Appendix B: Excerpts from Rama's Tape "Welcome To Lakshmi" (1982)
"During the first year, you will in effect become a new person. Even your personality structure will alter... we're just trying to cleanse your being... to just wash away those layers of maya, to teach you enough of our language so we can begin to communicate in a more sophisticated manner spiritually...
"Initially, the first few years, we're just trying to get basic obstructions out of the way, get your ideas of selfhood out of the way, just open you up to your own perfection. And as we remove more and more of these obstructions, then I am able to do more and more for you.
"You must keep a journal... of your spiritual experiences... when you write it down, it brings it very much into the physical consciousness... in other words, it will imprint the experience on your mind. Then, you should read your journal over from time to time... You see, the mind refuses to believe a lot of what we do... but when you bring the mind into the action of writing it down, the mind agrees and accepts these things...
"A large part of our program has to do with self-giving. Self-giving is totally important in my estimation. Everything we do is predicated upon it. You can only meditate a few hours a day, but you can give of yourself constantly. You should feel your whole life is nothing but self-giving... there is a great deal of self-giving you can do around the Centre, which will help you. Naturally, whenever you give to a spiritual organization, you enter into that circle of light, and you gain much more for it than if you had just gone out and helped one of your neighbors, from a karmic point of view. The way that you can give of yourself at the Centre, well, there are a few ways. Naturally, the most important is economically. Money is necessary in this world to run a spiritual organization. The more money we have, the more people we help. It's a very simple equation... "