Developing a Consciousness to Guide Us Through Life
Excerpts: October 4, 2001 Lecture
Today is a day when you should be critical in accepting and denying the facts of life. It was not necessary for Guru Nanak to come and teach Dharma. But the understanding of Dharma became limited to our perception of heaven and hell. When you hear reports of incidents involving fanaticism and terrorism this is where they come from.
For example you meet a person you like, or let us stretch it: You are in love with someone, but you have no idea if you can even speak to them. And it just so happens that they give you a hug. Don’t you feel in heaven? I’m telling you this is a bogus heaven. All is heaven for that moment. That moment of the cycle, when it is positive, it is heaven, and when it is negative, it is hell.
That is heaven and that is hell. That’s why Guru Nanak had to come. He said: “I don’t need anything, only the consistent love of Yours, in longing between You and me.” It means there is an Infinity, and the finite has to have a relationship with it. The enrichment which Infinity grants the finite is the ecstasy of consciousness.
We have a temperamental diversity. But we gather to cross all difficulties. Why? Because at the moment when we collectively meditate, the control our mind has on us be eliminated.
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During the day we give priority to things, and not to ourselves. Those hours, which we ignore, are minus yourself for yourself, they are the hours of ecstasy, divinity, Infinity and prosperity.
Giving is very difficult. When you give, you do not think God is making you to give. You think you are giving, so you think you are getting short-circuited. “Nothing. Nothing belongs to me, Lord. All is all yours, and I give Yours to You; I have no attachment.”
Technically we have to develop a consciousness which should guide us through life. We should believe as a matter of reality, that whatever is being given is given by God, and whatever we are giving, God is telling us to give. That’s all. When our mental state becomes that clean, that clear, and that crystal, it is that crystal which promises you Infinity, which is beyond heavens, earth and this whole episode. “Nothing belongs to me, everything belongs to You, because You are in everything.” This is consciousness.
It’s better to give to Sikh Dharma [tithe] because it is the real custodian of your soul and spirit. When you understand the spirit, the soul, then you will know that nothing belongs to you, it all belongs to God anyway.
It is an obligation for you now, if you do not give Dasvandh, to give Dasvandh [tithe], and add a dollar a day to it. You’re not going to become poor and your community can be strong and mobile. That God who created man lives in the man. Simply, man doesn’t know how to use that material which God uses; that’s the only difference.
It is up to us to remedy whatever time is left to us, because you can never know. Did you ever think that the Twin Towers would disappear from the skyline of New York? No. One, two, three, and it’s all over. What a tragedy it was! You think it is over? No. It has just started. Because, now we are waking up. That is what the Japanese commander said in 1941, “We have surprisingly awakened the American tiger.”
We, who are patriotic, can do it too. There are certain principles of life which have to be learned. Thank you for joining with me in this most divine congregation and oneness of the mind, sound, and body.