Topics

What questions do you ask?

What questions should you be asking?

Do you ask the question, "Am I blessed? And if I am blessed do I feel it every single day?"

Do I feel alive every single day?” Or, do I feel in my emotions, jealousy, anger, fear, doubt?

If you don’t feel jealousy and fear and anger and doubt, you should be put in a museum. You should be stuffed and put in a museum to say, “Here is a person who doesn’t feel anger, fear, doubt, confusion!”

But the thing is, that if there is fear in you there is freedom in you. If there is anger in you, there is compassion in you. If there is confusion in you, then there is clarity in you.

If there is pain in you, there is joy in you.

In you! Do you understand what that means, "In you"? Most people hear what I am saying, but it doesn’t compute: “In you.” Because for most people, who are the believers, for them this comes from up there.

Uh-uh! People say to me, "Where will I go?"—(I mean, everybody, right?) So, what, what will happen to you when you die? What will happen to you when you die? Are you going to go to heaven? I’m just asking!

So if you’re going to go somewhere, if you’re going to go somewhere ... that means, that when you were born, (and say, you weighed five pounds,) the earth, the weight of the earth increased. Right?

And when you’re going to go, the weight of the earth will decrease! Right?! Does it?

This is the belief system. This is the belief system: "Oh, I want to... I’m doing everything I am doing, you know, (I,) by the book, by the law, because I want to go to heaven. I want to go to heaven; I want to go to....” And do you want it expedited?

Look! Longer you are here, the more chances you have, of making mistakes.

So, best not to make mistakes—right?

So you want to go early? “Mmmmmmmmm-nnnnn-no!”

So now you’re contradicting yourself! If heaven is such a wonderful place ... why the wait?

"Ahhh! Eeee-yessssss" ... and "Ahhhh, nn-no!" Because you also know, where heaven is. And you know that heaven is right here. And you want to be in heaven. And you also know what hell is. You know what is hell? Very simple. Very simple. It’s not about boiling pots. When you are not in heaven, that’s hell! That’s hell.

- Prem Rawat

So, what is the importance of knowing yourself? I can give you the most beautiful map, very well illustrated; everything is there; everything is marked—and there is a very beautiful place on the map that you want to go to.

But what is the most important thing you need to have on that map? And that is, "Where are you on that map?" Because, "turn left, turn right, and go straight" is all relevant to where you are. But if you don't know where you are, what is "left?" What is "right?" What is "go straight?" What is "go around the roundabout"—it doesn’t mean anything.

And we forget! People are writing books; people are making lectures, and they’re telling everybody, "You know, we have to turn left; we have to turn left." And then, "Oh no, now we have to turn right." Whose "right?" Whose "left?" Which "left?" Where are we going? Which "straight?" Because it’s all relative.

Unless you know who you are, living in this world is going to be very different. Because one of the things is going to be disorientation because you don't know where you are. You're lost. That feeling of—yeah, somewhere here—"What I am about to do, is that right? Do people like me? Am I popular?"

This is all before you ever get to loving yourself. You are more interested in whether other people love you. You're not even interested in whether you love yourself. And it's disorienting; look at what's—what is social media all about? Approval from other people.

So, now I am bringing this message—it's not my message. Socrates said this a long time ago. Some of the hieroglyphs that were deciphered from Egypt also said the same thing: "Understand who you are; know yourself." Socrates echoes that—"Know yourself. Know thyself." Because the importance of knowing yourself is so important.

- Prem Rawat

Who are you? What are you?

When you hear "Do you know yourself?" What does that mean?

Is it some definition that somebody's going to plunk in your head? It better not be.

Because it has to be something that you know from the bottom of your heart-who you are.

That you were given an opportunity to be alive.

-Prem Rawat

That one moment when the universe began. Not just our universe, all of them, just where it began... did not the possibility of life exist at that moment? Has to. Maybe oxygen did not exist, but the possibility of being able to have oxygen existed. Maybe hydrogen didn't exist, but the possibility of having hydrogen existed.

And so from even that moment, your cards were stacked. Okay? Do you feel like you belong? You being here, alive on the face of this earth is made possible by the same possibility that put the moon where it is. Not any different. Put the sun where it is. All the stars in our universe known and unknown, that's the same force. That's the same possibility that has put you here. The same one that has put all the ants on this earth, that has put all the termites on this earth. By the way, there are tons of termites for every living human being. But has put termites on this earth, the blades of grass, the sand on the beaches, the water in the ocean, stars that you see that are and are not there. Has made the same... exactly the same force has made it possible for you to be alive right now.

Do you belong?

- Prem Rawat

When good things happen, you boost your ego.

“I did this. I did that.”

When bad things happen, you lose heart. You lose patience with yourself. And you blame yourself for everything.

That’s no way to live. Like a yo-yo. Up and down, up and down, up and down. Find that stability because that’s inside of you too.

Discover it and hang on to it. Hang on to the good in you.

- Prem Rawat

Wherever I go and I start talking about the subject of peace, most people wonder and ask me, “What about all these problems that we have? Why don’t we have peace? What happened?”

So I would like to tell you a story. There was a man and he had heard about elephants—that elephants were big; they were huge; they were powerful and they were mighty; they could lift a whole tree with their trunk. He wanted to see an elephant.

So he did some research; somebody told him, “You want to see an elephant, go to India!” So he found the village which is very famous, very popular for elephants, and he went there. And when he arrived at the village, he saw all these magnificent elephants standing there. And each one of the elephants had a very thin little rope tied to the leg, just very thin—and they were standing.

And the man was really surprised. He had never seen an elephant before, and he was very impressed by the power of the elephant. But he was also very confused. So he went to the village chief, and he said, “Chief, I have a question!”

He said, “This is the first time I’ve seen these elephants, and they’re strong, they’re mighty, they’re powerful. But you are tying them up by this little rope that is so fragile. Why don’t these elephants just run away? Why are they standing there? It’s not the rope that’s holding them, because they could easily break that.”

And the chief said, “Oh, that. Let me explain to you. When these elephants were really young, we tied them with these little ropes. Then they were not so strong, and the rope was enough to hold them. Now, they are definitely strong enough to break the rope, but they have forgotten their strength, and this little rope is enough to hold them.”

In a way, that is so sad. But that is our story too. That is our story too. We have forgotten our strength. We forget who we are. We forget the compassion in us. We forget the passion in us. We forget the kindness in us. We forget the joy in us. We forget what is a human being.

You cannot talk about peace without talking about the human being, because it is in the heart of that human being that the peace dances.

Right now, I know people say, “Oh, people are terrible. Look what they’re doing! They’re killing each other, terrorizing each other, putting fear in each other.” That’s not the nature of a human being.

There is a lot of good in this world; there is a lot of kindness in this world. There is a lot of generosity in this world. And this is the true nature of a human being; this is your true nature. To adore—to adore peace! To want peace. To be fulfilled! Need I say it? Indeed, to create a heaven right here on the face of this earth.

People talk about, when they die, will they go to heaven? There’s a small problem with that beautiful heaven. You have to die to get there. Why not create an experience, the heaven, whilst you’re alive? Whilst you are alive, whilst you are here?

People say, “Oh, look how many people go hungry.” Why? Have you ever thought of why people go hungry? Is it because there is shortage of food? No! Forty percent of the food that is actually farmed goes to waste. It’s thrown away. It’s unfit for consumption. There is more than plenty of food to feed everybody.

People say, “People don’t have clean water!” There’s plenty of water—believe me, there’s plenty of water. And who makes the water unclean? We do.

It’s up to us to understand our true nature, our power—that if we want the peace, we can have peace. We don’t have to be held back by a little rope of the elephant.

– Prem Rawat