To deal with the accelerated changes through 2012, we will have to develop spiritual consciousness based on a transcendental ontology. The spiritual platform is eternal, whereas the material world is ever-changing. Real freedom from change comes only from authentic self-realization. This means to develop a direct, personal loving relationship of devotional service with the Supreme Personality of Godhead.

 

Transcription

 

Babaji: OK. So the topic is, now we understand something about the Esoteric Teaching and its history, and the nature of the Teaching itself. And we've looked at 2012, and what kind of phenomenon that is. So our question now is "What are we going to do about it?" [It's] relatively simple, really.

As you know, an island is actually a mountain on the bottom of the sea. [draws a mountain] Here's the water level, and the mountain comes up out of the sea according to its height. So we can say that this mountain is like consciousness, and down here at the bottom is like the lowest level of consciousness, like plant or animal consciousness. At right about at the water level, that's human consciousness; ordinary material consciousness. And then above here there would be more like mental or intellectual consciousness, and up here at the top is like spiritual consciousness.

So if this water represents time and change, so if there's a tsunami, a big wave of change that's coming, if we're right here just sitting on the beach and this big tsunami comes, it's going to wipe us out. And even if we are somewhat elevated in consciousness, if a big enough wave comes along, it can still hit us. But if we're up on the top here, if we're up in spiritual consciousness way on the top of the mountain, even if there's a really big wave, we'll be alright.

Because, remember what we talked about in the very beginning [of the seminar] about the difference between material and spiritual [energy]. Basically, everything that's material changes; it's subject to time, it's going through those seven stages of manifestation [conception, gestation, birth, growth, production of byproducts, dwindling and death]. It's transforming from one form into another; maybe the substance remains the same, but the outward form is always going to be changing.

So what does that mean? That means [that] anytime there's a change in the material elements or in the material energy, then our consciousness has to change along with it. If there's a change in the material body or the conditions surrounding us, we're going to feel that; we're going to be affected by that. And if there's a big change, like the one that's coming, that means there's going to be a big effect, and it's going to disturb our consciousness; we're going to have to deal with the changes.

But spiritual consciousness is not like that; spiritual consciousness is fundamentally different. It's on a different platform; it's not on the material platform, it's on the spiritual platform. And remember what is the basic difference between material and spiritual? [long pause] Remember?

Response: One you can move around in, and navigate in, and one just... happens?

Babaji: No, no; the basic difference is that material things are temporary and spiritual things are eternal. Material things change, and spiritual things are permanent. So if we're in spiritual consciousness; if our existence is built on the basic of spirituality, real spirituality--I'm not talking about external religion, or some kind of a spiritual culture, or something like that. I mean real spiritual consciousness, where we're directly in touch with God. Then no matter what happens in the material world, we won't be affected by it.

Remember the explanation of the sky? The wind and clouds and dust and stuff is coming through the sky, and there's all kind of changes; but the sky itself remains the same. When the sky is in its natural condition, when it's clear like this, very beautiful, we say "The sky is gorgeous today; the weather's gorgeous, beautiful." What does that mean? It means that the sky is in its original condition: pure, clear, open, expansive, like that. No clouds, no obstructions, no changes, just a steady clear sky. We say "That's beautiful weather; perfect weather," because the sky is in its original condition.

Similarly when our consciousness is focused on objects of spiritual nature, we say "Our consciousness is in its original condition," and this is called samadhi. There's a nice verse in Bhagavad-gita:

"The stage of perfection is called trance, or samadhi, when one's mind is completely restrained from material mental activities by practice of yoga. This is characterized by one's ability to see the self by the pure mind and to relish and rejoice in the self. In that joyous state, one is situated in boundless transcendental happiness and enjoys himself through transcendental senses. Established thus, one never departs from the truth, and upon gaining this he thinks there is no greater gain. Being situated in such a position, one is never shaken, even in the midst of greatest difficulty. This indeed is actual freedom from all miseries arising from [the soul being in] contact with the material energy." [Bhagavad-gita 6.20-23]

The state of perfection is called samadhi, or trance, when there is no misery arising from contact of the consciousness with the material energy. The spiritual energy and the material energy are fundamentally different. So when consciousness is in touch with material energy, that's like the sky has got all these clouds in it; you can't see the sun, you can't see the stars, you can't see the moon or anything. It's obstructed, it's obscured, it's covered over. The sun isn't covered over; we are covered over by the clouds. The sun is still shining, but we can't see it because our eyes are covered.

Similarly, in material consciousness, God is there, but we can't see Him because our vision is covered by the material conditioning. That is called 'contact of the soul or consciousness with the material elements.' When that happens, we can't see God; we can only perceive the inputs of the senses. And because of that, we suffer. Why? Because the body is always changing.

In this life, the body is changing from a fetus to an infant, to a child, to a youngster, to an adolescent, to a grownup, to middle-aged, to old, to death; and then it changes to another body, and we go on to another life, and like that. The body is always changing, and these changes are a source of misery because we have to adapt and adjust, change and transmigrate, and move from one situation to another.

But that's not natural for the soul; the soul is always the same. We want relationships that don't change, or don't end; we want an abode, a situation that we don't have to move out of. Why does everybody want to own their own house? So you don't have to move when the lease is up; it's a natural thing. But in this material wold, there's no such thing as a permanent abode, no such thing as a permanent body; everything is always changing, so that's a source of difficulties, a source of problems. [The material energy is] fundamentally incompatible with the basic nature of the spirit soul.

So the spiritual world isn't like that; in the spiritual world everything is eternal, blissful, full of knowledge; all our relationships in the spiritual world are eternal, blissful, full of knowledge. Our abode is permanent, it never has to change, we never have to go anywhere; there's no separation, no anxiety, our relationships are all wonderful and beautiful, because they're with perfect people: the purified souls in the spiritual world, and of course our relationship with God.

So when the spirit soul withdraws his attention from the external forms of material energy, and directs that attention inward to the spiritual world, the spiritual energy, and perceives that world through spiritual senses, then we're in our natural position. And then no matter what happens in the material world, we won't be shaken, we won't be disturbed.

The whole material world can go away; [in fact,] the whole material world will go away someday! The principle of creation may be eternal, but the actual manifestation is temporary. Sometimes the material world exists, and sometimes it doesn't; at the end of Brahma's day the whole thing is dissolved, and at the beginning of the next day of Brahma, it's again manifest and everything becomes like it was before.

So we don't want to have to go through manifestation and unmanifestation; we don't want to have to go through changes; we don't want to have to feel that at any point something could happen that would just destroy our peace of mind, or our carefully constructed lifestyle, or our happiness. So the cure for this situation is to get ourselves to the top of the mountain; get ourselves to a state of consciousness that's not going to be affected by changes in the material modes; to transfer our existence and our consciousness to a platform that is not subject to material transformations.

That is the spiritual platform; that's the only platform that is like that. Every other platform--the mental platform, the intellectual platform, false ego, the body, the mind--they all are subject to the same rules, the same laws of the transformations of the material energies. So there's no real stability there.

We may be able, by some adjustment, we may be able to create some temporary stability, and then we think [that] we're doing very nicely. And actually we are; I mean, most people in this world, if you travel around the world you see how most people live--they don't have much security, they don't have much stability in their lives. Consequently they're suffering more. So we're very fortunate that we're able to get a little stability, a little normalcy, a little window of time where we have a fortunate circumstance, where we're able to actually understand some of these things and do something about it. This is called punya, or good fortune; good fortune means that we have accumulated some pious activities in the past lifetime, and because of that, it's manifesting in this lifetime as a relatively stable situation, a fortunate situation.

So people who have that, it's just like if you get an inheritance of a substantial amount of money from your family; what do you do, go out and blow it on parties? Well, some people do, but that's not very intelligent. If you get a substantial inheritance, everybody knows the best thing to do is to invest it; and that way you multiply, you leverage the value of that inheritance, and it lasts much longer. If you just spend it, then it's just gone, it's finished, and you're out of luck. So what we're saying is, if you have this good fortune that you have some stable condition in your life, this is actually very rare. If you have some opulence or if you have some stability, use that, reinvest that in more pious activities in the future.

We already talked about chanting and how you change the [quality of the] impressions in your mind, change the quality of your consciousness; so this is a very, very important thing. At the end of the day, we all have to live with our own consciousness; and the state that our consciousness is in is only up to us. If we perform activities that lead to the spiritual platform [of consciousness], then we'll be in a situation where no matter what happens in this material world, we won't be disturbed.

But if we continue to chase after material things, even though we're in a fortunate situation, we can spend all our pious activities and really have nothing to show for it, like the person who gets the inheritance and just blows it. Therefore the Vedas advise that one who has a fortunate situation should take advantage of that to save himself from the material ocean.

"The deluding energy is My potency and thus it is not possible for the dependant living beings to supercede the strength of the material modes. But those who take shelter of Me alone [the Personality of Godhead Sri Krsna] can cross over the gigantic ocean of material energy." [Bhagavad-gita 7.14-15]

And then if he is successful, he should save others. So that's basically what we're doing; that's our project. We are very fortunate; we got a blessing from a bona fide spiritual master, we got knowledge and we got detachment, we got full facility to develop our own consciousness to the point of self-realization. And so we took advantage of that; and then we felt like "OK, that's it." The next part of that verse I quoted earlier [Bg. 6.20-23] is "Once he has achieved this, he says there is no greater gain." So if you can achieve something that's so wonderful, it's just like a person who gets a huge inheritance, and he realizes "Ah, I never have to work again in my whole life. I've got it made." He feels like "Ah," this tremendous relief.

So similarly, when someone develops their original spiritual consciousness, they feel like that; they feel like "Ah, nothing in this world can ever really affect me again." They feel like "Whew! What a relief! This is the best thing ever." I know from my own experience that I can just sit under a tree with a set of beads and chant my mantra, and I'm completely happy. So I don't require any external situation for my satisfaction; I'm free of that. That's a tremendous relief! Now I don't have to worry about myself; I don't have to be concerned with "Oh, how am I going to be happy, what am I going to do, how am I going to solve my problems." It's all up to Krsna; whatever Krsna wants, that's fine. I'm just going to chant my mantra and I'll be fine. That's been my experience now for the last five years.

So I want to share that [blessing] with people; like Bill Gates, he has all this money, so what does he do? He starts a foundation; he's helping people in various ways, with medical issues and stuff like that. So similarly, we feel the same way; like we got this tremendous blessing, indescribable blessing, so what do we do in a situation like that? Well, the right thing to do is to share it with others. And that's why we don't want to put any financial barriers or conditions on the people who come to our seminars or joining our website or downloading our files; we make it all completely free and available.

And what we found is that people reciprocate with us in the same way; like Randy is being so gracious, opening up his house and allowing us to have the seminar here, he's sharing so much of his resources and so much of his time, arranging everything, inviting all the people, arranging all the catering and all the facilities here. I'm so grateful to Randy; but why is he doing that? Because he sees the value in the information that we're presenting.

We're not making this up; it's all coming from the Vedas, we can show the tradition, we can show the original text, going back thousands of years. It's not a scam; it's not a shuck and jive show, this is something that really has a solid basis. And we can even show how in science, the quantum realities and the Theory of Relativity and so on, are based on a similar basis of ontological truth. So this is a substantial teaching, and an intelligent person will recognize that, and they will want to reciprocate; they will want to give back a similar or equivalent value to what they feel they've received.

So that's our policy; we always share on the basis of a free-will exchange, because we find that when we do that, the intelligent people who really appreciate what we're doing want to reciprocate, and they also want to help pass this Teaching on to others so that they can also benefit. Like Uddhava; Uddhava was really the first one to recognize that, and he invited me down [to Mexico City] and gave me a place to preach from, and the last year that we've been working together, now we've increased the number of students by a factor of ten, and we've been able to reach people all over the world; hundreds of thousands of people have watched our videos online, and we've been able to present several hundred hours of seminars on all different subjects related to the Esoteric Teaching.

And people have benefitted from this; people who take up this Teaching, who actually apply it in their lives, they uniformly report that they're feeling bliss, they're feeling happiness, they're feeling detachment from the suffering of material life, they're getting psychological benefits, spiritual benefits, even material benefits. And people say "How can a spiritual teaching, or how can a spiritual process give material benefits?" They're two different things; to get material things, you have to work in the material world and create material causes, and those give you material results. And spiritual process is a whole different thing; when you create spiritual causes, then the results are also spiritual.

But there is a difference. Material things do not include spiritual things, but spiritual things do include material things. All material qualities, for example, are simply reflections of spiritual qualities. The love in this material world is simply a reflection of the love in the spiritual world, and that's why it's so wonderful; that's why everybody wants it. Everybody desires it because it reflects the qualities of spirituality that are our real existence.

Why does everybody want knowledge? In this material world, if you don't go to college, if you don't get a good education, or if you can't educate yourself and get knowledge, you're basically pretty much out of luck. Knowledge is required to have a good existence in this world. But the knowledge of this material world is relative knowledge, relative truth. For example if I say "Oh, the sun is out," well right now that's true; but what happens after dark, when the sun goes down? Then that's not true anymore. So material truth or relative truth is always dependent on circumstances. If circumstances allow that truth to be true, then we say it's true, otherwise we say it's false. But spiritual truth isn't like that; spiritual truth means it's always true for everyone, in every condition of life, in every circumstance. It's non-conditional, unconditional or Absolute Truth. Absolute Truth means it's always true for every being and every place and every condition, every time, in every circumstance.

So Absolute Truth is the food that nourishes our spiritual growth. And when we have a good diet of Absolute Truth, we feel happy, we feel satisfied, we feel secure. Why? Because the soul is of the same quality of Absolute existence. And so the material truths don't really nourish us, because there's always some insecurity, uncertainty with material truth: maybe it's true in some circumstances, maybe it's not true. And then we have to find out what is the scope of this truth: is it always true, is it sometimes true; when is it true, when is it not true. There's always a bunch of boundary conditions that we have to deal with when it comes to material truth.

But with spiritual truth, it's always true in every condition, in every place, every time. We don't have to worry about that; that truth is of the same nature as the soul. So when we encounter spiritual truth we feel nourished, we feel protected, we feel safe; we feel pleasure, we feel bliss.

So what are the Vedas then? What is the Esoteric Teaching? It's simply a large assembly or field of Absolute Truths. In fact, it doesn't have any equal in the whole world. Every religion has some Absolute Truths; that's the essence of religion, really, or spirituality. But [in religion] the Absolute Truth is mixed with relative truths, and it's only partial.

For example, Jesus mentions the soul in the Bible something like 28 times; but you can't find anywhere in the Bible where the nature of the soul is explained, where the science of the soul is given, or the explanation of the soul as consciousness, for example. It's not there in the Bible; it's only there in the Vedas, it's only there in the Esoteric Teaching. Similarly, the description of the spiritual world, or the detailed description of the creation. There's some mention of it in the Bible and other religious scriptures, but really, it's only discussed in the Vedas; it's only discussed in the Esoteric Teaching in detail, such that you would be able to use the information for further reasoning, further understanding.

And that's the test of scientific knowledge; if the theory is good, you can use the information to predict other things that are going to happen, and those predictions will pan out, will be accurate. So we need enough information that we're able to correlate it, and reason with it and use it to predict what's gong to happen. That level of information [regarding spiritual truth] is only available in the Vedas. That's why people in the West, even though they may be religious, have no transcendental ontology; they don't have enough information to have a transcendental ontology, transcendental epistemology, a transcendental science, a transcendental logic, because they don't have enough information to come up with a suitably robust ontology to actually be able to predict what is going to happen spiritually.

We developed all of our work based off of the Esoteric Teaching of the Vedas by taking this information, and then using it to review different theories or different viewpoints on life in the material world, time, changes, happiness--all kinds of subjects. And all of our courses are based on that type of [ontological] work. Without the Esoteric Teaching or without the Absolute Truth, we wouldn't be able to do that. If we were just taking knowledge from the scriptures and applying it in a dogmatic way, we would just have yet another religion. But we're not happy with that; nobody is happy with that.

[Intelligent] people don't want another religion competing for world domination with all the existing religions; what [intelligent] people really want is the Absolute Truth, a truth that gives them enough background that they can go on and figure things out for themselves. Intelligent people don't want to be told what to think; they want to be given a background, like a sandbox that they can play in and make their own projects. That's what I want; that's what any intelligent person would want. So we don't want a religion, we don't want dogmatism, we don't want somebody telling us what to do; we want somebody offering us knowledge that will enable us to do the kind of things that we want to do.

So that's what the Esoteric Teaching is. It's like a set of background knowledge, a field--an ontological field--that's [composed] of transcendental Absolute Truth. And it's sufficiently complex, sufficiently nuanced, sufficiently sophisticated and global and multivariate, that it will allow us to use that information to do further things that we are interested in. And we can take it, and according to our own initiative we can do all kinds of projects with it.

I'll give you an example. We have one [seminar] series called The Secret Teachings of Jesus. And of course, most of us started out from a Christian background, and at some point we realized its limitations, and then we went on to research other things. Well, that doesn't mean that there's anything substantially wrong with Jesus; it's just that somehow or other the presentation [of his teachings] got kind of limited and messed up, so we decided to investigate other sources of knowledge.

But Jesus is actually a fully-realized soul; he's a great teacher, he's even an incarnation [of God]. So there has to be a way that we can understand Jesus that is in line with the Esoteric Teaching and gives similar results. It turns out that there is, and so we developed that into a little course. And at some point we realized [that] "Wow! If somebody came along who is like, really into Jesus and wanted to develop this into a whole presentation, a whole religion--a new kind of Christianity [based on the Vedas] that was not dogmatic or that wasn't restrictive, or didn't have the potential for political or social control, that was instead based on [actual] enlightenment, that would be a really cool project." Now, I'm not the person to do that, but if somebody else came along that wanted to do that, they could take that information and run with it, and make their own project.

Or similarly, if someone wanted to do something in the area of science, you know how Florian and I were working on this project about cosmology some time back, and we were trying to come up with the outlines of a theory that would integrate Vedic knowledge with Western science and allow us to make a description of the universe that accommodates both material and spiritual observations, material and spiritual truth. Somebody who had the right background, who's really into that, had the qualifications and the interest, could make a really nice little project out of that.

Or somebody who, let's say--well I was doing this for awhile--doing transcendental music. There's a whole science of music in the Vedic Esoteric Teachings that can be used for all kinds of improvements of people's lives. This should be something that somebody who has the time and energy and the interest can do.

The foundation is there, and there are innumerable other applications in innumerable other sciences that could be extracted or drawn from the Esoteric Teaching and put into application in so many different areas; it's just unlimited. We want this; we want to spark people's initiative. We don't want robots; we don't want followers. We want people who have some interests, who have some initiative, and want to start their own projects. And then we make all this information available to them, and they can go off and start their own thing. And that will be good for them, and will be good for everybody.

So that's our vision; that's our purpose. We want to make this information [of the Vedic Esoteric Teaching] available to everyone on a wide scale. And of course the Internet is perfect for that, because nowadays practically everybody has access to it, at least in the developed world. An everybody, pretty much, who is educated speaks English, at least a little bit. So if we made all this material available, at least in English, Spanish, German, maybe a couple of other languages, it would pretty much cover everybody in the whole world.

And so that's what we want to do. We want to expand this [teaching], but not in the sense of creating another cult or another religion, or yet another organization that exploits people. No, we don't want to do that. That's already been done; that's like old news. We want to do something that's never been done before; we want to seed many different projects that are basically independent, and we have this completely decentralized network of people who share common interests in spiritual life, and who want to do stuff that's cool. Not another boring religion, with all these rules and all that stuff, but something that really changes people's consciousness.

Like yesterday we were talking about having a multimedia environment, where people would come in and there would be like laser holographic projections and spiritual sound vibrations, and certain aromas, and everything would be designed to give people a spiritual impression. They would come into this environment, and the whole idea would be to overwhelm their senses, to make them completely unable to resist this change in consciousness. And this is something that a lot of people could get into, and work together on, and use their talents and skills to do, and it would be so fulfilling and so neat, and really change people's lives; and who knows, it might even be something we could sell! [laughs]

But that's not really the point; the point is to help people. If we help people, if we make people's lives better, we don't have to worry about money; money will come. I have so much experience with this. When I quit business in 2001 and went to Kauai, I just camped out in the jungle and was chanting. I was on unemployment; and when my unemployment wore out, I said, "Well, I'm just going to travel around and teach people whatever I can share with them." So I started traveling, and I had no money; I had no funds, no means of support. And I would be hard put to tell you exactly how I made it through all those years of traveling; I really didn't have any plan, I would just go here, go there, talk to people, and whatever happened, happened; and somehow or other, you know, it's not like I starved, right? [slaps stomach and laughs]

So Krsna is taking care, God is taking care [of His devotee] because I'm doing His work. And every time I would run out of money, then somehow or other, money would come. Different people have been the instruments for God's will in supporting this work, and so the work has gone on for years now on that basis, on the basis of freely giving [the Teaching] and then people freely offering exchange.

So that's really the foundation of our work: We found something of great value, and we want to make it available to others, not as another control conspiracy, or not as another restrictive organization, but as a free offering of love and sharing of beautiful things that we found to be so valuable in life. And then other people naturally reciprocate.

Even Krsna Himself is like that. He says in Bhagavad-gita, [4.11] ye yatha mam prapadyante; that means, "As they surrender unto Me, I reward them accordingly; as the approach Me, I reciprocate with them exactly the same." He doesn't care how we serve Him; He doesn't care how we worship or surrender to Him. He's God; He's always going to be God. Nothing can change the fact that He's God; there's no competition, there's no way that somebody else is going to become God or something like that. So He's completely secure, He's completely comfortable with whatever; I mean, He created all this stuff, so He knows what's going on. He just would like to have a relationship with us; and when we take the initiative to start that relationship, He reciprocates it.

He's like that, therefore everybody is like that to some degree. When we get something of value from another person, if we're sane, if we're honest, we feel obligated to that person; we feel like "Well, now it's time for me to share something with them too." And actually if we realize what we are, if we realize that we're really spiritual beings, we won't have any problem with sharing, we won't have any problem with giving, because we know that we can give and give and give and give, and it really doesn't hurt us. If we're calculating materially, that's another story. If we calculate materially, then we say, "Well, if I give and give and give, then maybe they'll cheat me." But in spiritual life...

Well let me give you an example. You know I work with astrology--in fact tomorrow we're going to talk about Vedic astrology--and over the years I've done--oh, I don't know--it must be hundreds of charts for people. And only one of them has never given me a donation. And that was only a couple of weeks back, so you never know, maybe she'll still come around. [laughs] I'm not going to worry about it; it's the last thing that's on my mind.

I really just want to give people the advantage of having access to that knowledge. And if they have the access, they're going to think "Oh, this is great stuff. So of course I can share something back." There's no problem with that, because we have already got eternal life; it's not like we have to do something, or pass some test, or bribe somebody or convince God to give us eternal life somehow. We already have it: done deal. So the question now is: What are we going to do with our eternal life? Like "Whaddaya wanna do, Marty?" [quote from a famous film] Whaddaya wanna do with your eternity? We've already got it; no question about that. So, where do we go from here, what do we do? That's the question.

And that's the question that I would like to place before you, for your contemplation, for your meditation: "Really, what's the best thing that we can do with our eternity?" And each of us is going to have a different answer to that [question]. There's no one answer; there's no 'right' answer, you know? But the best answer for you is going to be found in the things that you think are beautiful, the things that you feel are enlivening to you, the things that are interesting to you.

I'd like to be in the spiritual world, and sing beautiful music for Radha and Krsna when They meet and have Their beautiful pastimes. I'd like to be in the spiritual world and offer beautiful music to Radha and Krsna; I'd like to meet Him in His Lion form, and like pet Him and scratch His ears, and listen to Him purr... [laughs] I'd like to have a relationship with God in so many different ways. A personal relationship, and these things are real; I mean, they're real to me, because I paid my dues; I did the process, I chanted the mantra, I did the meditations, I did the austerities. And therefore I got the result.

It's just like any kind of laboratory process; you have to take the [ingredients] and mix them properly, and so the process, and run the whole thing through whatever kind of transformation it is, and then you get the result. So yoga, or spiritual life or self-realization, is the same way; there are different processes, and each process has a different destination. Each mantra has a different result, a specific result. It's a huge field; it's not something you can learn in a weekend.

All we're doing here is opening up [the possibility], showing you where the doorway is. We're saying "The door is open; you can walk through it." You can go to our site, you can download all the Vedic literatures, you can read them. You can get all this information, and if you have any questions there's a forum. You can log on and ask all your questions, and either I or some of my students will respond, and so you can learn all this stuff; you can get a feeling for this whole enormous field of [Vedic] knowledge about God.

It's not that God is just one way, and the same for everybody. That wouldn't be very intelligent. But God has millions of forms, and millions of names, and millions of different pastimes on millions of different planets, for all time--eternity. And somewhere in all that there's a situation, there's a particular activity, a particular kind of service, a particular kind of relationship with God that's just right for you, for each and every one of us.

So we simply have to have the confidence that that exists, and that confidence comes from doing the process. If we maintain vegetarian diet; chant the mantra every day, especially first thing in the morning when first get up; if we use the information in the scriptures to understand our lives and what's happening in the world; we will gradually build confidence, because do we think that God is not going to reciprocate with us?

He's definitely going to respond from within, and He's going to let us know that He cares. He'll find a way. It's always different, because each one of us is different. He knows our hearts; He knows everything that's going on; He knows just how to get to us. [laughs] So if we open the door even a little bit; like, "Are You there?" He will find a way to show [that] He's really there. And we can experience that, and then our confidence in that relationship [with God] will build. And over time, it will become the main relationship in our life.

Like right now, like I said, I could literally just go out in the country and sit under a tree and chant my mantra, and I would be fine. I want each of you to have that strength, where you're not depending on other people for happiness; you only need to depend on God, because God is utterly reliable: a perfect Friend, a perfect Lover. So we don't need to ask God for things, because He knows what we need; He's supplying all of that, He's supplying already. But we need to ask God what He wants us to do for Him. He's going to say, "Well, what would make you happy?"

So I'm saying the same thing; I'm kind of acting as His representative here, as His ambassador. That's my role. I've been doing this now, well, since I met my guru when I was like 25 years old. So that's 253 years ago... No! [laughs] It seems like it sometimes. But I've been doing it for long enough now that I have complete confidence that this [Esoteric Teaching] is true.

I'm not just saying that because it's my business to convince people; I'm not a salesman, I'm not a very good salesman at all. I have experienced this [Esoteric Teaching] for myself, and I'm sharing from my experience, that's all. When I get up here, I don't even know what I'm going to say; I just take a deep breath, open my mouth, and [say to Krsna] "OK, it's up to You now." [laughs] The words come tumbling out; I don't know myself what I'm going to say.

So I hope that this [seminar] has been an opening for you; I hope it's brought you into awareness of things that you didn't--that you may have suspected were there, but didn't really know how to access. Or if you already had some experience of them, that it is giving you more freedom and more context to investigate these things and experience them for yourselves. And I hope that by sharing my experience that I've given you some value that you can take away from this workshop that will last you for the rest of your life.

And I also hope that you become a member of our site and use the facilities there, because there's a lot of value there. We've been building this site for three, going on four years; there's a lot, a lot of material there, and using the search facility you can find pretty much anything--anything you want to know is there somewhere. It might not be that easy to find, but we're working on that. That's our project, actually, right now, to improve the search mechanism. [This was just before the AskBaba FAQ and search engine went live.]

So, I guess maybe the best thing is to open up the discussion to questions, and to ask if there's anything you want to know that we haven't covered adequately, or that you're curious about, or that doesn't make sense to you, or any questions that you might have. Let's hear them; let's have a nice discussion.

Randy: The process of realization of the ontology that something outside of this material existence is real [and] exists... My particular path was the plant medicine path, which really facilitated me. A lot of people aren't going to have that opportunity, so they're going to find their path through self-realization through chanting and, um... I lost the core of my question. Let's say somebody really wanted to get out of the cycle of material existence, that after this particular incarnation they said "OK look, I believe you, I really believe that the spiritual realm is the place where I would prefer to be, and that's where all the goodness and juiciness is really; how can you assure yourself that you're going to, if you make a conscious decision to do that, that you will escape that wheel of life? Because, you know unless you've got some... Yeah I mean for me, from my perspective, the plant helpers were very powerful, and they really... They seized my consciousness in a way that, um, it was like putting jet boosters on your consciousness to get to that transcendental place. But without that assistance, I couldn't imagine what that process would be like, how difficult it must be.

Babaji: And the question is?

Randy: I don't know. [laughter]

Babaji: Well, Arjuna asks a similar question in Bhagavad-gita. And basically he says "What is the condition of someone who tries to attain spiritual consciousness, but due to their weakness, or circumstances, or events beyond their control, they don't make it? Are they like, between two different types of existence, and do they just like blow away, do they disappear like a cloud in the sky? I mean, what happens to them?" And Krsna says something very interesting; He says "Those who are on this path, their achievement is never diminished. There's no loss or diminution of the results, because the results are also eternal, just like the method."

Now the plant helpers, what they do [is] they force us to develop a transcendental ontology because they kind of pull the rug out from under our set conception of reality, and they show us another reality which doesn't follow the same rules. So it more or less puts us on the spot, and we have to develop a transcendental ontology, or an ontology that's sufficiently robust that it doesn't get destroyed when our whole context is changed.

So in that sense, they're very helpful. But they're still [material, because] they're not permanent. Maybe the result of you thinking over what you experienced leads to some permanent result, like in your case, you combined that experience with your knowledge of vibratory harmonies and so on, to realize the essence of what love is. And that has given you a transcendental perspective, which is remarkable.

But that's proper to you only; very few people could reach transcendence by taking that path. So what the Vedas counsel is like I said before, real spirituality means something that's universal, that everybody can follow. So the chanting process is like that. Anybody can do it; everybody can do it, and everyone gets the results. And those results are permanent, because the quality of the process is eternal and spiritual. So when we do that process, anything that we achieve on that process stays with us forever.

Even if we don't achieve perfection in this life and we still have to take another body, those results go with us into the next body; they're never lost. And there are certain things in an astrological chart that allow you to see what kind of benedictions or what kind of spiritual results a person has brought with them into this life. It's pretty easy to see that, actually. Because that will tell you where that person is on the spiritual path, and give you an indication where they need to go from there. But rest assured that whatever [actual spiritual] results that you have attained by whatever means are yours eternally, because they are of the same quality of eternal existence.

So that's that aspect; now the other aspect is if you decided that you want to transcend and attain full enlightenment in this lifetime, then the best thing for you to do is to find someone who has already attained that, and then have them coach you. Because they're experienced; and you'll avoid so many, wasting time because of making mistakes. You know, trial and error, like Edison. His method of invention wouldn't work with the stuff that we do today, because it's too complicated; it's not just a light bulb. It requires more background, more knowledge about how things work.

So similarly when we're working with consciousness, we have to have a clear idea of the theory of operation, and then we know when we try something that's unique, basically how it's going to work out. We have more confidence if we understand the process. And I think that's an underlying issue for a lot of people in spiritual life: how is this thing working? What's going on? Like if we work with plant helpers for example, what's going on? Why are we seeing all this far-out stuff? What does it mean?

Meaning is really the key to the whole process. Because the meaning will... Terence [McKenna] used to say this; he says "You know, there's so many people that get high, so many people who trip out. The difference between them and me is that I trip out, and then I think about it for a year." [laughs] Because... He's getting more meaning out of the experience because he's not just using it every day. He's using it under very specific controlled conditions, in a ceremonial way, with intention that's based on the sum total of his knowledge so far, and with a specific idea of what he's trying to accomplish. And therefore he's getting so much more out of the experience, that twice or three times a year is enough.

So when we approach spiritual life, we should have the same kind of substantial background, that we are going into the experience with an idea, a very clear idea of what we want, what we can expect and what we will get out of it. All that information is in the Vedas; I don't have time, we don't have time, you know we're all busy people, we're running around. We don't have to time to sit here and go over all this stuff, because it's just too much. But that's why I said, I'm like cracking open a door, and saying "Psst--hey, it's in here. You want the knowledge? You wanna know what's going on in the spiritual world? Check this out, buddy!" Download these files; read the Gita, read Srimad-Bhagavatam. Learn the Esoteric Teaching, and then you will know, when you sit down to chant, what's really going on, and "Why is this affecting me? Why does it make me feel so good? It's just a song! Why should it make me...?"

There's been some really great songs written; but how can anybody sing the same song over and over and over again for 40 or 50 years, and never get tired of it? I'm just waiting for the day when I can move to the woods and just sit down under a tree and just chant all day long. It's like "Oh, when am I gonna be able to do that?" I mean, I love to hang out with you all, but really that [just chanting] is a whole different order of experience.

So what I'm getting at here, is [that] when you have the background knowledge [of the Esoteric Teaching], then you're not engaged any more in religion. It's not even shamanism; it's engineering. You know what you're doing within a certain range of parameters, and there might be a few unknowns, but the knowns are far greater than the unknowns in an engineering situation. You pretty much know what you're doing, you know your materials, you know your methodology, and then you have a specific problem definition, and then you use decomposition to break it down into solvable chunks.

You can apply the same exact approaches to spiritual life, but it requires having the background, the training; the knowledge has to be there. And once you have that knowledge, it lights up everything. The things that are now mysterious, or strange, or seem far out, become like... Well it becomes like a laboratory. What is the thing... Oh, like a temple, for example, is like a simulator. If you learn to fly an airplane, for example, nobody can afford enough flight time to learn [how to handle] all the situations that can occur in an airplane. And besides, some of them are very dangerous, like having an engine go out on takeoff, for example. So you practice them in the simulator.

So what is a temple? A temple is actually a laboratory or a simulator of the spiritual world. So you get to practice these different transcendental pastimes in a safe context, where even if you screw up, it's not gonna be... nothing bad is going to happen. So you get a chance to experience all these different things, and try out all these different relationships [with God], and see which one fits you. That's the best analogy I can make. Why do we have temples? Why do we have gurus? Why do we have ashrams? Why do we have all that stuff? Well, it's a laboratory; it's a special kind of school for spiritual training. And it gives people the ability then to take that background knowledge and actually apply it, just like a lab in a physics course, or something like that. And then it becomes concrete.

There's a real difference between theoretical knowledge and practical knowledge. When you get your hands on something, and then you know the theory in your head, and then you see it actually working in the lab, it's like something clicks, and you get a much better understanding. The idea, the significance, acquires mass; it becomes real [instead of abstract]. Similarly, when we have a temple or ashram environment...

This is why we're doing this retreat in the mountains of Mexico; [so] that people can read this stuff, and then they can come there and see [that] this is the application. So it's like a real hands-on laboratory experience of the stuff that we're talking about now. In that environment, there will be a minimum of talking, and a maximum of applying the different methods. In other words, you're supposed to already have done your homework, and your background studies. And when you come there, the emphasis is going to be on the application. This is the classroom; that's going to be the lab.

So, both are necessary; if somebody just comes there and they haven't done their homework, and they don't have the background information, they're not gonna know what's going on. That's for one kind of aspirant; that's for someone who wants to become a disciple, or even a teacher of this knowledge. But the other thing that we were talking about, the multimedia experience, this would be for a broad audience, very wide audience. Anybody could come in there; they wouldn't have to know anything. In fact, we could use it as a lead-in for this kind of experience. And it would be like, they would go through the multimedia thing and get their mind blown, and then the next step would be "Well, do you want to understand what just happened to you? Then come to our workshop and we'll explain everything. Or go to this website, and you can read all about it."

We'll have some kind of a gated course on the website, and they can go through it, and it will say "When this happened, and your mind just splintered into a bunch of little pieces, and melted onto the floor, that was because we were doing this and this and that, and this is the way that this works." So it's possible to put together a whole series of experiences to move people from the consensus culture or the common culture that we've got in the world today, gradually into this spiritual space. And it's possible to do it; it wouldn't even take that much in terms of resources, it would take more in terms of intelligence and planning.

We're very close to it, with the website we've got already; all the information is there, it would just have to be somehow edited and massaged into more of a mass-market experience. Right now it's pretty much just for people who have enough initiative and enough intelligence to dig through it and find their way. It's that way on purpose; because in this kind of teaching, you want to start from the top down. You don't want to start from the bottom up. Although I really do want to work with you people, rather than with people who maybe have some preconceptions, or maybe some misunderstandings. I wanted to start from people who are really serious and build a core, and then from that core we would expand outward into more of a mass-market presentation.

It looks like there is a question [on the Internet chat]. Let's see the whole thing.

Neville: Babaji, in our original spiritual identity, do we also have other eternal relationships like mother, father, brother, sister etc. or do we just have a relationship with Krsna and all other relationships don't matter?

Babaji: Well, we have a main relationship with Krsna, and then we have other relationships with Krsna's other devotees. So let's say for example that we're Krsna's friend--cowherd boy friend. So then we also have a relationship with Krsna's mother and father, Krsna's brothers and sisters, Krsna's kids if we're in Dvaraka, or we have a relationship with Krsna's girlfriends. Like Sudama and Subala the cowherd boys, they help Krsna rendezvous with Radharani; they make their meeting place, and they send messages back and forth, and like that. So if you read in Krsna Book for example, or in the Tenth Canto of Srimad-Bhagavatam, that the devotees have relationships with each other as well as [with] Krsna. Nanda Maharaja and Mother Yasoda...

[responding to a comment on the Internet] Oh yeah, you have an eternal mother. In fact, that's part of the svarupa realization when you realize your eternal identity, you have a certain name, a certain form, a certain dress, a certain village that you come from, certain ancestry and family, and your family has a relationship with Krsna's family, a village relationship. In India they have the most wonderful custom, where you have relationships with people in your actual family; and then you have a village relationship with similar people in other families. So in Lord Caitanya's case, for example, His grandfather had a relationship with the father of Sarvabhauma Bhattacarya; so when Lord caitanya met Sarvabhauma Bhattacarya, by comparing the relationship that their fathers had with each other, they immediately had a certain relationship based on that relationship. Does that make sense? So in their village relationship, Sarvabhauma was like Lord Caitanya's uncle; so they could immediately could have a, uh, [gets distracted by a comment on the chat window] Neville, come on, stop kidding.

If you know what their [village] relationship is, then any person that you meet, you can immediately can have a relationship based on that relationship. So that's the village system in India, and that's very nice. [responding to a comment on the chat window] Well, no, when you get to the spiritual world, everything is complete. Om purnam...[responding to a comment on the chat window] Well I would think so, Conor. He says it's the same in Thailand. Because Thailand is also a derivative of the Vedic culture. Just like Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia, all those places were Vedic; they were under the Vedic Empire 5,000 years ago.

But anyway, what were we talking about? Oh yeah, so when you're in the spiritual world, everything is perfect; you have your mother, your father... Remember, you're living in a virtual reality. Even in the material world, we live in a virtual reality; but especially in the spiritual world, everything is there in relationship with Krsna. So when we're in the spiritual world, everything is perfect: our mother, our father, all our brothers and everything, like that. Just like when Krsna dances with all the gopis, He expands Himself into many forms so He can dance with each one; and each gopi thinks, "Oh, Krsna is dancing with me alone." They don't see Krsna dancing with the other gopis, but He's there, and they see like that. So there's this one central reality, but all based around Krsna, and all the devotees are in their virtual reality, and Krsna projects Himself so that each one of them thinks, "Krsna is with me alone," or "I have a special relationship with Krsna that nobody else can understand, and I please Krsna more than any other devotee. He told me so Himself." [laughs]

So that's Krsna; and He does that to love us better. So our relationship with Krsna is very deep, it's very multidimensional. So the other people [in the spiritual world], they're real living entities, but they also have multiple forms. There's a section in Brhad-Bhagavatamrta where the cowherd boy Gopa Kumar is talking with Narada Muni in one place, and Narada Muni says "You should chant your mantra, and then you can go to this other place." So he chants his mantra, and he's immediately taken in a celestial airplane to this other planet; and when he gets there, Narada Muni is there too! And he says "Hey wait a minute! Weren't you just in this other place?" And Narada says, "What's the matter" You think I only have one form?" He says "I have as many forms as I need to do my service."

So if your service to Krsna expands... Let's say Mother Yasoda or somebody like that, who has enormous responsibility in Krsna's pastimes that she is actually a mother to so many people, she can expand in many, many forms to do that service. And Krsna gives the required intelligence, He gives the required energy, and the bodies and the facility to do all that.

There's a nice sloka by Rupa Gosvami where he says, "I only have one mouth and two ears, so I couldn't really relish the Holy Name of Krsna. So I pray to Krsna to give me millions of mouths and millions of ears, and then maybe I can relish a drop of the Holy Name." So he's not just... This isn't just a metaphor; it's not just a nice poetic expression. He's really asking Krsna: "Give me millions of bodies with millions of mouths and millions of ears, and then I can chant very nicely and relish a drop of the Holy Name." That's how great the Holy Name is. I've been chanting the Holy Name now since 1967, and I feel like I just tasted half a drop out of this ocean. [laughs] It's an ocean; it's unlimited.

So when we dive into that ocean, our service expands more and more and more, and we can't even conceive of how it's done, because Krsna actually gives us the intelligence; Krsna can share any of His potencies with us. He can give us any of the energies that He uses to create many, many millions of universes. He can do that very easily, but what it depends on is our need to know that, or to have that knowledge or energy for His service. If we're dong something that pleases Him, then He can give us everything; He can give us so much. Look at how much He gave Arjuna; Arjuna was practically like a second Krsna.

So a devotee can become very, very powerful if that's necessary for his service in the spiritual world. Everything [in the spiritual world] is driven by service; not by mundane desire or greed, but by transcendental desire, transcendental greed, transcendental love, transcendental ambition, transcendental desire to please Krsna. That's spiritual life. So; you're welcome Neville.

Any other question? Yes, Uve?

Uve: Well I tried to summarize your lecture today, and it was about 2012, right? And in my...

Babaji: It started out [like that]...

Uve: ...nutshell, we don't know what's gonna happen then, but it's gonna be big, and while we don't know what it's gonna be, what's it's gonna mean for us, the best preparation for it is to follow the conscious path, right? And isn't that a recommendation that you would have given anyway, whether 2012 is coming or not?

Babaji: Oh man, you busted me! I thought I was gonna get away with it, too. [laughter]

Uve: There's nothing wrong with it, it's a great message...[indistinct]

Babaji: The 2012 thing is just to get your attention. [laughter]

Audience: "Hey, listen up!"

Babaji: I can say the same thing [in a different way]; I can say: "Guess what? We're all gonna die!" It's true; sooner or later, we're all gonna die, and before that happens we need to deal with that. But that's one of those things that everybody says "Yeah, yeah, I know, I'll deal with it when it happens." But if we say "2012," then [the response is] "Oh, I better do something right away." It's just a device, it's just a promotional device... [laughter] I have to be honest.

Randy: Thanks a lot, Baba.

Uve: I know a good marketing plan when I see one. [laughter]

Babaji: I have to tell you though, of all the marketing plans that we've had so far, this has been the most successful, especially on the Web. Oh my God, we've had hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube of our video.

Frankly though, we're all in trouble, because we all have to die someday. And even without that, there are so many difficulties in material life, and this knowledge can help us deal with them. So [the Esoteric Teaching is valuable] just from that point of view alone, but even more than that, once we actually come onto the platform of spiritual knowledge, we realize that "Whoa; this is really the way things are." And when we have this viewpoint, it's like we have this new dimension of awareness on reality, and you can never go back. You can never say, "No, actually I want to forget this, and go back to drinking beer and chasing broads in a convertible." No, you can never go back to that because it would be a diminution of your self, and we all have the natural urge to want to grow.

Audience: Rather than shrink.

Babaji: Yeah. That would be horrible, wouldn't it? Oh, it would be a loss; it would be like death. So just like we don't want death because the soul is naturally eternal, so also we don't want to give up any advancement that we have somehow made. So what I'm doing, really, I'm spoiling you. I'm rapping for a couple of hours from this platform of transcendental knowledge, and you're going to go out of here thinking "Oh, it makes perfect sense; that's right. OK, good; that sounds great." And then you'll go out of here and [later on] you'll go "What did he say? How did this connect with that? And what did that mean again, and how did he...? Oh, darn, I'm gonna have to read that Bhagavad-gita." [laughter]

So it's all a trick, you see. [laughter] Just sleight of hand. So I don't want to give you the impression that I'm trying to be tricky; I wish we had the time where you could all come to our ashram, and there would be plenty of time and we could just sit, and have a nice experience together over a period of weeks or months. Because that's what it really takes to absorb this knowledge; it takes some time, and we need to hear it again and again and again, and we finally start to absorb the transcendental logic, and then it's like "OK, yeah, I can understand that."

So all I'm doing is giving you a preview. Uddhava says, "In my experience, minimum six months of close association." Because that's his experience; I came down to Mexico and we started living together, and every day we would have these deep talks. So after six months it started to make sense, right Uddhava? Graciela had the same experience? Graciela is an assistant that he hired for his job.

[responding to a comment on the chat box] Less than six months; yeah I know, but he fell down because he was in bad association; his parents were trying to force him to eat meant and stuff, so they were being hard on him. But a person who is independent and has good association, they can become situated on this platform of knowledge pretty quickly—3 to 6 months—and you're changed forever. Your whole point of view, your whole consciousness is completely changed.

And then someday it's going to come down to "OK, it's time to really go for it," and you're gonna sit down with those beads and just go deep into the Holy Name and find out what's really there. [laughs] And that's a great day; that's a wonderful time, and I wish [for] you all that you would attain that, and attain even more than that. Because there's an unlimited scope for attainment and advancement in spiritual life.

Any more questions, guys? Yes.

Question: Like, I've really just only recently started learning more about 2012 and all of these different conspiracies that people speak of, and when I think about it, like since I can remember going back to school, when I started getting into my own religion, since my family never forced it, they kinda just said, "Here's a platform, you know learn as much as you can by [indistinct] and make a decision from there," kind of? You know, when I look back on it now, there really is like a connection between all that, even up to when I was going to college and I was taking an intellectual heritage class, I had to read the Bhagavad-gita for school, and I had to read the Bible and I had to read different, you know religious texts and then we had to sit down and analyze it, but at the time I was like, "I really don't wanna do this," now that I think about it and I'm learning more about it, because I had those experiences it kind of opened my eyes broader now, but when I've been talking to other people, if 2012 comes up, or religion comes up, I feel like more people now are kind of opening up to this whole idea, and being more open to this new idea as opposed to saying, you know, that they're with one religious, you know, spectrum because that's what they were raised in? Is this something that you've come across only recently also, or is it just my perspective that I'm running into more and more people who coincidentally are into the same thing?

Babaji: No, I think that as the level of change increases, there are going to be more and more people who are finally willing to cast away all the old structures and take a fresh look.

Questioner: So it is sort of kind of coming together, as we...

Babaji: Yeah, I think it's a symptom of the time that we're in. Like in the 60s, there were a lot of people who were willing to give up established ways of looking at things and try new things. And it was a time when society was looking for answers to problems. People were tired of living in fear. You know, then it was the Cold War; and at any moment there could be an atomic attack from Russia. And now it's Al Queda or whoever they made up that whole story about. So in some way or other, the controllers always want to use fear to make people obey; but I think people are getting tired of living in fear. They're getting tired of taking their shoes off to get on the plane, and all this nonsense. They want to find a solution that doesn't involve "my religion" versus "your religion."

A religion, if you look at the structure of a religion, it's an organization. And first of all an organization is simply an abstraction; it's not a real thing. They may build temples and churches, and have barbecues and fund-raising drives, but really what is a religion? It's just a bunch of agreements on a piece of paper, like any organization. What's real is people; and people want knowledge about what life is. But a religion tries to impose a certain set of understanding or dogma or practice or beliefs, and it tries to get in between the person and God, and moderate the relationship, like an advocate or a representative. And they say "Well we're going to represent God to you, and then we're going to represent you to God, and we'll work out a deal for you, see?"

Questioner: "If you follow all these things that we tell you to do, then maybe you'll get clear."

Babaji: And that's what it's really all about: "If you follow all these things that we tell you to do." That's like in the fine print somewhere: "Then we'll get you right with God. All you have to do is follow these simple instructions." [laughs] That's the rub; they get between the individual and God. The difference between that and what we're doing is [that] we want to give people a basis of knowledge from which they personally can approach God face-to-face, on an individual basis. It's like, we don't want to control you; we want to coach you. And that's a whole different kind of relationship. In our world, if we had our own planet or something like that, there wouldn't be churches; there might be some temples, but those would be just for training. And at a certain point, like Kung-fu, you have to leave the temple, go out in the world, and make it on your own.

Otherwise the knowledge is not yours. We want [you] to make the knowledge yours; we want to make sure that you know how to apply it. That leads to a greater level of awareness of your own self, and that you can go out in the world and apply this knowledge in any condition, any situation. You have to be strong; we want strong people, we don't want to make people weak. Religion tries to make people weak by undermining their confidence in their own self-determination. But we actually want to do the reverse; we want to give you more confidence in your self-determination because it's based on transcendental knowledge. And like we went over [earlier], transcendental knowledge is true in all situations, in all conditions, for all kinds of people.

So by giving transcendental knowledge, we make people strong. I want to be surrounded by strong people; I want to have friends who are independent and intelligent, have initiative and have resources and their own view on things. And we may not always agree 100% on everything, but we can work things out because we're grownups, and love each other. It's just like a family; you don't always agree with everything your family does. [But] that doesn't mean you don't love them, or you're going to leave them. That's conditional love. But we want to format--uh, sorry, support unconditional love, because that's the kind of love in the spiritual world. And by giving people a little taste of that in a spiritual community, then they can go on to realize the unconditional [loving] relationship between themselves and God.

And that's going to help people; we just want to help people, we're not trying to get anything out of this [spiritual teaching work]. So our product, our end goal, is to create spiritual community, or even better, to create a platform for spiritual community where people can make their own [communities]. If you want to learn this knowledge and go out and teach it, and hold classes and seminars like this, we'll give you 150% support. That's what we want. I'd love to have a little training school where people could come, learn all this stuff, and then go out in the world, start their own groups or their own community or whatever they want to do. That would be like, so cool.

And we wouldn't want to control them; [it's] not like we'd want to sell them a franchise, you know? [laughs] We want them to be responsible for their own project. And we would give them help; we'd give them support. We would give them a community where they could come back to, and figure out what they need to do next, and stuff like that. But we don't want to control them, because the minute you get into control, that's politics. And the minute you have politics, you have lies. And the minute you have lies, you go away from the [Absolute] Truth. And hey wait a minute, the Truth is what this is all about!

So we want to get away from all those control, power structure, profit, exploitation things, because that always leads to exploitation and lies and cheating. And that's the old way; we reject that. That's where we start from; that's why I liked your video, because you were saying, "No. We reject all these lies. We may not know what the truth is, but one thing we know: we don't want them lies!" [laughs] Kick that out. And now we're starting from a new platform which comes from before this age of darkness, which gives a way to approach God directly, personally, face-to-face.

And we give you all the tools; you have to do the work. We can't do the work for you. I'm not one of those teachers who goes, "I'm gonna zap you." Because that's just temporary anyway; you get back to work the next week, and you're just like "What was that all about?" We want to give you tools where you can transform your life permanently, so that means they have to be based on transcendental knowledge.

Question: How often do you have people come back to your place in the mountains in Mexico?

Babaji: It's completely individual; it's on an individual basis. Before somebody comes own there, I want to make sure that they're gong to fit in, they're going to be comfortable, that they're ready for it. It's an intense experience; it's discipleship. That's what it's about, really. So if someone is ready for that, then we'll invite them and we'll work things out on an individual basis. There's no "one size fits all." [That] don't work. Been through that; been there already.

Somebody have a question online? I haven't been watching. No? OK. Any more questions?

Question: On your website, how much information is there?

Babaji: There's about 40 Gigabytes. [laughs]

Questioner: Wow. How do you know where to begin?

Babaji: We have a summary; there's a page in the beginning that says "First time here?" And you go to that page, and there's links to several things that you can start from. And then from there, you just branch out into whatever your interests are. So there's stuff there about music, about philosophy, about art, about history; there's all kinds of material on there.

Questioner: Is that stuff you wrote, or you... [indistinct]

Babaji: Stuff that I wrote, based on the Vedic knowledge.

Question: Secret Teachings of Jesus was... did you write that?

Babaji: Secret Teachings of Jesus is on there, the Search for the Absolute Truth is on there, the Visnusahasranama the Thousand Names of God, oh there's just tons of stuff on there: Vedic astrology, The Big Lie, how to solve all your problems, there's all these different courses.

Question: [indistinct] Are those in audio form too?

Babaji: Some of them are; some are audio, some are video, some are written. There are all different kinds. The [Vedic] astrology course I'm especially proud of. I think it's the finest Vedic Astrology course on the Internet.

Question: Is that the one you just gave?

Babaji: This course?

Question: No, I mean the last few weeks you're doing one for Vedic astrology.

Babaji: I did some courses, yeah. Basically those were... I videoed those, and made them supplements to the online course. So the online course has written material, it has references to the original Vedic scriptures on astrology; it has supplemental audio and video recordings that explain the details, and then it has the original Vedic scriptures on astrology, and each chapter has a specific example of how it's actually used in chart interpretation, using Lord Caitanya's chart. So it's a really wonderful course; I put a lot of work into it. It's almost half done; but I don't know of anybody that's even gotten through the Introduction. [laughs] It's really high; and you talk about a learning curve, whoa. [laughs]

So basically you have to be almost like a spiritual master to really do Vedic astrology. And one of the quarrels that I have with the Vedic astrology community is that they have let their standards slide. They're training people that are not strong in spiritual life in the techniques of Vedic astrology, and the result is [that] the whole thing has become commercialized, and very cheap. They've made it into a business, instead of a spiritual path. And because of that, they're having trouble: there's all this infighting, people calling one another names, just a nasty political mess. And the reason for that is [that] they're misusing their knowledge.

So we want to present the original Vedic astrology in its original context, because context is so important. This is what's wrong with the yoga scene in the West. They teach yoga just like an ordinary exercise form; but it's actually much more than that. There are eight stages of yoga; it's called asta-anga. Astanga means 'eight limbs.' Astanga. So what are those eight limbs? Yama, niyama, asana, pranayama, pratyahara, dharana, dhyana and samadhi. But wait a minute; if you go to a yoga school, what do they teach you? Asana; "Sit here; do this; bend this way, move that way."

Questioner: I thought that was all there was to it.

Babaji: Well that's the way they present it; but actually, no, it's not like that. Without... Unless you do yama and niyama first, the asana won't have the proper result. The whole thing won't do anything. So basically, they've just taken this little piece out of context, and they're presenting it—for money—and they're teaching "Yeah, it'll make you healthy." Yeah, as an exercise form, it's the best exercise form on the planet. So just imagine if they were teaching the whole thing, how much benefit there would be in it.

But people want something cheap, quick and easy. So, what can you do? Our spiritual master used to always say "We're selling diamonds. Not everyone can afford." Everyone can benefit from them, but not everyone is willing to pay the price. That's the thing. So even though the process itself is very simple and anyone can do it, very few people actually do, because they don't have the background understanding and they don't have the qualifications. We make all that available for free; if people want it, all they have to do is invest the time, and go online and get it.

Questioner: That's what it comes down to, time.

Babaji: Yes. Time. [laughs] Isn't that where we started today?

Audience: Yes. [laughter]

Babaji: And so astrology is the measure of time, and the analysis of time according to the Vedic process, which is based on the motions of the planets. It's not that the planets cause stuff to happen; that's a Western idea, and that's a very crippled idea.

Randy: It's a chronograph, isn't it?

Babaji: That's exactly what it is.

Question: What's a chronograph?

Babaji: A chronograph is a way of measuring time. The universe is a clock. The clocks that we have are crippled because they try to make time linear: every second is the same as every other second, everywhere in the universe. No! Sorry, that's not true. You yourself know, like I made the example earlier, that sometimes time seems to go very fast and sometimes very slow. Everybody knows that; so how can we say that time is linear? Time and consciousness are inextricably tied together; so what distinguishes one moment, or one period of time, from another is the quality of the activities that happen then.

Now, it's very hard for us to see, just like when you're walking down the street and there are buildings in the way, you can't really see what's on the other side. But if you're in an airplane, you can see very clearly what's going on everywhere. So similarly, we can't really see what's going on in the immediate future, or even what went on in the past very well, because time itself is in the way. We can't really see the future; but we do know the movements of the heavenly bodies because they go in such remarkably regular patterns, we can predict them hundreds and thousands of years in advance.

So if we know those things, we can tell the time by means of the stars and planets much more accurately than by watching events here on earth. The same time is happening in the heavens as here on earth; and so the movements of the planets and stars are a way for us to understand what time it is: where are we in the cycle, the fractal cycles of time? And because similar things happened in the past at this particular time that are happening now, by examining the past, and what happened at this particular time cycle in the past, we can predict what's going to happen in the future. That's all there is to astrology; it's a way of knowing what time it is.

Audience: And it's a time of change.

Babaji: Well now it is; for us, it's always a time of change—it's just a question of how much change, how fast and what particular areas are going to change. So in the future, near future, we're going to go through a time of accelerated change, more and more. That's a foregone conclusion, and that knowledge comes from a scripture called Brahma-vidya. Brahma-vidya gives the time periods of all of the yugas and the chakras, and all that stuff that we talked about earlier. You can look it up on the Internet: Brahma-vidya by Sanjay Rath. [spells] He's probably the premier Vedic astrologer in the world today.

Question: Where's he located, in India?

Babaji: Yeah; and he translated this scripture, Brahma-vidya. And that gives all the information we were talking about earlier, even in much more detail. So if you really want to get into it...

All these things are linked on our website; we don't have any secret sources of information. Everything is right out there in the open; you can go look at the original text and verify everything. We're not speculating, we're not making stuff up. It's nice to be creative and all that good stuff, but your creativity should be based on something solid, something verifiable, something real. Yes, we want to have nice creative expression, and yes, I wish I had the leisure and the scope to just sit around and play beautiful music all day. But this other work [of presenting the Esoteric Teaching] has become more important, because really what's required is the [spiritual] education.

Without this spiritual education, people wouldn't understand my music anyway. Wen I came back from India and I tried to find people to play music with, I couldn't find anybody.

Question: How come?

Babaji: They didn't get it. I was saying "Look, the tonal resources that we're using in Western music are like hopelessly limited. We need to like, open this sucker up; in Indian music there are 256 different scales. Let's use more than three scales, OK people? Come on. Even in jazz, they're basically only using the seven scale mode of the Major scale. Well, there are so many more scales that have really cool scale modes. Well, why don't we use some of those harmonic systems; why are we using just this one scale that comes from ancient Greece; and even then we're only using two or three scale modes out of the seven [possible] scale modes. And then we're only using either 12/8 or 4/4 time; come on guys, there's all these other time signatures, all these other harmonic realms that we could be exploring." And they were like "Well duh, why would you want to do that?" [laughter] Hopeless.

Question: So your music is on your website under Music?

Babaji: Oh yeah. There's a menu on the left-hand side, and it has links to all these things. Just go through that; you'll find that everything is there. The Vedic Library is there: 500 Megabytes of Sanskrit texts. I don't even have everything on there yet. I still have this whole collection of rare texts that I haven't put up on there yet. It requires some editing, and I haven't had time to do it. Someday...

So anyway there's so much on our website. Even one thing: if you just read Bhagavad-gita. Just read Bhagavad-gita and actually understand it, and that would be the perfection of your life. Just that one thing; and we have so many things like that. We have a hundred times, a thousand times more stuff. So you can take advantage of our website, anybody can come online, they can get the information that they need to perfect their life. Then you have to put it into practice.

Question: That's the hard part.

Babaji: It is; because it's easy to start something like this [study of the Esoteric Teaching, but] it's hard to maintain it for any length of time. So that's why we need association; we need community. The website also has a Forum where we can get that community, we can reach out to other people following the same path, and you can get the support and the understanding... Like we have these online meetings all the time—at least every week.

So I guess we're kind of getting down to the end of today's session. Unless there's any more questions...

Randy: Baba, do the Vedas talk about other civilizations or planets that are in this particular universe?

Babaji: Oh yeah!

Randy: Do they give you a number, or talk about their qualities?

Babaji: They talk about there's 33,000,000 planets of the demigods. Those are just the heavenly planets; and then there are the planets of the sages up at the top, and then beneath [the earth planet] there's the so-called downward heavenly planets, and then there's the demoniac planets, the hellish planets. There's all kinds of planets. They don't give an actual number of the planets in this universe, but there's a lot of them: millions of them.

Randy: But the Vedas, are they specific to this particular universe?

Babaji: No.

Randy: Or they globally apply to all as a general operating manual?

Babaji: Mmmm hmm. Yeah. Absolute Truth; Absolute Truth is absolute because it deals with eternity. It deals with the things that are common to all existence. So whether you're in this universe, some other universe, this galaxy, some other, whatever... The same things are true to the 16-legged spider men on Regulus IV that are true for us here on Earth. It's just that God appears to them with more legs; He's the most beautiful of all the spider men. [laughs]

Randy: He has the most legs.

Babaji: He can really spin a web! God appears in terms of whatever values that we find elevating and beautiful and profound. He appears in every species of life; He appears to every kind of people in their own way. That's why there are so many religions in the world.

Randy: Are humanoids pretty common throughout the universe?

Babaji: Uh-huh. We're not unique on this planet; we're descended from humanoids on the higher planets.

Randy: Do they come traveling here?

Babaji: Oh yeah, they have space travel; they've had space travel for like, forever.

Randy: So that would support some of the Sumerian aspects of the giant race, or the Aryans that were very intelligent...

Babaji: Basically, anything that can happen, probably has happened, and will happen again in the future. So it's like, all these stories are true. We may not have accurate historical data of exactly when they happened; but in this universe, every possibility exists somewhere or sometime. So all these things are true.

The thing is, we're in a situation where, to really reach our full potential, we need to develop our spiritual consciousness. So regardless of where we came from, really our biggest concern is where we're going. And that's our focus. It's good to understand our origins, and how we got into this situation; but the real aim of all this transcendental knowledge is, how do we get out of this mess? Or, how do we get back to our our original home in the spiritual world? How do we experience transcendental love? How do we experience the Absolute Truth and attain self-realization? Because that's the real solution. And then we realize, then we can put all this stuff into perspective.

Question: Do the people who achieve self-realization go to one place, or is there more than one?

Babaji: Oh there's so many different places in the spiritual world. So we'll go to the place that most harmonizes with our individuality, with our particular needs. There's an unlimited number of destinations in the spiritual world; and if it doesn't exist, Krsna can create it in a second. For me, for example, for one of my transcendental forms, He emanated a whole new expansion, because I wanted to perform that particular kind of service. So there's nothing that's impossible for Him. Out of love, He can do anything for us.

Question: I heard of a theory that we have multiple selves?

Babaji: No, not multiple selves, multiple forms. So when I'm performing that service, then I'm in that form in that particular world, in relationship with that expansion of Krsna. When I'm in a different mod, then I'm in this other world, performing a different service to this other expansion of Krsna. In both cases, Krsna is the same individual, but He manifests a different form. He's pretty tricky; He's capable of anything. So for love, He can take on any form, or He can manifest any kind of pastime, or any kind of quality, or anything... whatever we need to feel completely satisfied. He's very accommodating; all He asks of us is that we love Him. He doesn't specify how; that part is up to us. However we want to love Him, He's willing to reciprocate. And He'll give us whatever we need to do our service.

There are devotees who fly around between different universes on these transcendental space vehicles, and just pick up the liberated souls and bring them to the spiritual world.

Questioner: Sounds like fun...

Babaji: Yeah, wouldn't that be a gas! You have to read Srimad-Bhagavatam. When you read Srimad-Bhagavatam, all this stuff is described, and it puts it all in perspective. And you go "Oh; that's what the spiritual world is like." There's no way I can explain it in just a few minutes, or even a few hours. It's a huge subject; you just have to read the whole thing, and then think about it for awhile, and it's like, "Yeah, I don't see how it could be any other way."

It just makes so much sense. Once you understand how God works, how the spiritual world works, how the soul works, and then you read the scriptures, it all falls into place: "Ah!" And then you understand; and this gives you complete spiritual freedom. God wants us to be completely free to be whatever we want to be; the only condition that He asks is that we do it in relationship with Him. That's it; everything else is completely wide open. If you want to be "Master of a Million Worlds," that's fine; just do it for Him!

That's what He says in Bhagavad-gita; He says "Whatever you do, whatever you make, whatever you sacrifice or give away, or whatever spiritual process you perform, simply do it as an offering unto Me." That's what He says; that's the only criterion. And then when you do that, He reciprocates. He's the controller of all the worlds; He's the origin, the emanation of everything. So He can easily create the resources to manifest any kind of vision of existence that we have. And the only catch, the only thing is, He says "Just do it for Me; do it out of love for Me."

Nobody else can really reciprocate our love the way [that] Krsna can. There's no other being in any other world that has as much potency as He does. He [even] creates or emanates the other Personalities of Godhead. He's so powerful that He can emanate another personality that's equally all-powerful, just like He is, and He's not diminished in any way. So there's nothing that He can't do.

So when we're in a love relationship with somebody like that, He wants to do everything, just to support us. It's so wonderful, and it's so completely intense. So I can't think of anything else I'd rather do for the rest of eternity. Yeah, the rest of eternity! That's what we've got to play with here.

[End of tape]

 

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