12/05/2026
Everything that is given to you is a gift from Wholeness, and the Lord dwells in it: your wife, your sister, your boyfriend, your husband, your children, and so on. They are the manifestation of the Lord. You are the reflections of One Lord. You are not different individuals. It is so heavy, so beautiful, that it will take you from silly thinking, silly feelings, to the height of philosophy and intuition.
Whatsoever exists belongs to Him. This is another very fascinating statement. Nothing belongs to you because you do not exist. If we impress such a philosophy, the world will be changed tomorrow. Everything belongs to Him, everything, death and life, money and loss, gain and loss, defeat and victory, belongs to Him. Nothing belongs to us. That is why the man who is detached from everything is in the infinite side of the life. There is the finite side, that you are stuck there, manipulating, exploiting, selfishness, mine, yours, ours. This is the finite sight. The infinite side is that the Lord is in everything, and everything belongs to the Lord. "Are you crazy, Torkom? What about my millions, my cars, my house?" Wait until they call you. "What am I going to do?" You are finished. Nothing will help you because you have nothing. You are assuming that you have, but it is an illusion that you have. You do not have everything. Even your body does not belong to you. What are you talking about? Why does not anything belong to you? It is because you are a portion of the Lord. Everything belongs to him.
This is the Teaching. When we are talking about the Teaching, this is the Teaching. In all my life, in all my books, I tried to put Upanishadic wisdom, intuition. Renounce and enjoy the whole existence. Do not say, "it is mine," but say, "it is His, but I am enjoying." But you cannot enjoy until you renounce. Why? Because if you say that that is mine, and what is yours is gone from your hands, you are angry, you are depressed, you are lost. But if you do not have anything, but enjoy everything, it is yours. Do you see the great philosophy?
Do not desire the wealth of anyone else. Why? Because they do not have wealth. Wealth belongs to him, everything. When the Agoura fire threatened the centre, I went to the altar and said, "If you want it to be burned, make it quick." It did not burn. Everything else surrounding our Temple was burned. It did not burn because I resigned myself. It is not yours. I mean, you will read this now and you will not comprehend it in its seriousness, but it will slowly work in your mind. Eventually, as you get aged, you will understand that nothing belongs to you so it is better to live a life that nothing belongs to you and everything belongs to the Lord.
We went so far in our human history from this basic truth. We build castles of "mine" and "yours" in our individual and national life forgetting that all belongs to the Lord, all belongs to the Whole.
Then we have the shocking statement, "Renounce and enjoy them." How can we do that if all that we learned urges us to possess? In our madness, we did not even see that possession brings sorrow and pain. Renouncement brings wealth and joy, health and success. What a great cycle of beauty and abundance will start when people renounce.
Once a great Sage said, there is no power greater than the power to renounce. We must learn to give, not possess. Synthesis and unity can be achieved only through renunciation.
The desire for things "belonging" to others make things "belong" to them. In the Bhagavad Gita, we see, "when a man dwells on objects, he develops attachment to the objects. From attachment arises desire, and the desire breeds anger. From anger arises confusion, failure of memory. From the failure of memory comes loss of discrimination, and here the man fails on the path of his spiritual striving."
It is important to know that the memory referred to here is the recollection of the divine Law of Unity or the Reality of the Supreme Self, the Wholeness. Once this is forgotten, man loses his faculty of discrimination and fails in his spiritual path.
Verse Two:
If a man's renunciation is continuous during all of his life, even if he desires to live a hundred years, he will not be trapped in karma. Renunciation brings freedom from karma. This is his sacred duty. The world is in darkness.
If you are detached, karma does not work for you. If you are detached, you are not doing anything. It is done for you. It is automatic, but you have no active participation in what you have, what you lose, what you are giving. It is all detachment, self-denial.
It is very interesting that karma does not work for the people who are renounced, detached. If you are attached, you are producing karma because your spirit is saying, this is mine, not the Lord's. Ten million dollars come to your hands. Let us go to Las Vegas, let us go to Hawaii, this place, that place. You spend it, you are creating karma. You take it and give it to the Lord. Who is the Lord? Service. Build hospitals, publish books. It is not my money, it's the Lord's. I am a steward. I better be a better steward and know where I am going to spend and not spend my money.
The Upanishads are straight knowledge, clear knowledge. Renunciation brings freedom from karma. This is his sacred duty. The world is in darkness. Everybody, 99% of the people are attached. You do everything to stick with your income, to stick to your job, to stick to your car. You think it is yours. It is not yours. But to understand this, you are going to shift your consciousness maybe 180 degrees. It is really not understood by people who are half attached, half detached. They mix up detachment, attachment. It is so interesting that people follow people who have money and want their money for themselves, their money for them. It is separatism. The Lord's money is the Lord's money, not for me, not for you. It is for the Lord's, the Lord's wealth.
Page 442
The Creative Fire
by Torkom Saraydarian