Hari Om.How to know God. This is something that's been bothering me for some time now, but somehow we need to know God and we need to find a formula somewhere in our divine mathematics, and create a spiritual equation to find God.
Many people have given you many different ways to find God. Some swamis teach you how to levitate and in they say 'Get up, get up, up, up, up! And they want to find God. God cannot be found in movement.
In Psalms 46 verse 10 it says 'Be still and know that I am God'. That means you should be still, not jumping all over like a chicken without a head. That's what's happening, and South Africa has become a haven for Swamis to come from India, a great haven. And when they come from India we flock to see them. We listen to them and we still remain the same. That's the sad part. I've not met anybody enlightened because he went and listened to some swami from India. I was listening to a recording the other day that said, 'Only the first five minutes of a talk is what you remember, and after that you remember nothing because you're not interested'. You only look interested. Looking interested and being interested are two different things.
So how do we know God? Where can we find God? How does God look? The Bible says man was created in God's image so God must look something like us. He created man in His image, so each one of you resembles God. Then why can't we find that God in the people around us? It's because when we see the people around us we try to look for their faults, how to bring the person down, even in our praises. How often have you heard somebody say, 'That's a beautiful dress you've got on,' or, 'a beautiful sari'. What about you? You spent one hour on your face and they comment on your dress! Why didn't you do a good job? Because you don't know how to glorify God. If you knew how to glorify God you'd be beauty personified. But you only know how to glorify the physical body, therefore people don't even see you, they see your dress, your pants, your glasses, whatever.
So how do we find a way of knowing God? Does anybody know? What's the point of having a japa bag with one finger sticking up like a hold-up and reciting 'Hare Krishna, Krishna Hare,' for thirty years and you never see Krishna. For thirty years you're calling this man and he has not even given you a speck of enlightenment. So we're doing something wrong. Looking for God in the wrong place.
To find God you need to shut your eyes, close your mouth, and dive deep into yourself, the deepest you can. Forget every existence in this universe: your family, the building. Just Be. And in that time you'll find God. But we can't just Be. All of you seated here can't just Be. There's an itch or a scratch somewhere, but we can't just Be. Why? We have too many sons of the blind king in our head. And those sons keep coming to you and telling you things while you have your eyes closed. Get rid of the blind king and his sons. How do you do that? By reciting the Gayathri Mantra.
The Gayathri Mantra has twenty-four tatvas (divine elements or sounds), not one. 'Sri Ram Jay Ram Jay Jay Ram only has seven tatvas.. 'Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna Hare, Hare. Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare,' only has five, and it is powerful. The Gayathri Mantra has twenty-four tatvas. What does that make it? Most powerful. Recite the Gayathri Mantra 'till you become transcendental, 'till you leave this physical body, 'till you have no body. But do you think you want to do that? As soon as you have no body you are lost. You are too attached to this body, and as long as you are attached to this body you're going to get nowhere.
Paramhansa Yogananda said: 'To know God, dive to the innermost altar of your being, and there seated will be Ishwara, God'.
We all need to know God. God is the only happiness that we have. Everything else is apparent happiness. We have this apparent happiness that we live every day. But we need that absolute happiness, and that is to know God, the truth. God is the truth. Can the truth change? No. God can never change. Whether you're Christian, Hindu, Islamic, whatever, even if you have no religion, God does not change. There is nobody in this whole universe who does not believe in God. Nobody. You cannot point out a man to me and say he doesn't believe in God and he can't tell me he doesn't believe in God. The fact that he says 'I don't believe there is a God,' means he knows there is a God, he just doesn't believe it. God is there for all of us. The same God, the same energy. We need to go inside and enjoy that God.
Hari Om.
