Welcome to the Simplicity

Edited excerpt, Maharaji in Amaroo, 18th September 1997

I'd I ike to welcome everyone to this beautiful event. Much courage and hard work has gone into putting this all together. And here we are to just feel, to just understand, those things that are important to us.

In this life, many things happen. And I guess if you were to plot how you feel this existence, it would be very undulating, it would be up and down. But then maybe through a simple understanding, you can realize that you don't have to go up and down with these waves. Maybe through a simple insight, maybe through a simple wisdom, you can understand that your destination, that your reality, that your truth, is above all this.

And when you can begin to welcome that simplicity in your life, I think that is so much the key. From what I can observe, if God created something simple, then the human beings immediately took it and made it complicated. We don't know how to welcome simplicity in our life. To me, the way everybody approaches it is that you have to be beyond a physicist and a rocket scientist and an astronaut, and an astronomer, even beyond God, to work out the problem.

Yet, we have been given the simplest of existences. We don't have to think to breathe. We don't have to push a button to exist. The breath comes in and out automatically, naturally. We have been given a desire to appreciate, we have been given a desire to enjoy. We have a liking for that. We have a want for that. And those are the things we need to welcome in our life. Those are the things that are critical to our existence. Some think that what is important in life is to gather information and solve problems. I cannot agree with that. I cannot agree that the purpose of your existence is to solve problems.

So much that you do, so much that you perceive, so much that you act and react to, has its foundation very deeply rooted in the river of time. Time, by nature, is something that changes. Anything that is touched by time is changed by time. That is the nature of time.

Yet we put our trust, our faith, our understanding in exactly those things. Those are the things we look towards to bring us joy in our life. Those are the things that we think are going to bring us that steady thing that we need. And I am not the first one, by any means, to say that is not the case. That's not how it is. That if you want to look for that one thing, you have to turn within. If you want to look for that, you have to retreat inside. If you want that joy, it is possible. It is possible. But you will not find it in those things which are incapable of producing that joy.

A Thrilling Encounter

Edited excerpt, Maharaji in Amaroo, 18th September 1997

Many times I see myself as that person who says, "If you are going across the desert, take water. Because you will need it." Now, you can say, "Well, I'm not thirsty. How can I need it?" But the desert is bigger than you think. We try to chart those terrains that cannot be charted. There is no map of this life. There is no map saying, "turn left, turn right." It can never be made. There are too many variables.

And sometimes it's a rude awakening to find out that that desert is a lot bigger than we thought. It's a very good philosophy to be uncertain of uncertainties. If you do that, you are taking chances. But be certain of those things that are certain. That have proven themselves to be certain again and again and again and again. And to me, in my life, I know this breath to be certain. I will depend on it till the day it leaves. I can depend on it. This is my swing. This is my relief. This is my thrill. This is my encounter.

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