CLAUDETTE BAKER: I'd like to thank you all for coming this evening. This is my beloved guru, Shelly. He is a disciple of Paramahamsa Yogananda, and I am very delighted that you've all joined us to share in his wisdom. Thank you.

SHELLY: First, I'll tell you a little bit about Yogananda. Yogananda loved to quote Shakespeare. One of perhaps the nicest quotations that he gave, was that we're all on a stage, actors on a stage, doing our part. But we should always remember we were an actor or an actress on the stage of life. And he hammed it up quite a bit. He loved being Yogananda, the guru. He loved being there.

I'll tell you the first way that he would act: in California, in Encinitas, it was kind of warm, 95 degrees in the summer time. He would come from his ashram to the temple, which had two lotus buds and one lotus blossom (which were in gold leaf), and he had on a bear skin coat, a derby hat and a cane. And he would walk down the flag steps, past what looked like the Taj Mahal, very sedately walking like this to the temple. When he got to the temple there was a disciple waiting to take his cane and his derby hat, and another disciple to take his bear skin coat. When he put his bear skin coat on him he would go down. It was a real heavy coat. Somebody that he liked quite well, had given it to him as a present. And then he'd sedately go into his temple and give whatever type of lecture he would be happening to give.

So this was Yogananda the man. Yogananda the humorist. Yogananda who hammed it up as hard as he possibly could. But there was behind this, Yogananda the saint.

Now to give you a true story what actually happened: There was one of his adopted sons there and it was close to Christmas time. In one of his wanderings through the world, when he was over in the Middle East, he had seen a statue which he admired pretty much, from one of the Shahs over there. I forgot the name of the Shah. But this Christmas, the Shah was sending this to Yogananda. Now it had tremendous value in the museum. They figured roughly maybe $100,000 back then, and this was years ago, when $100,000 was $100,000.

And so he kept calling on the telephone: "Has it come yet? Has it come yet?" "No, it hadn't come yet, it hadn't come yet." He said, "Now you call me as soon as it comes." The disciple said, "Yes, he would." But it didn't matter. Each day he called the disciple anyhow and he would ask "Has it come yet? Has it come yet?" And it was about the day before Christmas when it actually arrived. Well, the disciple and I, we put it into the truck because Yogananda wanted us to come immediately right up there. And the disciple was telling me how he had learned all these beautiful knots, so that things wouldn't come undone. He was really happy that he had been a Boy Scout. And so it was all pushed in, and everything else was tied down: all the gifts and other things that were supposed to go up there.

(Yogananda loved parties and he used to love to produce great feasts. That meant you sat before him for four whole hours and you just kept eating. It's undoubtedly why I eventually got this, and why Yogananda was a big soul, as they say. [laughter])

So everything was finally ready. And at this time, there was sort of a hurricane out in the Pacific Ocean and the wind was blowing pretty strong. It had blown some of the palm trees down. It even blew a palm tree down in Yogananda's place in Encinitas. As we were going up, some of the road was awash with water from the Pacific Ocean. So we had to go up and around, around the side. As we were going, about every five or ten minutes, we looked back to see if everything was alright, and everything was going okay, everything was going alright. Then suddenly we looked back and behold: the box was gone ! So we went back and we went forth, and we went back and we went forth. We couldn't even find a splinter of the wood. So this young man who was in charge of this whole thing, he was really getting scared.

Well, time was going on. We had to go up, so we continued to go north towards Los Angeles. And the closer we got to Los Angeles, the slower the truck began to go, and the whiter he began to look. So finally, when we got to Los Angeles, where Yogananda was, and we got out and we had to go in. Yogananda, like a cherub, came bouncing towards us. "It's come, it's come, it's come, it's come, it's come!". And he looked at this young disciple and he said, "It has come, hasn't it?" (And I'm not telling you the disciple's name because I think he's still alive.) [laughter] And he saw the paleness of his face. And so this young disciple told Yogananda, explained it, looking at me for confirmation. And I nodded. Everything he said was true.

Yogananda looked at him and a beam came onto his face. And he said, "Look, that was the thing, you're real." He put his arms around him and he said, "It's you that I love." Then he went over and he did the same thing to me. Now, as far as I know, he never said anything to this young disciple about it afterwards. He sure never said anything to me about it. That was a lot of money that went down the line.

So he was able to live a life. He lived a life and he enjoyed it to the fullest of its extent. He hammed it up at every time and every possibility that he could. But behind the man was always a saint. So here [placing hand at back of head] was the Mouth of God, and the mouth of God was where he sat, in constant viewing of Yogananda the man.

And so, I considered Yogananda really a saint, a being who was fully aware of his existence as an actor on the stage of life here. And he never really forgot that he was an actor, and he was in control of his emotions. He also was quite arrogant, for when he joined Sri Yukteshwar, (and that's the way I pronounce it anyhow, some pronounce it a little bit different), he recognized Yogananda, the arrogant person. So he did the best thing you can to a person like that: he made him wash the pots and pans. [laughter] Yogananda told me that when he first did this, he figured, he must be in the wrong place, with the wrong crew. He didn't realize his importance, see? [laughter]

But this was his job, and he continued to do this, and finally advanced up until he began to cook for the different individuals. He became a gourmet. And in his earliest books, you will notice that he taught you a lesson in spirituality, and then towards the end of the book, he taught you, for instance, what watermelon was good for - and how to make this type of candy out of watermelon rind - and things of this sort - and to save the seeds, and what the seeds were good for. In other words, he examined how what the different things in different foods that you might eat would do for your body, would help you in all different times and ways - which is very, very good for anybody who is interested in cooking, and for women in general. He always brought in very practical applications along with his spirituality.

He showed one thing above all others in his teaching: in order to reach the purpose of existence, to reach Self-Realization, to reach God Consciousness, a person needed a technique. With a technique, one did not have to believe the technique or disbelieve the technique: you merely had to use it. If you used the technique, you would reach Self-Realization, you would reach God Consciousness. And it was the technique of meditation.

His technique of meditation was quite simple. According to Yogananda, it was a simple mathematical equation. I know you're not too interested in mathematical equations, but I'm going to give you one anyhow so that you know what he meant by meditation and the pathway to Self-Realization, the pathway to God Consciousness. It was this: When you meditate, how many factors are involved? When you meditate upon that cane the cane is your object of meditation. You are the meditator and there's the act of meditation. When these three objects (the meditator, the object of meditation and the act of meditation) are equal to 1, perfect meditation ensues. And this is the purpose of meditation.

This means that now, each and every one of you who are here: you are aware that I am here, you're aware how I am dressed, you're aware of what the temperature is, you're aware of the people next to you, you're aware of the type of my voice. Maybe you have 20 or 30 different things that you're aware of right now. This is nowhere near close to one. And this formula, really, it's the meditator, divided by the object of meditation, times the act of meditation is equal to 1. And if you have 20 or 30 objects of meditation which you're aware of now, 1/20th is the power of your meditation. And this would be something really good.

So what do you do when you meditate ? You focus your awareness on one thing, and you keep it focused there, until the number of objects of meditation is reduced from 20 to 19 to 18 to 17 to 16 to 15. As it continues to reduce, the power of your meditation begins to increase and increase, until eventually you become close to at-one-ment with the object of your meditation. This produces, within your being, a deep sense of peace, calmness. They call it "the peace that goes before all understanding". It moves you into a state where you begin to digest the knowledge that you have, and when digested, that knowledge becomes wisdom. And now, you are beginning to move truly on the pathways toward Self-Realization.

When you get down to where there are very few things that you are aware of - maybe 5 or 6 - a strange thing takes place: You were meditating upon this cane. You find, "Well, I am more important than this cane. This cane is a thing". And so you find your self. Self-Realization takes place, and then an inversion begins to function.

The inversion indicates that you are a viewer and you are the viewed - but you don't know which one is which. And in this, the inversion takes place that you become the object of your meditation. And when this happens, it is like the viewer becomes viewed, the beholder becomes the beheld, the lover becomes the loved.

I'm expressing the various chapters associated with the laws of Self-Conscious Awareness. And the feeling is bliss. Pure, unadulterated bliss. Ever-changing, ever-new, ever-more-glorious bliss, that pours through your whole being. And if you think of dope and things of this sort as an avenue, you haven't tasted bliss yet. It is way above and beyond anything that dope can do. All dope can do is lead you into the illusions of the astral world, and you might think you're in a state of bliss. You're in a state of not bliss, but maybe some form of ecstasy. But it's nothing like the peace that goes before all understanding. It's not the pool which is clear, wherein you can look and see reality as it really is - not as you dream it is.

Remember: all of us think we are one thing, we pretend that we're something else to others, and we're really a third. But in the pool of bliss, in the calmness of our Self-Realization, we see reality as it really is. We see us as we really, truly are. Not as we think we are, not as we pretend to be, but as we really, truly are. At this point, we're moving towards the very purpose of our existence, the very nature of our being.

Many have expressed God in many ways. If you move into God Consciousness through any form of meditation (and this is what Yogananda has expressed as meditation from what I have described) you find that God is an all-giving, all-loving being. He wants to do nothing but give you everything that he is, everything that he has, and he asks you one thing and one thing only: let him. None of you let him.

People go to church - Catholic Church, Protestant Church, synagogues - it doesn't matter what the religion is, all paths lead to God Consciousness eventually. Most that go to church do this, and in the Catholic Church I have heard them pray: "Dear Jesus, give me this." Someone else says, "God, give me that." And I heard a woman say, "Dear Jesus, give me this. If you don't give it to me, I'll go on to the Holy Mother Mary, to intercede on my part so that I can have what I want." And you see, they are praying, they are tuning into "the gimmies". Now when you're tuning into Channel 13, you can't get it by tuning into Channel 8. You can't get God Consciousness, you can't get peace, you can't get this bliss, this calmness that solves your problems, by tuning into "the gimmies". You've got to tune into "the givies". God is an all-loving, all-giving reality. And so to tune into Him, tune into his channel. Pray to the cosmic dreamer, the great God, and pray: "How can I help you bring about your concept into the role of existence? What can I do to alleviate you from all the problems that everyone is praying to you about?" Now you're tuning into the God Channel. Now you've got a chance.

But so long as you're aware of all your wants and needs and wanting your own channel, you're really tuning into the Devil's Channel. And this is his opportunity, when you think that you have tremendous needs and wants. I'm not saying that the Devil won't give those things to you. But he does so at a price. And the price happens to be your soul.

Do you want to know what is your soul? Okay, I'll tell you: You are Self-Conscious Awareness. You are aware that you are. You stand off and view yourself. Any change in the state of Self-Conscious Awareness implies an event has taken place. Every event is a part of the memory track of the spirit. And the memory track of the spirit is a soul. Pure and simple. All the soul is, is a memory track of the spirit. It's part of the spirit. And to express it in Mathematics, I'd have to go into Transfinite Math, where we're dealing with infinities instead of finite things, and that's too much for an audience here, and especially I don't have a blackboard to do it on. This is God: pure and simple bliss, remember.

If you have a problem and you meditate, it eventually will solve all problems, because it brings into balance your Self-Conscious Awareness. But there's a time-lapse between getting there and the problems of today. So there are many helpful patterns along the way. Part of these patterns is the ability to understand the Law of Symbolic Association. Remember, if you take a child that is about 1 year of age, a child that you can understand (no one else can understand the child because of its youngness), and ask what it dreams, you will find that it uses the same basic symbols in a dream that an older person uses. Where did it learn them? In other words, there are some basic symbols which are always the same. They have the same meaning and are universal for really all living things. Up is good. Down is bad. You don't have to learn this. This is why Heaven is always up and Hell is always down. So if you have any kind of dream whatsoever and you're going up, it indicates a favorable condition.

Say you're going up a rickety ladder, a rope ladder, and part of the rope is frayed. It indicates you are advancing, but under precarious conditions. If you're going up a beautiful stairs, you're advancing under very favorable conditions. It doesn't say what the conditions are with these symbols, but it tells you that you are succeeding to move forward in some particular category of life. You have to have some other symbols to tell what it is, whether it's in the partnership, whether it's in health matters, whether it's in finance. It depends upon other symbols to indicate the category.

There are many types of sciences to help you learn the Laws of Symbolic Association. Freud was one of the ones who brought it to the level of an accepted, accredited college degree for understanding symbolism. Today we have Psychiatry, we have Psychology, we have Astrology, we have the Kabbalah: we have a number of methods whereby we can understand and learn the laws of symbolic association. Perhaps the simplest of all these methods is Astrology itself. It has come down to us from the ages more clearly than any other form of symbolism, to tell what a relationship is. It does, in this manner, tell our relationship to everything that has ever been, everything that will ever be, and everything that we are aware of now. Our relationship to it, the relationship of everything that we're aware of to each other.

And to show you this, here's another example, of what had happened with Yogananda in connection with Astrology: his secretary, whom he considered his best critic, was a good astrologer. She used to earn her money by writing for Astrology magazines and doing Astrology. Yogananda used to say to her, "Look, you're being enslaved by Astrology. To make your decisions, you always draw up a horoscope to find out what you should do." She said, "But you do everything under the best of aspects." He said, "Okay. You pick out the worst possible aspect. I'll show you I can do it and make it work. I don't have to depend upon my horoscope. I don't have to depend upon the fates to have what I want". So while I happened to be there, he happened to have a very, very adverse aspect, and there was a church which he had seen, which was made out of redwood. I'm not sure whether it was out of one redwood tree or not, but he had fallen in love with it, and he wanted to bring it down and put it into Hollywood. He figured Hollywood needed some spirituality for some reason or other. [laughter]

In order to do this, of course, he needed money. Now when you have an organization, there's only one way you can get money, but Yogananda tried his best. He prayed to God and he said that he was bringing this to help spread the Word of God and he needed some money to accomplish this. He said God told him to send flyers out to all of the disciples, to gather some money together, in order to accomplish this particular purpose. So Yogananda sent out flyers to everybody and the money came in, and the church was put on rollers and the tractor (or whatever it was) was coming down and Yogananda had smiles on his faces.

And then a telegram came: the trailer had broken loose and had gone through a fence and into some farmers' yard, and there it sat. And there were some legal troubles associated with it, to get it out. He had to pay for all the damages that were done to the crops, to the fence, etc., etc. So Yogananda needed some more money.

Yogananda, not getting any from his normal sources, once more had to meditate and pray unto God. And he told God what the situation was, what happened and things that sort, and God said, "You have to send another flyer out to the disciples." And he said, "Oh God," he said, "not again." He said "They have contributed so much." He said, "Not again." God said, "Yes, you must." So he sent out another flyer. And the money came in and finally it arrived. And by this time it was Easter. He had hoped to have it there by Easter, and opened up. Well, he just got it in before Easter and he ran into all different problems and things of that sort. When he finally had it so that people could go into it and that it was open for business, his adverse aspect had passed. A good aspect had come along, and so Yogananda said, "You see, you can accomplish it, but not without difficulties!" [laughter]

So, Astrology can be used to aid you in the normal everyday purposes of existence. Remember: "Forewarned is forearmed". And if you know something about the future, you have a chance to do something about it. If you don't know anything about the future, you have absolutely no chance whatsoever to alter the things. If you consider that you have free will, this is what must take place, to prove that you have free will: you must have some way of predicting the future with a rather high degree of accuracy, and then you must proceed to change it. If you can do this, you have proved to yourself that you have free will. Now there are many experiments taken on along this line. The results are not exactly too favorable. If you have free will, it would indicate that your free will existed before you entered into this body and the body that you entered into: its genetic coding matched very closely to your karmic destiny patterns. If it didn't, you would enter into the body and you'd be unable to stay in it. If you insisted upon staying in it, it would malfunction. It could act as an idiot, as a moron, or something of this sort, because some other physical phenomenon would take place, and it would not be a favorable vehicle.

So there must be a balance so that the genetic coding must equal your karma. If you want, in your next incarnation, you can be Cleopatra, or you can be William the Conqueror, or whatever you want. Time, in God's cosmic dream, in what we live, is not like you think it is. And this is why you're existing. Remember: from the beginning, the sages have always said, "What am I here for? Where am I going? What is the purpose of my existence? What is it all about?" And the sages say, "Man, know thyself" is the first step towards understanding of this. And to know yourself, you have to meditate. "Meditate, meditate" as Yogananda says. Continue to meditate to reach Self-Realization and God Consciousness. When you finally reach this, you find the world isn't like you think it is. Time is not like you think it is. Space is not like you think it is.

This is what happens: You all have a VCR (or most of you do) and know what it is anyhow. Supposing you take this tape and you run it out full-length and you have it stretched out. There is nothing moving on it, right? But if you pull the head on it and you move along at a steady rate, you can see what's taking place on your TV screen. Well, you've got a head here and you're moving on the tape of God's memory banks, memory tracks, so to speak. Where you are at now, this is an environment which is contiguous unto your own personal nature. In other words, if you have the awareness and the spiritual advancement of a fish, you will be born in the ocean where fish are. If you have the spiritual advancement of a guinea pig, this is where you will be. You'll be like a guinea pig, or maybe you'll be a serpent, or maybe you'll be pretty close to the top of the chain and be a human being on the face of this Earth. It depends upon your spiritual nature as to where you're going to be, what is your environment, your outer and inner environment. In other words, truly, your outer environment is a reflection of your inner environment. And once you have reached that particular point where you incarnate into the type of human being (or some other animal for that matter), that depicts your state of evolutionary spiritual advancement, you will have an outer environment reflecting this. And now you have a chance to advance spiritually.

For instance, you could have entered maybe at some time into the body of a dog and have a wonderful, glorious spiritual master. Look how fast you would advance in spirituality. Maybe in the next incarnation, you would be a human being. And because you're a human being this time, does not necessarily guarantee that you're going to be a human being next time. You could go down the scale a little bit. It's highly improbable, but it is possible. And so it behooves everyone to really try to advance as far as they possibly can, in this particular incarnation [laughter].

Life is really simple, but we make it complex. We make it terribly complex, and it is not complex. For instance, when we go into basic symbolism, here's some basic symbolism of artists: A vertical line is cool blue in color. It's austere, commanding, regal, awake. A horizontal line is soft green in color. It's peace, rest, soothing, sleep, death. At a 45 degree angle to it is a line, and it is red in color and it's action. It's like Mars. There's a fourth line, and it is like a wavy line. It modulates the other three. It's called the "many coats" of color, because here we have the combination of the three primary colors: red, blue, and green. Now this all only applies when you have a gravity field. If you go into deep space, there are not these three types of lines and colors. Remember: in deep space, where there is no gravity (this is a theoretical point because practically, we don't know of a place where there is no gravity), if we move into the abstract form, we have two types of lines: a straight line (which is white in color, it's masculine) and a curved line (which is black in color and is feminine). The most perfect curved line is a circle, but all curved lines indicate energy patterns.

This is why nature gave women the power to bear children, because a woman is a symbol of power, of energy, and she can therefore have the energy for creation. If they gave the power to men to have children, the population would have ceased long ago, because they'd have had one child, and then they would have stopped. [laughter] But women have the power of enduring this pain and continuing on. And they have glandular secretions which help them to love that little prune which is born. [laughter] The curved line is a kind of energy. You can always look for it, like when you have a watch and you're winding up the spring. I know that modern watches have a battery in them, but the early watches have a spring. In the early languages, spring and spirit, meant pretty much the same thing, because it meant an energy field.

You want to know how all this came into existence, how Karma originally started, where it all began ? It's not too difficult. When you are aware that you are, remember: there are 4 factors of Self-Conscious Awareness. Om Tat Sat Om in the Hindu. Jehovah, as far as we go, with the Hebrews. In other words, even in German, it's gotGott and the English language used to be "G-o-o-d," but they forgot one of the o's over time. (After all, we forgot some of the meaning of God anyhow: it meant "Good"). We always usually had 4 letters symbolizing the name of God. Remember, we have the 4 factors which indicate it in meditation. The other factor is the memory bank of the spirit. This is the 4th factor. Two are the same:You're the beholder, you're the beheld. But we don't know who the beholder is, we don't know who the beheld is. You act as though you're standing off and viewing yourself. And in the very act of doing this, there is an Uncertainty Principle: whom is who? One is feminine, one is masculine. One is a straight line, one is a curved line. The curved line results because we do not know who is the observer, who is the observed, who is the viewer, who is the viewed, who is the meditator, who is the object of meditation, so to speak.

And what happens under this condition and an uncertainty principle ? It indicates an energy differential. As soon as there's an energy differential, it's cumulative. It begins to increase, and as it increases, it eventually becomes a circle. The circle begins to shrink, the energy begins to build until we finally have an infinite amount of energy. Just recently, since with the new computers that they have in Great Britain (and Great Britain says now that she has the best computers in the world because she has the fastest computer in the world. That was at least about a month ago. That might have changed by now) in the computer, they have gone back, just before the Big Bang, when there was an infinite amount of energy. And they found out: there was an infinite amount of energy. Finally, there was enough energy in this infinite amount, that they could create Anti-Gravity. Because in this place, where there was an infinite amount of energy, it was all Gravity. Gravitons seemed to have an enormous amount of energy to create one. Momentarily, Anti-Gravity was created, and then the Big Bang took place. So we're a few seconds before the Big Bang took place. I am saying that we go back into Self-Conscious Awareness, and the very law of Self-Conscious Awareness causes an infinite amount of energy to be accumulated, and will then cause a Big Bang.

If we are uncontrolled, we will create unbalanced universes, and they will close in upon themselves, and there will be all kinds of suffering and struggles. To show you how unbalanced you are, here is an experiment that has taken place: In a college some years ago they took a group of ten average individuals, and they took another group of ten average individuals too. Remember, we must have a comparison. With the one group of ten individuals, they wrapped them in burlap, the hands, their legs. and they put them in a room where there was nothing to view. About three rooms further on, there was a candle burning. There was nothing to see anyhow. You didn't hear anything, you didn't feel anything. They wanted to see how long you could remain rational. Well, when you're in a state like this, you begin to hear your heartbeat, and your mind begins to turn inward for stimuli, because there's nothing to stimulate you outside. Within 12 hours, all the students were gloriously raving mad. They had lost their identity, they did not know who they were, and they had to talk them slowly back into existence. They found out when they were doing this, that they could brainwash them.

This is just exactly what Russia needed. They got certain individuals (and since you can do this with a large majority of human beings), someone had committed a crime. They couldn't find out who the criminal was. They'd take anybody at random and brainwash him, and he would confess to the crime and ask the nation, the courts to exterminate him. You could make him believe anything. They could even change their emotional patterns and all. Now they could not do this to everybody. To one who meditated, they were unable to accomplish this, because he was able to control the inner forces of his nature. What this means: You are not very well balanced in your inner nature. You need outside stimuli to keep you in control. In other words, you're in God's Cosmic Dream that is loaded with stimuli, and all paths in God's Cosmic Dream point to Self-Realization, to God Consciousness. If you meditate, you begin to control these states of unbalanced forces within your being, these states of unbalanced forces that cause you all the pains and griefs. And by your meditation, you bring that into realization. You bring that into peace. This is why when you have reached Balanced Self-Conscious Awareness, it feels as though it is a world full of peace that goeth before all understanding, before all expression. Why shouldn't it be peace? There are no longer any forces to keep you out of balance.

To indicate how different vehicles and different forces can upset an individual, and how God Consciousness is: There was a devotee in India, and he had cancer on his legs. (This is one of the stories that Yogananda would tell.) Because he had a cane, and he was not being able to walk too good because of the cancer which was on his legs, his disciples said, "When you're in God Consciousness, if you ask God, he'll cure you of your cancer." "Oh yes, yes," the devotee said. "When you're in God Consciousness in your meditation, ask him". "I will." He said, "I will, I will." And so months go on, and the cancer continued to grow and it was beginning to get more and more difficult to carry on his walking. And so the disciples again said to this devotee, this Guruji, "Look, things are getting worse. Ask God, ask God, so that you will be healed." And he said, "Yes," he said, "I will, I will." And months went on, and he was really getting into a bad condition, he could no longer walk unless he was leaning with help upon his disciples. And they were very concerned now, because they were apt to lose this man whom they revered. And they said, "Why don't you do something?" He said, "Oh, You see, it's so important, but when I'm in God Consciousness, when I'm in Balanced Self-Conscious Awareness," he said, "it's so peaceful," and he said, "I have no problems. I am not aware of any problems." He said, "How can I think something like a physical body under these conditions?" They said "But you must, you must". And so he went into God Consciousness in his meditation, and as he was beginning to come out, he said, "Oh," he said, "Cosmic Dreamer," he said, "for the sake of my disciples," he said, "cure my cancer here," and when he came out, it was gone.

Remember: He said "Oh Cosmic Dreamer, the Great Spirit, for the sake of my disciples". Not for selfish love, not for the self, but with Unselfish Love for his disciples. He was tuning into God Consciousness, remember: then the gift could be granted. If you go into meditation for selfishness, you're not tuning in, remember. It must be an unselfish love for someone else, to help another being. And the important thing: a ceremony. Remember, the disciples continued to tell him that there was a problem, So that finally the ceremony was intense enough, that when he was just moving out of God Consciousness, out of a state of balanced bliss, he became aware that there was a problem. So that this bliss of God could function and take place, but only through unselfish thought. Remember if he thought and he wanted to do it because he didn't like the cancer there, and it was for a selfish purpose, he wouldn't have been tuning into God. He'd be tuning into "the gimmeies" again. And then he'd have been in trouble.

This is what Yogananda loved to quote Shakespeare for. Very, very important to him, was that we're all actors on the stage, all playing our part. And remember: whatever part you're playing, play it to the hilt. Enjoy it. Regardless what it is. And meditate. There are many good books out. You have an excellent guru here to teach you the various techniques and the methods to Self-Realization, to God Consciousness, to solve your problems - and the sciences of Symbolic Association, to help you on the way, for all the different patterns and paths that might be important to you now - so that you might be able to meditate more perfectly to reach Self-Realization. But remember: the basic technique is to meditate. Never stop meditating.

There are two basic techniques that Yogananda taught: one is called Kriya proper and the other is called Indirect Kriya. It was found out by psychics and mystics, through God Consciousness, that around the cerebral spinal system, the closer a person moved towards Self-Realization, to God Consciousness, a current would flow. The farther away that one was, the less the current would flow. In other words, there was a technique which he taught that caused the current to flow in the manner that psychics saw. This was called Kriya. This is Kriya proper. Indirect Kriya is all other paths that lead to Self-Realization, to God Consciousness. This is Indirect Kriya. Of all the paths of Indirect Kriya, the path which is the strongest is the path wherein someone teaches someone else the path toward Self-Realization. Remember: no guru can take the path for you. He can show you the way. You have to take it yourself. You have to move toward Self-Realization. Only through self-discipline can you accomplish it. That's a dirty word, self-discipline. It means no one else can do anything for you but yourself. And you can accomplish it, if you want to. And if you didn't want to, you wouldn't be here. Since you are here, it means you can accomplish it.

Since all paths lead to God Consciousness, what is the difference between any two paths? There are many paths towards God Consciousness. In fact, in this cosmic dream, all paths lead to God Consciousness. But you can get to San Francisco by going by airplane, by going by train, by going by car. In fact, you can get to San Francisco by going due east. The only difference between any two paths towards Self-Realization, towards God Consciousness, towards bliss beyond all expression, is the length of time that it takes you to get there, and the experiences on the way. Now, Karma Yoga is considered the slowest of all paths towards God Consciousness. If you take a human being, deduct from it the time in between incarnations, deduct from it the time interval between sickness, you will reach God Consciousness in approximately 10 million years. You will experience just about everything that's on the way.

Once, our president, Eisenhower, was over in India and the savants said that he followed the path of Karma Yoga. And they said that God must love Karma Yoga above all other Yogas, because so many of the people on the face of the Earth are following Karma Yoga [laughter]. Of course, in this way, they flattered our president. But by Kriya Yoga, you can accomplish all this vast time. You can reduce it into one lifetime, one lifetime of Self-Realization, of Balanced Self-Conscious Awareness, of bliss. Pure unadulterated bliss. It's important, if you want to get there.

Now, as they said, and this is what Yogananda quoted: if you go to the desert and you sit there and you meditate (now you remember, you're doing practically nothing else but meditating, barely surviving by getting enough food and things of this sort), you can accomplish it. In accomplishing it, you lift every being on the face of the Earth up a little bit towards God Consciousness. You have helped everybody by reaching God Consciousness. But, he says, if you go into Chicago (and I bring that up because this happens to be Chicago where we're at) and you live close to where there's an elevated train and you go to meditate, and every time you go to meditate there's an elevated train going by, and your place shakes and trembles: if you reach God Consciousness here, you have created a much greater achievement. But the probability of you doing so is much, much less [laughter]. But it can be done, if you're sincere and earnest enough.

Remember, the way to God Consciousness, the way to Self-Realization, the way to solve your problems, is to find a sage someplace, to help you along the path. Somebody to help read your chart, read your destiny because of their inner insight, and to help solve your problems. To show the way. To bring you into Self-Realization, into this place of bliss. Once you have tasted it, you will never lose the path. You will continue on to meditate for the rest of your existence, because balance is uniqueness, not the norm. The norm is a state of unbalance. Remember: in Self-Conscious Awareness, you don't know which one is the viewer and which one is the viewed. There's a perpetual state of uncertainty, a state of unbalance that produces energy. But in the state of Balanced Self-Conscious Awareness, there is no energy differential.

The ancient Egyptians, when a person died, they weighed his soul against a feather. If he weighed more than the feather, he had to come back and reincarnate again. Remember, Energy is equal to Mass. Einstein found this out, some thousands of years later: "E equals MC Squared". The more energy you had, meant the more unbalanced you were. The more unbalanced you were, the greater was your mass. This is why they weighed a soul on the scale with a feather. They seem to have known these ideas long before we came around in this wonderful age and discovered it.

Question

STUDENT: What is Life's purpose ?

SHELLY: What is Life's purpose ? I thought that's what I was discussing [laughter]. In figuring of Life's purpose, firstly: Most of us, we're like a boat in the middle of the ocean. The boat hasn't got a rudder, but that doesn't matter. We don't know where the port is anyhow [laughter].

Most of us do not know really, basically, what the purpose is. And the purpose is really Balanced Self-Conscious Awareness. It has always been known what the purpose of existence is, so that you bring into balance, so that "countenance beholds countenance" in Balanced Self-Conscious Awareness.

In the book of the Kabbalah, the first statement in the Book of Concealed Mystery, says the "Book of Concealed Mystery is the Book of Equilibrium of Balance", so that "countenance beholds countenance in balanced equilibrium". This is what the purpose of existence is. This is what all beings do. In fact, when you're out and bodyless, in brilliant states of awareness, they have one game which continues to function: Press the other guy's buttons, which tells them how much unbalanced he is. There is no other better game than that. They say I am rather good at it myself [laughter]. And so, I really think the Cosmic Dreamer has got you all down here, and he's really pressing your buttons like nobody's business! And to me, that is what the ancients meant by the purpose of existence and the law of existence.