1. U S 81 - 20 CAN WE RID OURSELVES OF SAMSKARAS IN ONE LIFETIME? GURURAJ: I believe there's been some complaint about the coffee they serve here. I'm sure it's not from our meditators, really. SOMEONE: We never complain about anything. GURURAJ: Yeah, I know. So, this fellow was having coffee and he says to the lady that "This coffee tastes like mud." So she says, "I beg your pardon, sir." He says, "This coffee tastes like mud." So she say s, "Well, it was ground this morning." [Laughter] Fine. It's always nice to start off a morning with a bit of laughter and a smile a little joy shared together. Good. What shall we talk about today? JAMIE: Beloved Gururaj, you have said that we carry the memory of millions of years of experience in our subconscious mind. From a practical point of view, how many of these experiences can we free ourselves of in one life even with the help of spiritual practices? In addition, how can we know when we ha ve burnt off all of the samskaras that underlie a particular problem pattern in our lives? GURURAJ: All the millions of impressions and experiences that we have gathered through all these millions of years, can we get rid of them all in one life? Yes. Next question. [Much laughter] And how would you know that all of your samskaras are gone? Good. I will start with the first part first. Now, all these millions of experiences that we have had, all the impressions that we have had, as we have discuss ed before, forms what is known as our ego. Now, no one on earth not the greatest man that has ever lived, including Krishna, Christ or Buddha, could get rid of all their samskaras. They could only have clarity as far as 98 percent. The 2 percent has to be left in order to give them personality so that they could be conscious of themselves. So if anyone tells you that such and such a person is a perfect man, do not believe it because if you were a perfect man then you would not have this body. You've got to have that two percent imperfection. You've got to have that two percent sense of "I ness" to carry this body, and what carries this body is the ego self. So, there has to be that two percent ego left in man to be able to live in this world. It is like pure gold which is 24 carats, but you could never make jewelry from pure gold. You could not make a ring or a necklace or a bracelet because it is to soft. You've got to add on

2. U S 81 - 20 two carats of some kind of alloy to give it firmness and strength. S o, pure gold jewelry is that which is called pure gold is only 22 carat and not 24 carat. Now, we have one factor which is the greatest gift given to us by Divinity, and that is the gift of grace. So here karma works hand in hand with grace. If you have millions of years worth of karma stored up within you which are the impressions that make up your ego self, it does not mean that you have to live millions and millions of lifetimes to get rid of them all. They can be got rid of in one lifetime. Ma n has the ability in him to reach enlightenment in one lifetime, not by getting rid of the karmas, but by shedding them. This is a totally new angle to Eastern philosophy. This is a totally new angle to the saying, "Whatever you sow, you must reap." But let us try and understand it in a totally different context. Now, how does one shed karma? The seeds are there, and the normal expression used by Sanskritists is this, that you burn the seeds so that they could not germinate. Now, how does one burn the seeds? Spiritual practices play a great part. The proper mode of life, of living and thinking, plays a great part. But the greater part is played by action and by non stagnation. I usually say that if you have killed 10 people it is not necessary to be killed 10 times. You save 11 lives and you have one in the credit. So, the impressions and the karma formed by 10 killings is automatically removed because it works on the balance sheet principle, forever balancing itself. And how much karma you have l eft on the debit or the credit side is what you are today. Now, as far as karma goes, good karma is equally binding as bad karma. Yesterday we mentioned angels, I was told that we talked a bit about angels. Now, what are angels? And it was repeated to m e I think Betty mentioned it, yes that I said angels are in a form of stagnation and they do not evolve. Now, when one reaches that plane, one experiences a kind of happiness. There is nothing that one does which is against the laws of nature. So, all the good that you have done, you have to be rewarded for. And you get rewarded for it some of it in this lifetime and if there is a credit balance, then after you leave this body in another form which you could call angels, you enjoy the rewards of your action. But, that is all you do until that karmic law repays you for what you have done. So, in that state of being an angel you are just enjoying existence, but there is no progress. The meal has been cooked and now you are sitting down enjoyin g the dinner. So, therefore, angels have to be born once they have got all their rewards. They have to be born again as man, or a similar entity on the same range of existence, to be able to learn and evolve further. Now, that is what goes on. Now if a person has done bad things now bad things does not effect your spiritual self at all because it cannot be touched by good nor bad it is above it all. The spiritual life we talk of is above good and bad. Bu t, if some things you have done which are contrary to the laws of nature, then you have to pay for that as well. You pay for that as well. And that is what we call the concept of hell, where you are tortured for it and you pay for it. Yet those ver y

3. U S 81 - 20 heavens and hells are here and now and can al l be rewarded or paid for or repented upon here in this lifetime. So the entirety of millions of years of buildup can be done away with here in this lifetime. A cook mother spends hours and hours at the stove, but it only takes you ten minutes to finis h the meal. So here, on that level according to karmic law, time is not the factor. We measure time only here and now, but in the entire scheme of things there is no such thing as time. So in ordinary existence, on the relative or the grosser relative, a million years might have passed, but all of that can be wiped away in a few moments. The time it takes in preparing the candle and the match is far far longer than just striking the match and creating light, and that is illumination. So when that illum ination occurs with certain realizations, then the darkness of all those samskaras disappear. But the illumination is so powerful that although you reap what you have sown, you are beyond time factor. A darkness might exist in an old ancient English castl e for a few hundreds of years, and yet you walk in there with a lighted lamp and the darkness of hundreds of years in this unoccupied castle vanishes immediately. So, it vanishes because you are there with this light. And this light is lit by spiritual pr actices. So, as the force of the divine aspect of man is drawn forth from within to the subconscious, it lights up the darker recesses of the subconscious mind and eliminates the samskaras. Now, the Sanskrit word for practices is also "tapas" tapas m eans heat. So when this heat is drawn from within this light or heat is drawn from within it burns up the seeds that are there of your past experiences so it cannot germinate. It cannot grow. It cannot replicate or duplicate itself and caus e conseq uences that are not necessary for you. You see? So people are many times afraid that I've gone through so many lifetimes and so many experiences and I am paying for it now. That is good. That is good to think that way. That gives you a sense of accept ance that I must accept my lot wherever I am placed. But after you have this experience, you can also look at the other side of things that with this acceptance I must perform action, for acceptance alone will not help you. Acceptance stems from mi nd, from an analytical process, and acceptance can also come from the heart. But then acceptance can also be cowardly. Because you are a coward, you are not prepared to fight. You just accept. So acceptance has various forms in how acceptance is used. You can accept defeat and you can accept success. If a person is stronger than you a big bully and you don't fight him and you say, "Oh, well, I am a stronger man because I'm not going to be violent." Sounds beautiful from the outside, but really speaking, you are afraid that you are accepting defeat there now, not because you are stronger but because you are weak, because you fear. So, with the proper kind of acceptance it would mean that you are accepting the challenge by action. The little p ond was having a talk with the river, and the little pond says to the river, "Oh river, how foolish you are sending off your water all the time to the ocean forever sending your water away to the ocean and all the water you send away will not make th e ocean any bigger. It will not alter the saltiness or the brine in the ocean. Why do you do

4. U S 81 - 20 this? What result are you going to get out of it? You're just giving and giving and giving your waters, pouring them to the river." So, the river replies that , " I do not care for the result or what will happen to my waters. I am just giving it to the ocean as an offering." And yet when the Indian summer was at its hottest, the little pond dried up, stagnated, festering dried up, no water left. But the ri ver was forever flowing. That is the action: forever to be in action, for that very action in the offering to the river, the ocean so silently, so quietly and unnoticeably evaporates itself to fall at the fountainhead o f the river to make it keep on flowi ng and flowing and flowing. So all the actions we perform, if they are as an offering to that divine ocean, naturally washes away the dirt, for are all t he waters in the river not fresh all the time because it is moving, it is acting, it is performing, whi le the water in the pond stagnates. You see. So, as the river's water is forever fresh and moving its dirt away to the ocean, so man in his action, too, can move away all those samskaras all those impressions to the ocean of Divinity. You see how easy it is to reach that high state in one lifetime? And that is called right action not good action and neither bad action, but right action. And that which is right and righteous knows of nothing good nor bad because it is above both. It just keeps on working. Now, if man's life is regulated in that way, the rewards come by themselves. Commonly people would say you must have an aim and goal in life, that you are going to reach here or there. And that is not necessary. Don't aim for the goal at al l, but just k eep on performing action. Just keep on doing and you reach the goal. If you're driving from here to Baltimore, you are not repeating to yourself all the time, "Baltimore, Baltimore, Baltimore." No. No. You are just driving, and if you are on the right path you inevitably will reach Baltimore. You go to work end of the month is the salary check, and not throughout the day or every hour would you be thinking of the salary check. You don't. It is only when it comes to near the end of the month when y ou're broke then you say, "Oh, why don't these few days fly a bit faster?" But meanwhile you are working, and automatically the salary check is there. So this is how, by spiritual practices and right action and if one is not sure, by guided action from one who knows one gets rid of those impressions and samskaras. Now, what would happen if we allow it to take its own course? You will still be rid of those samskaras. You will still be ri d of the impressions. Your ego self will still be cleansed. Al l the dirt and dross will be washed away. But what a long process where you will have to taste every bit of it, every bit of the fruit that you have sown the seeds of which you hav e sown, bitter or sweet. And what a long process that is, while this pro cess of meditation, spiritual practice, acceptance in its proper sense which brings about surrender.... Does the river not surrender itself to the ocean? That way all the karmic debts, the debits and the credits, are washed away. And you do not want cred its only, and neither do you want debits. You have to neutralize yourself totally in order to reach Divinity. To reach that which is attributeless, you, too, have to become attributeless, which only means that the ego is clarified. All the impressions a nd experiences are got rid of, got

5. U S 81 - 20 rid of. You cannot destroy them. But spiritual practices does one thing also: that it disperses the energies, for the ego, too, is composed of energy. It disperses the energy where the energy leaves you. That ego energ y leaves you and goes to that which is attracted to it. You know the red color will run to the red and the blue color will run to the blue: fire t o fire, earth to earth, ether to ether, water to water. So, that is why good holy thinking also reduces the so called negative thoughts of the ego in the relative field. You see. So, illumination comes in a moment. It is not something that grows upon you. It comes in a moment and you would be surprised how suddenly it can dawn upon you. You would be surpri sed. For all these things we do are just but preparations for that moment of light. For that moment of illumination, all these are but preparations. And that people regard to be so much work and so much effort. Therefore I use the analogy of the river how it flows and flows and flows, yet it does not work. Such is also the nature of man: to flow and flow and flow, and the very work that is involved in the flowing becomes effortless. Now 99 percent of the world's population don't like their jobs tha t they are doing. They live in a world of wishful thinking. They are always trying to imagine themselves in a different position. In other words, it means that they always try to imagine what they are not at that moment. A person has a job as a lobbyis t in the Senate. Fine. Look at the wonderful, interesting people you are meeting, lobbying around with them. How many beautiful exchanges of ideas. How much it could enrich one's mind. Real riches can be found in that communication where you, with the spirituality awakened in you, could impart so much. Even in that lobbying where you could put a person's thinking straight so subtly, so beautifully, for the meditators do this so unconsciously without effort that with whatever they do there is also suc h a pouring of the inner self their spiritual self in it. It pours with it, and those very vibrations can alter the though ts of so many people that rule the country. A subtle influence that you are contributing to something so beautiful, for a true meditator will always in all his actions convey that force that is within. But now, the lobbyist would think, "Oh, I wish I could be the personal secretary of the President." Why? Why? What's it necessary for to be the personal secretary of the Presid ent or whoever. It's not important, or any other kind of job for that matter. It's not important because the happiness in man is not in the job. Happiness in every person is in what we are, what is in us, and it is we that make the job situation happy or unhappy. Many a lawyer would have loved to have been a doctor. Many a doctor would have loved to have been an architect. And like that it goes on. Yes. Many a salesman, you know, would like to have been a carpenter. And many of them achieve it. Why not? Why not? But let it not be a craving. Let it not be a deep desire which disturbs you emotionally, for by that you're not getting rid of the seeds of the karma or the impressions or past experiences. You're only strengthening them, and by strengthen ing them you got to carry on for millions and millions and millions of years suffering, suffering, suffering

6. U S 81 - 20 unnecessary misery created by one's self. I, myself, if it comes to the push, I will go and sweep streets, and I would not be ashamed of it bec ause I feel that a street sweeper does a greater service than the doctor. Yes. A street sweeper, creating greater hygiene, prevents diseases while the doctor only tries to cure them. So, is prevention not better than cure? So here is the meaning of tru e acceptance. And this applies to every facet of our lives, every facet of our lives by true acceptance. Now here is one little secret that I want you to remember as long as you live. That which you hanker for, that which you long for, you will never ge t. Never. That which you desire for you will not get, and if you do perchance get it, it won't produce joy or happiness in you. But, just think of work: then you work desirelessly. You are performing in th is whole scheme of the universe as an integral part. Does the spoke in the wheel desire to turn? No. It just turns because the wheel turns and the spoke is part and parcel of the wheel turning and never conscious that, "Ah, it is I that make the wheel turn." You see. So, work for the sake of work. As the Gita would say, offer it all to Divinity. It just means that work for the sake of work, whatever kind of work it is. And when you work just for the sake of work, so much joy comes because the craving for joy is not there. When you crave for joy, it runs away from you. So you neutralize yourself so the rewards of your work always comes there to you. Like the river, never stopping and continuously working and always being replenished so it runs and runs and runs and never runs dry, never runs dry . Yes. This one minister, a clergyman, was giving this sermon [??????ion], you know on the immortality of the soul. He says, "These mountains will become ashes. The trees will burn down. All this will be destroyed. The oceans will dry up, but not I." [ He laughs] Yes. You see. So, that is one secret of finding joy and at the same time destroying all the karma, or discarding all the karmic values of life, all the karmic values. If I were a lyricist or a musician, how would I start composing? Not by fo rmulating a melody first, but by just letting my heart and mind flow so that flow itself becomes a melody. That's creative melody making, for you do not desire or want to know what the outcome is going to be. You see? So your idea in the back of your min d is the creation of this melody or this lyric, but as you go on putting your notes together and ping ping pong on the piano, the melody merges itself. And if you're a meditator, you can make it emerge from the soul and not from the mind, for the mind is an instrument which uses the other instrument of the piano or the violin or the guitar or whatever. So, we do not need to bother ourselves about past experiences and past karmas. The greatest disease man suffers today is the sense of guilt. That is the cause of most of all mental and physical ailments, for the mind translates itself into its physical equivalent the sense of guilt. What are you guilty about? Why create greater and greater conflicts in your

7. U S 81 - 20 mind of that which has happened in the past or which might happen in the future? The past is gone. There are some seeds that have been sown, and who knows if it will grow in the future? There might be a drought. Create the drought. Create the drought by just working, by just working, not think ing of what the future is going to bring or what the past has formulated for the future. Whatever has been done in the past, why feel guilty about it? How do you know you have done it? Are you really sure that you have performed a certain action the real you? No. You have not performed any action. You are not the doer. You are just an instrument. The Great Doer knows why your little ego had to go through these processes; therefore, we stop condemning ourselves. We stop condemning ourselves, and w hen we stop condemning ourselves we stop condemning others. When we stop condemning ourselves, we do not feel guilty. The past is the past and that was regulated within this process of evolution. Whatever you did, whatever happened, had to happen. You did not make it happen. You were instrumental in the happening, but there was a greater will that made it happen a will far greater than that which you think is your little egoistic will. You see? So, at that state there is no karma. I told you the st ory of Milarepa once here or somewhere else. When Milarepa, the great Tibetan yogi, was a young man he said, "I did black deeds and then when I got more knowledge I did white deeds. But now I've risen above both. I do no deeds." And that area of no deeds is the greatest action area the greatest inaction in action. Why? Because the whole idea of doing is gone. "I do" has disappeared. It is just done. You see? That is how you wipe off you clean off the slate of those experiences and samskaras. [END SIDE ONE] You don't do. It is just done. You don't record. That machine records. You only fiddle with the knobs. Like that. Like that if life is lived. We just do. I am speaking to you. Do you think I am doing anything? I am doing nothi ng, just sitting here enjoying myself, that's all. You might say, "Oh, Gururaj is lecturing. He is working." No, I am not. I am having fun . Yes. I shut off the mind and let the inner self flow. And look at the beauty of the flow. Look at the music o f the bubbling brook that passes through this voice, the symphony, the melody. Listen carefully. It's not only the words. For who is uttering the words? Not I. I am just an instrument. All I have learned is how to tune this instrument to the greater I, to the real I, and let Him do the bloody work. Why must I work? And because He flows through me, I still enjoy. That is my little fun. My little fun in this vast ecstasy of life. You see? So that is how we get rid of all these samskaras. So never b e bothered. Never feel guilty. You have harmed no one in your life and no one has ever harmed you. I'm putting forward a lot of new thoughts to you. The mind of man is running in grooves, and that must be altered, for that will be in ages to come the sa lvation and consolation for man. In Indian

8. U S 81 - 20 villages where there are no tarred roads you have these dirt tracks, and the ox carts go through them all the time creating these grooves. And the ox pulls the cart. The driver can sleep because the wheels are running in the grooves. So what we have to do is put a stone in the groove so when the wheel hits it, jolts it, the driver wakes up. Well, we have to wake up. We have to wake up because we are sleeping in certain beliefs which are totally fallacious. S inner, sinner, sinner, sinner, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty what for! Is that the hope for man, or is that condemnation of man? The more guilt y you feel, the more miserable you will feel. If He is the doer omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent t hen who else could be the doer? He does. And because of the various mixtures and admixtures of the material you are made of which includes mind and body have formed certain patterns that make you experience life in a certain way. But if you experi ence life as not the doer, if you have that idea, then whatever experiences you go through will not add on to your karma. It will not. And that is how the ego is clarified. That is how this greatest disease in the world guilt can b e got rid of. D o not feel guilty and that is the only way you will find the truth. Because guilt is like a whirlpool, and you are caught up in it all the time. "I have done this, oh God. I have done this." And then organized religions came in, yeah, an d what did they do? When they couldn't capture us with love and this includes all the theologies: Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, the lot, the works and when they couldn't capture us by love, they tried to hold us by fear. Eternal damnation. It is not true. There can never be eternal damnation. If there was eternal damnation, then the Eternal God would also be damned, for there is only one eternity. You see? Live happily. Be of good cheer. Forget those samskaras. Forget those experiences although they migh t be regulating your life today. So accept what is today and act accordingly. Change put in changes wherever you can to make you flow more smoother. Get rid of some of the boulders in this river of life so the water flows more smoother. And even if t here are boulders in the river of life, how exciting for the waters to dash up against and rise and down again. It becomes a melody. You see? You see? So the river of life will forever flow. The water coming from up the hill and reaching the ocean doe s not feel guilty because it has gone over all the dirt and debris in the river or all the junk that is thrown into it. And then some rivers by certain theologies are called holy only certain ones. They're all holy. They're all holy, for they teach yo u the meaning of life. For the water there at the beginning at the start of evolution, the water here in the middle of evolution, and the water at t he end of evolution is still the same water, but ever afresh, ever anew, ever thirst quenching and not the s tagnation of the pond, huh? For in the pond, the stagnant pond where there is no movement and no work inaction there it festers and breeds all the feelings of insecurity and guilt and you name it, and you've got it there in the pond which you cal l your life. And that is the greatest delusion, for you are not the pond, the stagnant pond, you are the flowing river. You see the

9. U S 81 - 20 attitude to life: to accept life as it is, not as it was or will be, for as the water is there too, it is changing, changi ng, changing, but the essence that you really are is not changing in its constancy it is constant. You see? Beautiful. Beautiful. Yes. The miseries and the sorrows of this world is created by misconception. People tying you down with fear that in t urn creates greater fear within yourself: I am going to burn in the fires of hell. No, you don't burn in any fire at all that is outside you. You fry in your own fat. [Laughter] You see? So life could be so beautiful, so joyful. Forget those experienc es. Forget those samskaras. They are there, okay, they are there. And I'm prepared to take the consequences and I will take them laughingly like a man, not like a mouse. I'll face those consequences. And when one has that idea you become brave, for th e spiritual path is for those that are brave. You see? So, you have the choice. You have the choice with the little mind which we can put to use we can choose. And let the devil take his cares. You see? So in this choice there was a chap giving a talk on the platform and he asked the question, "If I put a pail of water on the platform here and another pail of beer here and I call up a donkey to drink, what would the donkey choose?" On the one side is a pail of water, and on the other side is a pail of beer. Now, the question is: what would the donkey choose? So some person from the audience replied, "Water." So the lecturer asked, "Why?" "Because he is an ass." [Laughter] There are so many lovely things you can choose. But first have the fe eling of being guilt free, and then perform action for the sake of action and all those karmic seeds are burnt up. You create that drought where those bad seeds won't sprout and the drought is created by action for the sake of action: acting for the sake of acting. And that is the great play of life this lovely musical drama of life. Always you're singing the high notes and the low notes on and on and on in its eternal variety. And you enjoy it all. These cooks here on these courses take me around t he world one day Mexican food, one day Italian food, one day American food, some day Indian food all this, I can't even remember the names of the things I eat, huh? But how beautiful each and every dish is so tasty the variety of life. But I am n ot going to feel guilty that I ate Italian food today and Spanish food day before yesterday. No, they're both enjoyable; they're all so nice. So that is life. Whatever is put on the table, enjoy it. It depends how you look at it, and if you look at it i n its true perspective, you'll find that the nutrients in all the foods are but the same containing all the combinations of the miner als and the vitamins or the nourishments that the body requires. The taste is different just as far as the throat. Aft er that it's all the same. Now we only worry about this little passage from the lips to the throat. Now is that your entirety? Is that your life? So the emphasis we put on this little thing which we think is everything and yet it is of no consequence. You're interested in the nutrition of life and not just these few taste buds there. If they can be pleased, why not enjoy, too? Enj oy, too. Good. Fine. I think it's past twelve.....

10. U S 81 - 20 VOICE: It's about five after. GURURAJ: Right, then. Enjoy your lunch! [Laughter] ****END****