Prem Rawat:
Hello, everyone. I hope you’re all well, feeling well—and you know, somehow putting up with this coronavirus thing. Whether it’s good times, bad times, that’s completely dependent on you; it has nothing to do with the coronavirus.
You know, for the rest of nature, it’s quite a boon to have everybody locked up in their homes—and nature is having a field day with it; it’s like a vacation for nature.
So, last night I was thinking and I came across this word in my ideas, in my thoughts, that actually, I haven’t used too much of. And the word is “purity.”
So, when you look at the definition of purity, it’s “something that is without contamination.” Now, you know, of course, the definition goes on and on and on, but “something which is uncontaminated, something which is without anything else except for what it is.”
So then I started thinking; it’s like, “Hmm, that’s very intriguing; ‘something that is without contamination.’” Something that is what it is—and in its purest form.
So, when you start to think about that, so many things come to mind; it’s like, “Whoa, is life pure? The way I experience my existence every day, is that pure? Or is that contaminated, contaminated from everybody’s ideas, everybody’s concepts and everything else?”
Somebody from Mumbai actually wrote me a question—and I came across that; I’ve got a lot of questions. So I’m getting ready to start answering them one by one, but—I usually reserve those for the weekend. But the question that came up was, “You know, why do people believe in the caste system?”
In the world, a lot of apartheid, in one way or the other way, is exercised—you know, like just even after people found out that this coronavirus came from China (or, you know, it came from where it came from; I don’t think that, you know, China particularly needs a label on it).
But a lot of Americans of Chinese descent who were probably living here, born here, started buying guns! I mean, it’s like they were threatened. Because there are people out there who, it’s like, “Oh, you know, you’re the one responsible for this.” But this is completely crazy, of course.
But we segregate and we, you know, we look at the differences; we don’t look at the similarity; we say, “Okay, that person is from China; that person is from Africa; that person is from India; this person is from, you know, this place, this place,” and on it goes.
And so the question was, “Where does this come from?” And I was with a few people in the room, (my staff, basically), and we were talking. And I say, “Well, how would you answer that question,” I said to them. And they said—nothing, actually. And I said, “Look, it’s very simple. It’s a learned behavior. We’re not born that way; we learned this.”
It’s like, you can take two babies that are, you know, two-years-olds and put them in a room and they’re not going to say “What’s your caste” or “Which country do you come from,” or “What is your origin,” or “Are you Chinese or are you African or are you American; are you Australian?”
They will simply just play with each other. To them, you’re a human being; you’re a being. You’re another person, “very similar to how I am.”
So we learned these things. So, when, in our thoughts, these kinds of things come, is our thought at that point pure? And the answer is, “No, it’s been contaminated by something.”
Now, contamination is contamination, whether it is a positive contamination or it’s a negative contamination; it is a contamination. It is no longer the pure thought, the pure understanding of being a human being. It is not the purity of how you can view your existence.
All these other filters are coming in: “This is important; that’s important. I have to do this; I have to do that; I have this relationship with that person. I have that relationship with that person. That person is there; that person is there.” And it gets contaminated.
Now, you can say “positive contamination” or “negative contamination.” It doesn’t really matter. It’s a contamination; it’s no longer that word, no longer what that word represents, which is purity.
So, purity of what? Well, purity of life. Purity of existence. Purity of thought. Purity of feeling. Purity of understanding. Purity of expression. Purity of enjoyment. Purity of fulfillment. Purity of clarity. Purity of you, as a human being.
So, what do all these things mean? That we feel. But do we really feel what the feeling is—how it should be felt? Should I give you an example? “Feeling of being alive.”
And you know, when a tragedy happens it’s like, “Oh my God, I’m so glad, you know, it didn’t happen to me.” Or, you know, it sets us back and we go, “Oh my God, I’m so fragile; I’m this; I’m that….”
Ten minutes later, we’ve forgotten it. We have forgotten it because we came across something more important: “We’ve got to do this; we’ve got to do this; we’ve got to do this; we’ve got to do this.”
So, “feeling of being alive,” feeling. Feeling of being alive. Do we keep feeling that feeling, consistently? Or does that get contaminated? How many things in our life actually get contaminated? When it comes to even, Knowledge of the self, it gets contaminated by other people’s ideas.
So really, even understanding the word “purity,” just, just for the sake of it, you know, not getting too deep into it and going, “Oh my God, you know, ahh….”
No, just for what it’s worth. Yeah, I guess, understanding purity, purely purity, just purely. Not trying to give it meaning, not trying to give it twists, not trying to give it all these other things, but just, “What is it about, your existence, you being alive, you being able to feel? You being able to feel the reality? In a very pure way, the purity of it?” Your connection to your creator—pure.
And see, this is where it gets very, very tricky. Because for you to have that connection with your creator be pure, you have to have a very pure understanding of your creator. For you to be able to understand what is that pure feeling, you have to know what it is that you are feeling.
What does pure love look like?—that is not because of a reason, that doesn’t have a season attached to it, that doesn’t have circumstances attached to it—but something that is purely love? And that you can feel, without inhibition, without having conditions attached to it, circumstances attached to it: “I love you because….”
You know, and it’s very funny because when children love, it’s love; they love. And children are not the ones who carry a grudge too far. You know, pretty soon they forget and they go on. And of course, the older they get, they can carry that grudge much, much further.
But when they’re really, really young and they want to punish you—they want to punish you as parents or they want to punish you; they want to say something nasty to you…. And you know, of course, they don’t know all the nasty words and this and that, (well, these days I don’t know), but usually, they don’t know the nasty words.
So, one of the things they say is, “I don’t love you anymore.” And it is the cutest thing. It’s like, this is like the worst possible punishment that this child can throw at you, that their love has been taken away. What must be their definition of what love is? That it is unconditional, because even after having said, “I don’t love you anymore,” two minutes later, ten minutes later, everything is fine.
And I remember that one day when my grandchild said to me, “This is the worst possible birthday I have ever had.” And I mean, you know, he wasn’t that old—so it wasn’t like a long list of birthdays that he had been through; he wasn’t like a big veteran that had fought many, many wars.
And then he got the good presents that he kind of wanted; his expectations were fulfilled. And everything was fine; it was the best birthday he had ever had.
So, you know, we go around in this world and every interaction we have, it really is about our expectations being fulfilled. If a loved one fulfills our expectations, “Oh, you’re wonderful. I love you.” But if that person does not fulfill your expectations; they do something really stupid or really weird, you no longer—you will question your love. This is strange; this is not pure love.
So, you know, can there be pure love in relationships? I don’t know. I don’t know. Should there be pure love in relationships? I don’t know. That’s up to you to decide.
My job here is just to point out the purity of love—that there must be some form of love that is absolutely pure. And that had better be used on you as well—and whatever else you want to use it on is one thing, but it had better be also used on you. That you have that love for you that is unconditional.
Because you’re going to need that love. People start to sometimes hate themselves. They don’t know the purpose of their life anymore. They question everything in a very weird way.
And yet, to have that purity of love for the self—and purity of understanding who you are, and purity of that self-Knowledge—for you. Not contaminated by somebody. And it doesn’t matter who they were, you know, what title they wore; contamination is contamination; pure is pure.
So, having an understanding of your life, of your circumstances, the time you are in—and understanding it in a very pure way. Not “this is happening and that’s happening and that’s happening and that could happen and that could happen….”
Because believe me, when those things start to strike you, the possibilities—and especially the negative possibilities, when they start to strike you, they can eat you alive. And there is no cure for it; there’s no pill you can take for it. There’s no cure for it—and just, it can get worse and worse and worse and worse and worse and worse and worse. And this has a physical effect.
So, there is thought that has been contaminated by circumstances. So what is the pure thought like? What is that purity truly, truly like? And only the heart, I feel, can verify to the purity—not by definitions that “this is pure”—but the acid test, sort of to say, would truly be the heart—to say “Yes, I understand the purity of it.”
And look, in this world, if things are contaminated, they’re contaminated. You know, so, you get on with it.
A lot of people go to restaurants—and sometimes I go to restaurants. And I always wonder if that food is pure. You know, you don’t know if whatever you have ordered, you know, your carrot halvah or carrot cake could have fallen on the ground and then the chef picked it up and put it on the plate; you don’t know that. But, fine, you sit there and you eat it anyway, right?
But the heart, the purity of those things that matter to me, that are important to me, that carry a significance in my life—that the stronger, the more pure that is, my understanding is, my feeling is, my love is, my clarity is, that without an exception if I have the purity of these, that then I truly stand on mighty ground.
And I have the power of purity. I have the power of that light that shines in my heart, that shines—that repels the darkness of all that that affects me negatively. That that purity is real; that that purity is good—and I feel it. That’s how it has to be, that I feel it.
If I don’t feel that purity, then I have nothing. So, I have to, now, conjure up the definitions of purity in my head. And then I have to go around asking people, “Is this pure; is this pure; is this pure; is this pure; is this pure?” And then I hope somebody tells me, “Yeah, that’s pure.”
And then I have to—and then, I have to believe them. I don’t have a choice. I have to believe them; I have to believe them. My goodness, if I don’t believe them my boat is sunk.
But that’s when you have to know to turn to your own heart. Not somebody else, but to your own heart—because that heart is where that divine is. And by that very definition, the purity resides there; the purity is there; the purity is in you. To be able to look and understand what that is, to be able to weed out all the contaminants to have something that is pure.
In India, they have these trays. And they put the wheat or rice that they’re cleaning and they go like this. And because of that, they—and it’s, I have done it—and the motion is not only up but slightly out, outward. And the rocks have a higher gravity or a higher density, so they go further by when you do this. And so they’re weeded out—and what is good, (the rice, which is lighter), stays.
And they can do it very fast, “Chou, chou, chou, chou, chou, chou!” And the next thing you know, that rice is clean.
And of course, you know, when the chef cooks the rice, he also takes a look at it; he pours in a plate, whatever he’s going to cook. And then he just goes through it very quickly and it’s very easy to see if there’s something dark, (because rice is white); if there’s something dark, you take it and you throw it out; you pick it out.
The purity. We like purity. We don’t like impure water; we like pure water. We like pure food. You know, we like that little label, “Pure olive oil.” You know, “Pure coconut oil,” pure this, pure that.
Anyways, give it a thought, about that purity, how it relates to your existence, to your life. So, be