the topic today is, “Is God there even where there is ignorance?” So, on this humorous occasion, I would like to tell you a joke about the Pope.
The Pope is a rather spiritual guy. Some people call him His Holiness, and some people believe he’s the only one who can talk to God. Naturally, when he flew into New York to give a talk, they had to pick him up in a car. But you can’t pick up the Pope in a taxi. They had to send a really fancy car, so they sent a limo.
As the Pope was riding around in this limo, he said, “Wow, I really like this limo, and I’ve never been to New York, and I’ve never driven before. Do you mind if I drive the limo?” A rather unusual request, but if you’re the driver, you can’t really say no to His Holiness.
So naturally, the Pope started driving around. As I said, he’s never driven in New York before and not a limo. So, he gets pulled over, and the officer comes up to collect the license and registration. He sees who it is, and he goes right back to his car and calls up the chief. He says, “Chief, I made a mistake. I pulled over someone really important.” The chief says, “Who was it? Was it the mayor?” He says, “No, I don’t think it was the mayor.” He says, “Was it the president?” The officer says, “I don’t think it was the president.” The chief says, “Well, who was it?” The officer says, “Well, I don’t know, but he’s got the Pope as his driver.”
So, back to the topic of “Is God there where there is ignorance?” Last week, Merley gave us a talk, and the subject of that talk was more or less, “Did God create the universe or become it?” Something like that. He told us a few creation stories. They were all a little bit different, but they basically had the gist that the universe was created by God. So, God is everywhere. Not only did God create the universe, the universe essentially is God, and He’s beyond the universe.
Without understanding that God is in everything and God is everything, we can answer today’s question fairly simply in that, yes, everything that even looks ignorant or appears ignorant actually is God. God’s in there. Our teachings say that every atom is imbued with uniqueness, divinity, and Christ consciousness.
When we look around the world, it’s pretty easy sometimes to remember this. If we’re in a forest, some people feel that’s their spiritual activity—to walk in a forest. Other people look at the moon, the sun, the ocean, and all the stars, and you think, wow, yeah, definitely God’s out there. So, the Master gave us a prayer or an affirmation: “God, God, God.” If everything’s God and everything reminds us of God, it should be pretty easy to remember “God, God, God.” And yet, we know that that’s a rather difficult thing to remember—”God, God, God.”
So, what takes us away from this thought? You know, there are natural disasters, but the Bible talks about natural disasters. Is it very clear that they’re always God’s will? Floods, for example. There’s also earthquakes and fires. When these things happen, people ask, “Why, God?” We may even get mad at God, but even when we get mad or we ask why, that’s because we understand that God’s behind it.
So, if natural disasters don’t make us forget about God, what does? Well, tomorrow is the inauguration, and it’s also Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The point is that, I think, it’s really other people who can sometimes appear ignorant and make us forget about God. When we get cut off on the road, we’re less likely to say “God, God, God” and more likely to say “God… (something else).” You know? And the thing is, we get cut off on the road every day, especially driving around in Seattle. There’s nothing more God-forgetting. If a walk in the forest is God-reminding, a ride down I-5 is sometimes God-forgetting, I find. And that’s not cutting you off on the road. Sometimes people don’t mean to do that. It’s certainly not the worst thing that a person can do. So why are other people so problematic? It’s because people are responsible for what they do, unlike animals. Master says they’re not responsible; it’s up to God whether they live or die, or become free. Whatever they do, if they eat each other, they’re not guilty of anything. But humans have to take responsibility for everything that we do.
Unfortunately, we let ignorance live inside us and give it agency. Sometimes we act from ignorance, and when we see it in other people, it can be very upsetting. When someone commits a crime, we sometimes say, “Why, God?” But we also often ask, “Why did he do it?” because we understand that the person who committed the crime is responsible.
We expect other people to behave themselves, and when they don’t, we forget and have other thoughts. But we can rather forgive ourselves when we slip because there are several examples in the book “Autobiography of a Yogi,” which is a sacred text to us about our own masters, our own gurus. There are at least three stories in the autobiography where our masters forget the presence of God because of the ignorance of another person.
So, this happens. Let me read you one story so that you know what I’m talking about. This story takes place at the Kumbh Mela, which is happening right now, by the way—the biggest one in 144 years, I believe. This story is from the point of view of Lahiri Mahasaya, who we call a yoga avatar, an incarnation of yoga, an incarnation of God, and he still makes a mistake. Let’s see what happens.
“The scene was at the Kumbh Mela at Allahabad,” Lahiri Mahasaya told his disciples. “I had gone there during a short vacation from my office duties. As I wandered amidst the throng of monks and sadhus who had come from great distances to attend the holy festival, I noticed an ash-smeared ascetic who was holding a begging bowl. The thought arose in my mind that the man was a hypocrite wearing the outward symbols of renunciation without a corresponding inward grace.
No sooner had I passed the ascetic than my astounded eye fell on Babaji. He was kneeling in front of a matted-haired anchorite. ‘Guruji,’ I hastened to his side. ‘Sir, what are you doing here?’ ‘I am washing the feet of this renunciate and then I shall clean his cooking utensils,’ Babaji smiled at me like a little child. I knew he was intimating that he wanted me to criticize no one but to see the Lord as residing equally in all body temples, whether of superior or inferior men. The great guru added, ‘By serving wise and ignorant sadhus, I am learning the greatest of virtues pleasing to God above all others—humility.'”
That’s a tremendous story. And I’m telling you, there are at least two other stories exactly like that, where one of our own gurus makes the mistake of criticizing someone and thinking that God isn’t in them or that they don’t have God. Immediately, God comes down in the form of a guru or another guru to correct them. It happens two other times—I won’t read them all, but it’s a huge spiritual lesson.
The words of Babaji himself said that humility is the greatest virtue we could and probably should have. Volumes have been written on the subject of humility in spiritual literature. I’ll give you one angle for why that might be important and relevant to this talk: it’s because the human part of ourselves, our ego, notices other humans and their egos. In other words, it’s the ignorance in us that sees the ignorance in you. We have to be elevated so that the divine in us can see the divine in you. I believe that’s roughly the meaning of ‘Namaste’—the divine in me acknowledges the divine in you.
We have to get to that level with the flawless vision, as described in the reading where the master saw his whole temple radiating light. His whole body inside of him was just light. We have to get there. The other point Babaji made is that we have to treat ignorant people the same way. So, we don’t look at someone who’s ignorant and think, “Oh, but they must be a pretty good guy.” Actually, that’s not the point. There are, in fact, ignorant people out in this world, and we can’t redeem them or whatever. We just have to understand that God is in them. That’s the only quality by which anything can truly be judged—whether God is residing in them. And the answer is always yes, of course.
The thing is, if we had three cups in front of us and one was filled with water, one with tea, and the other with some kind of sugary soda, we wouldn’t be justified in saying these are three cups of water. It’s true that water is filling each of these cups, but they all have different qualities. From a human perspective, which we have to deal with in this world of Maya, we have to treat these cups differently. If someone asks for a cup of water, we can’t give them a cup of soda and pretend we did our job. So, we have to be very practical in how we treat people, but always treat people based on what we know is the ultimate truth—that God is residing in them.
Martin Luther King said, “In your life’s blueprint, there must be a commitment to the eternal principles of beauty, love, and justice. Don’t allow anybody to pull you so low as to make you hate them.”
So, that’s the outward lesson for this topic. But there’s more. There’s an inner conflict with this. There’s a personal struggle. As devotees, we all meditate and get to know ourselves very well. The body is like a temple, as mentioned in the passage I just read to you. The altar is right here—our spiritual eye and our concentration. We have the ability to place God here. That’s the only thing that really deserves to be here. This is an altar, and it’s for God. If we put anything else up here, it’d be rather wrong. The same is true of our inner altar.
But when we meditate, we often find that we have some difficulty meditating. This altar that we’ve created inside ourselves, we use it to focus on other things. I was sitting there meditating, and all I could think about was what I was going to say in five minutes. Other things come there—desires, different forms of restlessness. Sometimes, when we have trouble meditating, we blame ourselves and identify.
The thing is, humans have actually developed perfect compassion. We think we need to be more compassionate. In fact, we have perfect compassion. We are fully compassionate with this body. We believe that this body is us. Isn’t that interesting to think about? Swami said one time that Master wasn’t just compassionate towards everyone—He was everyone, because He was one with God and God’s in everyone. So, when He saw a street, there’s mention in the autobiography of the different cosmic consciousness experiences that Master has, and He sees Himself in all the bodies walking around and in His soldiers.
I say we have perfect compassion… we’re getting there, but we do have perfect compassion for this body. The difficulty with that compassion is that we identify ourselves with our own faults and think they’re ours. But we have to develop the perfect vision that Master was talking about.
I’ll tell you one more thing about how Master sees us. We have to learn to see ourselves the way Master sees us. In His talks, you can hear from His own voice how much He loves His devotees. It’s very touching. So, I’ll read you one such passage:
“I was watching you all last night. There was not one soul I could find that had the slightest little kink. So wonderful to see. Every soul, when I look at their faces, I hardly talk to you, but I go through your souls.” But your response that brings happiness in you and in me is something that many families would love to have even for a day. That is the way to live. Only by loving God do you learn how to love other people. Otherwise, you only love yourself. As long as others don’t do what you want, you get mad at them. Seek happiness in making others happy, and then everybody will make you happy.
That’s absolutely astounding. You know, in this election, half the people have to win and half the people have to lose. We are all convinced that the other side needs to be unhappy. Isn’t that the case? As long as those people are happy, well, I can’t be happy. Only half of us can be happy in this election. Yeah, that’s how life goes sometimes. The funny thing is, it’s rather infuriating, but Master said this: ignorance is everywhere. Fifty-fifty. That’s a hard pill to swallow. I think ignorance has got to be at least sixty-forty right now.
So, we have all good tendencies and bad tendencies. I just said that the inner body is like a temple. It’s also like a battlefield. I feel a little embarrassed to mention this with Merley sitting there, but in the Bhagavad Gita, we talk about the body as a battlefield called Kurukshetra. There are the five good guys, basically. There’s more than that, but there’s the five Pandava brothers. And there’s at least a hundred bad guys called the Kauravas. The truth is, there’s way more than a hundred bad guys. There’s basically a countless number of bad guys, and there’s really only five good guys. There’s more than that. Each side has their own army, but the redeeming factor for the good guys is they’ve got Krishna on their side, and Krishna is like God.
The point I’m talking about is it’s a given, right? Because Kurukshetra is the body, and there are two sides. That means everybody has two sides inside of them. It’s not anybody’s fault necessarily. We have our mental citizens—some of them are good, and some of them are bad. We don’t have to identify with the bad tendencies. We’re really not supposed to do that. In fact, we’re not even supposed to identify so much with our good tendencies. But don’t think about that one too much.
When we identify with our bad tendencies, if we call ourselves sinners, there’s no reason why we wouldn’t just keep on sinning, right? If you are that, why wouldn’t you continue? So, we have to gain the way that Master sees us, which is to know that we have God inside of us and then act from there.
One of the most astounding things that Master said when I heard him say it—there’s a recording of this, I think you can find it on YouTube. If not, we sell it downstairs in the boutique. He said, “Do not call yourself sinners anymore. Sin belongs to the past. It is no longer yours. God is yours, and the Masters are yours. Hold that in your bosom, thrash that in every thought in yourself, and you will find that you dreamt that you were a man and woke and found that you were God’s reflection.”
So, you see, inside we have a battlefield. When it comes to our own ignorant tendencies, we have to be victorious. We have to be conquerors. We have to be like lions and say “God, God, God” inside of ourselves. But when it comes to our brothers and sisters on this earth, we must be peaceful. We must celebrate our brotherhood. If we choose victory over peace, we can’t do that. We have to choose peace over victory. Because if we’re victorious over our brothers, that means we lost the inner fight and succumbed to the ideas of greed and hatred. So, we cannot be a conqueror of other men. We have to be a conqueror of ourselves. In that way, we can develop the flawless vision of the Masters to see ourselves as we are. In seeing ourselves as we are, we’ll see God as God is and our brothers and sisters as they are. That is the way to develop peace on earth.
Martin Luther King said this: “Let us keep going to the goal of selfhood, toward the realization of the dream of brotherhood, and toward the realization of the dream of understanding goodwill.” That could almost be a quote from one of our own gurus. Realization and brotherhood—those were two topics that Master spoke about very often.
I’ll close now with a reading from “Whispers of Eternity.” This is number 209, “In the Temple of United Hearts”:
“It befits not thy lily tender feet to dance in the stony soil of hard hearts. On the petals of my sympathy for others, may thy tenderness dance forever. Divine Mother, may I feel thy heart throbs in my own heart. Thy joy in my happiness, thy wise direction in all my activity, thy spirit in my soul. Divine Mother, I lay all the flowers of my love at thy feet of eternity. Oh, open wide the flowers of my budding devotion and release thy fragrance that it may spread from my soul to the souls of others, ever whispering of thee. I pray to behold my love reflected in others in the light of the greater love. May I behold thine unveiled face of perfect compassion. May I behold my true self in others, that I perceive thee ever enthroned in our united hearts. At the heart of my whispered prayers, I feel stirring thy silent whispers and delight. To my burning candle of devotion, I behold at last thy sacred blaze of perfect love. Oh, Divine Mother, unite our hearts as one heart so that on the sacred altar of united hearts, we may find thy omnipresence enthroned forever.”