Lessons From The Master – Sri Harold Klemp
The title of today's talk is "Lessons From the Master." One example of this took place in a video arcade. The arcades provide a good way to be among people. Also, playing video games helps me work off tension. You might think a person in my position wouldn't have tension. But the fact is, there is a lot.
Playing Doubles
Occasionally, I go to a video arcade in a run-down section of town, patronized mainly by youth from the streets, some of them a bit rowdy. As I was leaving the arcade one day, I walked past a black youth who looked to be about fifteen. "You wanna play doubles on this game?" he said.
Playing doubles usually isn't done among strangers in video parlors, and frankly, its something I prefer not to do anyway,
"No thanks," I said. "I've played enough today. I'm ready to go home."
"I'll pay," he offered. "I've got a lot of tokens."
I realized the money for his tokens would not be easy to come by. If he wanted to play badly enough to pay for two players, he must really like the game. It showed that he cared about something, and to me that means a lot. "Don't worry about it," I said. "I'll pay for my own game.
Let's play."
Your opponents in this particular game are snapping turtles, pests, and fireballs. They try to hurt you. The two players can either attempt to protect each other, or they can work against each other, until the game finally gobbles you both up. The game has to end sometime, and eventually you make enough mistakes that the game wins and you lose.
"What kind of score do you average?" I asked.
"Hundred thousand points," he said.
"I'm lucky to get fifty thousand on this game," I said, "but let's give it a try."
As we started to play, I could tell he had a bit of a chip on his shoulder—teenager versus adult. We were both fighting common opponents, but at first he played only for himself.
At one point I tried my best to help him out of a very tight spot. But I wasn't skilled enough at this particular game, so he lost a player. "Doggone it," I said, "I tried to save you, but I couldn't. I just don't play well enough."
A change came over him when he saw that I was working with him, Not against him. He quickly turned his efforts to trying to help me too. Suddenly we were working as a team, fighting off the turtles, pests, and fireballs together. In the ten minutes the game lasted, I watched him transform from a person who played only for himself to one who was willing to help another. We both ended up with very poor scores, but we had a good time getting there.
He didn't know it, but for him this was a lesson from the Master. The experience was to give him a different outlook, and this may affect the way he deals with other people.
God, Stop the Rain
An elderly ECKist was going to a social with a Christian friend. The social was put on for retired people by an insurance company who wanted to sell them insurance, and refreshments were being provided to soften them up for the sales talk.
As the two women got into the car, it began to rain heavily. It was coming down in sheets by the time they arrived at the place where the social was being held. "We forgot our umbrellas," the ECKist's friend said. "We'll be drenched by the time we get inside."
The ECKist said, "Well, God, if we're supposed to go in there without getting soaked, could you please stop the rain?" Lo and behold, the rain stopped.
The two women went inside and enjoyed the social. When they got to the door to leave, it was pouring again; but just as they stepped outside, the rain stopped. They drove home without thinking much about it.
Later in the day, they went grocery shopping together. This time they brought their umbrellas, just in case. Sure enough, by the time they got to the store, it was raining heavily once more. The ECKist reached for her umbrella and started to get out of the car.
"Why not ask God to stop the rain?" the Christian woman said. "It worked last time."
"God knows when I need help or not," the ECKist replied, "God knows I have my umbrella this time."
Without using a whole bunch of strange-sounding ECK terms, the ECKist pointed out a spiritual principle to the other woman. It's the same idea expressed in the story about a traveler who asked the village sage, "Should I pray to God to keep the thieves from stealing my camel, or would I be better off to just tie up the animal?" The sage's reply: "Pray to God, and tie up your camel."
Asking for Divine Help
We ask for divine help when we need it, but not when the situation is within our own power to resolve. Too often we have the feeling that no matter what comes up, there must be an easy way out. Instead of using our God-given creative abilities to figure out a way to overcome the problem, we want someone else to take care of it. We are actually cheating ourselves as spiritual beings.
Power of Love
One of the most important lessons from the Master is that love is stronger than power. An initiate found this out several years ago when a group of Baptists came to picket an ECK seminar. Their motive was to convince the ECKists that Christ was the way to salvation, and their method was to push Bibles and brochures at them as they entered the seminar site.
The initiate was seated on a low, decorative wall outside the hall, watching the goings-on. Some of the ECKists were trying to get the Baptists to leave. "You don't have any right to be here," they insisted forcefully. They had a point, in a way. Would they feel the ECKists had the right to picket a Sunday morning Baptist service and try to force ECK literature on the congregation? Not only would that be in poor taste, it shows a lack of respect for the freedoms of others.
As the ECKist sat quietly on the wall, one of the Baptists, a handsome young man, came up to her and said, "Do you know that Christ has saved you?"
Instead of giving a direct response, the ECKIst asked him a question: "What is God?"
The Baptist went into a lively sermon about salvation through Christ, justification by faith, and what religion meant to him. The ECKist listened politely, without interrupting. When at last he paused for breath, she simply said, "I am June, and I love you."
The young man obviously didn't’t quite know what to say to this. He tried to resume his talk on salvation but finally changed the subject and to talk about his family problems.
"My wife and children don't appreciate me," he said, "and I don't know why. I am a dutiful husband, a loving father, and a compassionate human being. Yet for all the good that I do for my family, they don't have any respect for me."
The ECKist listened quietly as the young man unburdened himself of his troubles. When he was finished, he just looked at her for a minute. Finally he said, "I am John, and I love you."
They talked some more, and before he left to rejoin his friends she gave him a copy of ECKANKAR—The Key to Secret Worlds plus several ECK brochures. Then he went over to his friends and said, "Come on, time to go." She watched him tuck the Bible under his arm and begin thumbing through the ECK book. He and his friends were still discussing it as they walked away.
The woman had noticed how the power of love could change the direction of a situation. Whereas the other ECKists had tried to force the Baptists to go away, it was love that overcame the intrusion. This was her lesson from the Master.
Buzzing Bees
When an ECKist's father translated, she went to stay with her mother for a while. Soon after the funeral, she got a call from her father's sister. The aunt wanted to know how the ECKist and her mother were getting along, but there was also another reason for her call.
"I'm not psychic," said the aunt, a born-again Christian for twenty-four years, "but something very strange happened to me."
About the time her brother had translated, the woman said, "a sudden feeling of tiredness came over me. I went to my bedroom to lay down to rest. As soon as I closed my eyes, I heard a strange sound, like buzzing bees."
The aunt opened her eyes, and before her was the face of her brother, just as it had looked when he was young and healthy. Yet she knew that during his illness his weight had dwindled to seventy pounds. Her brother's face appeared and disappeared, three times. Each appearance was accompanied by the sound of buzzing bees.
"What happened?" she asked her niece. "What does it mean?"
"You saw your brother on the other side," the ECKist said. "He has regained his youth, and that's the way he looks now."
Then she explained, "The buzzing of bees is the sound on the plane, or heaven, where he is now living." In ECK we know that the buzzing of bees is the Sound of the Holy Spirit as It is heard on the Etheric Plane.
Encouraging Words
Many people outside of ECK have experiences with the Light and Sound of the Holy Spirit. But usually they do not understand them.
As channels for the ECK, or Holy Spirit, ECKists are able to give encouraging words. We are often placed in a certain position to be of help to someone who is seeking the Light, or has a question about the Light and Sound.
If they are afraid, or think that the experience means that there is something wrong with them, we can assure them: "No, you do not need a psychiatrist; you are perfectly sane. What you are having is a spiritual experience from the highest source. It does not fall into the category of psychic phenomena or anything of this nature. The Sound you hear is the Voice of God, the Holy Spirit, which we call the ECK."
What Is Detachment?
Sometimes an individual gets a lesson from the Master on detachment. Detached love is a term that comes up a lot in the ECK teachings. It is not always understood.
In the early years of ECKANKAR, some ECKists equated detachment with coldness. In other words, if someone needed a shoulder to cry on, the ECKist practiced his idea of detached love by standing rigid and strong, like an ivory pillar. But other people couldn't quite relate to this. It was more like leaning against a wooden post than another human being.
Detached love means listening patiently to someone talk, simply because that person has a need to talk. If they need to cry, you can be there to provide a shoulder for them to cry on until they can be healed of whatever is causing their sorrow.
One definition of detachment is to allow other people to have their emotions. Emotions are a very natural part of living. But it also has another meaning.
An ECKist receives a special edition of The Shariyat-Ki-Sugmad, which came complete with leather cover. She was so proud of this book that she thought about putting it in her home on a pedestal under glass. She knew that some of the ECKists had seen the Shariyat displayed this way in Temples of Golden Wisdom on the inner planes, where the pages glowed with light and turned by themselves.
After admiring her beautiful new book for a while, she set it on her coffee table and went out to a meeting. She came home later to find her dog happily chewing on the cover. In fact, a piece of cover was still hanging from the dog's mouth.
The woman was beside herself. "Don't you know that books are precious?" she said to the dog.
I suspect he did know that they were precious, but in a different way.
As she thought it over, she realized that for the last three weeks she had been giving her dog leather chew-toys to chew on. When he sniffed the leather book cover, naturally he thought it was his. Then he helped himself to this very high-grade leather toy.
The following week, the woman attended an ECK Satsang class and mentioned the incident to the Arahata. The Arahata's response is an example of an ECKist's ability to see the larger picture.
She said, "But did the dog eat any words?"
"No," the woman said. "As a matter of fact, the dog didn't eat any of the words at all. None of the print on the cover was missing."
After she digested the Arahata's words, she became reconciled to the fact that the dog had digested her book cover. Then she realized the Master had given her a lesson in detachment. The book had been very precious to her; but how important, really, should we allow any physical object to be?
When word got back to me about what had happened, I asked the staff to send her a new book for herself. "Tell her she is welcome to keep the other book for her dog," I said.
Not For ECKists Only
A Higher Initiate in ECK scheduled a viewing of "The Journey Home" video as part of an introductory presentation on Eckankar. She had reserved a motel room for the presentation. Since it was scheduled during the motel's busy season, they were booked solid.
Several ECKIsts arrived early to hook up the VCR. But no matter what they tried, they couldn't get "The Journey Home" to play.
The presentation was scheduled to begin at 8:00 P.M., and they were running out of time. They called for help. A maintenance man came to the room. He began to fiddle with the wires, trying different combinations of hookups between the VCR and the TV. Nothing he did could make the VCR work.
While he was busy with the technical end of the problem, the ECKist began to discuss spiritual aspects of the situation. The maintenance man no doubt wondered why these people considered their VCR to be a spiritual matter, but he was polite enough not to ask.
Finally he said, "Look, it's almost eight o'clock. The only thing I can think of is to run this film on the movie channel. That means it would be shown throughout the motel. I'm sorry," he said, "that's the only way I can do it."
The ECKists were delighted, of course. At 8:00 P.M., "The Journey Home" was shown in place of the regularly scheduled movie on every TV in the sold-out motel.
As the guests checked out the next morning, they had some very good comments about the film, according to the owner of the motel. Some told her how enjoyable it had made their stay. She was so pleased about it that when the Higher Initiate tried to pay for the room, the owner wouldn't take any money.
The situation worked out well for everyone involved. Lessons from the Master are not only for ECKists.
Expectations
A an ECK seminar recently, I ended a talk without saying, "May the blessings be," as I usually do. One of the initiates was very upset by this. It struck her strongly. Each time she heard that phrase, she felt the warmth and love of God and the Holy Spirit going out to her. She wondered why I had not said it after that particular talk.
Finally it came to her that I had been speaking about expectations — those we have about Divine Spirit and about other people. When our expectations are not met, we feel let down in spirit. Does the fault lie with the people who let us down, or were our expectations too high?
She saw she had been unrealistic to expect the ECK teachings to always come through outer channels. This included the blessings of the SUGMAD in the phrase "May the blessings be." The true message of ECK is always given on the inner planes, by the Inner Master.
The Keystone of ECK
The message that I give on the outer is just a link. It is a way for you to connect with the teachings on the inner planes, so that one day you can have a stronger linkup with the ECK flow, the love of ECK.
Love is the keystone of ECK: God is love, ECK is love, the Holy Spirit is love, and you are love. This is what you are trying to achieve in your realizations. As you rise to higher states of consciousness, you become not a greater servant of God, but a greater channel of love to all life for the Divinity which is, in whatever way you see and know IT.
The teachings of ECKANKAR are the teachings of love. And with love comes compassion, understanding, wisdom, and freedom.
May the blessings be.
The European Seminar, The Hague, The Netherlands, Sunday, July 31,1988
