2. U S 79 - 8 So they'll be leaving for Australia to open up that territory. Good. The sadness is that they'll be parting fr om us I mean, there's no parting, really, in the truest sense of the word there's no parting that is the sadness. And the gladness is t his, that our family is growing and will grow more. Because with the times ahead, as we spoke about during the we ek of the great calamities that can be averted, we do need greater and greater expansion. And Australia is one place from the various letters I get and what I've heard from people they are really seeking for something. There's not much happening there. And with Amrit and Gita going there we will see something happening. That I have the fullest confidence. So that's that. I could talk a whole hour on this. There's no one here in this world that knows Amrit and Gita the way I know them. Not only the ext erior, but more so the interior. For our relationship is not of this life only. It extends back very very far, ages and ages ago. Yes. If anything has been said by them, done by them, perhaps inadvertently, then I on their behalf ask your forgiveness. But I know everything they have done has been meant well. Their primary purpose in life is to spread this message of love and peace. Sometimes one has to be hard. Sometimes total gentleness does not always work. I always say, "If you can't get things t o people through the top, use a strap for the bottom." So sometimes it's necessary to be hard, and discipline is required and things like that. So there goes my son and daughter to Australia. And I ask you in whichever way you can be supportive in their move, in their going there, please do whatever you can. Because they are us, our family, one with us. They're none different. And of course, Doug and Betty has this big responsibility in this big, vast country. I say everything is so big here. Even the cars, the hats, the hearts, ahhh, also the hearts. That, too, has to be big. So I'm sure that you will be very supporti ve to Doug and Betty as well and give them all your assistance and encouragement. Because in organizations you have things going u p and down, sometimes it is disheartening. I sometimes feel disheartened. Although with me it's momentary, I just shake it off. But there are occasions and things that happen, it becomes disheartening, hm. So in movements these things will be there. I t just requires the moral strength and fortitude to carry on and on and on until the goal is reached. So with these few words I thank you all for being so supportive to Amrit and Gita. And please continue being supportive to Doug and Betty, because Doug, naturally, would be the president of AMS, and as you know, Betty is the administrative officer. Good. Fine. Let's start off with questions. Bless you, my son. Wherever you go, Divinity is with you always. QUESTION: [Gita?]: Namaste, Guruji.

3. U S 79 - 8 GURURAJ: Namaste. QUESTION: A long journey it seems to reach back to the starting point. And yet you know of no journey's start nor end nor flight. We are bewildered in our wingedness. Why do we fear surrender? Why do we resist the very purpose of our existence? How do we turn around, no longer tossed and twirled, but integrated in love, forever still, knowing thy will was accomplished? GURURAJ: Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. The basis of the question is, why do we fear surrender. Now surrender is something which is devoid of fear. It's like a person wanting to learn to swim. At first the person is very fearful jumping into the water. He fears drowning. But if he does not take that leap, he will not learn to swim. Hm? And he must not jump in shallow waters bec ause there's a protection there. He has not burned his bridges, hm, because he knows, "If I can't swim I can always stand up. The water's only two feet." But the man that wants to learn to swim must jump into eight, ten feet of water. Hm? And in that battle the moment just comes where he finds himself swimming. So what has he done? He has surrendered himself and taken the plunge, taken the leap into the unknown and because he has to take the leap into the unknown, into the matter that balances life and death, he has that fear, "Will I drown?" He does not think, "Will I swim?" He thinks only, "Will I drown?" But when he gathers the courage unto himself, when he gathers the courage unto himself to say, "I will swim," then all the tensions of his bod y is released, and in the release of the tension he finds himself floating. And he swims. And then what great joy, what an experience that he can swim. Amrit and Gita, for example, going to Australia. They have very few connections there. It's a leap ta ken into the unknown. But they have the confidence that we don't drown, we swim. You see. So fear is the obstacle to surrender. Now how do we get rid of fear? Now all fear is based on one basic fear, and that fear is loss of self. Man clings to himsel f in delusion. Man thinks he is the center of the universe and everything revolves around him. Man has assumed the idea that "I am the body," "I am the mind," "I do this" and "I do that." That is erroneous. That is the illusion, and that is the basis of all fear. And fear is the mother of all the other ills in life, such as feelings of insecurity. Insecurity means fear; feelings of inadequacy; feelings of anxiety. Fear is the basis of 90 odd percent of the world's diseases. And 90 percent of the wo rld's diseases are psychosomatic, originating in the mind, originating in the deluded mind by having misconceptions and false ideas. Now, how does one get rid of fear? Now, fear has not come in you by accident. There has been a whole buildup. So many li ves have been lived and so many experiences gained that might have not been conducive to oneself. So with all

4. U S 79 - 8 these little fears all totaled up and added up together, produces this big fear. Good. Many people buy newspapers for one purpose, to read the a strological column. Huh? Why? Because they fear the day. They fear the day. What is my fortune for today? That's why many of them buy the newspaper. Now I know many people as soon as they get the paper that's the first page they open. And I'll tell them, "Read that, fine, keep a tote of it over a period of six months and in the evening you write down 'true' or 'false'. And with the experiment that we made we found that over a period of six months only two or three times what that thing said had com e true. You see the insecurity of man, wanting to rely on knowing what is going to happen. And his mind is so involved in what is still to happen that he forgets the present and cannot live in the present. And when man cannot live in the present, then he is not living at all. If you are not here now, you are nowhere. You're living out somewhere else in unknown time. And who knows if we're going to live for another five minutes more. Now if man develops the attitude of living in the present, then all fears disappear. There would be no place for fear. And this is not just done by thought, but by every action in life which action will formulate that thought, that knowingness, tha t idea, that conception that I am here and now. Hm? Let's use some examp les. When we sit down to eat, are we really eating? Are we really eating or just shoveling food down the gullet? How many people really sit and eat, appreciate and have their focus entirely on the food? That this is a blueberry pie, and enjoying the pi e with the blueberries, the effort that went into making that pie and all that is associated with that pie. The mind should be centered entirely on the pie. That i s living with the pie, eating the pie, becoming the pie. But what do people do? They sit d own and eat that pie, but their minds where is their mind? I've got a date on tonight, ahh. What dress shall I wear? What suit am I going to put on? Where am I going to take my girlfriend? What am I going to tell my wife tonight? Shall I tell her t hat I am working late at the office? Or is that excuse too old now? Where is the mind? And if the mind is not here in every action that is performed, then you are not there. You are not eating that pie. You're just shoving it down your gullet to fill up that little gap there. So eating does not become eating. Have you watched a dog eating? How he enjoys that food! He slurps it! Because the dog has become one with the food he's eating. Like that, in every circumstance of life. I drink a glass of wa ter (do you mind that, please). I would sip on a glass of water, and I derive the maximum benefit from this glass of water. I'll tell you why. In this water out of the five elements on Earth: earth, fire, water, ether, ummm, what's the fifth one? V OICES: Air.

5. U S 79 - 8 GURURAJ: Air, right. Good. This is one of the basic elements that composes this universe. Right. When I drink this water, my mind is involved in the entire universe. I am drinking the juice of the universe. And with it I'm putting in m y system all the prana, the life force, that is contained in this element. Hm? So I benefit by it. It gives me extra energy. You see. And not only the extra energy, but I become one with the water, I become one with a certain aspect, a certain constitu ent of the universe. So... Mary... so that is the way to get rid of fear is to be totally involved in everything that one is doing. Because fear is never of the present. Fear is always of the past or future. We are by passing the present. We take t he happenings of the past and project it into the future, and, as a consequence, we suffer in the present. You see. What is there really to fear? What is there really to fear in life? What is the worst that could happen to man? What is th e worst? We'r e all tied up in the scheme of a Divine plan. And you cannot change the Divine plan at its basis. You can change the other circumstances in life. Fear is not part of man's nature. The part of man's nature is hope, not fear. And when we realize this, wh en we see and when we realize that in every adversity there is an opportunity, and this is true. You can take any circumstance in life, that in every adversity there is an opportunity, then that fear goes. We do not fear anymore. We think of the opportun ity. So my girlfriend jilts me. Okay. I feel a bit hurt, but, within that, there must be some opportunity. Let me discover tha t opportunity instead of mulling over her that has jilted me. I would say, "This has happened. There's some purpose to it." I always say, "If my milk turns sour, I turn it into yogurt." Because everything in life, never mind how fearful it might seem, that cannot be turned into hopefulness. And that is how, that is how a person becomes fearless, without fear. During the Hindu Moslem riots in India, when India was partitioned, thousands and thousands and millions of people died. You know what Gandhi used to do while all this killing was going on? He used to walk right into the center of the riot, and everyone dropped their weap ons. So when we develop this fearlessness, we emanate a certain power, a certain force, that conquers everything. Because to be fearless is to have faith in oneself. To have faith in oneself means to have faith in Divinity, for man is Divine. So when th is fearlessness comes, there is no question of surrender. Because surrender is automatic. And when surrender becomes spontaneous and automatic, then I do not think of myself. I do not think of myself. And when I do not think of myself, then "Thy will be done" also becomes automatic. You see how simple it is. So we start with ourselves. There are two kinds of people that could say "so what." The totally irresponsible and the totally responsible person. Those people could say "so what." Huh? You see . And once one has that positive attitude of responsibility and saying "so what" what is the worst that could happen? So one meditator falls out or falls along the

6. U S 79 - 8 wayside. Ten more will come. I know that. And the one that has fallen by the wayside wit h a little help will come back home like the prodigal son. Like that, everything in life, everything in life... as I said the other day, it's easy to fall, but courage to get up again and again and again. So what is there to fear about? Because every abi lity is within man. Man can, by his faith, move mountains, as the scriptures say. So what is there to fear? What is the worst that could happen? People fear dying. What is death, after all? There is no death. If there was death then this entire univ erse will collapse because the universe exists on life alone. Even when we shed this body, this body has not died. This body disintegrates into its various elements and actually becomes food to those elements. Yes. It becomes food to the elements. So s hedding this body is also helping the scheme of things. And then the immortal soul within man forever carries on. Death is but taking off one suit and being reborn, which means putting on another suit, leaving one room and going into another room. That's all it is. Because if the soul is eternal, if the spirit is eternal, then you are the spirit and you are eternal, too. So that is the unknown. That is the unknown. Why do people fear death? They fear what is going to happen to them. They fear hell. You see. Feelings of guilt. They feel guilty, "Oh, I've done that, I've done that one down, I've messed around with that woman, or I should have not," and this and that and all these kinds of fears, huh, because of guilt. Born of guilt. So to get rid of guilt, what do we do? We change our lifestyle and don't do the things which causes fear in us. Right. And then you don't even need to worry about burning in Hell, because Hell and Heaven is all but here. So up there, so down here. What is here is up there. Because after all, where are you going, in any case? You're going nowhere. You're just passing into a different dimension. That's all. And all these dimensions put together makes the whole. So at the time of death you just pass into a differen t dimension. Your very body becomes a sacrifice to feed the other elements on Earth. And then you enter the dimension, and in this dimension you start evaluating, the subtle body goes, you start evaluating what kind of birth to take again. Because th e subtle body does not tell lies. The subtle body evaluates. There's no one sitting on the other side judging and turning up pages. That this one has done this and ticking it off, "Ahhh, you bloody fool, now I've got you." No, no, no. You're judging yo urself. And you're judging yourself in such a way how to evolve. And you choose what kind of body to take, in what circumstances you are to be born so that you could evolve so that there would be maximum gain for you. Now, the little things that happen a child is born crippled, or born into very adverse circumstances. Now at first becaus e not having the understanding, not being able to view things in its wider perspective, we'll feel, "Oh, how unfair that old chap i s up there, putting me in these circumstances while someone else is in better circumstances." No. No one has put you where you are, you have put yourself by yourself where you are. Those circumstances might seem adverse, but those are the very lessons th at you need to learn. It's no sense patting someone on the back all the time. No, no, no. We are

7. U S 79 - 8 here in this school of life to learn, to evolve, to reach back home to the starting point. And in the cosmic view of life yo u have left from nowhere and yo u are going nowhere. You are all just here. The wave has so much movement on the ocean, but where does it really go to? It is still in the ocean. And the very movement we find of the wave coming from that end to this end is an illusion. The wave doesn 't move. It is just the currents in the water that makes the wave bob up and down, and another one bobs up and down here, and a third one bobs up and down here, and a fourth one, and like that. And it gives you the illusion that that wave has traveled fro m there to there. It has not. Science will tell you this. You see. So you are there all the time. And that is called "the play of Divinity." So what we want to do is to find happiness, as I always say, joyousness, to be ourselves again in the realizat ion that "I am Divine." So to do that, if I feel dirty, what do I do? I take a bath. So these spiritual practices and meditation is taking a bath. That's all to get rid of the dirt. To sho w you who you really are: that life is joy, and every moment is an eternal moment. It's none other. There has never been a past moment and neither a future moment. It's just this one moment, one flicker of this beautiful firefly. You see. So these are the basic causes of fear. And with these fears we fail to su rrender ourselves to the Divine will. Now, one can, through auto suggestion or hypnotism assume a kind of surrender. But that is even bluffing yourself more. That is not surrender. Surrender comes when we very actively change our thought style, lifestyle , thought, word, deed, which would be conducive to our own peace of mind and also to the environment around us. And that happens as we gradually carry on, and backed by the strength of the integration we are gaining through our spiritual practices. At fir st a bit difficult, like a child starting to learn to play the piano, ping, ping, ping, ping, with one finger. After that, plays a symphony and yet carries on a philosophical conversation. It becomes spontaneous, automatic, becomes one's lifestyle, it bec omes as automatic as breathing. You're not consciously aware all the time that you are breathing. You're not. You're just doing it . You're just breathing. Now life, every aspect of life, must be like that. Then there's no place for fear, and that is the true surrender. Surrender does not mean like I saw in some ashram, the person prostrates himself and "I surrender to you, my guru." That's all rubbish! No, it serves no purpose. One purpose it serves, it bolsters the guru's ego. That purpose it ser ves. No, that's not surrender. Surrender is to be able to find oneself and know with true realization that this little body, this little mind, this little assumed ego is not the end and aim of life. No. It's an instrument. We use it. Fine. It is just the flower that is offered at the altar of the Kingdom of Heaven within. That is surrender. And surrender should never be forced upon ourselves. We are not capable of that, we just can't do it. We are just shamming, putting on an act. No. It must well up spontaneously. And the other name for surrender is love. That's all. Everything reverts, revolves around that lovely word called love.

1. U S 79 - 8 WHY DO WE FEAR SURRENDER? GURURAJ: Come on, Mary [evidently referring to fly or bug]. It's the same one. Now I have a little announcement to mak e. And I make this announcement with mixed feelings of sadness and gladness. Our teachers have dedicated themselves to serve humanity. And by serving humanity one is serving Divinity. As I said in one of the talks, that Divinity is abstract, so his mani festation should be served, must be served and brought onto the path where, through the concrete, the abstract could be realized. Now in this task that we started and that was undertaken, my two beloveds, Amrit and Gita, have played a wonderful, wonderful part. A major part in starting up things, working on things, racking their brains, and at times working 16, 18 hours a day. I know all this. Hm? There have been busy days and some lazy days, too [he laughs]. Good, fine. In the beginning when we corre sponded, I said, "Look, the best place for you to start off something would be England. And they spent two years getting things together. No one heard of IFSU there. They got hold of a group of people, a nucleus, and from there, with all the organizatio nal ability which Amrit and Gita has, they really started expanding. Now you know in anything, it could be a business, a profession, whatever, the starting is always the most difficult period. Good. So they went through those difficult periods. It see ms to me that their mission in life is just to go through difficult periods [laughter]. So BMS was started. And today BMS has grown so beautifully and so fast. But who did the spade work? That is where all our appreciation goes. For now we have come to the push, we have come to the point where America has now been organized to a certain extent. Good people have been drawn to the organization I don't like the word "movement," it has been so abused where good people have been drawn, dedicated peopl e like Doug and Betty, and if I start mentioning names we'll never get finished. A long list of them. So they have got into the movement, they've been trained, they've gained experience, and Doug and Betty, with the assistance of all the counselors and t he prep teachers and all that, are now ready to carry on and expand. So now, Amrit and Gita, they're eternal wonderers like me, are going to move. And they're moving to open up the territory of Australia. They'll be leaving the beginning of October, and of course until then they are still our president and vice president of AMS. And in their departure, I mean many will feel very sad having formed such beautiful friendships with people and such love and devotion with everyone. Good. There might have bee n little squabbles and this and that that happens everywhere. We are still very fortunate. I've studied the workings of other movements, and you'd just be absolutely shocked how they run their affairs. Comparing to that, ours here has been a smooth s ailing. Some little waves bubbling up and down, but they were not big major waves that could sink a ship. Huh? See? See how beautiful it is.

8. U S 79 - 8 For even between man and wife there is a surrender. What are you surrendering? You are surrendering your personal ity. You are surrendering your ego to love. You see. So in every aspect of life if we live that kind of life, then all the posit ive qualities come to us: humility, everything, every virtue you can think of grows with it automatically. The flower canno t grow alone. All the beautiful leaves grow with the flower. By developing one virtue all the other virtues grow with it. Se e. So that is how one can really realize "Thy will be done." And when one realizes that, all fear disappears. You have to walk t hrough a dark road and you sincerely feel "Thy will be done," fear goes. Then all those things lurking in dark corners are not going to bother you. That is surrender. And when there's true surrender you have always that power of grace with you. Always, always. Grace is such a beautiful girl. Ahhh, she's so loving, so giving, she follows you around. But turn your head, look at her, look at her. That's all you need, just turning your head to see her. Ya. Quarter past twelve. I think you have to go for lunch. The other thing is... sorry.... ****END****