Dear Brothers and sisters,

If i have made the choice to speak to you about some reflections on the topic 'sacred or profane', it may be because the term 'profane' is often uttered, as well as the expression "to enter into the sacred", and it seemed to me that these terms and expressions were used as a mere habit and, therefore, in a quite ... profane way.

As for the title "Am I sacred or profane", it is clearly obvious that the "I" of this question is not the little reasoning "i" that aligns all these words, but rather the "I" that is common to all (of us). All of us say "my" hand, "my" foot, "my" head, etc..., therefore seeing these as objects belonging to the subject 'I'. But, when speaking about ourselves beyond all these objects, all of us say "I". This "I", which is ourselves and each one of us, this "I", common denominator of all beings, this "I" for the discovery of which we entered the Quest, is obviously the "I" of the question, as well as the "I" of all questions.

Let us look at the first teachings of the Biblical tradition. It would be possible to take those of any other tradition, we would find the same first teachings yet in the form of different symbols:
"And the Eternal God said: "You will freely eat from any tree of the garden, but from the tree of knowledge you will not, for the day you will eat from it, for sure you will die."

From the day man has eaten from the tree of knowledge, that is to say, from the day when he has begun to eat relative knowledge - that is to say, "to reason" - man has left the sacred for the profane, forgetting himself. And he is dying. This is true for himself as well as for the whole civilisation. At the beginning of what is called, by convention, "the civilisation", everything was only one science, to which it was also possible to give the name "religion". As soon as this science became dissected into several fields, and particularly when it has been cut into religion on one hand and science on the other hand, this by a purely mental artifice, then the civilisation, slowly, takes its direction towards its death.

"And the Eternal God made a woman from a rib He had taken from the man, and He brought her to the man." This is the outbreak of duality. With duality the mental snake was born. It says: "Certainly you will not die if you eat from it, for God knows that the day you will eat from it, your eyes will be open, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." The mind of man behaves in such a way that, under the impulse of desire, he looks for knowledge, but actually he looks for relative knowledge, mental knowledge, thinking that this knowledge is the source of all true knowledge. He thinks he is similar to God, unable of being aware that he is but a mental god. This is entirely the symbol of Lucifer: the bearer of light, yes, but of mental light, hence his fall. It is the still deeper fall into the profane. "The woman saw that the tree was desirable to become intelligent." The tree is desirable to cultivate the mind. How many great scientists are the kings of imbeciles! They know then that they are naked; it is the birth of the mental knowledge. God said: "Who has showed you that you were naked?" Actually, man himself .... Having left his source, he becomes aware that he is naked. With the mind all perceptions are born.

To summarize, as soon as there is duality, there is the emergence of the mind and, from this, a fall into the relative sphere. Man leaves his source, his deep Self and thinks, from this day, that he is different from the source. It is the fall from the sacred into the profane. Man has forgotten his source, and, because of this, he lives in delusion that there is the sacred on one side and the profane on the other side. Because of this, he thinks that knowledge comes from matter, as if everything that exists had no source. Yet every effect has a cause and if the effect is intelligent, the source cannot be otherwise.

Now, what is the difference between sacred and profane? Actually there is none; there is merely a mental illusion that, for man, makes a relative perception of things and of himself become apparent.

In an age that could be called a Golden Age, as it has just been said, and this in all civilisations, this division that the mind makes between several branches of science and reality did not exist. There was only one science that applied to an only one reality, a common trunk with all its branches connected to the same trunk. This science was also called Religion, actually it was the natural religion that was found everywhere and that has given the different branches of what is called Tradition. In the Vedas and Puranas that are quite old, besides all the other fields of science, one can find the Big-Bang theory that is quite new in the West. More than this, they give a date for the big-bang, they say that the universe will be expanding until such a date and will contract afterwards to come back to the original point. Less than one month ago (therefore 4 years ago) i read that this was a totally new theory for our great scientists who call what is only an assumption for them, the "big scrunch". Not so long ago, a man like PASCAL was a great scientist as well as a great mystic philosopher. Not so far from us, Albert Einstein was led to mysticism. In times past, there were not several knowledge trees, but one. But the mind has the bad habit to cut everything in pieces and one has cut the branches to plant them apart and made other trees from them. Just to take one example: medicine has divided from the tree. Then, the mind continuing, one has cut theses branches of this branch and one has made what is pompously called 'specialities'. And now, when the liver is sick, we swallow drugs to heal it. It has not yet completely recovered that we find that our stomach has got a shock from this! So, we treat the stomach but soon it is the tubes that know failures, etc... There is no more any notion of harmony. However, the human family, the Earth, and further the Cosmos, is only one body and each element has repercussions on the whole. It is like this with everything, and one divides more and more, each speciality giving sub-specialities. In the same way the world has divided into nations, in countries, then in sub-countries. This division has touched and continues to touch all spheres, as the fall goes on.

In our present world, the number of intellectuals, of great scholars who continue to divide the One in many in such a way are more and more numerous. And each one of these specialists of a particular field would want to explain everything through the only field he knows, and he cannot prevent himself to come out with new theories, often much weird. To take only one example: psychoanalysis, speciality of a speciality that is psychology, wanted to explain everything - and actually to reduce everything - through a minute discovery of a man named Freud. Many "scientists" are only able to deny the Only Force since they no more have any notion of the whole and of this Force that keeps that whole in cohesion.

The division that is done between ages: golden age, silver age, etc…, is a division of the involution of human consciousness that follows the mental emergence. As soon as the mind comes into consideration and cuts things, the world takes a direction towards its ruin. The golden age, which is called satya yuga, that is to say 'the age of truth', is said to be between the consciousness level of 4/4 and the consciousness level of 3/4. The silver age between the consciousness level of 3/4 and 1/2. The bronze age between 1/2 and 1/4 of consciousness, and the Kali yuga of Iron age between ¼ and zero of consciousness, age when the ego has entirely covered human consciousness. Then there is even no more any division between sacred and profane since, then, everything is profane and it is the 'religious side' that appears to be an illusion. Things and values are then completely inverted, and this, really, is the age we are living in.

Things appear as sacred for the one who sees them as born from a conscious source, they appear as profane for the one who sees them as born form a source without consciousness. The difference between sacred and profane is therefore an illusion that depends on the level of consciousness of each one.

This descent and these successive divisions apply to all fields, to man as well as to his civilisation and to the different countries of the world. In times past there was no cut between the 'Church' and the 'State'. One must say that, at this time, the 'Church' was not the fact of a sect. The society was divided into what is called 'castes' that existed everywhere. Priests were in charge of the said 'religious' side, so that man always remain conscious of his source, " warriors " were in charge of the defence of the Law, of the integrity of the territory and of every one, traders were in charge of the subsistence of the beings. So, it was a horizontal division of the society. It is the mind that, step by step, has made them appear as vertical divisions, and in doing so cutting the different sectors of this society and breaking its cohesion. Thus, the sector of the priests, or religious sector, which came from what was called the Natural law, the Eternal Law, has begun, with the descent of consciousness, to divide itself into different religions, parallel to the continuation of the involution of collective consciousness, each one according to the level of the restricted mental understanding of each one. These same religions, in time, then have divided themselves into different sects.

Hence, what is called 'Church' was no more one unit, and it became impossible to preserve the communion of the different spheres, since in each of them, as presently in politics, fights existed. In this way one came to the separation between " Church " and " State ", and this in almost all the countries of the world, religions as well as countries making a separation between the domain of 'above' and the domain of 'below'. The only countries in which the Constitution still contains the inalienable reference to religion are Tibet and Nepal and, actually, only Nepal, since Tibet is now under the heel of Chinese - and even in Western maps, it is seen as an integral part of China, which is purely shameful. Thus, at the level of every country, one has arrived to consider that, on one hand were the things of the inner life and, on the other the things of the external life; on one hand the sacred and on the other hand the profane, as if they were two separated things and as if they have not of had not to have any interrelation! Then new terms were created. On speaks of 'religions' on one hand and of 'secular' on the other hand. Everybody knows that the difference only lies in the manner to consider things. Again, at the country level, one speaks of communalism and secularism. The relative consciousness of each group collides with each other; and there are more an more collisions since, involution going on and the level of understanding decreasing, there are more and more divisions inside each group, each sub-group ending itself in dividing.

Talking of this, even if I had thought of not speaking of it, there is a country where the reading of this difference between sacred and profane is particularly clear. It is India. India is a country where the caste system was completely horizontal before and where everything was seen as sacred. The term 'Hinduism' did not exist - since, clearly speaking, Hinduism does not exist, it is a Persian term that West has made his. The religion of India includes all religions and has welcomed all of them and its real name is SANATANA DHARMA, which means ETERNAL LAW. The verticalisation of castes became accentuated with the two invasions that this country has known, the first with the Muslims, the second with the British. As it was necessary to divide in order to rule, this has been done in an almost scientific manner. India, which accepted all religions and respected them in the same way, became particularly divided the day when the British raised the division between Hindus and Muslims, which has culminated in the partition between India and Pakistan (which, let us mark, has divided itself afterwards into Pakistan and Bangladesh). In addition, this country suddenly found itself confronted with this division between sacred and profane brought by the West. Many followed as this brought them some power. Western values collided head-on with this civilisation of eternal values, hence a second division. Presently, India is a country that could be considered as being on the edge of the abyss. At the political level, she has nothing to envy us concerning corruption; the different communities clash; terrorism spreads and the economy is without breathe. In front of all these extreme tensions, some sages who lived in the Himalayas have been called and some of them have considered that it was their duty to enter politics to try to save Bharat Mata, Mother India. Therefore one can find "clever politicians" as well as some 'sages' in the Indian Parliament. 'Hinduism', which was considered as a religion for primitives under the Muslim and British rules, … is going through a revival more and more. Presently, there is a struggle to come back to the old civilisation, of course with integrating the new values from West, but where there would no more be separation between 'Church' and 'State', but total reintegration with not Hinduism and other religions, but with the sanatana dharma that includes all religions. The reading of this difference between sacred and profane, of the different conceptions, and of the struggles that this difference of perception gives rise to, is therefore easier in this country presently. It is no more no less than to re-create order from chaos. Many think that the only solution lies in reinvigorating Hinduism, and they speak of " striking need". Sages would want to come back to the perception of the sacred in all things, but, as this perception depends on the level of consciousness of each one, Mother India is not close to recognize all her children…

However - and I add this today - all sages of India have predicted that this country will become again the Mother of the world, and this could not be long. The West is dying and we are presently able to see the last starts, while India will revive, and I allow myself to say that this will begin in next April. The Sun of civilisation would have then made a complete revolution around the Earth. Having begun with India thousands of years ago, it has gone towards West, passing from Persia to Egypt, then to Greece, then Europe, then to America, then to Japan, now to Korea and soon to China, soon the complete revolution will be accomplished.

Brothers and sisters, when the source is sacred, all the effects of this source are inevitably sacred. There is no need to have gone to university to understand this reasoning. And, as the source is the only source of everything, everything is inevitably sacred.

Thus " sacred " and " profane " are nothing but words, forged but the limited mind of man. Actually, there is neither sacred nor profane or, said otherwise, everything is sacred or everything is profane. The best way to say is just to say that " everything is."

It would also be possible to define the 'sacred' as what concerns the inside, and the 'profane' as what concerns the outside. But this too is nothing but an illusion.

Everything that is below is like what is above. Basing on this principle, the sages of yore searched for the truth inside themselves and not, like in our present days, outside. The laws being the same, they discovered them and it is like this that they discovered laws that our present world is only discovering now. Everything that is outside is like what is inside. If what is inside is sacred, what is outside is also so, the outside being but an extension, a breathing of the inside.

To consider a thing or a being, let us say an entity, as sacred, is simply to respect it. If modern man thinks that he is a body before everything and that it is from this body that the thought comes, he should think that his body is nothing but an amalgam of salad and transformed vegetables. That the mother of his body is therefore the Earth and that, in this, She is sacred and therefore respectable. If he had the notion of this mere obviousness, he would respect his Mother the Earth and would not have made of it a tip that kills Her. The notion of 'sacred' completely fits in with the notion of 'profane' in this simple example, and one can find that both are but relative notions of the same reality and that, actually, religion and science are but one and the same thing. What is needed is simply to respect one's Mother. To respect the Earth is to respect one's own body. If he eats meat, then his body is also an amalgam of different parts of animals. Therefore he must, to respect himself, respect the vegetal realm as well as the animal realm since he contains them. The 'sacred' is, therefore, actually, the respect of oneself. It is characteristic that the term 'to profane something' means to degrade it. It is also characteristic that the French expression 'to be profane with the subject' means not knowing anything of it.

"Sarvam khalu idam Brahma." "Actually, all that exists is God ". This is the quintessence of Knowledge. As Sathya Sai Baba says: " The truth about this vast universe of mobile and immobile objects is contained in this simple proposition. There is nothing in this Cosmos without God. The Divinity is latent is every thing like the fire in the wood or the oil in the sesame. So, there is nothing in the world that is not impregnated by the Divine. Whether man believes it or not, the wheel of creation turns according to the Divine law… The sun shines and the Moon brings its soft rays on the earth. Rains fall and rivers flow, herbs grow. Not one of these things happens by the will of one man. Every human being has an equal right to enjoy the benefits of these things. Unfortunately, man has forgotten this basic truth. The feeling of such an 'equal' enjoyment is only found in children. Only in babies' hearts is it possible to notice the sense of enjoyment, while drinking the mother's milk, while enjoying the little fresh wind and while forgetting oneself in the childish songs of the mother."

My Master Yogi Ramsuratkumar says only one thing: " Only my Father exists. " But, as and when the computer, in other terms the brain and the mind, loads the software that is inherent in the one who has entered the hardware, everything divides. While the child grows, the 'ideals' of "mine" and "thine" grow in the mind and the ego more and more covers up Consciousness, and the Self is more and more hidden and forgotten. One forgets the Divine's omnipresence.

The world is full of powerful men, of men gifted with riches, of great scholars and men with great qualities, but few has realised wisdom. Sages of yore have let us what is called the " Tradition " and have let us, for example, the concept of the triangle. The body is one side, the mind the second side and the soul the third. The body is gross and the soul subtle. The mind coordinates both of them. The body is " this ", the soul " that "; the role of the mind is to put together the body that is close to the senses and the soul that is far from them. Therefore the question is to integrate the body and the soul and to realise the union of the three: body, mind and soul. To make a difference between sacred and profane is therefore a mere mental deviation.

The triangle could also be seen from another point of view: the individual, God, and the Nature. Another triad is: the gross, the subtle and the causal; a fourth: past, present and future.

"A seed is put in the soil. It grows, becomes a tree that bears branches, leaves, flowers and fruits. Where all these manifestations have come from? All of them come from the seed. Is the fruit profane compared to the seed that is sacred? The seed declares: "All, you were born from me."

It is this illusory differentiation of the mind that makes the very manifestation to be born, as we have seen, in things that are more and more divided, and this results in such a way, that at the end, one has no more any notion of the whole and how this whole works. Consciousness is gradually lost and it is like this that one arrives at the different Ages and finally to the Kali Yuga with an almost total loss of consciousness; in which we are presently living.

The only way to reform this is, therefore, to start again from where we are, at the most divided; that is to say at each individual. Everything depends on one's level of consciousness, but it is the individual mind that takes part in the common mind. It truly is the building of the temple with the burnishing of each stone. It is up to each one to search for the ultimate reality of every thing, and to remove the illusion in order to find the new man and to be born again to oneself. One should remove the old clothes, these clothes that make see something either as sacred or profane. If all of us live in our spirit the basic obviousness that everything is sacred, then each of us would respect everything and it would be possible to come to see everything as a part of oneself and, therefore, to really "love one's neighbour as being oneself". It is by behaving in this way that one is able to remove the ego, by seeing everything around us as an integral part of ourselves, which is the ultimate reality. To see the other as a divine incarnation inevitably brings to the respect and, therefore, to the greatest tolerance, since this first leads to listening…

To see the other one as a divine incarnation for the same reason as oneself, this is exactly what it is meant by " seeing the other as a brother ". And this is not only for the inside of a temple or a church that are just a representation of the Cosmos, but for everything, since there is no any outside of the temple. We never go out of the temple.

This leads to the Law of Love by which the Entire Cosmos stands and remains, Only Force that makes men, Universe and Gods move.

Why would a ciborium be more sacred than a blade of grass? Only by the symbol that one superimposes on it. But such a symbol can also be applied to the blade of grass. And more, the blade of grass has life while the ciborium has not. Actually, in the course of evolution, the blade of grass is much more sacred that the ciborium. Everything is a question of mental superimposition. Actually, as Sathya Sai Baba says, Creation is the first symbol of the Divine Consciousness. The divinity in man, which is part of creation, is not something distinct. God does not exist as something apart. Actually it is the same discussion as the discussion about the dichotomy between matter and spirit. Matter does not exist and this is well known. Matter is only a relative vision. It is a set of waves that appears to us in a different manner than to the being who would live on an atom of our skin and who would see, around him, an entire universe with galaxies. That is only a relative vision. And every relative thing must, at the end, be pushed away as being illusory for the one who is in quest of the eternal and absolute truth. To force oneself to see a difference between matter and spirit is, therefore, to cling to a separatist vision of the being. In reality, God is the architect, but he is also the stone, the one who burnishes it, and he is also the work… The difference between matter and spirit is only a difference of level of consciousness, exactly like the difference between sacred and profane is due to the level of consciousness of those who give these epithets.

As long as man will stay in the relative mental sphere, it will not be possible for him to go forward. As long as he will remain in this separation that is only mental, how would it be possible for him, precisely, to go beyond the mind where the Eternal Truth lies?

"It is a supreme madness to consider that the spiritual is separated from the physical and that the material world has no connection with spirituality. Spirituality runs like an underground current through every aspect of life - social, political, economic and moral. This basic truth has been forgotten today. People have faith in the impermanent, the ephemeral and the illusory."

We must think the entire Cosmos as the body of the Supreme, constituted with elements. The most vital element for man is water. It sustains life. The second essential element is fire that dwells in every man in the form of digestive fire. Without it, man would be unable to digest the food he eats and to receive the energy that sustains him and comes from that food. The third is the earth. The process of birth, of growth and of dissolution takes its place through the earth. The fourth is the air, intimately associated with life. The fifth element, which sustains the other four, is the ether of which sound is the form.

If everything was considered as sacred as it truly is, there would also be respect for the elements, and therefore for man himself. A misuse of the elements makes man become the victim of what could therefore be called a divine displeasure. Then the five elements turn against man. Actually, there is no difference between seeing it as a divine displeasure or as return chock or as reaction of an action.

The sounds we perceive in day to day life are a scandal of cacophony. The ears being polluted, the mind that receives these perceptions becomes polluted from hearing bad things. The inhaled air is polluted, the entire atmosphere is polluted, the ingested food is polluted. All this because man does not consider the nature and the elements by which this nature is formed as sacred when they actually are. Man calls them profane elements when it is himself who profanes them. But every action having its reaction, he undergoes the return chock, for what is inside is like what is outside and man sustains himself only through his environment. To pollute the environment is to pollute oneself. And the mind of civilisation is polluted. Because man transgresses the laws of nature that are divine.

Everything that is learned today through education is only useful for polluting the heart. It is confined to what promote personal profit and selfishness. Education should allow realising the unity of all beings. "To learn from a scientist the chemical composition of water is a kind of knowledge that can help a man to find a job. But how to use water in a good way so that everybody draws some profit from it is a knowledge of the spirit. When the worldly knowledge and the spiritual knowledge come together, then life can be divinised."

Everything is sacred. If this thought is the mental notion that we all strive to adopt, then we train ourselves to live beyond mind and the surrounding world becomes entirely different. We perceive it as a unity where everything is linked to everything and where this link is called Love. To perceive everything as divine, this is to begin to really love.

This means to even love one's enemy, since this enemy is a part of oneself and is also inhabited by the Divine. It is the ego that perceives him as an enemy, and not the "I", since it is common to both. The supposed enemy believes he acts against us but he is not conscious that, if we consider everything as sacred, the harm he is supposed to do to us is but an experience that allows us to grow in consciousness. The true harm, it does it to himself without being conscious of it. Therefore it does not matter his feelings towards us, since they concern himself only and only act on himself, even if such an unconsciousness makes us sad. He also is sacred and we must perceive him, see him, as well as all the others, as an indispensable stone without which there cannot be any edifice.

Actually, one has not to reason in terms of religious or profane, as if these terms were mutually exclusive, but in terms of opening of Self Consciousness. The more consciousness opens, the more things become sacred, since the more one becomes conscious of the Self that is inherent to all things. At the relative level, anything is sacred that can raise us internally, and the rest is profane. For, at the relative level, it is false to say, for example, that all music is equally as good; this is thoroughly ridiculous, they are sometimes totally in opposition, according to the three forces of Nature. The Missa Solemnis does not bring forth the same effect than hard-rock, even the plants know something about this, since they even die with hard-rock and bloom with Missa Solemnis. But, precisely, this depends on the inner evolution of each one. It is the universal law of Nature. Nothing is worse than the famous: " I am eclectic". "I am eclectic" simply means: "I am totally ignorant inside." Simply, the true tolerance is to recognise that levels of inner understanding and inner experience can exist. It is simply to recognize that evolution exists, from the all profane to the all sacred, there where both these words annihilate themselves.

If, entering the temple, it seems to us that we penetrate into the sacred, it is just because we change our mind to open it to Consciousness.

In the same way, things of science are not opposed to religion, since, actually, there are one and the same thing. It is the opening of consciousness that makes them appear as scientific or religious. From the moment when the nature is the body of God, science becomes religion. If a sect has a teaching in opposition to the objective truths proved by science, this teaching is then inevitably wrong. But if a religious teaching is rejected by scientists because, a priori, it has not any scientific character, then it is the scientist who makes a wrong reasoning. As long as science has not proved the contrary, the thing cannot be denied if it obeys some logic. Yet science is also sacred when it allows putting down blind and idiotic beliefs, for it is an instrument of light by removing darkness. Then it is more religious than the said religion in question. It is then this religion that is completely profane, since it goes in the direction of an obscuring of consciousness. And science can only lead to religion and the profane join the sacred. And it seems that, nowadays, it is possible to see the different branches destined to come back to the same trunk. When science is led to the principle of uncertainty, when it has shown that matter was illusory, when it says that everything was born from a Primordial Energy, it is difficult to see where is the barrier between both and one perceives that this barrier was nothing but a mental illusion.

Some call this the advent of the Aquarian Age (this is another discussion). But it really seems that a new age is on the point to begin, because man has everything he wants and his materialism has led to selfishness, to the murder of Nature and he is more unhappy than ever before. Like a little boy with his little cars, he has got all the little cars. Now he needs himself. He has used his intellect for his own destruction, as we have seen how the chapter of the Genesis described this well. If we take Hindu tradition, we have the same thing with another story: Gods and devils churn the Milky Ocean, symbol of the mind, to get the nectar of immortality. Many wonderful things come out of this, but also a deadly poison that is able to destroy everything. Gods and devils become frightened because nobody knows how to remove the poison. Only one solution remains: they invoke Shiva who appears, and receives the poison in His hands. The poison transforms itself into a marvellous ornament around His neck. And, at the end, appears the amrita, the nectar of immortality, that is to say realisation.

I will end with a quotation of the already quoted sage:

"It is madness for anybody to go in search of God. When God is omnipresent, what is the need of a search? It is an illusion to imagine that man is in quest of God. It is God who is in quest of a real man. "