have done so many things all over, wherever you go, people suffering of all kinds of pains and aches and diseases and just by being with you, or you just touching, so many things have happened which people call miraculous." But there's no miracles in this world. No it is just an understanding of subtler laws of nature. As I always say, if a hundred years ago you told someone that a two thousand ton machine will fly through the air or you could speak to someone instantaneously that is ten thousand miles away or see pictures on the T.V. screen which are transmitted thousands of miles away, they would not believe you. They would say you are mad. But as technology increased and as we started knowing subtler and subtler laws of nature, all these things have become realities. Now likewise, likewise when a person is cured of cancer or of blindness or of deafness or whatever, it is just understanding more subtler laws of nature, that is all. Now these people ask me, they say "Guruji, you can do this and that and that for this one and that one and that one" - there's thousands of letters on file, letters of gratitude and things which we have - " but why can't you do something for yourself? You can't even cure your cold." You see. Now there's a reason for that and it’s a very important reason. Because as soon as I want to cure my cold, I am thinking of 'me', 'my cold' and as soon as a thought of 'me' creeps in, I will immediately build a wall to that spiritual force that could flow through me, for I am non else but just a channel for that Divinity. So I have to stop thinking of me,

6. UK 80- 15 whatever happens. And that is why we spoke the other day of those great Masters who suffered of cancer and all kinds of things and they just ignored it. They cannot afford to think of themselves. They have to be totally selfless. Totally selfless. Not that they must not take some pills and aspirins and what have you for their colds because that would be impractical or rather foolish but the dominant idea is, they take a natural course as anyone else would, with various medications. And yet they could, just by a single thought, get rid of all their physical ailments and physical problems but that would constitute selfishness and not selflessness. And that is why Christ for example, he cured the blind and he made the lame walk. He raised the dead. Yeah. But when it came to his Crucifixion, the nails driven through his legs and hands, he could not stop it because then he would be thinking of himself and not as the Son who has to be selfless. I'm giving you these examples to show you how to analyse, according to the question that, when is the ego acting and when is that intuitive or that Divine force acting? And the simple formula is this, that what I am doing, is it selfish or is it selfless? And funny enough whenever one acts selflessly, all your needs are met in someway or the other. It is just there. You see. So that is the test, that is the formula. So, the more we can act in life, the more we can think selflessly, the smoother our path becomes, the path to unfoldment, of realising oneself. And then you and only you, can answer the question 'Who am I?' because that question 'Who am I?' can never be explained to you by anyone. It cannot even be explained by yourself. It can be experienced by yourself. So that question 'Who am I?', the answer to that question lies in self-experience, self-realisation and self-realisation, is God realisation. But meanwhile we're still stuck with the damn ego. Yeah. What shall we do about it? Now to repeat again, we can never destroy the ego. We can never destroy a single, for ego too is energy, we can never destroy a single ounce of energy in this universe and we can never add on a single ounce of energy. So what we have to do is expand the ego, expand the ego. But now by expansion, I mean not having a bigger ego (Gururaj laughs) but to refine the ego. So by meditational and spiritual practices where we draw that strength, by right thinking, by right action, by being as selfless as possible as opposed to selfish, as we go through life with these precepts and practices, you will find the ego like a piece of rubber, the more you stretch it, the more transparent it becomes. And as it becomes more and more transparent, more and more light of the spirit will shine through. And I said before, that it is like a pane of glass, you put a very bright light behind the glass and you will not even notice that there is a pane of glass, you will just see th e light. And that is the purpose of life while you are living in an embodied state. So when this body is dropped and of course with all this goes awareness, as the ego is made more transparent, your awareness also expands, awareness of all things around you, the entire universe. And the heart is opened as wide

7. UK 80- 15 as the universe and you can embrace everything animate or inanimate within your heart, for there is no such thing as inanimate, everything has life. Everything has life, so you have the entirety of life in your heart and the awareness, the cognition of the entirety that is within your heart. So with refinement, by making the egoself transparent, this light shines through. And when this physical body is discarded, the physical body will revert to the elements it is composed of, gas, water, earth, air, aether. Those are the components of this body and the entire universe. So these things, gas will go to gas, aether to aether, earth to earth. So even a dead body is a useful body, it helps things. And what goes beyond that, is that very fine transparent ego to the other world, so to say, - there's no other world. There is one universe and in the one universe, there is no time or space. It is a matter of dimensions and dimensions super-imposed upon each other. There are beings on this planet that we with our three dimensional view cannot see, until we develop the fourth and fifth dimension. So, the body then becomes an encumbrance and you discard the body unless you have some mission to perform, some work to do, you keep on the body by sheer will. And then when your work is done, you discard the body and it goes to its original elements. And then what you have left is that transparent clear ego which in time, because being clarified o f all the thoughts that had accumulated, with all the dirt on that pane of glass that has now been cleaned, also merges away into subtle spheres. And then what is left? The spirit. The spirit is left. So this body, physical body and the subtle body which one could also call the mind, melts away. The subtle body and the physical body is like an ice cube and you put it in a glass of water. You put the ice cube in a glass of water and the ice cube melts away and merges away in the water of the spirit because that ice cube is made of the spirit, is the spirit. And then only the spirit remains and you have merged away into eternity. You have merged away into God. And this experience can be had even while you are embodied. You do not need to wait to go into a different dimension to have these experiences. So therefore meditate, meditate, meditate. It helps to cleanse the ego. It helps to bring about that stillness in this lake of the mind. Now that does not mean you must be devoid of thought. Many people have a misconception. I think we must give a talk on this, Kummel, on thought and meditation. Thought is just as important in meditation as your Mantra. Good. So this experience can be had here and now. While the body acts, you are still. You are in action but totally still. It’s like the spinning top, the top that spins at high speed. It seems still and yet so much in motion, the little top that you play. Used to love playing tops when I was a boy. So still and steady and yet so filled with motion. And that is how life should be, full of action, dynamic, for that energy has to be expressed, that energy within and yet to preserve that stillness. And this is brought about by meditation and spiritual practices. Now many people say "Oh Guruji, I don't like to do Tratak, I don't like to do Mandala or whatever the case might be." It’s not what you like. If you don't like it, okay, you're

8. UK 80- 15 going to - I mean - I can only feel compassion, that's all. You know the doctor gives you medicines and they are bitter. "I don't like this medicine, it’s very bitter." It’s not going to help you. You have to take it and you'll feel better. It’s not a question of "I don't like this." You see. So teachers are sometimes hard but they are hard with love. The underlying factor is love, always. Good. That's done it for the moment. END (The following is part of Satsang UK 80/25 which is on this Tape) love and compassion, sharing, offering that which is within, simple, simple things that changes, transforms a person's whole life. And by drawing on the spiritual forces within through our meditational and spiritual practices, it strengthens our resolve, it strengthens that, those virtues that we are to develop within ourselves, not develop, unfold. To me every person is a virtuous person, every person is, some unfoldment is required. You have the book, you are the book of all the wisdom of the universe, but for God's sake open the cover. Don't let it lie on the shelves gathering dust. Open your book of life. Enjoy the joy that is within you. Enjoy it with tears, enjoy it with laughter. Live, Love, Laugh. That is you, you, you. That is your true nature. I have come to tell you of your true nature. I've come to tell you of your strengths, not your weaknesses. Why? What is it going to help you by analysing your weaknesses or dreaming or dwelling upon your weaknesses, so they go further and further and deeper and deeper within yourself. What sense is there? Let us think of our strengths and strengthen those strengths, so the force of those very strengths will get rid of the weaknesses because weakness is opposite to strength. You see. That's how it goes. So simple. Good. Would anybody like to talk of their experiences? I like to hear of these experiences because it gives me an idea of the amount of energy released and how much of that energy has been used and taken up. For those that couldn't hear, how about after tea we were thinking of having a Satsang, we were thinking of having a Satsang - I beg your pardon (General laughter) so those that couldn't hear at the back, I'm sure Keith would just be so happy to play the tape after tea- break, tonight. END