Well, before we start I want to ask you, and this is a thing that I've gone into endlessly, and I really in no way appreciate, and this is the thing that you did. You never bring anyone into this house, it's the most stupid expression of ego, and it has nothing to do with your studying here.
Nobody comes into the house to start, they come to the store, and they are given an interview. But if you feel that attached to somebody then you go with them and have dinner or you go to the theater, but you don't inflict your situation on the house. We start beginners at a particular time, and if you can bring them before that, fine. But you don't make special arrangements, that's your own mind, that's your own will. If there's an emergency, you call, but you don't visit your grandmother without an appointment, and you certainly don't have the right to come here without an appointment.
If you're a regular student y come to a class, but you don't bring outside traffic, we're not looking for that ever. And I've said this again and again, and if anyone ever does it a second time, or even in the future a first time, they will not be allowed to come back for a month. It's wrong to come in and push someone in an atmosphere that is in the functioning order.
You have to respect the energy, and I really don't care to see this, it only represents a limitation, because people wander around and they look and I understand their looking. But spiritual work is a very orderly manner of energy, and it can't come because of an emotional quantity on the part of somebody who feels that somebody else is right or not right or in need or not in need. Their coming and the time of their coming have to be on a Tuesday or a Thursday for one interview, and they have to be in the store by 5 to receive instruction by 5:30 if they qualify. And if they're right to be here, then they will arrive at a point when they fit into the schedule in a harmonious way. So your wish and your will on it is of no interest whatsoever. You call and you prepare the way for them as everyone else.
When Hilda does her benediction, then you open very, very deeply and you try to drink in the energy very much like a plant drinks in water -- in a state of receiving, to be as deeply open as possible.
Hilda, please. (Hilda chants)
I wanted to talk today about this thing of order, which is very much the symbol and very much one of the greatest ways of us understanding consciously the fact that nature and order and consciousness go together. And this thing of energy which isn't in order, the thing of situations which we feel are out of order, this has to do only with our will and our inability to consciously understand a situation
There is a balance in nature; there is a fantastic balance of energy in the universe, and these things operate on very straight, orderly lines; and they have harmony; they have cycles; they have rhythm; and more than anything else they are right because they are the patterns that hold the universe together. We continually fight that order because of our will, because of our limitation, and of course more than anything else, because of our stupidity.
Ignorance is the only mystery in the world. When you stop being ignorant, you begin to understand why things are as the way they are. We continually fight; we continually reject the one thing which is totally obvious, and that is something as it is at the moment. So fighting is only the way of putting your energy into the tension of a situation that is not succeeding.
We continually feed tensions because we can't accept inevitable situations, and we can't in any way accept facts. These things of equations of one thing equaling another really are the expression of a human being. If you don't get a result, if you don't have happiness, if you don't find truth and enlightenment, it is because the one side of the equation is not at all as you think it is. In other words, you aren't an open person, you aren't a good person, you aren't a free Person, you aren't a loving person, and that is why when this thing balances on the other side, it's very close to zero. You don't get a return because there is nothing in you that can receive a return, nothing in you that can hold spiritual energy.
We only grow by the consciousness, by our ability to surrender and break down. And the resistance to breaking down, the resistance to accepting facts as they are really has to do with our inability to accept within ourselves the ability to grow, the means to grow, and the ability to accept God. These energies and this expression of God really have to do with a seeing the external and understanding the external.
All of the reflection of a lack of acceptance is in our tension, in our anger, in our greed, in all of these things that represent our attachment to millions of other things; not letting go is one of the great expressions of our limitation. We want one minute and then we don't want the other. It's the inability to hold on and persevere and realize that the change of our feeling towards a person, a change in our feeling towards a particular truth which we have lived with represent only an insanity in us. It's an inconsistency, and instead of trying to right the balance, we really accept it. And it's a terrible, terrible limitation on human beings, where they never can find that the potential wrong, the potential imbalance is in them.
Nature is absolutely and always has been correct because nature has survived. She is still here and she still exists, and it's exactly the same expression of God and energy in the cosmos -- if it were wrong, it would have exploded a long time ago and separated a long time ago. But the fact that people are wrong has to do with the inability of human beings to pursue any line of work consciously or unconsciously, any line of relationship, any line of friendship, any line of consciousness for very long.
There are continually changing outer manifestations, whether it's fashion or architecture or styles of living or values, these continually changing things are only the manifestations of outer energy. They are trying to show you that this outer expression has absolutely no meaning whatsoever.
There are phases and fads that go on and on and on, and if you ever know anyone who's raised two or three children over a period of several years, one of the greatest things that they have to do is change the outer form of how they approach a child, how they relate to a child, because the rules, the psychological rules, continually change. The person who is more involved with the rules has been more involved with the change, because they want to keep up with the latest of everything, and they have to work very, very hard, because these things are values which are changing endlessly. We don't accept the fact of the change because we're so completely caught under the tension of it that we assume that what we're doing is right.
All of these outside things have absolutely no meaning; they're only the way of using energy, which cannot be used internally. If you really love a child, if you really nourish it, if you really love a person and you really love a situation, then your energy goes into the internal part of it, not on the outer shell, but in the inner manifestation, which is the manifestation of surrender and acceptance and flow, and we grow that way. We grow that way because it's the simple, normal, and organic way of growing, it is in law with nature, so that all changes become internalized, they don't have external manifestation.
So everything that happens really is a way of increasing energy and bringing the energy further and further inside. But changing towards outer manifestation only has to do with a neurotic inability to really internalize and grow inside. The thing that I spoke of twenty years ago, and I have students who have been around almost as long as that is that the thing that will change always will be the outer form of our teaching, because the energy will rise, and rising energy always brings a change in manifestation. It's a manifestation of an increased inner content and the ability to surrender in a bigger way, not to conform so much to social conditions or outer conditions, but only to relate to the change which comes about with increased energy, the ability to open deeper, to encompass more, and to function on a higher level. Because all of our consciousness has to do with an evolving energy, the ability to draw into our self more responsibility to be more disciplined and to be more grateful because we can function in a greater capacity.
Functioning, increased functioning and responsibility is the only reflection of spiritual growth. All the other manifestation just shows that there are ever evolving outer forms because of an inner quantity, which has raised and continually raises itself.
I had this last weekend. I want to Indiana early on Friday because we were going to launch a new ashram in Indianapolis, and it really went extremely well. I'll really share with you something that happened which is totally illogical; it has no value as such because it has to do with a manifestation, and manifestations are illusionary in the sense that it's energy showing itself in a form, not in any way to let you get lost with the form, but to surrender to what the form has as a content.
I sat down and I started to teach on Friday and I saw, and this is really what my eyes saw, was six spaceships which were as big as from where Hilda is sitting to the wall on the right where the Buddha is. And they were very funky spaceships; they weren't chrome and they weren't beautiful in the sense that they looked like things that blast off to the sun; but they were like some kind of a funky Italian, very ornately carved wood thing for a festival. It didn't look like anything that would hold up in water, much less in the atmosphere. And they were loaded with Tibetan Llamas, and this thing landed and I knew that in a very simple way, I had had it, because it was a manifestation of many higher beings that were coming down. When higher beings come down, they only come down for one reason, to change your energy and to change your inner patterns.
I knew that I was going to be worked on in the sense that what I was doing was good, but that what they were going to do was going to make it better. And it always scares the living daylights out of me, because this is a complete breaking apart, and the acceptance of it, in other words, the surrendering on my part of allowing these people who I respected as religious entities, to land and to take over really had to do with me opening to many, many, many different lines of spiritual and conscious and psychic attachment. I didn't like it; it's no different than being landed on by a whole bunch of pirates. They're going to do as they want and you have no say.
Well, when you work spiritually, you are surrendering to whatever forms come down to work on you. They are going to work inside you, and it's none of your business to in any way try to understand because it's not logical, and it certainly isn't physical in the ordinary sense. It's only a manifestation of energy, you either surrender and allow it to enter you, or you build up all kinds of logical defenses. So I had no logical defenses and I couldn't keep my eyes open beyond 8:30 and I slept a very, very long night. But the strangeness and this strange kind of manifestation went on all weekend until Sunday when I became absolutely unbelievably ill and I had extraordinary pains in my whole body and my whole insides felt like one great balloon of pain. And I lay down and pumped for three hours, getting rid of this terrible pain, and as soon as it subsided, another great balloon came out and I worked almost twelve hours bleeding this tension, it's the breaking down of walls inside and this thing went on and on and on and I was thoroughly exhausted. And I came back on Monday morning.
Well, what it is and where it comes from and all this other stuff I don't know and I'm frankly not interested, because to try to build in your mind a rational thing about an irrational situation, and that is exactly what a spiritual experience is, it's an irrational experience because your mind cannot understand something from another dimension. Your physical system can surrender to it so that your muscles can accept the energy and things can change in you. You may understand it six months later, you may understand it sixty years later, but your muscle system, your brain and all the other things within you have to take in that energy and eventually grow to the consciousness that that energy represents. Otherwise you are very much like a man looking at a dinosaur and trying to analyze it. You can't analyze it; you have to live in the time in which that dinosaur lived to truly understand it, or you spend the next sixty thousand years studying and delving. It is of no consequence, because if you try to spend this lifetime and the next one and the next one, you will never reach the level of understanding of that energy. But if you surrender that and the next couple of thousand experiences, in a few years you will grow to the level from which that particular energy came and in retrospect you'll understand.
All spiritual experience is of that nature; at least it has been from my particular place and from where I've worked.
Hilda, have you had any different experience than that? Does it come later, this is my thing, it comes much, much later. The experience happens and ten years later it reveals itself. It reveals what it is. But did you ever try to dig it out and try to understand it that way? It's accepting it, I can't conceive of anybody understanding it any other way. It's like finding something when you're on the second floor that has dropped from the tenth floor. It's a different kind of material, it's a different kind of content, and it has a different kind of nourishment. And if you take it, you'll accelerate to the second, from the second to the fourth very fast, and it continually is a gift. This kind of energy is really a gift from a higher dimension. And trying to push from where you are to where it is destroys the structure between you and where that energy came from. But by absorbing it you grow organically to that level.
It may take you six days, it may take you sixty years, but it's much healthier to finally get there completely, which is really what frees you from any sort of attachment and allows you to grow endlessly. But to have an experience and spend your whole lifetime trying to analyze it and make it fit, even if you could succeed, certainly only becomes the limitation to further growth. There are lots of people who have had very great spiritual experiences and lived up to them, but it is only the limitation of the experience; it is not the ultimate of the experience, because the experience is just a nourishment which is given as a test, and the greatest test of spiritual nourishment and spiritual experience is surrender. That it goes into you is God's will and is absorbed into you in the way that you can use it at the moment and nourishes you so that you can raise your level and continually have these gifts drop on you.
I feel it's very, very real for all of us that any experience, whether it's a very frightening experience or a very simple experience, be treated exactly the same way so that we can benefit completely from this kind of gift and this kind of quantity. And it's the simplicity of the approach; it really is the openness of the surrender that allows us to take the maximum from these gifts. And I've watched so many people trying to be on top of the situation, and being on top of it only puts a tension on the situation and makes, of course, a great limitation. Nobody ever understands -- understanding, if there is such a thing, becomes the limitation of whatever it is you wish to understand, and it becomes an enormous price for understanding.
We see tremendously people in academic life who are specialists in many many fields, people in colleges and universities and outside who have a rarefied intelligence, which is a tremendous development in a particular area, and that development in no way makes their life wonderful. It's a richness, it's a tremendous richness which they keep locked in their intellect, and you'll see people in school who teach physics and biology and all different kinds of sciences and all kinds of English and French, and they're extraordinary in a particular field, and that extraordinary quantity is absolutely wasted because it does not seep through the rest of their being. They are people who are geniuses in one aspect and totally unsuccessful in their ordinary life. There is no love and there is no satisfaction because they have intellectualized; they have completely put this content in a very safe vacuum so it in no way goes through the rest of their being.
Everything of a higher nature should in every way touch and inspire every other grain, every other molecular, every molecule of the body and really infuse it with the highest potential, and that's the only way we can grow as people. Not to let the lowest part of our nature infuse our system, but to let the highest part of our spiritual and every other kind of development soak through and really in every way inspire and really serve nourishment to the rest of us. And this can only take place in surrender, it cannot take place under the tension of a thing within us that has the ego and has to have in every way the attention and the sophisticated applause of everyone around us. By being simple and surrendering, we get the joy of any development many, many, many times. It really allows the rest of us to grow to that level. It allows us to have the benefits of quality in our life.
Is there anyone who doesn't understand or has a question? Yes?
(A question is asked)
No, you shouldn't, you should just try to surrender it. That you really feel it expand and spread, right, and spread through your whole chest, that it really saturates your whole being. It's like putting a fire, you understand, in a little tub and then surrounding it with fifty yards of earth. It's all absorbed in the earth; it does not heat the atmosphere around you. And we really need this knowledge to really warm our whole being, not just to give satisfaction in the mind or satisfaction in the heart. It should really give satisfaction throughout our whole body.
Physically if you were near me and I kicked you very heavily in the leg your entire body would become painful. Do you understand? Because your body has a sympathetic nervous system. Well, we have to have within ourselves a sympathetic spiritual system, where we allow anything that's accomplished spiritually to seep through every part of our being, that everything in us becomes awakened, everything in us becomes conscious. We really have this connection with God. We really have inside us this connection with higher energy, so that just not a little piece of our mind knows it, but that our entire being becomes familiar with it. When a situation occurs, these other parts of us can really tune in and really make a stand. When you really find yourself in an emotional situation, you (breathes) can take a breath and against your instinct, which wants to close to protect the image of you; you can really take a breath and feel your heart open and you can look and say, this is not a good situation for me. It's really the paralysis of our muscles because of a lack of nourishment that does not allow them to work for our benefit, and when we allow our spiritual nature, this higher energy, to really reach through us, then we can use it consciously in the same way that this instinctive system of pain spreads through our body.
We can have a conscious instinctive system that allows the spirituality to spread through us. And if you can do this thing with consciousness, then you can also limit pain, where you can cut off a finger and feel only a quarter of an inch from where the finger was cut off back. Do you understand?
Because instinct is a low form, consciousness is a much higher form. So your consciousness should encompass everything that's instinctive. When you feel yourself reacting instinctively, where you see some thing or you see somebody that makes you go forward and abandon yourself, do you understand, that movement you should be able to turn around and detach.
Because you see this feeling is the thing that always gets me in trouble, it's a negative thing, you understand? So you take a breath and you pull away. Does anyone else have a question? Yes?
(How do we draw a balance between our spiritual visions and exercises and everybody else's lifestyles and the marketplace?)
But there's no competition that way, because everyone's lifestyle in the marketplace is mostly talk, right? So you listen to the talk, and you look at your watch and you say, gee, I have to leave, goodbye. Why do you stay in the marketplace? Because you have nothing better to do with your time. It satisfies something in you, right?
(Student asks another question)
They'll survive without you very well. They're not dependent on you. You would like to think they're dependent on you, but they're not dependent on you -- you're dependent on them much more than you would like to think. You falling out of the crowd would not make a ripple, but them falling away from you would really make a dent in your life, right? Do you understand? But you like to think of it as being the other way around. That's your illusion, so living with that kind of an illusion, how can you possibly come to any reality? (So I follow the spiritual exercises wherever they go?) Not wherever they go; there's a rational quantity to it -- Phillip, relax your head -- You have to build for you if this is what you want, then you have to build for your habits and patterns which allow that to grow. It's like a man who doesn't have any money, and lives in a very poor neighborhood; his pastime is watching people on the corner beating each other to a pulp. That's a neighborhood sport, do you understand? Right? It's part of it, you go here and you watch this one being beaten up, and you watch that one being beaten up, the cops come along and pull somebody out of a house; this is part of the way of spending time.
When you live in a very poor neighborhood, and there's a lot of action happening on the street, right? But what happens when you get a car? You can drive in the country or you can drive to another neighborhood and watch people there getting beaten up. Right? It really has to do with making a vehicle or giving you an alternative. Well, you haven't even begun to think in those terms, you're just trying to think of how vital you are in this situation, and you haven't really even made enough steps to put it in perspective.
So firstly you have to really have a perspective, have a rational perspective, and then begin to think of what you want. Who else has a question? Yes.
(Student asks a question)
Yeah, that's good. Does anyone else have a question?
Oh, those of you who haven't signed up for the weekend, you have to do so by actually tomorrow, because we are fairly well booked and we have to have a very good idea of who is going up. The weekend will begin on Friday evening, and on Saturday we'll go into the second half of the astral travel exercises, and these will never be given in the city, so you have to be absolutely sure that you . . .
(End of tape)