Q     In  following the material life in whatever our ambitions or worldly job is, in differentiating between how much we should pursue our career or profession or whatever, and our spiritual attempts, should we not try hard to see that it does not bother our spiritual attempts?

A     We shall have to try our best for our living in this world, and then if we do not achieve it, we should leave it to the Will of the Lord. The results should be left to Him. That does not mean that we should not try to do our best for our promotion, and work hard to earn all that. We have certain responsibilities and duties which we must do in this world. At the same time we should not get so much involved in these things that we forget the real purpose for which we want these things. These are just a means to a certain end. We should not be so much involved in the means that we forget the end. The end should always be kept in view, and what we should do is to try to achieve that end.

Q     There are so many hours and so much time. A karmic time of working, of graduating?

A      We are to consider so many factors in our life. You cannot draw a line for this work, how many hours we should work for our living, for it depends on so many factors.

Q      Well, in order to go the other way, supposing I work only six hours a day and spend all the other time in meditation or trying to?

A      I personally feel, if we are regular and punctual in our meditation and we are living in Sant Mat and for Sant Mat, that two hours and thirty minutes or three hours daily are sufficient for meditation.

Q      I have wokred eighteen hours a day for two years straight without any time off, I try ---?

A      I am just telling you, since you have asked me the question. It is not the mechanical meditation which brings about better results. It is the living of Sant Mat. By meditation we have to build that atmosphere around us in which we have to live, in which we have to imbibe Sant Mat. It is not the time that matters. It is living the life of Sant Mat, that life of devotion, that life of meditation that matters. We do not live in it only for that two or three-hour period. We live in it the whole day. That does not mean we give three hours to meditation and the rest of the day we forget what Sant Mat is. We have to live in Sant Mat daily, for twenty-four hours. Out of that, two or three hours meditation is sufficient, if thereby we can build that atmospherer in which we have to live the whole day.

Q      As Jesus said, "By their fruit ye shall know them," does that mean how we act regardless of our intellectual ability, or that, whatever man is, we should love one another?

A      Brother, when do we love each other? When we have a pure heart, when we have devotion in our heart, then only we will love each other. The nearer we are to the Lord, the nearere we are to each other The more devotion and love of the Lord is within us, the more we find we are closer and nearer to each other. The more we are away from Him, the more we drift away from each other. When Christ said, "Love one another," we forget the real essence behind that. We can love one another only when we see the Lord in one another. When we have love of the Lord within us, we will love one another. Then we do not love persons, but love the Lord within each one of us. We are not lost in individualities and personalities then. We are lost in our love for the Lord. When we are in tune with Him, we find Him within every one. When we find Him within every one, the question of superiority and inferiority does not arise; the question of ego does not arise; the question of hatred of hatred does not arise at a. So in order to love one another we must have that love, His love, within us. Then we will find we are also close to each other.

I mentioned somewhere, perhaps in Chicago, that everybody tries to find peace in this world. At least according to what I read in the newspapers, every nation, every country is anxious to create peace in the world. The approach, however, is either political, economic or social, and we can never achieve peace in the world as long as we are trying on those levels. We can never convert all countries and nations to one ideology along those lines. If, on the other hand, our approach becomes spiritual, we can come much closer to each other. But the difficulty is that we do not try to appraoch each other from the spiritual angle. If everyone realizes that he is to love the same Lord, and we know the same Lord is within everyone of us, and if everybody would make an effort to seek Him within, then as we are nearer to the Lord, we will be nearer to each other, and nations and countries will automatically come closer to each other. If our object is one, if our love is one, then we will love one another. If we forget Him, we ignore Him, we do not try to know who He is, and yet we want to create peace in the world, we can never succeed on that basis, no matter how hard we may try. Histroy at least doesnot encourage us from this standpoint.

In order to have this outside peace we must have peace within ourselves. And we can have peace within ourselves only when we are in tune with the Lord, when we are nearer to our destination, when we are nearer to Him. Then there will be no ego or hatred nor malice against each other. Rather, we will find love in everyone of us and we will be much closer to each other, as we will be on the same spiritual platform.

Now we want to create peace with the help of arms, with the help of superiority, with the help of social reform, by changing the political structure of the world, converting people to the political ideology of our own way of thinking. We can never achieve it that way. Politicins may try their way during their whole life, but they will never achieve it. To even think so is just a self-deception. We are talking of peace and preparing for war. We are not living at peace in the world nor with ourselves.

If we want real peace we must search for it within ourself. The nearer we are to our destination and Home, the more we will find that peace within our ownself, the more we will find peace in the whole world, and the more we will be closer and nearer to each other. Generally, when you meet satsangis, those who are traveling on the same path, you do not need an introductioin; you feel so close to each other. You just meet and you feel that you have known each other for ages. Why? The objective is the same. Love is the same. The destination is the same. You are all nearer to the Lord, so you are all nearer to each other.

In order to find peace we must look for it in the right direction. Unless we merge in that Light, unless we become a part of that Light about which Christ said, "If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light." Unless we see that Light within us, unless we merge into that Light, we can never get peace. But nobody tries to open that eye, nobody tries to see that Light. We are ignoring, rather we ridicule and mock anybody who talks about that Light, or about that single eye or third eye. So, how can we get peace in this world?

Q    We have been thinking about what you said about giving love to other people. It is possible in this situation where one has to work very closely with people who are aggresively hostile, and where the more love you give them the more hostile they seem to be; and if you try to ignore them as the other way out, they aggress upon you with evenj more hostility, and soon it becomes a situation where either you have to leace this job and find something else, or put up with it somehow or another?

A     Well, brother, choose the lesser evil.

Q     What is the lesser evil?

A     You should not torture yourself by hating anybody. You must live within yourself, with yourself. You should just give love do your duty in the best way possible, and be kind and helpful and good to the other person. It is impossible to reform another person by trying to set him right according to your way of thinking. You can always reform yourself. You can always improve yourself. You cannot improve another, so you will always be happy if you are able to adapt yourself to the situation, and you may not be happy if the other person tries to adapt himself to your situation. It is always better that we adapt ourself.

The world is full of problems, and we cannot solve all of them. But bymeditation, by spiritual advancement, we can always rise above these problems. Then they do not affect us at all; whether people think about us in a slanderous way, or they do not like us, or disregard us, or are indifferent to us. These things do not bother us any more, because we have risen above their ways of thinking.

Many times I have explained that we cannot pick up the thorns of the world, but we can always wear strong shoes so that the thorns do not affect us at all. That is the purpose of meditationThat is the purose of Sant Mat. We develop ourselves to that level that these petty things do not bother us. Then these problems are no longer problems to us. Not that we are able to solve them, but we can always rise above them.

So, do the best you can in that situation, in all sincerity, and then leave it to the Lord. Do not torture yourself unnecessarily by letting it bother you. If you are living with your meditation, these small things will not bother you at all.

Q     Master, how much is a satsangi's family or relations affected by his being a satsangi?

A     What brings us back into this life is our attachments. If we are attached to anything or anybody in this world, that attaches us to this world. In that way we are leaving our roots in this world, and these roots bring us back into this world. If a satsangi is attached to Shabd, to the Master, naturally that course is pulling him much more than worldly attachments. He has detached himself from the world, from his relations, and has attached himself to the Master or the Audible Life Stream or the Supreme Father, and he is being pulled to the Lord by His attachment.

A satsangi's relations and people around him are attached to him. Their attachment to the satsangi will bring them to him, and the satsangis attachment to the Lord will bring him to the Lord. So, those who are attached to you are being helped in that way, for eventually they will have to come to the path to reach the same place where you have gone. If, on the other hand, you are attached to them and not attached to the Master or Shabd or the Lord, you will be pulled back by your attachment to them. When we are attached to a bulldozer, and a dog is attached to us, he cannot pull us back. He will be drawn along with us, and thus gets the advantage of our being attached to the bulldozer. Actually it is the degree of attachment tha tmatters. Their attachment to you will help them because you are attached to something more powerful with an upward tendency, but your attachment to them would help neither them nor you.

Q      Who decides which is the bulldozer?

A      The Master, Shabd, Word or Nam is the bulldozer.

Q      How can we help those in our own home who refuse to listen?

A      I think you can help them best by not forcing them to listen. Be an example to them, according to what you have gained out of the teachings. By our living example we automatically influence them. If it is in their karma, they will run after you to understand what they want to know. When you try to force people, I think you are driving them away instead of attracting them. There is nothing to be forced on anyone. It must come from within. And that will come only when you are a living example for them. So, you really help them by not trying to force them to understand.

Q      They should listen to us. I try to apologize, being that you are here, I should explain.

A      No, no, no, I am happy to explain. Do not bother. I have come all the way --- over eleven thousand miles --- to explain certain things.

Q      An individual in India would make better progress because there are less temptations?

A      No, I do not think so. As far as progress is concerned, the place does not make any difference. I, sometimes, find the Westerners are more sincere than the Indians. Whatever they do, they do sincerely, after they have satisfied their intellect. It does not make any difference whether you are born in India or America, in the West or the East or anywhere else. You have to pick up the thread where you left it. It hardly makes any difference.

Q      Do you think observation is cultivated by abstinence from excessive talk?

A      Well, we would have less trouble in this world if people would learn to guiard the tongue. When they probe into the affairs of others, they unnecessarily create trouble.

Q      I suppose it is just like saying. "If I had only kept my mouth shut, everything would have been all right?"

A      That is right. we learn by experience. This is what we learn by experience.

Q      Master, we speak about the love in the heart. How did this relationship between heart and love ever arise? This connection we talk of ?

A      The Lord has given every part of the body a certain function. Seeing is done with the eyes, smelling with the nose, eating with the mouth, and the feeling of emotion in the heart. So, love is felt through the heart. These are physical functions of the body.

Q      On that question, I sense more feeling in the solar plexus or in my throat than in my heart. Perhaps I do not know where my heart is?

A      Sister, they are all combined. when the heart feels, the throat is choked , tears come in the eyes, and the face is flushed. So, you cannot confine love just to the heart. Rather, you feel this sensation in the whole body---from the feet to the head===physically. You may feel it here in the throat, in the eyes or in the head, in fact in your whole being. That is different, but it arises from the heart. Of course the spiritual heart center is the eye center, and what we experience spiritually is felt with even greater intensity from there upward.