Hari Om.
I'm sure all of you, or many of you, or a
few of you, have been watching the news. And we've see all the great terrific
disasters happening in Kedernath and Badrinath. These are the two holiest parts
of India where ordinary people can just go and get the bliss of being in the
radiance of Babaji. And many, many people have lost members of their family.
Now everybody, including many in South Africa, blame it on God. It is our
nature that we find reason to blame. This is how were made. One thing we fail
in is acceptance but we are all graduates on the subject of blame. We like to
blame everyone else, and now everyone is blaming God.
A lady on television said she went all the
way there to pray and she lost her daughter and her mother so where is God? People
who talk like that do not understand death. They believe that by praying
they'll live forever. Unfortunately it happened under these tragic conditions
that people had to die. So why did such a thing happen in the most sacred part
of India? There are many reasons. Firstly many of the so-called gurus, sages,
and saints have taken many devotees to the regions of Badrinath and Kedernath,
and they made a lot of money out of it. There was one sage who, in his total
visits with devotees to those two areas, made 60 million rupees. That's
equivalent to 10 million rand. But did they put anything back into Badrinath
and Kedernath? No, they didn't. They were amassing the money, using the roads
and not giving anything back to the temples.
The second reason this could be happening,
I'm not sure if it's true but it's what I've read - and they are expecting
another tsunami in a few days time, where more people will be affected - is that a dam was being planned to be built
between Kedernath and Badrinath. But in the valley there was an ancient sacred
Mother Kali temple. To build a dam there they needed to move the temple. On the 14th of June they moved the murthi, the statue, and on the 15th and 16th of June they experienced that great tsunami. And we ask,
'Where is God?' There we have proof. That could be the Divine Mother. That is
Earth, the Universe, showing us that we shouldn't interfere with certain things
in life.
This reminds me of something in South
Africa, when I was maybe fourteen years old. Where the present Umbilo Road
highway is, that is the one that goes to the Bluff, there was a temple there
and they needed to move that temple but, actually, they couldn't. Everybody who
attempted to move the temple died on site. The older devotees will remember the
Umbilo Road temple. Chains were becoming snakes and people were running from
the caterpillar machines trying to destroy it. I remember we went to pray at
this temple, and they had to build a road over the temple so we had to stop on
the road and walk on the side to get to the temple that was under the road.
The energy we create remains. When it is an ancient temple, ancient energy is
much more powerful than what we know now. What we have now is computer energy.
The ancients didn't know about that. They had pure energy. That could be the
reason we had such disaster in the Haridwar, Rishikesh, Badrinath and Kedernath
areas. We need to believe, even if we cannot see it, that God exists, that
everything we have, and we touch is His, not ours. As long as we believe that
then we won't have a problem. But we don't believe that. We believe that if we
can't see or feel something that it's non-existent. We can't see oxygen, but we
believe it is there for our breathing. In the same way God exists in that
oxygen. The nucleus of the atom of the oxygen is God, just as your nucleus,
which is your soul, is God. So, God exists.
Nothing is possible, not even a blade of
grass or a drop of dew, without God. And once we start believing that, we will
become better people and understand what's happening around us. I'm doing this
trip in September, the same trip where the disasters happened, but with one
thought in my mind: if God decides, I can't choose the place. If God decides
that I'm going to collapse while talking to you, I cant say, “Wait, wait, let
me first go lie on the bed”. I can't. He decides. Everything we do in our life,
whether we become millionnaires or paupers – He's teaching you a lesson. When
He makes you a millionnaire it's to see if you forget the times of your difficulties.
And when He makes you a pauper, He's teaching you that this is what life is all
about. That is the uniqueness of God. And He is not a single unit, but a
multiple unit of pure consciousness. Therefore it is believed that He can be
everywhere at the same time.
God is there. We are on His property. He
can decide to do what he wants on his property. If He decides tomorrow that the
whole world must be under water, we can't do anything. We only want Him when we
have difficulties, problems, and troubles. We have no respect. When we are okay
in life, we don't think of God at all. When does the student think of
Saraswathi? When writing exams. When
does the businessman think of Lakshmi? Only when he has financial problems.
I'm leaving for India on Monday in the
radiance of Babaji, the glory of Christ, and the light of my gurus. This is my
hundredth trip to India so I'm looking forward to it. And I'll celebrate my 60th
birthday in Sri Lanka. Only after you meet the Sri Lankan devotees will you
realise why I would love to celebrate my 60th birthday in Sri Lanka.
To tell you the truth, the biggest culprits of making sure my birthday is
celebrated in Sri Lanka are Suganiya and Sudas – they set this whole thing up.
So please, service will continue while I'm
away. I'm not going alone. The total number of those going with me is 14,
including two infants. Sara is going with me. Shivas is going with me, her
husband and baby. Vishal and his wife and baby. Deepak's father and mother.
It's a big crowd. Annagret is already sending me messages since Monday asking
what time we're leaving. So we have a big number but I think I will enjoy it.
