Tonight I’d like to talk to you just a little bit about purity and its importance in the inner life.
Purity is meditation. When you meditate, purity radiates through you. Purity is light. Not just an ordinary light that we see in the physical universe, but a transcendental light.
Without purity it’s impossible to realize God. To realize God means to see your own eternality in all things, in all places, at all times.
We have a lot of different ideas about what self-realization is, what God consciousness is, but in order to go beyond ideas to direct realization of that which is and will always be, it’s essential to have a great deal of purity.
The easiest place to see purity at work is in nature. When you go for a walk in the woods or out to the desert or by the ocean, when you look at flowers, it’s very easy to get a sense of that which is pure.
Purity is something that comes from another world. It really doesn’t exist, per se, in this physical world. It’s a radiance or a light that stems from eternity and enters into the physical, into this world of transformation and change.
It’s very fragile when it takes physical manifestation. It’s very, very strong in its original aspect.
Unless you have a great deal of purity, it’s difficult, if not impossible, to retain higher spiritual energy, or we might say, it’s difficult, if not impossible, to stay in a higher consciousness.
Beyond this world, beyond this Earth, beyond this life, there’s something that is immortal, perfect, and shining.
I call it Eternity. You pick your own name. That existence has always been and will always be.
Without any awareness of that existence, your life is extremely empty.
The greater your awareness of that existence, the more complete your life is.
Your life is incomplete without that awareness, no matter what you have or what you do, because it is your own body.
As you become more conscious of your body, which is Eternity, a sense of ease, a fullness beyond description, occurs.
In deep meditation we see nothing but purity.
In deep meditation thought stops, action stops, time stops. The world stops, and we become consciously one with Eternity.
That is to say, anything that separates us from that still perfection, which is reality, which is what they call God and truth and Nirvana … all obstructions fall away.
At that point, one becomes immortal, in the sense that one sees that one has always been immortality itself.
You can no longer be on the wheel of death and rebirth because the wheel has dissolved. The wheel was but a manifestation of eternity.
When the sun rises, the darkness vanishes. With absorption in eternity, all thoughts, actions and ideas, all consequences, all former births and future deaths, vanish. These are mere ideas in the eye of the beholder.
Very few people, as you know, are conscious of the deeper strata of eternity. The primary reason is either because they lack purity or they lack motivation. It’s essential to have both.
Purity is receptivity, the ability to sit and wait patiently, for as long as necessary, for the coming of the light. Keeping a vigil from lifetime to lifetime, waiting.
Purity means lack of hatred, lack of jealousy, lack of fear, lack of any volatile, antagonistic energy.
It is the absence of greed, the absence of lust, the absence of anything that can stain consciousness.
Greed, fear, lust, hate, jealousy, these are all part of reality too. They exist, but they are partialities. They are small bundles of consciousness wrapped tightly. They are barbs on which you can injure yourself, volatile energies which serve as separations between yourself and perfect stillness, an end to suffering, an end to salvation, an end to realization.
Have what you will, do what you shall, without the realization of eternity, without living in that eternal consciousness — you are alone, separate, fixated, unhappy, incomplete.
Human beings become so obsessed with partialities that they miss eternity. It’s what we call penny wise but pound foolish. We’re so busy trying to perfect our desires and the things that matter and sustain us in this world that we don’t see what really is, but these things, no matter how we bring them to perfection, don’t last.
Accumulate vast sums of money today and feel better, but tomorrow you’ll die and it’s all gone away. Perfect your friendships and your relationships, but then tomorrow someone will forget you. Someone else will die, and it’s all gone away.
Do what you will, succeed at what you shall, but these are all temporary bulwarks, shortstops against existence itself.
To think that fulfilling yourself in this world … will create eternal fulfillment is absurd.
We think this way, and we feel this way, because we lack purity.
Purity is the ability to see dharma, truth, in its manifold forms, both in the field of action, which we call this world, the physical world, the field of manifestation — in and through the subtle physical worlds, in any plane or any loka.
To develop purity is essential then, just for your own peace of mind.
Otherwise you’ll go through this world like a mad person, howling and screaming and cursing, never satisfied, never happy.
You’ll go howling, screaming, yelling, and kicking from lifetime to lifetime. It doesn’t end with death — it should be so simple. It goes on and on and on.
To run away from life and from desire is impossible. Because you are life and you have desire.
Rather, not to fight against desire, not to condemn yourself because you have lust or you have jealousy or fears, rather to accept that this is part of your physical condition, which is transitory.
[To see] That these aspects or qualities are not really indigenous to what you are, is a beginning.
To be able to discriminate and see that, “I am not the body, I am not the mind, I am not the hatred, I am not the desire, I am not the passion, I am not the fear” …
… is a beginning. But still, these can only be ideas in the mind, mere abstractions. You have to have something more than abstraction.
Meditation takes us beyond abstraction. When you meditate perfectly, that is to say with no thought or no conscious awareness of self as the doer, as the action, as that which experiences the action, when the mind is not only silent but that part of the mind that could become conscious that the mind is silent dissolves in light.
Then we see and feel purity.
We become it — the purity of eternal light.
In those moments, which are Samadhi … the transcendental light permeates your being and washes away impurity. It breaks down the fears, and the hatreds, the desires, the greed, and the jealousy, the bigotry, the smallness. All those different selves which are limited, and binding, and hurting, are washed away. They cannot stand up to the clear light of reality. They vanish, as phantoms vanish when the sun rises. The shadows dissolve, but unless you take tide against the sea of trouble, unless you energize yourself, and reach deeply, and learn to still the mind completely — to become absorbed in that perfection which is existence — the shadows will not go away. If you do nothing, the shadows will become darker, stronger, more rooted in your awareness, harder to get rid of.
Purity is also developed in action, not only in meditation. Purity is developed when we love.
The scriptures recommend love and service to the Enlightened to develop purity. The concept is simple to understand. Search this world, and find that being whom you feel has the greatest light and the greatest radiance, and become their apprentice.
Listen not only to what they say, but to what they don’t say.
Meditate on them and become one with the light of the eternal, which they reflect. As the moon reflects the sunlight to the Earth, so the liberated soul reflects the light of eternity to this world.
However, in your meditation, when you meditate deeply enough and you go inside a liberated person you will see, not the moon, but the sun itself. You’ll see that there is no longer a differentiation between their awareness and that eternity which you seek.
Beyond space, beyond time, beyond condition, there is only eternity.
There is no separativity.
This is your own condition. If you go deeply enough within yourself you will see, not the reflection, but the sun itself — eternity.
Purity develops through caring. You need to care about light and the matters of light — the matters of truth, of religion, of spirituality.
As you engage your mind in the scriptures, in the Bhagavad Gita, in The Way of Life, in the writings of enlightened spiritual persons, your mind will become pure.
As you learn to love the company of the holy, of those who seek light, and spend time with them as opposed to people who are still trapped in desires, and frustrations, hatreds, and jealousies, so your heart will become pure.
As you learn to accept that the body is transitory, as you watch it grow, develop, and age and decline — with love, but without attachment — the body will develop purity.
Feel that your body is like a group of flowers. When someone gives you flowers, you enjoy their beauty, their purity. You delight in it. At the same time you realize that one day, the flowers will wither, they’ll fade, and that is natural and proper. When that time comes you discard them, without sadness, without remorse. It is a natural cause of events in this world. You remain, but the flowers go. New flowers come.
In this sense, realize that you are not the body.
The body will blossom and then it will fade, and then you will discard it. You will remain, after this body of yours has gone away. This knowledge allows you to love the body without attachment. Thus the body becomes pure, absolutely pure.
Spend time engaging your mind and your being in light.
Spend time with spiritual friends.
It matters not really what you do together, whether you play monopoly, whether you read each other sections of your journals of spiritual experiences, whether you get together once or twice a week and meditate with your friends in small groups, take walks, go to the movies.
Whatever you do, if you do it together, then you’re keeping the company of the holy, those who seek light. This will energize your consciousness. Regardless of what you’re doing physically, an inner dialogue is taking place between yourself and those who you are with. You are teaching them inwardly what you know; they are sharing with you what they know. Purity is gained through strength.
Avoid the company of the wicked, that is to say, those who would do injury to you or to others.
Like a disease, their energy is something that you can catch, and it will fill up your being. Once it is within you, it is hard to rid yourself of it. Your own nature, you must realize, is pure, spotless, pristine.
But through association we drag ourselves down or we can raise ourselves up. It is the mind that brings us to illusion. It is also the mind that liberates us. So you can use your mind to discriminate and to choose what to do at every moment — something to advance yourself, to bring more purity into your being.
It is as easy to love as it is to hate.
It is as easy to be courageous as it is to fear.
It is as easy to do that which is right as it is to do that which is wrong.
It is as easy to be still as to be active.
To aspire in the inner life is not difficult, to become pure is not difficult.
But you must make choices that will lead you to freedom and liberation, not to enslavement — to the wills and actions and desires of others.
Every being generates a field of attention.
When you spend time with someone — or if you think of someone — you enter into their field of attention.
That is why you should try and think [of], and … and spend your time … with those who are holy, with those who seek light.
If you think of an Enlightened person, you enter into their field of attention. If you think of a celestial being, you enter into their field of attention. If you think of a friend who’s aspiring, a spiritual seeker, you enter into their field of attention.
So try and become conscious of what you think during the day. This is part of yoga.
Watch your mind. Observe it from a distance.
Become conscious of what you’re thinking.
If you find yourself thinking unpleasant thoughts, then eradicate them from your mind.
These are your three choices if you wish to develop purity in the mind.
When unhappy thoughts — thoughts that would deceive you or hurt you — come into the mind …
One needs to do this all of the time, at every waking moment.
As you do this again and again and again, the mind will become pure. These thoughts will come less and less. Higher thoughts will grow spontaneously.
But you must be vigilant and watchful all of the time, because a negative thought will enter you.
And at first it will be a vague feeling, it will seem innocuous, but then it will take root in your consciousness and it will grow and develop, and soon it will be almost impossible to eradicate.
Pray for grace. Reach to the Eternal. While the Eternal has an impersonal aspect, it also has a personal aspect — it has both.
Eternity does live and does exist and it does answer our prayers.
At the same time it has an impersonal aspect … which disregards all of existence.
So approach the personal aspect.
If you need money and you know that your father won’t give you any, you can go to your mother. Even though your father turned you down, your mother may slip you a twenty.
So in the same sense, the impersonal aspect of existence may ignore you, but then there’s the personal aspect.
And there are intermediaries, the Gods and Goddesses, the celestial beings that help many spiritual seekers who have prayed to them.
Just as you may not be able to reach the president of a company, but if you can reach an intermediary, they can go and intercede with the president of the company and help you reach that person, so there are carrier beings — Gods, Goddesses — who aid many spiritual seekers and have throughout the ages.
But there is only one prayer, and that is the prayer for light, the prayer for purity.
To pray for material things just to fulfill your desires is silly.
You must know and trust that if those things are necessary they will come, and if they don’t come, they’re not necessary.
At the same time, right livelihood is essential. You should seek to advance your fortunes in this world, to set up a strong base so that you can practice your spirituality and be of service to others. This is purity too.
But at the same time, —in and through that, while you do that — you must think of eternity, think of light, think of perfection.
As you do this more and more, you will find your consciousness will transform. You’ll become happy, free, and complete. Your meditation will deepen, your awareness of what it is to exist … will multiply … as you find that you are Eternality itself.
Purity is something, in other words, that can be consciously developed.
It’s something that we each have in seed form inside of us … but unless the seed is germinated, nothing will grow.
So you must observe where you spend your time, with whom, what you think of, what you expose yourself to and what your motives are.
And again, expect to have impure moments, impure thoughts, impure ideas. You’re quite human, and you will have these things for some time.
One day they will go away and there will be nothing but pure thoughts and pure actions.
Then there will be happiness.
Ego is impurity.
You must become conscious of your ego, and when you enter into the ego, when you find the ego operating, you must ignore it. Push it away, think of light.
Don’t be selfish. Your selfishness only makes you unhappy. Rather be self-less. Consecrate and dedicate your life to perfection.
Then you will see real transformation take place, inside you, real happiness, real freedom.
Set your sights on the highest goal.
And settle for nothing else.
Find that person whom you feel to be most enlightened and learn from them, study them, reach into them.
Meditate on the transcendental truth, on silence. Learn from the purity of nature. Spend your free time with those who also seek, who can laugh more openly.
Don’t be so concerned with what you do, but what your motives are.
Constantly examine yourself again and again, and when you find yourself lacking, when you find that your motives are impure, don’t condemn yourself — that only increases the hold of impurity.
Rather, accept your limitations but know that you’re working towards changing them.
Know that it’s not up to you, that by your own puny, human volition you can never accomplish anything.
That it is only with the grace of the eternal, with that light of the superconscious working through you, that you have gotten to where you are now and that you will go forward.
Invoke that light, reach for it, cry in the depths of your meditation — to eternity.
And then be willing to smile … in both success and in adversity.
Be willing to laugh freely, at yourself, at your humanness and at your divinity.
Develop a pure heart.
Don’t be concerned whether others understand you or misunderstand you. You have to live with yourself every moment.
And your life will be joyful and complete when you have a pure heart and your motives are unsullied.
And your life will be miserable if you have an impure heart. No matter what your outer condition is, unless you have inner peace, there is nothing.
So blend yourself with the transcendental light until you can’t tell the difference between yourself and that light.
And when you find yourself in the human consciousness, accept it, continue to work with it.
Don’t be offended by your own lack of purity.
Rather, feel that like the seed that will grow and develop, so you too are in a formative and early stage. You will not stay as you are now.
Provided … you work towards change. You do the things that I’ve just suggested.
Then completion, and perfection, and refinement come into your being. Then the dark oppressive forces of maya cannot hold you. Then the dharma shines through you.
So let us meditate for just a couple more minutes, OK?