Maharaji at Thamamssat University
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| Maharaji at Thamamssat University by |
| Prem Rawat'a address at Thamamssat University, Bangkok, Thailand, May 17, 2005 |
Your excellencies, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen. What I have to say this evening is really quite simple. It is simple because it deals with every individual. Sometimes, when we look at huge structures, tall buildings—we forget something.
Yesterday, I happened to go for a walk, and I found myself in the middle of these really tall buildings, everywhere you looked. I was trying to figure out where I was and where I needed to go. And it hit me once again that, what I see is this massive building, but what is this massive building? What is it? I see windows. I see the face of it. I see the decorations. But what is this building?
And I sometimes forget that the building is standing on a foundation, which I can’t see because it’s buried. Only when something bad begins to happen—like an earthquake—will my attention even go towards the foundation, hoping, especially if I am in the building, that the foundation is good, that it will stand. And I also forget that, however tall the building is, it is built of blocks, of components that are much, much smaller than the building. And the integrity of this building actually relies on the integrity of those far smaller components.
Now, I am sure that you don’t need a lecture in architecture, and you’re not here to learn about architecture. But when we talk about peace, it isn’t any different. We look at the world. We see huge nations. We see countries, we see cities. And what we forget is that all these huge countries, all these nations, are actually built on little components called human beings. We are the components. And the integrity of that country, the integrity of that nation, depends upon the integrity of these individual components.
When you look at this world, this is what we talk about. We talk about countries. What we don’t talk about is people. Because if people do not have peace in their lives, whatever it is that one is trying to achieve as an objective will never succeed.
There is an analogy that I give. And the analogy is that, a film is playing. A projector is running and a film is playing, and we’re looking at a picture on a screen. And all of a sudden, we see something on the screen that we don’t like. So what do we do? We immediately pull down the screen. That’s not going to make any difference. It’s not the screen. It’s the film in the projector that is being projected. And if you don’t like what you see on the screen, don’t change the screen, change the film. If you change the film, then what you will see, hopefully, is what you want to see.
Peace begins with our understanding of what we have been given. Why is this important? Because the entire world is telling us about things that we do not have. Nobody is pointing out to us what we do have. What we have been given is this life, is this existence. And this existence needs to mean something. Existence—when it means nothing to us, what happens? The value of human life becomes non-existent. Any cause takes on a greater meaning for war than for peace. Because that one thing that is irreplaceable has lost its value. And then, it doesn’t matter. Causes become greater than life itself. And life becomes a meaningless commodity in this great market where things are being traded all the time.
I’m here, and I go around the world. I say to people, “You are alive.” And that means the most. And it needs to mean the most for you. You, yourself, need to understand the preciousness of your existence. Believe me, this message is too simple. Especially when you go in front of a group of people, and say, “Oh, by the way, you are alive, and that’s important.” People say, “What’s so great about the message? What message? I don’t see a message.”
Ah. Till the day comes that we begin to get deprived of this life that we have, and then all of a sudden, “Oh, my God. This is all I want. I don’t care about anything else!”
Somebody once said—and it is very true—that all our lives we are busy making money. In fact, so busy making money that we lose our health. So that we can make money. Only to turn around and spend all that money trying to gain back our health. Justifications are many. Rationales are many. But realities are few. Rationales do not change reality. Explanations do not change the truth. And your existence is incredibly precious regardless of whether you pay attention to it or not.
Today, the sun rose, and you awoke. And what did you think of? You thought about your responsibilities. How do I know this? Because that’s what we all do. I’m not excluding myself. I am not saying, “I don’t need peace; I’m here to tell you about peace, I don’t need peace.” I’m not excluding myself, I am saying, “I need peace, too”—like you do. I am in the same boat as you are. And that’s what makes me infinitely more qualified to talk about it. If I were in some other boat, this would just be wise ideas, theories. But I am in the same boat.
And then, you hear about frailty. Yesterday, I got up. Everything was going okay. Trying to get my emails. Trying to log onto the computer. And then, somebody came and said to me that a very good friend of mine passed away. And I stopped. I thought about it. Once again, I understood in that moment—how precious life is. Once again, I understood in that moment that no day can be wasted. And once again, I understood in that moment, that of all the gifts I have been given in my life, the greatest gift I have been given is the gift of this breath as it comes into me every moment.
It is the most non-judgmental gift that I receive. I judge the world; the world judges me. And we all play a nice judgment game. “So who are you? What are you? What have you accomplished? And what have you not accomplished?” And we have our signs—believe me, we have our signs.
Sometimes, if I wear casual clothes, I blend in so much wherever I go that people don’t pay any attention to me. I like that because I can disappear. I go to Mexico, and people think: He’s definitely a Mexican. One time I was in Mexico and I asked directions. And the person got very upset because I didn’t speak to him in Spanish. How come you kids go away and come back and you don’t speak your own language?!”
But, to me, I know that I wear the suit, and I wear the tie, and I am empowered. People look at me, “Oh, somebody important.” But I cannot get lost in that because every evening, I have to take this off. As powerful as it is, and as nice as it is, I can’t sleep in it.
So, you see, every day is like one lifetime. The sun rises and I am born. And then all these things happen. Some things happen and I am in control of them, and some things happen and I am not in control of them. Some things happen, I like; some things happen, I don’t like. But, rather than make judgments—whether good things happen, bad things happen, right things happen, wrong things happen—the sun does set. And the eyes do close and I fall asleep.
This is my ambition. This is not open to the practicalities of whether this is possible or not. The truest achievement in this life doesn’t happen because somebody overcame some odds, but it happens when a person understood in their life that ‘no’ was not an answer, that compromise was not a solution.
The greatness of this life, the peace in this existence, the greatness of what we have been given can truly be manifested when each one of us—each one of us—begins to understand that, ‘no,’ is not an answer, that compromise is not a solution to realizing the greatness of this existence.
Some people say immediately: “What do I have to sacrifice to do that?” “I don’t have time!!” Let’s understand the value of time. Very humbly, I propose to you that time has you—not the other way around. We sometimes in our arrogance forget who’s got hold of whom. It’s a bit like a big tiger that has you by the neck and you’re saying, “I got the tiger! See? I got the tiger.” No, you don’t have the tiger; the tiger has you.
We forget that we are influenced by time. We have only seen one aspect of time. And the aspect of time we have seen is age. We want to be young. Spend a lot of money trying to be young. Especially in the Western culture, that’s a major obsession: Young, young. Youth, youth, youth.
There is another element to time. And that’s your frailty, or your strength. To understand. To see the mortality. To either make you weak or to make you strong. What do you want to be? Do you want it to be chaos? Or do you want it to be peace? Because both are possible. The potential exists for both in every person’s existence.
To me, we look in so many places for the one thing that, indeed, is with us. And an analogy comes to mind, a little story.
There was a man. And he left his home to earn money, to become rich. So he went to town, got a good job, and he made a lot of money. When he was returning home, a thief saw him and suspected that this man was quite wealthy. So he joined him and started walking with him. And the thief started having a conversation with him. “How are you? Where did you go? What happened?” Befriended him.
And the man started telling him, “I used to be very poor, and I decided to go to town, earn money. And I earned a lot of money, and I’m going home with it.”
So the thief said to himself, “This is good. I can rob him.”
So, they went along that night. They stayed in a little inn and shared a room. The time came to have dinner. And the thief said to the man, “Why don’t you go ahead and I will join you?” So the man said, “Fine.” He went to have dinner. The thief searched—searched his trunk, searched under his pillow, searched his clothes, nothing. Puzzled, the thief went and joined him for dinner and they started talking again, and the man reconfirmed that, yes, indeed, he had a lot of money.
This really puzzled the thief. So, again, he joined him and they went on their little journey. They arrived at another inn, and the same exact thing happened. The thief says, “You go ahead, have dinner. I’ll join you.” Starts searching, searching, searching—nothing. Nothing, nothing—nothing. Finally, the thief gives up and goes to have dinner. Same conversation. They rich man says, “Oh, yes, I made a lot of money. A lot of money. And I’m taking it back home.”
Finally, the next day, they came pretty close to where the man lived, and the thief said to the man, “Please. I have something to ask you. Now that you’re almost home, I must confess. I’m a thief. And I have been your friend only to get your money. So, every night that you went to have dinner, I would search for this money, and I never found it. Tell me. Is it true you have money? And if you do have money, where did you put it?”
And the man said, “When I first saw you, I suspected you were a thief. So every night that you would go to the bathroom—to shower, to change—I would take my money, and I put it under your pillow knowing that’s one place you’re not going to search. And my money would be quite secure. That’s exactly what happened. Here’s the money—let me show it to you.” And he showed him the money. “So, here’s the money, but if only you would have searched under your own pillow, you would have found it.”
When I first heard this story, I really liked it. And the reason is because we forget to search within ourselves for that one thing we are looking for. Now, the big question is: What is it we are looking for? Everybody has their definition of what we are looking for. Some people say, “I’m looking for wealth.” Some people say, “I’m looking for a good wife; I’m looking for a good business.”
I understand all that. Now, let me ask a question: Why? Because we think that will bring us happiness. What we’re looking for is happiness. What we’re looking for is contentment. And we think that these are the avenues to get to it. So we look, and we search, and we search, and we search, and we search. And we do what is necessary. And in all our searching and in all our doing, who do we forget? Us.
We remember everything else. But we forget ourselves. A very famous Chinese philosopher said, “To know your friends is good intelligence. But to know yourself is true wisdom.
Socrates said, “Know thyself.” Because that’s the box that hasn’t been opened yet. That’s the person who hasn’t been contacted yet. That is the person who hasn’t been asked yet. What is it that you want in your life? What is it that you want in your life?
Ultimately, at the end of all of these things that you do and search for, what do you want in your life? And the answer—believe me, I have been around the world many times. And I have a very funny perspective of world. I do. I really do. People get very confused when they listen to my definition of the world. Because I started traveling when I was very young, and I never saw the world. I never came across one thing that I could put my finger on and say, “This is the world.” All I saw was people. And people, and people, and people.
And wherever I went, I couldn’t talk to them. They didn’t understand my language. But peace is what they were looking for. Peace is something they wanted in their lives.
I’m here to remind you that, in whatever equation you have created, please put yourself there, because otherwise—even if you manage to solve this formula—it will mean nothing. Without you, without your heart, without your understanding, without peace in your life, there can never, ever be world peace. Not possible.
Where do the wars begin? Wars don’t begin on battlefields; they begin here (indicating inside). And when the war has started here, there is no stopping it from getting to the battlefield. This is where war starts, and this is where peace resides: in you. In you.
So what is the magic formula? There is one. There is a magic formula. And you know where it is? In me, in you. That’s where it is. The solution lies within us. In our understanding that, yes, peace is a possibility. And I am that field in which the seed awaits. Awaits. The seed is within me. It needs to be put in the ground.
You see, if you take a bunch of seeds of different flowers and put them in a can and shake them up, what do you think will happen? Maybe you won’t be able to identify the individual seeds because they’re all mixed up. Maybe you won’t be able to say, “This seed belongs to this, and this one is this, and this one is this because it’s all mixed up.
But take those seeds and sow them, and they will sort themselves out. You don’t have to separate each seed. Just sow them, because just being mixed up in a can does not deprive them of their individuality, and their individual beauty, and their individual need, and the individual little possibility that each seed carries with it.
We, too, are a bunch of seeds that have been mixed up in a can. And the world says, “I don’t know what is in here. There’s a bunch of seeds.” Sow it. Water it. And all of a sudden, you will see it’s not just a bunch of seeds; it’s individual things in there, because that’s who we are. Individuals, with the same thirst.
I know the world shows us our differences, and I see a similarity. The world says, “You are light-colored, you’re dark-colored.” The world says, “You’re tall; you’re short.” The world says, “You’re fat; you’re skinny.” You know what I see? I see people around the world who want to be happy who want to feel that contentment in their lives—that is what I see.
Ask those questions that are pertinent to you. Ask those things that are important to you. Ask those things that are going to make a difference in your life. Consciousness does not begin by the birth of unconsciousness. Consciousness begins with the very first step of understanding that, “I exist.”
People say, “Isn’t that selfish? Isn’t that selfish that you should be thinking about yourself?” It is not about thinking about myself. It is about accepting what I have been given. It is about accepting the gift that I have been given. When I take a breath, is that selfish? Breath is one thing that I cannot share with anyone. I cannot give to anyone. I cannot make a gift of it to anyone. It is me, and it comes into me alone, and it runs through me.
And I am saying, find a way to accept that gift of life, to accept that breath in your life. Because these are the fundamental places where peace can begin to germinate. That, yes. I am that vessel. What kind of vessel?
I was speaking in Taiwan not too long ago. And I was giving an analogy of a pot. That if a pot has a hole in it—a clay pot has a hole in the bottom—the water of all the oceans can pass through it. Now, once you realize that, it is pretty marvelous. That the water of all the oceans can pass through it. Aha. But it cannot even retain a single drop.
Ignorance then, is that hole. What is ignorance? To ignore. You cannot ignore that which you don’t know. You know something is there, and only because you know something is there, can you say, “I don’t want to deal with it. I will ignore it.” Ignore-ance. Ignorance. Knowing something is there, and not acknowledging it is ignorance. And understanding that without that hole being plugged up, not a single drop of water will stay in [that] the pot. And, taking something that can plug that hole is Knowledge.
Knowledge can take away that ignorance. And when that transformation happens, that same pot that was unable to hold even one drop of water will now be able to hold whatever is placed in it. Is that complicated, or too simple? If you find it complicated, then think again. If you find it’s too simple, then I am glad. I’m really glad. Because I didn’t come here to tell you something new. I should only be telling you that which you already know.
You know. You know that peace begins with you. And if you can understand that, then yes there are cynics who say, “You cannot have world peace. There are so many people out there. There are people out there who do this, who do that, who do this, who do that. How could you have world peace?” Ah, you didn’t listen to me. I said: The component that brings the building together is not as big as the building. It is much smaller than the building, but all those little components are what is making the building stand up.
I’m talking about you. Peace begins with you. Peace is possible with you. Will governments bring peace? I don’t know. Why do I say that? Track record. Can they bring wars? Yes. Why do I say that? Track record. Can people feel peace? Yes. Why do I say that? Track record. Yes, people can feel peace.
Yours is this life, the gift that you have been given. Awaken and accept it. Realize what a gift you have been given. Understand this beauty that is dancing in front of your very eyes. When you point your finger at someone else, look how many fingers are pointing towards you. When you say, “Peace is there,” look how many are saying, “This way.” [indicating inside] When you say, “Joy is out there,” look how many are pointing towards you. And indeed, when you say, “God is up there,” look how many are saying “In here.” Because this—this—is the temple. [pointing inward] This is the stage where the peace dances. That is not something of today.
We look at technology and we say, “Yes, but the world has changed.” Has it? We talk on cell phones, but what do we talk about? We talk about the same things we would talk about if the person were standing in front of us. A long time ago, the only way you could talk to somebody was to be there. And then you would ask, “How are you? Hello!” Today, we have a cell phone, and what do we say? “Hello.” It hasn’t changed.
Technology will keep on happening, and things will happen that we cannot even imagine. But to say that changes our fundamental needs is not true.
Once there was a chariot. Before that, there was a horse. Today, there are fast cars, there are fast airplanes. And what people do is exactly the same thing. They visit place to place. Looking, seeing. And, indeed, the tourists.
You are a tourist, too, my friends. You have come on this incredible vacation, but instead of enjoying it, you’re painting the hotel, changing the carpet. Fixing the plumbing and saying, “Once I am through with this, I can really enjoy my vacation.” That’s not going to happen.
This is a vacation. And you are that tourist. What are you doing? Are you enjoying this existence in its truest sense? Or are you busy saying, “Well, let me fix the carpets, and let me fix the walls, and let me fix the window.” Because by the time you fix all that you have to fix, the vacation will be over.
It is like that. I have four children. When they were young, it was like, “When the kids grow up. . .” Now, they have grown up. Now that my kids have all grown up, what do I know? You want me to tell you what I know? Kids don’t grow up. That is the most incredible lie on the face of this earth: “Kids grow up.” “I will look at peace when my kids grow up.” Kids don’t grow up. They’re still kids. And even though they all have their own thing, you sit there like a parent, doing exactly the same thing as when they were 10 years old: “Where are they? Are you okay? Where are you? Are you okay? You haven’t sent me an email, you haven’t called me. You know, you can do that. You can let me know you are okay!” Because kids don’t grow up.
Don’t wait. This is your time. This is your vacation. Grab that peace in your heart, grab the request for peace in your heart, find contentment in your life. That is the only way to enjoy. Because the only thing you can enjoy is the beauty that is inside of you. That’s what peace is. Peace is beautiful. Peace is real. Peace is the passion for existence. For this breath. Peace is when I’m not caught up in duality, but a feeling. An understanding of what life means—what every day means, what every hour means, what every breath means. Then I can begin to savor what peace is all about.
Will that stop the wars? I don’t know. I hope so. Because wars are terrible. And everything has been tried. And even today, billions and billions and billions of dollars are spent every year to research better methods of destruction. But hardly anything is spent on research for peace—anything. Not even a fraction.
When people say, “Peace,” you wonder how serious they really are. But maybe—not by the masses—but by understanding the value of each seed in that can. Not the bushel of roses, but one rose at a time, finding that contentment. That is the only possibility that has never been tried. Making it incumbent upon people to have peace. To solidify every brick, every block, and to say, “Yes, indeed, this building can stand tall because every brick, every block in this building has integrity. Is solid.” And, come the earthquake, this is not going to fall down. That is the integrity that is needed.
People of this world are the bricks, the mortar, the steel girders, the blocks, the cement walls of this structure. This is our time. This is our life. And it is incumbent upon us to at least try to make a difference. Rather than to offer the logic of how it can not be done, to at least try to see the possibility of how it could be done. And maybe there will be—at least the hope indicates —that there will be peace on this earth.
So, thank you very much for coming this evening, for listening to what I have to say. And if nothing else, I hope that I have provoked some thoughts. Something you might think about. And if I have done so, then I have succeeded. And very humbly, all I can really say is: It’s your life. Please, enjoy this vacation, because like all vacations, sooner or later, it’s going to be over.
I’m not talking about death—I’m talking about life. Death, you don’t even have to make an appointment for. It will come. Life is what we have to work with. You can’t work with death; you can work with life. Make every day count.
So, thank you very much and thank you for coming.
Prem Rawat, Bangkok, Thailand, May 17, 2005
