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Divine friends, who is God?
God is Satyam, absolute truth. Dharma, righteousness. Prema,
love. Shanthi, peace. God is Atma and God is Paramatma.
Everything is part of the nature of Almighty God. God is the
elements, fire, water, earth, air and ether. God is you and your
family, God is the environment. When you’re coming to the temple
to pray, what should you be trying to do? You should be trying
to identify yourself as part of the nature of God. Not separate
from God. You have divinity embodied within you. You are divine
by nature. What separates you from God are the obstacles that
you have placed in your path of evolution. God has not placed
those obstacles. The karma that you have accumulated from many
cycles of life is what separates you from God. When you come
into the orbit of divine power, of Shakti and the Anandam, the
grace of God, you are given an opportunity for that karma to be
modified and for you to realize and express your divinity, your
higher nature.
In your daily lives how do
you express that higher nature? You express it through love,
compassion, understanding and being exceedingly mindful of how
you interact with your fellow men, your environment and nature,
because you’re becoming aware of your interaction with almighty
God. Heightened mindfulness and consciousness of the
universality of God is what spirituality is all about; it is
what religion is about. You will only get the grace of God in
your lives if you make an effort to serve God and identify with
God. Karma yoga and Bhakta yoga are the two yogas taught by
Krishna and in the Kaliyuga, this age of destruction they are
the simplest path to realize God – through service to life and
through love and devotion in your life.
We have an immense drama
happening at the moment in the temple. One of our temple bulls,
Shambo – he’s just behind you, behind those shutters, in the
back of the temple. We have put him in the temple to protect
his life because the government want to kill him. They want to
kill him because he’s reacted to a Bovine Tuberculosis test and
they think he is a danger to other cows and to society in
general, so they want to kill him, like they would like to kill
any cow who reacts to that test. If a member of your family has
a problem you take them to the doctors. You diagnose accurately
through many tests what the nature of the problem is and you
find the most appropriate medication to deal with the problem.
You do not kill a member of your family because they may be
sick. Shambo is a member of our family, he is part of the nature
of God. He has every right to live as you or I do. He is divine
by nature, as is every single life.
Sanathana Dharma - the
timeless consciousness of God – is based on knowing the
universality of God, that everything is part of this nature of
God. The basic human value of the sanctity of life has been
eroded, especially in recent years. In society, killing is the
foremost solution in many problems. In the Foot & Mouth disease
and BSE crisis millions and millions of cows were killed, most
of whom were perfectly healthy. Once killing has become a
solution in the minds of those in authority, the boundaries of
stepping over the line from not killing to killing cease to
exist. Killing a human being then becomes as easy as killing an
animal. The authorities always state great reasons why people
should go to war, great reasons why people should desecrate
life. Thou shalt not kill. The law of Dharma is that life is
sacred. Killing is Adharma. It is fuelled by negative forces, by
fear, by ignorance, by greed, by the lower nature that is in
humanity. That is what fuels the forces of Adharma. We have an
utmost duty and responsibility to uphold the highest
consciousness of God, the law of Dharma.
Why has almighty God created
this drama here in a temple – in order to test the validity of
our commitment to serving God. We’ve been here since 1973,
serving the community from the United Kingdom and abroad, many
thousands of pilgrims, about ninety thousand pilgrims came here
last year. It is very easy for us to be complacent to just carry
on doing the aarti, the pujas and everything else, but we are
successful here because we rely on God. We obey the will of God.
If we do not stand up for Dharma, if we not try and uphold the
highest consciousness of God, do you think for one minute that
the power and the presence of God will remain in Skanda Vale? It
won’t. God will say, ‘OK, you’ve decided to do it your way.
You’re prepared to compromise the highest consciousness of mine.
Why should I be involved in you?’
The whole purpose of any
spiritual centre of excellence is to set an example to uphold
the highest consciousness of dharma in the world. Not to be in
the pocket of those in power, not to be in the pocket of the
government, not to compromise your values because you may not
get a grant for building a new temple, you may not get funding
for this, that or the other. You have to be free to worship and
uphold Dharma, to obey the will of God. In ancient times before
kings made any decision of impact they always consulted the
rishis. They did this because they had the capacity to realize
that the will of God is the most important thing to follow. If
you offer your life in service to God and you rely on the grace
of God the Divine will always find a solution to uphold dharma.
To obey the will of God is
one the most difficult things for people to do in the pressure
of today’s society but that is why we are doing what we are with
Shambo. We have no choice. We can never allow any life entrusted
to our care to be killed. He is a member of our family as much
as you are, as much as all the monks and nuns in the community.
There is a very very simple solution here and that solution is
for Jane Davidson, who is the minister in charge of making this
decision to realize that Skanda Vale is a place of worship, it
is a temple and that Shambo’s life is sacred here. We are not a
commercial farm. We never kill any animal. No animal leaves
here. He was born here, he will die here naturally. If an animal
is sick, we never put that animal down. We work with our vets
and we are committed to spending as much money and as much time
to care for life. We know what caring for life means. We have
cattle here over twenty years old. We have cows that have not
been able to stand up for over a year. We know how to care for
them, to turn them over, to treat them like you would a person
who is terminally ill. We run a hospice eight miles from here
looking after people who are terminally ill. Our job is serving
God in life and the people in government need to realize that
that is a world of difference from a commercial farm whose job
is to kill to make money. It’s quite a clear difference. There
are many advance tests and diagnostics available for bovine TB,
as there are for TB in human beings. Tuberculosis is treatable
in animals, it can be treated in elephants, it can be treated in
cows, it can be treated in gorillas, it can be treated in any
animal. If you can treat it in a human being you can treat it in
an animal. There just has to be the will to do this.
How can you help us? You can
help us by sending an email, writing to Jane Davidson in the
next day or two because she’ll be making a decision in the next
few days, expressing the reasons why Shambo should not be
killed. It will be a desecration of his life, a desecration of
Hinduism and Sanathana Dharma and a desecration of a place of
worship. There is no reason at all to take his life.
Bless you.
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