I think this midweek satsang has been necessary because of the speed of the acceleration of events in the unreal world that many mistake for reality. So I think part of our job is to give the spiritual perspective on the news of the day, as well as the ever news of the eternity of the Self, and to put them both into perspective. And, of course, because the Supreme Intelligence is nothing if not utterly paradoxical, we in the illusory phenomenal plane are in a state of total paradox.
The world is clearly in a state of chaos, yet that chaos is actually divine order. What’s important is to be able to perceive the divine presence within the apparent madness of a world that is unfolding psychopathically and psychotically at almost every level (perhaps at every level) of reality—hopefully not including your own soul—although, if you still have an ego, it probably does include that. So it’s useful, in a sense, to be able to create a capillary. You know, capillaries are where the the veins and the arteries meet and the nutrients (oxygen, etc.) are able to enter into the system and the waste can be carried out. So I think we need a new spiritual political system that we could perhaps call capillarism instead of capitalism—we need to have this capillary between the transcendent and the immanent so that there is a refreshment of inner peace as the extremes of turmoil and destructiveness seem to rage externally . . . and so that that peace can then be emanated into the external plane.
For example, in the U.S. we have a “peace president” who is, I think, going for the world record of starting more wars simultaneously than has ever been done. Not only is there apparently an imminent war scheduled between the U.S. and Israel versus Iran (and who knows who else on their side), but Trump has been igniting wars of every kind—whether trade wars or hot wars or personal wars with friends and colleagues or political wars (apparently) with politicians from other parties. And now, of course, we have a budding civil war in the U.S. He couldn’t come up with too many more, but I’m sure that will happen as the days go by. So the O.K. Corral is filled now with people shooting in all directions.
In this context, I think it’s even more important to return to the roots of what the human spirit is really all about, while recognizing that—when an empire dies—it begins flailing wildly and insanely. That happens to many individuals as well, as their health declines, their mental capacities decline, dementia sets in, and they regress into tendencies of infantile acting out, erupting of tantrums, etc. We see this happening at every level of the phenomenal plane. At the same time, of course (and not coincidentally), we see the economy sinking very fast—the economy of the whole West, which is now threatening to destabilize the global economic and financial system. And as that happens, the extreme desperation for diversion through war becomes even more urgent for those who are trying to hold on to some shred of power.
The spiritual response to all this has to be the opposite of that, an equal and opposite response to that chaotic acting out. But when an economy collapses, as is happening to the dollar economy as well as the euro economy and that of other countries as well, people who had some resources find that the value of their money is decreasing rapidly while the threat of hyperinflation increases . . . and those people begin to look very desperately for a store of value. Once U.S.Treasury bonds no longer represent a safe store of value, then those people begin to hoard gold (which will probably not be very useful on a day-to-day basis when they may need to trade for a loaf of bread or something else of immediate need like medicine), or they buy objets d’art (art objects) that seem to have a high level of value on the art market. But, as the economy goes down, things like art that are not real necessities also begin to lose their interest.
You can go down the list of everything that, under normal conditions, economists would have considered to be a store of value; and we are reaching a point where there is really nothing in the external plane that is a secure store of value. That then, I think, begins to open people’s minds to the question of, “Well, what is value anyway? What value do I really need to have access to in a time like this, which is verging on total war and social collapse and destruction that will no doubt contagiously spread from the empire to all the vassal states and the periphery in each continent?” What is actually essential to one’s well-being? If one is really honest with oneself, there is nothing more important than to have a state of inner peace—a state of fearless tranquility in the face of the uncertainty of the continuity of life itself. And because life itself is not a store of value (since biological life has a very short expiration date, no matter what), the value would have to be in that level of consciousness that transcends the existence of the bodily form.
Ultimately, if you are theistically inclined, you would say the only store of value is God. If you’re a Buddhist you might say it’s the Buddha nature (the Buddha mind) that’s the essence of value, or it’s Christ Consciousness, or it’s Brahman, or it’s the Atman. It doesn’t matter what word you use because the value is not in the signifier. The value is only in that which is Real, which language cannot reach and which cannot be taken away or lost or defiled. So a Sat Yogi is one who stores up that value, who chooses the value of tranquility. But to really have that value in a true sense that is unlosable, unshakable (that is certain beyond doubt and beyond any possible conditions that could vitiate that state of tranquility) requires a shift in one’s paradigm of consciousness.
That shift is the renunciation of personal identity, because consciousness in its eternal essence is prior to the existence of the person you think you are, and it will abide after the death and annihilation of any trace of the existence of the person you think you are. But if you are still identifying with that person and holding on to that as your store of value, you cannot receive, retain, or magnify the real value of unshakable tranquility. It’s this choice that has to be made, requiring this one renunciation of everything that you have been holding on to and recognizing it as the obstacle to tranquility . . . requiring the will to drop the ego, the will to be still, the will to keep the consciousness empty of the anxious thoughts of the personal character (that cannot be stopped unless the character has been renounced as a representation of yourself). Unless that character is recognized as fictional and of no value whatsoever in comparison to the tranquility of the real Self—unless that reality is fully, totally recognized—you will not be able to perform the one act of letting go that is required for attaining peace.
So that is the wager of the willingness to let go that the Sat Yogi makes, and it’s a very rare achievement. But when you do let go of that identification, you enter a very uncanny state in which suddenly there are no boundaries, because your mind had been bounded by the body form and the mental operating system with its limited perspectives, projections, and preconceptions. Once all of that has fallen away, there is an infinite space, an infinite light, an infinite power, and an infinite amount of intelligence and wisdom that your consciousness is merged with without differentiation. It’s only then that you realize that there was no loss in that dropping away of the person for the suprapersonal Self but an infinite gain.
Because we have been living in an atheistic, materialistic, consumeristic culture that valorizes only the ego of the individual and indoctrinates you into the belief that that is all you are, it is exponentially more difficult now to let go of the ego identity than it ever has been in the past. And yet, paradoxically, it’s more urgent to do it now than ever in the past.
