Maitreya: When we say this person is bad, this religion is bad, what are we doing? Aren't we separating ourselves, or our religion, from the rest? And then we are doing what? We're separating God from God. How can we do that?

Guest: Probably when people say, "That religion is not good," that's because they don't think that God is everywhere.

Maitreya: That's right, because they don't know God. They have religion but they don't have God. You can have religion but not have God. You can have God and not have religion. And you can have both. It's very true.

We need unity now in this time especially, because the distances are no longer really distances. We're becoming so close to one another. If we want to go to the other side of the world, we are there in sixteen hours with the airplane. Of course, with the bigger jet planes, we can be there in a much shorter time. And with the satellite we can get there in a couple of minutes.

We're no longer separated from one another like we used to be. We're so interdependent. We can't afford anymore to be separated by religion, by country, by nation, by race, by language, by color. We just can't afford it, simply we cannot.

We are the pioneers. We are the people who have seen that some-thing is wrong and have seen the vision. And we want to do something about it. We might have different opinions about how to go about it, maybe a little different lifestyle, a different cultural background, but if we all rely on the Spirit, what the Spirit has already revealed to us, what is good and what is not good, then we can become even more unified. Instead of following our own culture or our own background, we can all rely on the words of the Spirit.

Then we can create a new culture to do that which is of a universal culture. It's no longer a Persian culture, or American, or Hindu, or Quebecians culture. But it's a culture based on God's Word. It's a new culture. The more we have people like this, and we create this kind of culture, the more those cultures are willing to change themselves to the new one.

Just like, we say, "Let everyone learn English." There might be resistance from those people who already have their own language or might say, "English is not my mother language." But I see a merit in doing that because English is already everywhere. Many people in many different cultures know English very well. However, English is not going to stay English.

Imagine fifteen or twenty years ago, when there were no words like Dharma or karma in English. Now they are very common words in English. After awhile the beautiful words of each culture are going to become part of this one language. Later on we're going to have a very rich, much more powerful and beautiful language than we have now.

So we have to have our focus on the future, on the goal. What is now, really doesn't count much. If we are called to do this Mission, we are the pioneers. And the life of the pioneer is not easy. Just remember those pioneers who came to the United States. Do you think they had the easiest life? No, they didn't. It was hard. It was difficult.

You have to go through some changes, no doubt about that. But if you really focus on the goal and if you believe that what you do here is wonderful, then those changes are not very painful. It's very easy, it's very simple.

I wanted to talk a little about fasting. There's a certain amount of life-force in each body. Of course, the more you meditate, and the more you can draw the energy into your body, you have more life-force in it. But usually there is a limited life-force in every person. That limited life-force has to be used for different functions of the body.

For instance, when you digest the food there is some amount of energy that has to be asserted or used to digest that food. If you think, you have to use energy. If you walk, if you talk, if you sit, all of them use energy. So if you use this energy for digesting food and other activities, the body never has a chance to heal itself, to really heal those stored problems that it has to take care of. Energy and Spirit are really very close.

But when you fast, what you are doing is giving the Spirit a chance to go through the body and take care of those problems that it has put aside and stored somewhere for later on. Also because there is more Spirit in you, you become more sensitive. You become more sensitive to your emotions and understanding your subconscious mind. You can even meditate deeper if you're fasting because you take care of all the toxins in the body, so the Spirit is much stronger in you. And because you become more sensitive, you can see your karma much better. You can learn your lessons much better because you are more sensitive, and you can see yourself better so you can heal yourself.

Why are you sick? Everything in this universe has a spiritual base and sickness has a spiritual base too. Some people say, "It's because of your karma that you have this disease," but when you fast you become more sensitive to realize that in yourself. Fasting is not something physical. Fasting is a very spiritual thing.

You don't get healed because you are physically healed but spiritually you become healed. That is the most important thing in fasting. If you only do fasting as a diet, as I said, you fast for a month or so, you lose some weight, and two months later you are at it again. You start eating again, and you gain everything you lost. But if spiritually you heal yourself, then you don't crave food, or you don't become an impulsive eater.

Then the reason you are an impulsive eater is because there is something subconscious in you that makes you become an impulsive eater. But in fasting and meditation, when you realize what is in your subconscious mind that makes you do that, then what happens? You overcome it.

So I just wanted to emphasize the spiritual importance of fasting on the spiritual progress rather than only using it as something physical.

Question: Like you were talking in one of the Satsangs on healing, is fasting only good for the shallowness of the body in this lifetime? Or it goes like you said, you can clean your karma with fasting? It's deeper than the other techniques we were talking about before, about how to heal yourself with diet and a few things?

Maitreya: Exactly. That's exactly the point I'm trying to make here, about fasting. It has a great spiritual significance. It is not only for a physical reason that you should fast. There are other things that you can do, such as cleaning your colon. We are trying to get rid of the toxins in the body and the colon is the most toxic place in the body.

So if you fast and also wash your colon, then you detoxify yourself much quicker. When your body is detoxified, and you meditate and make your body strong enough to receive more energy and Spirit, so you become much more aware of your emotional, psychological and subconscious mind. As you meditate much deeper, these problems vanish by themselves.

I used to use an analogy of psychological and emotional problems as the dark creatures in a person that make us do what we do. Sometimes we don't even want to do them. These dark creatures or psychological things can live only in darkness. They cannot live in light.

That is actually what the psychiatrists do when they have you lie down on a comfortable couch and make you talk about yourself. As you talk about yourself, you go deeper and deeper into your childhood, then just like a chain, you pick up the first one, the second one comes up, the third one, the fourth one, the fifth one, etc. The same thing happens in psychoanalysis. You go deeper and deeper into your being. You bring these creatures out to the light, and eventually you reach a point where you see a complex there. But the problem with the psychiatrist is that he cannot keep the complex in the light for a long time. But in meditation you can.

Anytime you meditate you can keep yourself in the light. And the more you stay in the light, the less darkness there is going to be. What is darkness? Darkness is the lack of light, isn't it? When you enter a dark room and flip on the switch, what happens to the darkness? It's gone. It can't stand the light. Darkness cannot stand the light. As you keep this light in you and you meditate on it, so the less and less darkness is going to be there. Then one day you wake up, and as Christ said, "When your eye is single your whole body becomes light." Then you have your light body. You become much more keen about what is going on in the universe. And the darkness is no longer there.

Question: I meditate a little every day, but I still have problems to keep my mental not working. It's always working -- thinking about this and thinking about that. Do you have a trick?

Maitreya: Yes. The story goes that there was this man who had all these desires. He knew he had so many desires that he could not fulfill in even a hundred lifetimes. So he went to this yogi, his teacher, and said, "Oh great yogi, I have so many desires. How am I going to fulfill all of these?" The yogi said, "OK, I have a mantra, I have a word, this incantation that I can give you. If you use it, this genie is going to come, and he can fulfill any desire you have. But the problem with this genie is he needs work to do. If you let him be idle he's going to kill you."

So this person said, "Don't worry about it, I have so many desires that they are going to keep this genie busy for a couple of lifetimes." The yogi said, "OK, but I warn you, it's dangerous." He said, "No, no, give it to me, I want it." He insisted. So the yogi said, "OK, here is the word, go and use it."

This man went and repeated the mantra, and he went through the ritual that the yogi told him. Then this large genie came and said, "Yes, master, what can I do for you?" The man said, "Build me a castle with such windows, all ceramic, this chandelier like this and this part should be this high, and everything that you could desire that a castle should have." Half an hour later the genie came and said, "Master the castle is ready." The man said, "What? I thought at least it's going to take you a couple of months." The genie said, "No, it's ready, it's here."

Anyway by 2:00 in the afternoon he was out of desires. Everything was fulfilled but he couldn't enjoy it because the genie kept asking him, "What else master, what next? I can't stand here idle, I want to work. Come on, give me something to do, I can't stand it. I'm getting pretty bored."

This man became upset, he remembered that the yogi told him the genie is going to kill him if he's idle. He said, "OK, OK wait here. I'll be right back." He ran to the yogi and said, "Yogi please, I'm sorry. You were right. He's going to kill me. I am out of desires." The yogi said, "There is only one way to keep this genie busy. Give him the tail of a dog and tell him to keep it straight. When he lets it go, it curls back. He straightens it and lets it go, and it curls back, and on and on."

That is what the mantra is. The mantra is that tail of the dog. And do you know who the genie is? It's the human mind. The human mind is a genie who thinks he wants this, he wants that, he wants to go there. "What did I do last night? What am I going to do today? Did he say that? Why did this person say a thing like this? Really was that what I wanted to say?" Or, "No, I didn't want to say that." The mind just chatters, blub blub blub. If you do not keep it busy, you think it will kill you.

So when you meditate, instead of meditating you're listening to that chattering mind. That's when you're given a mantra. You repeat a word that, of course, has higher energy in it, but also it keeps the mind busy with the repetition of the mantra. So it doesn't have time to think about anything else. Anytime your mind wanders about a thought, gently bring it back to the mantra. It wanders, bring it back. It wanders, bring it back.

Eventually the mind gives up. It gets tired. The mind doesn't want to think about one subject alone. It wants to jump from one to another, to another, to another, and when it becomes tired it becomes still. As it is said, "Be still and know that I am God."

So if you can keep the mind still, then you can see God within. That stillness is the Art of Stillness. And that is how you can really meditate. That is really meditation, when your mind is still.

Question: After awhile you don't have to repeat the mantra?

Maitreya: It depends upon the person. It depends, some people can get the mantra in one moment and the next moment their mind is still. Some people have to meditate many lifetimes before they get it. So it depends upon how sincere you are in doing it, where you are at, and do you really want to be that still? Some people are scared to be that still because it is different.

It is different than anything you have been taught to be. When you reach that point of stillness, you will be different. You have no choice. As I said, this world is upside down, just like an upside down tree. The more you climb it, the more you go down to the earth. You become earthly. The more you start trying to go out of the tree, the more you go to the root, which is heaven. The root is in the heaven and the branches are in the earth. The more you climb it you go to the earth. The more you don't want to climb it, you go to the heaven.

But that doesn't mean that we have to be escapists or not to be engaged in the world. "Be in the world but not of it." And that again returns us to the Communities of Light: creation of the communities where the people can have a spiritual base and environment, and at the same time can reach the outside world, and provide for themselves and for the communities. Eventually, the more we create this kind of community, the more the earth will become like heaven. That is because the people are going to be more friendly, more loving to one another and create an environment where everyone will be more loving to one another.

Of course, I'm talking about Godly Love. Godly Love is different than human love. It doesn't mean we have to cling to one another all the time, or hug one another all the time. It's OK to hug, but you can Love a person and never even see him or her. For instance, I Love a disciple, but he doesn't have to be here. My Love is for him even if he's hundreds of thousands of miles from here, or whoever else. We are connected without being in one another's presence.

So that is how we meditate, to still the mind.

Question: You talk about human love and God Love. Often I ask myself is it possible in ordinary life to mix both loves, to be with a man and at the same time to Love God and to be with both?

Maitreya: Well, that's what happened to this lady. She loved Krishna. Do you know Krishna? Krishna is God incarnated in India. She loved Krishna so much she didn't have anything else to talk about but Krishna. "Krishna did this. Krishna did that. Krishna stood like that. Krishna sings like that. Krishna walks like that. Krishna talks like that." She loved Krishna so much she had nothing else in the universe to talk about except Krishna.

Then her husband became very upset. One day he just couldn't stand it any longer and said, "Look woman, you're married to me, you didn't marry Krishna. You never talk about me, you talk about Krishna." She said, "That's why I Love you because I Love Krishna, and you are a part of Krishna."

You see? If you Love God with all your heart, mind and Spirit, and the man you are with is your husband and you Love him so much because he is a part of God, then you can have both. But your priority should be God first, man second. Not man first and God second. That's not going to work.

It's not going to work in any situation, if your priority is not God. After you get your priorities straight then you will find a man who is Godly. Most women look for a man who has Godly characteristics, who is honest, strong and connected to the Spirit, a man who really loves God more than anything else.

The reason that there are so many relationships that break up is because God is not the center of the relationship. The relationship is the center. You love this man and this man loves you. What happens is, you really love him because you think that you're going to receive some love from him, don't you? He's going to love you. And he loves you and gives you attention because he thinks he's going to receive love from you. In reality neither of you have it. Neither of you really have the love, because you're looking for it, aren't you? You're looking for love, and he's looking for love.

Let's put it in a more worldly way, OK? I bump into you and I don't have any money, and you don't have any money. I think you're going to give me some, and you think I'm going to give you some money. But we both don't have any money. So we get together with this feeling that I'm going to receive some money from you, and you have this feeling that I'm going to give you some money. Later on we realize none of us have it. What happens? The very reason we came together is no longer there. You don't have money and I don't have money, so what happens to us? Our relationship is finished because that was the reason we were together in the first place.

I was looking for love and I thought you were going to give it to me. You were looking for love and you thought I was going to give it to you. Later on we realized that all the attention we gave to one another was because we thought we were going to receive something that we both didn't have ourselves. The relationship is finished. I didn't have it. You didn't have it. So there's no relationship there. That's the problem with a lot of relationships.

If you're all looking for something that you don't have, then how can you receive it from others who do not have it? But if you love God with all your heart, mind and Spirit, and He has a lot of Love, then He gives it to you. What happens to you? You are all filled up, aren't you? You have Love. The whole world is looking for that Love. You're pretty precious, aren't you? A lot of people want you. You're full of Love. Everyone is looking for love, aren't they? And now you have it. What happens? Then you can fill other people and just give it to him, give it to her, give it to her, give it to him. You are all filled up. You're all precious now because you're all filled up.

Question: But maybe you don't need to be with a man?

Maitreya: That's right. You don't have to. Actually your desire for a man is no longer that important because you really don't want a man just because you need a man. You want a man because you two are one, because it is the Spirit that brought you together, because he or she is your other part. Not everyone has to marry. Not everyone has to have a partner. It's fine, if it happens, if it's God's desire that you be together, that's great, that's beautiful. But if I need to marry, then it is a human desire. It is not from the Spirit.

The desire of the Spirit, or "I need," are two different things, aren't they? If you need to do something then you have to sit back. This is the time to meditate. "I really need to do this." You are no longer relaxed about it. You can sit back and see, "Really, do I want to do this? Do I really need to have that?"

That's another part of the meditation. You can meditate and go through the process. For example, you have gone through the process of relationships many times. What happened? You got hurt at the end, didn't you? Now it is again the same situation. "I'm going through the same cycle and situation again and again." Look at the pattern in your life.

There is a pattern there, isn't there? Are you going to continue the pattern for the rest of your life? Or are you going to break it somewhere? If you want to release yourself, if you want to be free, you have to break the pattern. Otherwise you're going to just continue with this pattern for the rest of your life. And to the end of your life, still you're going to be in this wheel again and again.

That's where the meditation comes in again. If you have a still mind, you can sit back and look at it and go through it in your meditation. OK, we're going to get together. We're going to be happy. We're going to give each other attention for awhile. We love one another. We think that's it, and at the end we find, "Well, he doesn't have it or he's not going to change the way I want him to change," or, "She's not going to change the way I want her to change." And again you see your path is going to go in different directions.

There is a moment, a period of passion, a period when you take attention as love. A lot of people do that. You need attention (really you need love). You think if someone gives you attention you should love him. And that's not the truth. Someone might love you, but just like parents might spank their child, that doesn't mean they don't love him. But attention is not love. Of course, you shouldn't spank your child.

So if you go through your meditation, and look at the situation and go through it, you don't have to go through that situation physically or in life. You can see, "No, that's not what I want. I can see it now." You no longer have to live that cycle and come out of it when it is finished, and then say, "Well, that was not it either. See, I'm going through this cycle again."

In your meditation, you don't have to do that. You go through the cycle in your meditation. And because you go through it in your meditation, you come out of your meditation strong and resolved, "I'm not going to follow this pattern any longer. I'm going to break this pattern." The moment you break that pattern, you learned a lesson. The moment you learn the lesson, that pattern is gone. You will be amazed, it's no longer there.

A lot of people want to do something about this pattern in their lives, and they can't do it. They can't do it because they haven't learned their lesson. But if you learn the lesson through your meditation, then you don't have to do it anymore. You are free.

Then, of course, there is another lesson after that. But this is the way humans can resolve their personal problems by deep understanding within themselves.

See, what is perfection? Perfection means the lack of mistakes, the absence of mistakes. If through my meditation I learn my lessons, so the less mistakes I make the more perfect I am.

If we can realize our mistakes and not repeat them, what happens? We become more perfect!

So meditate!