Hari OmTonight, at midnight, we start Kriya III, at twelve o'clock. And the hawan will carry on until twelve o'clock tomorrow midday. Those people who have not done Kriya, or who have avoided this Kriya initiation, there's something I'd like to tell all of you. This was an opportunity of a lifetime. It's not going to be done again at the Gayathri Peedam. I don't intend doing another Kriya initiation.
What does Kriya mean? What is karma yoga? Karma yoga is anything that is done selflessly without waiting for the fruit of that action. Kriya Yoga is exactly like that. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna clearly indicates that he who works selflessly without any intention for the fruits of his action, is a yogi. And what are the benefits of Kriya Yoga? Kriya Yoga has many benefits. Some of these are: mentally, you become wide awake; you become calm and still; you eat less because food is one of our biggest downfalls in this yogic practise. Great sages have told us, “He who eats once a day is a yogi; he who eats twice a day is a roghi; he who eats three times a day is a boghi”. Kriya masters have told us this. And in Kriya yoga we teach you the same.
Tonight is the first lesson that these students are going to go through. They will have nothing to eat for twelve hours. From midnight tonight until midday tomorrow they cannot eat anything. And I will have the opportunity of eating in their presence. But they will be nourished. They won't feel hungry or want food because their union with Babaji will take place any time between midnight and midday tomorrow. If you have the opportunity to come here at midday tomorrow you'll see them all still energised – or maybe a few won't be - but most of them will be fully energised to continue the day. And they'll only have had three hours of sleep, from one to four in the afternoon.
This is the beauty of this Kriya journey. It teaches you discipline. And we all lack discipline. It teaches you to be ego-less. And we all have ego. And we portray our ego very efficiently. We do that with such excellence, it's unbelievable. But we do it. Why? Today we were having a discussion about being, and in the discussion it came out like this: I told Deborah that when I travel to India with our female devotees, and some mornings when I catch one of them unawares, I have to look again to see if its the same person. And the only reason for that is that some foundation is missing. I look again to see if I'm at the right room. It's happened many times. In India, sometimes there's no hot water so I go with the hotel staff to knock on the lady's door to take the water, and have to look again to see if the number on the door is right. No foundation. That is what ego is all about.
This weekend will make you all ego-less. You'll be so ego-less that you might even go home with the same clothes you're wearing today. And Kriya helps you to destroy that ego. The beauty of any individual lies in the deeper self. What you see on the superficial, top self is nothing but an act for society. Society might tell you that you have beautiful eye-liner, or lipstick, or dress. They will never tell you that your inner self is beautiful because that is the bigger picture. The outer self can be anything. When the outer self has no inner self - that is called death. You can wear any amount of foundation and you'll still rot; and the worms will still leave your body when it is useless to them. Why? Because the beauty has left the body; and that beauty is what Kriya teaches is the soul. And in that beauty we must start living without ego.
Can we live without ego? No, because we always want to be judgemental in every aspect of our lives. And when we are judgemental, the better part of us comes out. Yet, as Paramahamsa Yogananda said, “Look at the innermost altar of your being, and in there is Ishwara, God himself”.
I'm going to show you a picture of an egoless being, and I hope some of you can identify with it. (Swami holds up a photo of Appaji.) This is who we call Appaji. Anusha met him and she'll tell you that when you sit in front of him you don't want to go anywhere. And that is how we must try to be. Egoless. That's him in his garden, picking up the weeds, without ego. No ego at all. And that's who we must strive to be – one without ego. To other people you'll be referred to as a madman.
And why I brought up this topic, is that great rishis have told us that the beauty in any human being lies in the hair. The beauty in every female lies in the hair. But, as parents, we send our young girls to cut their hair short. It's not meant to be like that, but that's what parents do. Our mothers allow the girls to cut their hair. And we only have a haircut because we have a thing called ego. Nobody can tell me that their hair looks untidy when it's long. There's no such thing, because no matter how untidy it is, if you comb it, it will look fine. So that is our first ego. We all have it.
How would you describe Appaji? As Swami Murugesu was, but very unkempt. He never brushes his hair. His dhoti is tied in a funny way. He walks with everybody. You won't even know who he is. In kriya yoga we teach you how to be simple. Very nicely.
So the test of the kriyabans will be tonight. The first one that sleeps will be sent home. We don't want anybody sleeping on this journey - and we're driving them. This is a wide-awake journey, for THE people, who want THE journey – and that is the spiritual journey. I hope that sometime in your life you'll find a guru who will give you this initiation. It's not going to happen again at this ashram. But you can't join today. This is the third part of the Kriya, so you missed out. But you still have the opportunity to be on the journey. As the Bhagavad Gita says, “There are many paths and all of them lead to the same goal”. But the problem is that we don't have a goal. We get in the car and get out when the petrol is finished. We are all living this life without a set spiritual goal. We need a spiritual goal.
So one devotee asked me today when all this will stop - this flooding and drowning. It will stop in 2014. Be content to continue being disturbed by natural disasters. Agasthiar has predicted this. It's all because we have no spiritual goals. We only have material goals. There's your opportunity to do some karma, bhakti and dhyana yoga and see where it takes you. Kriya is for all of you, only you're not making it part of you. The day you make Kriya part of you, you'll see what I am talking about.
I'm going to give you my famous line: my time with you is not as long as I expect it to be. So while I'm here, make the best of it. If you think I'm joking, early this afternoon I was asking Saras to write a letter to give permission for me to be buried here in the temple, to have my body in there. The jokes are over now. I just hope that all of you somehow find a guru and make him your life. I made my guru my life. I'm not regretting one minute. Even today we discussed that. Many people think he's taken samadhi. To me he's still here. You had all the opportunities but you didn't take them. You have a last chance. Make the best of me. Ask your questions and learn.
One person who's learning a lot, very silently, is Sundrie. Many of you think she's mental, but she's learning a lot in her silence. She talks to Warren at home and sometimes he's amazed. Lots of things that she mentions I didn't expect her to even remember. Become like that. Many of us want to become bosses, of the ashram, the Shiva mandir, of upstairs. Forget becoming a boss. Just become. Start there.
So, I'm going to read the last part to you. This is about being. Its going to be placed all over the ashram.
If you make a mess - clean it.
If you take something - put it back.
If you borrow something - give it back.
If you use it - look after it.
If you promise - do it.
If you open something - close it again.
If you break something - fix it.
If you can't - ask for help.
If you switch it on – switch it off again.
If something belongs to someone else – leave it alone.
If it's none of your business – don't interfere.
If you don't have something good to say about someone – don't say anything.
The first four we had up in our physics lab class. So these are lessons for you to understand that whatever is here is yours. Use it as though it's yours. If you use it, put it back. We find lots of things missing. People take things and don't put them back. They forget.
So, God bless all of you. Today is my spiritual birthday so I'm feeding you today. I cooked some beans, some rice, dahl, pumpkin. And I cooked for you. I know a lot of you dont like it – stew. But I cooked very special stew for you. You can have that, the beans, the rice, kerela.
Hari Om.
