Life at thirty

Maharaji was born in Hardwar on the Ganges in Northern India on the 10th of December, 1957. Since the age of eight he has been telling people about the experience of Knowledge. In a talk given in Los Angeles on his last birthday, Maharaji reflected on life at 30.

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.

To be going global

Over sixteen years ago, Maharaji decided to take his message from India to the West. Since that time, people have been shown the experience of Knowledge in countries all around the world.

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.

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