2012: Matrix Singularity

Part 6: Spiritual Work Transcription

Babaji: I'm not saying it's wrong to be rich or to be successful. It's nice to have money. It's good; it gives us facility for spiritual things. But we have to engage that energy [in God's service], because it's God's energy. Whether we are talking about physical labor, or trying to understand the teachings, or giving our time, energy or money for spiritual causes; it's all God's energy. If we engage it properly, then we get a spiritual, transcendental result. But if we engage it for our own use, then at best we get a result in the mode of goodness. But what we see is most people engage in passion and ignorance. They take the money on Friday night, and by Monday morning, they're broke. [laughs] This is most people's life. 

So that's why we are concentrating on spiritual education. Because by education, a person can learn all these principles. How to live their life in such a way that the work that we do actually becomes spiritual. Consider for example of the communion ceremony, the mass. They have the bread and the wine, and then they offer it. What happens? It's transformed from material to spiritual. This is called transubstantiation. The actual substance—[starts getting choked up, as if to cry] I just get, I get like really ecstatic when I think about this—the actual substance is transformed from material to spiritual. Now think about it. If God can transform bread and wine, He can transform anything—anything. Even our own bodies can be transformed from material to spiritual, if we use those bodies in the service of God, according  to the proportion that we invest. 

We have a saying: "Jesus saves, Moses invests..." Krsna? "Krsna spends." [laughs] Krsna spends. So our mood, as devotees of Krsna is that we spend our resources in His service. And my experience over 40 years, is when we do this, He always replaces it with more. I've seen it again and again and again. I mean I literally can take it to the bank—literally. That when we use our resources for Krsna, then He always protects me. 

I've been traveling all over the world, all these years. Let me see, since 1975, 32 years? 30, yeah? Traveling. And sometimes I worked, but most of the time I didn't. Where did I get the money? Where did I get the travel expenses, or the other facilities I needed? I can't tell you exactly. It just sort of came to me. It was a miracle actually. And it's not like I was preaching all the time, it's not like I was going up to people in the street and saying "Hey give me some money, I'm a great guy!" No, I'm not like that, I'm too shy. [laughs] But what I was doing, was every day chanting, studying the scriptures, and when I found somebody who had good intelligence, I would tell them about what I knew, what my experience is, and what they could do to help to improve their lives. 

So that's been my occupation now for more than 30 years: to help people improve their lives by this knowledge. And I want to expand these activities, I want to be able to help more people. We came up with a great idea last night: to present the research that shows that meditation helps solve urban problems like, crime, poverty, disease. We were talking about hyperactivity in the children, and the discipline problems in the schools, and how that can be helped by meditation and so on. And there's research around that confirms this. 

What is the cause of the problems of the body and the mind, is spiritual. So that's the root cause, and it will also show up in subsequent causes like mental anxiety, and wrong ideas about life, criminal activities, drugs. Drugs are very, very common in our society. Alcohol is a drug; a very dangerous drug. If we could somehow present this information to the local government, to convince them to sponsor some local research programs, that would give us a platform, for large-scale spiritual education. 

And not that we want to change anyone's religion. But we want to encourage them to practice the religion they've got. I mean, how many people practice all the 10 Commandments? Anybody who eats meat is killing. Anyone who doesn’t engage at least the majority of their income in some kind of spiritual work, they're coveting God's property. People think that the 10 Commandments are on a human level; but no, they're about God. Try to understand. So these laws are meant for very broad application. And if we can make people understand, maybe we can reduce some of the suffering in the world. That's going to happen through education. 

So education is the best thing. In the Vedic society, spiritual education was for everybody. Everyone was expected to take courses like this. No one, especially in the upper classes of society, [was exempt;] they were all expected to be initiated. If you weren’t an initiate, you couldn’t have a position in the government, or in any leadership position in business or, nobody would accept [you as a cultured person]. Just see how far we have come [down the slippery slope since then].

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