Maharaji: Los Angeles Excerpts, November 17, 1985
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.



The Following Excerpts Were Taken From Maharaji Speaking In Los Angeles On November 17, 1985
I had a very beautiful experience on my recent world tour, and I haven't had a chance yet to share it with anybody. It was really super smooth, with a lot of grace. You could feel it everywhere…
I found myself going places I've never been before, like Abidjan on the Ivory Coast. It's a different continent, a different place altogether. You're in a place where none of the things that you know about exist. They do have highways and they do have cars, but that's about the limit of it. People are very different, cultures are very different. Understanding about everything is different. You know you are an alien, because nothing around is familiar.
I arrived in the morning, waited until the time of the program, got ready and went to the hall. It was a beautiful place, a circular hall with big windows - not really windows, just open on the sides. There was no air conditioning, just natural air conditioning. I realized that people had been waiting in that hall since noon - the hall had been filled since noon, and the program was supposed to start at 8 o'clock in the evening! Nobody talked, nothing happened, there were no big lectures. Everyone sat there, very patiently, very quietly, waiting.
As I walked onto the stage, I was a bit shocked. Everybody went wild. They had never seen me; a lot of these people had Knowledge for seven years and had never seen me.
Next, I had an opportunity to go to Ghana … Then we flew down to Zambia, which is a very different place …
Something inside started to break down. We have our ideas, we have our concepts - what Knowledge is, what people are, how things need to be. Something very fundamental starts to break down, and you start to look at the scope of a certain reality that is so undefined, so untouched in our day-to-day lives. You start to realize that there is something more in each individual.
I went from Zambia to a little place in Ndola. There, I met with approximately 75 people, native Africans who had received Knowledge. It was very beautiful. We were on a veranda and just sitting there. We started talking. First of all, we just talked about Knowledge, how beautiful Knowledge is and how nice it is to have it. Then we really started talking. They started asking me questions and it went back and forth.
You could see and feel that what they want in their lives is so real for them. They want to grab, and they want to reach, and they want to touch it. They want nothing more than this. They don't want all the philosophies. When you say "Socrates" to them, they say "Who? What? Who is he? Did you bring him with you? If you're talking about him, you must have brought him with you."
No philosophies, nothing. Just reaching to a very direct sense of being alive, that I am alive. This is the philosophy - that I am alive, you are alive and I want to share; I want to share something very beautiful. I want to be a part of that beauty, that reality. I want to be a part of that which is me, really, really me. Not just a whole bunch of props. Because we have a lot of props…
I spoke at a program in Patna, India with 300,000 people. It was a public program, Sunday afternoon, open air, in the heart of the city. It looked like the entire city of Patna was empty and everyone was sitting there. Everywhere you looked - people, people, people.
It was an incredible moment. Everyone became quiet; they all sat down and listened. Because when you talk about this Knowledge, when you talk about this reality, it touches everyone. It touches everyone exactly in the same place and equally in the same place.
That, my friends, is the essence. Leave that, and you can grab onto a lot of things, but they are all trains to the wrong place. All you can do is look to your heart and accept, and be in that place of enjoyment. That's how it unfolds. Not only here, but in Zambia, Mauritius, Jaipur, Delhi, Patna or any place.
see Africa/India page 2

Africa/India cont'd from page 1
I met a man in Kathmandu. He is 85 years old, head of the Vedanta Society, and can speak seven languages. He doesn't look 85. I saw him, and he started crying.
He said, "You know, for such a long time I studied the theory, and just like that you made it real for me. It's so beautiful, because now I have both the philosophy and the experience." Then he said: "Now, it's obvious to me what's real. Theories only took me to one point and after that there was no other door, no other avenue. That was it. All I could do in my empty house was to go out of one door, walk into another one, get out of that one, walk into another one. Just my theories; how does this work, how does that work. But all of a sudden to turn and find the room in which I found what I was searching for. I didn't even know what I was searching for, but when I found it, it was so obvious."
You know, all the perils and all the problems we have - it's about time to put it all in one basket and sort it out. And let that joy really, really manifest in this heart.