Maharaji: Miami 10th December 1987

His speeches were not written or prepared but they are certainly not unrehearsed. The speeches preceding his current one are the rehearsals and his speeches following evolve gradually using the same store of tales, premie gossip, clichés, life events, recent tv shows, stock phrases and buzzwords.

Maharaji Birthday Program, Shrine Auditorium December 10, 1987 (Extracts)

Sooner or later I knew I would reach 30. And I would like to say what it has meant personally for me.

I was talking to somebody who asked me how does it feel to be 30?! knew all day long that's the question I'm going to be asked. I was going to get a T-shirt and write my answers down on the front and the back. But nonetheless, what does it mean? Well in one sense it is really no different than what has been happening because personally for me something started a very long time ago and it's been happening ever since. We're looking at sixteen and a half years since I have been in the west.

To me, I know what's happening, I know what's happened these last 30 years. You have to realise that Knowledge was all around me. Always it was talk, talk, talk, Knowledge, Knowledge, Knowledge. Talk about Knowledge, people interested in Knowledge, people wanting Knowledge. For 30 years. Discount the first three or four, it's twenty-six years I have been around.

So many people's lives have been transformed because of this wonderful and precious gift. It's been a very incredible 30 years. It is what has been passed and yet, I look towards the future. I have no great plans because one thing that I have learnt in these 26 years is that you need to be now. All because there are those days where you absolutely feel that the life is repeating itself. Like it's skipped a track on the record. From the time you wake up in the morning to the time you go to sleep, it's a repeat of another day. Yet it has moved, it has moved all of us and it all does move us.

So enjoy and be in that moment, be in that place, be in that recognition of what is so real, so real. Everything else comes and goes and changes. If it doesn't it stinks.

Everything else has to move. And there is one thing that is also moving but moving in its own rhythm, moving in its pace and that's the life. Recognise it, enjoy it and trust it. It has brought you through some incredible maze.


One day it became clear to me that somehow the Knowledge had to be taken around the world. It had to be global.

When I first came to Rome then England and then to the United States, there was an ambition, there was an understanding, there was a calling. The meaning of this Knowledge has to be taken to everyone. It has to be brought and at least presented to as many people around the world as possible.

At that stage, there was no understanding what was involved, but there was an ambition. I must say that still today it is a very ambitious project, an extremely ambitious project. For it to happen, incredible changes have to be made, incredible changes.

When you'd think about what these changes actually involved, you saw they were unimaginable. Yet slowly and slowly, changes were enacted which affected everybody. They also affected those people who wouldn't have a chance in this universe to hear about Knowledge. That is what was the most incredible part about it. Something had the possibility of becoming global and being everywhere. Something had the possibility of being awoken in each human being, regardless of race, creed, colour, nationality.

I know what that statement is. Just a good sounding statement. But to really go out there and say, 'I don't care about the race. I don't care about your creed. / don't care about your beliefs. I don't care who you are It means something entirely different that people in this world have no idea of. To really mean that is completely different than what people think it means.

And I said, The fact of the matter is that when you have decided or I have decided that people are open and we start doing it, people are there: There has never been a case where people haven't been there to listen about Knowledge and try to understand it. Because truly, it is something that is beautiful.


Great care, concern and gentleness has to be exercised to ensure that those people who do have Knowledge are enjoying it.

Because we tend to forget This is not a question of knowledge. We forget everything. Do you remember the day you were born? We forget so much, it is only natural that we would sometimes forget what Knowledge has done for us; what it has brought us; and what that experience has been. We are not trying to become part of a corporation or part of a society. We are not part of a club, but in fact we are trying to celebrate our own life, that very thing, so mysterious and yet so evident, called life itself.

Sometimes, I go to a place that I didn't even know existed and see people and they're smiling. They are not smiling because somebody has told them to smile. They are not smiling because something has happened to them that is forcing them to smile. They are smiling because they feel something within inside of them. That smile comes from them. It's not forced or brought by anybody. It is not part of a dogma.

So this ambition and this adventure continues. To go on around the world. This year has been pretty fascinating. I really took time to be with the people who had received Knowledge everywhere and get the basics completely straightened out. There are still many countries to go around the world. I've only done 13 of these Rejoice programs and we will probably do another 23 of the Rejoice '87's and '88's and '89's. It was really beautiful to see the response from everybody. Something so beautiful was awakening inside them; not ideas, but getting in touch with that simple beauty. How many of us do tend to forget the beauty that exists? There was a day when we approached someone and said, 'Yes, I would like Knowledge' There was a day in which we were able to enjoy ourselves. That day has to be immortal. That day has to be immortalised in our lives. That day has to be there every single day. However, so many times I have seen people get caught up in everything else.

We get caught in something and people say, 'Well now you have to be mature: Look, either you are or you're not. Maturity is not tobacco that you can go and buy, put it in your mouth and chew on it for a while. That's not what maturity is, that's not what it's all about.

People say, Now I have to be really responsible' Either you are, or you're not. All of those things are irrelevant. You can be responsible but you have to find out what you're responsible for. You have to be really responsible for your life. That's the crux. Everything else is easy come and easy go. Everything else is changeable and has the absolute potential of giving you nothing. Everything except this life, which has given you so much and continues to do so.

Those people who know something, more than belief, are the ones who can understand something. I was watching an interview where an old professor was asked, 'Do you believe in God?' He stopped and mumbled for a while, then he said, 'I know, I don't believe. I know' Really I like that. There will always be believers. Then there will be those who know. Those who know what life is. We need to feel and experience what we have been given. It is such a joy to be alive, that is one thing you would not trade for anything. To be, to know, to be able to be curious, to be able to enjoy, to be able to say 'yes' and to be able to say 'no, to be able to say 'that's wonderful, and to be able to say, 'no, that is not wonderful' We exist. This is what consciousness means. The first step of being conscious is beginning with the closest thing you have; this life - is you. It begins with that.

There is something alive within us, that transforms us. There is something that moves us, and changes us.

It forced you to understand. It moved and changed you, moulded you, folded you, not just a facial expression but there's something very deep inside. That's what is always real. We need to recognise, know, feel, and be a part of it.