2012: Matrix Singularity

Part 5: Mastering Change Transcription

Babaji: The one thing that we can change is our activities. We can't change the way the world is. We can't change other people. We can't change the laws of God, or the laws of nature. We can't overcome the influence of time; it's going to happen. But we can change our activities. We can change what we eat, how we work, how we dress; how we think, what we do with our work, the results of our work. Our attitude towards other people, towards God. We can change all these things; it just requires knowledge. 

But once we have that knowledge, we have to act on it, we have to do something. We have to make some changes in our life. I know it's difficult, I know 99.99% of most people, they do things the other way. I know, because I was there too, remember? I started out just like you. I'm not any different from anybody else. So if I can make it, you can also make it. You can realize God in this lifetime, through the power of his Holy Name. 

The Holy Name is what gives us the power to change all these things, because we have the association of something pure. When we chant the Holy name, God is directly present. I mean God is present anyway, but usually we're not aware. So when we chant, then we become aware of God. And this is called God consciousness, which is Enlightenment. I mean, I can't get over it. When I chant God's name, I mean, God's name is just the most amazing thing that I've ever experienced in my life. The Holy Name is just, it's so far beyond anything you could experience in life. I mean, I just can't say enough about how wonderful the Holy Name is. 

But to realize these things you have to chant purely. It means you have to clean up your act. [chuckles] You have to become pure. If you become purified, then the slightest impurity will become very noticeable. What was the example you gave, a smoker?  When you become contaminated by the material consciousness, and our, our body also becomes contaminated by material substances, we can't sense impurities. Actually they don't even bother us, because our body is used to a polluted state. But when someone becomes very, very, very pure.. 

I remember my guru, one time he was trying to sleep in the temple. And he couldn’t sleep, and he rang the bell for his servant. The servant said "What do you want," and so he says "There is water dripping in the faucet. Please turn it off, I can't sleep." So they looked everywhere, and they couldn't find any. They said, "um I, I, We can't find any dripping faucet." He said "I can hear it, [laughing] you have to find it and stop it."  So it took 10 men searching the whole building until finally [in] some closet in the back end of a hallway where no one goes, there was a sink, it was one faucet dripping. [clicks his tongue to indicate a dripping noise] And he heard it and it kept him awake. 

Prabhupada was incredibly sensitive like that. When ever he came to a temple to stay, I remember this very clearly, because I had to do it. [chuckles] We had to clean his room 5 times, just to get all the smells and contaminated things out of that room. Or he would come and say [makes a sniffing sound] "Clean this room, It smells!" [laughs] Because if someone who is not clean had been in that room 2 weeks before, he would know. Now I'm getting like that. [laughs] 

Someone was complaining because I said, "I don’t like that cologne your wearing." Yet we find again and again and again, in teaching spiritual things, that if a person doesn’t purify themselves according to these standards, they always misunderstand the philosophy. A person needs to be pure at heart to really understand God. You can hear the words OK, or read the books. But to get it in practice requires purity. 

Prabhupada used to give the example that a dog is an animal in the mode of ignorance. So when you see a big dog, he may be very powerful and strong. But what does he do with that power? What does he do with that strength? Everything he does is contaminated. Everything he does is something unspiritual, and wrong.  But a lion or tiger is an animal in the mode of passion. So everything they do, even though they're very strong, it causes harm and suffering to other beings. They're very lusty also. But a cow or a bull is an animal in the mode of goodness. So they are very strong, but their strength is controlled. I know because I used to live on a farm with over 100 cows, and we managed them according to Vedic principles. So we never killed the cows. Each bull had his own pasture, and several cows, so they were very happy. 

When we do things according to instructions in the Vedas, we find that everything works exactly just like a scientific formula. Even though it may seem we're being unreasonable, or setting too high of a standard, we do it because we know by experience, that's what works. And if people don't follow the instructions they can't understand the philosophy, they can't put [it] into practice. So this goes back to my favorite saying: "You get what you pay for." Somebody was complaining: "Why does it take so long to realize God?" I think they were referring to my story about  6 months of chanting. He happened to be a doctor, so I said "Well, how long did it take you to become a doctor?"  "10 years." What's more important: our professional qualification, or our spiritual qualification? You can't take it with you. All the work that we do in the material world, we can't take it with us [when we leave this world]. So isn't it worth our while to put our energy into something that we can take with us? That's going to be with us forever? That's going to determine our situation in the next life? 

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