A powerful, high-level exposition of the scientific background of mantras, including the science of consciousness, higher dimensions, the relationship between the soul and Supersoul, the history of the Vedas and Upanisads, qualifications for receiving the Esoteric Teaching, how to chant properly, and much more.

 

 

Transcription

Babaji: [leading kirtan] oṁ namo bhagavate vāsudevāya

"O my Lord, Śrī Kṛṣṇa, son of King Vasudeva, O all-pervading Personality of Godhead, I offer my respectful obeisances unto You."

nama oṁ viṣṇu-pādāya kṛṣṇa-preṣṭhāya bhū-tale
śrīmate bhaktivedānta-svāmin iti nāmine

"I offer my respectful obeisances unto His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda, who is very dear to Lord Kṛṣṇa on this earth, having taken shelter at His lotus feet."

namas te sārasvate deve gaura-vāṇī-pracāriṇe
nirviśeṣa-śūnyavādi-pāścātya-deśa-tāriṇe

"Our respectful obeisances unto you, O spiritual master, servant of Sarasvatī Gosvāmī. You are kindly preaching the message of Lord Caitanyadeva and delivering the Western countries, which are filled with impersonalism and voidism."

namo mahā-vadānyāya kṛṣṇa-prema-pradāya te
kṛṣṇāya kṛṣṇa-caitanya-nāmne gaura-tviṣe namaḥ

"O most munificent incarnation! You are Kṛṣṇa Himself appearing as Śrī Kṛṣṇa Caitanya Mahāprabhu. You have assumed the golden color of Śrīmatī Rādhārāṇī, and You are widely distributing pure love of Kṛṣṇa. We offer our respectful obeisances unto You."

namo brahmaṇya-devāya go-brāhmaṇa-hitāya ca
jagad-dhitāya kṛṣṇāya govindāya namo namaḥ

"Let me offer my respectful obeisances unto Lord Kṛṣṇa, who is the worshipable Deity for all brahminical men, who is the well-wisher of cows and brāhmaṇas, and who is always benefiting the whole world. I offer my repeated obeisances to the Personality of Godhead, known as Kṛṣṇa and Govinda."

bhaja śrī-kṛṣṇa-caitanya prabhu nityānanda
śrī-advaita gadādhara śrīvāsādi-gaura-bhakta-vṛnda

"I offer my obeisances to Śrī Kṛṣṇa Caitanya, Prabhu Nityānanda, Śrī Advaita, Gadādhara, Śrīvāsa and all others in the line of devotion."

Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa, Hare Hare
Hare Rāma, Hare Rāma, Rāma Rāma, Hare Hare

om tat sat

So that is kirtan. Oh good, I'm glad the sound quality is good. We're also webcasting. Where did they go? I'm just fine, thank you for coming. We've got like ten people on the Web, and nine people physically present, so, more on the way? coming? Oh really! Very nice. So it was good that we took our time to get started. Well, we're going to be here for awhile, so there's no big rush.

The big rush is when you chant these mantras. [laughs] Always gives me a rush, because the quality of our consciousness depends on the quality of our impressions; and when we take in impressions through the material senses, then the quality of those impressions is also material. But the mantras have a special quality, which is called transcendental sound vibration. Transcendental sound vibration means that there is no significance to these words in the material world. These words have only a spiritual significance; they don't have any material meaning.

So when we hear these words, the impressions that we get from them are fully spiritual, and this changes the quality of our consciousness. You may not feel it immediately. One time in Hawaii, I was trying to talk to some young fellow about this, and he was saying "Well, I tried chanting the mantra, and nothing happened." I said "Really? Nothing happened?" He said "Yeah! I chanted it for 30 minutes and nothing happened." [laughs]

Well, we have in our minds, how many lifetimes of material impressions; who can count the number of lifetimes that we've been in this material world? And so our minds are full of material impressions: our identification with the material body; our mind full of all kinds of material desires, material thoughts, material calculations; our identification with our form of occupation, or with the country of the birth of our body, or with a particular family, or particular activities that we perform in this life. So many material designations that we identify with; because of that identification, all the impressions, all the sense impressions connected with that are of material quality.

What am I talking about in terms of quantity? Well, consider that an MP3 file runs about one Megabyte per minute, isn't it? About one Megabyte per minute for a 124K, a 128K MP3 file--stereo. So we have two ears, stereo, and we're constantly absorbing sound from the environment. That means the throughput that we're talking about is at least one Megabyte a minute just for sound. And then vision is much more than that; our eyes are extremely high-resolution. If you compare it to a camera like this video camera that we're using here today, this is about--what is it, we figured it out one time--about 13 Gigabytes per hour. 13 Gigabytes per hour, divided by--well let's say it's 12, divided by 60--it comes out to about like 500 Megabytes a minute. 500 Megabytes a minute for video. And we have two eyes, not just one; it's stereo. So we have two of those going, and then there's the bodily tactile and kinesthetic senses, our sense of smell--which nobody knows how to quantify, because there's no meaningful measure of smell data--taste, and so many other senses.

So the amount of data coming into the mind is immense; I mean, the amount of throughput it would take, you know there's no network, no data network that we have today that would have the capacity for the amount of sensory data , and every one of those bytes of sensory data creates an impression. So we have this enormous file of impressions in our mind. That's what the mind is; it's a file of impressions or pictures of our experience.

So, the quality of those impressions, taken as a whole, is what determines the quality of our consciousness. So all these lifetimes in the material world, we've been absorbing tons and tons of impressions of material life, all through the material senses, because we think that the body is our self, or we assume that it is. So out of that, how much time have we spent chanting a mantra? How many impressions have we collected of something that's transcendental? Actually if we understood properly, we could be collecting transcendental impressions every moment, because consciousness is itself a spiritual experience. And we'll get to that later; we'll explain all this, why this is so.

But most people aren't even aware that they're conscious; they're not even conscious of consciousness, they simply take it for granted. But it's actually the most wonderful thing that we possess, and we should appreciate it properly. So, hopefully this seminar will help you do that. But anyway, how many impressions of spiritual quality does the average person absorb, even in a lifetime? Very very few, in comparison to the flood of material impressions that we have to accept through the senses, and so on. And then our mind, also; in our mind, we are generating material impressions by our evaluation of our sense experience.

So the mind is full of material impressions; both directly generated by the senses, through the senses, and those that result from our processing that information to try to understand what kind of situation we're in, and what kind of value or meaning we should attach to our experience. That's another layer of impressions that are self-generated. So the combined aggregate of all these impressions is extremely large; yet, to attain spiritual consciousness, we have to somehow collect enough spiritual impressions--impressions of a spiritual quality--to overcome the material impressions.

Now fortunately, spiritual impressions are very powerful; more powerful than material, because they aren't subject to the degrading influence of time. In other words, spiritual things are ever-fresh. I've been chanting this mantra and other similar mantras for a long time, going on 50 years now, and I never get tired of them. They never become dry; they never become stale. They never lose their appeal or their freshness, because everything that's truly spiritual is eternal: without beginning or end.

So that's the difference between material and spiritual; and you can ask anybody who's teaching spiritual things, you can ask your pastor down at the church, or you know, the yoga teacher down at the local ashram, whatever, or the local Zen master or whoever, ask them: "What's the difference between material and spiritual?" Most of them can't tell you. They won't be able to... I mean, they might come up with some gobbledegook, you know, explanation, but they don't have the real knowledge of what is spiritual. So they can't help us.

That's very unfortunate. There should be, you know, like a guru on every street corner, there should be a transcendental doctor in every hospital, that can help us heal our consciousness. Unfortunately this knowledge is very, very rare. So we're very happy that you can be with us today, and share this knowledge.

Now, my promise is [that] if you take this mantra, or any transcendental mantra, and you just chant this mantra, like, as much as possible, as close to 24 hours a day as you can; you just give up all other engagements and concentrate on this transcendental sound vibration, within six months you will see God face-to-face. That's my promise; that's my experience, and you can have that same experience if you're willing to dedicate ourself to this process of transcendental sound vibration. I'm not kidding; this is not... I'm not bluffing you. This is the real thing.

So generally, what I say to people [after giving them the mantra] is, "OK that's it, that's the end of the seminar, you don't really need to know anything more." Because if you just do that, you will get the highest result. And for some strange reason, people don't want to do that. They don't want to just give up everything, and go to the forest, and sit down under a tree, and chant the transcendental mantra. But I'm telling you from my own experience: you will come to a point where that's the only thing left. And it might happen as soon as 2012 [laughs]; or it might even happen tomorrow.

Why? Because when our consciousness is in material quality, we are subject to the changes in the material world--the ups and downs. This is called conditioned consciousness, because the condition of our consciousness is influenced by the physical condition that we're in, the mental condition that we're in. And the thing about the material world is that it's always changing. One day you're up, one day you're down. One day your game is on; the next day, you know, you can't hit anything. That's just life in the material world.

So we're always subject to those changes when we're in material consciousness, but when we're in spiritual consciousness, we're transcendental. What does that mean? We're in the eternal realm, where everything is the same, everything is constant. There's no beginning and no end, no changes, no time: only eternity. It doesn't mean that things are static; it means that we're in a higher dimension. Let me explain.

[moves to the whiteboard] Everybody got this mantra? Well I don't have to erase it, anyway.

OK, here's a line, from Point A to Point B. How many dimensions are there in a line? One; that means I only need one number to describe the length of this line. It's called X. When I say that "The line is X centimeters, or X inches [long]," that completely describes the line, doesn't it? At least as far as the line itself is concerned. But then, what if I have another line? Now what do I have? Two dimensions, exactly; I have a plane. And my plane has X, and it also has Y. So now I need two numbers to describe this plane. I can say "It's X feet long by Y feet wide."

But now, suppose that I have a third line at right angles to both of these. Now what do I have? Anybody? Three dimensions; a little isometric view. So now I need a third number, Z. Now I have a solid; three dimensions, it takes three numbers to describe it: length, height, width. But this thing exists in time. So now what have I got? I've got another dimension--which, we don't know exactly the relationship between them, do we?--called T. It comes into existence at a particular point, whatever this object is. And then it exists for a certain period of time, and then at some point it disappears. That's time. Time is inescapable in the material world; everything is subject to time. There's nothing that can escape the influence of time.

OK, what's the difference between these three dimensions [X, Y and Z] and this dimension [T]? As far as our experience.

Uve: Well the first three, we kind of think we can move in them, [but] we can go only within a limited distance. The fourth one, we're kind of slave to a movement in one direction, and we can't do anything about it; we can't even imagine what it means to reverse that.

Babaji: Precisely. For those on the Web, Uve said that we can move around in the three physical spatial dimensions, but we can't really influence our passage through time. Because it's as if we're in a river, and it's like we're a leaf floating in the river, and the river is moving downstream towards the ocean, and there's nothing we can do about it. The fish doesn't know that he's in the water. A fish could never discover water, because the fish is a part of that medium; [he is] so thoroughly embedded in that medium [that] he has no distance from it, so he can't observe it.

Remember the cat in the room, the black cat in the black room? The fish can't see the water; well neither can we perceive time, because we have no distance from it. We're stuck in it; to us, it's one-dimensional, just a line. So we have no awareness of time directly; how do we measure time? We have to make some machine, a clock that will tick away the seconds; and then we know time. But directly, we can't measure time.

Sometimes to us, time seems [like it's] going very quickly: when we're having fun, when we're in the groove, when things are happening, time goes fast. But when we're in the dentist's chair, time goes very slow. But what is really happening? We're inexorably being pushed down that river of time by the current, and there's nothing we can do about it. It may sometimes seem to go fast, sometimes seem to go slow, but we can't get out of it; because this body, being a material object, [and] this mind, being material, [are] always subject to time.

But what if there was another dimension of the same nature? What if there was eternity? What if, instead of just a line [of time], all of a sudden we had a plane of the same quality? What if we could detach ourselves from the river of time that we are in, and view it, like, from above? And see how "Oh yeah, this time is moving like that." That would be a whole different experience, wouldn't it? [Vedic Astrology is a tool to develop this viewpoint on time.]

So this is what happens when we begin to change our consciousness from material to spiritual; we actually taste eternity. We start to become aware of a new dimension that we weren't aware of before. And this gives us a new freedom; which if you think about it, we actually already have.

What is memory? When you think of something that happened a long time ago, it's like you're there, isn't it? Especially if you return to the experience, like in depth psychology or something like that, you relive the actual impressions that you originally experienced at that time. It's just like being there. And then we have things like video and audio recordings, where we actually record the impressions that we would have if we were present at a certain event. In this way we can relive that event again. This is actually... [it] means movement in time.

Consciousness is transcendental; and therefore consciousness can locate itself at any point in space or time. If we think of being someplace where, let's say, we were when we were younger, and we remember those times, then we're there. So actually we can move in time, to a limited degree. It's not very clear; it's not as clear as our present experience because we're relying on memory instead of actual sensory input. But in a sense we're moving in time when we remember.

Now what if there was even a third dimension to time? What would that be like? These things are all described in the Vedas, by the way. I'm just trying to make a presentation that will be similar to things that we've learned already and so, you know, easy to relate to. What if we look at possibility as a third dimension of time? What if we consider that, in our present state of consciousness, we only have access to certain possibilities; but if we could change our consciousness, if we could expand our consciousness, or make our consciousness aware, more aware of these higher dimensions of time, that would open up new possibilities that we didn't have before. We could suddenly see ways to move through possibility space that we can't see right now. We're blind to that because of our identifications.

Identification is like a blinder; you think, "I am this body, I am this mind; I am attached to this material existence; I must function in this way." And because of this, our possibilities become limited, mechanical, programmed. That's why it's called 'conditioned consciousness.' When our consciousness becomes unconditioned by material energy, then we get back so much freedom.

Our original nature is actually spiritual; it's actually in this domain, the time domain--the domain of pure consciousness. And I want to suggest that these three dimensions of time have real manifestations in our consciousness. What are they? The natural flow of time from one moment to another gives us what is called cit in Sanskrit. Cit means consciousness itself, or awareness; a contrast of one thing with another. That gives us perception; that gives us situational awareness, self-identity, self-consciousness, cognizance, desire--all those things. These all come from the cit factor, which is a product of time, the flow of time.

Then in eternity, we have another quality, which is called sat. Sat means eternal existence. The soul is eternally existing in the spiritual world, in the world of time. 'Eternal' means no beginning, no end. Only material things have a beginning and an end; only material things go through changes. The soul doesn't ever change. I was explaining earlier, just like the sky: sometimes it's clear like it is today, and the sky seems to be in its natural state. But sometimes clouds come, rain comes, smoke or pollution, or winds or dust, you know, hail even--crazy things can happen in the sky. But afterwards, the sky clears up, and then it's again in its natural state. So the sky is never affected by the clouds and the rain and the other stuff that comes through it.

Similarly, consciousness, even though we may have so many experiences of different qualities, the consciousness itself is never affected. Consciousness never changes; consciousness is the one constant thing, that is always the same and is present everywhere. And the proof is that, like we were talking about before, you can postulate the point of view of your consciousness to be, actually, anywhere, anytime. Time and space, these things, this whole domain, this space-time domain, we have complete freedom within that domain. That's a natural consequence, or a natural quality of the soul. And when we become conscious of this domain [of time and eternity], then we start to experience these features of the consciousness domain: sat, cit, and one more which has to do with possibilities, that we call ananda: bliss.

So the qualities of the soul are sat, eternal existence; cit, eternal consciousness; and ananda, or infinite possibilities. But we only experience this when we are aware of the spiritual domain, the time domain. We don't experience this in material life; or actually we do, but to a very, very limited extent. Why? Because our existence here is conditioned by material laws. Material law affects material objects, and spiritual laws affect spiritual objects. And the two don't mix; like oil and water. You can temporarily force them to mix by shaking up the container or something, but then they immediately separate, due to their different natures.

So right now we're like oil and water; we're mixed up with this material body. And it's very confusing, because the material body functions according to completely different laws than the spiritual body. We have a spiritual body; and the soul is nondifferent from the spiritual body. But we've forgotten that body, and now we're identified with this [material] body, and because of that, we're in so much trouble. We have to go through so many uncomfortable experiences, like gestation and birth, growing up and being picked on by the big kids; and then we have to work for a living, and struggle to make so much money and make our way in the world; and then we have a family, and have all those issues; and then finally we get old, and we retire, and then the body starts to fall apart, and you know, so many problems one after another; all due to the change of the body.

The body is constantly changing; the body, like any material object, goes through seven stages of manifestation: conception, gestation, birth, growth, work or the production of byproducts, dwindling and death. Everything in the material world goes through those seven stages unavoidably by the pressure of time. So we find ourselves, you know, pushed into this material world, squeezed out like a tube of toothpaste from the womb, and then we have to deal with it.

So, we go searching for knowledge; and what do we find? We find that there's these great knowledge traditions in the world, and they all say the same thing: "You're not this body, you're the soul within." But because none of them are truly contemporary, none of them are actually living, all of the ancient wisdom traditions have been interrupted. Therefore they're of limited value because they're not really connected with their roots, they're not really grounded. Only the Vedic tradition; the Vedic tradition is the only tradition that is still alive, and originated before the current age of degradation, before 5,000 years ago or so, when things started getting really heavy on this planet.

And up until that time there were many [authentic wisdom] traditions all over the world; but most of them have been destroyed in the last 5,000 years, or interrupted, and we may have their relics, we may have their books, we may have some cave paintings, or some sculptures or some Rosetta stones, or, you know, something like that--ruins--but we don't have a living tradition that has been passed down from Master to student all that time, except for the Vedas.

The Vedas go back more than 100,000 years, and the Esoteric Teaching is like the essence of that tradition. It's an enormous tradition; if you had all the Vedic literatures, let's say, collected in this house, it would, like, fill the whole building. There's an enormous volume of literature there, all in the Sanskrit language. And it's all written by people of enlightened consciousness. And then they passed that knowledge down to their disciples--not just book learning--the books, the records are there just to verify everything, and to keep everybody straight. The real thing is passed down as, like a personal apprenticeship, from Master to student. And this has been going on now for thousands and thousands of years.

And they have all kinds of safeguards to prevent changing the knowledge: like there are checksums built into the Sanskrit poetry so it can't be changed without somebody catching on, and then there are four repositories of identical historical literatures in four places in India, and they periodically cross-check them with each other to make sure that the continuity of the knowledge is there. So the Vedic tradition is the only one that hasn't changed, that hasn't been altered, that hasn't been destroyed [by the demons of Kali-yuga].

When the British took over India and the Muslims took over India, they went underground; they went into their caves where nobody could find them, and they kept these traditions alive in secret. And now the Internet is allowing us to bring these traditions out and actually share them with the whole world without changing them. And we have all the Vedic literatures on our site; you can download them, you can read them at your leisure, and you can also, you know, post questions and we'll respond.

Uve: We can ask questions?

Babaji: Oh, any time.

Uve: The 100,000 years that you mentioned are kind of very hard to understand. It seems much longer than any other trace of cultural activity. And, what is the evidence, and what makes us believe that 100,000 years?

Babaji: Uve is asking... For the people on the Web, he's saying that 100,000 years seems to be a very long time for any tradition, and where is the evidence that this tradition is correct?

Well, there's a lot of evidence. Take for example the Ramayana. Ramayana describes the appearance of Lord Ramacandra 1.6 million year ago on this planet. And one of His pastimes was that He built a bridge from India to Lanka with the help of the monkey race, the Vanaras. So nobody knew of this bridge; it seemed like a lost thing until the Space Shuttle started taking pictures from orbit; and they took a beautiful set of pictures that, you could see the remnants of this bridge in the Hormuz Strait between India and Sri Lanka. And subsequently geologists went and examined it, and they estimated that the age was 1.6 million years.

So that's there; and then there's, oh what's another good example? The city of Dvaraka. The city of Dvaraka was Krsna's capital city, and that was supposed to be off the coast of Gujarat, what is now Gujarat. And Gujarat, if you go there, you won't see anything because the whole city sank; as soon as Krsna left the planet, the city sank under the water. That's described in the scriptures. So of course, nobody knew where the city was located exactly, but then when side-looking radar came out, they were able to do a scan of the ocean floor, and there's just a huge area of ruins there, and enormous area that precisely matches the description of the location at the mouth of the Sarasvati River.

However, there's no river there today. So people were saying "No, that couldn't be right, because nobody has ever found, nobody has ever observed the Sarasvati River, so what is the possibility that this is the actual location?" Well, then again by radar, from satellite this time, they found an old riverbed in exactly the location of the Sarasvati River that's given in the Vedas. What happened was there was some kind of an earth movement, some kind of a tectonic shift, and the water that was coming down [from the Himalayas] into that valley got shunted over into this other valley, and so the Sarasvati River dried up. So now that India is doing its own archaeology, and they're not under the British anymore, they're finding all these old towns that were mentioned in the Vedas as being on the banks of the Sarasvati, in this dried-up river valley. Of course they're all buried by sand and everything now; it's been 5,000 years.

So anyway there's a lot of proof, a lot of proof. We just had to get past the knowledge filter of the colonial British government in India that was covering up all these things and preaching this crazy Aryan invasion theory, and all that; that's been completely debunked. And there's even more anomalous archaeological evidence that shows that human civilization [in general] is much, much older than previously thought. But because of the [Western academic] knowledge filter--which means that you can't get funding, you can't get a grant, you can't get published unless you publish something that fits with the prevailing theories in science--these observations have been basically covered up, and you know, thrown in the basement of the museums and nobody ever sees them.

My colleagues Richard Thompson (Sadaputa) and Michael Cremo [Drutakarma] wrote a book called Forbidden Archeology, and basically what they did was a survey of all the archeological finds [published] in America and Europe over the last 350 years. They analyzed each find according to the quality of the evidence, and they took both the accepted finds and the anomalous finds. So what they found, basically, at the end of their analysis was that for the anomalous finds, the quality of the evidence, the quality of the observations, was just as good as the ones that were accepted.

And the [only] difference was the anomalous finds did not support the theory of the recent origin of Homo Erectus in Africa, and all that, that is the scientific gospel. Instead, they supported the Vedic theory that human beings arrived on this planet approximately 500 million years ago from the Sun planet, and that we've been in basically a civilized state of existence ever since then. Although that civilization has been destroyed many times, it's always rebuilt again, because the same ancient knowledge is at its core, is at its origin, and that's the Vedic tradition, the Esoteric Teaching.

So this Esoteric Teaching is actually at the core of all religions, of all ancient spiritual teachings, of all yoga practices, of all, you know, magic, occultism, whatever. You can find the same theories are there [in all spiritual teachings]; it's just that they're incomplete or fragmented. In the Vedic Esoteric Teaching they're whole, they're complete; and there's also a living tradition going on, a living line, a lineage of Masters going back through all that time. So our histories go back a long, long, long time. I don't want to stretch your credibility by telling you how long, but a long time; as long as it's possible [to go back in time].

So OK, in our material consciousness, we experience the material world as having three dimensions, and then we're pushed along by time. But in the spiritual world, we experience eternal existence, with full knowledge and ananda. What does ananda mean? Ananda means bliss. So bliss comes when we have the kind of experience or the kind of existence that we actually desire.

Everybody has, within the core of their heart, an ideal kind of relationship or an ideal type of activity that makes them happy, that is perfectly fulfilling; an ideal kind of love. So we can experience that love, we can experience that kind of relationship or those kinds of activities in the spiritual world, because in the spiritual world, we have control over the dimension of possibilities. Not like here in the material world, where our possibilities are limited by so many different factors. In the spiritual world there's no limit to the possibilities because God is there. God is there, and we're with God.

So just like when a spark falls out of the fire, you know, like when a piece of wood pops and sparks come out, if the spark gets thrown out of the fire, onto water or onto the sand or the dirt, gradually the spark will go out. That's what happens when we get thrown out of the spiritual world into the material world, then our original consciousness gets covered over. It's like the spark going out; it loses its original quality, its effulgence and its brightness, and it becomes covered over by the material energy, and we become dull, we become inhibited, we become conditioned by material consciousness.

But if the spark falls back into the fire, it doesn't go out. It stays bright; it remains in the equivalent quality of the source. So when we're in the spiritual world, because we're still in the fire, we're not separated from God, we're with God in the spiritual world, we don't lose our brightness, we don't lose our spiritual qualities. And so we have full bliss, full knowledge, and eternal existence without any conditions. Unconditional--unconditional existence, unconditional knowledge and unconditional love. So it's not that when we come to the material world we become material things. We are still spiritual; we are still in our original nature. We just get temporarily covered over by this material stuff.

And the process by which we regain our original spiritual consciousness is this process of transcendental sound; by hearing transcendental sound. This is transcendental sound, what I'm speaking right now; it's transcendental sound vibration. It cleans the mind of all the material stuff; it's called ceto-darpana-mārjanaṁ: it means that... Ceta means the mind. Cit, remember, is knowledge; so cetah is that which contains knowledge. Cetah-darpana means like a mirror; mārjana means cleaning. Ceto-darpaṇa-mārjanaṁ bhava-mahā-dāvāgni-nirvāpaṇaṁ [means that] this restores us to our original state of being, bhava. The original state of being is like, full of knowledge, full of bliss, full of transcendental positive emotion, full of love.

So the secret to love is being in our original spiritual consciousness; when we're in that consciousness, then all possibilities are open to us, all knowledge is there, everything is clear, we have so much energy, we have so much life, so much consciousness, that we can really love; that we can really experience love, too. In this material world, we're always worried about "What if this happens; what if that happens. What if I do this, and I make a mistake, and then I get cheated, and da da da da da." You know that dance. So, we don't want to do that anymore. We want to transfer our consciousness from the material world to the spiritual world, and how do we do that?

Well, let me use an analogy. When we see the light coming through the shutters here, we know the sun is there. Can we see the sun? Not directly; but because the symptom of light is there, we say "Oh, the sun must be there." The sun is the origin or the reservoir of the light. Similarly, when we see rain, it's just a little sprinkle of water, but we know because the water is there, that somewhere the ocean is there. And the sun draws up the water from the ocean, and it makes a cloud, and it dumps the rain someplace else. But without the ocean, there would be no rain. So when we see rain, we know that there's an ocean somewhere.

Similarly, when we see the soul, we know that God is there, because God is the origin, God is the reservoir of that energy. Whenever we see energy, there's always an energetic source. Energy is emitted by something; it doesn't just exist all by itself, it comes from somewhere, some source. So when we see the energy of the soul, the energy of consciousness, the energy of the living being, life energy, we know there has to be a reservoir, there has to be a source, there has to be an origin of that energy. What is that? That's God; that's God.

In one sense, God is the Complete Whole; everything that exists. There's a nice mantra:

oṁ pūrṇam adaḥ pūrṇam idaṁ
pūrṇāt pūrṇam udacyate
pūrṇasya pūrṇam ādāya
pūrṇam evāvaśiṣyate

"The Personality of Godhead is perfect and complete, and because He is completely perfect, all emanations from Him, such as this phenomenal world, are perfectly equipped as complete wholes. Whatever is produced of the Complete Whole is also complete in itself. Because He is the Complete Whole, even though so many complete units emanate from Him, He remains the complete balance." [Sri Isopanisad, Invocation]

So that means that God is the Complete Whole, oṁ pūrṇam. Adaḥ pūrṇam idaṁ: and everything that exists is within that Complete Whole. Now, every system of knowledge in the world has this idea of the Complete Whole. Isn't it? Even material science has this idea of the Universe, or 'everything that is.' That's the most basic idea of God; that's the most universal idea of God: everything that is or can be--all of time, all of space, all living beings, all energy, all possibilities. All of that put together, that's God, that's the Complete Whole.

What is the potency of God? God has complete potency, complete fullness at all times. What does that mean? That means that God can emanate, not only one other being, but many, many other beings who possess equivalent qualities and are also complete. And yet, although He emanates so many complete units of complete consciousness and complete life, He does not become diminished in any way. That's the meaning of this mantra: it's a fantastic concept of God. And this is the opening mantra of the first Upanisad.

Remember last night, we were talking about the Vedas and Upanisads? The Vedas will leave you with many, many questions; so the Upanisads take up these questions one at a time. And the first question they take up is: What is the meaning of God? What is the source of everything? Oṁ pūrṇam, the Complete, the Complete Whole, the complete unit is the Source. And even though so many complete units emanate from Him, still He remains complete and is never diminished. That's God.

And that's what we experience; that's what we observe when we look at the world. We see here's all these living beings, all these planets and stars, all these galaxies, everything is going on, and yet it seems like so much more can come, without any limit. It seems like the Universe is just expanding and expanding, and there's nothing stopping it; it's going on infinitely. How is that possible? Because God is the source, God is the origin, God is the Complete Whole of everything, and even though He can emanate... He can take everything that exists right now, the whole Universe, and He can emit a second one, and a third one, and a fourth, and a fifth, and... infinite universes, just like the one we have now--and He would never be diminished in potency; He would still have infinite potency. That's God.

So the Vedic idea of God, therefore, includes unlimited possibilities: ananda. And this is only the material world; in the spiritual world, there are even more possibilities because we're free of time. If time is no longer a factor... Everybody's done a project where it had to be done at a particular time, and it's always a source of anxiety: "If I don't get it done on time, then it's going to be useless." And that's the nature of all material endeavors: if they're not done in time, then you might as well not even do it. But in the spiritual world, that's not an issue, because we're free to move around in time in the spiritual world. So if we don't have something quite finished, that's OK, just shift time a little bit, and go back... We have so much more freedom in the spiritual world, because all possibilities are there.

So our real existence, our real home, our real happiness is in the spiritual world. This material world is just kind of a reflection, or a dumbed-down copy of the original spiritual world. And when we live in that spiritual consciousness, then we're happy, we're free; we have complete knowledge, complete existence, complete love, complete happiness; everything is there in completion. Oṁ pūrṇam adaḥ pūrṇam idaṁ pūrṇāt pūrṇam udacyate.

Pūrṇasya pūrṇam ādāya: because God can emanate unlimited units, He's never short of anything, He's never running out. Pūrṇam evāvaśiṣyate: He remains the complete source, the complete balance, without diminution. So when we chant this mantra, oṁ namo bhagavate vāsudevāya, we are putting ourselves in touch with that source.

It's just like when you have a radio signal; you know, how does radio work? You have a tower, and there's an antenna on the top. And then there's radio waves coming out from the antenna, and then we have our little radio set down here, and the radio waves come into our antenna, and then there's some electronics that decodes the signal, and we can hear the music. But how does that work? Well it's really cool; it's called modulation. Modulation means that there is a carrier wave; and the carrier wave is at a particular frequency. When we tune our radio, what are we really doing? We're tuning in to this carrier wave. It's a certain frequency, like a certain sound.

And then with amplitude [modulation], AM radio, let's say we have some music going like this, what happens is [that] this carrier wave gets modulated by this signal, so it goes like that. Basically, the information is encoded into the waveform by the transmitter. And then when our receiver picks it up, what does it do? It separates the two. Remember we were talking about [the fact that] to be aware of something, you have to have separation? If they're together, if there's no context, you can't be aware of something, you can't be conscious [of it]. So there's so many radio programs going through this room, right now; but we're not aware of any of them. Why? We don't have the receiver turned on to separate the signal from the carrier.

So, somebody might say "I don't see God. Where is God? I don't see Him anywhere. It's said that God is present everywhere; why can't I see Him?" Because you haven't separated the signal from the carrier. God is there; God is everywhere, fully present. But because we didn't decode the signal properly, we're not getting the message. When we put our consciousness in the proper context, then we can decode the message. And how do we do that? By this carrier wave: [oṁ namo bhagavate vāsudevāya]. First the radio has to be tuned to the carrier; before the radio can receive the station, you have to tune it in. So what we're doing when we chant this mantra is we're tuning our consciousness in to the carrier wave that carries the message of God.

And if we do that successfully, what happens is that we can receive that message in our hearts. The circuit is already there; you don't have to develop it, you don't have to create it, you don't have to get it from somebody else, all you have to do is tune in on the mantra. And when you tune in on that mantra, what happens is [that] automatically it starts working. It's like the radio is there; it's just not plugged in. If you plug in the radio, turn it on, tune it to the right station, and boom! You get the message; you hear the music.

So what we're saying is, when you chant the mantra, you're tuning in to this message that is coming from the time domain, coming from the spiritual domain, from the higher dimensions. And you'll be able to get the message that's coming, that will give you the information how to live as a spiritual being, even in the material world. So that's the story of mantras; that's what mantras are all about.

There are many mantras, not just this one mantra; and they each have their specific application. Just like there are different radio stations, and some are music stations, some are news stations, talk stations, emergency stations, what have you. They all have a different purpose, different programming. So the different mantras tune us in to these different channels; but first we have to learn how they work. They work by uncovering our original consciousness, and tuning us in to the carrier wave coming from the spiritual world that broadcasts everywhere, all the time. Like [radio announcer voice], "All God--all the time." So if we tune in to the station, then we can detect this.

So what's going on when we get inspiration? Who was telling me... Oh you were telling me last night, Randy, about your idea about the 3D laser projector thingy, and all that. And remember you were telling me, "It's just coming through me; I'm just the instrument, and I'm getting this inspiration, and it's like, time for this idea to manifest." We know this, it's a common thing that happens in the world, that several scientists will get the same idea at the same time. Isn't it? In the history of science, it's like, there'll be a particular question and several people will be looking into it, and all of a sudden they'll all get the same idea right around the same time. So how do we explain that?

It's that the message is coming [from the dimension of possibilities]: "It's time for this thing to manifest." So, who's going to pick up on it? Because you have the background, you're tuning in to the carrier, by thinking in that area of subject matter. Then that message will manifest to you, and you'll be able to decode it, and you'll actually be able to build the thing, because you get the vision. How many stories are there of physicists, like you know, stepping on to the bus, and getting this incredible epiphany of how things really work, what's really going on?

This is a very common theme in science, what to speak of art. I mean, Mozart talked about how he would get a whole symphony, all in one package. Just like, download the whole thing. There it was; all he had to do was write it down. So inspiration is coming, love is coming, joy is coming, all these things are coming from the spiritual realm, because that's their natural source. And in the material world, what do we have? A bunch of animals competing for sense gratification.

So we have to get beyond that before we get to this stage [of being tuned in to God]; we have to be a human being in the full sense of the term, or someone who has controlled their senses, and cooperates with other living beings to attain desirable ends. That's what civilization is all about, isn't it? So we have to be really civilized, we have to be really conscious of who we are, even on the human level, before we reach this point. This teaching is not for two-legged animals; this is for real human beings in the full sense of the term.

So that's what you're doing here today; you're all very nice and qualified, very nice human beings who have some idea of spiritual life, some aspiration for higher consciousness, higher existence, more possibilities, more freedom, isn't it? I think we all share these values. And this is the technology which has come down to us from a long, long, long, long time [ago]. I mean, people have been chanting this mantra [oṁ namo bhagavate vāsudevāya] for a long time. It's a very powerful mantra; it's considered one of the three most powerful mantras in existence; and of those three, it's the only one that we can share publicly; the other ones are initiatory mysteries, because they require certain conditions.

How can I explain? It's just like, to fly an airplane you have to have a license; not everybody can fly an airplane. You have to be checked out; you need to qualify yourself in a certain way. Why? Because an airplane is dangerous; and if you mess up, you can really cause a lot of problems. So we have a process for qualifying people to fly airplanes. Well, similarly, there are some mantras that are so powerful that they require a similar [process]. It's not that we want to keep them secret; actually we'd like to give it to everybody, but we don't want them to mess up their spiritual life by misusing it. Power can be misused; and if it is, it becomes extremely dangerous. So we don't want these mantras to be misused.

But this [oṁ namo bhagavate vāsudevāya] is a mantra that, basically, can't be misused. It's like a bike with training wheels: you can't fall off. You'd have to try really hard. [laughs] So we give this mantra very publicly, and it's just as good as the mantras that are confidential, but its specific purpose is to benefit the population in general. Vāsudeva... King Vasudeva is the King, he's Kṛṣṇa's father in His appearance on earth 5,000 years ago, and he was a great king of the Vṛṣṇi dynasty. So the Vāsudeva form of Kṛṣṇa is also a great king, and His mood in that form, that pastime, is that He wants to benefit the citizens.

See, we have this mood; we feel that we have already received the greatest benefit; we already have everything, you know, the maximal benefits that we can get from human life. So at this point, all we have to do is share that; all we want to do is give; all we want to do is help others. We don't want anything selfish, because we already have, like, the major benefit that you can get in human life. So, Kṛṣṇa's mood is also like that, but bigger. His mood as a great king is that He wants to help the people conquer all material miseries and problems of life, and be situated in the highest stage of consciousness, so that they have no suffering, no fear, no feeling of loss, even at the time of death. If you really have things together, even death is not a problem, because you're just changing your body. It's not a big problem, not a big deal; part of the natural process of life, you know?

If you have a cut, and a scab is there, and the scab falls off one day, you don't feel bad about it. So the material body is like an unnatural growth on the soul, you know, it's like a scab. We had some injury; we fell down from the spiritual world, we got injured. And now we have this unnatural, you know, thing growing. So, when this falls off, if we're in spiritual consciousness, that means it's our liberation; we can go back to the spiritual world, we don't have to come back to this world anymore. Or if you want to take another birth, well I guess we can do that, but I don't know why you would want to.

So now I'm going to open up the floor to questions, both from the people here and the people online. So I'm going to be watching the chat box. And please ask any questions you like, but it would be nice if you could keep it within the same context, because in the next section we're going to be talking about 2012.

Question: You were talking about chanting as close to 24/7 as possible; does that necessarily have to be out loud, or can you kinda like do it in the mind, while you're doing the other business like going to work, and like that?

Babaji: Good question. She's asking if she can chant silently while doing other activities or if it has to be out loud. Well, we get the maximum benefit from chanting out loud. The idea is [that] we want to engage as many senses as possible in the chanting process; by doing that we create more impressions. Remember, the idea of the whole thing is to create as many impressions of spiritual quality as we can, to overcome the material impressions. So if we're chanting and hearing, and counting beads, that will help us to do that.

The best way to chant is to sit in yogic posture with the legs crossed, sit up straight, breathe nicely, yogic breathing with the diaphragm, use the beads to count the mantras, and chant a regulated amount every day. Best thing is first thing in the morning; when you first get up in the morning, wash your face, wake up a little bit, maybe have a cup of tea, sit down, and chant your mantra. That way, the whole day is going to go smoothly; it's got to, because we're being connected with our original source, our original nature.

But of course, we all have to do other things, and work for a living, and do [material] stuff like that. So yeah, at those times it's more appropriate to chant silently. The kind of work that I used to do, it was very hard to chant because it was knowledge work; I was a technical writer, so I had to use my intelligence to do my work. And that interfered with the chanting, and it used to really bother me. So I would just get a set of headphones, like these little headphones, Walkman headphones that everybody has today, and I'd just play the file on my computer. We have hours and hours of transcendental sound vibration on our website that you can download: beautiful musical arrangements in the traditional style, and also in the modern style. So you can supply your transcendental sound vibration needs for work, or for driving in the car. It's not good to chant while you're driving in the car... [laughter] [You can get too blissed-out and have an accident.]

Question: We're characterizing birth as a fall from the spiritual world, so why do we feel the need to create children, to create families?

Babaji: Well, that's nature. Nature insists on the preservation of the species; so the laws of nature are designed to reward us for reproducing.

Question: So it's more of a material need than a spiritual need?

Babaji: Well, there's also a process where you can have spiritual children. My spiritual master was describing it, but it doesn't involve sex life. You can create spiritual children independently. He was describing, you lie down and a lotus flower grows from your navel, and then a new living being appears [in the flower]. Pretty cool, but in the material world we have to propagate the species; that's part of the game. So sex life, family life, all those things are quite natural; they're instinctive needs, they're part of the animal. We have like an animal part, which is the body, and we have the spiritual part, which is the human part.

Question: I kind of missed what you said about the lotus from the navel, does that have anything to do with the chakras, or... I missed where that came from.

Babaji: Not really. This is in the spiritual world. In the spiritual world, people can reproduce without sex, that was the point. They don't need the combination of the two sexes, but they can still have children; because having children, and having that affectionate relationship is a very natural thing.

Question: With the mantras, are there any mudras that correlate with it?

Babaji: Not with this mantra [oṁ namo bhagavate vāsudevāya]; it's not necessary. Mudras are a part of Tantra; and Tantra gives instructions for different kinds of worship. So for example if you have a temple with a Deity, and you're doing different offerings to the Deity, then you may use different mudra forms to give the offering. For example, when you ask the Lord to fall asleep, you use the perfection mudra, and there are many, many mudras; I don't even know all of them. It's just too much to know, because that lifestyle or that process is not really suitable to our age.

I don't know if I should get into the whole [Vedic teaching of] different processes for different ages. But just in a nutshell, processes like silent yogic meditation, elaborate temple worship, and opulent sacrifices and ceremonies aren't really appropriate to this age. They can't be done properly because we don't have the circumstances, we don't have the knowledge, the training, the background, the culture, the wealth, the situation; it requires a certain situation that doesn't exist now on this planet. There might be a few people here and there that can perform those processes properly; but what's the meaning of a form of spiritual life that isn't available to everyone? If it's not universal, if it's not accessible to the majority of people, what's the value of it? If it requires specific conditions that are so rare, so hard to achieve that 99% of the people are locked out of it, then you know, we don't want to start another elitist cult; we want something that everybody can benefit from.

Everybody can chant; and if you can't chant you can hear. If you can't give, then receive; that's alright too, it works. Even on an animal it works. We've seen, in some of our communities where there are farms, we'll involve the animals, you know, the dogs and cats and cows, the birds and everybody in this chanting process, and they all become very peaceful and happy. Oh, we had one dog named 'Hare Rama,' because when we petted him, he'd put his head between his legs and go, "Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama." [laughter] He was great.

Question: I had a question about conscious procreation, conscious conception, if you're elevating procreation for a great purpose. How does that work into this?

Babaji: Well, that's really cool, if you can do it. Family life should be spiritual; it should be done for the purpose of elevating the soul. In fact there's a whole process of how to bring in a really first-class soul; it's called the garbhadana-samskara. Garbhadana means 'giving the seed.' So there's a whole process where you invite a brahmana priest; first of all, astrologically you have to find an auspicious time. And then you do certain meditations where you get in touch with the soul that you want to bring in. Then you make a ceremony, you invite all your friends, you have a big party, feed everybody; everybody's really happy, and at the appointed time, the couple goes to the wedding house, and actually, that's a Vedic wedding. The wedding is consummated at a particular astrological time, so it requires a lot of knowledge and a lot of timing, but the good intentions behind it are the key.

Question: If you're setting your intentions to do these things, is that setting it already into motion?

Babaji: Oh, absolutely.

Question: So those things were unfolding, even before you... in the intention to procreate a conscious conception?

Babaji: Yeah; how could you do it otherwise? Well, it's fortunate [that] in the Vedic culture, if you go to India, to the traditional villages and families, they still do a lot of these things, just because of cultural reasons. Just like, you know, "something borrowed, something blue." Why do we do it? Who knows! [laughter] It's a custom. So similarly, in Vedic culture there are a lot of things, like we were talking last night about the food. In Vedic culture, the food is automatically a balanced diet, and you don't have to know why it's balanced, or how it provides all the needs of the body; but just because of the culture, you automatically get that benefit. So a lot of that is there in the Vedic culture in the traditional way.

But kids, especially, want to know why: "Why do we do it this way? Why do we chant this mantra? Why do we do this ceremony at this time?" It's good to know; and we should know these things. People get fed up with religion because they ask "Why," and people say, "There's no reason why, that's just the way it is." Well, that just means that they don't understand, that's all. So we should always have an explanation or a source for that information. Why do we do it? Why do we have to make a clear intention?

Response: To bring meaning to an action.

Babaji: Yeah; yeah. Meaning is the key to a fulfilling life. Life without meaning is... meaningless. [laughter] Not the most profound thing we've heard today. So let's see; was there a question on the chat? Let me check it out here. Does anybody have a question on the Web?

Question: Can we fall from the spiritual world to the material world once, or is this repeating?

Babaji: OK, that's a good question. We fell once; and now we're dealing with the consequences of that fall. Which are many, many births in the material world, for a long, long time until we finally get it together that "Ah, I don't want to be here anymore." [laughter] So when we fall... Actually the question of how we fall to the material world is kind of irrelevant, because here we are, and now we need to get out. Yes, and once we get out, we don't fall back in. That's right, Peter.

In fact it's stated in Bhagavad-gita, that once someone goes to the spiritual world, they don't come back. If they actually get enlightened; if they actually get full, complete enlightenment, they don't want to come back. Why would you? I mean, if you had lived in the slums all your life, and then you got your life together, and you were able to move to a nice place in the suburbs, would you ever want to go back? Why? If you get out of grade school, and you graduate and you go to high school and college, would you ever want to go back to grade school? Why? What's the point?

Similarly, when someone goes to the spiritual world, they've already learned all the lessons there to learn in the material world; why would they want to come back again? There's no reason for it; there's no gain. So no, we won't come back from the spiritual world.

So OK, I would like to take a short break...

Question: I have a question!

Babaji: Oh, one more question, Cathy.

Question: Is there an optimal number of chants to do when you're... Is that 108 from the beads, or...

Babaji: There's 108 beads on the string.

Question: But is it 108, or should you do 216, or...

Babaji: Yeah, you can do as many as you like. Basically, you should do a similar number each day, and then gradually increase until you feel satisfied. So the point is not that we want to, for example, take up all your time with this chanting. The point is to reach a place where you feel cleansed, where you feel satisfied spiritually. And then you try to chant that much every day, as a regular daily routine. And like I say, at some point, you're going to say "OK; I'm ready for the big push I want to really do it; I want to get there," and at that point maybe you take a retreat, and then you chant all the time, until you make it.

But that warmup, that getting ready, that preparation of chanting as a daily routine for some time, is really necessary. Nobody can just jump in to chanting all the time; that's unrealistic. What will happen is [that] you'll chant all the time for two or three days, and then you'll get tired of it. [laughs] So the development of the relationship with the Holy Name takes time, and can't be rushed, just like any kind of a relationship. You don't just jump into marriage, or a big commitment like that; you gradually get to know the other person, then you find by experiencing them that the more you're with them, the more you like them. So you want to be closer to them.

So it's the same with the Holy Name. In the beginning you try a little bit; and then [you think] "OK, that went alright," and you try some more. And gradually you increase more and more, and you find that the more you increase, the more you like it, so you just keep in creasing more and more. And finally at one point, you say, "OK, I trust this relationship. This relationship is going to work. I have confidence; I can take the jump now. I'm willing to try the complete surrendering process." And that's when you get the complete result.

Kṛṣṇa says, ye yathā māṁ prapadyante tāṁs tathaiva bhajāmy aham: "As they surrender unto Me, I reward them accordingly." [Bhagavad-gita 4.11] That means, "I reciprocate according to the degree of surrender." And according to the quality [of our surrender] also. So if we surrender to Him in a kind of neutral mood, well then He's kind of the same way towards us. Or if we become a servant, if we dedicate ourselves, then He takes care to protect us. But if we want to become a friend, and really take on His purposes as our purposes, and His concerns as our concerns--you know that what friends do, they share everything--He also shares everything: He shares all His resources, and all His power, and His insight with us.

And then if we really want to get into it, we become like a parent. Like my Catholic friends in New Jersey used to say, "Oh, Holy Mutha of Gawd!" [laughter] Because the mother or father of God is a very exalted position. It means that God actually becomes like a little helpless baby, a child, and we serve Him in all kinds of ways; it's a very, very exalted position.

And then finally, the highest relationship that we can have is of conjugal love. This is a big, big secret; this is a deep, deep mystery. And it's there in every tradition; but very few people understand it properly. When we have a relationship with God like that, it means that we just completely fall in love with Him; it's a romantic relationship. And this pleases God more than anything; so He also pleases us very deeply. And this is the most satisfying thing that the soul can experience. But it's very esoteric. The Song of Solomon, or the Song of Songs, have you ever read that in the Bible? That's what it talks about.

So, all these things are there in the spiritual world, and they're real; we can taste them now, even in the material world, because we are spiritual by constitution. But when we chant this mantra, when we get into communication, when we tune in to the radio and we start getting the message from God, then [we find that] actually God is very interested in us; He's interested in every little detail of our life. He really wants to help us; He really wants to advise us, guide us, show us the way. And He's willing to get involved very deeply, very intimately in our lives. But we have to allow Him. He's shy; He's not forward, He doesn't push Himself on us. He only comes [into our lives] if He's invited. He's a real gentleman.

So when we invite God into our life, and we trust Him, and we open up to Him and we share everything about ourselves with Him... There's this tendency in religion to only want to share the good parts. "O God, I was so good today. I said my prayers," you know, like that. But God isn't like that; He really wants to know what's going on with us, so we can share everything with Him; we can share our victories, our defeats, our certainty, our uncertainty, our trust, our distrust--we can share that all with Him, and He's cool with it. I mean, He's seen it all; come on, He made it all. So He knows what's going on; and He's delighted, actually, when we invite Him into our lives and trust Him, and say "Oh I want You to guide me, I want You to give me inspiration." And He will; and you'll be amazed at the things that will come to you, the incredible intelligence that He'll make available to you.

It's like, to the point where I don't think about these seminars anymore. I used to sit down and plan everything, and outline the whole thing, and make sure I had all the graphics ready, and now I'm just like "Well, let Krsna figure it out." And He does, and He gives the intelligence. And the intelligence to do this teaching comes out of the relationships that I establish with people who are hungry and thirsty for this knowledge. It comes from their need. I feel that I already got the benefit, although I keep expanding my service more and more, and my insight keeps expanding more and more, I basically feel like all my problems are solved, like I don't have to worry about myself. So my work is really based on your needs, on your desires, on the questions that you ask, on the hunger that you have, the thirst that you have for God.

That's why I always open up for questions, and I always have questions on the Web. By the way, do we have any more Web questions before we take a break? One more question? What's that?

Question: Well I wanted to ask, how do you know what chants to choose, or what we need in our lives?

Babaji: Guru gives that. There's a need for personal instruction on this path. It's just like, well again to use the example of leaning how to fly an airplane. You cannot learn it from a book. You can learn about it from a book; you can become familiar with the different terminology and the background information, and stuff from a book. Or learning music; you can read a book, these are the notes, and stuff like that. But to really learn music, to really learn any skill like that requires expert personalized instruction, and association. It's like an apprenticeship; you learn by doing, but not independently--under guidance. So you approach someone who already knows, and they show you how to do it. And then all the stuff you read makes sense. It's like "Oh, that's what that means!" You flash on it; you see it in action, and it's much more meaningful than anything you can get from a book.

So the Vedas are there; but the Vedas are, like, for a check to make sure the teaching you're getting is accurate. We don't teach outside the tradition; we extend the tradition, but we always refer back to the tradition because that's our standard. And it's public; it's published, it's available publicly. All the stuff that I'm talking about, you'll find on our website in the original Vedic literatures. It's just that we're putting it into contemporary language and making examples that people can understand, so they can get it.

But the real thing comes from the association: the fact that I can talk to you with confidence, because I've experienced these things; it's not just theory, it's not just a belief. You know, it's like your ceremonies; if you were to explain these things to other people, they'd be like "Yeah, right, come on." [laughs] But if they go through one experience themselves, with good guidance, then they'll experience all these things for themselves. And then there's no need to explain; it's like "Oh, yeah," they know it's real. So that's what we're trying to do; we're trying to just share that.

Oh, here's an interesting question.

Question: By sharing the negative aspect of ourself with God, this is how we overcome these negative aspects? He will free us if we approach Him honestly, so while I chant I can think of these negative aspects?

Babaji: Well, the short answer is yes. When we don't hide any of ourself from God, because well, He already knows anyway. [laughter] But we can fool ourselves, and be in denial about certain aspects of our personality, and think that we're hiding them from God. And we don't share them or we don't show them, or we don't ask Him. But we should ask Him; this is how I discovered my eternal relationship with God. There are certain aspects of my life that are not considered exactly traditional in a religious context. And so I was keeping these kind of hidden. Like "Well I'm just going to chant my rounds, and I'm not going to show these things to God, and I'm just going to show the part that I think is acceptable to Him."

But that wasn't enough for Him; He wanted to see these other parts of my life, that I was thinking "Oh, well, that's not really something I can share with God." But guess what: He's interested in everything; He wants to know all of it. So as soon as I let God into those parts of my life, then things went very quickly to full self-realization. So He'll not only help you with those negative aspects or whatever... I mean, we think of them as negative, but actually these are parts of our personality, part of our individuality, the way we were created by God. He has given us this personality for reasons of His own; He wants us to serve Him in a particular way that only we can do.

Each one of us is a unique individual because God created us for a specific purpose that He had in mind; a specific service that He wants us to perform for Him. And so He's given us the qualities that are exactly appropriate to that service. But in the material world, because everything is reflected in a distorted way in the material energy, those things show up as being immoral, or irreligious, or fattening, or something like that. So those very qualities that we consider like a problem or detriment or imperfection, are often the very things that God made us to do in the spiritual world that He finds the most pleasing.

I don't want to get into specific examples because it's very personal, but basically, I want to encourage you to be completely open with God in your prayers, while you're chanting or while you're meditating on Him, because He loves us unconditionally. He doesn't have any inhibitions; He's certainly never shocked by anything. He's seen it all, He knows it all. So open yourself up to God, and you'll be amazed if you trust Him, how far that He will go with you. He'll really go all the way with you; you don't have to hold back. He's very kind.

So, is that OK, Peter? Peter says, "Hmmmmm. Yes." So let's take about a 5- or 10-minute break, and just have refreshments or whatever, and then we'll come back for the next section, OK?

Randy: Thank you, Baba.

Babaji: Hare Krsna.

 

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