How To Make Friends With God

Now there are people who meditate, who meditate very well, it would seem, who don't know much about God. So that might seem to be a problem. But it's easy to understand. When they meditate, they don't actually see or feel God or get to know God, what they do is they meditate upon how wonderful they are. During their meditation, they think marvelous thoughts. Or during meditation they enter into states of awareness where they feel a wonderful ecstasy. But all their ecstasy is, is a reflection of their own personal consciousness in a heightened form. They really don't see God, they just see themselves in a fancier mirror. No, I hardly know of anyone on the planet who knows God at all, although many people claim to.

Tonight I'd like to pass on a couple of thoughts to you about getting to know God. I can't tell you about God, you'll have to find out for yourself. And I probably will never talk about God again as long as you know me, because I know that no one's really interested. But just tonight, since it doesn't seem to be very important, it might be a good thing to talk about - just for a couple of minutes, not for very long.

Getting to know God involves a tremendous, tremendous, openness. God is the universe. But not the universe that you see or feel, as long as there's a you to see or feel. All you're seeing is your own reflected universe. Everything that you see and feel is a reflection of your own form. In order to understand God, you have to learn to listen. Some people talk very loudly. You do. Your thoughts talk very loudly all the time. But God is very, very, very quiet. God doesn't speak through words or thoughts, God doesn't speak. God is silent.

Everybody's trying to get somewhere in life, did you ever notice? Everybody's trying to get somewhere. They're trying to get to a passion, an experience, a feeling - but there's no place to go. We've all been everywhere there is in one lifetime or another. Why bother? Oh, it's interesting to go places and have careers and feelings, but you must realize not so much the ultimate futility of it all, but that it's just a dream.

You still think life is physical, and yet you've gone to the desert with me and I've shown you that it isn't. But you still think that there is an actual world. I can't believe it! After all the experiences we've had together, after all I've shown you, you still think that this world is solid, that it actually is taking place. I can't believe that! I take you out into the desert and give you these marvelous experiences where we go into states of absolute dissolution, where we go above the level of the dream. We do it here in the meditation hall, sometimes we do it when we're separated and we just join our consciousness.

In other words, my consciousness fixes on God. I go away, and there's just God - and you. And you'll look right at God and you won't see. Oh, I'm not there. I can't get in the way, that's my talent - dissolution. I dissolve myself. I become invisible. Well, then, all you have to do is deal with God, not with me, thank heavens. But still, you don't see God.

It astounds me that with the amount of experience that you've already had in meditation, with the levels of awareness that you've been exposed to, with the level of the dharma that's available to you, that you just still don't see God. Because I know if you did see God, you would lead different types of lives than you do. I don't think you're doing anything wrong. I just think you're unhappy, that's all. You're unhappy because you don't know God.

You see, that's the one thing that I've managed to do that you haven't done in life. You can probably do everything better than I can. But the one thing that I've managed to do is make friends with God. It took a while. First I thought it would happen on my terms. I thought that I could define the relationship and make myself available when it suited me. Then I realized that while God would put up with that, God would never really show me Herself. I was lucky. God smiled at me. God decided to absolutely destroy my life in front of my very eyes. Over and over. And it was so wonderful, it was so liberating.

I know that all this will come and go. This world, all of you, all of me, all of this will go away. That's a wonderful feeling. For me there is no death, there is no rebirth, there's only God. That's all there is anymore. I see people who are asleep, who dream unusual dreams, but I don't really see any people on the earth - many of them - who want to come to know God as God really is, not just their version of God.

So I don't talk much about God because I figure, what can you say about God? The more I say about God, the less you'll know about God. I just think maybe that if I just stay friends with God, that maybe that would inspire somebody; someone would see that the most important things in self-discovery I never discuss. The things I discuss I think are important, but how could I possibly discuss what lies beyond words? God lies beyond words.

The way you make friends with God - well, how do you make friends with a bird? Birds are curious creatures, they tend to keep to themselves. But the way you make friends with a bird is, you make a little bit of an offering of friendship, a little food or something. You give the bird some food. But you don't ask anything of the bird. Then you give it a little more food, and so on. Over a period of time the bird might come and visit you, or maybe the bird won't.

This is what people did with sacrifices. That's what sacrifice is all about in religion. They wanted to give something to God. Sometimes they sacrificed material possessions, sometimes ghee - clarified butter, sometimes horrible things - animals, other human beings. But they were onto something. In other words, there's a basic religious principle that they understood and that's that sacrifice, giving God something, is a way to start a conversation anyway. But they misunderstood that you don't give a thing. How can you give something to someone who has everything? If you think men are tough to shop for at Christmas, try God. God has everything except one thing. Friends. God doesn't have friends.

So the one thing that you can give God that will truly impress God is friendship. God is an eternal companion, who is always with us all the time - never judges, just is. God is is-ness. People like gods and goddesses, male deities, female deities, but they miss God. God's not into sex. God's into eternity - timeless eternity, beyond the dream of this life.

Life is a thin fabric, a gossamer web, that's been spun by existence itself. And there's lifetime after lifetime; creation, dissolution, creation; world after world; dimension after dimension. It's endless. You could explore them all and never know God. Or you could just stay right where you are, in this life, in this planet, in this locale, and come to know God.

The reason you don't get to know God is because you're afraid. You're afraid of the immensity. You don't understand that the immensity is your friend. You've come forth from God, you exist in God and you will return to God. That's all there is to know. If you could remember back as far as remembering is, you would remember God. You would remember being there. If you were able to see what was really happening right now, you would see that you are in God. You've never left.

This is just a dream. You're at home, asleep, and you're dreaming. In the dream, you think you're off someplace in another world having adventures. And in the dream you are. But actually your body has never left the house. Eventually we return to the source. That's the awareness of God. God is the source.

When we see qualities of character that we admire, we're seeing God, freely translated. When we see qualities of character in human beings that we don't admire, we're seeing God, roughly translated. But in order to see God and make friends, you can't be a person. People don't make friends with God. People are vindictive, self-seeking creatures. No, you definitely can't be a person. People aren't interested in making friends with God. In order to come to know God, you have to go beyond personality. And you can only do it for pure love. You can't have any motives.

You think getting to know God is going to help you because then God will be on your side and fight for your army, give you the things you want. Well, God can easily do those things. You see that all the time. People get what they want all the time in life. God is happy to do that. God is the wish-fulfilling tree. Whatever you wish for, you'll get in one lifetime or another, if you wish hard enough, if you work for it, except one thing - God. You'll get everything but God. The more you want, the more you'll get, but you'll never know that which is eternal.

They say in many, many spiritual books, in the Bhagavad-Gita and other books, they say that out of the billions of people in this world, only a small group will seek to know God and out of that small group, only a few of those who seek will continue, most will give up. And even of those few who continue, only several will really come to know God. Not very good statistics. But actually, that's simply because they didn't want to. It wasn't that the percentages were against them and it was an impossible task. Anybody can come to know God, anybody can attain God-realization. That's what God-realization means. God-realization means making friends with God, going back home, merging with the source. But people don't really want to do that, they want everything else.

So my question to you is, what do you want? I can teach you about power, I can teach you about many, many things - dreaming, seeing, meditating, all kinds of things. I'll teach you whatever you want, whatever your desires are, as long as they don't hurt another individual, I'll fulfill them, if your desires are pure. But I'll never teach you about God because you never asked. No one's ever asked me, in all my years of spiritual teaching, to show them God. And I don't think anyone ever will. Oh, someone might hear me say this and then they'll ask because they think it's the right thing to say. But on their own, no one's ever come up to me and said, "Could you show me God?" They talk about their enlightenment, their spiritual progress, their pain. I see beautiful self-giving in people sometimes, within limitations of the human frame. But no one ever really wants to know about God. I did. I found out about God. It doesn't make a lot of difference, except to the person, I suppose. Then the person goes away, and you become God. You become eternal awareness. Then you're free.

Most of you will probably never know God because you didn't think God was important enough to know, not mentioned in Who's Who. You had so many things to do with your life, so many places to go, so many things to get, whether they were material or spiritual, that you never had time for God. You didn't care enough. The quality of your love was not pure enough. Only because you were busy. Well, I understand that, and I know you're busy and you've got a lot to do. And my job is, within the limited time I have in this plane, to help you, if your motives are pure, get whatever you want. And that's what I do.

I can fulfill wishes you can't imagine, and do all the time. Most people don't even have very large wishes. They're very mundane so they don't tax me even, with the powers that I have. They just want to succeed, they want to make more money, they want to find someone to love. They want a little inner peace, they want to get away from their pain. Easy stuff. But no one ever wants to know God. Poor God! Fortunately, God is very unattached.

They never come to know the dharma, the real truth. They were always so busy striving for their own enlightenment, that they missed enlightenment. Nothing wrong with striving; it's all the same - striving, non-striving - just words. But they didn't listen. They didn't understand the magic of God is just magic. Life is magic. The dream is magic.

How to know God? With your heart, your body, your mind, your soul. You know, all the things they used to tell us in catechism are right, even though the people teaching them didn't even understand what the words meant anymore. The words had been handed down to them by somebody who once understood, and they didn't know what they meant, they just kept repeating them. They used to tell us in religion class when we were kids, "You have to love God with your whole heart, your whole mind and your whole soul." Well, they were right, but they didn't know what it meant. They'd forgotten. It was an empty ritual, words that they taught. They thought they knew what it meant, but they didn't know.

It's very, very rare to find someone who knows God in this world. There's only a handful, just a few, who have made friends with God, who are God-realized. There are people with impressive powers, impressive words and impressive knowledge. You can study with them and become like them if you want to, and then you'll be impressive. But only a handful have reached that friendship, that realization, and that's because they wanted to. Anybody could. They didn't have a special ticket. They just decided one day that everything in life without God didn't mean anything.

Oh, people say that. You can read the great stories where people say, "I realized that nothing mattered but God and I devoted my life to God." Yeah, but they devoted their life to their version of God, their version of paradise. That's what they did. Then people like to be impressed. They like their God to come in robes and satin. They didn't see that the people in front of them were God, that everything was God. You have to dissolve the dream.

Now, if you really want to make friends with God, of course, it's no effort. It's no effort to become perfect because you have to become perfect consciousness in order to make friends with God. But you don't feel it's an effort. God is your friend, and for a friend that you love, it's easy. But everyone else has difficulty with the spiritual path because they're doing it for themselves, you see? As long as you do it for yourself, it's very hard. But when you really have a terrific love for God because God is your friend, what's hard? The most difficult task becomes easy.

If the person you love is on top of the mountain, even if it's the biggest mountain on the earth, but if you just love them and you're infatuated with them, it's not particularly hard to go up the mountain because every step up you're closer, and all you're doing is thinking about them and how happy you'll be together. Even on the way up, everything is filled with beauty because you're in love and your consciousness is love. It's no effort. No task is too great, but who knows that? Who feels that way? No, you have to overcome all selfishness to feel that way.

From age to age an enlightened person comes along, one who has made friends with God. They're usually forgotten or scorned, once in a while they're remembered. But then people don't really see who they were, they invent religions around them - ways, forms, catechisms, rules - and they miss what the person said. All the person said was, "Listen, God is your friend. Get to know God and you'll be free. You'll be beyond the transitory, beyond this world and all worlds. That's all there is, is perfect freedom."

I know we live in a sophisticated age now, where religion is either something we scorn because we're too rational or it's the realm of the fanatic who insists that their God and their religion is the only way and everyone else is damned. It's one or the other. I suggest it's neither - oh, it is for them. It's much simpler than that.

Only a pure heart, a completely pure heart can house eternity. Your heart has to be absolutely pure. You can only want that which is absolutely good. You have to live in goodness all the time, and nothing else can matter. There can be no thought of self, no apartheid in the inner world. No discrimination. It's only with that absolute humility and purity that you can make friends with God because otherwise you're just too busy with all your desires.

I don't know if I'll ever teach anyone to realize God. Oh, I'll teach them to develop great powers, to move into other fields of attention. I do that all the time. But I don't know if anyone's really interested. I don't find that sad or harmful. I'm happy to teach them, whatever they'd like to learn.

But I know that if any of you ever have an actual aspiration to become a friend of God's, to realize God, to step in that absolute effulgence of light, not for personal pleasure, not because it feels good, not because it's ecstasy, not because it's knowledge, not because it will give you some ability, but if you actually just wanted that with your whole being, you ached for it - you have to ache for God, just because you love - and if that was the dominant theme of your life, the only theme of your life, if that's all that mattered and yet you would live your life as perfectly as possible, for that, then it's easy to realize God. It's not hard at all.

If you cannot do that but it still matters, try and be around those who try to do that. That is Krishna's suggestion, and I concur, that if you find it impossible to have a pure heart and pure mind all of the time, if you cannot totally devote yourself unceasingly to God, if that's not all you think about and dream about and care about and all your work, even with others and in the world, is a medium of exchange just for that, if that isn't really how you feel all the time, then try and be around those who are like that, who aspire to that.

Let's face it, not everyone is pure, not everyone is holy. Most people are very worldly, even people who are spiritual seekers. There's nothing wrong with that, but you can always better your position. If you can't make friends with God, make friends with somebody who is a friend. Maybe you'll get invited to the party after all.

That's the classical spiritual advice. If you yourself are not capable of meditating on the clear light of reality and holding nothing else, of being drunken with the love of God all the time, which means not just sitting around in amorous self-delight but going out and working and doing whatever tasks are laid before you without thought of reward, then try and be around those who are. They're remarkable beings, the holy. There aren't many; it's an endangered species. But try and be around them because if you are, your little light will increase and become brighter.

The holy are very few in this world. There's a handful of realized souls. Some teach, some don't even teach. They just are, that's enough. They're happy - they're friends with God, why do they need to teach anybody anything? God, their friend, is showing them that all they have to do is just be. They're not even in this world. You see them, they look like they're in this world, but the realized are not. They're far, far beyond the dream.

I can tell you and assure you that ultimately everything does work out OK at the end of the movie. It does have a happy ending. But it's a long movie, or so it seems. But I can also tell you that the shades of darkness that you dwell in, these different strata of reality, will never fulfill you. The only thing that will finally fulfill you is when you merge with the superconscious. Not for yourself, though. You can't do it then, because there's still self. You can't go beyond the self when it's for self. You can climb to a certain distance that way. But the final entrance into nirvikalpa samadhi, into nirvana, God-realization, when you become the absolutely best friend of God, can only come when your love is completely pure, when your heart is completely pure and your life is what it is, with humility. Only then will you find that which you seek.

In every lifetime you seek it, birth after birth, world after world. You can go to the highest worlds or the lowest worlds, it's all the same. It's just real estate, different locations - Beverly Hills, Watts - different locations. But even in the highest worlds, you won't be perpetual. You'll go and experience - it's like a ride at Disneyland. It's a lovely ride. But the ride won't fulfill you because you weren't pure, your love wasn't complete.

There are no techniques to realize God. There are no things that you must do or not do. There are suggestions. But it takes just wanting. God is very available, but you must want. Oh, some people want for five minutes a day or ten minutes or once a month or once a year, or when they're dying and the fear of death comes, they want - when something bad happens. A few people, nice people, when something good happens think of God and thank God. But they don't know who they're thanking, they're just saying the words, ritual. There's some love there but it's not complete, otherwise they would merge with God.

So then, meditate more deeply if you seek to know God, because in meditation you will find God. This I can tell you. As you meditate more and more deeply, you will come to know God. But your meditation will stop eventually at a certain point. You'll reach a certain point in this life where you'll hit a plateau that you'll never go beyond until your love is absolutely pure. Until nothing else matters, until you literally ache for God, cry for God, your whole being wants nothing but that absolute reality - your friend, your mother, your father, your child, your brother, wife, husband. All of the words that we use for things that we love - "Porsche."

When all of your feelings are conjoined and all you seek is that, and that, of course, is here in the material too, then and then alone will you come to know God. Until then, it's just words. But in the meantime, if that's your interest, if you have interest of that type at all, even if it's just for a few minutes once in a while, then try and associate with people who are pure and who have humility. Try and keep company with the holy. Be around people who care about God, who aren't trying to impress others with their spiritual knowledge, who aren't trying to show that they're "in" with their spiritual teacher, who aren't talking in a certain way and affecting the various mannerisms that people who profess to have spiritual knowledge do - who are just plain, simple people, but who have ultimately this purity and terrific love of God. You'll know because you'll feel comfortable when you're with them, unless they threaten you by their simplicity and purity.

Again, simplicity and purity does not preclude worldly success. They may be very successful, very powerful individuals, geniuses, artists. One doesn't have to go live in a shack and be poor to be holy. It has nothing to do with it one way or another. No, wherever they are, whatever they're doing, you'll see this beautiful childlike simplicity that they have when you look within them. You'll see God then, in varying degrees, according to how meshed their consciousness is with God. Of course, if you can find a God-realized person who's no longer a person, then you'll see innocence, absolute innocence.

That's what always surprises people. They have the images of what God-realized people are like, God-realization meaning they made friends. You go and see one, and you expect some powerful display of something or other and all you do is find this person (Rama chuckles softly) who just loves God. But if you look inside them, of course, you'll see that they went away a long time ago. All there is is God in there. They became such good friends that they joined. And still they're here in the world for a while. Well, isn't God in the world?

Oh, everyone is God, and everything is God. You'll see that someday. Now you may have the idea, but one day you'll actually see that. No, there's only light and more light and infinite light. You shouldn't worry about the transitory in the world. You shouldn't worry about success or failure, whether you're in or you're out. If you only concern yourself with God and living your life as best you can, then it's out of your hands, isn't it? Well, that's humility, isn't it? If you're not envious of others, if you feel that you trust God and that God has put you in exactly the place you should be with exactly the experiences you should have, well, that's what we call purity.

You must have that acceptance. If you question God's judgment for a moment, then you're not a real friend of God's. It's only when you accept completely, not only in success but in so-called failure, not only in health but in ill-health and pain, that [life] is exactly correct, that God is doing everything perfectly - only then can you be a real friend of God. Otherwise you think that God is making mistakes, you think that there's another way to do it. Well, there may be, but you won't be a friend of God's - you lack the purity necessary and the receptivity.

Those who seek, find. Jesus said that. He knew. He found God. Lao Tzu did, Krishna did, Buddha did, Sri Ramakrishna did. I found God. Others who aren't really well known, whose names you'll never hear, who haven't written spiritual books - when we found God, we were home. We found that we had always been home, we'd just been asleep, dreaming, and we woke up and we realized that we weren't important. There was no importance or lack of importance because there was no world. The objective reality faded. All there was was God.

So, appearing to be asleep in this world, we walk, a Baudelairean vision of a sleepwalker, through the world, children of light, just pure. Assuming whatever role that our friend God asks us to. Not questioning it - if the role is to be crucified, if the role is to be crowned king, if the role is to be rich or poor, to teach or to be silent. Since God is our friend, we trust God implicitly, we'll do whatever God wants, without question.

We don't care about the opinions of others because we have such a good friend that our friend fulfills us. Our love of our friend is our happiness. Why should we be concerned about other people's dreams? What we do is not necessarily logical, it's just what God tells us to do. God doesn't speak in words, God just acts through us and we observe.

I don't know if you'll ever become a friend of God in this life. God's your friend. But I don't know if you'll ever open your heart that much. If you do, then surely you'll realize God. Surely you'll merge with the superconscious, all those different words that describe a very simple action. If that's what you want, it's so easy. The only way to engender that is to be around those who feel that way, and not to hate yourself for having desires and for being human because your hate is the hate of God.

If you hate yourself and your desires, well, you know, God is your desires, and God is your self. As long as you hate God, you'll never realize God. If you hate your body, your body's part of God. You're not going to realize God if you hate yourself. You have to accept yourself. Regardless of what your condition is in life or what you think or what you feel, you just have to love more and more. You may not be able to alter your condition in life, but you can love.