Prem Rawat:
Hello, everyone. I hope you’re all well. What I’d like to talk about today is a little bit different—because it has a lot to do with you, as in regards to everything else that happens in this world.
So, you know, from a very early age, we are told what to do and what not to do. Now, please, don’t take this the wrong way; I’m not trying to say that that’s right or wrong. I’m just saying there comes a point in one’s life where you have to look at that, just look at it for whatever it’s worth.
So, we go along and, you know, when we are very, very young we are told, “No, you can’t do this; don’t do that; that’s not good”—and maybe we’re taking our toy and ramming it against the wall and the parents say, “Don’t do that”—and so we stop.
And in this whole process, it is important to listen to what people are telling us. And so, pretty soon, there is, of course, a want, a desire to do something—but then there is the outside influence which is saying whether you can or cannot do it. Now, this goes on. And every step of the phase of your life, things like that happen.
So you get a little bit older and you start going to school—and then a whole myriad of responsibilities are introduced to you. And you’re told what you can do and you cannot do—again, this is what you’re told. Then you get a little bit older; you also start getting a lot of friends—and it’s the same thing; you’re now again being told by a different group of people what it is that you can and cannot do.
Then you get older—and you get different kinds of friends. But again, there are rules; there are limitations; there’s discipline. And whether that’s good or bad, I’m not making that judgment at all. You know, some of it we do need because just how it is.
Then we keep on going—and maybe we get a job. Now we have a different group of people—and we have bosses; we have colleagues. And they tell us “what it is that I can do, or we can do or not do.” And it keeps on going like that.
And the point of all this is that “Okay, why look at it”—because maybe at some point in time in that whole stretch that we have that we call “existence,” we have to make some important decisions. I have been trying to please the world; we try to do that—and whatever the world says, “Yes, we’ll do this; we will do this; we will do this; we will do this.”
But there comes a time when I need to look at me as me and this existence as mine. Not somebody else’s, not somebody else’s idea of who I should be, but my idea of who I should be. I have to dig in and I have to understand what my reality is; who, who am I? What am I? What are my needs? These are the things that I want to flourish.
So, it’s as though I have been this perfect little soldier—and the world has commanded me to “march, march, march, march,” and I have marched. They’ve told me, “Go, do this; go, do that; think this way; think that way….”
But you know, before this life passes you by—and it’s gone—and for you, never to have it again, it would be nice if you, the one who has this life, was to take a little time and look at you, not as the world, but look at you and look at your world. Look at what your needs are, look at what your heart is telling you. What that fundamental “you” really is.
Now, I know that there are people who are afraid; they’re afraid to acknowledge themselves that way. Because what if they look at themselves and they find something ugly?
But you know how many chances you take; you take an awful lot of chances in this world. You get in your car and you head out; you go to a freeway. You’re driving on a freeway—and you’re taking a chance—that somebody isn’t going to come and slam into you. Sometimes that happens.
You’re taking a chance that those tires that you are riding on, those four tires will stay intact. You’re taking a chance that your brakes won’t fail.
If you go flying, you’re taking a chance that somebody who was putting together the wing, you know, didn’t try to beat the rivet into shape, because the rivet was being a little bit unruly—and beat it so hard that, you know, now the plane is unsafe and one thing happens and the plane just comes apart.
It’s not like that would be the first time that that would have happened—no, it has happened before. Somebody maybe got a little bit too excited about, you know, that hammer in that engine and, you know, that engine starts to fall apart. That—that has happened.
So, we take chances. And we take a chance on everybody. We take a chance on our friends, that they’re good. We take a chance on our job that that is good; we take a chance on our boss that he’s good.
But we never take a chance on ourselves. And I think, sooner or later, that time is going to come when you have to take a chance on yourself. You’re going to have to say, “Okay, I want to know; I want to experience my life as it is meant to be experienced.” Not by people’s definition of how it should be experienced, but how it really, really, really, really must be experienced.
That simplicity—the simplicity of life, the simplicity of existence, what is that simplicity really like? What is it like to awaken and have a longing and a thirst in your heart to be fulfilled?
And not to put that away, not to say, “Okay, I’ll go do something and I’ll cure this”—but to sit with it and feel, feel that thirst—of how beautiful and how important it is that that thirst exists as the great motivator, to motivate us to find that peace, to find that fulfillment in our lives.
To totally transform—from being just this little soldier, this wooden soldier that just marches and marches and marches—to sitting down and accepting that sea of serenity that exists inside of every single human being.
And what is it like to see you through your eyes? Not somebody else’s eyes, not through somebody else’s interpretation, but through your eyes? What is it like to welcome you from your heart, your existence, not judging it, not judging how it is, not judging “this is right and that’s wrong.”
And not splitting your world into just “right and wrong and right and wrong and right and wrong,” even though that’s the mantra that you’ve been taught. And that’s the mantra you have been reciting since you were very, very young: “Right, wrong, right, wrong, right, wrong….”
But there is something beyond this right and wrong—and it is good, and it’s beautiful, and it’s simple—and it is your existence. It’s about you. It’s not about your fantasies, but it’s about you, your fulfillment, not the fulfillment of other people’s expectations.
Because, you know, you see a sign for a soft drink and it’s like, “Yeah, oh, we should have this.” Because—and they’re telling you that “If you have this, you will be satisfied.” The reality is, not you; it is the company that will be satisfied if you were to buy their soft drink.
And this is how it has been. You do certain things…. But before this life passes you by—because it is; it’s passing by very, very quickly—and pretty soon, before you realize it, it’ll be gone.
And I’m not talking about coronavirus or this situation today. But I’m talking about just how it is! It’s all too short a period of time. And for you to realize that you came—and you maybe were not understood by this whole world—but you were understood by you. That you sought to be fulfilled amongst the vast emptiness of this, crazy thoughts that we have had.
It wasn’t that long ago that human beings embarked on a very distinct path of existence—and it was with farming. Because with farming came this whole idea of protection—you had to be protected because you would work so hard; it takes time; it is up to nature that your crop comes up—and then somebody comes and steals it.
And all that food that had to be transported back and forth—the idea of roads, the idea of soldiers; the ideas of a king; the ideas of what the current society is, are very relatively starting from that time of when farming began. (Now, I could be wrong—but this is what I have read.)
Before that, we were different; we lived differently. We didn’t exist for a particular thing; we weren’t tied down to anywhere—because we could just go wherever we could go, find food—we lived for food. And whatever food we could find, we would bring it back….
But the farming gave us this opportunity to, you know—one person creates all the food—and then a whole bunch of us don’t have to be occupied with that occupation; we can sit at home, do whatever we want to do and we’ll get our food.
We have been trying to make the “land of milk and honey” everywhere, every household. But that’s not the case. The case is, “Okay, you’ve been trying to do all this.” And maybe someday we will succeed. So far, the track record is that we have not succeeded and there is no indication whatsoever that we will in the near future.
Because the drama that it would require for us to un-click out of that is incredible. It takes something like this coronavirus to bring home a point about us being human. This is what that coronavirus is telling us.
I mean, I know it’s not—it can’t speak; it’s—but this is what has happened. There has been a stark reality; there has been the brakes that have been applied to this bus that was just going off a cliff somewhere.
And the brakes have been applied and people are like—the only thing, there are a certain group of people, the only thing they’re interested in, “Get that bus going; get that bus going; get that bus going,” even if it means the bus is going off the deep end—but they just want to get the bus going.
Whilst there needs to be an understanding of “What is this all about? How do we want to be? How do we want to live?” And I’m not—you know, I’m no doctor for society—but I am an advocate for understanding every individual that is on the face of this earth.
That I see that potential—that when every human being, (as many as possible), can be strong, then that strength will make us all strong—to go forward, to take those tough decisions that we have to take, make a better life for all of us. For all of us.
But it begins with truly looking at yourself as a human being. All the chances that we take with the world, to take a chance with us. To take a chance with this heart, to take a chance with the need that exists inside of you to be fulfilled.
You know, too many people, when you mention the word “peace,” it all falls apart and people start to—you know, there are the yeasayers and there are the naysayers. And unequivocally, everywhere you go, anywhere around in the world you go, there are the naysayers and there are the yeasayers. “Yes, that’s a great idea”—“No, that’s never going to happen.”
But to go beyond that—and say, “Why do I have a need in me for peace? Why, why is it that I want freedom?” I mean, after all, whenever the word “freedom” is said, it sounds so good. But what’s binding you? I mean, unless you’re incarcerated—but you’re not, maybe not—what’s binding you? Why do you like the idea of freedom?
Because maybe you don’t physically see that you’re incarcerated, but you are incarcerated from that true freedom, from that true feeling that you want to have in your heart, in yourself.
Now, you know, people say, “Well, where is the heart? I mean, is it here; is it here; is it here?” Well, what difference does it make? You know, is it that a person should be at a particular address—or wherever that person happens to be, that is what is of importance, not the address itself.
If that person is not at his house—you want to meet a person who is not at his house but he is at the corner post office, so be it! And you will meet him at the corner post office.
Because it is the connection with the person? Or is it the connection with the address? A lot of people want the connection with the address; they don’t care about the person. They will never meet that person; they will never understand who you are.
Because you have to say, “It’s not a question of where—but I do have a heart.” There is one part of me that aspires to find peace, that aspires me to find joy, that aspires me to be happy, that aspires me to know, that aspires me towards clarity, that aspires me towards fulfillment—I call that the heart. By the way, that’s what I call the heart.
That which inspires me to do strange things, weird things sometimes, that’s another part of me. But there is a part of me that I welcome, that I want to know, that I want to understand more and more and more and as much as I can. Of course, before this life passes me by, to welcome it, to understand it, to find my strength in that part, because it’s real.
I need to be real; you need to be real; the world needs to be real. And we need to be real to ourselves. We need to take a chance in us being alive, being fulfilled.
So, be well; be healthy; be safe; be—and I’ll talk to you later. Thank you.