Análisis y diseño de software 5.5.1.1.1 Datos Básicos del Nivel 3

Friday Evening - Brother Anandamoy

As Brother Anandamoy enters the room the whole audience stands and applauds. Amused, Brother says, “You know, you never clap before a talk!”

(Laughter plus more clapping)

“Can I go now?”

(More laughter)

Do you know what I’m going to talk about? No? I’m glad, because I had a schedule, but then I thought, “I’m not gonna talk about it.” I want to review a few points from Master’s teachings with you. It is time to learn - to really learn - and the more we do, the more we get out of it: we have to have a concept of God we are comfortable with.

I’ll tell you a story: A few years ago one of the monks interviewed some lay members, and they were videotaping it. One of them was a little Sunday school girl about six or seven years old. During the interview she told the monk, “God loves me.” And when the monk asked her, “How do you know?”

she grimaced and answered, “God loves everybody. God loves the good guys and He loves the bad guys ... and even you!”

(Laughter)

And that is how a little Sunday school girl destroys a minister!

(Laughter)

Now I’ll ask you; do you believe that God loves you? … because we are human, and we make mistakes. If you make a mistake, does God still love you?

Quite a few years ago a gentleman called me on the phone and he told me, “I made a terrible mistake.” He didn’t say what is was, but he told me, “It’s so bad that I feel I cannot even look at the Guru’s picture.” I told him, “No, No!

Now you need Master even more than ever. You look at his picture. He

understands. He loves you. He will help you.” At that moment the phone was disconnected. Did he purposely hang up? I don’t know. And due to an

accident I had years ago in India when I lost a good part of my hearing in one ear, I hadn’t heard what his name was, and I couldn’t call him back. And he never called me back.

You have to have a concept of God that you feel comfortable with - one in which you can really feel loved. I remember when I was a boy I heard stories - like souls burning in hell forever and forever. And I thought God was a

monster … until I met Master, and I saw his incredible compassion, his

unconditional love. I had read his talks, and he had said, “He who has seen an avatar has seen God.” And when I saw Master and his incredible love, then I thought, “That’s the God I love.”

Master said of evildoers - and he was talking about the real evildoers, not the average person who makes mistakes - “Evildoers are children of God and are loved by Him as dearly as you are. They have gone astray and God wants intensely to bring them back into His fold.”

This is unconditional love. Unconditional love.

One time a woman came to Convocation for the first time, and afterwards she told me, “When I came into the California Ballroom and saw all the people sitting there I thought, “Here I am, the only sinner among four thousand saints.” I burst out laughing. I could see that she was obviously a very nice person, and I couldn’t imagine why she would say something like that. Never say anything like that. Master was very strict about that: no negative thoughts about yourself. Why? Because it blocks your devotion.

The commandment to love God - loving God is the highest law. It’s not a command. It’s not, “You have to love Me.” It’s for our benefit, so that we can really love. You read in the Autobiography, Sri Yukteswar said, “Forget the past. The vanished lives of all men are dark with many shames. Human conduct is ever unreliable until it is anchored in the divine.” We cannot be perfect until we have Self-realization. And Sri Yukteswar continues:

“Everything in future will improve if you are making a spiritual effort now.” Do

the best you can. And when you make a mistake, you learn the lesson from it and forget the unnecessary details. That’s the right attitude!

Now, something else: every day you look in the mirror to see if you look

presentable, don’t you? And every time you look there you think what you see is you. You think you are a man or a woman so many years old and with

certain facial features and so on … but it’s not true! That isn’t you! The body - I call it, pardon me, “the package”.

(Laughter)

That is what you see. You see the body, the package … but you are not your package. Think of it: when we die, what will people do with our package?

(Laughter)

Think of how many packages you’ve had! You are alive now and sitting here, and you have a new package, but you are not that package. This is the big delusion.

What are we? I call it “the jewel in the package” ... and that is the soul. We are the soul. What is the soul? It’s a tiny little piece of God, a ray of God’s consciousness - that’s what we are. Master said, “Man can misuse his free will for a time and do wrong, but that temporary delusion can never erase the mark of immortality and perfection of God’s image imprinted on his soul.”

The soul doesn’t act - it is the body-identified ego that acts. Do you realize what that means?

It means your soul has never done anything wrong. And here they talk about hellfire and burning in it forever. Those are Dark Age religions. Of course wrong action is bad, but it cannot touch the soul. The soul is always pure. And the dark covering over the soul can be removed by right action, karma, and the grace of God.

How do we get the grace of God? Devotion. That is why devotion is so important. It’s not a business deal you make with God. It’s not “God, I gave you so much love, now you give me this.” Devotion is stepping into the light and love of God. And in loving God, and that light purifies you.

Now, another point regarding meditation: you had a review of the techniques this week. We have to learn to withdraw the energy from the senses in order to interiorize the consciousness. In sleep, God does it for you, but we are not conscious of it. By meditation we can attain this inward state consciously. This is necessary, because as long as the energy is in the sense organs we have the ordinary sense of body consciousness, and we cannot perceive God. We have to learn to withdraw the energy within.

Krishna said the great secret is: God is within you. Sure, God is everywhere, but we find Him within ourselves. Jesus Christ said exactly the same thing:

“The kingdom of God is within you.” In the universal cycle of the Yugas, there are 12,000 years going up and 12,000 years going down. Jesus came at the darkest point, when man had lost the knowledge of electricity and the finer forces of energy that were known in the enlightened ages, and so he couldn’t teach the scientific techniques of pranayama to the masses. “Prana” means energy. “Yama” means control. Jesus could not teach the scientific techniques of pranayama in the Dark Ages because the people had no concept of energy.

And so in the Dark Ages religious practice was just an outer external worship of deities or simple oral and mental prayer - that’s all they had.

And St. Teresa of Avila said that even monastics could not go deep in

meditation through oral and mental prayer. They didn’t know how to go within.

But now we have scientific techniques of meditation that the masters have given to us. When Babaji initiated Lahiri Mahasaya in Kriya Yoga, this was a tremendous blessing for the whole world, and it coincided exactly at the time when man began to use and apply electricity in a practical way.

Now, on the spiritual path there are two obstacles waiting for you, and you have to know what they are so you can handle them. One of them is having a negative attitude toward yourself. When you come on the spiritual path you begin to become more introspective, and as a result you become more aware of your bad habits that interfere with seeking God. We have to introspect in order to learn to overcome what is in the way of finding God, but many devotees identify themselves with their negative thinking to the point of

thinking, “I’m not spiritual. I’m no good. God couldn’t possibly love me.” And that is the end of spiritual life. So be careful not to give in to those negative thoughts. Be careful not to become identified with negative thoughts. They come from the dark force that wants to prevent you from going back to God.

Use introspection in the same way as a businessman uses accounting. If a business man sees there are certain things not quite right in his business, does he say, “God doesn’t love me”? No, of course not. He makes the necessary adjustments to put his business on the right track. It’s the same thing with us.

If you see something you don’t like in yourself, don’t say, “God doesn’t love me.” Make the necessary changes, but never, never think that God doesn’t love you.

There is another obstacle – more complex - and I’ll give you this visualization as an example: Visualize that somebody you know comes to see you every day, and every day that person says, “Give me this. Give me that.” How do you feel?

Now visualize somebody you know and see every day, and each day they say,

“I love you”, and you know he is sincere and he really means it. How do you feel then? Now these are extreme examples, but they are the two ways to approach God. One says, “God, gimmee, gimmee, gimmee … I want this and I want it now!”

(Laughter)

We are living in what I call an instant-satisfaction society. So many devotees read the Autobiography, they sign up for the Lessons, and then they want instant results. Then when they don’t come, people say this teaching is no good, and they give up. This is one of the greatest tests you have to go through and accept.

Gyanamata said that the ego - the body-identified ego - has the soul by the throat. The ego says, “I want this. I want this.” And so it is when you are meditating. But the soul says, “God alone can make you happy.”

Sri Yukteswar said, “To know God, don’t expect anything.” That’s the first part of the quote. He didn’t mean to take it literally. What he meant is to get the ego out of the picture. The ego says, “I want results from meditation right away. Gimmee this. Gimmee this.” It doesn’t work. The second part of the quote is: “Just launch yourself with faith into His blissful Presence within.”

Launch yourself with faith. God is there. Whether you have any experiences or not, God is there. He is always there. Anandamayi Ma, a great saint of India, said, “His absence too, is one of His manifestations.” Why? Because, He cannot be absent. Even if you don’t hear anything, even if you don’t see anything, He is there. Love Him. Love Him. I am talking from experience. You can have deep meditations even without any experiences if you remember, if you know that God is there, and you love Him. Get the ego out.

And so now I want to give you some stories of my personal experiences with Master. Thank God

I came when Master was still here, and I learned how to meditate. What I mean by that is, it’s not just the lessons and the techniques I learned, but I learned how to approach God - and what I learned by how Master taught was better than reading a thousand books on meditation.

I saw Master when he gave Sunday services every week, alternating between Hollywood Temple and San Diego Temple. I attended the services at

Hollywood Temple, but I didn’t get much out of it because I didn’t understand much English at the time. But I learned much after the services were over, when I saw how people approached Master after the service and how he responded to them. It was incredible.

I remember the first Convocation in 1950. There weren’t many people who came. It was held at Mother Center on the tennis court, and there were about 250 people who came. After Master’s final talk ended he sat in a chair and the devotees came one by one to greet him and say good-bye to him. I stood nearby and watched. Now this was interesting - that Master allowed me to watch. He didn’t say it was private, but he let me stay, and I thought, “Master is really, really loving to help me learn,” - because he had told me I would have to teach.

What I learned was unbelievable. I saw how people came to him, and I saw how Master responded to them. At the end of Convocation of course everyone was flying high, but I could see all the different mentalities and how they approached Master. They all came with great reverence, but each had a different kind of devotion. It was an eye opener. I saw, not just with my senses, but I saw that some were grasping - they had devotion mingled with some percentage of ego – “What do I get? What do you give me?” But Master was very kind and loving with them. In other kinds of people their devotion was sometimes physical or emotional - cry, cry, cry!

(Laughter)

There’s nothing wrong with crying - Master didn’t say, “Don’t cry” - he was sympathetic to this too. And then there was another kind of devotion. I saw some devotees, just a few - and it was really deeply touching how they

approached Master - and I thought, “This is pure love. This is pure devotion.”

There was no ego - none of, “What do I get? What do you give me?” It was pure giving. It was pure love. And I tell you, it was really deeply touching.

And I saw Master’s response. He very rarely touched a person - just a hand on occasion - but when those devotees came I could see he was just pouring out his blessing to those devotees, pouring out his love to them - and there is where I learned how to approach God in meditation - with pure love. And this you cannot describe; it is beyond words, this pure love. And I really learned that it is not what we achieve – it’s not, “What do I get?” or “What is God giving me?” What I learned is, what we give to God is what we get.

We have no control over what we receive - what we receive is God’s business.

God and the Gurus – they know when the time is right - they know when we are ready. Our part is to learn to give our love without asking, “What do I get?”

It’s such a simple principle, but it’s so deep.

So many people are straining for experiences. After meditation, how many times have you said to yourself, “That was a lousy meditation”? Have you ever said that?

(Laughter)

It’s only because we are thinking, “What do I get?” We have to turn it around and say, “What do I give? What do I give? - even if I don’t see anything or hear anything?” Give your love, and have faith that God is there. He can’t be

absent. Master said that the Guru is always present at the Christ Center and in the heart of the disciple. Say, and really feel, “I love Him” - that’s all. The techniques will work automatically. The basic thing is to give your love. When I saw how Master responded to those devotees, it was incredible - it was

unforgettable.

Another point: Master talked to us about the different aspects of God, such as wisdom and love. What are we? The soul, isn’t it? What is the soul? The soul

is a part of God. Where does it come from? From God. We came out of the womb of Divine Mother, and Master often emphasized, “If you only knew how much God loves you!” It was deeply touching. It’s up to us to create an image of God, a concept of God that we can love, that we can trust - a concept of God where we feel like a little child going to its mother.

Master often used the word “yearning” - yearning for God. The Divine Mother yearns for Her children to come back home to Her. She is saying, “You have been playing so long in this delusion. It’s time to come Home.” But She doesn’t force us. When you see how much God wants us to come back …!

After Master’s passing I read in the Gita about “shraddha”, which is a Sanskrit word. Shraddha is a quality of the soul - devotion, the heart’s natural love - but it means more than devotion. It means yearning. It is the yearning of the soul to become one again with its source, which is God.

I finally understood: God put that yearning into the soul to be sure we wouldn’t be lost forever. That’s the setup of this creation. He put that yearning into the soul to be sure we would come Home.

We have this vast complex creation, but really it’s a simple setup:

God loves you.

God yearns for you to come back.

God puts that same yearning into the soul to be sure we come back.

That’s the secret! Everyone is looking for something, but where? People are seeking fulfillment in the world.

The last thing Master told us the day before his mahasamadhi – he was at Lake Shrine and then he came back to Mother Center, and a few of the monks were with him. We had just finished the Energization Exercises – and he talked to us for what was to be the last time, and once more he gave us a few basic points.

And he especially stressed to us, “You have to cultivate the desire for God.

Nobody can give it to you. You have to cultivate it yourself. Remember, nothing in this world can satisfy you - only God.”

I thought to myself, “Through all those incarnations, that yearning was always there in my soul, but I didn’t understand it.” I didn’t know it was yearning for God. I had been desperately seeking fulfillment in the wrong place - in the world. And that’s the story of all of us. We are seeking fulfillment in the wrong

I thought to myself, “Through all those incarnations, that yearning was always there in my soul, but I didn’t understand it.” I didn’t know it was yearning for God. I had been desperately seeking fulfillment in the wrong place - in the world. And that’s the story of all of us. We are seeking fulfillment in the wrong