Treasures Along the Path

We have a very

important subject today. It's right attitude as the basis for the spiritual life that is the topic, isn't it?

Probably the most important thing that we must keep in mind before we even get into this subject is that we are not our personalities. It's a common delusion to think that whatever attitudes we hold, are we and therefore, why should we change? I've seen many people in their lives justifying wrong additive by saying, Well, this is what I am.

It isn't what you are. It's a certain octave of what you are. Now that's an important point to understand, because you can't make yourself over into someone else from the very beginning. There is that, as master wrote in The Autobiography of a Yogi, every atom has certain qualities, including individuality. Every soul, when it becomes manifested, is manifested with a certain individuality, and that individuality never changes. That individuality is more than just the thought of I. It's a certain mode in with which you came into manifestation. And thus, although it's more than probable that we have to go through every experience possible before we learn our lessons and get out. It isn't necessary, theoretically, but it probably happens anyway, because mankind is so

inventive that he's likely to want to try it all before he finally agrees that maybe the answer isn't here, but in God, and he's likely to try it all many times, not just once. And so it goes on. And so it goes on. But although it's, as I say, more than probable that you've been everything, burglar, King, mendicant, all sorts of people, galley, slave,

a cruel person, a kind person, many, many different kinds of human beings, man, woman, nevertheless, you will not have been any one of those things, just like anyone else, it will always be you In that particular role. After all, we always probably think of pirates, for example, as being a particular kind of person, and all pirates are alike. They're all sitting there singing Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum and

talking about keel hauling boys and so on. But when you get on the ship, you'll probably find that every one of them is just as unique as everyone else, and there are many kinds of pirates. So it is that you must recognize that you are a particular kind of person, and you'll never be anything but that kind of person, that much is true, but, and this is a point that I made in my book, your sun sign is a spiritual guide. I wrote that book much less from a point of view of interest in astrology than from a point of view of interest in human psychology that there are astrology is a wonderfully sophisticated thing. For example, look at even modern psychology has come up with terms like introvert and extrovert two. Astrology gives us 12 basic types, and it doesn't speak of introvert and extrovert. It speaks of any one of those types can be either introverted or extroverted, depending on how he directs his energy. It's a very sophisticated system, if it's understood deeply enough, and 12 is only broad families of attitudes beyond which there are many, many refinements

of combinations, refinements of individual ways of

translating whatever influences there may be in your nature. And thus it is that I wrote the book primarily, not merely to say, this is what you are, but if this is what you are. And I didn't insist, then

here's how you can develop from that into a higher octave of that

same person. You have the note of C, way down in the basement, and then higher and higher and higher and higher, and you keep coming back to C or D, coming back to D, and so on. And so it is that you, as you are, have many dimensions, many octaves that you can reach. Each one of them will be you, even though, in some ways it will be unrecognizably you, but you will know that it's you. Other people may not. Other people. People may say, after you've been meditating for many years.

My how you've changed. You will have changed a lot, but there will still be the same you,

and like the popular song, there can never, ever be another you,

because in all time, in all infinity, there is only that one you just as there's only one thumbprint on this planet, but there's that uniqueness that will be so for all the billions of galaxies and all the billions of eons of time that you will be manifested, but you will find that the higher and higher octaves always are still the same. You, it was such an interesting experience. I mentioned this to you when I was working on my autobiography. It was really such an intriguing experience, more than usual, because I had to really put myself back in the consciousness of when I was four years old, three years old, et cetera. And it was so interesting to look at pictures of myself, for example, and look at the eyes of that little four year old, or even two year old, and see he was the same old fellow. No, not really different, very different in some ways. If you had known me at the age of 20 and known me now, you'd say, My what a different person. But underneath it all, it's the same person reacting in different ways. So remember that there isn't anything that you can't change in your personality. Even if the change won't be radical, it will be in the same context, but it will be refined to the point where it becomes a pure and beautiful expression of the divine, and don't cling. This is the whole story of the Bhagavad Gita, isn't it, where Arjuna is saying that he doesn't want to kill these people in battle because they're his own flesh and blood. And the spiritual meaning, the true meaning of that passage, is that the ego says, I don't want to get rid of these qualities because they're me, and if I kill them, this will be a sin. It'll be destroying part of my nature. Sure, I know I'm selfish, but gosh, I am selfish, and so like that poem of Edna St Vincent Millay,

I burn my candle at both ends. It will not last the night, but Oh, my foes and ah, my friends, it gives a lovely light.

Well,

this is rationalization, if, in fact, she means what everybody else means by burning your candle at both ends. The light may be there, but it's not lovely. It means burning your candle at the bottom of the spine as well as the top of the spine, I suppose. And what she's thinking is that I might as well affirm whatever I am gloriously, whether I'm selfish, whether I'm sensual, whether I'm egotistical, whether I have all these negative attitudes. Sure, you may not like me, but this is what I am, and I will affirm it. We've had a lot of that kind of psychology thrown at us in this century so much that we really need to offset it with something else. Think of the writing of Jean Paul Sartre, who was looked up to by a lot of people, although I think if Satan incarnated to write books, it was Jean Paul Sartre, because the kind of things that he wrote were incredibly low he was saying, but it's basically very much in keeping with modern psychology, and much of what he said is true. You can't get by with saying bad things if you don't say good things too. How are you going to win anybody if everything that you say is preposterous? So what he does is start out by saying, You got to be true to yourself. And you sit there and mutter, yeah, yeah. And then he says, Don't let anybody else influence you. Yeah, yeah, that's right.

Then he goes on and says, and that means that if you're evil, then glory in your evil. His hero, Orestes, in the play, kills his mother, Clytemnestra, then comes out and declares to the country folk, you see me, men of Argos, a free man, I have at last done something of my own will, not something influenced by the morality of my society. And never mind that it was something like killing my mother. You may think it's wrong, but for me, it was my only creative act in my whole life, and when he carries his philosophy to such a preposterous extent, then you begin to stop saying, yeah, yeah. Unless you've been really hooked, there's something wrong with that kind of teaching. He wrote a book called Saint Genet. Why was Saint Genet a saint? Well, let's first of all say why was Saint Why was Genet. Genet. Genet was, well, what was he? A male prostitute, a thief, a condemned criminal, all the sort of basic things that we would tend to put down. Why was he a saint? Then he talked of him as being just as much a saint as Saint Avila, Saint, uh.

St Teresa of Avila, St Francis. Why? Because he was true to himself. He admitted that he was a criminal. He wrote books about it. He gloried in it. He told the world this is what he was. He had no shame in the matter. And he was so completely self integrated that

this, of course, assumes that there is no God and that each of us is a particular cussed self that has to be fulfilled. But Master gave us the key. He said that the key is happiness. I think if we had asked Saint Genet, do you experience ecstasy?

No matter what he answered, I think we would have had to say that the chances are slim.

Do they exist? Possibly so, because sometimes people carry over a very great mountain of good karma, and they have to put out a great deal of bad karma before they offset it. That's why it's not always that easy to tell. But if you look at the overall picture, you will find that people who live low lives experience very little happiness and a great deal of pain, and sooner or later, everybody who lives in the right way will find himself becoming happier and happier. One of the fallacies that we are faced with in our age is that so many people present theories as if they were reality. In fact, it's almost

the reason why Western philosophy is not geared to modern life, is not geared particularly to the findings of science, because it's all theoretical, and they're willing to fight each other on the basis of theory.

Science is not theoretical. Science is always saying, Well, it's an interesting theory, but let's prove it. And if they find something that is provable but is totally in conflict with every imaginable theory, as they sometimes do, they find realities in nature that confound reason, they instantly say, even regretfully, we have to go with what we experience. We can't go with the theory. And so, as an example that I've often used the the discovery of science that light is two contradictory things. It's both a particle and a wave, a particle moves, a wave doesn't move. The two can't be the same, and yet they are the same. Science doesn't say, therefore they aren't the same, because they can't be. Science says, well, they are, therefore we have yet to find out how it's possible. But they'll take the experience. Indian philosophy is not a philosophy in the sense of the original meaning, which is love of wisdom. It is wisdom, which is to say it's based in experience, not theory. And Indian philosophy is much better geared to Western, modern Western understanding, and particularly that aspect of modern Western understanding, which has been born of science, because it's experiential. It says, Try it and find out for yourself. And it points out those things which work are going to be demonstrable to yourself. You will feel happier. You will feel more in tune. You will feel many, many ways. You will discover in your life that it's working, whereas in the West, it doesn't really matter whether it works or not, because there's no proof offered even suggested. The only proof suggested is that when you die, you'll find out that you did the right thing, which is a little rather slim pickings, in my opinion. How many people get come back to tell us

they made it the the experiential approach of knowing how it really works, rather than a theory about how it might work. And I've seen a lot of people hotly defend theories in the west and not stepping back to see, well, is it so it's a part of our heritage. It's our way of thinking, and it doesn't stand up any longer to the realities of the world that we've discovered, that we've uncovered, it doesn't stand up, and that's why we have this tremendous division between morality and scientific discovery, which, if we don't close, is likely to blast us into non existence as a planet. We've got to understand the importance of coming up into a level of attitude and understanding that will enable us to cope with those new realities that we've discovered. Will we? I'm convinced we will. But will it be easy? You know damn well, it won't. It never is change isn't easy. Well, the important point then to remember is that whatever attitude you hold is not you. It's merely an expression of something deeper that can take on any attitudes. Krishnas answer to Arjuna was the right one when he said he put it in a broader context. He said nobody who dies remains.

Dead, he goes on into other lives. Life keeps going, and he'll be reborn in other forms and so on. What he was talking about is that no this is the inner and truer meaning of the Bhagavad Gita, that no quality is killed when you overcome it, it's transformed into a new kind of energy. You don't kill your energy by overcoming selfishness. Many people think that if they can't be free to express themselves in the ways they're accustomed to, that they'll just wilt and die. Some people do because they're only suppressing but if they allow themselves an outlet, they can turn that same energy into something else, which will be

the same energy, yes, but it will be a totally new expression, an example of that that was a very interesting one to me, was many years ago, in 1955 I went to Switzerland, and I've told many of you this story before

and I spent, we had, what, $12.50

allowance at the time, or was it $20 a month? Not much, but at any rate, that's all we had. And I, I was saving this up for my trip to

Europe, and I bought friends presents for all my friends. But toward the end, I saw a beautiful statue of the Virgin Mary and child carved out of wood. And I thought, Oh, I'd love to get that. And I just that's about all I had left. And I thought, yes, let me do that. And then I thought, no, wait a minute, I haven't bought a present for Daya, Mata, and I'd love to give her this. So I bought it and satisfied my desire of acquisition, but I bought it for her, which meant that it was not selfishness, but selfishness transformed. I acquired it, but didn't have to own it. And so I gave it to her, and I discovered over a period of time that it gave me a lot more pleasure than if it had been in my room, where I probably wouldn't have looked at it again, but every time I'd visit her, there it was, and it was a renewed pleasure every time, plus there was this sense of the joy of getting, but not the sort of limitation of getting, and the sort of release that comes when you give. And not only that, but divine mother just a very two or three years ago or so, gave me an even nicer carving of exactly the same thing, which is up in the up in the show display case there. So it shows that God doesn't, doesn't

take anything from you if you give it to him, which is what, essentially, I was doing, nothing that you give up if you give it to him,

is really a loss. In our day and age. There's been a great campaign, and I don't suppose many of you lived through it, but it probably came out with Lady Chatterley's Lover. It may have come sooner, but that was certainly one of the big waves in the little pond of human consciousness, and they banned it in Boston, which was the surest way of getting a book success. And then there was this big court case, and more and more people began to talk in terms of artistic and poetic license, that we, in the name of artistry, have to be free to be able to express what we want to express, and not to be told by anybody else what we should do. Well, I'm not going to argue that point particularly, I must say it,

it's very offensive to me to be reading a perfectly pleasant story and suddenly have some heavy scene thrown at me that I think ought to be confined to the privacy of their bedrooms, but nevertheless, if they want to do it, it's their business. I just put the book down.

However, it's a very interesting thing in that context to consider the early years of Islam. They weren't allowed to depict anything in nature. Now you tell me what could be a heavier restriction than that on the visual arts,

and yet it was one of the most productive periods in artistic history. That's when they got all those wonderful geometric shapes, all those wonderful the Taj Mahal and so on. It was, it was a period of tremendous flourishing. And there's another period in literary history that's very interesting that way too. Back in the 16th century, the noblemen of France were always out there fighting wars and coming home with Gore all over their arms, if they came home at all. And after a century of this, or whatever it was, the women just got fed up with it all. And they said, listen, we're tired of this nonsense. And so they went to the opposite extreme. They created a very rigid code of behavior and conversation, and it found it.

Way into literature. And in fact, it finally led Moliere to write a beautiful farce called Les precis redicules. Les preciuze Was the

precious ones. In other words, this was the way they were so exquisite they couldn't talk about a chair, for example, this was two base you talk about a commodity of conversation, and

at least Moliere panned it this way. It probably was a little bit exaggerated. But the thing is that during that period when it was still fresh and hadn't just become absolutely absurd, was the highest period of French literature. They they were so restricted that their energy went in one direction. You get a lot more power from a hose than you do from just taking the hose off and turning on the tap, because it's channeled. And you you do indeed find that if you can channel your energies in a higher way, and not just sort of let them go any old way, then you have a great deal more power to do whatever you want. Now I said I don't want to get into it deeply, because I that there are many, many ramifications to it. Who is going to set what rules for whom?

I don't mean to do it that way, but I do want to talk about it from the importance of our setting certain rules for ourselves, of not imagining that we can do anything and everything and be as free as we can be if we can be somewhat disciplined and direct that energy In a higher way. There was that, that delightful little comic book that I saw, if you can call it a comic book. It was love affair between a line and a dot, and the line fell in love with a dot and tried to attract the.by

bending itself into all sorts of different shapes. And it became a squiggle, and it became just like this, and the dot paid no attention. And finally, the line decided that it would discipline itself. Instead of just squiggling, it began moving itself in beautiful geometric shapes and so on. And finally, the dot fell in love with the line. And the moral of the story was that to the vector, belong the spoils. But

if we want to grow spiritually, then a certain amount of self discipline is necessary, and we have to accept that there are certain things that we can't do it all at once. We have to do certain things at a time. We have to take everything in its time, and we have to recognize that there isn't a single aspect of our personality that can't be transformed into something higher.

This is particularly true for people who are good.

It's odd, isn't it, but Jesus, remember how he went to the publicans and so on, and people said, Why do you eat with them? And he talked about the good people as not really needing him. In other words, they didn't, they weren't aware of their need for him. I've seen this with basically moral and good people that very often they feel perfectly satisfied. I mentioned to my father one time something about how people aren't happy. He said, I'm perfectly happy. And in his context, he was he couldn't imagine anything more. And in my context, he wasn't, because it was just nothing.

The happiness is being able to play cribbage in the evening and go to the symphony and and sit there with growing deafness, listening to friends as long as you can. But it was not

I remember the last year of his life a man of great courage. He was but he was just he would weep. He was so frustrated with a life that he built that was gradually falling apart. He couldn't see, he couldn't hear, he couldn't taste, he couldn't feel, he'd fall down and couldn't get up. Somebody would have to find him and pick him up. And the poor man he had, unfortunately, in a way, he had his mind perfectly clear, and so he was aware of all this, but he had no control, and his happiness was based on something that was falling apart, and he had nothing to replace it with, and so with all his courage, he was just weeping like a child. Well, we need to understand that any level that we have can be higher until it's completely one with God. And if we want to work on the right attitudes, then we must have the first attitude of thinking, maybe I can do better. Maybe I'm not perfect, maybe I can learn. An attitude of learning is possibly the most fundamental attitude of all that. What can I learn from this situation? I have found it so helpful to listen to people, never to respond.

I in the consciousness of well, I know that, but listen, they may have something to tell me. Yes, I've been on the path 36 years. They may not even be on the path yet, but they've learned things that I haven't learned. Nobody can learn it all. Listen, always be willing to learn from any situation. That doesn't mean that you go to the extent of thinking that everybody has something to teach you. Many of them, frankly, have nothing to teach you. Many of them are too dull to learn to share anything. But you don't need to have an egotistical attitude about it. You still need to be open, because I've seen that the moment that I write somebody off as too stupid to help me in any way, God uses that person to teach me,

and so I've learned to be very sort of just waiting and listening, always be willing, but we don't want to take it to the extreme that we find in so many Christian books and practices of just assuming the worst about yourself. In other words, what always calling yourself a sinner, you're always, always sort of criticizing yourself for being bad. That's not humility. That's another and perhaps even more exaggerated form of ego, because it's thinking of yourself. Humility isn't debasing yourself. It's forgetting yourself. It's being open to a larger reality. And so anybody who goes around calling himself a sinner all the time is depriving himself of the chance to grow more than that. He's giving giving himself an excuse not to because if you really are a sinner, then why not be yourself like Genet?

Why not go ahead and sin? Have fun doing it. But the truth of it is that you are the ever perfect spirit, and you must claim that reality. That's why master used to say that the greatest sin is to call yourself a sinner. Now here is where intuition is needed, because Jesus himself said that we should say that we're sinners. Is master taking issue with Jesus? Not at all.

It's perfectly good to say that you're a sinner, as long as you don't make that your reality, as long as you use that thought in order to admit the possibility of being wrong so that you can correct yourself.

But I remember a volleyball game I was playing years ago, and I was not very apt, if that's the word,

not very apt at this game, and

I kept making the sort of mistakes that cause your sign to lose points. And

each time I said, I'm sorry, my fault. And finally, one of my teammates said, your humility is inspiring, but when will you reform?

And so what we need to do is use that

humility, that self recognition, whatever it is, not to affirm, but to discard, to say, All right, if it's wrong, then I want to change. And we can only change if we know that we aren't sinners. We can only change if we know that we aren't selfish. Aren't any of these things that are limiting us. We are manifesting those qualities that's altogether different from being those qualities you have been everything. But are you in the least bit interested in this day and age, in being a pirate, let's say, or a highway robber or a murderer? I would like to think that nobody in this room would even dream of such a thing.

You've been that, but you aren't. But what you are now, you won't be in the future, recognize your infinite capacity to change, and the first quality that you need in order to change that is an attitude of always being open to learn, always being open to see whether you might be wrong and that some other way might be better, and never at any time. This is what I think, is the worst thing about growing old that not everybody. I've seen some people in their 80s and 90s who were always open and always fresh and young in spirit, but I've seen some people of 15 who are already ossified. And I'm talking of that as the definition of old age, and it in most people's lives becomes a sort of creeping paralysis that grows through the years until the time they reach the age of 4050,

you can't even talk to them, because they've only got their own ideas and their own interests. They can't come out of those things for anything. Well, you don't want to be like that. People like that just sort of gradually die on the vine, there's just no life left in them. That's why old people are usually so uninteresting to talk with, and why some old people are such a joy to talk with, because they've always gone on living and they're always there listening to you, instead of sitting there in their wheelchairs pontificating on how the world would be read around.

If they were running it still, and it gets so boring to hear that kind of thing. But if you really have this learning attitude of, what can I gain so that you hear everything that's coming to you? Anybody who talks listen if they're out to tell you how wrong you are, be willing to listen.

Maybe they're right, maybe they're wrong. Even if they're wrong, maybe they have something in their argument on their side. Be willing to learn. Be willing to grow. That's the first thing. The next attitude that is very essential for spiritual growth, and

just about as essential, is willingness

we have within each of us a life or yes saying principle and a death or no saying principle. And in fact, this is really where we are, sort of midway between the two, or not to feel that we're always in the same place, if not midway, still somewhere between the two,

because even physiologically, we have the base of the spine, is that part of our nature from which we have grown, and the spiritual eye is that part of our nature to which we're growing. And

it's a very

it's within every one of us, there is this conflict. In some people, the conflict is more weighted toward the lower. In some people more weighted toward the higher. And you can see that there are some people who, almost as a deliberate policy, seem to be descending the scale.

They're going back. Their solution to every problem is to be less conscious, not more conscious, like some woman whose husband died, and somebody asked, how is she taking it? And his friend said, Oh, she's taking it beautifully. She's taking drugs and and doesn't even know what happened. She's so stoned.

I don't call that a solution, but the mind proposes it as a solution. That story in the path where I mentioned the time I was in love with Sue, and it turned out she was married, and it was a big crisis and trauma for me. That evening, I drank six daiquiris in six minutes.

This no longer means anything to me. But from your laughter, I assume that my memory is valid, that it was a lot.

I passed out,

woke up after some 12 hours with the same sorrow plus a hangover, it didn't help me at all. And so what I've seen is that people who try to escape by being less aware,

and this is a very common kind of reply to anything, whether it's extreme, like getting drunk, suicide, which is even more extreme, or just an attitude of one unwillingness, which is a kind of death too, that when somebody

is when something's happening that you don't like, you sort of wish it weren't happening, but it is happening.

This experience is worth repeating too, that I mentioned in the path when I was giving classes in the Bay Area and in Sacramento, and every night a different city, a different class, and I had hundreds of students, and I was, I was having to work so hard because I had to pay off the the farm, I mean, the retreat buildings and so on, and it was a big, a big crisis in my life, because I had committed myself to a lot more than I could reasonably expect to afford, and divine mother sent me the necessary students. So I always was able to meet my

obligations by the end of the month, although sometimes very barely. But

I resented the need. I thought Divine Mother, I didn't I've never wanted money, and why? Why do I have to earn so much? And I just felt that I was being sucked into materialism. I discovered later that materialism isn't

what you get, but it's being attached to it. I wasn't earning it for myself. I was earning it to make this place possible for all of you. So it wasn't materialism, but it was definitely matter. And having to deal with matter in this way was very, very much of a strain. I didn't have all these people helping me now. Now I ask Karin for a cup of coffee, and there it is. Then I not only had to do all my own cooking, but

writing letters and sending out books and going to these classes and setting up the chairs and everything. And I just reached the point where I was very tired, very tired. And I remember going down to my parents' house and my.

Mother took one look at me, and she said, You've got to give up your class tonight. You can't, you can't punish yourself like this. And I said, Well, how am I going to tell these students I don't know where they live? I mean, I can't reach them like that. Some of them have phones. Many don't. And so I just felt that I couldn't get just not come. So I went to my room and I lay down on the bed. I had a half an hour free. And instead of going to sleep, which I would have liked to do,

instantly, my mind began to dwell on all the things that I that were making me so exhausted. I mean, really exhausted. And I would think of those phone calls, two phones constantly ringing, and and just that day, some lady had phoned me and talked for an hour to tell me not to work so hard. And

I

my first thought, as soon as I remembered that and thought of all those phone calls, was Oh no. And as soon as I thought no, I thought, well, what's the use of saying No, and it's a fact in your life say yes. And so I said yes, and all of a sudden, when I accepted those phone calls as something necessary and therefore good, I felt a certain amount of energy coming back to me. I felt a little better, but I still couldn't get to sleep, and I started thinking about all those letters that I kept getting, oh no. And immediately I thought, Yes, why not? These people need help, and it's a good thing, and you've made this stupid choice yourself, so you might as well like it.

And and so I said yes, and as soon as I said, Yes, all this energy which I had been using to sort of keep that door closed and keep those foes from rushing in and invading me, invading my privacy, suddenly I didn't need to push on that door anymore. I opened the door and said, welcome. And all this pushing away energy came back to me. Then I thought of all those classes and this class that I had to give that night. And again, the same thing happened. In fact, the whole half hour, I suddenly discovered two things, one, that the half hour I'd set aside for sleep had vanished, and two, that I felt absolutely recharged, that all this energy I'd been pushing out that was making me so tired was mine again. And I went and I gave that class, and it was on energization, and it was one of the best classes I've ever given, and I felt so charged with energy I couldn't get to sleep till two that night, not from insomnia, just because I didn't even want to go to bed. But I've seen through that experience and similar ones, how important that teaching of masters was, you remember that little story in the path when he saw me downstairs one time and he said, Hello, how are you Walter? And I said, Well, he said, That's good.

Willingness was something, perhaps more than anything else, that he kept trying to drill into us and those who wouldn't go along with the with the show, he just didn't bother with. But those who were willing, he'd give them more. You might think, Well, God, then the answer is not to be willing.

But in fact, what happened was that you found you always had the energy to do what you had to do, and do it joyfully.

I was meditating on master

recently, as I always do, but thinking that I was master, identifying myself with him, and I felt this tremendous surge of energy up here. I could feel that his whole consciousness was this directed, and that's how we need to be. He said that you can advance very quickly spiritually, if you'll always keep your mind here at the point between the eyebrows. But what I felt from him was not a static holding, but just a creative constant surge toward that point. And if you if you learn, if you really are a disciple. A disciple doesn't mean somebody who is always standing there, shuffling his feet and looking at the floor and saying Yes, Master like this.

A disciple is somebody who says yes to life instead of No, who's out there, willing to learn and to be disciplined by life.

Be willing to take what he needs to take in order to grow. And those people who draw the line, and they're most people, let's face it, and there are times when probably all of us do this. I remember there was one time when I just didn't want to be disciplined anymore, and I lay down on my bed, closed all the curtains, took my clothes off, pulled out a volume of Shakespeare and just reveled in all his beautiful poetry. Nothing wrong with that, but it was at the same time a certain private rebellion at all this spiritual discipline. And that part wasn't good.

If we can understand that the more you are willing, the more.

Energy you have. Remember that principle that Master said, the greater the will or willingness, the greater the flow of energy and the tendency to say no is always there.

It's always something you've got. This is the battle, basically the fight between the yes saying principle and the no saying principle. If you can learn in some way to say yes to life,

this was perhaps in some ways, the most beautiful example of St Francis. He would go from house to house before he earned the popularity that made people serve Him, and when they were still thinking of him as a beggar who renounced his patrimony. He would go from house to house asking for whatever their garbage held, and that's all they'd give him. And he'd have a little pail with bits of scraps of fat and meat and bone and

discarded garbage from the table. And what would be your thought on seeing this. Well, let me not make it personal, but

I suspect that there are many people who would say, God, I've given up everything for you. Do you have to give me this in return?

What did he say? He treated as if it was a banquet. He said, Thank you, God, for this wonderful meal you've given me. He was so incredibly positive. The bishop was said something about him as being a

unrefined, uneducated man of no taste, and why would anybody listen to him? And he was putting him down because everybody was going to St Francis, not to the bishop, obviously. But anyway, what was st Francis's reply? Or let us imagine what the bishop's reply might have been if he'd been in a similar situation. You think that? But look, they're all coming to me, aren't they? Like this?

A lot of people would answer like that. St Francis went and prostrated himself joyfully before the bishop and said, Thank you for telling the truth.

And it was beautiful. And it doesn't mean that he accepted that he was a man of this, this type, so much as that he didn't care that. It didn't matter, of course, we're all rubbish before the infinite glory of God. And so because he was looking at that, you know, in the light of God, even sunlight looks dark.

And so in the light of God, no human quality is worth anything. And if the bishop wanted to reinforce that knowledge, why not thank him for it, instead of thinking, Yeah, but gee, I didn't do all that badly. You know, people are always saying, You tell them that they've got a fault, yeah, but I'm not always like that or Yeah, but I've got this virtue. Why not? In fact, it's a beautiful thing, and it's a little self contradictory, until you understand it, and then it's not at all to say that none of my qualities are worth anything. This isn't negative thinking. If you're putting it in the context of the blazing light of the sun, if you're putting it in a human context that you can you'll very soon develop a sort of a hang dog expression. But if you're recognizing that as the only reality, then there isn't anything that you are that's worth, anything we don't have any. What are human virtues? They're so petty. This little body trying to claim that, Jay, I remember my one time, when I was a little child, I said to my mother, somebody gave me some chocolate and I thanked him. That was nice of me, wasn't it? Mother said it wasn't nice at all. It was what you should have done.

We should be good.

We should we absolutely should be saints. For people to get proud because they're becoming spiritual is

perhaps the greatest insult to their aspiration. You have no right to be proud of what you ought to be. Rather you should be ashamed that all these saints have made it and here you're still swallowing in the mud.

It's high time for heaven's sake.

I remember Sri Yukteswar when when

Master was talking about how few disciples he had, and Sri Yukteswar said that. I mean, Master said, Sri Yukteswar didn't even want disciples. And I said, that must be, because he wasn't coming back anymore. Didn't want to take on more responsibilities that he couldn't fulfill. And Master said, That's right, he had a few stragglers this time. That's all so maybe we're all stragglers. Maybe all the disciples of master have gotten out, and we're just sort of the last,

sort of scraping the bottom of the barrel.

There's really absolutely no room for pride on the spiritual path, or as you grow rather, there should be a sense of satisfaction, yes, because you're bound to become happy as you grow in these qualities, but it's all God. So a willingness means.

Is to offer yourself up wholly to him and not have any thing held back, so that when you're asked to do something, I remember this lovely story, and again, it's in the path when we had the Christmas banquet at Mount Washington. And it was a very the one time in the year that and Master's birthday both. It was the one time in the year when we used

to it was just our family thing. The public wasn't invited. Master was always with the public, but this was for us, and we had little place cards set in front of our places and so on. And it was a very wonderful thing. It's not that easy to be intimate with 130 people or so, but it was very intimate in in that way, because Master would talk to us as you heard him talk in that birthday talk. It was not a public talk. It was very different. Well, this particular year, somebody got people began to get the idea, I don't know how that this was sort of free for them, too, for anybody who wanted to come, like a public satsang or something. And so quite a lot of people came, and there they were, guests on our doorstep at the we hadn't for a year, we hadn't had anything like this. What would be the normal reaction? I don't even have to spell it out, but the disciples were all eagerly vying with each other for the privilege of giving up their seats. And when Master heard about that, he said,

Ah, these are the things that please me

when you want to when you're willing to do that, which will serve God, when you're willing to give up your own desires, when you're willing to put yourself out that extra bit, when you're willing to say yes instead of no, that is more pleasing to God than sitting there in so called Samadhi for 10 hours a day, because you won't get Samadhi if you don't have that attitude, attitude. Attitude. A lot of people think that the spiritual path is seeing visions and hearing voices and having all sorts of wonderful phenomena, but basically the spiritual path is right attitude. And from that right attitude, certainly visions and experiences and graces and so un come, most certainly, but without the right attitude, even if they do come, they won't stay, and they are by no means the definition of your own spiritual value. People on the path, in fact, rise quite high repeatedly before they finally rise and stay there.

There was one woman who came to Satsang in Boston, when Master was there,

and

her very first experience, and she saw the 1000 petaled lotus, and she could see through the walls, and see light everywhere, and everything was made of that light. And the sort of thing that the average Yogi would give quite a lot to have. She never came back. It seemed so ordinary to her, because it happened so quickly that she thought, Oh, well. So it didn't occur to her. When I was new at Mount Washington, I used to get very discouraged, because Master said it's because I used to have so many doubts in past lives, those things were hidden from me and other disciples would have all sorts of visions and phenomena and expansions of consciousness, and wonderful things happen to them spiritually, as far as phenomena go. And yet I would be very envious, but I would see, after a period of time, I began to see that these people who didn't have right attitude were leaving,

and they lost all of it, and it's as if God gave them those things to try to hold on to them.

It not the experience that that defines what you're gaining. It's how you're changing as a person. Had they also had the right attitude, it would have been different, but too often there was just just no wish. What's the next thing to think about? Willingness is a very important one. I remember with with

Master that those who said yes when he asked them, were the

were the ones who grew spiritually, yeah,

but I don't know that just saying yes is enough.

I think that we have to say yes with understanding. He talked of some of his disciples who used to run around like chicken with their heads cut off. I think he was referring to people with a wonderful attitude of willingness, but they would suddenly go in circles because he said it, and wouldn't stop to think, well, what does he mean? What's he trying to say? What's behind it? And we have to say, yes, but with discrimination, we have to sort of understand, as he also said, you have to be practical in your idealism,

and so try.

To understand what what it is have an attitude. For example, there are many things that that

come your way on the path that you don't understand, and to say yes to those things is inadequate. What is it you're saying yes to? You

become blind and rather dulled in your discrimination, if you're just instinctively and automatically saying yes, it's fine when it's not, you've got to have a good reason for saying yes, yes, because you're in love with God and that's all that matters. Fine. Like that, that devotee in India that I that I knew, who, no matter what you said, he would just blissfully smile and say, Guru Guru.

Well, this was understanding, even if you didn't know what I was talking about. I think he probably did, but it just didn't matter to him. It was all God, all God, all Guru, Guru. That's fine, but people who

say yes because you've asked them to do something and rush out to do it before they even know what it is they're doing. They're likely to drop off a cliff or something. We need to have an ability to if you don't understand,

say yes, provisionally, that is to say, I'm sure something good will come of it, but I don't know what. Yet,

there must always be an openness to the good, but a willingness to question. I think that's been very helpful for me in teaching Master's teachings, that instead of just quoting what he said, I didn't write the path until I'd meditated on everything that he said, until I felt I understand it, at least on understood it on at least some level. No doubt there are higher dimensions, but I don't want to repeat anything that he says, If I haven't experienced it myself, if somebody asks me, is there a god?

I'm not going to answer him, yes, there is, because

I haven't seen God yet.

I'll answer him that everything that I've experienced leads me to believe it, but I'll talk from what I know, rather than saying yes there is when I don't know or saying yes to something that I'm told to do, because when I don't understand, do it as well as I can sure. I can't be waiting 25 years to fulfill a command to do something tomorrow, but don't, don't have that reservation of I'm still trying to understand. But the trouble with many people is that they have an instinctive in their wish to not be too blind in saying yes they have it, and in their wish to be honest, they have a tendency to say no, which is almost as if to say that they think you're being a fraud, until you prove that you aren't. They think that you're doing something with wrong motive, until you finally justify yourself enough to them to prove that you're not. Well, such people, at least in my position, I don't even bother answering if they like what I'm doing fine, and if they don't, fine, I'm just I think I've done enough to justify my own sincerity, but this should be so in your life with one another, also that you don't have to be always defending yourself, but also in your attitude toward others, you don't have to be making a big issue of it if you don't understand, don't assume the Worst and don't affirm a best that you don't recognize, but be open, be willing, and then wait for whatever understanding comes this is this is right attitude. And I've been through, as you know, many, many years of practice on the path, and I've seen a great many people who either rise or fall just because of this one point

that they assume the best or they assume the worst, and those who assume the best blindly and affirm it without understanding it, never go beyond assumption. But those who assume the worst, or those who are always ready to gripe and criticize, this is the normal human attitude. I've seen this in the Bhagavad Gita. Remember what Krishna says to you who have overcome the carping spirit. I reveal these truths. And I used to see that Master would keep those around him, not because they were yes men. He didn't look for yes men, but those who were open, who could understand and appreciate you're going to be able to pour milk much more satisfactorily into a bowl that is whole than into one that's a sieve.

And so a Master isn't going to waste time on somebody who doesn't ever understand. And no matter what you say, you're always trying to he's always being criticized. And he doesn't want yes men, but he wants people who are enough his friend to appreciate what he's giving them on his level, because he's certainly our friend. He's giving us whatever he can, and if we just take this as ours, you know, snatch it out.

Of his hand, then that's not love.

So the I saw that this attitude with Master that

and I had to go through both. I used to see some disciples, like marinalini, for example, who were always positive. I don't think she ever had to go through any of these things. And I honor her for it. I had to go through a lot. Fortunately, every time I crashed, I landed on my feet,

but I had to go through lots of questioning and lots of doubting, and it was just my particular cross, in a way. I think that's one thing that if I'm a good teacher, makes me a good teacher, that there isn't a doubt that others have that I haven't anticipated.

I've had them all, and thus I can answer but the other side of it is that I noticed that when I could get out of that, and what always pulled me out of it was love. Remember that time in that I wrote about in 29 palms when I went through this, this real crisis of faith, I knew that master was my guru. I didn't doubt that, but I didn't know what a guru was.

I knew that he was wise, but I didn't know how wise some of the mistakes that had crept in, I learned later, it was from editors,

or sometimes it was because he had a deadline to meet and didn't write it carefully enough or something. But there were so many contradictions in the things that I was trying to edit for him, and I began to think, well, doesn't he? Can he make up his mind?

Really? I if you read those old magazine articles. You may go through this too.

I've come to understand on a much deeper level and appreciate very deeply. But at that time, I was going through quite a quite a

test, and

with some reason, I think

master had all the wisdom in the world, but he didn't always express himself from that level.

He was just sometimes talking casually, and he would tentatively put out a thought that was sort of on other people's wavelength, which if he had rethought it and tried to bring in the whole picture. Well, as an example, it was partly his own sheer generosity, there was some

man who sort of was wandering around in long sackcloth robe, and he came to Mount Washington because one of the disciples had met him, and just thought, oh, he must be a Christ like person, because he's got long hair and a beard and wears sackcloth. And he was sitting there in the chapel. Of course, he was nothing spiritually. He was just a very ordinary person, but master was there with him and all of us. Master didn't show him up. Master spoke about the things that he did. He said that he never will cut a fruit with metal because it preserves more of the vitamins when he cuts it with a wooden knife. And Master said this without at all saying that it was really rather a silly thing to base your whole life on, but he was so generous that if this is what he had to say, then it was good. Let it be so you see that a broader understanding, saw master in a context that could include a great deal of relative nonsense, and didn't always have to talk from a cosmic level. But you as a beginner think that, oh, he said this. It must be absolute, like Master tapping on wood in that thing and saying, I'm a little bit superstitious. Oh, he's not superstitious. He was just willing to say, you know, but people who've never,

who don't know, they think, oh, Master's superstitious, therefore it's good to be

superstitious. You know, it was a very great deal more relaxed. But what helped me out of it was really what you can hear in that talk, that he could make mistakes in what he said, but he was so absolutely lovable.

Cute was the word I used, and that's in a way, right? But he was so lovable. He was so when you it was love that pulled me out of that, that I saw that he was just our friend. And if he knew everything or didn't know everything, was absolutely not the point. I didn't have to weigh it all to find out.

And then I came to find out that really, he had everything that I was looking for. And of course, the more I've grown on the path, the more I see that he was coming from a cosmic level. But my experience at that point didn't help me to understand that. What pulled me out of it was that feeling of love. And I found that when I was that open, that then I was just totally with him. And when I started weighing it like this, suddenly I'd find that I wasn't with him. I didn't know how to get with him. It was just an openness that somehow worked. Well, this is how we knew.

To be not just toward him, but toward everybody. And this is how I saw him with people who were quite absurd.

I remember this one woman who used to come and talk and talk and talk. I remember once how in exasperation he said she's garrulity itself.

He Yes, and yet, when he was with her, he had absolute respect, absolute openness. He was that way to us,

and that's what helped us to learn how to be that way toward him, this attitude of openness, of saying yes, of including when you have that kind of attitude, then you find that things start to go well. He was so marvelous, because he could always find something to appreciate in others. He never sat there grumbling about people. There was always something

upbeat that he had to say or he didn't say. That was another wonderful thing that I heard Daya Mata say about sister, gyanamata, that in all the years, 20 years or so that I've known her, I've never known her once to criticize anybody.

I can't say that, but what a wonderful quality

this kind of openness is what really happens is that it changes you. Because here we're trying to get all our energy moving in a positive way, then the carping spirit comes in and it pulls our energy down. We're the ones who suffer. You may think that, well, yeah, but I want to be discriminating.

I don't want to see see a false golden aura around things that are really essentially dark.

That's certainly true, but you don't have to waste your time discriminating about everything that doesn't concern

you. What you need to discriminate about, mostly is your own self. How do I grow? And do you when you see a fault in yourself? Say, yeah, like this, don't you rather tend to make excuses for it.

If you want to criticize, criticize yourself and then don't criticize.

Rather just say, well, how can I change? Don't do what most people do, which is to try to pretend that that's not a fault. How often I've heard people who are very willing to say, Oh yeah, I know everybody's got faults. Sure, I've got them too. So you say, Well, yeah, as a matter of fact, I wanted,

oh no, not that fault that, that one they don't have. They're not willing to see what they have. We want to work on what we have by offering it up to the divine. Don't cling, don't worship your failings.

And then, if we can have this attitude of love, love is what pulls us out of it. Discriminating doesn't do it. I've seen again and again, that people who

try to get out of delusion by staring at delusion all the time really only hypnotize themselves with that delusion. This is the difficulty with so much of the encounter group philosophy and the self accusation and so on, that people go through the same thing again and again and again. It almost becomes their pride. Look how honest I am. I can talk about these things, but they they hypnotize themselves with that people who who really want to grow don't think about that you you see, for instance, that you're selfish. Okay, so you've recognized this, but then you have to tell yourself, not, I'm so selfish. You don't do that. You say, Ah, but I have the divine spark in me that will enable me to become kind and unselfish generous. And so you put your energy in the positive way. Instead of dwelling on the darkness, dwell on the opposite light, the benefit in seeing your failings is so that you can concentrate on where to put the opposite energy in order to overcome that. You won't overcome

a tendency like selfishness by doing certain things,

you will overcome it by doing other things, do those things which will help you to overcome whatever quality in you is holding you back.

Love will be the most important thing of all, willingness, saying yes to life, loving, we don't get out of this world merely by hating the world.

Granted, there are higher worlds, but we've got to be able to be good students. And the good student isn't the one who hates 11th grade and can't wait to get to 12th grade.

When he's in 11th grade, he loves 11th grade, and that makes him worthy to go into the 12th grade.

So you don't

the.

Delusion has such a wonderful way of masquerading as good qualities, and I've seen many people who think that they are

showing spiritual qualities by hating everything here.

That's not true.

You have to love it in the right way. Love it as a gift of God. Love it the way St Francis loved that garbage that he had to eat. Love it in the way that everything that comes to you master used to say, and this is a very wonderful attitude to hold to what comes of itself, let it come

that doesn't mean only good things, anything, if it comes of itself, always be neutral. The right attitude, ultimately, for a devotee, is not to generate, not to whip up a sort of false sense of well being. It reminds me of that time when I there was one boy in our school in England who was much bigger than I. He was in a higher form, and he was a Jew and had escaped persecution in Germany. Maybe this added to an innately bully nature. I don't know. Maybe he was simply a bully anyway, but at any rate, he was, and everybody cowered before him. And he caught me upstairs one time alone, and he was really in for me, because I didn't cower. And so finding me alone, he was coming out of a room, and I was in the way. He said, get out of the way. And I I just didn't respond the way he thought I should, which was with cringing, backing away kind of attitude. So he pushed me, and I pushed him back, knowing full well that I'd be beaten up for my pains, but I wasn't going to allow anybody to pull that act on me no matter what happened. And so he took me and threw me to the floor and sat on me and started pounding away. And I was bleeding all over my lips and my nose and any he said, Do you give in? And I said no. And he kept pounding away and saying, do you give in? I kept saying no. And just at that point,

some upperclassmen came by. There were enough of them there to pull him off me,

and they were having a positive attitude. They said, Oh, nice, fair fight. And left the room.

Well, he finally got tired and quit, and from then on, he never beat me again, never threatened me again, because I wouldn't give in. If I had, he'd have made me his favorite whipping boast

a positive attitude in the face of negativity, is that a good thing? Ridiculous? We want to see things as they really are. We don't want to say yes to

to nonsense. But the basic attitude of all is in the midst of willingness, in the midst of having a good reason for being positive, which is to see that it's from God, not because somebody who's being angry is not really angry at all. He's basically a good guy. He may be, but that doesn't excuse the anger. A lot of people are just sort of putting a bunch of snow over over coal to make it look pretty. And that doesn't make it doesn't stop it from being coal.

The basic attitude, really then would be

to be even minded and cheerful.

In fact, that's the definition of yoga, isn't it, that you

overcome likes and dislikes. Or as Patanjali put it in the yogasastras, Yoga Sutras, yoga, citta Vritti, nirod Yoga is the neutralization of the vortices of feeling, and those vortices are both hatred and attraction, love, hate, likes, dislikes. Both are attractive. It might seem that hating energy is repulsive, but it isn't so. In fact, Master said that there are families that are always fighting. He said it's because they were enemies before drawn together by the magnet, magnetism of their hatred. And

you'll see that anything that you hate will draw to you just as much as anything

that you love, the important attitude is one of neutrality, but not apathy. And that's the hard one to learn, and that's why I put it in the context of cheerfulness, of saying yes to life, of being even minded, but cheerful

to be neutral, not in an apathetic way, but to say yes to whatever happens if people wish to like that, that lovely story that Vivekananda told about this wandering, naked sadhu in India who lived in a forest ashram and strayed a little bit beyond the forest into.

A town, he was sort of in ecstasy. And the village children seeing this naked man, ran after him, pelting him with stones. And he came home laughing happily. He said, We had such a good time today. The children were throwing stones. And it

didn't he didn't think, oh, it happened to me. It happened let it be God has so many ways of playing. Sometimes he puts me in a palace, sometimes he puts me in a hovel. Let it be Swami Ramdas told that delightful story about how he had been among devotees, and they had fed him lovingly and done so much for him. And then he took a train journey, and there was no place for him, and so he just curled on the floor. And it didn't matter. Finally, there were enough people to who

had left the train so that there was a little bit of a seat there for him to sit on. And he sat down, and some other man seeing him there, and assuming, sort of being accustomed to him being on the floor, said, get off that seat. And Ram Dass was, was he didn't mind at all. But at that moment, somebody else said, leave him there. And so Ram Dass said, Oh, and I'll stay. But

it was a wonderful attitude of just taking whatever God gives cheerfully, not apathetically, not with a sort of ho hum attitude, but it's what comes from God joyfully, let it come. And when you can overcome likes and dislikes in this way, you may say, Well, that's the supreme liking, okay? It's a liking that transcends this level of liking that is opposites. It's a liking of the soul to which there is no opposite. There is no opposite to the joy of the soul. There is an opposite to any human joy. Every human fulfillment is balanced by a human failure. Every human joy is balanced by human pain. This is simply the nature of Maya, and you cannot escape it. It's the reality of this world that it will always vary from rain to sunshine to rain to sunshine, and that's why a novel, a story, has to end when he finally gets the girl and they get married and live happily ever after and they hastily close the subject before the next day dawns with rolling pins and black eyes, and

it's always in and out, up and down. You can't get away from that, but you can get away from it if you have this joy inside, because there isn't any opposite to that joy. And once you live in that joy, everything is wonderful. Rolling pins are just as nice as apple pie. It doesn't matter. So we need to be even minded and cheerful in the thought of God. Just do everything that you have for him. Don't do it with any motive. And that's another thing that we should always keep in mind. And this is a basic attitude that is pointed out to us in the Bhagavad Gita

nishkama, karma,

action without desire for the fruits, action without motive. Do it because it's a good thing to do. Don't do it because you want to get something out of it. Be willing to accept and this is a very good discipline to go through that you imagine various results from whatever it is you're trying to do. And if there's any point at which you say, oh no no, not that I couldn't accept that, then

make yourself accepted. When I was learning to lecture, I had the usual nervousness, perhaps a little less, but I you can imagine, I mean, that first day that I had to lecture, Master hadn't been there for a long time, and then he was supposed to come, and at the last minute, said that he couldn't come, and I had to go down in his place. And I was 22 years old, and had been there about eight months or so, and

I had to give kriya afterwards. That was even worse.

And then I from then on, he had me lecturing. And I found that the thing that most made me nervous was the thought, the fear I should say that people would think me a fool, a very easy thought to have at that point, I found that

in five minutes, I'd said everything I had to say, and I was supposed to go on for a lot longer, but I found that the best cure for it was to say, okay, maybe I am a fool. So in that case, what does it matter if they find out?

And I found that then I could relax. It didn't matter anymore. Okay, so they know me as I am good for them, and you'll find that if you just accept whatever is, don't be afraid. Don't allow yourself if in your talking about motiveless action, that is to say, motive should be for God, that's a good motive, but not.

A selfish motive. Don't do it for what you'll get out of it. And if there's one thing that you find in your own mind is coming up as a wave of resistance, then mentally, try to put yourself in the position of accepting that. You'll find it's a very good discipline.

It'll help to make you strong on many, many levels, the things that you have an aversion to, mentally see yourself going through until you finally say, Yes, I could do it

and you'll be able to do it if you do it in God, death, disease, old age, hatred from others,

misunderstanding, all the things that people fear. None of these things are really that big. Once you face them, they're all mental, like the story of that, was it the Red Queen or the White Queen in Alistair the looking glass? Who? Because it was in the looking glass, who Red Queen?

No, not that one. But anyway, it may have been the Red Queen, because it's a world in the looking glass. Everything is backwards, including time. And so she saw that she was going to prick herself with a needle. Oh, and finally, she was quiet. Nah. Said, Well, why are you quiet? She said, Well, I pricked myself.

And so often, our anticipation is built up to a big thing where the reality is absolutely nothing that's true in a positive as well as a negative way. You think, oh, the Super Bowl. How wonderful in efforts over

after it's over, then what

right attitude means not to have selfish motive to be able to accept anything impartially and to accept joyfully in God,

in our life here, attitude is more important than anything else, and it's the one thing that all of you I've talked a lot about it, and therefore all of you work on it, work on it even more. It doesn't mean I'm saying it from a negative point of view. I'm very pleased with the attitude that I've seen here. I haven't seen such attitudes just about anywhere, but it's something that we can keep growing in until we reach that perfection, which is union with God. Perfect attitude, I don't think just as what is perfect attitude, absolute purity of heart.

And what is purity of heart? Jesus said, Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. He didn't see Blessed are those who see the spiritual eye. Hear om, have visions of me walking on clouds of gold. All of these things are great. You can't knock them.

But he said, Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God, and that's the quintessence of right attitude. Purity of heart means embracing all these things and more, just living only for and in God.

Okay. Thank you. You.