"But I think it's time everybody grew up. And stop being so petty. About their own lives or other people's lives. And instead, turn their attention towards what matters: money! Sex is the preoccupation of adolescence. Money is the preoccupation of adults. And Lakshmi is the goddess of money...
"So I think it's time everybody adopted a more professional attitude about their lives. In other words, don't focus so much on your relationships. Have fun with them. Or if you don't have them, you don't want them, have fun with that. But don't bother with what other people in the Centre do so much...
"Sexuality, I think, is a little different for me than it is for most people in that there is almost no body awareness whatsoever. It's just light...
"If you can't handle the fact that someday you might be enlightened, and still fall in love with people and love them and be with them, and if you can't deal with that, if you hate yourself so much and hate your sexuality so much that you think it has no light in it... If you think it makes a difference if I have ten thousand sports cars, and ten million girlfriends, and lead a very flashy life, and eat at only the most fashionable restaurants, which I don't, but if that would make a difference in what we do, in other words, if you can carry my lifestyle to the most absurd proportions in your mind, and that would make a difference in the meditation process, then you shouldn't work with me. I don't think you should work with any teacher. 'Cause you don't know what it's all about yet. You should come to the fashionable restaurants with us and have a good time. 'Cause we have a good time. 'Cause God is in everything... "
Appendix D: Excerpts from Rama's Advertisements and Brochures
(from a full-page spread in The New York Times)
The Still Center of the Turning Worlds
"There is a still center of Eternity. A place where all pasts, presents and futures meet. This intersecting point of knowledge and experience, pleasure and pain, mortality and immortality has been described and referred to in a variety of different ways by mystics, prophets and teachers who have experienced it.
"Some have described it as God or Heaven. Others have referred to it as Nirvana or Tao. In Zen it is called Zen mind or Enlightenment.