The Court of Love
Maharaji December 18, 1976, Atlantic City, New Jersey
Thank you. You welcome me to Atlantic City, I'll welcome you to Atlantic City. Let's have some - let's put it this way: let's have some casual satsang. it is really beautiful, so far as the experience of Knowledge goes and so far the experience of Guru Maharaj Ji goes.
I was reading the card list. I was reading a lot of cards and a lot of cards came from East Coast for my birthday. I'd like to thank you very much; it was a wonderful surprise and a very beautiful gift. I didn't quite expect that, you know. I saw this chopper turn around, I said, "Wow" - I thought it was maybe the police coming to find out what's going on up there. Then all of a sudden it wasn't a police chopper; it was something else, and I said, "No, they couldn't have gotten this for his birthday." And then it said "Air Ride Rental" I said, "No, that's not the one, that's not the surprise." But anyway, it was really beautiful.
You know, I wasn't really expecting to come to Atlantic City. It all started when I landed in New York from the Frankfurt flight. Few of these premies were there and they gave me this beautiful - brochure you would say almost, with all the things of Atlantic City and so on and so forth. I just glanced through it; I was pretty tired. I just glanced through it and I said, "'Oh, nice package, who made it?" It was really decorated very beautifully and very nice. So that was it. Then Marino arrived and Steve - before Marino was going to come to LA, he asked me if Marino should stop in Atlantic City and check it out. Before I even got a chance to say yes or no, Marino was already there.
Then this whole thing just slowly started to build up. I was saying, "Wait a minute, maybe we just shouldn't have this," I was tired - still I'm tired - but maybe we shouldn't have this, maybe it'd be too much. Only three thousand premies coming. I didn't realize the fact that that doesn't matter. I did realize the fact and that's why I'm here. But I flew all the way from Rio to South Africa to Swaziland - and I believe there's a few premies here that have been on that flight, and there are a few premies sitting out in the audience that have been on this flight - it's quite flight, and to go all the way through that just for seven hundred premies was totally worth it.
So it doesn't really matter the amount of premies that there are, it's just the love and just the understanding between all the premies - that's what really matters. The love and the understanding of all the premies is what I guess is bringing this whole festival together to this point where it is really happening. This is the eighteenth and what have you - tomorrow's the nineteenth and there's going to be a big satsang program. I wasn't going to come - I was just watching the video; it's been a very beautiful experience for me, myself. I watched John give satsang and I watched Pranam Bai give satsang and then I watched Marolyn give satsang and then I watched Raja Ji give satsang. And this guy with my jacket on comes on the stage and he goes: "Let's get Maharaj Ji over here!"
I gotta be really stupid to let him talk me into this. I was just trying to relax a little bit. Caught our flight from Los Angeles - we were supposed to stop in St. Louis and make the stop we stopped in Kansas City, and it just makes you wonder a little bit if you're just going to about make it to New Jersey or not, you know? And if it just about makes it to New Jersey - the airplane - that's not quite good enough: three hundred feet from the runway, "kabumpf."
So anyway, I'm here, and it's really beautiful to be here. We're just a great old huge family, and we have to just get big enough places together so the whole family can meet - like a family reunion, but the only problem is that this family, we don't have disputes and confusions between us, that we shouldn't meet because of that. We are all understanding the same thing and we are proceeding towards the same path, so it's always very blissful to come together. We don't have to sit down and talk about the crazy garbage, but we can sit here and talk
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Prem Rawat (Maharaji) aka Guru Maharaj Ji the Perfect Master
about love and understanding, which is really true, and the truth. That's the whole name of the game: understanding the love, the beauty of this realization that we have.
The more people can understand how beautiful really it is in our lives, more people can proceed towards it. it's just like an open gate: it's open to everybody. There's seven doors and there's one main door, and you can enter through any of these seven doors. But there's this one door and premies who really have the right patience and premies who really have the right understanding do make it through this final door. You have to knock; it's not open, you have to knock, but if you knock, it shall be opened - there are no restrictions to anybody, so far you're not a gorilla, you're a human being. I guess the person who opens it is Guru Maharaj Ji, and even if it's a dedicated enough gorilla and has gone to the program, I guess Guru Maharaj Ji will open it to him, too.
But the point is, if you're a human being and you knock at the door, then the door shall be opened for us - and it has been opened for a lot of premies. Lot of premies sometimes come in the hall and they want to go out. They don't know why they want to go out, but they just want to go out. They figured they just came in there wandering, wanting to find out what it was all about, but there's a lot happening in that hall. It's the Hall of Wonders, that's the hall where everything happens; except when it isn't happening, nothing happens there. The absence is absent, and the presence has overfilled that hall. So people who just open themselves up to that hall again, find so much happening in that hall, and people who just don't open themselves to that hall don't find anything happening there - and this is the path of realization. I tell you, it's wondrous. It's beautiful, its gorgeous.
On the other hand, it's bumpy; tough, steep inclines and what have you. But it is also a very smooth highway, and it depends which way you look at it. if you look at it from the bottom, yes. If you look at a highway from the bottom of it, it would be very hard to drive on it - there are all the pilings and so on and so forth. But if you looked at the right side, which is the top, it might be very smooth. This is a highway that is very smooth. Underneath it, it's got a lot of support, and you try to look at the support and try to cruise by the support - it's virtually impossible to do that, but if you try to cruise on top of this highway it's really beautiful, because that's the way you're supposed to cruise on it, obviously.
And so I just want to say hello. Premies wanted me to come down here so here I am. Just to tell you something, or maybe for your
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information, just because this is a community program - communities came together and really built this program up, and I guess any program, for that matter - but I was in Lima and I was in Frankfurt, where there were representatives from all over the place: Canada, Australia, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Nepal - what have you, everywhere. The point was that before everybody was there, everybody was expecting something, expecting a lot of problems, expecting a lot of mind to happen - expecting as a usual conference goes. But then something happened, and something else took over, completely, and it was an obsession. It was an obsession of love that got to everybody after a little while. A lot of people tried to defend that obsession of love, but some people just didn't try to resist it and some people did try to resist it and couldn't resist it and had to give up. And before you knew it, there was satsang happening.
And you know, logically, if you look at it, well how is that possible? If you're having plain old flat satsang - that's the way you would put it, too - if you're just having plain old flat satsang, how are your problems going to get solved? Well, the only problem is, if that is the way you think, you don't know. Then you don't know what your problems really are. Your problems are the lack of satsang, the lack of that love, lack of that understanding - and if you can have that, don't have to have any problems. That is my experience. I've talked to a lot of people; lot of people come up to me and say, "Maharaj Ji, we have problems."
"So what is your problem?"
"Duh, I don't know - I think it is this, or I think it is that …"
But our problems are self-made, you know. You make a castle - you dig a hole and you keep on digging it, and all of sudden you find out you can't get out of the hole; you've dug it so deep that you need a ladder to get out. And that's the way it is. But if we just get out of that, and get back into our very basics, very fundamental - the very thing that why we received Knowledge, for satsang, service and meditation, then it's really beautiful and there is really a true experience to experience. And I guess that's what we'll be talking about tomorrow night - about the experience of Knowledge.
But just for your information, Frankfurt - the conference in Frankfurt, it was really blissful, and i think all the countries around are starting to pick back up again, in terms of just getting together and having - I don't know about this one, but what I call it in my own terms is -Project Action.- It's always gonna be there, it's always been there, but if you ever put a heading on this energy that is going around here, it'll be called "Project Action.- We need a lot of action all the time, and this is one of the parts of Project Action to me, at least - a lot of action happening. Without action, we almost go poof! It's just like - one of the premies for my birthday gave me a hot air balloon. So we got the hot air going and filled the balloon - it was made out of paper - got big, was ready to go up, went up - if you ever pulled the string on it, it would sort of reverse and all the hot air would leak out of it and it'd just start to come down. Everything else that our mind projects is just like that. A slight pull on it - and everything goes down. But that's not the way Knowledge is. Knowledge is an authentic balloon. Well, it's not even a balloon, but in terms of balloons, it is an authentic balloon, which carries its own fire underneath it all the time. Doesn't matter - if you reverse it, it'll go forward and is always going to be an experience. And even if you do reverse it, you are going to remember the experience that you had with Knowledge.
So the point is, we could go out and we could get lost. There's so many things to get lost - it's easier to get lost than to get found - but the point is we have to get found. Even if that is a gimmick, even if that is a game, the game ends when we have got the Boardwalk. And the Boardwalk is when we have been found. That is the Monopoly; you don't have to own everything else, you have to own that one section of the whole Monopoly game, then you've got it. That's to get found, that is to understand, and to have that love flow between all of us. Because there's everything else out there in the world. Anything you want is out there, except one thing that is in here.
So you have the option: you can come in, open this, and also open one of the doors of the craziness - or, you can make it very exclusive, where only one door opens when we all come together. Wherever we are and whoever we are, just one door of love opens and not the
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Prem Rawat (Maharaji) aka Guru Maharaj Ji the Perfect Master Dressed Up As Krishna
jabber and the craziness of this world. Because I have experienced it. Believe me, I have experienced it.
The 747 that I was flying from Frankfurt to New York - whole thing was just about ready to break down, and they were doing this movie in the aft section and all of a sudden one of the stewardesses comes from the back and says the projector broke down, the people want their money back. All of a sudden the first class started to watch the movie and two minutes later, that projector broke down. So I said, "Well, you look around the airplane and the whole windows are cracking up, the seals around them are cracking up." I was flying from Hong Kong to Hawaii, and all the airplane was just whistling, because there was a little leak in the door.
So this world is completely full of craziness. You'll find there everything else - except the Truth, the Knowledge, the experience of love, and that's within us and that's why we are all here. So why don't we just open up and experience that, and it's not the point of just coming to Atlantic City festival and opening it, but it is just coming always in our lives and doing that. We make things sophisticated for ourselves - nobody else does. Nobody does. I don't. I've tried to make things as simple and as easy as possible. You make things sophisticated for yourself. So if you are, by the way, caught by your own sophistication, eat it. Don't give it to me. Don't try to lay it on somebody else around you, other premies, or just me. Eat it, just keep it in your pocket; hold it there, that's your own problem. Let's try to come together, be open here.
This is the Court of Love, this is where love happens. See, this is the point: that this is the issued order, not from just this time but of time immemorial, that in this court, whenever this court assembles, there's only one thing happens and that is love. And if you don't do that in this court, then you're degrading the court, and the court can turn around and file a suit against you and you'll be in deep trouble. Only thing this court can do is exclude you. But not really excluding you, but putting you in a spot where you will exclude yourself from this court. It's a tricky subject. Courtroom won't exclude you, because the doors are always open. What it'll do is that automatically you will find yourself in situation where you are in a little room, locked all by yourself with four doors around you, but all of them locked. This is the order of this Supreme Court: just love. if there's anything else happening without love in it and without that true understanding in it and without that true realization of Knowledge in it, you're disobeying the Court, and if you disobey the Court of Love, that's really bad. You can get a lot of sentence for that, and nobody will give you the sentence. it'll be your own sentence that you put on your head.
All I want to say is let's come together; we have come together; let's open up and let's just really blossom like a flower to this whole thing, because it's beautiful. Let's not get caught in the bear traps of mind. And if we do, either we will have to be as powerful as a raccoon, who can bite off his own feet to get out of a trap, or if we're not, then we might as well consider ourselves dead in that sense, from love. It's straight down the line: when man doesn't have love, when a person doesn't have love, he is very barren. It's like a tree without leaves, it's like a little plant which doesn't have any greenness in it. It is a bulb that will never glow, it is a cloud that will never rain. if it's a camera it'll never shoot any pictures.
Let's just come together and understand what we are all about and what we are all here for. I think there's a greater purpose and there's a greater reason why I came here. Of course, that reason has always been there; it wasn't like it just now occurred, because I was coming to Atlantic City. The reason has always been there, but the importance of that reason is now very vital to the premies of America and to the premies anywhere else, and especially to the premies of America because we need to grow. There is Europe, there is Canada, there's South America, there's the Orient, there's India - what have you - South Africa. Everything is happening beautiful there; it's all growing.
It's really incredible, you know. Just like in the conference: everybody was really like - just having 220 volts go through them. Then all of a sudden it was like somebody came and turned off the switch and showed them that the whole machine was never plugged in, it was just their own selves going like this. The machine didn't have any juice ever, but just to pretend that it did, even turned off the switch, and people said
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Prem Rawat aka Maharaji aka Guru Maharaj Ji the Perfect Master
So it's all happening. Now there's only one country left and this is the first time that I have experienced this. You know, whenever I came back to America, it was like premies are really flourishing; premies always flourish. But I think this time there was a good bear trap the mind set for some of the premies. I think that just for that, you have to give some credit to the mind - just for that. It was a good one. I wouldn't buy it, but it doesn't matter what kind of bear trap the mind sets, to me it's nothing, because it doesn't really exist. Mind is nothing; mind is the absence of everything else, and absence always seeks presence, and imperfection always seeks perfection. We are all for that reason here: to seek perfection.
So let's just all come together, understand what this is all about and get rid of the bear traps. They don't do nothing to us, they're not so good, they're not good to have around. Who knows? You might trip on them. So let's get rid of this mind once and for all. And we can do it. You and me - together we can do anything. You, I don't know what - me, I don't know what - you and me can do anything.
Thank you.
After Arti …
So, it's getting close to twelve, but - big deal. It's not a big deal. This thing (watch) is made to tick. if it stops, you throw it away - that's it's duty, to tick. Not a big deal. But there is one big deal - that you get enough rest tonight so that you can be awake for the darshan line tomorrow. There is no point to be so sleepy that you just go around doing pranam to everybody.
So I'll see you tomorrow. I've heard quad sound, but that's more than quad.
Cut the cake, Maharaj Ji.
Okay. Before I cut the cake and leave, I just want to say good night - and I love you.
Cake cutting and music.
I've never really had a cavity yet, but if I ever do, I'll have them install a microphone in there. Then we won't run into this problem for a microphone.
Boy, this is a real cake, isn't it? In Malibu they had a cake - it was pretty big, and Hansy came out of it and I went ahead and cut it, and it didn't quite feel like a cake. Turned out to be styrofoam, with real icing on it. But anyway, it was a lot of fun cutting, and this is a lot of fun cutting.
I don't want to have a cavity. This is bound to give me one.
All right. You'll have my doctor's bill. I'll take one piece upstairs and I'll eat it.
It worked out all perfect - I haven't had my dinner yet, so I'll have that for dessert. Thank you. Thank you very much.
It has been a birthday that I think I'm gonna remember for quite a while. So I guess I'll see you tomorrow. Good night.
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