12/02/00 Conference Satsang

With

MAITREYA

Question: There has never in history been an election for President in the United States like this years. Can you comment on what is happening to the democratic process of election in the United States, and why?

Maitreya: Probably everyone knows by now that it has been around a month since the United States presidential election. Never in the history of the United States have we had an election that has not resulted in any conclusion for a month. It has gone from the very local court to the highest court in the land, the Supreme Court, that heard the situation yesterday and they have to make a decision, a one narrow, limited decision about if the court of Florida was correct or not.

But the whole question is, Why now? Why now is the election, even in this country, not working the way it has worked in the past? And also a lot of Americans thought that when they vote, their vote counts, there is no problem. They thought that it is the most perfect system you can find on earth.

As the discussion goes, more and more people find out, No, it is not really perfect. Its a dimple, or its a chad, or it is hanging with one side or two sides, is it the ballot of absentees, or overseas, and they do not count the absentees and overseas ballots if it is a landslide election. There are a lot of things that are coming up. People are becoming aware of things that they did not know about at all.

So now the thing is, that it is not a perfect system, it has a lot of flaws. But at the same time it was the most perfect one on earth so far. It was supposed to be the perfect system that humans eventually came up with, and it has been working fine for two hundred years. As I said, when I came to this country, a couple of months later the matter of Nixon, and the Watergate came up, and later on we had Irangate and later on we had the Clintongates and now this is what is happening. Why?

The answer can be found in the Bible, in the dream of Nebuchadnezzar, that when the stone with no hands comes, it will smite all the earthly kingdoms. The statue will be destroyed to nothingness, and a new system will come and fill the earth.

So we can see that even the system in the United States is man-made. Also it had the blessing of God, according to our book in THOTH, Children of Abram (Abraham), All Prophecies Are Fulfilled. If you read that book, God did bless the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the system in the United States. It is a system well-thought out by the founders..

They were pretty smart and connected people. The people who founded it were the Free Masons who are very open-minded. They have members all over the world even in other religions. They believe in the perfection of man and working on the self. It is a very, very high thing. It is very secretive because a lot of them could not talk about their beliefs in their environments because of the persecution by the dogmatic religions.

Actually that is where the idea of the freedom of religion came from because they were mostly humanists, not dogmatic religious people. Since they did not have the unification of all religions, they came with the idea of promoting humans to bring some unity among them with acceptance of the freedom of religion. So you can believe in whatever you want as long as you tolerate others and obey the law of the land.

Really they were Free Masons. A lot of people think it was Christians who were the founding fathers but really it was the Free Masons who were the founders of the Constitution and Bill of Rights. It came from a very high level. The people who founded it were connected; they were much more universal than belonging to only one way of thinking or one religion.

But still they were humans. Even the idea of from the people, by the people, and for the people which means one person having one vote that will be counted, is not in the system in the United States. It is not manifested because it is not really from the people. You have the electoral college that eventually chooses the President. People do not choose the President.

If that was true, Al Gore should be the President because he won the popular vote. Even that Republicans object to. They say since it was announced in the media that Al Gore won Florida and that anyone who won Florida would be President, many Republicans who were in the central or western states might have stopped voting. They thought Al Gore was already the President. However, a lot of people say that even that is not correct; he might not have won the popular vote.

So anyway, that is a technicality but the most important point is that there were many problems in this voting system this year, and the system of the United States is not from the people, by the people, and for the people. It is the electoral college that elects the President.

But in our system none of these problems are going to arise because people emerge from where? They will emerge from the Communities of Light. And in the Communities of Light the people know the person who emerges and eventually reaches to the top of the society.

Of course, we have a similar system just like the United States for the people who are not in the Communities of Light. It is just like those who are not in the Communities of Light, they are the worldly people so they go with the worldly system. Those who are in the Communities of Light go with the Godly system. If everyone is in the Communities of Light, do we need the other process of electing by the vote? No, the people are going to emerge from the Communities of Light and go to the top. And in the Bible as I said it is explained very clearly that when Gods system comes, other systems just fall apart.

We can see that it is true, we do not have a perfect system in any country, anywhere on earth, nowhere. Either we have a dictatorship or we have democratic elections. And even with democratic elections the people are not happy.

Are you guys 100% happy with your elections in Canada? Everyone is happy with them?

Disciple (through the Internet): Not really Maitreya.

Maitreya: You see? How about in France, are you all happy with your system in France?

Disciple (through the Internet): 50-50. Half the people are happy, and the other half are not happy.

Maitreya: We can see that all these systems are democratic systems; they are electing their people. They are supposed to be the best in the world.

Are the people in Iraq happy; is everyone happy because of Saddam Hussein? Saddam Hussein wants to believe everyone is happy but why do they have so many arms and people with the guns suppressing others?

Is everyone happy in Iran happy with their system? I do not think my sister was. At least I know that one, she was not happy. No, they are not happy there.

Is there any place on earth that people are happy with their system 100%? Most of the people are not happy.

That 50-50 is a good number. 50% of the people are happy with their system; that is high. How many are happy in the United States, 60-70% are happy? This is a pretty good high number but we will see that it is not 100% because it is not really from the people.

But in our system it is from the people. No one can say, Well, I do not like the system, because they had the ability to participate in it in the very bottom of the society. So although the system of the United States is very good and it is probably one of the best in the world and also the other systems in the west and the democratic systems in some other countries are good systems, they are not Gods System. So it is time for them to break up. And it is breaking up all over the world, and the people are coming up with the same idea, This is not perfect.

Any problem we discussed, the problem with old people, the problem with children, the problem of the society, the problem of the community, the problem of the men, the problem of the women, are all taken care of in our system because men and women in our system are equal and are more together in the bottom of the society and in the Communities of Light to emerge as leaders. Whoever has the ability in the community can come to the leadership position and eventually emerge to the top of the society.

So we do not have hanging chads or dimples or any of that because we do not have any machines or any cards to punch.

Also it is becoming too polarized. The idea has come that human ideas, opinions are there. We have democrats and republicans. We have two completely opposite opinions of how the country should be run. So that is a problem of polarization, and each wants to gain the power because they know that if they gain the power they can push their own ideas on the rest of us.

But in our system where do our ideas come from? Our ideas come from the Scriptures; our ideas come from God. There has to be a basic understanding in the society of what are the relationships between man and man, man and woman, children, community, family. And we go where for that? We go to the Scriptures. We go to the Word of God. The whole society eventually accepts the Word of God as the basis for those relationships. That destroys the ability to polarize and have opinions and ideas that conflict with each other, and it brings a unity to the society.

So that also helps to bring a more unified society instead of each person having their own opinions and ideas and pulling the society in different directions, and eventually destroying the society. It is not a dictatorship, still opinions and ideas and creativity are accepted, allowed, and encouraged, but what is the relationship, what is the base of society, is the Communities of Light based on the married people, pure couples. And when the majority of the people accepts these ideas then they become the norm in the society, and it will become a more unified people together. So other ideas are not going to be encouraged that completely destroy the fabric of the society.

Therefore we can see again Gods Revelation, Gods Ideas, sent to man brings greater happiness and unity to them than if each man says, No, I know better than everyone else and everyone should listen to me. Otherwise it is no good and your idea is different than mine, my opinion is different than everyone else.

Every person has opinions. There is no one out there who does not say that, I have my own ideas. All of us have that. Now why are we all here and at the same time we all have different opinions? We have some unification or unified energy with each other, it is God.

We accept the basic truth from the Scriptures that unifies us. But at the same time are we saying all of us think the same way? No, we do not. All of us have our own ideas, our own energy, our own understanding of The Word, even of THOTH. None of us really see THOTH as everyone else does.

So if that basic unity is destroyed, if you put God out of the system, you will have two hundred and fifty million people who each are pulling the society in different directions. Now, expand that to the whole earth and now you have five billion people who are pulling the whole earth to five billion different directions.

But if all of us believe in THOTH, if all of us believe in the Eternal Divine Path, if all of us believe in the Communities of Light based on the pure couples and sannyasins and our system, would all of us pull it in different directions? No, we will all be behind the idea that we are all going to push toward the creation of the Communities of Light. Although we will have our own opinions and differences, at the same time we will have something to unify us together and work toward that completion.

So we can see that when you put God out of the society, that society falls apart because that unification, that center, is not there anymore. So each person says, I know better than everyone else, and ego and selfishness will destroy the society.

In other countries people pick up guns and shoot each other. In this country they take it to the courts, but taking it to court and taking it to court and fighting and not listen to each other and maneuvering and all that. Each group wants to become what? Each group wants to win. The winning is more important than the truth, than the reality, then how the founding fathers really meant the system to work. So we can see it is not working anymore.

Well, if it is not working, it is not perfect. We need something to replace it. We need something that is more perfect than what we have.

What is perfect? Gods system, Gods Revelation, what God has told that He is going to send to humanity. It is time for the Communities of Light. It is time for all of us to realize that the old system is not going to work. We are in it. We are going to maintain it. We are going to support the old system but at the same time know that a new system eventually should replace that old system because the old system is not perfect.

We can see the evidence everywhere. If 50% of the people are not happy with the system, that system is no good. It means that 50% of the people are living under something that does not bring them happiness.

With Watergate, with the assassination of John Kennedy, with Iran-gate, with Clinton-gate, with all these things, one after another, the American people are realizing that their system is not perfect, something is not correct. The reason is, of course, that the Founders found, In God we trust, but is that still correct? It is not. God is out. And also, in which God do we trust, in the Moslem God we trust, or in the Christian God we trust, or in the Free Mason God we trust? Which one are we going to trust?

The only one really we should trust is the one who sent THOTH, who unifies all the religions. If we all trust on that, we have the unification, the center for ourselves to unify and work together.

So we can see that that is another sign that God is working for the Mission to manifest itself and for humanity to realize that the time is up for all the systems on earth. As God said, When the stone comes and hits the image, what happens to the image? It becomes powder and goes away. And those systems are no longer going to work. That is why no system on earth is working anymore.

Again you can see that with the coming of His Revelation, we are on the brink of the Golden Age, the coming of the unification of earth together, of religions together, of humans together, and the old systems are falling apart.

We have to do our best. We have to reach to everyone around us. We have to let everyone know about this truth that has come to them. And we have to work toward the creation of the Communities of Light.

It is OK, our numbers are small, it seems that we ask many times for people to come to these conferences, and they do not come. But that is OK. As I say, it might take a couple of lifetimes before this Mission manifests. It is a big job. It is something that we are working toward the unification of all of humanity. There are a lot of egos going in the earth now. Also some people are happy where they are, with their system, with their life, with their religions. Although they see it is falling apart, but at the same time they havent really hit the bottom yet.

But the society and the earth are going to hit the bottom eventually, and when they hit the bottom what will we have? We will have an alternative. We can tell them, OK, this is the best way to go. Look, God said He was going to send a Revelation that unifies the religions. He gave these prophecies that such a thing is going to come to humanity, and now it has come. So, come back to God, turn around, and be baptized. When you are baptized, then you turn around and you become one of the children of God. You unify yourselves together and again we will have the society that is more unified, there is not a lot of different opinions between people, they are more cohesive and we will have a society that they choose the leaders that are worthy, not that they are selfish and thinking about themselves but thinking about the creation of the Communities of Light, and bringing peace and goodwill to man.

Does that make sense?

Audience: And also Maitreya-ji what I love about our system is that we will have overseers to the system which I do not think is anywhere on earth right now. The overseer, which are the Elders and the Eldest, will be like a check for the disintegration of morals or corruption and things like that in the system. So I think that is a great asset.

Maitreya: That is the whole idea, that the top of the system is connected to God, is connected to the Spirit. With that the leaders who are the head of the society are also connected to God. If the leaders are not connected, the whole body is not connected, as the Bible says, If the head is sick, what happens to the body? If you have a head of congestion and fever, does your body still feel good? No. Your body is going to feel bad.

So if the head, which is the leaders, are not connected, is the rest of the body connected? No. The rest of the body falls apart. That is why in our system, the top of the society is connected to God so the body will be connected also.

Audience: Just as a follow-up question. In our system we have the units, the small units like of six families, twelve people, kind of as the base. You said a person would emerge as the leader of that small unit, probably by vote, do you think? Probably the twelve people would get together and vote who is the most qualified?

Maitreya: Yes. Well that part is mostly up to the six couples, how they are going to do it. The person is going to emerge as the leader and that person in the society is more concerned about the community, working harder than anyone else, and also has good ideas. Other people accept him or her as the person that has the leadership ability, and he or she emerges. Either that or they say, really we do not know who is the best among us and who to accept as the leader, either he emerges just naturally or is accepted or they say, OK, lets see who we are going to accept as the final authority in our group. And they probably sit there and democratically accept 7-5 a leader.

Audience: Then at the next level it would be 12 x 12 = 144 people? And then at the third level, it would be 12 x 12 x 12, and that would be around 2,000 people? At that level there would be a group of twelve who would decide who is the leader of that level?

Maitreya: Yes. The first level, the twelve people, choose their leader, the first unit. Then twelve of them, the twelve leaders of twelve units come together and choose one for their leader. And twelve of those twelve-twelve units come together and one becomes the leader of the community.

Audience: So really the ideal maximum of a unit of decision-making would be around twelve people who would vote or decide for a leader?

Maitreya: That is right.

Audience: Because to me that would seem like that is one of the major problems about voting, that it is such a huge number of people who are voting and people feel apathetic, they feel that their vote does not count because it is such a huge number, the process is not accurate, and things get lost. There is such potential for abuse and there is such a possibility of people getting hypnotized just by how someone looks, or what their family background is, etc.

Maitreya: A lot of people said that they voted for Mr. Clinton because he was so handsome [laughter]. He looked good. A lot of people admitted that. They did not vote for him because he was a great general or leader. Probably they voted for Eisenhower because he was a great general, but a lot of people voted for Clinton because of his looks.

Also we can ask, how many people can you know really well? In your life, if you can know yourself well you are lucky. If you know yourself, you can see what, around twelve people, you can really know well in your lifetime. Then suddenly they throw someone at you that you have no idea who he or she is, in the middle of the voting and say, Choose between these two.

But I do not know them. They look good. They can put on some makeup and make themselves look good or play games in front of the camera for you for a couple of months or a year. And then you accept one of them as the best between all you can know about them. So you really havent come to know them at all.

In our system you live with the person. Eventually everything comes out, and you know them well. They cannot hide anything.

Audience: But even on the second level do you live with the people who are chosen to the second level?

Maitreya: No, the twelve leaders who have been chosen by the first level come together to form the second level.

Audience: OK. You are working together.

Maitreya: After a while they will know one another well, therefore they choose the best among them.

Audience: Another big problem with the system in the United States is that certain very powerful and rich families have taken all the positions of Presidents. It is kind of like you have to be a millionaire even to begin to think about running, and you have to have a lot of political power before you can begin. And our system also prevents that?

Maitreya: That is a very good observation. That is one of the things that is happening in the third-world countries also. In every system eventually a few people become powerful and well-known, and they almost create a dynasty.

What is a dynasty? A dynasty is the father becomes President, and two elections later the son becomes President. And then the brother becomes President. After a while you have a kingdom; you no longer have a completely free election that the best man wins.

As you said, if you do not have millions of dollars you cannot even run. So you can see that the system has fallen apart. It is not the system that the founding fathers envisioned, that the best man wins. It is not that anymore. The best man does not win all the time. But the richest man wins. The well-known man, the more connected man, wins.

Still it is a good system compared to the many systems on earth, but it is not perfect. And it will eventually end up as a dynasty and a few families are going to have the power and positions. If they decide it is going to be a kingdom, it will become a kingdom. You are absolutely right.

In our system this cannot happen. How can it happen? You are in the Communities of Light, and you share everything together. Even if you are rich, you have only one voice from the twelve of you.

Also you do not have elections. You do not have to spend millions of dollars for advertising. You are living with everyone else so you emerge from the twelve people, so you do not have to be rich to emerge.

Audience: Just one more question. I know since we do not have this set-up yet there will be a lot of details that will be worked out as we set this up, but if people are living in a community around twelve-twelve families and they do not like the atmosphere, is there an obligation to stay there or the idea is that if a few people do try to somehow get the power other people will just move away and there will not be support for that?

Maitreya: That is it exactly. When the communities are all over the world, you do not have to live with any community that you do not want to live with. If you do not like this community, you can live two blocks down here and go to another community, even create your own community. You do not have to stay in a community that you do not like and you do not want to be in. You move.

Of course, we do not even have a Community of Light yet. We are a facilitating body. We are here to get the Message out, because we want to create the Communities of Light eventually. That is what the facilitating body has to work out together; we have to work toward the creation of the Communities of Light.

In the Communities of Light, you stay there because you want to. But you do not just leave because, well, it does not fit you completely. You should sacrifice. You should try to work it out. You should stay as much as you can. But if it is impossible, if you reach the point that you feel it is impossible to live in that environment, you have a choice to go to another community or start your own community, and you have the freedom of movement and living. For example, if you do not want to live in South America, you can go and live in South Africa. So you have all kinds of possibilities.

Audience: You said that the overseers run a check for the government, but what is the check for the overseers?

Maitreya: OK. In our system, the decision-making process is that usually there are a lot of committees that study different problems and they come up with recommendations and/or solutions which they take to the house or senate it depends if we have both or one of them and they decide if that committee made a right decision, either they approve it or they disapprove it. If they approve it, then it goes to the executive branch where it is looked at and either approved or disapproved.

If they approve it, it is approved. If it is disapproved, it is sent back to the houses. They go over it one more time. They send it to the executive branch with the reasoning. They approve it again. It goes one more time to the houses. Again if the executive branch does not approve it, this process continues. After the third time, it goes to the Elders. The Elders then make a final decision if it is approved or disapproved. Their word is final.

So the Elders are the observers of the system. They do not interfere until those two branches cannot make their decisions. But if the Elder Body felt that the system is going away from its original purpose, creating the law, that it is interfering, and it is not according to Gods Word, then they can also interfere. They can go and say, We do not agree with this. Then they can discuss it with them so they can change it to what it is felt it should be.

So they have absolute power but they do not interfere until their presence is necessary.

Audience: But what if they do, what do you do then? What if they do interfere?

Audience: In THOTH I believe it says that if the Elders are misusing their powers or getting senile from old age, they can be voted down through the system too, if they are not staying connected to God.

Maitreya: Is that what your question is, how are they going to be removed?

Audience: How will we be able to check to see that they are OK?

Maitreya: Right. If the Elders are not doing their work, then the two Elder Bodies can come together and change them. Even they can be impeached.

Audience: Just a comment. Again that is a difference between this system and what you are proposing. I mean the system that is in the United States, at least. Like here we have a President who has been in office for 8 years. He has a lot of experience. Maybe we do not agree with everything he does, but he does have a lot of experience and a lot of contacts in the world. After 8 years he is just let go and that is it. All that experience and any wisdom that he has gained is just wasted.

Maitreya: Exactly. Actually the Elder Body is like the number of Presidents that you have alive right now. It is just like Carter, and Ford, and Bush, etc. Reagan, for example, cannot be an Elder anymore because he has Alzheimers Disease. So that would be when they would vote him out because he could not carry out his responsibilities. But actually you do have some aspect of Elders right now. Sometimes Presidents do ask for advice from former Presidents.

In our system, we do not throw them out. We say, You have a very good function in the system because you have so much experience.

It is just like, we do not throw the elder people out. We said that older people have a lot of experience. They have lived 50-60-70 years, and now they can pass on that experience to our children. So in the Communities of Light, the older people are looked at as the source of the wisdom of course they have to manifest that they have the wisdom and they really have learned from their lives. Not every older person is wise. We do not just say that just because someone is old, he or she is wise. They have to manifest that they do have the wisdom and the experience.

So then they have to be taught that we do not throw out the people with experience; we use their experience in the society and in the community and in our system. That is one thing.

Another important part of the Elder Body is that they are connected to God. They look at the society and say, OK, this part is going wrong so we have to fix it. If they misuse the power, as it was mentioned, there are remedies for removing even them.

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Audience: So in a sense you could say that of all these governmental systems probably the democratic process has been the most perfect up to this point? Now we have learned more about how even democracy has problems, and this is one more step that is even more a perfect government and which is also democratic? Actually the system you propose is democratic.

Maitreya: To a point. Even in a democratic system it does not mean chaos. When you choose the President, the President has a lot of power to say no. Just like even if the houses pass a law and the President does not like it, he vetoes it. So it is not something you choose yourself.

After you choose the leader, that leader actually is a dictator. But you have the ability to choose who you want to be a dictator. In other countries they do not have that choice; the dictator is the person who has the gun, or whoever has the most guns becomes the dictator.

Even in the democratic countries, people choose the leader and he tells the people what to do. So in a sense a leader means a dictator, it means he dictates. When the President vetoes, do you have a choice to say, No, do not veto it? No. He vetoes it. That is his choice. You chose him as the leader, so leader means the person who leads. Then everyone cannot say, OK, I am not going to follow. You have to choose him or her, and then you have to follow. The only way to stop his veto is a two-thirds majority of the houses, and that is usually very hard to obtain.

So there are a lot of misconceptions in democracy that it means chaos, I can do whatever I want to do. That is not true. That is not a democracy.

But the democratic system that the United States has and the democratic system that was created on earth is the best that humans could come up with. It is a good system. It is not bad at all. But our system is more perfect because it is Gods-made system. And we can prove it many times over and over and over that our system is more perfect.

Audience: It sounds like our system will be as perfect as the people in it are connected to God, staying with God.

Maitreya: It depends on whom we choose as the head of the system. If the head is connected to God, they will make the body more connected to God. The more the body is connected to God, they will choose the people who are connected more to God. So really the triangle downward in our system is the Spirit of God in the system. The triangle upward is the system; the triangle downward is the Spirit of God. The more of the triangle downward is in the system, the more perfect that system becomes.

That is one of the problems with the present systems in management or in the governmental systems; always they have one triangle upward. They do not have the triangle downward. But in the Old Testament the Hebrews had the triangle downward also. That is what the Old Testament was supposed to create, to create the Communities of Light, the twelve tribes, where God is the King, God is the Spirit among them, God is chosen as the Spirit in the community and in the system. Then that system becomes more and more perfect.

Audience: My question is, I was studying the early American history with my son about the Constitution Convention and how the people got together. They came up with many different ideas, and they really had to work at compromising to get a system to work at all. However, I am assuming that when this system starts and begins, we should never get to the point of compromising this. This is how this system was revealed, and it should be followed in total.

Is that correct do you think?

Maitreya: Yes. Actually, I am not a very compromising person [laughter]. So I havent been compromised. I hope you do not compromise either.

Well, you can do the compromising in the community level between the twelve people. They can compromise. They can adjust themselves, just like a married couple that they compromise, they talk, they decide, for example, one person lets the other person have a little more and the other person have a little less, and then eventually they work it out and somehow they meet each other and say, OK, this is the place you both feel good about it, and we can work it out this way.

The same thing happens in community. One person pushes another person or other people compromise a little bit but if he or she pushes too much, the community says, No, that is it. You pushed enough. We are going to stop you. And that is where you stand. Eventually you create a more cohesive community. So the compromise mostly should happen in that level.

In the second level the compromise will occur between the twelve-twelve people or one hundred forty-four people. Somehow they have to compromise and come to where the meeting of the minds happens, and eventually that one hundred forty-four people live in peace together.

In the next level, there are twelve-twelve-twelve people. The compromise becomes a more general thing. Between the couples, it is about finances, about bringing the child up, their own relationships, and all of that. Between the twelve people (first level) is about who washes the dishes, who sweeps the floor, etc. Between the one hundred forty-four people (second level) who takes out the garbage and when the garbage man picks up the garbage is not of concern. And see the scope changes as the numbers are added.

So those compromises happen between people until it comes to the twelve-twelve twelve and then the next level, and then the county, and then the state, and then the country (at least in the beginning there might be some countries), and eventually the world. So the compromises change but the most important thing is that somehow people are able to reach a point that they can live with each other. Of course, in each level, that is why we need the leaders to look at the problems, to talk with the people, to discuss with them and eventually come to a point that they can say, OK, we are going to do this, this way. Is that OK with everyone? One or two people might not be happy in one situation but they might be happy in another situation, etc.

So our system is not an idea of a couple of people compromising so they can come up with a new constitution for a new nation. Our system comes from the very bottom. The bottom has to compromise and get along. As they get along, the system is built on them. And at the top, the decisions are also made based on what the situation is in a much higher scope of the society, of course, the base of the whole system should be on the prime directive and the Spirit of God (His Words).

Does it make sense?

Audience: Yes it does. So the basic structure of the system should not be compromised. Someone should not come along and say, Well, we need to elect a President by popular vote. No. We do not compromise that.

Maitreya: That is right. It is not by popular vote. The popular vote is at the bottom. The popular vote is in the second level, the popular vote in the third level, the popular vote is in the fourth level. But it is not something that someone comes and the majority says, He looks so good; we want him, and he or she becomes the President.

We have that kind of election for those who are not in the Communities of Light. But those people do not have as many rights as the people who are in the Communities of Light. They receive their rights as they prove themselves to be effective leaders. That is why they cannot be in the Elder Body, or they cannot become direct reporters to the leaders, or they cannot become the leader unless they are elected two or three times to a position.

So the people who are not in the Communities of Light are given the right to have a voice in the system but their voice is not as strong, at least not in the beginning, unless their leader proves that he is wise, he is concerned with the community, he sacrifices, surrenders, and submits to God, and is a universalist.

Audience: So the people who are not in the Communities of Light will have their own election, and whoever they elect can participate in this system, is that correct?

Maitreya: Yes. That is right. So they are not completely left out of our system. They have some voice.

OK, if there are no other questions about this topic, we are going to go to the next question.

Question: Teacher, when we see all in this world/universe as temporal, will we then and only then begin to truly understand and serve God and His Son with complete devotion and conviction? And, also realize Him and His Plan as the only lasting, eternal truth in creation?

Maitreya: Yes, that is exactly what the Mystical Paths teach us. When a person realizes that this external world is not permanent, and he/she can see that it is a temporary truth, it is not the ultimate reality, while the rest of humanity is caught up into it as the ultimate reality, such a person is in the path of self-realization and will realize what is permanent in the universe, which is God (the Essence in each man).

The rest of humanity lives in this delusion, and they live, they scratch each others face, and their egos are with them. The only thing they are thinking about is making more money, coping up with the Jones, and living a life that is best for them, That is it, that is my reality, this is the ultimate truth, the ultimate reality. And they cannot see the temporal nature of life and what they are.

Is it really something that is permanent that we are living in? What is permanent? Even our bodies are not permanent Every seven years our bodies change to new cells. We die and our bodies spoil and become dirt. Is that permanent? What is permanent then in the whole temporary universe?

Is the earth permanent? It has been here a couple of billion years but it is not going to be there a couple of billion years from now.

Is the sun permanent? We know what happens to suns; eventually they become super novas. Is our sun the greatest sun ever? No, we know that there are suns that are hundreds and thousands times larger than our sun in other solar systems.

So we can see that none of them are permanent things. What is permanent then? What is permanent is our Spirit or Essence, which is the only permanent thing in the universe.

OK, well great! So I have to become a yogi then. I have to go to the mountains and forget about the society, relationships, my body, and completely merge myself in meditation and fasting because I want to reach the permanent things in my life. But God said that if you do that, what is He going to do? I am going to spue you out of my mouth. Why? It is because God wants that Essence, that permanency, to return to its original form, which was the state of be-ness, or the state of complete balance in the universe before the creation was created, that state of eternity or bliss that all of us have forgotten. We have amnesia to remember what it felt like.

So we can see that we cannot go and become a yogi. What should we do then? God says, You have to stay in the society and create the Communities of Light. And in the Communities of Light you progress. In the Communities of Light you learn about God. In the Communities of Light you read THOTH together. In the Communities of Light you discuss together, and you realize what is the goal of the life. The goal of the life is to become Divine, in the middle of the Communities of Light.

How are you going to create such communities? You sacrifice.

Sacrifice? That is the thing I do not want to do. I want to be all selfish and to think about myself all the time and see what is good for me, and I will take care of my body, and my body aches, and I have a lot of diseases, and problems. And I want to think about that all the time and heal myself. I do not want to think about the Communities of Light.

God says, No. If you think about yourself then you might heal yourself a little bit but the ability to heal self stops sometimes in some age in some higher levels. You eventually have to say, This is the time to let this body go or take care of it as much as I can and heal it but follow the Eternal Divine Path.

So that is one sacrifice, sacrifice of your intellect, sacrifice of your abilities, sacrifice for the things that help the Communities of Light to form. Then when you do that, the next step is surrendering and submission and becoming a universalist. You know all the Eternal Divine Path.

We can see that the beginning of the spiritual progress is when you see that this world is temporary. If you have not realized that, if you have not seen that the world is temporary and life is temporary and all these attachments are temporary, you did not sit and meditate, unless you sit and meditate just to feel good. Which is OK. Eventually it is going to take you to the place that you will see the temporal nature of the life.

But really you meditate to realize that you are your Essence. It feels good, of course, but at the same time you realize that Essence is the most important part that you have to work on. That Essence is something that you have and is permanent. Anything else is temporary.

We are not saying, Do not take care of your body. No, you should take care of your body. If you do not have a good body, can you have a good meditation? No. That is why we have the Prerequisites of Spiritual Life. One of the things is to have a healthy body, have a healthy environment, have healthy air to breathe, etc.

It is then that you realize, Oh, OK, the goal of my life is to be(come) Divine. How do I become Divine? I become Divine by following the Eternal Divine Path. Now your realization comes from, I am going to the mountains, to following the Eternal Divine Path.

Who brought the Eternal Divine Path? God sent it to us through His Revelations to this person whom we call by many names. Then we realize that really the only thing worthwhile in life is to know Gods Plan.

What is Gods Plan? Gods Plan is the Eternal Divine Path, the creation of the Communities of Light and realizing that the person who brings them has fulfilled all His Prophecies that God said was going to be fulfilled. Therefore, I am in good shape. I am in a good place. I found the person who fulfilled His Prophecies, and God said that He was going to come. I found Him. He tells me how I can become Divine. I am a fulfilled person because God has sent me the way to fulfill the purpose of my life which is the following of the Eternal Divine Path, unifying all the religions of the world, reaching out to other people and telling them, Look, it is all here for you.

But are you still attached to your body? Are you still attached to your social status? Are you still attached to the things that are temporary? Are they going to help you in this Path? You will see, no, they will not. They are going to be in your way.

That is when you become lukewarm. That is when you say, Oh, I cannot do this because I have also to do those things. I cannot completely commit myself to the Mission because I am afraid of what my neighbor says, what my father says, what my mother says, what my family says, what my friends are going to say. If you are still attached to those things then you have not seen the temporal nature of your life, your body, your friends, your social status, and all that.

You have to realize that they are all temporary. The only thing that is permanent is to recognize and to realize this Mission, the Eternal Divine Path, and how to create the Communities of Light, and then give yourself to this cause.

So you are absolutely right, the beginning of the realization is to realize that everything is temporary but your Soul, your Essence. If you realize that then what are you going to work on? You are going to work on your Essence, arent you? That is the only thing that is really permanent.

You are not going to take your body with you when you die. You are not going to take your wealth when you die. You are not going to take your friends when you die. You are not going to take your social status or anything out of yourself when you die. What are you taking with you? You can only take The Essence, your Soul, your Being, which resides in this body and has all these attachments. The more it detaches itself from all these things, the freer you are.

And now you know the Path, you know the Way of God, you know the Will of God, which is the Eternal Divine Path, to reach Pure Consciousness and Divinity. So what is left? What is left is your Soul, the Eternal Divine Path, that is it. You are in a pretty powerful stronghold of your life.

So you are right, the beginning of the spiritual progress is the realization that everything is temporary in this universe. Nothing is permanent. Nothing is permanent in the manifested world. Nothing!

Show me one thing that is permanent in the manifested world. Not even super novas are permanent. Not even black holes are permanent. They are powerful. Or warped stars can collapse to condense the whole earth to one inch. What can be more powerful than that, they can squeeze the earth into a square inch? Isnt that powerful? Is that permanent? Even that is not permanent. Even that is temporary. Even the warped star eventually comes back, becomes a super nova, and creates a new creation.

So what is permanent then? What should I hang on to in life? It is my Soul.

Does going to the mountains and becoming a yogi help? Will I become Divine? God says, No. I am going to throw you out of My Mouth. I am going to reincarnate you somewhere that you have no choice but to get engaged with the family and with the community.

So the next step is: Not only do you meditate and awaken your spiritual forces, you also direct your energy toward the creation of the Communities of Light.

What are the Communities of Light? The Communities of Light are the base of the Kingdom Of Heaven On Earth. Why do we need the Kingdom Of Heaven On Earth? We need it to accelerate everyones progress. That is another thing about our system, the goal of our system is not for people to just feel good about it and become rich. The goal of the system is to help humanity to accelerate their progress toward Pure Consciousness. It is to create an environment where people have time to meditate, to awaken their spiritual forces. They progress spiritually to be(come) in Pure Consciousness, or One.

And so we can see that you need to get involved. If you want to progress, you cannot progress by not recognizing and realizing these things. You progress by recognizing and realizing what this Mission is offering is the goal of the universe, the goal of the life.

If you recognize that, then you put your priorities in the right place. Your priority is to be(come) Divine. How do you become Divine? You become Divine by following the Eternal Divine Path. You do not become Divine by escaping the society.

People in India escaped the society for thousands of years. How many people in Pure Consciousness do we have there? The whole society is in bad shape, in poor condition. The people are diseased, unhappy, and all of that. We do not want that. We want to create communities where the people are not diseased, and they have created the ability to heal themselves or heal each other.

So we can see that the beginning of spiritual progress is the realization of the temporal nature of everything in the universe. Everything out of us is temporal. The only thing that is permanent is your Soul that we have to awaken to realize, to recognize, to know the Self, or God.

As I have said, you cannot know anyone else if you do not know yourself. Why do you want to know anyone else if you do not know yourself? And how can you know anyone else if you do not know yourself? The only thing that you really have to know is to know yourself.

You want to know your husband. You want to know your child. You want to know your neighbor. You want to know your father and mother and friends, But I do not know myself, how can I know them? I cannot. That is why you have so many problems with them. You have to know yourself first.

That is the only person you should know. But how many people really know themselves? And that is where they are missing out.

So the first step is to know thyself. Knowing thyself is knowing God. And if you know God, can you know everyone else? Of course you can, because they are a part of God too. If you know God you know exactly who they are, what they are, etc.

Actually you know them better than they know themselves. But sometimes you cannot tell them because it does not help to tell people, Oh you have this problem, or you have to know yourself in this situation, unless they want to know themselves. Knowing themselves means knowing the Ways of God.

So knowing yourself is the beginning of spiritual progress, and it does not start unless you realize that everything else is temporary, even your desire to know your husband and wife is not going to work until you work on yourself. That is why I have said many times, The only person you can work on is yourself, no one else. The only person you can help is yourself. Then you can go, help other people, teach other people, and know them, etc.

Is that enough? God says, No. Then you have to create the Communities of Light, then you have to sacrifice, surrender, and submit. If you know thyself it is very easy. What do you need? You just need a little place to sleep and a little food to eat. The rest is, to work toward the creation of the Communities of Light.

And then it is easy to sacrifice. There is really not any sacrifice anymore. You call it sacrifice but you are not self-centered anymore. More importantly is to create an environment where a lot of people can live in it happily, they have a warm place to be, and their physiological and safety needs have been taken care of. So you can also make them to realize that everything is temporary, and they should also forget about all those attachments, and desires, and let them go. Then you become two, three, four, five, six, ten unattached people. That ten people find ten others and that ten finds ten.

What is that kind of marketing called? A couple of people get a couple of people [someone said chain]. You need only seven, eight, to ten levels to reach the whole of humanity. It is not that hard. But we have to create those second levels, third levels, fourth levels. Then we can see that the Mission is going to go all over and create an earth that people meditate, they know themselves, and they can create Communities of Light all over.

I am hoping eventually we do not have anyone who is not in Communities of Light. Then our system is really perfect. It is the most perfect system that anyone can have if everyone is in the Communities of Light. If everyone is not in the Communities of Light, still we have some people who will have to use the earthly system, if they are earthly.

Who is going to bring them? We should bring them. How? By knowing ourselves, the creation of the Communities of Light, by realizing that what we have here is incredible. And then be(come) Divine. Eventually you become the leaders. You become the Elder Body. You become the initial body to humanity, and eventually humanity realizes all these things because you can tell them.

So the beginning of the spiritual progress is the realization that everything is temporary. But that is not enough. After that you have to realize the Eternal Divine Path and accomplish it.

Does that make sense?

Audience: Thank you so much. That was the Essence.

Maitreya: OK. Next question.

Question: Teacher, I have been seeing something happening in our society that causes great concern. The pharmaceutical companies and medical field have a pill/drug for almost any and every mental or emotional problem for modern man. There is a pill for anxiety, stress, depression (Prozac, Zoloft, Zanax, etc.), and fear of being around other people (Paxil). And just the other day on TV an ad came on for a pill for anxiety, depression, etc., for children 8-12 years old. They say that certain ones are not bad because they help the hormones in the brain.

My question is: What will happen to our society in the future with people taking drugs for these so-called problems instead of using their God-given tools of meditation and spiritual path (preferably, the Eternal Divine Path) to cure these mental conditions on their own? Will this degrade and weaken the society?

Maitreya: We have a problem with the whole society and all this about taking a pill for instant gratification. Also the people who make these pills do not really study the cause of the problems. Most of the methods in the society now are not to find the cause but a cure without knowing why the problem is there.

It is just like drinking. Drinking makes the people feel good. Some people say, When I drink, I am more social, and I can socialize better. But why cant you socialize in the first place? The person does not meditate on that to realize what is wrong with him when they want to socialize with other people.

Also, is it really necessary to socialize and be a social butterfly in your life? Or is it better to know yourself and see in what situation or what environment you would be more comfortable than pushing yourself because society tells us that we have to be a social person and socialize with other people? Is it really necessary or a requirement? I do not think that God said that the goal of the life is to become a social person, did He? He did not.

Instead of finding the cause of the problem they give a temporary cure or a temporary relief. I have to say, it is not really a cure. The person who takes the Prozac is not cured. It makes them feel good for a day or two, and then they are back where they were before they took the drug. So the cause of the problem should be realized or recognized.

Why are people depressed? Were the people as depressed as they are now in our society? How many people see a hearty laugh these days in our society? Have you seen a hearty laugh recently anywhere? Can anyone tell me you have seen a hearty laugh? You have?

Audience: At the Feast of Tabernacles [laughter].

Maitreya: So a hearty laugh that was last observed in the universe was at the Feast of Tabernacles?

Isaac has seen a hearty laugh.

Isaac: We had one last night [laughter].

Maitreya: Yes. So the next one is between Isaac and me when we were together last night. Anyone else, on the Internet? Have you seen any hearty laugh recently? Sarah-ji has seen one.

Sarah-ji: I did. He was like a little eighteen month old severely developmentally delayed but the happiest little kid you ever saw. He just laughs, and seems very happy and content.

Maitreya: Well, he does not know about our society much [laughter]. That is why he was laughing. Anyone in the Internet?

Shakti: At the Feast I said to someone that the only time I really laugh is when I am with my spiritual family at the Feast of Tabernacles. And that is really true.

Maitreya: OK, so we can see that it is rare. But I have seen one, I have seen many in that village in Iran. People did not have anything. People had very little. Probably their whole yearly income was around $200-$300 a year at that time, thirty-forty years ago. But they were happy.

Probably the happiest face I have ever seen was a man who did not even have any teeth in his mouth, and he was laughing like crazy. He was so happy. He was not depressed. He was not unhappy in his life. How come he, or the people in that village were laughing and they were very flowing, joking, and happy?

And why do we have it at the Feast of Tabernacles? It is because at the Feast of Tabernacles people are living in the Communities of Light. Are we going to have that kind of laughter in the Communities of Light? Yes, we will. The people are not afraid of each other. Their opinions are not that separate that each person has their own opinion, and these days they are even afraid to be politically correct or incorrect if they open their mouths.

That is because in the Communities of Light you are one and you have the Spirit among yourselves, not the ego and the mind, which separates man from man and creates small universes, pockets of universes all over. There are a lot of small universes even in our society. Each person is living in their apartment or houses with their own universes. We are not connected. Our neighbor has their universe; we have our own. We cannot interfere with their universe, and they are afraid of our universe because they love their universe better than anything else. And in that universe there is no God because if there were the true God among us, are we afraid of each other in the Mission? Because our universe is what? It is married to each other as based on God. So we are happy, and we are more content.

And it becomes even better as we create more Communities of Light. We are still affected by the society ourselves. We are not as powerful as and as open as we should be. As I said, we do not have the Communities of Light; we are the facilitating body. Even we are in mundanity and in the society. We have to go to work. We have to go to work in the society, which does not teach our teaching. It is not based on the Communities of Light.

Are we affected by them? Yes, we are. We have to deal with those people who have no idea how to meditate and awaken their spiritual forces and become wonderful. So we can see that as this problem becomes more and more, what happens to the people? There is more separation among people; there is more disunity between them. Is it natural for humans to live like that? It is not a natural way for humans to live.

So society, the industrial progress, the technology, and all those things and also our belief that, "We have the ability to live the way we want, we do not need God, and we do not need the spiritual teaching," has separated us and if we continue in this path, we will be separated in even a greater degree.

Just watch some of these talk shows on the television. Do they talk about God and what He wants? No. They express what is the best way to live according to them. Or listen to Dr. Laura; she thinks she is God. She tells you exactly what you should do. She has some good opinions. I am not saying that all of what she says is wrong but sometimes she is absolutely off the wall. But who is she? She is God to them. The people call her to ask her what should they do.

Do they go to the Bible, do they go to the Koran, or do they go to THOTH to find out what God wants them to do with their lives? No, they do not. So absolutely you can see that the society is lost. And then when it does not work and there is a relationship not based on God, when their lives are not based on God, things will go wrong. And since they do not have the Word of God and His Guidance, they rely on men who themselves are not guided.

We are spirit. All our hormones, chemistry, our bodies, our relationships, our lives are based on Spirit; God is Everything. So when we do not put our lives in the right direction, in the right way, what happens to us? The chemicals in our bodies become imbalanced.

When the chemicals in our bodies become imbalanced, we have to take what? We take Prozac to make them in balance. But does that take care of the problems? Does it take care of the cause of your problems?

The cause of your problems again goes back to the society, it goes back to humanity that has forgotten the right path. It goes back to our relationships, it goes back to our way of thinking, and creating the society based on ego trips and me and me and me that not only destroys you, it destroys your family, it destroys the society, it destroys your political system, etc. And it is going to get worse.

It is going to get worse, you know? You can mark my words. It is getting worse. It is incredible how bad it is out there. It is absolutely like Sodom and Gomorrah.

Now the only light on earth is us. We are the light of the world. We are here to show the way, to tell humanity, This is the way to live. The way to live is living in the Communities of Light, awakening your spiritual forces, meditating, becoming in a greater way than your body and what is in it for me only. It is by creation of the Communities of Light. We have to attract like-minded people. We have to create the Communities of Light.

It is not just coming to the Satsang but a month of working ahead of you. If you come to the Satsang there is a month of work before you come to the next Satsang. Coming to the Satsang and feeling good - - well, we can go to the church and feel good.

The preachers are there at least a couple of times a week instead of once a month. But do they create the Communities of Light? No.

So we have to find the cause of the problems. What is the cause of the depression? What is the cause of the aggressiveness in the children? Were the children like this - - did they have the anti-depression drugs fifty years ago? No one even knew anti-depression and all that. The kids were laughing and joking and playing and jumping and having fun.

Of course, if a child loses one of his parents when they are three, four, or five years old, that is a shock. Everything is so permanent for a child; it is so set in stone. And suddenly one part of their lives is just cut off away from them. You have no idea what kind of effect is that. That is selfishness between the couple that for their own selfish reasons they put the child in that situation. Again society becomes selfish, What is in it for me? It is not that God said that you have to get married, stay together, and raise children.

I recently read that there is a movement now that some people, singles, are objecting to the privileges that some companies are giving to the people with children. They are saying, Why are they giving those privileges to those people who have children? about the companies creating childcare close to the work places. They say, We want the same kind of privileges.

People do not think that the base of the society should be the family. The society has lost the idea that children are the most important. It should be based on taking care of them, and bringing up very good children, educated, well-mannered, nurtured children. And then you do what, you give them Prozac and a pill to make them not to be depressed? We can see again that we have lost our way.

This is not the way to live; this is not a God-based society and the human way to live. We know it. We have to tell other people to know it. We have to get together and turn things around. As I have said many times, We are swimming against the tide. But the tide is slowing down. People are realizing, Something is wrong here. A lot of people are getting to this point that, There is something wrong.

Even in this current system people are questioning it, for example, We did not know that our vote does not count. Someone told me, I did not know that absentee votes do not count if there is a landslide. Or the votes from overseas do not count if it is a landslide. I thought my vote counts no matter what. But it is not like that.

I did not know that machines could make mistakes. And, I did not know that they threw 20,000 votes out because the machine could not read them. Or, why havent one of them conceded and said, OK, for the good of the country I accept the other guy has won. You can see that many people are talking now, It is not perfect.

I do not want to make you depressed about the whole thing but you are lucky, you have the way. We have given the way to change the system. You do not have to conform to something that you know is not perfect. We have the way to turn this thing around but we need to get on with it. We need to create the Communities of Light, we need to be dedicated, and we need to realize that what we are doing here is the Will of God.

That is fine, as I say, if this thing does not happen in this lifetime. I will be back. I will be back [laughter]. Eventually we are going to get this thing established.

But, of course, there are situations, very rare situations; first of all we have to set the society in the right place, in the right direction, on the right foundation. Secondly, every person should meditate and awaken their spiritual forces.

They are related. They are interrelated things. Everything is interrelated. The individual person works on himself, the individual works on society, society gets better, the individual gets better, more people awaken their spiritual forces, more people getting to the society, society even gets better. Then more people You see, there is a complete back and forth, give and take relationship that goes between the individual and the society. As we heal the society, the individual is going to be healed, and the individual learns how to heal himself.

Of course, if there is a person in a good society, in a system that is set up in Gods Way and still such a person is depressed and they still meditate and they cannot function correctly, maybe then Prozac might help. But if it becomes something the people just pop the pills into their mouths to feel better because it is there, and millions of people are on it, then there is something wrong.

So these medicine things, we have to find the reason, the cause of the problem. When the cause is found, it should take care of itself. These medicines should be used very rarely; it is not something that just should be given away to everyone to use them.

Each person should meditate, awaken their spiritual forces, realize why they are depressed and take care of the problem. Of course, depression can be physical. If it is physical, you might cure it with the nutritional things in your life. There are many, many ways you have to avoid to take pills as much as you can. But if you reach a point that you have no choice, of course, you have no choice and you have to help your body to heal itself. And if you give the body a chance usually it does heal itself. But you have to give the body a chance.

So taking these pills has a much deeper reason for it than just, It is there so I should take it. There should not be that much depression in the society. If there is so much depression, that society has gone wrong. There should not be depression for children. If they are depressed there is something wrong. But if there is no other way, so be it.

Also we believe in the science based on Spirit. Eventually all these things in the Communities of Light in the future can be cured with light therapy, meditation, with realizing your body and the things that spiritually help you to heal yourself.

Does that make sense?

Audience: Again, Maitreya, it makes so much sense. And thank you so much. I know someone who works for a pharmaceutical sales company, and I would love for them to read these words at some point. Thank you.

Maitreya: You are welcome. Actually, drugs and drug companies are one of the groups who make the most money in the world right now because they are selling everything related to curing health problems and they charge a lot for them. As the question says, they have created a pill for anything, for depression, for all those things, and the people take them.

But the question is, is it permanent? The effect is not permanent. That is the thing you have to think about. If I take a pill and two days later I go back to being depressed, it did not cure the reason for it. If it did not cure the reason, it is not something permanent, therefore, it is not really the cure.

Another thing, when you take the drug, usually it takes from other parts of your body to cure something you have a problem with. We have talked about LSD and other drugs. When people take them their immune system is weakened in other ways. LSD or any other drug causes an acceleration for the feeling of the trip they go through or the cure by a drug from somewhere else in the immune system, therefore the natural immune system becomes weak. It has to take its energy and the power to heal from somewhere of your body to do it. Therefore, you usually become weaker in other parts, by taking drugs, too many drugs.

Well, maybe you should type these words and send them to your friend [laughing].

But the drug companies are not going to listen to our words; individuals should. If we get most people on earth not to fall for these advertisements, the drug companies are going to change their ways.

Audience: The demand is there.

Maitreya: Exactly. If the demand is there and people are going to demand for anti-depressive drugs, they will make it for you. If the people learn to meditate and cure themselves and the depression goes down, they are going to put their effort and money and energy into something most conducive to the spiritual way of living.

They are going to make money even in our system. But they are going to make money in a better way by curing the reason, the cause of the problem, not just a band-aid.

We are at the end of our session today. So I will give you thirty seconds if you have anything else to bring up, otherwise we will say our goodbyes after thirty seconds.

OK you all have a good (God) month and come to the activities of the conference room. That is a part of our teaching and your spiritual progress and your unity. Bring your ideas and think about these words and feast on them until we have another Satsang.

Sal-OM