London, England, 28th July, 1980. Public Programme:

"Yesterday I told you about the Void, the dharma, which one has to establish. In modern times, people have used their freedom to such an extent. They have moved so much to this extreme or to that extreme. They have left their central path and have accepted and identified themselves with such an extreme ideas about everything that it is rather difficult to convince people that they have lost their way. All extremes are wrong. Moderation is the way we really solve the problem. But human race is such that everybody starts running very fast and there’s a competition set in. Who goes first to hell?

It’s not only in one direction. You can take up any direction but all these directions are linear. They move, straightforward and coil back and go down, any, any movement of that kind. For example, take our, say, industrial development. We started our industrial development without understanding the whole, the world as a whole, that the whole world was created by God, not the part - one country. Without understanding the relationship with the whole, when we start moving industrially, we created industries and to pamper them we had to create other industries. Then also to keep the hungry machines working out, we had to feed them with something. And thus we created a horrible system of extracting things from the Mother Earth, using them. We have so many things but we do not have the thing which is your spirit. We never thought that, after all, all this matter is for what? All these things are for what? For comfort? That also, if not done in moderation, we are going to be ruined, completely ruined. We’ll become like worms.

The Mother Earth is available to you. That doesn’t mean that you should be indiscriminate and use it for your comfort. She’s there for your comfort, no doubt. She’s the comforting element we have got, the greatest comforting element. But we do not know how to use her for our comfort. The way we use her is by taking out, extracting her. Now if I say that, the other extreme would be: 'We’ll have no possessions, nothing, live, hang by the string, some shoestring somewhere.' There are people who believe in such a thing also, who want to live on a shoestring and have all kinds of diseases, physical, mental because they are living abnormally, in such a way that they do not relate themselves to the Mother Earth at all. Either you abstract completely whatever she has, or take away all her flesh, blood, everything and otherwise you have nothing to do. These are two extremes! And once you start doing like that, you find that you become slave to both ways because you start forming habits with the help of this matter. Habit formation is slavery, complete slavery, even a habit formation like fasting. Now some people have to fast. Who has asked them to fast, I don’t know. What is the need to fast for people who are already suffering from liver troubles and thin like sticks? It’s all right, somebody has to fast because, supposing he has too much weight, or say they want some rest to the stomach, is all right. But this fasting also can become such a habit, such a habit, that the day you do not fast you’ll say: 'Oh! You have done the greatest crime on the Earth. Oh God, I did not fast on Thursday, I should have fasted.' In India we get so many mad people like that. They go crazy because they have not fasted. There are some who get crazy because they have not eaten their food. I mean they are all right but if they have not taken their lunch, for them it’s the greatest injury, the greatest injustice done to them, that they have not been able to take their lunch.

The matter starts enslaving you and your mind becomes a slave of that matter. You do not know in what way this Mother Earth, which is there to give you the ultimate, she’s the one who resides within you at the Mooladhara Chakra to give you the innocence. She gives you the innocence. Instead of taking that essence of hers, the innocence, what you take is the matter which is dead. The living principle of Mother Earth is innocence, her magnetism, her gravity. Instead of that, what do you take out of her is this matter. Either you run away from it, or you run towards it. Nothing in between. Now matter is there for you to use, no doubt, but to use so that you do not get dominated by it because you are the supreme thing God has created. You are the supreme-most thing. All the elements are working in you. There’s no animal in the world who has all these elements working in such a beautiful fashion that you develop your own will, your own freedom. It’s such an intricate process which has worked out a human being, which we don’t realise, where you develop your own will, your own freedom. But again, with your own will, what do you do is to lose your freedom all the time. For example, take a person who indulges in luxuries. I mean he is idiotic sometimes. I mean he really becomes an idiot, the way he goes on. I mean you can see that he’s an idiot and stupid fellow. The another one, he will say that this luxury is - indulgence fellow is very, very idiotic and stupid, you can see. So he says: 'All right, let me give it up.' He goes to another extreme, to such an extreme that he becomes a dry person, absolutely dry.

The innocence is in the centre. For example, the best use of the Mother Earth is to watch her working. Watch the nature, watch every tree. What beautiful personality every tree has. Every leaf of the tree stands against the sky. I mean it’s such a poetry, to feel her with your feet. How soft she is, when she produces flowers for you. You have to learn so much from what she does. She creates a flower to emit fragrance, to give, to give, to give. She just gives. Her innocence doesn’t bother as to what you are, whether you deserve it or not, whether you are a good person or a bad person or what use you are going to put her resources. She just gives. She doesn’t judge you. Nirvaj – it flows. The capital flows without any interest. It just goes on flowing and flowing. That’s the word of nirvaj is. It doesn’t think to whom she is giving to, whether they deserve it or not, if they are sinners or they are this or that. But now it is for you to use your wisdom.

And she has created this deity of wisdom within you [ Shri Ganesha ] and you have to keep that deity awakened. He came, incarnated on this Earth as Jesus Christ. Look at him. Look at his life, how he lived. He was a carpenter’s son. He lived like a carpenter’s son. He didn’t amass money. And what a dynamic life in thirty years of his age! What a dynamic life, out of which he spent only four years in the public. With all our indulgences and all our comforts, all our movements and aeroplanes and all this, how many there are who have created such a dynamic life? What dynamism have we been able to show, the dynamism of the Mother Earth. 'We must have this, we must have that, we must get this, we must enjoy this.' All right - but what is the ultimate? I mean how much we have been able to absorb it and what have we, giving others. What is our fruit of this tree that we are? The reason is, we have lacked wisdom. He was wisdom. He is the one who emits wisdom, who balances our ego, superego, everything. You know where he stands, that deity. But the people who followed him, or who called themselves Christians, where is the wisdom gone? Wisdom is one thing lacking in all of them. What is the reason? Because we just thought that he was crucified because he was a poor man? Or I don’t know what we thought of him. I can’t understand human beings. What is the lesson we have taken from his life? And the Christian nations have advanced so much materially. Can you imagine? They do not know that poverty is such a blissful thing sometimes.

And then now a reaction has started. I’m sure reaction will also take you to another extreme, you’ll miss the point. It’s like a madman running to one end and when he goes from there he runs to another end. Have you ever seen a wild boar running? Have you ever seen a wild boar running? You see, it’s very easy to get out of the way of a wild boar because he just runs straightforward, till he meets some opposition. Straightforward. He wouldn’t see this side, that side. If you can just keep away from the line from where he’s moving he will not hit you. Then again he comes back in the same way. Goes this way, comes back. That is our movement has been about ourselves. What have we done out of our life? Let’s see. While we are capable, we are the seeds which are going to render the real fruits. We are capable. You know now that. And that is why, first of all, we have done the greatest harm to ourselves by ruining all our sustenance within ourselves. As I told you the other day in the lecture, that how we have to maintain our sustenance.

I hope it was not too much for you to – that I was trying to tell the people also there's a group of people who think this is all conditioning. Actually, we are so confused in modern times about everything. Supposing a plane has to take off, all its parts are to be in a proper proportion, are to be tied together to the main body. Otherwise everything will go helter-skelter, isn’t it? Now if you have to jump into your unconscious, all your parts of the being should be attached to the gravity of the body, to your sustenance, otherwise you’ll go helter-skelter. Will you say that a – putting the plane in that way is conditioning it, for its freedom? You have much more freedom when it is properly done. A person who is properly prepared for this flight, has much more freedom than people who think that one nose is lying this, and ears are lying on the other side, then eyes are going on the other side, his mind is going on the third side, his stomach is going on the other side. Here he is listening to me and he’s thinking of his food. His eyes are looking at something else. His feet are moving. He’s jumpy. There’s no proper binding. And that’s why the conditioning has a word in Sanskrit language as samskar, samskar. Now 'sam' means 'good, beautiful', or you can say 'which are good to your Spirit.' Even to add to that, they can say 'susamskar', means 'good conditionings', where you are to be chiselled out. And in that chiselling, if you understand it is for not only your good but for your flight, then you do not give everything to the winds. And this is the biggest mistake we have committed, when we started on the flight of our freedom. How can you have your freedom when you are bound by everything?

You must go to the pub in the evening. You must go for your dancing. You must see a friend who smokes and must smoke with him. You have to attend a party where you have to drink. You must sleep at some particular time. Because you cannot sleep, so you must take pills. You have to have girlfriends or boyfriends, spend money on their – I don’t know what you call – dates and things like that. I mean, how frivolous the whole thing sounds to me. Same thing in India. I mean they have other frivolities.

But when you understand through your Self-realisation, your Self-esteem, then you try to think: 'Then what have I done of my life?' You are like diamonds, thrown into dust. You must find out your relative relationship with all these useless things, where the money is wasted, you are frittered away, your time is wasted, everything wasted. Just find out. Once you discover that, then you start detaching yourself from that. But first and foremost thing, I’m sorry to say – it is may call conditioning or anything – are these important things are, ten things I told you the other day.

Now all the gurus, all the gurus who came, say from we can start from Socrates, then Abraham, Moses – this is the Guru Tattwa, is the principle of master, primordial masters. The principle is born again and again. In India we can say the Adi Nath. We had one Adi Nath, the guru long time back. Then we had Dattatreya, we had Janaka, Nanaka, Sai Nath. We had in the Middle East, Mohammed Sahib, Lao Tse in China, Confucius – all these great principles of gurus who were born. They had one job to do, is to establish your dharma. Their job was not to give you Realisation, you must understand, everyone has one’s own job. See mine is a horrible job because I have to do everybody’s jobs. But their job was just to establish your dharma. They came at that time, in those places where it was needed the most.

So these ten principles, as I told you, they established. They are created in the Void, as you see here, the Void part. This part is made out of the water element. So whatever miracles they did, had something to do with water, like they could create water anywhere they wanted to. They would not cure people. All of them have created water in the desert or in the places where - like in - Nanaka has created a Panja Sahib, they call it. Everywhere they have been able to create water. Whatever they touched, they could create water out of it. Water is the life, life force which sustains us. Without water we cannot live, that is the sustenance. But they actually are symbolised in an ocean, in the ocean because they give us the salt, the salt of life, which gives us the sustenance. If you see the salt, if we do not have salt in our body, we’ll have no sustenance. Christ has said: 'You are the salt.' Who are these 'you'? - are the people whom I was facing yesterday and today. You are the gurus of today. But see with how many powers you have come. Just think of it. These gurus did not have to give Realisation. You can raise the Kundalini, you can give Realisation, you can cure people."

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