Prem Rawat:
Hello, everyone. I hope you’re all well and safe.
So, today I’d like to just talk a little bit about this opportunity, really—a chance to be, to be happy—a chance to enjoy, to be simple, to have an understanding that your relationship between the two walls is with you.
It’s about you—it’s about your existence; it’s about your being here. It’s not about the coronavirus; it’s not about this world; it’s not about the world economy; it’s not about all of this stuff.
The reason why I say that is, all the stuff that we are always concerned about is human-made. All this economy, all this stuff, this is just a play of the human beings. Somebody came up with these ideas: “This is what we should do; this is what we should do; this is what we should do.”
There are policies; there is, “This happens; that that happens. There is this bank that controls that; there is a group of people that controls that.” And you, you don’t feel like a puppet in it; you don’t want to be a puppet in it, but that’s exactly what you are, whether you like it or not. Hence you have a desire to be free.
And when the word is mentioned, “freedom,” there is such a strong feeling, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I want to be free.” But have you ever asked yourself, “What is it that enslaves you? Why do you want to feel free? Why don’t you feel free?” And the reason why you don’t feel free is because all this stuff that is on the outside is holding you back from being truly who you are and what you are.
You have this life. You have this existence. And for the most part, we know so little about it. We have not thoroughly explored it; we have not truly looked at it and said, “What does it mean; what does it mean to be alive; what does it mean to exist; what does it mean to be? What does it mean to have this?”
Is this an opportunity—or is this a kickback of some actions of a past lifetime and this and that—and you know, there’s no shortage of people making it complicated. Oh, you just cannot believe how complicated people of this world have made existence to be.
“Oh, you are only here because you did something in your last lifetime; you did this; you did that,” and on it goes. And those people who tell you all these things, they themselves have no idea what it all means. Why? Because it has all come from a book, not from them.
It’s all about believing—believing, believing, believing, believing. And we are all happy to believe; we can just believe away our problems; we can just believe away all the complicated stuff. We can just believe away who the creator is. We can just believe away how we got here. We can just believe away all this, all this stuff.
I challenge the people to know! What can you know? To know, to understand, to have the awareness of the self. And that’s what everything is about—to really feel what it means to be alive—and in this time.
So, what happened? Well, you heard some news; it was around December 2019, “Yeah, oh, there are some people who got sick in China.” “Wow. Okay, hope they get better soon.” Hmm, well, they may or may not get better soon—but they all started leaving. People realized that they had jumped.
And you see, when I say, “And this is all people’s doing,” it is. We human beings do these things. So, all of a sudden, we have airlines who are happily taking people away, wherever they want to go. And unbeknown to most people, they’re carrying this virus. The next thing you know, all over the world….
Now, whoever came up with the idea of having unrestricted travel, it wasn’t with a bad intention; it was like, “Yeah, that would be really good; people could go wherever they want to go.”
There was a time that was not the case. When I was traveling a lot in the early seventies, 70, 71, it wasn’t like that. It wasn’t anything like what traveling is like now. People actually got dressed; it was an occasion. And you had to have a lot of money to be able to get on an airplane.
Then, it was around the Carter administration where they opened it all up. Before that, the major airlines had everything locked up. And they removed all those restrictions and now all competitive airlines could come—and all the airlines could come that wanted to come and start flying people around. And the quality, of course, disappeared, but yes, a lot of people were going all over the place.
And the next thing you know, something like this coronavirus, traveling, traveling, traveling—and there’s quite a parallel to this, Spanish flu—that was all about traveling too. And that traveling made it possible for that stuff to spread.
So, anyways, besides the point that, yeah, whatever is going on…. That human beings have created for themselves, this issue—and it is human beings who have to try to figure out how to get out of it.
And there are people, I’m sure, it’s like, “Oh, it’s, but it’s, this is complicated and that’s complicated and this happened this way and that happened that way.” It has nothing to do with it.
Don’t ever forget what your business here between the two walls is. Please, don’t be distracted by this stuff; this will go away. All you have to do—it’s a pretty simple formula: “Isolate. Don’t give it; don’t get it. Wash your hands; maintain the distance”—fair enough.
They’re working on viruses––the vaccines; they will have the vaccines, medication, whatever…. And then you can go on with your business of whatever that business was that you can’t wait to get to, (which I can’t imagine what that could be), fighting with each other? You know, all kinds of bizarre stuff, that’s what we were doing.
Excuse me, that’s what we were doing before—you could have picked up the newspaper and seen all that stuff that’s going on. And now we have got coronavirus; that’s got our undivided attention. And when this is over, I’m sure we’re going to go back to the same old craziness.
But this is not why you’re here. Neither you are here for coronavirus, nor you are here for that craziness that goes on every day. You’re here for something else. You’re here to be fulfilled.
Like many times, I give this example; it’s like, you know, you bought a ticket and you won it. And the ticket is that, you know, for X amount of days, you’re going to be in this most incredible shopping center.
And there are all kinds of shops in that shopping center, most magnificent shops in that shopping center. And you can have—you can go to any shop you want and get anything you want. There’s only one caveat. And that one caveat is, you get to take nothing from that shopping center with you.
What is your strategy going to be? I know what my strategy will be. I will enjoy every minute of being in that shopping center. I may not be able to take anything with me, but one thing I can sneak away from there—I know I can—and that is my enjoyment.
So, that’s my strategy; my strategy is to enjoy every minute of it that I can. And now, situations happen. People come up with ideas, situations, different things, “Oh, don’t do this; don’t do that, you know, I don’t want you to do this and I don’t want you to do that.” And I’m like, “What? Why? What’s your point?” But then you just like, understand, “Look. Fine, let it go.”
It becomes very important—I can’t control the situations, but I can control the way I react to them, for my sake—not for people’s sake, for my sake. This is a big part of what the training that I am putting together for you is all about.
“What do you control?” You don’t control the situation. Obviously, you want to control the situation—but you’re not going to be able to control the situation all the time. But what you can control is how you react to that situation.
And if you can control that, not for other people’s sake, not for the sake of looking good, but for yourself—whatever you do has to be for yourself first.
If you cannot be kind to yourself, you cannot be kind to other people. If you cannot be understanding of yourself, you cannot be understanding of other people. If you cannot be fulfilled, you cannot fulfill other people. If you cannot love you, you cannot love other people. If you cannot be clear, you cannot pass on clarity to the other people. First, it has to happen for you.
And if it can happen for you, then it’s up to you, “What do you want to do with it?” It’s up to you, how you want to unfold it. It’s up to you, “What do you do with it?” Because you have just awakened and evoked those beautiful powers that reside inside of you, that are inside of you.
Will we never feel sad? Of course we will feel sad. Somebody asked me that question and I’ve been thinking about it—“You know, I’ve got my grandfather and I can’t go and say goodbye to that person; I cannot take care of that person. What do I do?” And when I read that, you know, of course, I was sad too. This is not good. This is the sad part of it.
And what’s going to happen with this virus thing; I mean, this thing has only begun. I mean, can you imagine all those poor people—the poor are the ones who are always going to get hit the hardest—really, really hard.
I mean, you know, most people have a house or have an apartment or have a place which has got proper walls and so on and so forth. Can you imagine how many people live in these shacks that are made out of those corrugated aluminum tins? That that’s it, those aluminum sheets?
And the summer is upon them. You know, I mean, in California, of course, it’s still cool outside—not a problem. But in places like India, places like Africa, I mean, the summer is here in the northern part. And my God, it just gets…. How do you quarantine yourself? Where do you quarantine yourself?
So, you know, give it a thought, of all that stuff. And yet, what did I come up with for that person who said, “You know, there’s my grandfather….” It’s like, “You can love. You can love that person.”
Love is the only thing you’ve got that does not see walls, that does not see doors, that does not see time, that does not see situations, that does not see wealth, that does not see economy, that does not see anything. Love is! And it is one of the most powerful things you have.
Your love? Your love? Oh my God, it is the most powerful thing you have. It is more powerful than punching somebody with your fist in somebody’s face.
Love! Love is one of those things, that when a person is touched by that, they will never forget. If you hurt somebody, they may, after the wounds healed and everything is good, they may forget it. But love will touch them in a place where they will never forget what it has been like.
You have that. You don’t know how to use it; you don’t know how to evoke it. Why, because you’re always being shortchanged by these little picture postcards that this printer keeps putting out—what your vision of love is, what your vision, what your view of the perfect person is, who you should give this love to. This is what happens every single time.
These pictures, the more I think about them, how obnoxious are they? Every single time, they shortchange the people, my potential, my possibility of why I am here between those two walls, the time that I have….
And they get shortchanged by this printer that just keeps putting out more and more and more and more prints—and I keep looking at those prints and going, “Oh, how wonderful that is; yes, yes, yes, that’s what I want.”
For me, this journey has been quite a journey. I mean, I left Spain—and the lockdown hadn’t quite begun yet. They were just getting some talk about it and I left—and I arrived in Brazil. And at that point, when I arrived in Brazil, it was fine to go to South America; it was fine to go to Argentina; it was fine to go to Montevideo.
But I was going to be there for a couple of days, three days I believe, and just then they said, “No, no, nobody’s coming to Argentina.” And I decided, “Well, you know that we really shouldn’t be holding gatherings and getting people in one room; this would be very bad.” So I said, “I don’t want to do that.”
And so then, the day I left Brazil, the next day they were announcing that they were going to go under lockdown; they were going to stop. And I’d looked around where I was, and people were so poor! Being isolated wasn’t going to work for them. And they just, and that just—they didn’t know how to be isolated.
But this is what poor people do; they congregate; they go to a tea shop; they go to a coffee shop; they go somewhere, just, and they congregate and this is where they, you know, have their interaction and this is where they get their little news and this is where it happens.
Because a lot of them are migrant workers and they’re there; they have come from different villages. And their families are in their villages and they’ve come to the cities to do and make a little bit of money. And I was like, “Oh my God, poor people are just going to get slaughtered by this.”
And it’s so important that the governments and all of us as human beings, try to help as much as possible. And I have some good news in that regard.
So, I asked TPRF and I asked RVK India to send me a report of what TPRF is doing and what RVK is doing and I would like to share that with you at some point in time. But it’s really wonderful to just see what little effort we make, and it has such a profound impact.
And so, I know, whatever the difficult situation may be, have a heart and give a thought for everyone else. Because they’re in the same boat; you’re all in the same boat; we’re all in the same boat. The boat isn’t any different. Somebody may be by the bow; somebody may be by the stern; somebody may be starboard; somebody may be port—but it’s the same boat.
So, somebody might say, “Yes, I am in the bow; I’ll get there sooner.” And then, you know, somebody might say, “Well, I’m in the stern and I might get there later,” and somebody might say, “This is the port side; I’m going to dock first,” and then somebody says, “And the starboard side; I’m going to dock….” And whatever. But it’s the same boat. We have to realize that.
And that would be an incredible turning point if we could realize what humanity means—in these times, what humanity means. That, let this not be another repeat of the Spanish flu. And a world with all the technology, with all that information, forgot what that was all about.
So, I hope you stay well. Please, be safe; be well. And most importantly, be. Thank you very much.