1. U S 77 - 22 ***US 77022 AND US 77025 ARE THE SAME*** US 77025 IS THE BETTER RECORDING AMRIT: I recognize many of the faces from last night, and also some that I didn't see last night. How many are here tonight that weren't there last night? VOICE: That were not there? AMRIT: That were not there last night. [LAUGHTER] Now, Guruji will be down in about ten or fifteen minutes. Let me just check my watch here. Right. He said he'd come down about a quarter `til tonight. And he's going to talk to you for awhile we'll have a kind of satsang. By the way, how m any have heard the term "satsang" before? You know the term? Now, this is a Sanskrit word whose literal translation of "satt," which has to do with truth. Okay, and a "sang", which is being together in communion. Okay. So it's a communion together for the purposes of seeking truth. For the purposes of achieving or experiencing truth. I think that's a better way of putting it experiencing truth. And the traditional way th at this happens is that the people gather around the teacher and a series of qu estions come up, and the teacher responds to the questions. Now, you saw this, most of you, in operation last night. And what the teacher does, what he says, how he responds, how deep the answers get, all depends upon the depth of the questions. That is, what it is that people are asking. And for this reason, I think many of you will find it useful to really think deeply about questions that you'd like to ask Gururaj. And one of the best ways of forcing yourself to do this is to write down the questions. Okay. Now, if you just...suddenly an idea comes to your mind and you get up and start to speak it out and you haven't yet articulated the question in your mind, you'll find then the questions will not be nearly as deep as if you'd thought about it for awhile. M aybe you'd thought about it for half an hour or something. You'd really thought about the various angles of the question and then wrote it down. We did this in England and we got beautiful questions that came out of this. So I would recommend that you a ll write down questions, things that have been on your mind. They can be on any subject you like. There's no holds barred. If you want to ask questions about people from outer space, then you ask questions about people from outer space. Anything you wan t to talk about. And then after you've done this, it might be good, say, in the morning, to hand these questions into Tom or to myself. And what we'll do... and put your name on them. Make sure your name is on them. And what we'll do is look for repeti tions. That is if there are two people are asking basically the

2. U S 77 - 22 same question, then we'll get those two people together and see if they can agree on one formulation of the question, so we don't have repetitions of the same questions coming up over and ove r again. And then we'll give the questions back to you, so you can actually read out the question to Gururaj. Because it's your question and you should be allowed, therefore, to ask for the answer. Okay, is that...you want to try that? So tonight when yo u get back to your rooms, or tomorrow morning, start thinking about questions. Anything that's been on your mind. And deep and probing questions if you like. Alright, a little bit about how this whole movement got started. I was working for a number of years for another organization teaching meditation, and I had been traveling and working, mainly on the West Coast, for a couple of years. And suddenly in about 1964, `74 rather, I started having a feeling that I should go to England. Now, there was abso lutely no rational explanation for this. My life back here was very good. I had a good life. I was enjoying my work. I was well paid for it. My daughter lived very close to where I was living. I had a lovely home there. And so I could see my wife my first wife and I had been divorced and she was living with her mother and, now, step father. So I was very happy about being able to have her with me every week end, because I'm very close to her she's sixteen years old now. And everything was going al ong very nicely. So I could not understand why this feeling, this urge, kept coming up inside: I have to go to England. Well, finally in the autumn of 1974 this urge became too strong. It had started way back in the spring of `74 and it became stronger and stronger. And so by the autumn of 1974 I made some arrangements to go to England to do a lecture tour to talk about meditation. And I arrived there in February of 1975. I started doing a lecture tour, and in May of 1975 I met a woman whose name was then Margaritte Causley. Now, when we met it was on the course that I was teaching, a week end course. A course of this type, a week end course. A course of this type. A week end course that I was teaching. Not for Gururaj, but for the other organiza tion. And Margaritte came up to me after the lecture and introduced herself. Now, this is someone that I had heard about through a friend in the United States. So I was [?????] interested and we met. So we went, it was in the evening after the meeting, we went to another room, and we had tea the English are eternal tea drinkers, twenty four hours a day, at least seventeen cups a day. And so we had tea and talked into the wee hours of the morning. And immediately there was a very strong rapport betwee n us. Although at this time certainly no romantic implications. That is, we didn't have any interest in each other, except in terms of our spiritual [selves?]. Okay? Not that there's any conflict between the two, [LAUGHTER] but at that time we had no o ther interest. Okay? Both of us were on very, very strong, heavy celibacy trips. We thought this was how you achieved enlightenment was by being celibate. We had read books where they described how when you're celibate you transmute the sexual energy i nto kundalini, and then that rises and makes you grow spiritually, and so on. This was sort of the path we were following at that time.

3. U S 77 - 22 Anyway, Margaritte had met Gururaj when she was in South Africa. This was way back in 1972 and, or `71, rather. She h ad known him for about a year and a half. And a very close bond of friendship had grown up between herself and Gururaj. This was not an accident because way back in the eons of time there's a tendency for souls to come together time after time that have a close affinity, and that know each other really deeply and well. There's a deep bond of love. And this had been the case with Margaritte. She had known Gururaj many cycles in the past, and so a close bond of friendship immediately arose and Gururaj spe nt a lot of time telling her that it was in fact his destiny a little later in his life to be involved in starting a meditation organization, or a spiritual movement, let's put it that way, a spiritual organizatio n, if you like. And so she knew this was c oming. But at this time he was still living a householder life. He was using his household name, which was Perry Valodia, or the Indian form of that which is Purushottam Valodia. Although he usually was known by his Western name, Perry. And after Marga ritte and I had known each other for several weeks she showed me a picture of Gururaj. Now at this time, of course, he lived completely in his Western costume. Okay. He had his suit on, his tie, and his short hair and so forth. And she showed me a pict ure of him, a photograph of him, sitting in his garden reading a book. And I looked at him, here was this very elegantly dressed businessman with short hair and nice cleanly shaven face and so forth. And she had never yet told me what his name was, if I remember at this time. So I just thought it was Perry. And the oddest experience happened to me as I was looking at the photo. And that is I just looked at it and I knew that this was a teacher that I was here to work with. And this was very odd becaus e I had had many spiritual teachers before. Many of whom I had found to be extremely beautiful and I found very attractive, but never had any sense that I should get involved. Well, in this case there was just an immediate sense of that. And there wasn't any sparks flying. It wasn't any dramatic experience. I didn't do inner flip flops and things like that. Just a simple recognition that this was the teacher that I wa s here to work with. And so, he was to be my teacher. And so I immediately sat down and wrote a letter and said, "Okay, here I am. I'm ready. What'll we do?" And he wrote back a letter and he said, "Get married!" [LAUGHTER] And I said, "What?" Because, you know, Margaritte and I were planning on being, perhaps, lifelong celibates, a nd this didn't fit into our picture of what the spiritual life was. So I wrote him back a letter protesting, and so on. And he wrote a letter back saying, "Get married. This is an order." And he said...and then he went into a long explanation saying th at, "This is, celibacy is not the path for you, as it isn't for the great majority of human beings. You are not going to grow that way. You will grow and evolve spiritually through the experience of being married. And really only through that experience will you be able to achieve what you've come here to do in this lifetime. And Margaritte is the one." And then he explained to me in the letter that he'd been asking me for two years to

4. U S 77 - 22 go to her in England. I'd never even heard of this man before physi cally that is on the physical plane. But he knows those with whom he has a long time close relationship and has for a long time. He's known them on the spiritual plane. [That is ?????] and his meditations he's in communion with those souls. And though he hadn't met me physically, I didn't know anything about him physically, that communion was taking place. And it was for that reason that that strong desire kept building up inside of me. Go to England. Go to England. Go to England. So if you have s uch a desire.... [LAUGHTER] Okay. AMRIT: Hm. Now, Margaritte and I married in the autumn of 1975. And he sent us...he sent me my spiritual name which was Amrit. Magaritte's spiritual name was Gita, she had known that for a couple of years. And then h e told us in a letter that in September of `75 that we were to start the movement in the West. And that he wanted us to start it after we had our honeymoon. He told us to get married, have a long holiday, because it would be the last one we'd be having fo r a long time. And then he said, "And then you come back and start a center in England early in `76." So we returned to England at the end of March in 1976, wrote a note, [SNEEZES] (excuse me), wrote a newsletter to our friends telling them we were about to start this new movement. We sent some of these letters to people that are sitting right in this room here. [Phil ????????] not here, but Ruth Yedlin's here. Anyone else get one of those letters from us? Several of you. VOICE: In Cape Town. AMR IT: Ah, you got one in Cape Town. Aha. So anyway we sent out the letters and immediately had a good response. I think the first month that we were in England about a hundred and fifty people started the practices. And everything just started growing f rom there. And now in England we have a fairly large movement. I think there's about somewhere between thirteen or fifteen hundred meditators there now. I'm not sure, because we haven't been back there for several weeks. And we have several hundred peop le also on the prep technique now. And we have about eighty people who are either teachers or in training as teachers now. And, of course, you know we have centers started all over the world. Now, Margaritte and I came to this country in December of 1975 to get things started here. And we did a course here in Las Vegas. Ruth Yedlin came and [????????]. Where is? Ah, there we are. Tom was in that course. And you were too, Mickey? And, there they are. Okay, all four sitting back there, okay, were in that. And we had...five. You were there too, weren't you? No, you weren't there in that first course. In any case, many of the people in this room were in that course. And then we went to the San Francisco Bay area, and then down through Los Angeles and did courses there. And those

5. U S 77 - 22 are the three areas now where we have the most meditators in this country. Though we now have a center in Washington, and one that's just opening in Chicago. Someone from Chicago is here. And that's about it. Wait, we have someone up in Seattle now, too. Now, I did want to say just a few words to you about Gururaj. Information that would be good for you to know and understand as this course goes on. Gururaj was born with a congenital heart defect. And this was not... this was not just an accident. It was part and parcel of a certain kind of, let us put it this way, as many of you know, what happens on the level of the physical plane is very often a manifestation, and at the same time symbolic, of something which is ta king place on the spiritual plane, the deeper inner subtle planes. And this was certainly true in the case of him being born with this congenital heart defect, because it was symbolic of, and a manifestation of, the state of the human spiritual heart as i t exists today. The state of the heart is that people's hearts are contracted. They are restricted. The spiritual energy whi ch we call love can't flow easily through the heart. And as a result of this, human beings have gotten themselves in the most in credible mess on this planet, making use of very, very finely tuned intellect which we had developed to a very high degree, but using it in ways that do not flow from the wisdom of the heart. And therefore have used these in very destructive ways we've go t ourselves in a lot of trouble. Now, this is basically because of the state of the human heart in our world today. Now, Gururaj's basic purpose for coming here onto this planet and working was to heal the human heart. And when he underwent heart surge ry, which happened in April of 1975, I'm sorry, in July of 1975, the purpose of this was both literal and also at the same time symbolic of something else. He developed a cold in the chest early in 1975, this was in April of '75. And it became very sever e, going to his lungs. And so the doctors were called in to examine him. When they examined him, they were amazed that he was alive. The reason being that the two arteries leading down to the heart were so severely blocked up, that was their state from birth, that only a very, very small trickle of blood could get through. And as a result of this, they were amazed that it was possible for him to live. They'd say it's like most children can't liv e past several weeks with a heart, with arteries in the he arts, that are that badly blocked. So they recommended that he have immediate open heart surgery. And initially he was not going to do this. Instead he was going to go to India where he would take a period of six to nine months of silence. He would go i nto a cave, and he would go into a set of special practices where he would stop his breathing, stop the heartbeats, except the very almost imperceptible beat which you couldn't even hear physically. And then through special practices where he would, throu gh a process of inner concentration, he would dissolve the old arteries and new ones would grow in their place. But Gururaj, like all of us, has his mentors, his teachers, those that are

6. U S 77 - 22 guiding and directing him. And they're not here physically on this p lanet. They're not on the physical plane here, but he is in communion with them. And he was warned not to have, not to do this practice, but rather to take the heart surgery for the simple reason that if he did these practices for six to nine months he w ould slip into the state of unity. Now, the state of unity that we're talking about is not to be confused with the state that you may have heard about if you were involved in TM. This state is far beyond that. And it's a state where you loose all awarene ss. You become so enmeshed in the absolute, you become so totally identified with it, that you're just saturated in bliss. And in that state there's no motivation to do anything, there's nothing to do. Everything that one sees is already perfect, and th erefore there's nothing to regenerate, there's nothing to do. And a person in this state cannot function in the world as a teacher, because there have to be motives. There has to be a spiritual action. Something to get you going, or else you can't do any thing. And so there are, in fact, teachers who are in that state, although they are not, we wouldn't say teachers, rather, they just, there are individuals in that state that just sit in caves. And their whole purpose of being on this planet is ju st to r adiate. That's all they do is they just radiate vibrations. But this was not Gururaj's purpose. He was here to be a teache r in the world, amongst the people in the world. And so he couldn't enter that state. If any of you have read the life story of Buddha, you will know that when the Buddha achieved his enlightenment experience, sitting under a [bowdi?] tree, that he was, for two weeks he sat saturated in bliss like that. And then along came [Mara?] the tempter. Okay. And [Mara?] came up to him an d he said, "Okay, now you've got what you want, basically, now. Okay, you're in that state, everything's fine. You're totally at one with yourself. There's nothing to be done anymore. So why don't you go off to a cave now and just be there. Stay there maybe until you're maybe fifty, sixty, seventy, then the body will just drop away and you'll be in bliss for eternity. Why not just do that?" And Buddha's answer was, no, that he couldn't do that because he was here to do a specific job of work. That it was his purpose to help guide other human beings to the state which he had achieved. And so he turned him down, essentially. And this is what Guruji did. He turned it down. And this meant that he had to have the open heart surgery. Now, this was done, as I said, in July of 1975, the last week in July. They cut the chest open and they take arteries from the thigh which have been transplanted. They do a bypass operation going down to the heart. Now, this was symbolic of the work that Gururaj had to do in this world. Because basically what it was was to take the most precise tools of what we might call spiritual science, the most precise laws, if you like, of the spiritual science, and use that to regenerate the human spiritual heart. To heal it, so th at once again the feeling that we call love could flow through the heart, and it was in exactly that way, symbolically, the physical heart, which was constricted, represented the original condition of the human heart at this time. And the removal of the a rteries, the replacing of them with new arteries so that once again the blood could flow, this was symbolic of that task on the physical plane. And it also marked that point in his life when he

7. U S 77 - 22 ceased to be a businessman, with his business career finished , and he began his spiritual work. He knew this was going to happen, but he didn't know exactly when. But at this point when he actually had the operation he said, literally, when he came out of the anesthesia for the operation, that at that point the who le picture of what his spiritual work was to be came to him completely and began to dawn on him step by step by step. Things that had not been clear up until this point became immediately perfectly clear. So the operation was had at that time. Now, for this reason, Gururaj's health tends to be somewhat delicate. It's easy for him to catch colds, for instance. And also he does need more rest, a certain amount more physical rest, than he had needed previously in his life. Most of his life he ha s slept very little, maybe two or three hours a night. And he still continues to do this much of the time, but he does not have the same physical energy that he did before the operation. Now, for this reason, we try to have as few private interviews with Gururaj as we can possibly get by with, so as to retain as much of that physical energy as we can. Because this is the thing which is generally the most...the hardest on him. And therefore we try to have as few of these as possible. Now, some people wil l require these. And if people do require them they will have these private interviews. But in many instances what Gururaj will do is he will assign you to seeing myself or Tom Hall or perhaps Mickey back here, and we will have a session with you, a coun seling session, or a healing if this is necessary. So when he goes over your review forms, he will indicate on the form if he would like you to see one of us. And if this if the case, please don't be disappointed or feel that in any way you've been shunt ed aside. It's because he knows that what you need to have taken care of we will be able to handle. Only those people he knows he must handle will be seeing him for these private interviews. On the other hand, after lectures, for instance after the morni ng lecture, he will be mingling with you here socially. But that's a little different than these very intense private interviews that took place. The first time he came to England we had him do about two hundred private interviews in a period of two and a half to three weeks. And he had to go to bed for about two weeks after he got home he was so exhausted from this. So we want to try and avoid this kind of situation. So I wanted to explain this to you so everyone would understand this point. Okay, I th ink Gururaj is here now. And if you'd like to greet Gururaj. [SOUNDS OF AUDIENCE RISING. REMAINDER OF SIDE ONE IS BLANK] **** END ****