Master of the secret Power

Good morning.

This morning, I want to talk about how a Guru, how a Master is living practically in life.

I received an email with questions about this, and I love this email. I love to talk about this, although I don't know how. I mean, all I can talk about is how I experienced my Master and how I still experience him, how I experience my Guru, and what I know about them. So, what you hear in this video is a personal report. Somebody else might tell you different things.

And my spiritual Master Sohamji... I know him since 24 years. And for 20 of those years, I was practically living with him. We were constantly traveling from city to city. He was giving Satsangs in all kinds of cities and countries, so we were traveling together, often we were living together, I had contact with him daily. So, I can, out of my personal experience, tell you how that was for me, how he was and how he is today.

About my Guru Swamiji, I cannot tell you things like this. I have never been personally so close to him. I am totally close to him inside, but as far as the practical aspects of life are concerned, my account comes out of what I know about him, what I read about him, especially what I read in his autobiography, where he talks about his life and what he experienced, in such a profound but also direct, almost childlike, unpolished way. He has such a natural, unpretentious way of describing his experiences and how his life developed and unfolded.

And what I read there, I can tell you a few things about that. But you can read it also yourself, if you're interested. This autobiography has 6 volumes, and it's available on Amazon as ebook in English language. And on my website, I put up the links for these ebooks, in case you are interested to read this. I can only recommend it. It's a great read. It's the rare opportunity to read the personal account of one of the greatest Gurus who ever lived. What we know from Jesus, we don't even know second hand. We don't even know 3rd hand.

We only know what was written down about Jesus, and these are all things written down 50, 60 years afterwards, so it had already been passed on from one generation to the next 2 or 3 times, and then it was written down by some other people. And that has already been changed and translated many, many times, and that's what we hear. But here you can read the personal account of the Ssaint himself, and you can feel it. It's an amazing energy in these words. I love this.

But here, I'm going to give my personal account, and I just want to prefix it like this because I want you to know what I experienced myself and what I didn't. So, I will start reading out this email, which has a few questions about the subject, and I will stop after each sentence and answer, otherwise, I will forget half of the questions at the end. Let's start. "You say that a Guru is someone alive who allows me to encounter God in the encounter with him itself."

Yes, this is true. A Guru is somebody who is like God for you, if it's your Guru.

You know he is not God. You know that nobody can be God, because God is everywhere, so God cannot be reduced to one thing or one body.

So, you know the Guru is not God, but you experience being close to God through the Guru.

And, practically, this means that you experience the proximity to the Guru, whether it's a practical, outwardly proximity or an inside proximity. In this proximity to the Guru, you experience the proximity of God, as if the Guru is God, and in a way, he is.

Many people ask: why do I need a Guru? Why can't I go to God directly? Why is this intermediate necessary. It's only necessary because of you. Because of us. It's only necessary because of the way we humans are.

I read something beautiful exactly about this from Swamiji just the other day. He said, it's like this: there's the ocean, God. God is like the ocean, vast and infinite. And you don't know anything about the ocean. You have never seen the ocean. All you know is some hearsay about it.

So, you can't be close to the ocean. You know nothing about it, but you live close to a river. There's a river, and the river you can experience. You can go to the river, and you sit at the banks of the river. Now, the water which flows in the river, it's the same water that is also in the ocean. The ocean and the river are made up of the same essence, the water. So, by sitting at the river, you experience the essence, the water.

You can't be close to the ocean because you don't know anything about the ocean, but the river is close to you. The river is part of your daily life. It's like the ocean comes to you, into your life, in the form of the river. And I like this picture. I like this analogy. It's like: all we know about God is some hearsay. It's just a word for us, and each human being has different associations with this world and different imaginations about it.

But the Guru, in form of another human being, that he can experience. And then, through this Guru, they experience the essence, the energy of God, through this other human being. That's what a Guru is like for us.

So, I read the next sentence. "Isn't the goal of life then to be a Guru yourself, to merge with the Divine?"

Yes. Exactly. Yes. That's the goal of this life.

That's why you are here: to become your own Guru, that's your goal.

You don't know anything about Guru. You don't know anything about God. But then you meet the river, and because you live close to the river, you jump into the water, and without knowing, you already meet the ocean. And when you spend a long time at the river, you become the ocean yourself. That's how it works. Simple. Natural. Swamiji says: "My only goal"... Swamiji is my Guru, he says:"My only goal is to make your soul your Guru."

In the beginning, you meet a Guru on the outside in the form of another human being, because this is helpful for you to encounter your own inner self for the first time. And then, after a while, you don't need this external Guru anymore, because then you are deeply connected to your soul, to God inside of you. The Guru was only a temporary help.

That's how Swamiji describes it himself in his own words. So, yes, it's true. This is the goal of this life: to discover your true nature and to become your own Guru.

That's why we are here, and that's what a Guru helps you with. A Guru helps you to become your own Guru.

It's like when you want to become a master in a craft, a master of of making shoes. You don't know... you have no idea how to make a shoe, and then you go to a shoemaker, to a master of making shoes, and then you learn it. And after a short time, you know how to make shoes. And after some more time, you become a master at it yourself. And then, you don't need the other master anymore.

You will be infinitely grateful to this master for the rest of your life, because through him, mastership came to you, but now you are your own master. You know: without my master, without my shoemaker master, I would have never even known how to make a shoe, not to talk about becoming a master at it. So, you will be infinitely grateful, but now you are your own master.

That's how it is in life.

Before I read on, I want to say a few more sentences about this. For most people, it's very hard to accept somebody who is greater than themselves. I heard quite a lot of people saying: "Jesus is like a good friend for me", or somebody wrote: "I want to meet the Guru as a friend, as an equal, on eye level." But this is not possible. If you meet somebody as a friend, if you meet somebody on eye level with you, then you don't meet him as a Guru.

It's like this: a Guru is somebody... Imagine you want to climb a mountain, but the mountain is too steep. You don't know how to get up there. You don't see any path, any way. But there is somebody already up there, and this somebody reaches down to you with his hand, or he he throws a rope down to you, and says: "Here, grab my hand, or grab the rope. I will pull you up." That is a Guru.

If he is on your level, he can't pull you up. He cannot be of help to you. So, if you need somebody to be on your level in order to accept him, you make it impossible that you get the gift what the Guru has to give you. It's not possible.

First, the Guru pulls you up to his level, and then you are up there. Then you don't need him anymore. But for a short time, this is helpful. It's such a gift. It's such a gift when it is possible for you to accept somebody greater than yourself, a Guru. And this is true for all kinds of areas in life. A student in school or at university... The more he admires his teacher, the more he loves his teacher, the more he can look up to his teacher, the more open he or she is, and the better she or he can learn. That is a big secret of learning and growing in life.

And when we pull somebody down onto our level, we feel better, we feel equal, but we stop learning. So, now on to the next sentence of this beautiful letter.

"I sometimes think that if this is the case, that you are so close to Heaven that you virtually embody Heaven, that then it is also the right moment for Heaven, that means: to leave the earthly body and to die."

Yes, this is How the logical mind concludes this: if I start experiencing Heaven, I don't need the body anymore. Usually, we think that all these things connected to the earth and to the body are actually a hindrance. They just distract us from Heaven, and all we want is Heaven.

And although it is true that all we want is Heaven... That's the only reason why we're here: to rediscover our true nature.

The body and all the earthly things are a help. They are necessary on that path.

And it might be that you start discovering Heaven, maybe you already know Heaven, maybe you already rest in Heaven from time to time.

And as long as you are living in the body, as long as you are alive as a human being, you have distractions, but they help. As long as we are in the body, we go deeper and deeper in this connection to ourselves, in this connection to God. It's like this body is the tool for us to meet ourselves and to grow in that. As soon as the body is gone, we cannot do this anymore.

So, being in the body and being alive in the body is a tremendous help with this. And all the saints I know personally, Swamiji and Sohamji, they have not come to an end of this development and to this growing and to this becoming deeper and wider inside.

My Master Sohamji, I experience him as so much deeper and bigger insight than I experience myself, but he is not at the end. He tells me this. We have contact every other day because of some technical things, we talk at least once a week briefly, and and sometimes we share about how it is for us in our lives. And what I hear from him: this discovery and this growing goes on and on.

And the same impression I get from my Guru Swamiji, who is even much, much deeper and bigger inside than my Master Swamiji. When I read his account in his autobiography, or when I read what he is writing or what he is talking about, I get the impression that also for him, it is getting more and more, the longer he lives.

And it is like this that it's not that we don't need this body anymore once we discover Heaven and once we dissolve as an individual, once we are not identified with this body anymore. When you are at that point, the one task remaining afterwards is to pass it on.

That is what Swamiji is doing. And many of the Gurus he had met in the Himalayas in his life, they talked about this. Swamiji has an amazing life. I can only recommend you reading the autobiography, it's an amazing story and such a good read. I think he met a total of 11 gurus, maybe there were 12. I'm not sure, I keep forgetting. And these Gurus, each of them was living completely alone and secluded in the depth of the Himalayas, somewhere high up.

Some of them, they're very, very, very old, but they were waiting, they were still alive, and when Swamiji reached up to them, all of them said the same thing. They said: "Oh, I was waiting for you, because I cannot die before I pass on what I have received." And that's the task for the reminder of the time in the body when you are in Heaven. You pass on this energy. You pass on this knowledge. That is why I make videos, just to pass on what I received. That's the biggest and only joy left then: just to pass it on.

Okay. Let's see.

I read on in the letter. "I currently feel that Heaven is always possible at certain points, but as soon as the earth with its tasks and challenges comes crashing down on me, it very quickly becomes very earthy again." Yes, it is exactly like this. We get tastes of Heaven. We get tastes of the inside.

We begin to experience our true nature inside. And then, life, the outward life, distracts us again. We feel the urgency of certain things, the demands of practical life. And before we know it, we get totally distracted from the only thing which we really want to find, and that is this direction to Heaven.

And that's a good thing. You know, we adopted the body to learn this: to learn to look into the right direction despite of distractions. It's like a tree. When a tree grows in a very protected area where there is no wind, no rain, no storm, the tree is growing, but it's weak. But then, there's a tree at the side of a mountain, high up, and there are storms all the time and strong winds, and that tree growa strong roots. That tree, it has roots which go deep into the stone, into the ground, and it can't be shaken.

And that's why we are in this life voluntarily: to grow strong in our true nature, so we are not distracted, so we won't forget again.

That's why we can welcome these distractions. Usually, what happens when somebody starts on the spiritual path... You have the first glimpses of the truth. You have the first glimpses of a kind of happiness which you have not known before, and then you lost it again. It's gone. You can't feel it anymore. You can only remember it. And then you are sad, or you blame yourself. You say: "I did something wrong. I shouldn't let myself be distracted." And then, some people blame themselves, or some people blame life, and then they want to run away from life. But this is not helpful.

Through these distractions, we learn, only through them. It's like when you're in school and you get upset with the teacher because the teacher gives you a difficult problem to solve. You learn the art by solving the problem, again and again and again. That's why you go to school. This life is a school.

It's a gift.

I read on in the letter. "But I guess that it's different for a Guru. For him or for her, Heaven is probably not an occasional experience, but a permanent state."

I would say "yes and no". There is no such thing as a permanent state.

This is just an idea we have when we're not in Heaven. But it becomes more and more natural to be in Heaven. It's more and more obvious for you that Heaven is the only interesting thing. You see: you get distracted by the world only because you think it's important. You think it is important that you are successful, it is important that somebody likes you, and so on, and this pulls you out. And you meditate every morning.

You become stronger and stronger inside of yourself, and the effect of this is that you know naturally, by yourself, so to speak, what is really important for you, what you value. And once you know this, you naturally focus more on that which is important to you, and you are not distracted anymore by things which are not important for you anymore. But it's a process, a gradual and natural process. And as far as I can see it with my Master Soham, and as far as I understand what my Guru Swamiji reports about his life, this is a process which goes on until the end of this physical life.

Swamiji says about himself that he's not identified with his body anymore at all. In so far, what you just said is true: there comes obviously a point where you are in Heaven all the time. But still, the way I understand it is, that still growths and develops further and further. Swamiji is living in the world. He's married. He travels around. He meets his disciples, in India, they call it Sadhaks. So, he's constantly in connection with the world. And as long as you have this connection with the world, there is growth happening.

Right now, my Guru Swamiji has Anushthan. Anushthan is a time... I think it's 7 weeks long, and he does this once a year.... For 7 weeks, he withdraws completely. He doesn't meet other people. He doesn't give Shibirs or Ssatsangs or anything. He calls it the deep meditation practicum. All he does is meditating. He doesn't have any contact with the outside world. And this is for him to recharge, to become totally clean and reconnected, because for the rest of the year, although he is not identified with his body anymore, he's in the world.

He's connected with the world. He picks up things. He picks up energies, and he has to take care of this, so he remains at his level; that he remains clean and clear. And this is a growing. This is a learning. That's how I understand it. I'm not at this point, so this is not my personal account. Sohamji, my Master, he is also living in the world. He's married. He lives not far from Frankfurt in Germany, and I meet him personally regularly, and what I see there is: he is more and more just totally content and in Heaven, not bothered by the world at all.

And: there's growth happening further and further and deeper and deeper. It it's such a beautiful process which has no end, as long as we are in the body. Ordinary people, they wish for arriving in Heaven, and then it should be done and being over with. But you only think this while you are in hell, while you are in your own suffering, which comes out of the identification as a body, as a human being.

But once you are not identified with this anymore, all these problems of normal life disappear, and then, this ongoing process of discovering Heaven more and deeper and more and deeper is so beautiful, you don't want this to stop. That's my personal experience.

I go on with reading the letter.

"What I ask myself, and now I ask you: is it even possible to achieve a Guru state in everyday life?"

Oh, this is such a beautiful question. Yes. This is the question.

So, you know, we said, we are here in this life to become a Guru, not necessarily a Guru for other people, but your own Guru.

That's the goal of this life: to discover Heaven.

And in the past, this was not possible in ordinary everyday life. If somebody went on this spiritual path in the past, it meant he has or she has to leave society and live in a place undistracted by society, undistracted by other people and their thoughts and their worries. And in this completely natural environment where only the peace of nature is, that's where they slowly, slowly discovered their own nature and the proximity of God.

And that's how it has been for all the Gurus of Swamiji as well. They all lived deep far away in the Himalayas. But now we live in a different time. This is an amazing and unique time we experience now. Right now, on Earth, the time begins where this knowledge of how to start the path to the inside, this knowledge of how to discover Heaven, this knowledge of how to become a Jesus yourself, that now comes into society.

That's why now the word "meditation" is now known to many people. By now, it's almost en vogue to meditate. Most people still don't know what true meditation is, but people know this word. These days, it's normal that you can listen to Satsangs online, that you can go to Satsangs in a bigger town. All this becomes normal and available. This was unthinkable only a few decades before.

That's by the way why now is the time where the Samarpan Meditation comes into society. This meditation is very old. It has been developed and preserved in the Himalayas by those Gurus since 800 years, and it was kept there because the time was not ready yet for it to enter society. The energy of the planet, the the people in society, they were not ready for this. But now this time has come. So, to answer your question... 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago, one would have said: no, this is not possible, becoming your own Guru while living a practical life in society. But today, the answer is:"Oh yes.

It is possible." And today, it's not only possible. It's required. Now is the time where it's possible that this meditation, the Samarpan Meditation, can come into society. Every normal human being can learn this meditation and can learn to discover his or her own soul, and through this, come to Heaven, come to God. And it's necessary that it comes into society because this is what's supposed to be happening now: that this energy, this kind of consciousnes, now begins to enter society slowly, slowly, naturally. That's how the world will be transformed in the future.

Not by somebody running around and telling everybody how to be different and how to be good people. No. By you having the desire to become your own Guru, by you having the desire to be in Heaven while you are here in society, you start meditating, you just start discovering this path, and slowly, slowly, you are being transformed into your own Guru, while you're living, where you are, in your family, in your job, with your friends.

And through your consciousness growing, you affect other people. You don't have to say a word. You don't have to talk about it. Just by you becoming a different being, other people pick it up. More people will feel this desire to discover themselves. And that is how this spreads in society and into the entire world, very slowly and totally naturally.

So, yes, it is possible to become your own Guru while you live in society. The tool for this is the Samarpan Meditation. It is not possible by just living your life. You need help. And in the in the past, the help was by you running away from society. And now the Samapan Meditation helps you to connect to your inner, to connect to your essence, no matter where you are. And that's why it's so important to do this meditation every day.

Swamiji says: "You don't have to change yourself. You can live any way you want. You don't have to change your life. You don't have to change your friends. You don't have to run away from your family. You don't have to change jobs. You don't have to become celibate or anything. All you need to do is start every day with the Samarpan Meditation, half an hour in the morning, that's enough. For the rest of the day, live yny way you want, just live as you live."

And this is enough that this new side in you, this inner side, starts growing. It's a slow process. It takes time, but it's important that it's a slow process, just like a strong tree growing on the mountain top. And slowly, slowly, this becomes stronger and stronger and stronger in you, naturally, you can count on it. And then you you can watch how you and your life slowly transforms. Everything changes slowly. It's totally amazing.

So, I go on reading from this letter. "Every day, life consists of so many earthly things, so much earth instead of Heaven, earning a living, earning money, relationships with colleagues and friends, and last but not least, partnership and family. Your own children and parents, in particular, can be incredibly triggering. There's this wonderful saying: 'If you think you're enlightened, spend 2 weeks with your parents.'" Yes. This is so true. The closer people are to us, the better they trigger us. But as I said, this is not a problem. This is not any reason for concern.

It's like this, that those people closest to us, those people who are important to us, because of this importance, they pull our attention away from us towards the outside. A stranger can't do this because he doesn't matter to us. But there's somebody we love, somebody we think we need, somebody we feel obliged to, and then our attention is being pulled away from us so easily. And one word from the other, and we feel terrible, we feel hurt, we are totally triggered. And this is so helpful.

Of course, we want it different. We want the easy path. Yeah. We want to be a tree without any wind, without any storm, but then we wouldn't grow any roots. We would be shallow. And these challenges you have in your life, they are the storm which help you grow your roots inside of yourself. It's incredibly helpful. I know people, they have so many challenges in their lives, so much pain, traumata, and they think they have the wrong life. They think something is wrong.

They think something is wrong with them, or they feel that God has forgotten them because they have such a challenging, difficult life. But I know, and I keep telling them, but it's not easy to hear this... I keep telling them: "Everything is fine. Your life is a gift. It forces you to grow roots. It forces you to turn inside and to develop this inside strength of your awareness so that it can't be distracted anymore by other people, by memories, by your own thoughts, by your past, by your feelings."

Soham, my Master, when he was in Satsang and somebody would come to him with a particularly challenging life, he would say: "Wow, here I see somebody who's ready." And then he went on explaining. He said: when you are ready, then you get the challenges to grow. Yeah. And as I said: of course, we would like to be a tree without wind, but this would not be helpful. This would not be a gift.

So, when you accept all these challenges happily as gifts, when you take them on, like: "Okay. Thank you! Now I want to learn how to deal with this." Then you grow a strength inside of you, and that's what brings you closer to yourself and into Heaven. But you have to discover this yourself. The Samarpan Meditation helps with this, especially with these triggers like family, like partnership, children. It's an amazing help. I don't know how anybody can live in society, in a normal practical life, on this path without the Samarpan Meditation, because it's so helpful and so simple.

So, let's go on in the letter.

"Hence, my question to you: How does you master, and how does your Guru live in this world? What past do they have? Do they live in connection with their own parents? Do they live with a partner, with children, sexuality, with a job, or are they celibate? In short, how do they live practically on this earth?"

Oh, this is such a beautiful question. I love speaking about this.

How do they live practically?

The first thing I want to say about this is that the practical things, everything you can see from the outside... how somebody lives, whether he has a job or not, or she, how she speaks, how she walks, how she farts, all these things... that's the one level.

That's the obvious stuff. That's what we can see, what we can hear, that's what we can talk about.

But then there's another level, and that's the subtle level, something very fine, something you can only feel inside when you're very aware and quiet.

Now it is such that for a normal person who is not on the spiritual path, for a person who knows nothing about inside and who is not interested, a person who is only concerned about the outside... for such a person, a Master or a Guru is totally unimpressive. He cannot see anything special, quite the ordinary. Usually, for those people, a Master or a Guru is somebody who seems to be wrong; not somebody great, but somebody who is a problem, who is bad, lazy, nothing special.

When you look at a Guru from the outside, when you look at his practical life, you see nothing special.

You see utter normality.

You cannot recognize the Guru by anything on the outside.

When you meet him on the street, just by looking, you can't tell the difference.

I want to briefly share how I my first encounter with my spiritual Master Soham went, 24 years ago. I was sitting in my first Satsang with him, I don't even know how I ended up there, it was pure accident. I wasn't looking for a master. So, I was sitting in this room, the room was full of other people. It was a packed room.

Everybody was waiting for Soham to arrive. I didn't know hi, I hadn't hadn't seen him before. And then, suddenly, this guy walked into the room. And my first thought was that this guy obviously is in the wrong room. I thought: somebody is in the wrong meeting. There was this guy strolling into the room, he looked totally ordinary, absolutely ordinary. I didn't know that this was Soham. At this time, his name was Samarpan.

He looked so normal that I thought, he's in the wrong room. What is he doing here? But then, he walked up to the front of the room, and he was sitting down in Soham's chair. So, I thought: this must be Sohan. But then, I experienced something inside. While he was entering the room, sitting down, starting his Satsang, I was overcome by a peace, a depth, a quietness, a deep reconciliation with myself I have never experienced before in my life.

It didn't have anything to do with what this guy had said.

Just by him being there, that was enough. From the outside, he looked utterly normal, totally unimpressive.

But what I felt inside, that was impressive, that was unique for me at that time. So, only people who are on the spiritual path, only people who begin to turn inwards, only they can recognize a Master, only they can recognize a Guru. The mastership, the guruship, is inside, not outside.

There are some Gurus... Based on the power of their consciousness, they have certain abilities also in the outside world which are very impressive.

There are some Gurus who can be at different places at the same time. Some of these Gurus can tell you what is happening right now somewhere else in the world, accurately. There are all kinds of things some of these Guru can do, but all this happens based on the power of their inner consciousness. It's not that they become Gurus because they are able to do these things, these tricks. No.

It's because some of these Gurus, because they have such a strong consciousness, these things become possible for them. There are other people who can do certain tricks and certain impressive things, but there are no Gurus. So, what you can see on the outside is totally unimportant. Swamiji says this: "You cannot recognize a Guru from the outside." He says: "It's your own inexperience who tells you who you have in front of you."

So, I wanted to start with this before I start about talking about how these people live practically, because everything I'm talking about now is rather unimportant, but interesting, of course. What I found is that... and as I said, I cannot really talk in detail about Swamiji, because I have never lived with him, but I can tell you a little bit about what I experienced with Sohamji, my master. And I experienced him in all kinds of situations.

I experienced him at home, in the kitchen, we cooked together, we ate together, we got drunk together, we talked together, we worked together, we were lugging luggage together. He helped sometimes in the Satsang room with setting up the technique. I was driving hours and days, weeks with him in the car. So, I experienced him in all kinds of practical situations. I experienced him doing things. I could observe and learn how he's doing things, what he's doing, how he's behaving.

And when you look at it, just outwardly, there's nothing special. When I came to him 24 years ago, he wasn't holy at all. He was drinking alcohol. He still smoked. He was eating meat. For years, we were sitting together, having a glass of wine in the evening, or maybe even more, having meat every day.

Sometimes he said things I found totally stupid. Sometimes I thought: "Why is he saying this, he has no idea what he's talking about?" So, often, I experienced him as a totally normal being, and yet I always could sense this other energy being present all the time, and sometimes it will show in the behavior. It was interesting. When we had dealings with each other, when they were of practical nature, I could sense, and I can still sense, whatever he's doing practically, he's doing with more awareness and more beingness than I do them.

But other than that, he does the same stupid things, and he does mistakes, and he is not particularly intelligent or fast or talented. This is not where the uniqueness is. And then, sometimes, suddenly, there wouldn't be Soham who is traveling with you or Soham who is cooking with you, suddenly, there is the Master. Suddenly, you have a conversation between Master and Disciple, and you're in a totally different room.

You're in a totally different space. It's like God speaking to you.

And this is something most people can't get together. I got a rare gift in this life. I got the gift that I was able to experience my Master close-up and still see him as my Master. You know, it's like this... I just tried to describe that that what makes a being a Master is something on the inside, and you can sense this by the experiences you have in your inside. It's nothing you can see, nothing you can observe on the outside, nothing you can hear on the outside.

And because it is like this, usually, what happens is... Traditionally, a Guru or a Master kept his disciples at a distance to himself, and this is not because the Master or the Guru thinks of himself as being better or anything. No. It is to protect the disciples, because normal human beings, they can only sense the subtle, they can only sense the God coming through the Master, through the Guru, as long as the unsubtle things, those things which are obvious to us, as long as those are not in the way.

Meaning: when you start experiencing your Master or your Guru as a human being, as an ordinary human being, somebody who cooks and eats and shits and and farts and sleeps and all these ordinary things... As I said: on the outside, all these obvious things, there's nothing special. Then, because these things are so obvious, they tend to dominate our perception of somebody.

And when that happens, when you come so close to the Guru or to the Master that you can experience him as a normal human being, then most people stop perceiving the subtle. They stop perceiving that what actually comes through. And then they lose the Master, they lose the Guru, because their own awareness starts focusing on the outside of the Guru or the Master.

And I have experienced this a few times. When we were traveling around, often there were people who said: "I want to be close to you. I want to travel with you." They said this to Soham: "I want to part of your team." But they said this not because they wanted to be at his service as a crew member, they said this because they thought: if they can be closer to him, practically... they are on a human level... then they will get more of his divinity.

But the opposite happened. Sometimes, Soham said: "Yes, okay, come. Join." Then they came close to him, so close that they experienced the human being, the ordinariness. And then, in a very short time, they were gone, because then, all they saw was an ordinary human being.

Now, in my case, I had the great fortune, the great luck, that I could experience him so close-up every day, year by year by year, and I didn't lose my Master. There were often situations where I got upset with him because I thought what he's saying is totally stupid, and he's not right. Sometimes I felt that he behaved to me in a way which was not appropriate, where I felt: "Why is he not nice to me?

Why is he talking to me like this?" I had these moments, but something on the subtle level inside of me was stronger. Not once in all these years did I have a moment where I thought: "He's not my master anymore." Yes, I got upset sometimes. I felt hurt sometimes. I felt misunderstood sometimes.

But it was my Master. I knew there's something else. Something else carried me all the time.

And I'm so grateful for this. There are not many people who can be close to the Master and not lose the Master.

And this is, and now I want to go on answering the question, because what I can tell you about practical things in life, with such a Guru, with such a Master, it's all ordinary.

It is even more ordinary than ordinary. It is like, a normal human being wants to be special. He wants to be somebody. He wants to be successful. He wants to achieve something. He wants to be remembered by other people. He wants to be recognized.

A normal human being wants to be special one way or another, but a Master, a Guru, has lost all these things. He doesn't want to achieve anything. He doesn't want to change. He doesn't want to be successful. He doesn't want to achieve anything. Quite the contrary, he learned to be more and more here, and then you are just here. When there's no tomorrow, then there's no becoming, no changing. You don't care what other people think of you. You're just the way you are.

And this makes it that such a being looks from the outside utterly ordinary, nothing special whatsoever.

The most normal person on the street will look more interesting than a Guru or Master, because that person wants to show off for something, wants to be somebody in some way, wants to get your attention in some way. Not a Guru. He doesn't care about your attention.

So, if you have an eye for it, you can recognize a true Guru by his utterordinariness, in his behavior, in his way of living.

I said: when I came to Soham, he was eating meat, he was drinking wine, he was smoking cigarettes. And he was married, and he's still married to the same lady, and I'm sure he had sex.

So, there were no things which we usually imagine are happening when somebody is holy. These are all imaginations. I experience it like this, and I saw this happening with Soham, and I see the same thing happening in my own life... Usually, we think: "In order to become holy, in order to become a saint, in order to be become close to God and discover Heaven, I must become a certain way.

I must stop eating meat. I must be celibate. I must be peaceful. I must behave in such and such a way, and then I will become worthy of God." That's how normal human beings interpret what they experience from the outside with a Guru, because they see that the Guru doesn't eat meat, doesn't have sex, doesn't drink, doesn't smoke, and behaves in an amazing way.

But this is not true. It's exactly the other way around.

You start turning inwards, ou start discovering the path to the inside, and that's when you start becoming closer to your own soul, to the river, to God.

And the closer you come to yourself, the closer you come to God, the more you begin to experience Heaven practically, inside. The more sensitive you become, the more subtle you become, the more you perceive, the finer you get with your awareness. And out of that, certain changes happen in the practical life, but they happen all by themselves. They are not a prerequisite for entering Heaven, there are a consequence of entering Heaven.

So, you become more and more rooted in yourself, you become more and more quiet and content. You feel so much better what your body really likes and what not, so, smoking just stops, drinking just stops. At some point, eating meat just stops because you don't want anymore, not because you think it is required. It just stops because you you stop wanting it. It happens automatically.

And then, at some point, you become so happy and content that even sexuality becomes... it's not a problem, it just becomes not interesting anymore, because now you have much more interesting things in your life on the inside. And then, when sex happens, it's nice, nothing wrong with it, but it's nothing you crave for, nothing you want, and, of course, nothing you need. That's the natural development of these things.

So, 24 years ago, all these things were still going on in Soham life and, of course, in my life too.

And then, slowly, slowly, as time passed, these things changed all by themselves. Soham never said: "I think we should stop eating meat, because this is really not appropriate for a Satsang teacher" or something like this. He would never say anything like this. Soham always did what felt good to him, what he wanted. He was only guided by his own energy. That's why I learned what I pass on to you in every video when I tell you: "Be true to yourself.

Follow your own energy, no matter how much you judge it to be wrong, and that will lead you on the right path to yourself." And then, all these good things happen by themselves, automatically. That's why Jesus said: "Don't worry about anything. Just put God first", meaning: turn inwards to yourself, and all the rest, all the things normal people are concerned about, then they all happen by themselves, in the most beautiful way, automatically.

So, over the years, at some point... pretty soon after I joined Soham, he stopped smoking. And then, at some point, I think it was 10 years later or so, we stopped eating meat, just like this; suddenly we didn't want to anymore. And then, the Samarpan Meditation came into our lives, and briefly afterwards, we had no desire for even one glass of wine anymore, just by itself.

That's why all these holy people, the real holy people, Swamiji... He says: "Don't change yourself. Don't worry about all these things. Don't try to change yourself. But meditate." This helps you to come inside. And out of that, all the rest happens automatically without you having to worry about it in any way.

What I noticed when I was spending so much time on a regular basis, daily basis, with Soham was that he was never worried about anything. I was worried about so many things, but he he never worried. It was like: already back then, 20, 24 years ago, he knew through and through: "Everything is fine. Everything what is supposed to happen will happen. I don't have to worry." He knew it.

And I had so many occasions where I experienced this with him. I would get totally worried about how we should organize certain things, for instance that when we travel to the next city, that there are enough helpers to help with preparing the Satsang room. There was always a lot of work involved and also very heavy physical work, because we had a lot of heavy equipment in the vans.

He was never worried. He did everything which was necessary and intelligent to do in order to prepare things, but he was never worried in any way. And the interesting thing is: around him, nothing bad ever happened. 20 years I was traveling with him nonstop, year by year. Not once did Satsang not happen because we had some difficulty.

I was always worried about this and that. I would be worried about the weather and the driving and the traffic and whether we would have enough helpers or whether we would get an accommodation. There was never ever even once a problem with any of this. It just happened in the most amazing ways. It's like around a Master, nothing bad can happen.

Once, there was a time where there was no Satsang for, I think, 2 months or so because Soham had broken his leg. We were... Where were we? I think we were in Bremen. And then, one evening, it was suddenly extremely slippery outside, ice, and he fell and broke his leg. And he thought: "No problem, I get this treated, and the next day, I will have Satsang." But the doctors told him: this is not a good idea. And then he realized: "Okay, I will not be able to give Satsang for a while."

And then, once he realized this, then he noticed how much in need of a break he had been; that he needed to have time out and have time for himself, because up to this point, we were traveling all the time. They were only sometimes a week here or a week there in between for a short break at home. And then, he had, for the first time ever since I had been with him, a break of 2 months at home, and he was so glad about this. And then we also learned slowly that although we had this wonderful, intense Satsang travel life, we needed breaks. We needed time to rest and to recharge our batteries.

So, nothing bad ever happened around him. And if something happened which one would say: "Oh, this is something bad", it was something good. We never had any car accident. You need to imagine that for 20 years, I was traveling with him nonstop all the way across Germany, into Switzerland, into Austria, down to Greece. We traveled such long distances all the time. I was sitting in the car every day, and not one accident. Nobody ever got hurt. No van ever got stolen or broken into. No equipment ever was taken away. How is this possible? We felt totally safe and protected.

There were 2 incidents. Once there was a break into one of our vans, but the van was empty. The only thing which was in the van was a bag which had been left on the passenger seat, totally obviously invisible, and some thief saw this and broke into the car and took it.

And this happened when the car was empty, nothing valuable in there, and it was like a wake-up call for the driver: "Hey, what you are doing here is not good. Wake up. Learn your lesson." And this is what I experienced with living with the Master. You still get your life lessons. You get your experiences which help you to learn, experiences where life teaches you: "Hey, what you are doing is not a good idea", but it happened so gently.

And once, there was a car accident. Another one of our drivers, she had an accident, but she was alone in the car. Other than the car... the car got damaged, but nothing else. She didn't get damaged. Nobody else got damaged. No other car. Also there, it was an experience she had to have in her life, where life taught her: "What you are doing is stupid", but it it told her in such a gentle way.

And that's one of the marks of living with a Master. You get your experiences, but life is so gentle. There's a story from a Master, I forgot who this was, and the Master was supposed to go on a long bus trip, this was in India, with his disciples onto a spiritual journey to meet some holy place somewhere else, and all the disciples were totally totally, excited about this journey they would do with their Guru. And then, the Guru and the disciples went to town to meet the bus and to enter the bus. And just before they entered the bus, the Guru said: "No, we don't take the bus. We stay here."

And the the disciples were totally disappointed. They were upset. They said: "Why? We want to go there!" And the Guru said: "This bus will have an accident. Everybody will die." But the disciples were blind. They didn't believe the Guru. They were upset. They wanted to go there, but the Guru knew what would happen. And the interesting thing is this: the bus had an accident. Everybody on the bus died. But then, each and every one of the disciples later had an accident, but a minor one, a little one. One broken leg, another an arm. So, these disciples, they had to learn their lessons.

Life gave them, each of them, the lesson they had to live through, but in a very, very gentle way. They didn't have to go through a major tragedy or death. And that's how I experienced it with Soham. Once I had an experience like this myself. I was traveling from one city to the next. I was on the way, I think, from Frankfurt to Dresden to the next Satsang. It was a long drive, and I was very exhausted. I was tired, and the energy on the freeway was difficult, a lot of traffic, and I was worn, I was getting impatient and a little bit of aggressive.

And then, just before I was arriving at my destination... This was a long drive, I think I was on the road for 6 or 7 hours, and, like, 5 minutes before I arrived at my destination, I did something totally stupid with the car. I almost killed a bicycle driver. I did something totally stupid. And like a miracle, I was saved from this. I could feel: "This could have changed my entire life. This one split second." Nothing happened. Nobody got hurt, just a little shock, that was it. But then, 5 minutes later, when I arrived at my destination, I made a mistake. I had a bicycle.

I had a bicycle I really loved. I had this bicycle with me all the time. It was mounted on a bicycle holder on the back of the car, and I had built it in such a way that the bike was higher than the car. And I was entering a garage, a big parking garage with a car, with a van, and I had completely forgotten in that moment that I have a bike mounted on the car, and with this bike, we were too high to fit into the garage. So, I entered the garage, and when I entered the garage, there was a big bang when the bicycle hit the building.

The bicycle was completely trashed. There was no damage at the car, no damage to the building, just the bicycle. And I was heartbroken. I loved this bicycle. I didn't have much money at that time, and the savings I had, I had purchased this bike, this used bike, a really nice one, and I used this bike wherever I was to drive around in the towns. This was my vehicle for practical freedom. I loved this bike. And one moment of stupidity, one moment of not being aware, and it was trashed beyond repair.

It was totally broken. I was really in pain. But in this pain, I had a realization. I saw that this was the replacement of what could have happened just a few minutes before. Life, the aura, the energy of my Master, saved me from this really serious accident I could have had, but I still had to learn my lesson. I still had to go through my pain, but in the gentlest way possible. I wasn't hurt. The car wasn't hurt. Just a bicycle. I almost killed a bicycle driver 5 minutes before.

Instead, my own bicycle got damaged, and I was saved. And the only price I had to pay was feeling my own pain. That's that's happens around a Guru. That's what happens around a Master. It's like you meet these kinds of miracles all the time. And this is because of this invisible energy of the Master. I said earlier that you cannot recognize the Master from the outside, and what the whole world and what ordinary people are concerned with is only outside things.

It's like in the past, people who were very strong physically with muscles, with the ability to fight physically, they were being the respected ones. They were being the powerful ones. And now we are living in a time where this is totally different. Now, the intellectual strength is important. Somebody who is smart, they rule, they are powerful: the smart people, the ones with brainpower.

And this age is coming to an end, the age of intellectual strength, and we enter a third age now. We enter the age of the the power of consciousness, Chitta Shakti. That's what the Indians call it. And that's the strength a Guru has. He is the Master of his own consciousness. He can't be distracted. He can't be influenced. He can't be manipulated. His focus to the inside cannot be shaken, cannot be broken.

And this strength of consciousness cannot be seen from the outside. The actions of a physically strong person, you can see. The actions of an intellectually strong person, you can see. But what happens through the power of consciousness, it happens in a way that you don't know how this is possible. It's like around a Master or a Guru, his aura, which you cannot see, his energy field is vast and protects him and the people inside of it, but you don't know how this is possible.

You don't connect it to this person. Nothing bad can happen to him. If a bad person comes along, either that bad person suddenly feels to go another way, or that bad person comes close and suddenly forgets all his bad intentions and suddenly wants something completely different. But you don't notice that you are being changed inside by the power of the consciousness of this being. It's like my first encounter with Soham in Satsang 24 years ago.

I was sitting in a Satsang room. This ordinary looking man enters the room, sits down in the front seat, and I thought: who is this? Is he in the wrong room? And then something inside of me happened. And I had no indication that this was coming from him. It was my own experience inside. I didn't know that I had been changed by his aura. And that's how all these miracles around Masters and Gurus can happen.

And by the way, this is also how you benefit when you meditate and when you are on the path to the inside. This happens also in your life. Many people are worried how they should protect themselves in dangerous times which are so unpredictable. They worry: how could they prepare so their lives are safe? And you cannot prepare on the outside, no matter what you do. You cannot run away far enough to be safe. You cannot build fences high enough to be safe.

You cannot have enough weapons to be safe. This all does not help. But when you turn inwards and when you grow your soul strength, and what I mean by this is your ability to have your attention inside and not worry about the outside, your ability to be more interested in your inside than on your outside, then this energy grows by itself. And the stronger you become in this respect, the more miraculous your life becomes. It's truly amazing, and I experienced this with Soham over and over again.

So, when you ask about the practical aspects of life of a Guru... Maybe I can put it together in one sentence like this: "Most ordinary. More ordinary than any normal person." All the normal people, they're wanto to be special.

A Guru doesn't care at all.

He is. And from the outside, this looks most ordinary.

That's why Gurus are invisible for normal people, because they look for the special stuff. The Internet is full of special people, and most of them talk really interesting, and some of them talk very holy, but a true Guru, you have to look closely, otherwise, you will overlook him. He's so ordinary, much more ordinary than you are.

That's his guruship, that's his mastership. There's nobody who wants to be special. There's nobody who wants to be spiritually, there's nobody, period. And because there's nobody, it's like he's empty, she's empty, and God just flows through, and with God, so much power. That's how all these miracles happen.

That's why a Guru is also not concerned at all whether you listen to him or not.

He doesn't care how many people come to him or whether anybody comes at all. All this happens by itself because this energy is so attractive.

But that, you can only feel on the inside.

If you look for anything special on the outside, you will not find the Guru.

Maybe this was interesting or at least a little bit entertaining for you. I find it hard to talk about these things, and yet, I love to talk about them. So many blessings.

Thank you for this letter. Thank you.

Thank you that you are here, and thank you that I'm allowed to talk about this. Thank you.

I love you.