I am not here to prove to you that I am good or bad. I am here to tell you that you are great, you are good, and if you follow my instructions, you will feel, you will see, you will know that you are great, you are good…You’ll feel that you are great, that you know God.
You would like to ask me some questions now, or do you want to have a glimpse of Heaven? (Glimpse of Heaven.) How many “Heaven?” How many…? OK. Fine. Fine. It’s very simple. I will show you, but the work is yours. I can only show you, but you must work. I cannot work for you. It’s a little bit not very quiet here. But I have shown you. You go home and do it. You will enjoy. Enjoy. You have any question? Bring the first ones. I’m sorry because of shortness of time, but you could do this at home. Have any one of you seen some (inner Heavenly) Light at least, so quick? Yeah? Have you? Raise your hand. Oh, yeah? Thanks, that’s good. Wow! That’s good, just for two seconds. You’re quick! You’re very pure, that’s why. Very pure in such a not quiet environment and just two seconds you still can see. I told you. We can get immediate enlightenment. Some of you see some Heaven scenery, or not? Yes? Raise your hand. Yeah? That’s cool. That’s cool. Ok! Questions please!
(In the last days, many false Christs will appear,) Again? (showing great signs and wonders so as to lead, if possible, even the elite astray. How, without being initiated, can one tell whether You are true or false?)
You can’t. You can’t tell whether I am true or false. So it’s up to you. (Thank You.) You are welcome. Of course... but there are some little things that you can tell. For example – not because of me – if you meet a Master, you immediately feel something, or you don’t. Either you feel something good about that person or you don’t. We do have this intuition. Even sometimes we see a stranger in the street, we feel like, “Yes, she gives me good vibes. She’s lovely, she must be a good person,” and some person we just see for the first time, we feel kind of... we don’t want to talk to that person; we’re a little scared. Yes, we have this intuition. Or else, we come home and pray to God, “Please, God let me know who is the good one!” Yes? And then you follow your heart. No one else can tell you. You can only tell from the outside, but inside you cannot. Unless you go into a higher spiritual level, then you can see me, like a mirror, but from human to human standard, you cannot see anything. I am not here to prove to you that I am good or bad. I am here to tell you that you are great, you are good, and if you follow my instructions, you will feel, you will see, you will know that you are great, you are good. Forget about me. I am good or bad has nothing to do with you. Just so that you feel good, that’s all!
You’ll feel that you are great, that you know God; and suppose you don’t feel like that, you can always leave. I don’t charge any money, I don’t follow you to your house, I don’t call you at all. I’ll be gone tomorrow, and you’ll be lucky to ever catch me again, so don’t worry that I am bad or good. Follow your instinct; learn to know, to remember your greatness. That’s what I am here for; not here so that you think I’m great. That’s a different question. I am here to show you that you are great. And if you want to know your greatness, then just follow my instructions; not follow me, follow my instructions.
(Should our children be vegetarians [vegans], too, Master? Thanks.)
Yes. Because children also have souls and they are also God, so if they wish to be, that means they’re OK. We can talk logically and reasonably, and if they want to, they can be. They should be, because children who are vegetarians (vegans) are very healthy. Look at me... I am pretty! No, no, I am kidding... I am kidding! Look at her! She’s so beautiful. She looks like a movie star and she’s a vegetarian (vegan), no? Is she not beautiful? Our fellow initiates, when they are pregnant, the babies are vegetarians (vegans) from the mothers’ wombs already. And when they are born, they’re the most beautiful babies, if you compare to other babies nearby. They are born pinky, healthy, and other children, sometimes they are born blue, and purple. Yes! Really! No, you go and take a look at the newborn babies; sometimes they’re so blue, so dark. But our children are always born pinky, healthy and cry the loudest.
(This next question is playing a game of “blankety-blank,” it’s asking You to fill in the rest of the sentence. “Can You please explain what should be the aim of human life? We should meditate to achieve…?” And that’s the question.) The aim of human life is to know your Self, to know that you are God, that you’re connected with God. And we meditate in order to calm this busy-busy thinking mind, so that we can recognize the True Self behind this mind. Just like to recognize the driver, not the car. Yes, sister.
(I would love to know the Truth. However, it seems strange to stop drinking wine, etc…) Oh. Is it? (Then she goes on. “…whereas all the cakes and white sugar products are as harmful. I always experienced that it is more important to have a real ‘first.’ I just want to know what to put first in every moment.”) What to put… what? (What to put first in every moment. What should be the first thing…)
What is the priority? (Yes.) God is the priority! Not the wine! OK. You bargain all the time. You’d like to know God, but you like to enjoy all these poisons. I don’t know why you like wine so much. All this alcohol has been proven that they’re damaging to the brain cells. They numb your nerves; they make you less intelligent and impotent! Shh! If you like to continue drinking this kind of poison and pay a lot of hard, sweating, earned money for it, welcome! If you want to know God, forget that. It’s just a little wine compared to great Heaven and the whole universe. They are better than wine; stuff better than wine. When you meditate and you are in ecstasy, it’s better than getting drunk and hungover. Really! Next one.
(Would Master please enlighten us as to the spiritual path of animals? Do domestic animals, such as cats and dogs, choose a situation in life which will assist them spiritually? Can they achieve supreme enlightenment?)
They will in their own time. Animals are great friends of man. Sometimes a dog, a cat can teach us wonderful, unconditional love lessons. So, they have chosen to be animal, just for us, for our sake. We should love them, assist them, and take care of them. And whatever, whenever they attain enlightenment, that’s their own choice. They will get there whenever they want to. They know.
(I have always talked to Quan Yin by talking to the stars, but I always believed I was talking to a goddess, as I am a spiritual person, not religious. What is the difference?)
What is the difference between a religious and a spiritual person? Is that right? (Yeah. She believes she is talking to a goddess, and asking, “I’m a spiritual person, not religious. What is the difference?”) I don’t … (Compared to the Quan Yin.) I don’t really know. I think we look in the dictionary and see what’s the difference. To me, a spiritual person is the one who aspires to know his origin. And not only aspiring, but knowing also. Experiencing his own divine quality, his own God inside. That is a true spiritual, or even, true religious person.
(What can I do to keep up meditation daily, when there’s not enough waking hours in a day?)
Cannot wake up? (Yes.) Yes, me too! Nobody likes to wake up when we’re snug in bed, but we have to try. Suppose if you have to get up to work, then you must. You must! For like, $2,000 per month, you wake up every morning... five o’clock, yes? For God, you don’t wake up! So what am I to do? So make your own priority choice.
We can wake up a little earlier than usual, and then get used to it. For example, it’s too early to get up at 3 o’clock, don’t wake up at 3 o’clock. Normally, you wake up to work at 5 o’clock, OK, then wake up like 20 to 5 the first day, or 10 to 5 even, or even 5 to 5. And the next day or next week, 10 to 5, yes? Get yourself used to the idea and reward yourself abundantly. Tell yourself, “OK, if you wake up early today, I’m going to give you a double bagel,” for example, or “one more cup of cafe late.” Whatever your mind loves to have, reward it. Reward yourself. You must love yourself also, because, let’s face it, we have only one, this physical body, and we are so tired sometimes. We work so hard, 8 hours, 10 hours a day, just to keep this “machine” running, and then we have to attend to, sometimes, other work like family, wife, children, and parents, friends, neighbors, relatives, etc. We really are very hard demanding on this physical body. So, of course, if you cannot wake up in the morning for meditation, forgive yourself. Don’t be too hard on yourself, but train yourself slowly. Watch TV less, sleep a little earlier, so you can get up better, or whatever the activities you used to do too much before, in order to pass the time when you are bored, use that time for knowing God. It is a matter of organization. I am also pretty busy you don’t believe it. I sit here looking pretty, but I’m very busy, too. And it’s hard for me also to get up early sometimes. But you have to put an alarm clock, yes? Sometimes it’s like that.
In the old Indian tradition, there was one saint, he wakes up all right, but he sleeps sitting instead of lying, so it’s just the same. Our people are the same. You know! When you go to our retreat or they come to my house, they sit there look very good but.... yeah! They sit any fashion, you know. So, never mind, you try your best. That’s what counts. So that person, the saint in India, you know what he did? He had long hair like me and he tied his hair onto the ceiling or something. Yes, yes, yes! Yes, I am not kidding! And then he became a Master because he tried so hard. He tied his hair to the ceiling, so whenever he nodded, “Oh! OK...” Yes! Yes! I am not saying that you should grow your hair long or do that, but you find your way, yes?
Like, we wake up early and... In the beginning, I had to put, like, ice water next to me, a flask of ice, and then when the alarm rang, I reached for the ice and threw it on my face, and “Ohh! Blaaah!”– the ice comes through your clothes and everything and you just have to jump out of bed. But don’t do it... just don’t do it, I mean, you have your own ways. But when you want to do something, you can. Believe me, you can, because you are God. There’s nothing impossible with God. Just remember that you have God inside you and that no one else is there. Don’t listen to the mind and the brain. It’s just a computer. The mind tells us, “Oh...sleep...sleep... sleep is good for you.” But that’s not God’s voice! God is behind that.
(Do You ever meet with Quan Yin?) Oh, yes. Yes. Why not? You can see all the Saints from the past if you want to, but you have to work hard, tie your hair to the ceiling! Now you know why many yogis in India have long hair.
(As we are spiritual beings having a human experience, we are perfect in our expression of life; we are already divine. If God is everything without duality, then everything we are, everything we do is an expression of God. So do we need then to do nothing just to be without reward?)
That’s fine. That’s fine. That’s fine, too. As I said earlier, you chose to be what you want to be. But there are many aspects of God; God is the total sum of our being. So, if we want to say that we are God, of course we are already God, that is for sure, but then go back to the finger, see? Suppose we say, “OK, I am God now. I don’t need to do anything.” It’s fine! But then we go out and steal, or we do things that are not proper or we harm other beings, because we say every expression is God anyway, so we don’t try to be better, we don’t try to represent ourselves in other aspects of divine quality and just concentrate on one point and do the physical things. And in that case, even though we are God, we have not the whole complete quality, we have not expressed ourselves in the whole, complete way. So that is the only difference.
Once we know the whole thing, the total sum of God, we act differently. We don’t just look at the finger, we know the whole being, and that is different. If I just sit here and look at the finger, I look different, “My God! Nice finger!” But when I know my whole being, then I stand up, I walk, you see? I sing, I embrace people, I greet people with love, I write poetry, I play music, I go swimming – I do all kinds of things which a whole being would do. But if I keep looking at one finger only, I still have the whole being here, but it’s useless. See what I mean? That’s the difference. That’s the difference between knowing the whole being of God and just saying, “OK, whatever I do is God anyway.” But, of course, you are divine already, so you choose what you are doing. I am just answering your question.
(Yes. Next question is in two parts. Where in the Himalayas did You learn Your spiritualism?) Oh, that is a secret. (What guided You to go there?) My inner Self. I was blind, blindly in love with God. I would not advise you to go there, because you might not come back. It is very dangerous, places where I went. I have talked about that sometime before, I remember. So maybe you just search out for those tapes or something, and listen. OK?
(Dear Master Ching Hai, would You please explain ghosts to us?) Ghosts? (And then asks do You believe in them?) Oh, I’m scared. Do you see ghosts? Anyone of you see ghosts? Raise your hand. What do they look like? (Great.) Great? Then they are not ghosts; they’re angels. The person who asks means the ghost who are scary, right? OK. There are different levels of life as I have told you before. Even us, we are also part human, part ghost. But we only know that when we die. Actually, there are just different levels of living. For example, here we live as human beings; there are others that live as worms and ants. And in other levels of consciousness, they don’t live with this physical body; they live with an astral body. And some people who die live within that astral body which looks exactly like his body right now. So sometimes he thinks he’s still a human being, I mean a physical being, so he comes and talks to people. He tries to throw tantrums because nobody listens to him. Nobody even knows that he exists. He goes through people, goes through walls and he talks to everyone and he tries to get back his possessions and his loved ones. And he was very frustrated sometimes, and he scares people. He uses all his spiritual might to manifest in something, and that’s when we say we see ghosts. Otherwise, there’s nothing scary about ghosts. And these so-called ghosts, after some time, they will realize that they’re so-called “dead,” meaning they don’t have a physical body anymore, and nobody understands them anymore. Then they will begin to also turn inward or seek help from angels, or some beings will go and take care of them. It’s like police in our planet. And then they will be gone. Gone somewhere they belong. Like maybe go to Heaven, maybe go to lower heaven or higher Heaven, depends on their merit and their understanding at that time.
(How many times do we need to come to this planet before we become enlightened? And where do we go when we are not in a physical body?) We come as many times as we choose to come. For example, some people who are supposed to die already, but then some relatives are crying and loving and needing them so much, they come back to physical life immediately. That’s “reborn,” that’s resurrection. And sometimes we go to Heaven already, but we like to have the human being’s experience again for our own pleasure or our own development, and sometimes we come back because some loved ones are still there, calling us and wanting us to be with them, and we choose to come back.
And, if we have not realized God in the physical body, sometimes we choose to come back, so that we can realize God on a higher level. If we are not in a physical body, we can go in many different places; we are more free. Free, free, free, like birds; we can fly anywhere in an instant! For example, if I die and I want to go to Germany, we don’t need an airplane, just one thought, We'd be there right away. One second, one instant, and that is the freedom of not having a body.
But nevertheless, if we have not trained ourselves during our lifetime to think highly, to remember our higher Self, then when we die, we leave the physical body and we just linger on a lower level of ourselves without realizing the higher aspects of the Divine Self. So we might linger there and then we get bored and then we come back to the physical body again, or we might be lucky, meeting some spiritual friend and then we inch our way up, or we go back to the physical body and get a teacher and learn properly and then go “bzzt!!” So, it depends on what we chose to do in this physical life; we will be at that level when we die.
