GURURAJ:  It is so important for people to do their best to attend a full course. I do not think it is very difficult.  We always start a course on a weekend and end it by Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday.  It is not as difficult as we imagine it to be to get two or three days off from work.  And if you want any doctor's certificates, I would write them out for you.  The disease I would put down would be that "Miss X,Y,Z, was suffering from Gurujitis which is a very contagious disease, so she must not be at the office or else all of them will suffer from Gurujitis."  

Apart from joking, it is important to attend a full course.  If you can't, you can't; some things you just can't help.  But imagine yourself in the position you want to be. I will show you how you can use imagination or illusion to make it into a reality.  You start a week ahead and imagine in your mind that next week I am going to ask my manager or boss that I will not be able to come to work on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.  Use that illusion and delude, with your illusion, that boss of yours.  It works, because the basis of imagination is thought, and thought is a thing. Thought is powerful.  You can place yourself in any circumstances if your thoughts are powerful enough.  For example, some of you have driven hundreds of miles to be here because you wanted to, because your thoughts were strong enough. I'm using this example to illustrate that if you add strength to your thought, by repeating the illusory thought, you can make the illusory thought into reality.  

The reason why I ask you to try and stay for the full course is that, step by step, I would make you delve deeper and deeper into your minds and hearts so that you could know yourself.  That is why being in each other's presence is so important.  So then, illusion can be used usefully, and not selfishly.  

Finding oneself, finding the truth that is in oneself, is the greatest thing a person could ever strive for, even if it means taking two or three days off from work.  For, how else are we going to find it? Never from a book where you create certain thoughts in your mind, and those thoughts create other thoughts, which are illusions. But when a thought is put to you by a spiritual master, it is not an illusion because it is not only the idea but the spiritual force that goes with it that penetrates deep within yourself.  That is why these courses are important or else do you think that I would travel 15,000 miles to speak to fifteen people?  I, a hard-boiled businessman that was trained in business, that used to handle millions of bucks every month?  But I know how important it is.  Even if there were five, it's still worth it.  As the flower requires expression in its fragrance, I, too, require the expression.  And why express it to the wind when there are so many human hearts around?

In my mind, I use this as the illusion for a good purpose.  As I'm speaking to fifteen or twenty people, the illusion and the thought projection is there that it is not twenty people listening to me, but two million, twenty million, fifty million that are listening to me, for the truth I speak will never die. These are the truths for the 'new age', as the Americans call it. These are truths that will have to be realized in times to come, for generation after generation.  So, I'm putting that illusion to good use, without any selfishness, because man's evolving mind is going to need these thoughts very much in the future, more so in the future than today.  

If you take the thoughts or teachings of Buddha, Krishna, or Jesus, they are better understood today, after two thousand years, than when they were spoken, for truths are eternal.  They can never die.  There is no death to truth because there is no death to anything at all.  And truth, being so powerful, shines out. It stands out, like a palm tree in a desert, giving shade to the weary that pass by, and even giving of its fruit to the hungry that are passing through the desert of life.  ~ Gururaj, US 83-27