Prem Pal Singh Rawat, born 10 December 1957, is an Indian American also known as Maharajji, and formerly as Guru Maharaj Ji and Balyogeshwar. Rawat’s teachings include a meditation practice he calls “Knowledge”, and peace education based on the discovery of personal resources such as inner strength, choice, appreciation and hope.
The core of Prem Rawat’s teaching is that the individual’s need for fulfillment can be satisfied by turning within to contact a constant source of peace and joy. Rather than a body of dogma, he emphasizes a direct experience of transcendence that he says is accessible through the meditation techniques he teaches. Prem Rawat claims that light, love, wisdom and clarity exist within each individual, and that the meditation techniques which he teaches, and which he learned from his teacher, are a way of accessing them. These techniques are known as the ‘Knowledge’. In his public talks he quotes from Hindu, Muslim and Christian scriptures, but he relies on this inner experience for his inspiration and guidance. George Chryssides describes what Prem Rawat terms ‘Knowledge’ as based on self-understanding and an inner self, identical with the divine. (via Wikipedia)
Here are a few quotes that reflect his views about life:
On Love:
To live this life, my friends, you have to have a genuine passion. Nothing artificial. To live this life, to love this life, you have to have a genuine passion. People think Kabir was so wonderful because he was uneducated and yet he said all these wonderful things. Do you think it would have been different had Kabir gone to Yale and Oxford If so, you missed the point. The point isn’t whether he was educated or not, because, in the truest sense, he was very educated. More educated than most people. The point is that passion. Maybe you won’t be able to write like Kabir, but you can feel the same passion. Passion is the point. That love is the point. That feeling is the point. That is achievable by everyone sitting in this hall, and in the city of London, and on this planet Earth.
Today I will speak about love. What is love How can one get love Why should one get it There are two kinds of love. One is the worldly connection. The other is attained through Knowledge. In this human body exists the love we have to discover. You should love one another and behave lovingly because when love comes, everything comes. You should speak to one another with love and humility. Love is the essence.
On Life:
Life is a tide; float on it. Go down with it and go up with it, but be detached. Then it is not difficult.
For all of us who are alive, life is the real issue. Yet so often we judge our existence by the things that happen to usby whether things are going our way or not. Sometimes we feel strongstrong enough to dictate our future. Sometimes we feel that we can make things happen. Then there are times when we feel totally helpless. But through all the dramas and bumps, there is life. There is the very powerful, very existence of every single human being.
This life that has been given to us as a gift, as such a precious gift. To really try to understand it, really try to recognize it, is the greatest meditation. Through the media of this Knowledge we can tap into our inner sources that are so beautiful.
When you are introduced to the clarity inside of you, to the simplicity inside of you, to that beauty inside of you, the journey of life begins.
On Happiness:
Happiness is your own treasure because it lies within you.
What we’re looking for is happiness, and in all our searching who do we forget? Ourselves. Whatever the equation is that you have created, please include yourself in it, because without you, without your heart, without peace in your life, there can never be peace in the world.
On God:
To the mind, God is a perfect criminal. He has done such a perfect crime by creating this world that mind cannot trace how He did it. That is why the mind always freaks out about God.
People think God is a man. People think God has got ears, nose, teeth and he rises daily in the morning, brushes his teeth and washes his mouth. And he is an old man and he has a beard. All these things people think. But no, God is energy. God is perfect and pure energy.
On Peace:
The greatest problem all around the world today, whether in America, Japan, China Russia, India or anywhere else in the world, is that people are not in peace. People want peace.
That peace which is within us, we must experience it. And if we are searching for peace outside we will never find the peace within.
Every human being has to find their own peace. Peace is within you and me. When you and I can experience who we really are, what life is, and what we are doing here, that’s the day peace will begin in this world.
It is not the world that needs peace, it is people. When people in the world are at peace within, the world will be at peace.
Other Quotes:
It’s okay to ask questions, but get the answers. So, where are the answers? Since the questions came from within you, guess where the answers are? Within you.
What you are looking for is within you Fall silent a moment and contemplate what that means… You lack nothing.
The world doesn’t want you to know. They want you to believe. But there is a big difference between believing and knowing. Should you believe in yourself or should you know yourself?
I suggest you take a look at yourself. Not the concepts, not the ideas, not the goods, not the bads. But a timeless purity of existence. A witness to the beauty that is.
Take solace, take comfort. Your problems, too, will go away one day. They’re temporary. The only thing that is permanent in nature is in your heart. Recognize that and be fulfilled. Fulfill the possibility that was declared the day you were born, the moment you took your first breath.
