Love - The Fourth Level of Ecstasy

Now, of course, there are gradations. The child will then want to receive something in return. The initial impulse is, "Mommy, I've made this for you, out of love." But then, perhaps, the child will want Mommy to say, "Oh, how wonderful!" So then, there needs to be, in early love, a return on the investment. In other words, "I love you and do something for you, and in return you do something for me." In the very first stage of love, there is only concern for the self - y happiness, my unhappiness, my pleasure and my pain.

In the second stage of love, the pattern moves beyond the limited self, and we love someone else - but we need a return. It's a business deal, it's an agreement so that I will do something for you, I will give you something, but I expect something back. Naturally, this love is vulnerable. Because if we expect something and we don't get it, sometimes we're not happy. So you love someone, you bring them flowers, candy, something like that - a granola bar. And they take your granola bar, and they eat it and walk away. And maybe your granola bar made them happy, maybe it added to their day. But they sure didn't let you know. So then, you expected to receive something in return, and it didn't come. Therefore, you'll be unhappy.

Now, had you been able to love in a more advanced way, you would have realized that they didn't want a granola bar. (Audience laughs.) And you might have brought them something more apropos. A little serious out there tonight I'm afraid. OK, I'll dispense with the humor. Had you been able to love a little bit more deeply, what you would have done was not to seek a reward, or return on your investment. It wouldn't have been necessary. It would have been enough just to love, and you would have been happy, just to give. The giving itself would have been enough.

There are very few people who love this way. It's a wonderful ideal. And you can do it, but very few people love this way. So then, in the first stage of love, "Love seeketh only itself to please," as the poet William Blake said. In the second stage of love, we move into contractual love, where we give something and we receive something back. The first stage of love has very little happiness in it. The second stage of love has more happiness because we're concerned with the other, not just the self. In the first stage of love, one is only happy when things are going well. And even then, happiness is rather shallow. In the second stage of love, there's a deeper love, there's a recognition of the other, and that the other is worth loving and worth giving to But there's still a claim check. We still expect something back in return, and that love is vulnerable.

In the third stage of love, we love selflessly. We give just for the sake of giving and we love, just for the sake of loving. That's as far as human beings go, and human love goes. And if you can reach the third level of loving, that's a wonderful thing to do. And you'll be happy in love.

But of course, in the spiritual realm, we know that there's a fourth level of love, a fourth level of ecstasy. That is the love that we see in complete selfless giving, in complete self-offering. We see that love manifested normally in the soldier, in the parent, in the lover, and of course in the spiritual teacher. In the soldier, we see the love of country. When you are willing to go onto a battlefield and risk, or perhaps give your life to defend an ideal, knowing that you may not live throughout the day, the sensible person would say, "Listen, lock me up, do what you want. At least I'll be alive." But the soldier is willing to give their life, perhaps for someone they never even met in their country. That's a type of very high love. That's why it's always said that when one is a soldier and dies in battle you go to a very high world. There's a great and good karma for the soldier who dies in battle because it's an extended selfless giving.

In the parent, ideally, we see love. Not always. It's strange, but there are many parents who really don't love their children at all. Who are more interested in their own welfare, than the welfare of their children. I, myself was very fortunate. I grew up in a family that, while I'm sure it had its difficulties like most families do, there was never any question about love. If anything, there was sometimes too much of it, but there are many, many homes in which parents simply don't love their children. They don't make any sacrifices for their children. They're not willing to go and work extra hours so the child can have something nice to wear, attend a better school. They're more interested in their own vacations, in their own holidays, in their own state of the art living. It seems to be a rather backward way to be, and there's not much happiness in it.

But ideally, what we see and sometimes just practically, is the love of a parent that's a self-sacrificing love. When you could go out that night, you stay at home to be with your child. It might be more fun, but the child needs something. And there's a recognition of that need, and while that need could be overlooked, the need is not overlooked because of a basic love. You love your child, and you want to do anything you can for that child because it makes you happy. You can go out and buy clothing for the child. You work all day and make some money and you buy the kid a new outfit. And the kid is happy! The kid may not even say thank you. They may be so anxious to run off to school to show their friends. But it doesn't matter, you're happy that the child is happy. So there's a deeper type of self-sacrifice. Even in the animal kingdom, we see that a mother bird will give her life to protect her young. It's a basic nature to love one's child. It's more than instinct. It's intelligence of a higher sort.

In the lover we see self-sacrifice sometimes. When someone is - Shakespeare loved this - when someone is inundated with love, infatuated, they'll do ridiculous things. They'll stand under the window of their beloved all night and sing songs and have shoes thrown at them. They'll write terrible poems and waste postage (Audience laughs) and they'll make a complete fool out of themselves. But it doesn't matter. Because they're in a kind of intoxicated state that is love. The poets celebrate it. Although many of them ended up killing themselves. But in their good moments - (Audience laughs) they reveled in love.

So there's a kind of an intoxication, there's a beauteous love in which the identification becomes so complete - Petrarch, in the Italian sonnets, the idealization of love, was so caught up in the idea that nothing but the beloved exists, and of course, the sense of an ideal. That the beloved is not someone whom you simply love for personal sake, but that your love for someone else is representative of a higher spiritual love. That there is a principal that is active in the act of loving, that you are mirroring, which is the principal of the universe itself. And so your love for Gwendolyn or Bernie is a reflection of the divine principle itself and should be appreciated as such, and as sacred as such.

All three of these types of love come together in the love of a spiritual teacher. That is to say, if I can use an example that most people are familiar with, Christ is in the West of course, known as an incarnation of love. The idea was, simply, that here was this guy who attained self-realization. He reached a place where he no longer was a "he" but pure intelligence, pure knowledge and pure consciousness. He became a super being, a limitless one, one with God. United with eternity. And yet, this being, who no longer needed to suffer, was willing to accept suffering to be an example for others. Of course, the popular line is, "He died for our sins." It seems to me that's an honest but simplistic way of looking at a very magnificent act of self-sacrifice. Christ didn't just die for people's sins, he lived, and suffered and brought joy to elevate the awareness of humanity. And he didn't have to. He could have walked away. But he didn't. This is self-sacrifice in its highest form. We see it in all spiritual teachers, in all real spiritual individuals. It's one thing when you're still bound by the three worlds to love. It's another when you no longer are bound and yet you love anyway.

But let's descend, for a moment, from this lofty world of love, this highest ideal of self-sacrifice, and come down to a more basic, common level of living. This is why Gandhi appeals to me. Practical man. It seems to me, that love begins where you are. That it is first necessary, if we go back to the basic level of love, to love yourself, to like yourself, before you can really love others. It's very hard to love yourself if you're not truthful, if you haven't taken the time and trouble to find out who and what you are. It's very hard to love yourself. Because something in you instinctively knows that you're covering up. You're not being honest. It's very shallow. To not take the trouble and time to discover your own beauty and perfection, it's really not much of a life. Very superficial.

In self-discovery then, we admonish people to take the time to discover themselves. This is done in a variety of different ways. In other words, the suggestion is that you are more beautiful than you realize, that you are more wonderful, that there is something inside you that IS you, that is eternal and perfect, and that is God. And that thing is not hidden somewhere in there. It's in every part of your being. In every atom. It is the atom, it is the smile, it is the frown, it is the thought. It is everything. Everything is holy, everything is divine. And you must recognize that.

But of course, we won't recognize that if we're superficial. If we hide behind the mask of ego and illusion. We won't discover who and what we are. Because we're selfish. It takes self-effort to inquire of the self. It takes energy. It takes commitment, and that commitment will only come when it is spurred either by pain or love. Pain spurs us forward. We are in pain, we're uncomfortable, we want to get away from that condition, so we'll do something to get away from pain. Anything to get away from pain. Once we're away from pain, though, we won't necessarily go any farther. We've eliminated pain, that's enough. Now we're happy.

Love, on the other hand, will not stop at that point. Love will continue on. Pleasure and pain are irrelevant. So in self-discovery, in the process of self-discovery, pain will spur you on. You're unhappy, your life isn't working out, you get depressed, things aren't going as well as they might be. That will encourage you to seek something higher. Relief. You'll meditate, you'll put your life in order to a certain degree, so that you smooth that pain out. That's as far as most people go with self-discovery. They'll find a teacher, they'll attend a church, whatever it may be. They'll do things to make them feel better, and there's nothing wrong in that.

But the true spiritual seeker is motivated by love. They seek union with God. They realize that love is union. That in life we have diversity. Everywhere we look, we see opposition, juxtaposition, pairs of opposites. But in love, we go beyond separativity. We're not standing back watching the movie, we go into the movie itself. Love is union. It's the union of the finite and the infinite, it's the union of God with God. And only in that union, be it on a simple, physical basis, a transitory love, an affection, a deeper love, a higher love, a more evolved love, or the absolute love itself - of God for God - is there release from the bondage of the three worlds; is there release from pain, desire; is there absolution. Only in absolute and complete love is there the radiance of eternal, perfect being.

I personally don't talk about love too much. This is one of the few talks I've ever given on the subject. Because it seems to me that we don't talk about the most important things in life. I could take you up to Colorado and show you the Continental Divide and say, "Look at the beauty of the Continental Divide." There is nothing that I, as an individual, can do to add to that beauty. I am insignificant. I am nothing. My job is only to help you see that beauty.

Now, if I brought you up there and we went up to the Continental Divide, and you saw these majestic mountains that are covered with snow, up at 14,000 feet, a world beyond what most of us experience in our daily life, just in terms of natural beauty. But you were there, and you were worried about your investments, your health was lousy, you were worried that someone was dating someone who you were in love with, you were discouraged because things weren't working out in your career - you would go up there and you would be so self-involved, with your mind, with the thoughts, the sharks that were swimming through the sea of your mental consciousness, that you wouldn't enjoy it.

Or, after years of living this way, your perceptions would be so dulled that you wouldn't even really see on a basic sensory level what was in front of you. You would live in such a world of illusion that when you looked at it, it wouldn't mean much, it wouldn't touch your heart. You'd be dead.

In self-discovery then, what I as a teacher do, or what any teacher does, we can't make it more beautiful - we don't need to. The Continental Divide is beautiful. - The ocean is beautiful. -People are. -Everything is. -But what we do is teach you how to look again. - Or, if you've never learned, we teach you how to do that, by clearing the mind. Life itself is complete beauty. In every stage there's beauty because God exists in all things. And when you can see that, then there's happiness. As long as you're dogged by desire, you're nagged by fear, jealousy, frustration, lack of mental clarity - as long as you're not experiencing a deeper, higher love, which need not be emphatic. It need not be the kind of love where we're parading it back and forth, as does the lover for his beloved - rather, it can be a simple, quiet love, that needs no expression because it's sufficiently strong not to need a false covering, or any embellishment at all. Because it is what it is. That love is eternal.

In self-discovery, it is our intention - the intention of spiritual teachers, of those of us who have climbed these mountains and seen them - to come back down from the mountains and say to you, "Life can be better. Life is better than you realize. But you must see it. And to see it, you must clear you mind. Your mental conditioning, the way you look at life - which has been engendered by your society, your upbringing, language, history, past incarnations - prevents you from seeing the radiance of God all the time. And you are capable as an individual, at any age, if you truly want to, of seeing the radiance and perfection of life. And there are definitive, scientific methods for doing so, which we call self-discovery. There are many of them, and those are not simply methods, which are taught to you in the sense of techniques or mantrams or things like that, but rather that the spiritual process is an art form. And what a spiritual teacher does is radiate consciousness and light and create substantial changes in the structure of your being to allow, with your self-effort, patience, perseverance, and dedication, to see eternity."

So while there are certain meditation methods and techniques, that's two percent of the study. Ninety-eight percent of the study –is that one who has attained self-knowledge is able to transmit it to others. Not simply in the sense of a one-shot transmission, but by continually bringing light into their being, they effect change - and then showing people how to retain that light, and of course, how to gain that light on their own. Every day, if we take a plant and we put it in the sunlight, if the sunlight comes every day, the plant grows and develops. Without light, the plant does not do well. It needs it for its photosynthesis, to create food.

In the same sense, you as an individual need the light of God to grow. Now, true, the light of God is available everywhere. But most people don't access very much of it. So when we want sunlight, we go out of doors and we find it. If you want the light of God, you go to someone who is imbued with it, who is one with the light of God, who radiates it in every action, in every way. And if you are with such a being, it's catching. It touches you.

Now, you can go to a beautiful place. You can go to see the Continental Divide, to the ocean, wherever it may be. But you can turn your back on it, even though you're there, and not see it. You can be so caught up in the maya or the ignorance and frustration and illusion that you will not see the simple beauty of perfection.

The spiritual process, then, is the process of learning to love. Because only love will have the power and the velocity to hurtle you beyond your own imperfections, imperfect ways of seeing, that is. And the way you learn to love is by being around someone who loves. You could read all the books in the world about love and not learn anything about love. But if you live with someone who loves, if you watch them, if you observe them, love actually emanates from that person and touches you.

That's why the simple self-sacrifice of a man two thousand years ago who gave his life out of love still changes the lives of so many. People give their lives every day. In battle. Just in life. Working for their families. So why should what one man did two thousand years ago create such an impression? Why should the Buddha and his life create such an impression? Why do religious leaders create impressions that last beyond all the politicians, all the Nobel laureates, why? Because of their love. Because the actual potency and strength of their love is so great, that it makes an impression on the universe. Because something in us recognizes that and responds to that. And it's not necessarily conscious. We know it to be true.

So you, in your life, need to bring about a revolution, a silent revolution. It's a revolution of love. And you need to start in the first stage - self-love. You can't skip it, but you can do it in a more mature fashion. You must accept yourself and discover yourself and discover that there's someone in there who's worth loving. That's you. Your spirit. Not what you do, not how you think, not how you feel, not what you've done in the past. Not what you believe in, not what you hope to achieve, not what you're afraid of, not what discourages you, not what encourages you. The actual spirit of your being, which is birthless, deathless and immortal is well worthy of loving.

And once you come in contact with that animate spirit within yourself, you will fall in love with it. Not in an egotistical or self-centered sense, but simply, you will recognize the beauty of perfection, which exists in you. When we meditate, this is what happens. But still, there are forces in the universe that make it very difficult to do this. There is the mental conditioning that we have, the operative forces, the erosive forces of existence. In order to love ourselves, we need encouragement, we need example. So we try and associate with those who have succeeded.

If you want to learn to be happy, go find the person you know in the world who's the happiest and spend time with them. If you want to learn to make a fortune, go find someone who's made a fortune and apprentice yourself. Whatever you wish to learn in life, go find that person whom you consider to be the most successful and be with them, and you will learn. The real things in life that are taught are taught inwardly, not outwardly. If you want to learn to be very successful financially, the way you'll learn is not so much by learning a formula. There are lots of books that have been written that can tell you investment formulas. But the person who used those formulas or who invented them had more than a formula. They understood something. They had a certain energy, a certain strand of kundalini. And when you're with that person, when you're around them, it touches you. It enters you. You can recognize it, and it's within yourself and you can bring it out.

When you study with a great professor at a university, at which I was fortunate enough to have many, if you observe them and not simply what they say, but what they are, you will learn a great deal. I was very fortunate. I had one professor, a Dr. Charles Owen at the University of Connecticut, and he was a Chaucerian. I spent a great deal of time with him, not only in class but I participated in a special group he had of honor students who would come over to his house just because we all fell in love with him. He was this marvelous old man. He was an old scholar, but he had an animate spirit - he was alive. And I used to go, and we used to study certain archaic books, which I really didn't have much of an interest in, to be honest with you. But he was fascinated by them, and I was fascinated by him. So I was willing to put up with the books for him. I loved to be around him. There was something in this man, some deep truth, that touched me. And so I would sit and listen to his lectures on these old texts and I would study them, just so we could be together. Because what interested me in him was what he was, his essence. That's what I fell in love with, and that's what I responded to, and I wanted to be like him. I felt a goodness that I responded to, and I fell in love with it.

I told you before, I have this disease. I fall in love with people. I had many professors like that as an undergraduate. In graduate school, the man who directed my dissertation, Louis Simpson, who's a poet - I took as many courses with him as I could - He's a marvelous scholar - because I fell in love with him. In other words, that aspect of eternity that reflected in him - his strength, his beauty, his vision, his mental clarity, whatever it was - I fell in love with his consciousness. And that happened to me many, many times in school. I met these wonderful professors, great souls, in other words. It didn't really matter to me what they were teaching, whether it was Milton or Chaucer or Shakespeare or botany or biology or biochemistry. It didn't really matter. I wanted to be around them because I recognized a great goodness in these souls, and I apprenticed myself to that goodness. And I studied them.

I learned what they said. I passed their examinations, I wrote the papers. But what fascinated me was them. And by affixing my consciousness to them, I gained something. I didn't do it to gain something, to be honest with you, I just fell in love and found myself doing it. Love creates a bridge, a bridge between peoples, a bridge between nations. The absence of love is war, hate, enmity, fear.

So it's necessary in self-discovery for us to contemplate the meaning of love. Love makes you alive. We take an individual who's very successful - I read a story in the Los Angeles Times not long ago, about a fellow who made himself several million dollars, but his life was empty. He'd succeeded at doing what most people want to do. This article went into long descriptions about all the different automobiles he had and homes he owned and places in Switzerland, and all this sort of stuff. But once he'd done it all and he had achieved everything that everybody thinks will finally make them happy, he found that he wasn't happy. He had it all but he didn't have anybody to share it with. So then he began a long search to find someone to share it with. He suddenly realized that, having gotten it all, it really didn't do it. So he went through this long process of placing ads, I guess, in places to find the ideal woman, someone he could love. And finally, after many years of searching, he found her, and they married. And they'll be happy for a while. (Audience laughs.) Well, everything is just for a while, but at least it's working for him at the moment. In other words, finding this person animated his spirit, and he feels more alive than he did before. Does he feel more alive because of her? No. Because of his love for her.

You see, the great mistake we make is we mistake the object of our love and love. We think that it's the thing that makes us happy. It's not the thing, it's the emotion we feel for it. That's what's so great about love. You'll find someone and you'll say, "I could never love that person." Someone else will find that person to be the most adorable person in all the worlds. Well, somebody's wrong!

Well, actually, no one's wrong, everyone's quite right. It's not the person, it's the love. Whatever engenders that love is the catalyst. It enables one to bring out something that makes life worth living. There are people in cancer wards, who are dying very painful deaths. They've reached the point where even the morphine doesn't stop the pain completely. And they are happy. They are happy because they love. They have a love for God, and they feel that they are going to God. And that love sustains them. They are happy because they know their families are doing well. Because when they get a visit - the son is succeeding at school, the daughter has just become a physician - whatever it may be. In the minds of these sometimes simple people, basic down to earth people, they found something that makes them happy. It's the love of others, even in their darkest moment. Sometimes it isn't until that moment comes that we realize what we love. It is not 'till we are about to leave this life that suddenly we realize there were a lot of things we loved, and we want them all, right away.

Well, a great secret that we learn in self-discovery, of course, is not simply to love people and plants and physicians. But to love love. And to realize that love is God. t's a hackneyed phrase. It's written all over church walls and in books. But it's amazing, people hear the phrase, but it doesn't mean much. "God is love" - what does that mean? Not much, if you can't meditate perfectly. Because then you don't know what God is, nor do you know what love is. To love is to be God. Not God as a persona, as a being, perhaps - perhaps as all beings, as all things.

In metaphysics, which is the applied study of meditation, we realize God through love. That love may cause us to follow the path of Zen; we may practice discrimination - jnana yoga; we may do karma yoga - work for others; we may practice mysticism and study power, but all of it, all of those applications and processes, are motivated by love. Without love, there is very little.

Now, naturally, we learn in self-discovery that love can be a very painful experience. For a person who's in an earlier state of evolution, in their early incarnations, it's enough to go out and love and have a family, have relationships. But of course we know that that love is also mixed with great pain. You love someone and then they decide to leave you. They die - this world offers constant transition. And when we become attached to something, when we lose it, it's terribly painful.

So in self-discovery, we learn to love without attachment. To just love, to realize that love is eternal, as is everything And then we don't get hurt in love. That's a higher type of love. It's an unconditional love. You can't just do these things. There has to be something that brings you in touch with some part of yourself that you are not yet in touch with. When you come into contact with that part of yourself, you will begin to love. These are fine ideas and ideals, you may embrace them, and this little talk may inspire you for a short time, to love more deeply. Hopefully it will. But it won't last. Your inspiration won't last. It won't last unless you find some way of being in touch with that part of yourself which you are not yet in touch with. That's why we meditate. When we meditate and stop thought, or at least slow it down, or at least feel we're separate from it, we clear the air and we can feel and see the deeper parts of ourselves. Not necessarily with our conscious mind, but it happens. We slowly come to consciousness, in the short span of time that we call life. We experience awaking. We wake to life in new ways.

As a spiritual teacher, as one who teaches others to love, hopefully by example, I observe a great lack of love in the world that we live in. I don't find this discouraging. Rather, I think that it's the age, it's the time, and that rather than being discouraged by the lack of love in the world in general, you should be encouraged by your own ability to love.

My ability to aid another in self-discovery, aside from just the quantum energy transfers that occur when I meditate with people, is strictly apportioned to their love of light. Now we're getting into basics of self-discovery here. All spiritual teachers try and create an experience of love. This experience of love varies from teacher to teacher and from lifetime to lifetime, and according to the evolution of the teacher, and of course, the evolution of the people they work with. But I'd like to give some gross generalizations that are usually fairly true.

A spiritual teacher tries to ignite love in someone. Now let's understand what the teacher is - the teacher is someone who's climbed the high mountain, with a great deal of effort, with a great deal of ease, however it was for the teacher. The teacher was not always a teacher, there was a time the teacher was a student. And the teacher climbed the mountain as a student, and after a great deal of effort and time and incarnations, reached a point that we call self-realization. There are many teachers - very few, in any of the three worlds, are self-realized. Self-realization is a very, very rare thing. There are saints, wages, spiritually advanced people. But a completely self-realized individual is very unusual. There are very few of them.

When someone has attained self-realization, it means that they are no longer human as we know human to be, or perhaps they are human for the first time. It means that they have, in the absolute ecstasy and union of love, attained the highest truth. And they live that truth. They can no longer be separated from it. It means that their ego, their personal motivations, even the higher motivations have been lost in the ocean of love, and that they are willing, eager and conscious to live whatever is truth. Because love cannot be separated from truth. They no longer have individual desires or motives. Or, as Ramakrishna said, desire passes through the teacher, through the enlightened one, as smoke does through the thin air.

Enlightened people experience desire, as it's part of the multiplicity, it's part of creation. But it does not create an effect. As smoke passing through the air leaves no residue in the air, the air is clear. Whereas with most persons who are not enlightened, when smoke passes through them, it's like smoke passing through a building. The smoke will pass, and it will leave soot, it will leave residue on the walls.

To be enlightened is to be the clear air, is to be not one particular strand of consciousness, not just nirvana. It's to exist as an endless, changeless being who is always new, and who can exist in any plane, in any level, and yet is beyond change. It's a curious duality. Now, teachers who are at that stage of evolution, few though they may be, or even those who are just fairly along the way who perhaps had thousands of incarnations as a holy person, and while their self-realization is not rounded yet, they are quite advanced - these individuals go about the teaching process. Now there's a great book, of course, called Jonathan Livingston Seagull, which in my estimation is worth rereading occasionally. Because what this little silly book about a seagull does, this little parable, is trace the spiritual teaching process, which is very simple.

Something in you sought light. You found it. You became enamored of it. You gave everything for it, without wanting anything in return, or even if you did, you kept wanting it. You yourself passed through the stages of love in your self-discovery. At first it was just for yourself and your happiness. Then you became aware of the existence of God and others, and you did things for them, but it was contractual, you wanted something in return, and that was happier, but also more frustrating. Then you passed beyond that and you only had selfless motives, and then you had no motives at all.

So you went through the four stages. You attained knowledge. But then, that wasn't enough, you see. The fourth level of ecstasy is taking that knowledge and sharing it with others, if that's what's truth. Or, if that's not truth for you, to not do that. To always follow the will of God or eternity, and to unite yourself with that will at all times, in all places. There is nothing else. And if it makes you a fool in front of others, to play the fool. If it makes you a hero, to be the hero. In other words, you're a slave of God. There is nothing else for you anymore. You're not interested in the opinions of others, in winning their favor, in courting their money - if that's the will of God, you'll do that. And even if others say terrible things about you, they say, "Well, look at that spiritual teacher there, he's seeking money or fame." Some spiritual teachers have done that because that was the will of God. But it doesn't matter. What do you need people for? What do you need places? What do you need press? Because you realize that all things in this world are transitory. None of them last.

God is eternal. And you have founded all of your realization upon that fact. You have merged with the light of God, so nothing matters anymore. You don't need anything, you are everything. And yet, if that everything manifests itself in and through you to do a certain thing, you are more than happy to do it. No matter what the expense. Which is why, of course, Christ could die on a cross or Buddha could live to be very old. Sometimes living is equally painful as dying. But you go where the company sends you, joyfully, because what else is there to do? You're free. And you're willing to give that very freedom that you worked so hard for up, and go all the way back to the beginning again. For love. Risky business, loving that way.

A spiritual teacher, then, tries to ignite the flame of love in others because they realize that that's the very nature of existence, and that's the only thing that brings happiness, that lasts. The love that most people experience is better than no love at all. But it's a rocky road, that love. Sometimes up, sometimes down. Sometimes more down than up But at least it's better than nothing. I's better than the nebulous, sterile state in which we don't love. That's death, not even a pleasant death.

You try and ignite that love, any way you can. By example, by instruction, by meditation. Now, of course, the great advantage that the self-realized person has over one who is just inspired, a saint, someone who has had great visions of God and tries to tell others, is the self-realized person has power. When they meditate with others, anyone who has any psychic perception can see them surrounded by glowing lights. They see that there's not a body there, they see them disappear, they're invisible, they see nirvana or various forms manifesting through them. They see the universal form of God, whatever it may be. The visions will vary according to the level of awareness of the audience.

But a spiritual teacher who has attained enlightenment, when they meditate with one person or a group, or even with someone who's not physically present, thousands of miles away, or in other worlds, has the ability to channel what we call the kundalini energy, consciousness itself, to others and elevate them in ways that that person would not be able to do themselves for many, many lifetimes and advance them spiritually. The teacher does this, of course, out of love. Because it matters to them that someone else can be happy. You see, love is so simple, even in the most advanced beings it's really the same. You just care about somebody else and their welfare. You want them to have a nice day. After you're enlightened, it doesn't change. It adapts new forms.

So a teacher then will strike out into the world, and sometime strike out - but they will form a community. The community may be a few students, it may be hundreds, it may be thousands. But the principles that are involved in the community are always the same. The study makes it necessary for it to be the same. The teacher has reached the point of enlightenment. Or, perhaps, you don't have an enlightened teacher. Perhaps an individual has a teacher who is only partially enlightened. A teacher can go into samadhi but is still subject to a great deal of illusion but is certainly far more advanced than most people are.

The teacher will try and inspire others. And the teacher will have to deal with the public, initially, to encounter students. This is called spreading the dharma. And even after one has many students, most teachers will continue to deal with the public even if they don't want any more students because they want to advance others in any way that they possibly can. So the role of the teacher, then, is not simply to deal with their own individual students but to advance anyone they possibly can, in any way. Yet, they have specialized missions sometimes. So then, a teacher will normally divide their time between dealing with the public, dealing with their students, of which there are two types, and between their own meditations and their own adventures. There are really four elements.

A teacher has two types of students - very close students and what we'll call general students. A teacher can only have very few close students at any one time, perhaps a dozen, only because there's so many hours in a day, so many days in a week, so many weeks in a year and so many years in our lives. And by close student, we mean someone with whom you spend a certain amount of time physically. In order to bring someone to enlightenment, it is necessary, at a certain stage of their development, to spend time with them, to teach them on an individual basis. A teacher has to spend a certain amount of time with an individual to do that, and you can only do that with a very few people, let's say, perhaps, a dozen. You just wouldn't have the time otherwise - there aren't enough hours in the day, literally.

While an enlightened teacher is able to inwardly communicate with thousands of people simultaneously, still, there remains the need to physically interact with students. An enlightened teacher - well, let me give you an example. As I sit here tonight addressing several hundred of my students, I am also communicating with some of my students who are not here inwardly, my students who are in San Francisco, or non-resident students in other parts of the world. Right now there are dialogues taking place on other levels of attention between myself and them. But my students who are with me tonight need the actual physical experience of sitting in this hall, listening to me talk and experiencing, of course, more importantly, the energy that's radiating from me at this time that's entering their subtle physical bodies and helping them to store power, bringing them through a variety of different transitions. Each one is going through different transitions, which is why they sit here and put up with me.

It really doesn't matter to them essentially what I say, hopefully it will be encouraging. But I'm transferring consciousness to each one. And consciousness transfers in a special way in the physical presence of a teacher, in a way that it really doesn't long distance - unless a person is very spiritually advanced and has a very close connection with a teacher. If you're very spiritually advanced, if you're quite close to enlightenment or in that ballpark, you have a close connection with a teacher which is love, then it is possible to experience exactly the same energy transfer at any distance. But that's very unusual. That's why it's necessary to come and see a teacher in person.

People in India and in Tibet would travel thousands of miles to just see a teacher, to be within a hundred yards of them. And they'll travel on foot to be there for five minutes when the teacher came out to give a short discourse. Because they knew that to be near a holy one, an enlightened one, was so beneficial, so much prana, energy came forth at that time, that to be in the physical radius of that energy could cause their whole life to change, their consciousness to change, their level of meditation to change. That after they went away from that experience, they would be different. They would experience an epiphany. A metamorphosis would take place in their consciousness and being. And of course it would take place not simply because the teacher was there, but because they were at a level of attention that drew that.

The teacher could be out in the street and people could be passing by, and while a certain radiation emanates from an enlightened being which touches all, those who seek it, who admire it, who love it, will draw more of it. And it will cause them to evolve spiritually. To become more conscious of what they are.

So, as I sit here this evening, there's a correspondence course taking place between myself and each student of mine, whom I love, otherwise I would not accept them as students and work with them and absorb their karmas. There is a correspondence course taking place between myself and my students who are in other locales. There is a correspondence taking place between myself right now and members of the public, persons who have come to recently see me at one of our public meditations. When they leave the room, the correspondence doesn't end. Sometimes, that's when our dialogues begin, that's when it gets fun. Right now, I feel a number of people who will never be students whom I'm corresponding with inwardly. I'm corresponding with friends I had years ago. They may not be consciously aware of that, but I help them in their daily life, some of my teenage friends when I was growing up. They don't know what happened to me, they have no idea that I attained liberation or anything like that, but I help them. They don't need to know, I can help them anyway, effectively, inwardly. I can send them energy and light and help them in their evolution. There are people I feel in other parts of the world who will never meet me or hear my name. They are probably better off. But I help them inwardly. I feel their souls seeking light, and I help all who come. They don't have to physically come.

This is not because I am so great or so wonderful, it's just the way it works. I'm not particularly great nor I am particularly wonderful, yet I'm capable of doing some very interesting things. Because I am no longer a single individual. I have merged with a force that has infinite powers and possibilities, and it works through me as it does through any fully enlightened being, as it works through all beings, in one way or another. But naturally we can do amazing things with it as we extend ourselves into the superconsciousness. Because we are no longer human in the sense that we're capable of the actions that human beings are capable of. We can do impossible things - impossible from the eyes of those who still don't know their own limitlessness.

So a teacher then starts to teach. They go out, they give some talks - the Buddha gave his first talks, you know, and three or four ascetics became his first disciples. They recognized his enlightenment. They knew before he was not, and then something happened He went through this incredible transition. And they saw he was enlightened, and they became his first disciples. Over a period of many years he collected thousands of disciples. Many became his students. Many didn't become his students but whenever he was in town - he traveled a lot - they would go and see him, listen to his discourses. Some tried to kill him. There were assassination attempts. Some hated him. This is par for the course.

The story is the same, is what I'm suggesting. There's an archetype working here. The story is retold again and time after time, land after land, world after world, but it's really the same. And when you understand the active principles of it, it becomes fun to participate in. And you do better at your participation.

So a teacher then has two types of students. One type of student is a close student. The other is also a close student, but not in the sense of physical proximity. Now, the close students rotate a lot. What I mean by that is this - let's say a teacher could be with maybe 12, perhaps 20 close students at a time. Rarely is that number achieved. As far as I know, it's never been necessary in the history of spiritual teaching in this world for a teacher to turn away someone who could have been a close student because all of the slots were filled. There's not that much aspiration in this world. So you should never feel as an individual that your teacher is turning you away because they have too many close students. That's nonsense.

There's an inviolable law that when there's a want for light, there's a fulfillment. That if, when you reach a certain level of understanding, a teacher is provided. And when you're ready for a close association, that association is provided. That's taken care of for you. So never feel, "Oh gosh, my teacher has so many close students, I can never be close." That's not true. If you have a real teacher, an enlightened teacher, that's not true. The teacher will immediately recognize that it's your time and you will be placed in a closer proximity. But that happens to very few people at a time. Only because very few people want that.

Now, we enter into humor. You have to have a good sense of humor to understand this part of the talk. Because it's very funny. People do not want to achieve liberation or be happy. This is the basic guideline that they teach you in spiritual training school, as a spiritual teacher. You must recognize people love misery, they love to feel sorry for themselves and they definitely don't want to be enlightened. If you don't know that, then you will not succeed in spiritual teaching. That's the first thing they tell you at boot camp. In the higher worlds. They're not interested. You've got to do something to interest them.

Don Juan in the teachings of Carlos Castaneda makes the same point. He says you have to fool people into seeking knowledge. People will not do it of their own volition. Now then, of course you have the spiritual teacher who says, "Well, it's absurd. How can you fool anyone, there's just love." Such a teacher is either not being up front, they're speaking metaphorically, or they're not very advanced. It is necessary to engage a person's attention and show them the benefits of self-discovery versus the detrimental effect of their current lifestyle. In other words, you've got to make a person aware of how miserable they really are, and show them how happy they can be. Otherwise, why should they seek this nebulous goal called self-discovery? And the lengths that a teacher will go to do this are unbelievable.

Now this is where it gets fun. As you know, I recommend frequently many different books. But very often I recommend the books of Carlos Castaneda. Particularly Journey to Ixtlan, Tales of Power and The Second Ring of Power. From my point of view, it's not important whether the characters in these books ever existed or not because I find the spiritual principles in them to be true. And there are some great stories in them about what, particularly, I think, in The Second Ring of Power, about how don Juan and don Genaro found their apprentices. They're in the school of mysticism so they call them apprentices. They're students. And what they went through to fool their students into seeking light. They're well worth reading. Perhaps I myself someday will sit down and write some of the experiences that I've had (Rama laughs) with some of my students. I don't know if I could print a lot of them. Because no one would believe them. But some of the things you have to do to get people to be happy are remarkable.

So you have to engage someone's attention first off. The person is locked into maya. They're miserable. But they don't sometimes even know how miserable they are because they don't know what happiness can be, because they don't know what love is - yet. So you have to attract their attention, and there's a variety of different ways to do this.

Ramakrishna, of course, the great spiritual teacher in India, at times used to go on top of his house and yell out for students to come. This is called Indian advertising.' [Laughter] Hey, it must have worked, he found some good students, who later started the Ramakrishna Math.

However, what most teachers do is not so much to climb on top of the house and yell - and he of course was doing this too - but you meditate within. When you sit down and you do your daily meditation, you reach out and you look inwardly and see who is available. You just send out light. Then you do whatever seems appropriate physically to make yourself generally available.

Some teachers are extremely inaccessible. They feel that's the best thing. They feel that their teachings are for very few so they make it intentionally hard to get to themselves. Some teachers are very accessible. They advertise a great deal, they go out into the public. But while they may be very accessible on a simple level, if they're advanced teachers, doubtlessly they are very inaccessible in terms of physical proximity. There are different forms, but essentially they're the same.

A teacher will have an initial contact at some point with someone. But my point is, it always happens inwardly first. Before you ever meet an advanced teacher, they have somehow traveled inwardly along the astral planes to you, and they've probably been in contact with you for perhaps many years before you ever met them physically. Of course, in some situations, where the teacher has had many incarnations - in my own case and other cases - many of the people I work with I've worked with in other lifetimes. What happens is you come back, you reincarnate, your own realization returns after a number of years and spiritual transpositions, and you encounter your old students again and perhaps new students too. You reach out inwardly and find them. You move to the place where they are.

In my case I moved to California because I knew that many of my students from past lives were in California. I could see that. So I changed location because I knew it was easier for me to go to them, than for them to come to me. I travel now. I'll go to a city and give a lecture, a school, because I can feel someone there. Whenever I give a lecture series someplace, it's because I inwardly see first that there's someone there who is waiting. Whether they'll show up or not, I don't know. That depends upon many factors.

The initial contact is inner. But then there has to be a secondary contact which is outer. So you go and give a talk. Perhaps you advertise, you've had initial contact with the person, and if they follow that stream of light, life in some way will open a door for them. Someone will tell them that you're coming to town, they'll see a poster, read a newspaper about you, something will happen. Maybe they've read a book of yours. Then when they come and meditate with you, of course, if you enter into samadhi, if you're absorbed in the super-conscious, they will feel that and it will change their life.

Their whole life will begin to shift, from their first physical contact with you. Sometimes their immediate reaction is to want to run away because they realize inwardly that the transpositions their life will now go through will be remarkable, but in a way it will change everything. And part of them has grown very attached to a certain way of life. People they associate with, careers, everything is going to go topsy-turvy now, it has to. Because they're remembering who they are.

The king had a daughter - the king and the queen. And she was stolen by a roving band of flamingos out of her crib. And the flamingos took her to a small island. They raised her and told her that she was a flamingo. They taught her various arts that only flamingos know, secret flamingo arts. And she walked around thinking she was a flamingo.

One day, as fate would have it, a great spiritual sage was traveling through the astral planes, and he saw the little island of flamingos where this young girl was. And he saw a delightful opportunity to confuse everyone. So he manifested himself in the material on the island in the form of a flamingo, naturally, because she would only listen to a flamingo, because she only spoke flamingese. (Audience laughs.)

The sage approached her, and he explained to her that she was the daughter of a great king and queen and that she came from another kingdom. She listened, and of course the light of knowledge dawned, and she left with the sage, and they married and lived happily ever after. (Audience laughs.)

Not really, no, what actually happened was that she went back to the kingdom and realized that she had a lot of money because her parents had died and she led a flagrant but happy life (Audience laughs). No, not exactly, I'll get the story right yet, be patient. What happened was, as I think the legend goes, she suddenly realized that she was not who she thought she was. So she decided to walk on two feet instead of four, and life was different. She gave up flying.

Anyway, at some point when you run into your spiritual teacher, you realize you're not a flamingo. That's my point. And you begin to change. Suddenly you realize, something inside you knows that you've been slumming. Your soul has not been living up to its highest destiny. You've been slumbering and now you begin to awaken. But naturally, there are parts of yourself, your mental conditioning, your attachments and so on, that will fight this process, so then the battle begins within yourself, between the old self and the soul. And the spiritual teacher engages in warfare and uses all the light and powers that he or she possesses to aid you in that battle, but still, it's up to you.

You can be a very advanced soul, and not follow the higher call and miss it for a lifetime. Or many lifetimes. That happens quite frequently. You have to decide what you want to do. Now this is where love comes in. Because if you love, if the light of that contact has triggered something on subconscious levels, then that love will compel you to leave your current comfortable or uncomfortable but attached lifestyle and to take up something new. To begin again in a new land. The land need not always, of course, involve changes in your physical lifestyle, very often it does. There's no set change. But it involves large, substantial changes in the way that you lead your life, how you spend your time, what you think about, all this sort of thing.

Then, if one is drawn, one applies to become a student of the teacher. You say to the teacher, in effect - we don't do it quite the way they used to do it in Japan and India and Tibet - but in effect you're saying, "Please accept me as a student. I seek knowledge, I seek light, I want to learn how to love" - whatever it may be. We're not so formal in the West. And we begin this marvelous process.

Now, at that point you enter into a general pool of students, and the teacher will begin to work with you inwardly and outwardly, according to your level of development. What you need at the time, the teacher will provide, if you've got a good teacher. Because the teacher is interested in one thing - your progress. The teacher will do whatever is necessary and will hold back nothing for you as an individual. But you must have faith in your teacher. If you don't have faith, you shouldn't study with a teacher because the process won't work. And that faith will only come about through love.

The spiritual teaching process is a process of mutual love. Without that love, very little can happen. You should recognize that the reason you were ever drawn to a teacher initially was out of love. You might have thought of beneficial reasons, categorical reasons, logical reasons. But to be honest with you, it was an inner motivation of love. Your soul fell in love with that being, just as I used to fall in love with my university professors. And I'd put up with anything. I'd study old, archaic books that I didn't even have an interest in just to be around them. Because I was in love. That's what makes love so great is that it takes us beyond what we desire, which is what binds us, and it leads us to something higher. It causes us to change and do things we would never do. Love knows something. It knows about self-sacrifice.

What a spiritual teacher, what I have to ask you to do is unbelievable. It's impossible. I have to ask you to become perfect. To change yourself through thousands of personalities in one lifetime. To give up everything, to accept everything. To do things that no reasonable person would do, to become a saint, a sage, an enlightened person eventually. The only way you will ever do that is if you fall absolutely in love with God, truth, yourself and your teacher.

The student-teacher relationship is very important to understand because it's very difficult for most people to love God. God is an abstraction for most people. Even when you meditate and feel God, you may love God then, but once you stop your meditation and you go out to work, you'll forget about God. You must think of God 24 hours a day in order to attain enlightenment, or even to make serious spiritual progress. That's where the teacher comes in, spiritual friends come in, spiritual books come in. You have to aim your consciousness at light. You have to access it more and more all the time. It starts gradually but increases as you progress, and there's a beauty and an ease to this progression.

The teacher is a surrogate for God. The teacher is someone who has merged themselves, melded themselves with the light of eternity, and it's easier for you to focus on them than on the unmanifest. The teacher is pointing. They've got their finger out saying, "The unmanifest lies over thar pardner!" "Thar's gold in them thar yugas, in them thar Himalayas." But all the time the teacher is putting you on completely. It's not over there, it's right in front of you, it's right within you.

So then we begin this wonderful dialectical process of self-discovery that drives everyone up the wall. That turns you inside out. That brings into effect every emotion, emotions you didn't know you had, every ability. That tests you at every moment, that gives you everything and offers you nothing, inverts you - the process of self-discovery. Which is surely not my topic tonight. That's our constant topic. But my point this evening is that it seems to me most people haven't doped out that the most important factor in their self-discovery, other than making friends with themselves and making friends with God, is making the relationship between student and teacher work. And that it only works because of love. You can't buy it although people try sometimes - if it's a real teacher.

You can't fool a real teacher. You can't impress them with your qualities and abilities. The only thing that impresses me, to come down to the brass tacks of the situation, is love. It's the only human quality that impresses me - love in its pure form, or love as selfless giving. That's the only thing that impresses me about a person. The only reason I want to work with a person is I see that they have some possibility of manifesting a higher love. The only reason I ever work with a person at a closer distance is because they lead a life of self-sacrifice, and they have a great deal of purity which has been won through continuous love in this and other lifetimes.

And it seems to me that there's a terrible misunderstanding between us. It seems to me that I love you a great deal, my friends. That's how I feel. I don't feel students, that's of course the arbitrary relationship, but I feel friends, lovers. But it seems to me that you don't understand yet that the real fun of the whole process is loving. That the only way you can move into the higher spheres of attention, unless you were an incredible meditator, you were spotlessly selfless, you were completely motivated all the time, is through the grace of a spiritual teacher. So say all the holy books, and they're right. And that grace, if you want to call it that, comes about because of love. In other words, the teacher doesn't sit back and say, "I have billions of dollars I'm gonna give out to my favorites." The teacher is Impartial City.

What the teacher does is simply observe who accesses what. The teacher wants to give consciousness and light and love to everyone. The problem is not that, the problem is that people don't take what's there. The reason they don't take it - they're afraid, they fear light, they have mental conditioning that prohibits them from being what they truly are, you know, the reasons are endless. But what really prevents it is that they don't love. What I'm suggesting is that when you sit down and meditate with myself or any enlightened teacher or when you just meditate directly on God or on your inner self, whatever form you want to use, spiritual teachers who are no longer in the body , OK, you're all trying to access light. And the only way that light can enter you is when you love it, and that's a fact. And that if I have anything to teach you as an incarnation of Vishnu, it is that love is the way.

All incarnations of Vishnu are incarnations of love, of that strand of light we call Vishnu. In other words, I am an embodiment of the quality of love. Enlightenment takes many forms. Yet in an individual being it manifests through a series of qualities. So different teachers are different incarnations of different things. And the qualities we give names to. Vishnu is the quality of love. In the Hindu trinity, there's Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. Brahman is the creative force, a very intensive transmuting force that brings the unmanifest into the manifest. Shiva goes in the other direction. Shiva transforms, destroys, changes. But Vishnu is the aspect of love. Love is preserving and persevering. In other words, the aspect that they call Vishnu is that which wants to hold life and keep it alive because of love. Love is in all the aspects, Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. These are names, in other words, for a cycle, a circle. But Vishnu is the aspect of love. So when I say to you that I'm an incarnation of Vishnu, what I mean by that is not that I'm particularly high and mighty. I'm anything but that. I'm nothing, if anything. I'm not even sure that I'm nothing because that sounds like something. But that your particular teacher named Rama, the quality his soul is, is love.

Some teachers, the quality they are is power. That would be, let's say, the Shiva quality. ,You see, there are different names. ,We as human beings like names for things that are really unnameable. ,But the particular method that I use in teaching is love. ,The one thing anyone can learn from me is how to love. ,Love is self-giving, with discrimination and detachment, yet with rhapsody and absorption.

The reason I took the name Rama is that Rama was an incarnation of Vishnu. And the very strand of energy that I have been in this and other lives is Vishnu, is love. I use the word Vishnu because it has a very deep, somewhat forgotten meaning, which is love of a certain type. And I am an incarnation of that love, as each of you is an incarnation of something. You see, when I say I'm an incarnation of Vishnu, people immediately want to think that I have elevated myself to Godhood. I don't have to, I am a god. So are you. We're all gods and goddesses. I have no more God in me than anyone else does, I'm just aware of that. So when I say I'm an incarnation of Vishnu, please don't think that I've placed myself on a pedestal. That's not true. It's a way of trying to express in exact spiritual terminology a point to you. That is to say, I'm an incarnation of love. That is to say that what I am is love. That's the aspect of God that you see through this being that we call Rama. You could go to another enlightened teacher and you'll see another aspect, or perhaps see the same aspect.

There are currently 12 fully enlightened teachers in this world. Each one manifests a different aspect. The aspect that I am manifesting is love. Others have manifested it before, others will again. You don't have to be fully enlightened to manifest that or any other aspect, it's the quality of the soul. A person who wants to learn about love will be drawn to me. Someone who wants to learn about power will be drawn to one of the other of the 12. Someone who wants to learn about knowledge will be drawn to another. Now all of us, all 12 of us, are more than capable of teaching all of the aspects, and we do. But let us just say that each one of us is a string on the lute of eternity and that each string has a certain note, a certain quality. And therefore the students who will be attracted to us will be those who seek to work on that quality. Either because they're very good at it or it's because it is the thing that they are the worst at, that they need the most. In other words, you'll seek your opposite because you need that to complete yourself. You may have learned all of the other qualities and perfected them but if you have not perfected one, you will not attain God realization.

So I deal with two types of students, either those who have a very deep-seated knowledge of love, which are few, or those who in all of their lives have ignored love. And you have come to me for karmic discipline, as it were, or karmic illumination, depending upon your point of view. The one thing that you have overlooked thus far in all of your lives is love. That's why you're here with this guy. He is here to teach you about love and self-sacrifice. That is the course I offer. Now, as a dialectical teacher, as you know, I've had many lives where I've taught Zen and Tibetan Buddhism and mysticism and many other things. So because of all that experience, I teach in many different modalities. But the theme that unites them, the theme that I live by, the theme that I attained realization through in this life and in other lives, is love. It is not the best theme. There are others. Naturally, I'll say it is the best because I'm biased. But I can accept that bias and accept that it's one way of talking. So love, then, is the central theme.

We've named our spiritual center Lakshmi. Lakshmi is the incarnation of love. But it's a curious thing that you will see so many of my students have trouble, more trouble with love than anything else. You should understand that the reason is, that that's the reason they're here. They had been drawn to an incarnation of love, one who loves more than anything, beyond reason, beyond sense, because they need to see someone who can do that and feel that with their bodies and with their spirits. Because that's where they need work. Or, you will see a second type of student who has done this for many lives.

In other words, I have graduate students who have developed this ability to love and they want to finish and perfect it. Those are the students you'll find that I spend a lot of physical time with, because they at this time need that. Then there are most of my students who don't know a whole lot about love. Poor, poor things! You don't know what fun love is. And I will remain inaccessible to you until you learn how to love.

Love is an exacting teacher. It includes everything in life, which is why I teach tantric mysticism. Because tantric mysticism is the love of life. So, as an instrument of love, as an emblem of love, since I practice the way of love exclusively, yet I find the way of love integrates with every form of self-discovery that I know, it's the tonality of this particular study. Then I know that your ability to work with me successfully is based upon your ability to love, and you'll find that the more you love, the deeper the connection will be between the level of meditation I can do and you.

I can sit absorbed in samadhi, radiate light, but it won't reach you. Only a certain amount will. Oh, a certain amount has to. It's just pure radiation. But the real ability to transform your nature and your consciousness, which I have, is strictly in your hands. In spite of all the things I can do, all the occult powers I have, still everything I do is based upon your ability to love. When you love light, you love God, you love your spiritual friends, your family, myself - that ability to love opens a doorway, a channel, through which I can then do my magic. The more you love, every time you can love more, the more I can do for you. The less you love, the less I can do for you, even though I want to. You see, I have a disease, I fall in love with people. Because love is my way, it's the only way I know. It's not sensible, it's not logical. But love makes demands too upon us. It discriminates. The kind of love of which I speak is not necessarily a maudlin love. It's not a love that professes itself through vast phrases and adorations. It's a love that involves discipline and self-sacrifice. It's a love that will turn people away if necessary.

Sometimes I ask some of my students to leave. Now then, you say, how can you say that love is your principle quality when you do that? Well, I can say because it is my principle quality, I do that. Because when you love someone you always do what's best for them, whether it makes you happy or not. That's love, friends. And you do it with caring and exactedness, beyond exhaustion, beyond limitation, beyond life and death. Complete commitment. Unswerving. That's the way I love. You always do what's best for the other. And you take the time and trouble to find out. It's not your self-imposed ideas, but rather you meditate until you see what is right, the dharma. And you practice that always. So I work with an individual as long as it's helpful to their growth, and when it's no longer helpful, when I see that what they need, what is dharma is for them to be on their own, then I do that. That's love.

Love is not admiring yourself in the mirror of humanity and having millions of people come to you and profess their love and adoration for you. That's not love, that's self-indulgence. Sick, from a spiritual point of view, for a teacher to do that. Love is quiet commitment. It's the ability to withstand pain for others. It's the ability to give your life for others, either in an action of death, or of continuous life. It's an unwavering spirit and it produces results. It is the strongest power in the universe. The atomic bomb is nothing compared to love, it's a child's toy. Love sustains and holds this creation into place. Without love, without the Vishnu aspect, it doesn't stay. The Vishnu aspect is no more important than the Brahma or Shiva aspect. That is, to say, creation, preservation and destruction, these are the three aspects of change. Each is unique, each is as important as the other. But it is the preservation aspect that is life. t is love that holds the universes into manifestation.

So then, this education process that we are engaged in is love. And what I can offer you, by example - I don't tend to talk about love too much because I think that one lives it. If you talk about it too much, it's just words. People then seem to believe that what you talk about is what really is. There's no way to express it, you live it. What I can teach you is how to love. You have come to study with a being who knows how to love, who's an emblem of love, an incarnation of love, who's stuck with it - and that's all I know how to do. But again, that love is not going to necessarily take the forms you think it should with your understanding of love. It takes millions of forms and it's formless, and it leads to God realization and to a rather lovely, sometimes painful but happy life.

You should start to think about love. Because you're with me for one of two reasons. Count 'em, two. (Rama laughs.) Reason one is because you're quite good at loving and you want to learn more. The other reason is, it is the one course you have either not taken too far or done well with. You're in here because you're a beginner - you're in Love 101. (Audience laughs.) You're in remedial love. You have not done well with it in other lives, as a matter of fact you moved in the other direction and I am your bad karma. I am the grim reaper. (Audience laughs.) You get me. In the Marines, they have something called motivation. When you don't do well, they send you to motivation. The sergeant there motivates you. So I am motivation - for those of you who do not know how to love. For those of you who are just beginning, I am the voice of inspiration. Love and be happy. Love and be free. Love carefully.

For those of you who are advanced in the study of love, who have done this before, then naturally we have mutual recognition and admiration. For you I am not the study of love, I am love itself. And you seek to merge with me, and I with you. And there's a decorum and a formality and a dignity to do that. Then we get involved with spiritual etiquette. And then I teach you the higher points of living a life of complete and absolute love. That's where the real fun begins.

So I'm either motivation, inspiration or beatitude, depending upon where you are. But all of you who follow this path of love will find out that love is the shortest path to self-realization. A to B, it's the happiest path, and C, it's the most complicated and the craziest. When I say the path of love, I mean the quality. On the path of love you can study Zen, Tibetan Buddhism, mysticism which is the path of power, jnana yoga which is discrimination, any of the traditional or nontraditional forms. It is not the form when I say the path of love, it is the motivation. Therefore, I adapt love into all the different paths. But within each terminology we see love, within each meaning.

You have come to learn to love. And it can be easy or difficult depending upon your mood. But I can tell you that my ability to act in your behalf is based strictly upon your ability to love. If you wish to do well, if you wish to learn from what this vehicle can offer, then I suggest that you begin to consider love. Whatever your level is. And begin to think about how you can love more and how you can open your heart. But again, not in a maudlin way, not in a sort of a phony, flaky way where you talk about it a lot, but how you can live a very quiet, simple efficient love which will grow and become bigger than the universe itself. And then you will be absorbed in God and there will be nothing left but eternity. And then that will do as it will. Whether it manifests in forms and you reincarnate again, whether you go beyond incarnation is irrelevant because you've become the self. Selfless. Eternity.

This is what I do, this is what I teach, this is how I live. And it is of use to you. That is why you're here. And as long as you're here, and as long as we're working together, you might as well understand what we do and why, why you're here - and you should be able to decide which of those three categories you're in, one is not better than another. Because each one who pursues this path of love will attain immortality, will go beyond the finite and the bound worlds, will go beyond the samsara. Whether it's because you didn't do well at it before, well this time let's get it right. That's my position. That's why I'm a teacher.

I love people who make mistakes. That's why I'm in the teaching business. That's why I incarnate as a teacher. I enjoy that. As long as they have a good and cheerful attitude, I love people who make mistakes because I enjoy watching them learn and helping them, assisting them. Because I find it a beautiful process. So if you've had terrible trouble with it, maybe you finally found a good teacher. Because I understand. Incarnations of love are extremely compassionate, you know.

If you're a beginner at love, then well, pleased to meet you. I have a good friend who I think you will become very close with called love, who will do everything for you and make you very happy. And I've had quite a bit of experience with love. o I'll share my experiences with you. I'll share my life with you, my meditation with you. My meditation is love. It's an ecstatic meditation, as is all higher meditation.

Or if you're advanced in the ways of love, then I'm happy to show you the fine points. Great! Now I've got someone I can work with a little more closely. And I'll show you the higher etiquettes of love - complete self-sacrifice, with no thought of the self whatsoever, complete absorption in God. When it's time for you to become one of those closer students, I will be the first to walk up to you and say, "Hi! It's that time now." Until it isn't, I'm doing everything I can for you. If I were to do that and spend more time with you on a physical basis, it would interfere with your spiritual progress. You'd get all confused.

I have plenty of room. I'm only working these days, since I started this process of spiritual teaching, I've worked with maybe, what, 30 people closely. Sometimes just for a month or two. And that was all they could take. That's all they needed. Now they have to go and make changes in their life.

You see, you work with a person closely and you give them as much as they can take. So let's say, suddenly, I called you up on the phone and I said, "Hey, let's go on an adventure, let's meditate." For a while we work more closely. But then a day would come when I'll say to you, "OK, thank you!" And then I won't call you for a while. It's because you've reached a point where I've taught you all I can teach you in your current form, and now I have to wait to see what you do with it. And then when you grow with it, and you move to a higher level, then I can teach you more. Until then I have to wait. If it's six weeks, six months, six years - I'll wait I'm patient. If you're trying, I'll wait.

There are many people who, again, I've worked with about 30 over the years, who I don't see now at all. And they feel very bad sometimes. They think I don't like them. They don't understand. I called them all into the room the other night. I read all their names out. Those are all the people I've worked closely with, either inwardly or outwardly in a certain way. But most of them I never see anymore, because they need time to work it out now. I gave them the best I could, and now we work inwardly. You know, they come to meetings, we see, we talk, we chat. But they don't need that close contact until they reach another level. They've been given their homework assignment. When they've done it correctly, then it's time for another assignment.

There's a lot of turnover among that small group. Always. It's very easy to get in it. All you have to do is love, totally. I'll know immediately. And sometimes a person is in it for a day or a night. I just see them for a day because they reach that moment, and I recognize that and I call them up, and I say, "Hey, let's spend a day together, let's spend an evening together," because at that time they've reached that moment. Then they feel very bad because I don't call them for a month or two, or maybe ever. They shouldn't feel bad. That was the night they were in, or the day they were in, their highest consciousness. I saw that they were ready for the higher teaching at that point at a close level, I called them up. Now, they shouldn't feel frustrated when we don't see each other because it means that we had our moment. And then if they use that moment, they now have developed a connection and they can draw inwardly in a way they never could before. If they get frustrated and mad at me or at themselves, then they'll lose that connection. The time we spent together gave them a deeper connection to draw more light.

I'm available inwardly to everyone all the time. I do not love - this may seem strange to you - but I do not love any one student more than another. The student I've worked with for many, many years whom I see every day, I do not love that being any more than the first one who just joined. That's how love is, you see, it's impartial. But while one loves all equally, you spend time with people according to their need. But the love is universal. If you don't understand that, then obviously you don't understand love yet. It's universal. There's enough for everyone. But at the same time it's precise, it's not sloppy. It gives each what they need, according to their need. Sometimes people think they need something that they don't need, or they don't recognize something that they need. So it's the job of the spiritual teacher to administer properly with justice, but more than justice, with love. If I used justice, you'd all be dead. (Audience laughs.)

No, the karma that you throw at me when you don't like me, if I just let it come back, you'd all be destroyed in no time. But as an incarnation of love, you put up with the flack until it becomes detrimental to a person. There's a time you can't turn it back. When a person is very destructive, when they hate you tremendously, even though love is your aspect, you have to disassociate yourself with them. Many spiritual teachers have done this. They have disbanded their whole community because everyone got angry with them. All their students got angry. And the teachers had to ask them to leave because the karma at a certain point, you can't stop it, it has to go back to the person; it's intensified, and it hurts them spiritually. So then, it's better not to be their teacher.

It's a deep matter. There are many sides to it. We won't see them all tonight. But my message is very simple - love each other please. Love each other. These are the nicest people in the universe. Here. Because they're here now and they're all interested in love. Love each other, accept each other. Don't expect perfect people. There are none. Discriminate, follow your inner voice, be unattached when you must be unattached, or if you find yourself hopelessly attached, then at least love. Don't judge others, don't tell them how to live their lives. Concern yourself with your own love. Become absorbed in love but not a sloppy, maudlin love. You don't have to profess it or tell people. Sometimes it's fun to do that. But live it. Be consumed in it.

Meditate on love. And then bring that love into whatever practice appeals to you, into Zen, jnana yoga, mysticism, selfless giving, it doesn't matter, it's all the same family. But bring love into your actions. If you want me to be able to help you at all, you have to love me as I love you. The more you love me, you'll find the more this consciousness is with you. It's not my consciousness, it comes through me. It's eternity. I have no consciousness anymore, I am eternity. The sooner you recognize that, the sooner you'll gain more of what's here for you. I am powerless to aid you unless you love. And that's the truth.

So now you have an inside secret that can save you 20 or 30 lifetimes. You are studying love. You are on the path of love with an embodiment of love. It is where you are supposed to be at this time If sometime you feel that this is not the teacher, this is not the study, love is not the way, then find another way. I'll love you anyway. If I have to make that decision, if I see that's right some day, then please accept that with an even mind knowing that I love you and I made the right choice because I love you. I don't know how to do anything else but love.

It amazes me that people can come to our meetings and not understand what holds the whole center together, why we all give everything and never hold back - it's because we love madly and wildly, the few of us who do that. We give everything for the study because there's nothing else, because when you love, you love completely. You can't hold back. That's why we're free.

Be patient with yourself. This takes time. You must learn to meditate and to love. To give and to love. It takes time. There's no rush. But begin to explore your heart. Don't be afraid to discover yourself. What you're going to find is really not so horrible. You'll have to be honest with yourself, you'll have to admit your jealousies, your selfishness, your anxieties, all the parts of your being that limit you. You have to become honest in love. Love is terribly honest. It's not blind, not the kind of love that I know. But it forgives, it understands, and it engenders new life. Such is the way of love and the path of love. It's a lovely path, I think. I follow it. Walk it. And it takes me to very lovely places. I see beauty everywhere and love everywhere. Even in hate I see love, even in hate.

So try to love each other. Begin in your spiritual community. Then spread it to the world. Don't expect others to love you. Don't expect to be understood - and be discrete in your love. Don't profess it, love quietly. It's the best. There's less ego problem that way. And don't tell others how to love. Let each find their own way. Help when you can, but don't be so self-knowledgeable that you know the way for everyone else. I'm the teacher, and as a teacher I'm only a student, to be honest. I just follow love, and wherever it directs me I go - without shame, without fear. However it wants to express itself through me, I am that. I know nothing else, and need know nothing else, except that that is God. Everything else is beyond words. It is the meditation we do, the samadhi. It is nirvana. It is absorption beyond all these descriptions and ideations. It is the eternal light of existence. That's all there is - timeless, birthless, deathless, immortal.

We are the strands of eternity. We are existence. These words are just a little weight around your half sleep to make you remember that you're a flamingo. No, you're not a flamingo. You're a queen, aren't you, or a princess? I forget, it was a story from a long time ago. If you meet a flamingo, you might ask them.