Jeffrey Carr editor
SATSANG by GURURAJ ANANDA YOGI
Editor: In this profound satsang, Gururaj explains a key spiritual discipline towards achieving the goal of Self Realization; the practice of devotion and surrender. He is teaching us how to lose the boundaries of our limited ego-self by identifying ourselves with an external object of love and devotion, which leads to our identification with the true or divine Self. When I read this satsang, I thought of Jesus. Jesus taught to “love thy neighbor as thyself.” We often interpret this as the Golden Rule: to do unto others what you would have them do unto you. But this version keeps the separation between “me” and your neighbor. I suspect that Jesus (and Gururaj) are both teaching something different and more important: to love thy neighbor AS THYSELF. In other words, you ARE your neighbor. How you love yourself is the same as loving your beloved, because in a very real sense, you and the beloved are the same. How can this be so? From the perspective of the limited, deluded ego-self this doesn’t make any sense. But from the perspective of the Divine Self, in which “I and the Father are One”, it makes all the sense in the world. Read this satsang with very careful attention to what Gururaj means by “me” and what he means by the “beloved.” Who is it that Loves? And who is it that is being loved?
Question: Is there a difference between merging with another and surrendering oneself to another? And what is non-separation?
GURURAJ: You can just float away into another being, in which you become one with that being in totality. It’s a wonderful experience. By floating into that one person only, you at the same time float away into the entire universe. That is your real Self, and not your so- called divided self. You tell the universe, “Float into me as I float into thee.” And you go away, nothing bothers you. You are in a state of nirvikalpa samadhi, where nothing else exists.
Your thoughts that are running around do not bother you, and you are there in that supreme bliss. Go there; go there. Forever and for always, be there. Nothing in life, nothing in the world will ever bother you at all. You become the most touchable, and yet at the same time, the most untouchable. It’s a different sphere of existence. Although you have your feet firmly planted on Mother Earth, you’re still floating away in the beatitude of what life is all about.
That is true life: where you find yourself here and everywhere, and still you find yourself to be nowhere. Then all your worries are gone. It’s all gone. Everything disappears in the beautifulness of appearance, where not for a moment do you become apart from the reality of appearance instead of being in the land of so-called appearance.
“In the path of life, when it becomes difficult to bring yourself within yourself, then these symbols of love are necessary—unless you are very highly realized. But the end is the same. The end is the same as the beginning, where I worship the very ground my beloved walks upon”.
That is where the trouble lies, for you dwell in seeming appearance and not in the true appearance. (In true appearance), you become just one with all that which exists, and you become the existence itself.
What a lovely journey it is! So beautiful! Where flowers bloom without blooming and the sun shines without shining, and you experience the coolness of the moon without its ever being cool– for you are IT. You have reached there, you have become the powerhouse of existence itself; and that is total ecstasy. As I sit here talking to you, I just melt away within each and every one of you, for you are not apart from me and I am not apart from you. To me, there is no Balraj; there is no Chetan; there is no Vidya; there is no Roopa; there is no Madhu or Lalaji. They are not there. The only thing that exists is that Supreme ‘I’ that I see all around me. It is only that Supreme “I” that knows of love’s totality; where you just love. Balraj merges away into me. Chetanji, Madhuji–all of you–merge away. So where am I? Nowhere. I merge into emergence, and being there, I find the oneness of all existence forever existing in its own divine joy. Nice place to belong; nice place to be.
To find yourself surrendering to another still constitutes the feeling of “I” and “Thou”, for “I” surrenders myself to “Thee.” It is a path, a step to become the oneness of total mergence, and then there is no separation at all. But surrendering yourself plays a very important part, because you become non-existent when you surrender your all into your beloved. You will find that this surrendering leads you to mergence, in which you are not there anymore, because the “I” has merged into “Thee.”
Through this path of surrender, what are you actually surrendering? You are only surrendering a concept that you have of yourself. Surrender implies self-destruction. You are destroying the ego-self within you. Only then can you surrender yourself to that love that is a symbol of your true Self. So, I will say this to you: you might require the object to surrender to, but in reality you are surrendering yourself to yourself, and that is the true surrender. In true surrender, you realize step by step that “I” am not “me”. Neti neti neti – not this, not this, not this: “I” am not really “me.” There is that “me-ness” within me in which I surrender my outer self into that inner self. How then can there be any separation at all? That is true merging. And where do you start? You start with yourself merging within yourself, where the outward form–the ego self, the conception of “me” or “mine” –just disappears, and there is only “Thee” and “Thine.” That is how I surrender myself into Thee. And when I surrender myself into Thee, I am not left there anymore. I am Thine.
That is the outer conception, until the realization comes that there was no “Thee” in the first place, and there was no “Thine.” How far can I go? I can only reach the essence of me. So, I combine the “me” and the “Thee,” the “mine” and the “Thine” into that Oneness. In that Oneness I am totally surrendered because I’ve destroyed what I regarded to be “me”, those mental conceptions that I live in all the time.
By living in these mental conceptions of yourself, you are only creating greater and greater misery. In the beginning we start off by surrendering, totally surrendering. In the beginning, if I cannot find the essence of that which is “me”, then let me find that essence in my object, in my beloved, and by surrendering to my beloved. But as I become closer and closer to my beloved, I do not find any separation; for she is me. And I am one with this objectification, because I now realize it is just the symbol. And that symbol brings me back to me.
When you achieve this, the entire universe runs to you. It does not tarry anymore, but it runs to you–like the goddess Lakshmi in Eastern mythology. The more you chase that goddess, the further she runs away. But if you run away from the goddess, she will come running after you– because there is no attachment. So, Goddess, I worship thee. I love thee, but I am not going to make myself into toilet paper to clean your ass! And when you find this equality–that you and the goddess are but one–then what happens? You wipe each others’ asses! That’s love! Yes! And it’s pleasurable– where all the stinks are gone. But you get stung by the divinity of the love, by the offering of yourself to your beloved. After all, it is only the stinging bee that produces the nectar! And that is why you call your beloved, “Honey”. That’s why you say,
“Oh, Honeybun”, or “honey”-this or “honey” that. Because you have been stung by her! Therefore, you see the honey and not the sting. All languages have their own beautiful interpretations, if you understand the truth behind all verbalizations. When you reach a stage of non-verbalness, you just feel: you just pour and pour– not in words, but through your heart. For nothing else is there. And that is the meaning of how our Lord bled from his heart so that His blood could intermix with the blood that is in you, to give you the impetus of life to refresh your blood by his divinity. And He keeps on bleeding all the time, all the time. But it is up to you to receive that blood and call that blood the life-giving essence of yourself.
So become a hot potato, instead of a cold one! Because potatoes taste better when they are warm.
You progress from that coldness into the heat of love. For love is hot–not physically perhaps–but in your heart the heat is there, and that is all that is really keeping you alive– that heat. For when you become cold, you are dead. Show me the body of any person who is dead and who still feels warm to the touch. Impossible! So, it is a re-creation all the time, in every moment, to merge in the heat that is within oneself. Yes! To feel its warmth; for that warmth is you. That warmth is reality. Through that warmth you enlighten yourself– as the sun with its rays gives you light. But that sun is not only there in the sky; the true sun is within you. So you are the son of a sun! Yes! You are the son of the sun, you son of a gun! So get loaded with love, to aid you in pursuing the path where the path is non-separate from you. You may think you walk on the path, but think about it in a different way: that the path is walking in you! The path walks in you. So, let me not be blinded by the world’s fancies. Let me not be sucked in by my personal desires that are blocking the path that is walking in me. That is true surrender. That is the gist of surrender.
Question: So, in reality, to whom do you surrender?
You surrender yourself to yourself. And when this secret becomes practical, then you are automatically surrendered to everything that exists. So surrender first to thyself, and then you are automatically surrendered to the entire universe. The universe itself will come marching to you and surrendering itself to you. But don’t go and look for the universe somewhere around. It comes to you automatically if you are surrendered within yourself, if you are surrendered to the divinity that resides within you. It is so near, so close, while seeming so far away. But it is only seemingly so. Sometimes I wonder why people have to go through miseries and sufferings when the greatest medication is flowing all the time through your blood and your veins– all the time. It is there: joy! Joy! The happiness of joy! And yet joy seeks not for happiness at all. It only seeks itself, and produces everything that your heart could ever desire. For you are Joy. You are made of joy. You are the Alpha and the Omega of life. It’s all there.
Instead, you allow your time to run out. This Omega watch (that I am wearing) dwells in time, but my beloved that gave me the watch dwells eternally within me– and I become neglectful of the time it produces. So why does the timelessness of me require to measure time? Because it is there on my wrist as a remembrance of divinity, which is love. What happens here is that love, in time, gave itself to me, making me know that Thou and I are nothing else but timeless… not requiring time. That is the factor that becomes such a botheration–to be conscious of time and not to be conscious of your eternity. So you go on measuring time, time, time… and by doing that, you are going against the timelessness that you really are. You’ve always been timeless. You have always been without a beginning, and you’ll always be without an end. But we divide it up into time. And that division takes away the quality and realization of the timelessness which is eternity. That is the great delusion that brings about separation. You separate firstly yourself from yourself and then you separate yourself from all that which seemingly exists around you.
Question: But how to realize this little thing, and how to combine the Alpha with the Omega?
Instead, you allow your time to run out. This Omega watch (that I am wearing) dwells in time, but my beloved that gave me the watch dwells eternally within me– and I become neglectful of the time it produces. So why does the timelessness of me require to measure time? Because it is there on my wrist as a remembrance of divinity, which is love. What happens here is that love, in time, gave itself to me, making me know that Thou and I are nothing else but timeless… not requiring time. That is the factor that becomes such a botheration–to be conscious of time and not to be conscious of your eternity. So you go on measuring time, time, time… and by doing that, you are going against the timelessness that you really are. You’ve always been timeless. You have always been without a beginning, and you’ll always be without an end. But we divide it up into time. And that division takes away the quality and realization of the timelessness which is eternity. That is the great delusion that brings about separation. You separate firstly yourself from yourself and then you separate yourself from all that which seemingly exists around you.
Question: Who can ever prove to me that those bricks on that wall are not me?
They are me. This very chair is me. This very glass of water is me. The entire universe is me. For nothing can exist without me. Realize that factor–that fact–that everything is you. There’s nothing else existent. But in the path to find everything is you, you require the object until the object becomes the subject. And the subject is the totality of all existence. That is true mergence.
So in reality, you are not surrendering yourself to anyone at all. You are surrendering yourself to yourself, and are expressing that self-surrender outwardly in the seeming beingness of other existences for the time being, until you come to the realization that there exists nothing apart from me. That is the essence of love. That is God. That is Divinity, which you all are! Get away from that delusion that you are apart from everything else around you. That is the real delusion. The illusion created by you is like that of a movie screen creating figures and fantasies. And what do you see? You see the superimposition, and are not aware of the white screen that is there. You only become aware of the superimpositions. You have to move away, and the best way to move away is to shut off the projector and see the real white screen. That is surrender: to be able to see a thing as it is, and not as what you assume it to be. That is true surrender. So, instead of mirroring the film in the projector onto that screen, let me mirror myself onto that screen, and see me– and not Cary Grant or Sophia Loren. They are bullshitters, taking you away from yourself. (And when you allow this to happen), what happens then? You are dwelling in fantasy. They are the creations of fantasy, perhaps pleasurable, (but just) passing time– wasting time–instead of seeing yourself. If you live for sixty or seventy years in your lifetime, remember one thing: that out of the seventy years of your life, you have lived perhaps only one year as yourself. The other sixty-nine are wasted, totally wasted. They have no meaning at all. No meaning.
So what are you doing in life? (You are) wasting yourself, (being) non- productive, (as in the poet) T. S. Eliot’s (poem) “Wasteland.” But to spend just one moment throughout the day knowing yourself, that is not wasting. That is fruitful, for that is why you are here. Not to waste your bloomin’ time. You are here to find yourself. And you tell me you can’t spend one moment of the day seeking within yourself, facing yourself, mirroring yourself? Even if you have to use an object to find the subject, that is a stage, some of the steps on the path. And that path that you choose will eventually turn around, so that you will start walking on the pathless path– which is yourself. Who has created these paths that you see around yourself? Only you have done that, no one else. Who has built these roads around here on this campus? You have built them by your thoughts– and you used the construction engineers to do the job for you. That is all.
So, we are looking for paths, aren’t we? In every circumstance that faces us, we are looking for ways of escape. Escape, escape, escape! Run away! Run away! Run away from the paths of this world around you, while forgetting the real path that is within you. So, you dwell in separation and not in that integration that is your real you. Instead, you keep on escaping, running away. How far are you running?
I’m sure you know Tolstoy’s story, in which this man was given the opportunity (to have)however much land that he could cover by running throughout the day; however far he got, it was his. So this man started running faster and faster, so he could capture as much ground as he could– until he fell down totally exhausted and died, and the ground he was given was only the six feet in which he was buried. So you are also running, running, and running. But what ground are you capturing, except that six feet of ground? By all means, run. But do not run out there, run within yourself. For within yourself is eternal time, eternal space– so eternal that time becomes timeless and space becomes spaceless. For who can ever define eternity or infinity? And it is all there within you, all the time.
You tell me that you love me. Lovely expression! But in reality, who are you really loving? You are not loving me, because you do not know me. Instead, you are loving yourself and superimposing it upon me. That’s beautiful too! How many people could really and truthfully say, “I love me?” So, the object is a path to take you back to yourself, because love is itself yourself. Because of the support, the crutch you need, you project it upon the object. Which is not bad; it’s a path. I’m talking of the totality of things and not the pathways to take you back to yourself. That is love. That is mergence. So from surrendering yourself to another, you will start surrendering yourself to yourself and there is no separation. There is only mergence within yourself.
Many people in this world, unfortunate ones, feel that they are not wanted, not loved, and they go through so much suffering: “Oh, no one loves me! I am wanted by no one!” This is a total fallacy. It contains no truth at all! It is nothing else but the product of one’s own insecurity and inadequacy. Why do you want others to love you? Why? To make you feel great? To feed your ego? No, love yourself first and the outer love will come automatically. And you will at the same time get rid of your insecurities and your inadequacies. “I’m so lonely and lost!” That’s what they all say within themselves. You are not lonely! You are not lost! The greatest force in the universe is there residing within you.
Question:How can you be lonely? How can you be lost?
Yet you crave for that mirror to peer into, to objectify the love of others for you. Forget that idea for a moment. Instead, have a prayer in your heart, “I do not need to be loved by anyone, because the greatest force that resides in me loves me, or else that force would only be within me.” Then all your sufferings will disappear. All the miseries and varied machinations of the mind will just disappear, and you will be yourself, your true self. You’ll be totally satisfied within yourself. There would be no outer thirst that requires satiation–none! There won’t be that any more. Association with one’s inner self is something far different than finding outer satiation. That’s so! Yes! That’s life!
That’s enough; I don’t want to stretch your imagination too long or too much. One point given can find a greater value than a hundred points given, because they will all be forgotten. If you find a friend who repeats one joke after another–half a dozen or a dozen of them–you will not remember any of them. But if he just cracks one joke, it will stick in your mind, and you will remember it. Do you see?
So you jokers, regard life to be a damned joke, for it is nothing else but a joke. Enjoy the joke, but do not become the joke. And if you have to become the joke, then be like the moth consuming itself in that fire of love. That is another form of surrender–to be consumed in the object, until the object and the subject just become One. So whenever you hear me telling you that I love you, remember this: that you are me, and I love myself. But for the purpose of expressing myself, you are the object of my expression. So come closer and still closer to me; by doing so, you are doing the object a great favor. More than that, you are doing yourself a great favor, by knowing how to combine the object with the subject until you both, my beloved and I, get consumed in the Oneness of that flame.
We have traveled so many paths to find the harmony to be consumed in that flame. So can we blame the moth? I suppose it knows more than we do, to be consumed in the flame and to become the flame. When you try and sell a house, first become the house. And then say to yourself, “I am selling me, for I AM the house.” This principle applies to everything in life. You cannot sell anything to anyone. You can only give yourself to others. That’s all! You do not sell. You become the object, and you give the object, yourself – (that is) “surrender” in common, practical terminology.
