Prem Rawat (Maharaji) is Beyond All Our Praise

Durga Ji's satsang at Atlantic City, New Jersey on December 18, 1976.

Bolie Shri Satgurudev Maharaj Ki Jai.

You know, right before I came here, I just - what can I say? What am I going to say to the premies? That's always the thing when you get up to give satsang: what am I going to say? I don't want to think about of course, none of us do - what we're going to say. We want to be able to say whatever Guru Maharaj Ji within us will allow us to say, and that's when it's really beautiful. That's when it's really fantastic - that's when we really experience something, because it coming from a place that's so pure.

It's something that we're not thinking about or planning, like a speech. As I was walking out, all I really want to say is: Bolie Shri Satgurudev Maharaj Ki Jai - that's what I want. I want to say that all the time, especially lately - I'v just been experiencing that. It seems like we don't say that because it became - well, we thought - kind of like a rut, something we thought we had to say, and it's not. In our hearts we have to feel that praise - praise to the one who has given us everything, praise to the one and we can never praise him enough.

One time we were having dinner at Raja Ji's and Claudia's house, and Maharaj Ji was just giving satsang and I looked at him - he's too unbelievable to be true. It's by his grace sometimes I can experience him this way. It's just too fantastic. I looked at him and I said,

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"Maharaj Ji, all I want to do really is just sing your praises. All I want to do is just praise you." And he said,"That can't be done; no one can ever sing my praises." And when he said that, I realised it, I knew it. I knew what he was saying: no matter how we try to praise Guru Maharaj Ji, we cannot.

He's beyond all our praise; he's too magnificent to begin to praise, and yet we have to, we must - it feels so good. It's our need to praise him, to thank him. And where do we even begin to thank him? You can say, "Thank you for my car, thank you for my house, thank you for my wife, thank you for my child, thank you for my health, thank you for this food," - you can just go on and on and on and on, about trying to thank Guru Maharaj Ji. But when it really comes down to it, you say, "Thank you for this life, thank you for this Knowledge - but most of all, thank you for Maharaj Ji, for you. Thank you for you, because without you, I wouldn't have this Knowledge, and without this Knowledge, I wouldn't even know what this life is all about."

Knowing what this life is all about, everything becomes beautiful, everything becomes precious, everything becomes a gift. Even things that we wouldn't think would be a gift, if we see them in the right way, they're a gift. I fell down the stairs in Malibu, and at first, my first reaction was "Oh no! Why did this happen? This is terrible!" And, "I think I broke my back." I was just lying there and I was in a lot of pain, but Maharaj Ji came and he just showed me to trust in him. I really thought I'd broken my back, and I thought, "Oh, how am I going to take care of Premlata? How am I going to hold Hans? What's going to happen. . .?" and he looked at me, like, trust in me.

And that whole incident turned out to be really beautiful. So even the things that we could consider to be not so good, Maharaj Ji can turn them into something really beautiful if we just trust him. Because we don't really know what our future holds. Really, Guru Maharaj Ji has said, "I am your future." Guru Maharaj Ji is our future, and that's why we have to put our everything into him.

Sometimes we really get lazy and we get really - I don't know, we just get unappreciative of everything that Maharaj Ji's giving us, all the time, every minute, and we tend to take things much for granted. But we really can't do that, because we're missing out; we're the ones who are missing our much when we do that. The love that Guru Maharaj Ji is giving us is so precious; it's the most precious thing that any of us can feel in this world, this lifetime, anytime. So why - hoe can we space it out? How can we leave it? We can't. We have to really concentrate on it and feel it and experience it, and I know each one us has at least once in our life experienced a love so precious and so tender and so pure for our Guru Maharaj Ji. Because when we look at him, each one of us has to look at him and see that he's ours - and we're his. He's our Guru Maharaj Ji, and we are his. And he is so precious to us. We have to see it; we really, really, really have to know it. Because this is the time that we know it in: right now.

I know for myself - I'm with him so much and I lose it so much, and it's very, very painful for me. And yet, by his grace, he fills me up and I can look at him, and I can see that he's everything. He's our everything. So many times - most of the time - I don't see the perfection of Guru Maharaj Ji, and it really hurts me, but then, if I really pray in my heart and really ask please, that I see that perfection, he always gives it to me.

So what we have to do, premies, is just pray in our hearts that we can experience that most beautiful love that there is.

I was listening to the video tape up with John and Pranam Bai giving satsang, and both of them mentioned something that I think all of us are feeling, and that is that somehow, we got into the tendency of separating Knowledge and Guru Maharaj Ji: "Well, let's play up Knowledge and let Guru Maharaj Ji just stay there. We'll just put Guru Maharaj Ji in this little box and we'll really practise Knowledge." But that just doesn't work, because like John was saying, Guru Maharaj Ji gave us this Knowledge, and if we think this Knowledge is beautiful, if we think Knowledge is perfect, if we've experienced anything of this Knowledge,then what about the one who's giving it to us?

We must really give our everything to Guru Maharaj Ji, and he's here in physical body so that we can focus our minds on him. Spiritually, within, we have Knowledge, we have meditation, we have satsang, we have service - and we have Guru Maharaj Ji externally. Mind wants to say, "Well, what's he doing? That's not right. Look what he's doing here! How come he's doing that? Why is he doing that?"

I know I experience that, but if we can just trust him and know that everything he's doing is really perfect, it's really something else, because there's - I don't think there's any other perfect human being in this world. So if we can just trust him, and if this is his mission, if we can just trust him with his mission and not try to do it how we think is the best way, or how we think it should be done, or how we think Guru Maharaj Ji should be - if we can just let him do it, I know he'll let us experience his perfection. And that's really an incredible experience, to experience Guru Maharaj Ji's perfection.

As Guru Maharaj Ji has said, imperfection seeks perfection, and we are imperfect - we know that. But he's perfect - and he never really comes out and even says that, you know. He talks about Perfect Master and he talks about this … but really he's perfect. It's so hard, it seems, for mind - at least for me, it's so hard for me to see that, and yet I get glimpses of it and he's so beautiful - it's so fantastic.

Maharaj Ji said one thing, it was really - it impressed me very much. When he went on tour, and he went to South Africa, he said the premies there were really beautiful because they had the right focus. They had Guru Maharaj Ji on top of Knowledge. Not like one, two; first, second - but in a way, Guru Maharaj Ji sits on top of Knowledge. It's like the one thing - and Guru Maharaj Ji is first; Guru Maharaj Ji came to us first and then we received Knowledge. And we have to have that right perspective. He said the premies there were so beautiful; there was no confusion at all. And Guru Maharaj Ji once asked: what's more important - the water or the fish? The ocean or the fish? Then he explained that the water is more important than the fish actually, because the water was first. Without the water, the fish could not survive. Without the water, the fish could not exist, even though the fish is very beautiful. Without that water, there can be no fish. In the same way, without Guru Maharaj Ji we cannot know

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The Golden Age

Knowledge; we cannot ever experience Knowledge.

Today I was reading the new And It Is Divine. To me, that's really beautiful, And It Is Divine, because it has satsang from 1971, '72, '73, '74, and it's really beautiful satsang of Guru Maharaj Ji because all of Guru Maharaj Ji's satsang is beautiful, because when we read it and when we hear it again, we realise that there was so much in it, that when we heard it, we didn't really hardly hear anything at all. That's the way it is all the time.

One thing that really struck me today when I was reading it was that if we really want to love Guru Maharaj Ji more, the way to do that is through meditation. If we really want to experience the most beautiful, fantastic experience in our lives - which is to me that most precious love - then it is to meditate, to practise Knowledge. And for me, sometimes that's really hard, and and I think it is for probably most all of us, because we tend to make excuses: "Well, now is not the right time, I don't have x amount of time, I don't have an hour, so I'll just wait until I have an hour." I know I do that a lot. So sometimes I end up spacing the whole day, but it's me who's suffering from it, because I'm not experiencing that most beautiful thing. I'm losing out.

And when I am able to meditate and experience that love, it's just like "Wow, how could I ever do that? How could I ever space it out? Maharaj Ji, please help me, let me love you." And he's always- he's waiting for us. One thing Guru Maharaj Ji said - and it's so precious, it's so beautiful - is that he can have anything in this world - anything - but what he hungers for, what he yearns for, what he longs for, is our love. That's really incredible to me, because that's something we can always be giving.

When we got - all of us were able to come together and buy Guru Maharaj Ji a birthday present, it was really wonderful, because it wasn't the birthday present that was anything. It wasn't a car - c-a-r - or money, or whatever we want to call it. It was our love that was beautiful. That's the thing that Maharaj Ji loves, and he said that's the only thing that surprises him in this world - is our love. We're so lucky to have that situation, but it's our love that really makes Maharaj Ji happy, that he longs for. He's made it that way, he's created it that way, so that he's distributed his love among all of us so that we can give it back to him. And that's what he yearns for. That's what he hungers for. Because believe me, he could have anything. What's precious: diamonds, gold, jewels - are they really precious? They're nothing, but our love is precious, because we give him ourselves when we give him our love.

I just pray in my heart that I can somehow be a servant to Guru Maharaj Ji, because I'm really not a very good servant. He's given me such a beautiful service, and so often I miss what is the essence of that service. I know we all do, and he's given us - actually, he's given us more than we could ever comprehend, but he's given us each other in a way that we can help each other. Because I know it really helps me to hear satsang, and it helps me to see other premies who are loving Guru Maharaj Ji. It makes me really high.

When we walked in the hotel and I saw so much love - just flowers in the bathroom, a little note saying "I love you, Maharaj Ji" - it just really, it gets me in that special place. Oh, please, all of us, please, while we're here, please love Guru Maharaj Ji. Please experience that love. I'm saying it to myself as well as I'm saying it to you, because it really means absolutely everything. He's given us this opportunity, and we all know that this love is really the most beautiful thing that we can ever possess. It's something that no-one can ever really take away from us. Only mind can distract us from it.

One thing that Guru Maharaj Ji said to me once that helped me so much: when we're meditating, and all of a sudden we're sitting down and we decide, oh, I need a drink of water, or I need this or I want that - it's a constant thing when you first sit down to meditate, because mind just doesn't want to do that. He said "I can bet you, as sure as you say 'No, I don't want a drink of water' - you'll get up and get one." Because we've just acknowledged that mind, saying yes, you're there - no, I don't want a drink of water. So we'll get up and get one. So what he's saying is just don't even acknowledge it, don't even acknowledge that mind. If it's knocking at the door and you're really … say if you're trying to take a nap and you're trying to sleep, you really want to sleep, and somebody comes banging at your door. And you really don't want to talk with them, you don't want to do any­thing - the smartest thing to do is just pretend you're not home, just don't even answer the door. They'll go away; they'll think, "Oh, he's not home," and they leave. Same way with this mind: it's going to bug us, but if we don't acknowledge it, if we don't even recognise it, if we can really get into meditation, then it must go away.

It's really pretty wonderful, what Maharaj Ji's given us. Because we are in a situation where we have a big mind. We've fed it for so long. Maharaj Ji was saying once, the only thing that is more powerful than this mind is service. The only thing that is more powerful than mind is satsang - real satsang, the essence of satsang, the love behind satsang. Because mind can't really go on, if that's really happening. Mind can try to depict every little thing that the person is saying and then we get caught in that, but if that essence is really happening, then mind has to just stay back. The only thing that is more powerful than mind is meditation. If there's real satsang, real service, real meditation, then mind can't exist. That's really so wonderful to have, because the deeper we go into this Knowledge, the higher Knowledge goes, the higher Guru Maharaj Ji must also go, because Guru Maharaj Ji sits on top of it.

We can't lose perspective of it. We have to always be prepared for the things that mind will throw in front of us. We have to be prepared, and Maharaj Ji's always preparing us. It's like Maharaj Ji's said in his satsang so many times: it's a battle, but if we really do as our Guru Maharaj Ji has instructed us, is showing us all the time, then there's really no battle.

I feel really so graced to be here, really fortunate, really blessed. Today I wanted to come so badly and I didn't know if I was going to be able to, and I just really prayed that this could happen - and Maharaj Ji fulfilled it. Like John was saying~ be careful what you desire, because Guru Maharaj Ji will fulfill it. But please, premies, let our desire be really focused on Guru Maharaj Ji, really focused on this Knowledge - and then that desire will come true.

So I think that's enough for now. Jaisatchitanand and thank you very much.

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Prem Rawat aka Maharaji aka Guru Maharaj Ji