Part I — Discourse

• What is the spiritual life?

Part II — The soul's evolution

• Question: Can you please explain the nature and the purpose of the soul?
• Question: Can you tell me what I was in my past life?
• Question: Sometimes when I go to a place I feel that I have been there before. What is the significance of this?
• Question: Do the physical abilities we possess have anything to do with our achievements in our previous incarnations?
• Question: Is it because we don't practise all year?
• Question: Will there always be an animal kingdom, a plant kingdom and all the other lower kingdoms?
• Question: The other night we were meditating and you asked us for the date and hour of our birth. Then you meditated on our exact hour of birth. I would like to know the real meaning of that meditation.
• Question: Can we change our karmic law?
• Question: Do we suffer because of our past actions?
• Question: Does the law of karma bind the soul and make the soul suffer?
• Question: How much of illness is due to karma and how much is due to physical factors?
• Question: If earth is the place for nature's evolution, will a soul go to some other galaxy for some reason?

Part III — Love and aspiration

• Question: Could you say something about divine love.
• Question: Why does loving kindness lead us towards God?
• Question: How do you tell whether you are ambitious or are really aspiring?
• Question: Why is it that you accepted me as your disciple when I was unaspiring, outwardly at least? I was unaspiring practically up to the very second you initiated me.
• Question: While I was meditating with you, I felt a very strong spinal energy. Is there a way of staying in touch with that when we're not here, in your presence?
• Question: What does acceptance mean from the spiritual point of view?
• Question: What is awareness?
• Question: What is the relationship between faith and spirituality?
• Question: Would you please explain the difference between joy and happiness?
• Question: Guru, how can we have spiritual capacity without having spiritual pride?
• Question: Guru, is it good to imagine? Sometimes when I meditate I imagine what is going on in the inner worlds.

Part IV — Divine qualities

• Question: In the conflict between intuition and common sense, which one should we listen to?
• Question: How can I make the silence I enjoy more fruitful?
• Question: How can I know my spiritual status?
• Question: Can our emotions be developed like a muscle?
• Question: Is expressing my creative capacity important in my existence?
• Question: Sometimes when I have good experiences, or when I feel touched by nature or anything good, my mind tries to express it either in poetry or painting or some other way. But doing so seems to rob me of the experience itself.
• Question: How can I be more conscious of my experiences when I am sleeping?
• Question: How do we know which of our actions are good?

Part V — Negative thoughts

• Negative thoughts
• Question: When I become aware that my consciousness has slipped down very far, I often feel that when I try to do something to raise it again, I'm not being sincere or it's just coming from the mind, or maybe I'm pushing or pulling or forcing. What is the best way when you become aware that your consciousness has dropped to get it back up?
• Question: Is the ability to fight hostile forces a question of Grace?
• Question: In our relationships with others, sometimes we get along and sometimes we don't. Is this a problem of the ego?
• Question: How can we tell the difference between an inner cry and a selfish demand?
• Question: Many times I complain to you about things. How do I know if these are because of my own narrow-mindedness or if there really is a problem?
• Question: What is the difference between complacency and non-attachment?

Part VI — Interview on KPFA Radio

• Question: I would like to ask you about the meaning of the goal of attaining inseparable oneness with God. I know that T.S. Eliot has said that at the end of all our journeying we will arrive at the place where we began, only to recognise it for the first time. Is this at all analogous to achieving total enlightenment?
• Question: Is there then something which is beyond total oneness with God?
• Question: In your own personal life-history, was there a particular point when you achieved oneness with God which marked a change for you from then on?
• Question: While I was watching the film about you that was shown in Berkeley recently, one of the striking things that I noticed was the way your eyes were constantly quivering. This gives one the sensation of inner ecstasy. Can you comment about that?
• Question: Let me ask you some questions about the relationship between leading a spiritual life and being involved in secular activities, such as politics. I know you yourself are involved in the United Nations, so apparently you don't think they are two incongruous ways of life.
• Question: Can you comment specifically on the use of drugs?
• Question: Would you say that in order to achieve enlightenment it is necessary to give up sex or to engage in ascetic discipline?
• Question: There are many paths in the West and in the East which claim to lead to the one goal of reaching the Supreme: Yoga, Tai Chi and Zen in the East and astrology, hermeticism and so forth in the West. Can you comment on these comparatively?
• Question: In your writings you quote quite a bit from Western poets and Western philosophers. I wonder if you get spiritual inspiration from them? Do you think that they are enlightened in the sense in which the people in the Orient use the term?
• Question: I would like to know how all disciplines such as diet fit in with spirituality. It seems to me that if God is in everything, then if we just keep our thoughts on God we shouldn't need anything else.
• Question: Would you please comment on something I read in a book by Paul Brunton? He said that secret and esoteric knowledge, the sort that used to be open only to the initiates of the mystical Egyptian religions and the Indian Yogis of centuries ago, is now becoming available to the many in the age of Aquarius, and that now many paths, if they are followed with integrity and openness, can offer people today the experiences that formerly had been available only to the chosen few. Do you see this type of cosmic change happening?