Contents
2   International News
7   Letter To The Editor
8   Changes
10   Follow Your Guide
13   First Things First
19   Interview
22   Adelaide
24   Up The Country
27   Something Universal
28   YOU are going to end up in hell…

2   International News

Premies are "spaced out" all over this globe. I mean everywhere we've been.

So we'd say, "Oh it'll be great when we get to Jamaica, the premies will be cool and …" But man, everywhere people are asleep!! When the golden opportunity arises and I get a chance to give satsang I pray to Maharaj Ji to give me the words to shake them, to wake them just enough. It's like they're just into a trip, like Guru Maharaj Ji said in Denver, going to satsang, doing service and sitting not meditating.

Reading the latest Golden Age left me in a state of confusion, frustration and - above all - weariness. I've been feeling it a lot lately. It's as if I'm constantly being pushed, pulled, cajoled, ordered and ( sometimes) even threatened to try harder, to experience more, to examine and strengthen my commitment to Knowledge, to put in more effort, and so on and so on. It almost seems like I've been given two opposing directions … one to practise satsang, service and meditation, and to experience a natural, organic growth; and another contradictory one to let myself be pulled up to a level of consciousness and dedication that's not only foreign and frightening, but which I just can't handle.

8   Changes

One of the main things that seems to be happening in Hobart at the present time is that many of us are taking a long, honest look at ourselves, the depth of our experience in Knowledge and the way we relate to people we contact in our every day situations. In a lot of cases the result of this kind of self-evaluation has been a more conscious awareness of just how little we have really given of ourselves to experiencing Knowledge, in spite of saying - sometimes for years - that Knowledge is "everything" to us.

8   First Things First Guru Maharaj Ji Riva del Garda Italy, 18th May 1976

There are people who receive Knowledge, and maybe they were saved from one thing that could have completely messed up their lives, but now they're not meditating on it - to them it's always something else, something else, something else. In their lives the real importance of Knowledge has completely disappeared and therefore they're not even doing meditation any more. The reason for that was they couldn't see themselves, they couldn't see the situation around them to really see that yes, in fact I have been saved.

19   Interview

I got to a point where I was doing all these things, I was just going along in life and I started thinking that maybe there was something more, something to make me happy. I was feeling that there wasn't much in life; sometimes I couldn't even see why I wanted to keep living, because there didn't seem to be anything.

22   Adelaide

Three-and-a-half years ago a battered Honda motorcycle bearing two premies made the first inroads into Adelaide's complacency. John Macgregor and Mary Starrs rode the city streets till they found functional - if somewhat cramped - premises in Pulteney Street, where they set up the ashram, satsang hall, Divine Sales and offices, all rolled into one.

A tiny band of totally misguided but earnestly "devoted" natives remained, carefully preserving the ancient rituals as they had learned them from the attempted colonizers from the city. Satsang still could be heard (occasionally and unpredictably) three nights a week in Adam Wrigley's bedroom. The scene must have been reminiscent of the early Christian meetings in tiny groups with utter secrecy. But Roman persecution was not the enemy - it was lack of understanding and inspiration, which made propagation ineffective, no matter how earnestly attempted

Guru Maharaj Ji is placing a lot of emphasis on understanding.

I can see that there are many people who have Knowledge, who have something very, very precious, but they lack understanding: Knowledge is not worth anything to them just because they cannot understand it.

'Instead of sitting and explaining to YOU how YOU are going to end up in hell… what I have come to tell you is just that it's all fantastic.'

Guru Maharaj Ji Indianapolis July 1976