The First Sermon

(What follows is the transcript of Sri PD Lapinsky’s first sermon as given on the 3rd of April, 2022)

“As we begin, I’ll address a question I’m often asked: why do I minister only to women? My answer is quite simple: men have had their chance, and the world is almost destroyed. What the world needs now is love and kindness. This is where men lack an attribute that women have in spades. And men, let’s face it, will never tire of playing with their weapons. For this reason, I minister to women only.

Secondly, I am a Christian Minister, but I preach a new Gospel. What does that mean. It means, again, quite simply, that I abide by those tenets espoused by Christ, but do not abide by the doctrine and dogma that has suffocated the Christian movement; a movement that has been shamed and degraded by their very priests charged to lead it. What is the good of orthodoxy if it leads to the molestation of the youth? What good is orthodoxy if wars are fought in its name? What good is orthodoxy if after thousands of years of so called progress we are right back where we started, the threat of another major war on the horizon, widespread poverty and famine, the corruption of culture to the extent that the only respect afforded is to the gun or to the dollar bill. So, I ask you, “where has orthodoxy got us?”

It is all well and good to know your commandments. It is all well and good to know your bible verses. But, what good do scriptures and strictures do if they do not change your life for the better?

You have a choice: you can pray to God from a distance, or you can know God in person. When you pray, you distance yourself from God, because you assume a separation. You assume that God is somewhere on the horizon of possibility, that the granting of your prayers is not assured. This is not true religion. Orthodox or official practices are not true religion. They are aberrations.

Jesus Christ did not say “Thou shalt not.” Jesus Christ did not say “fight wars in my name.” Jesus Christ did not say corrupt the youth because you have not the moral fortitude to stand your celibacy. Celibacy is a gift from God, that you may know God. What you don’t realize is that licentious behaviour is not only self-destructive, it is destructive to your connection with God. The further you look from God, the further away he is. When you maintain a licentious or promiscuous lifestyle, you take yourself further away from He who created you.

"Who can find a virtuous woman?  for her price is far above rubies."

-Proverbs 31:10

We call all women who seek truth rather than the lies of the wicked, rather than the chaos of an impartial world. Yet, what does it mean to seek truth? What is truth? Truth is am often debated subject, as it is dependent upon the context and perspective from which you are seeking it. Yet, the more you seek to contextualize, the more you seek to mould truth to a perspective, the more truth fails you; the more its absence can be felt. For, in truth, it is not there.

Truth that is contextually defined is not truth at all. Truth that depends upon the perspective of a man is no truth at all. The truth that you seek does not exist outside of yourself. It does not exist in a doctrine, a commandment, or a biblical verse. It exists within. This was, perhaps, Jesus’s greatest teaching:

Jesus said, “The Kingdom of God lies within.” He did not say, “seek God in the after life.” He did not say, “seek God in a scripture.” He said, “seek God within.” And that is what you are here to do.

Here, we know God not through passages and history. We know God through going into the deepest recesses of self, to that space inside where he lies waiting. For, he is there. You have only to look, only to see him. When you look outside yourself, you do not see God, you see the corruption of God’s creation.

We once had wings, all of us. We once were pure at heart, and pure of expression. To regain your purity, to regain your wings, you must give yourself to God, not through outward prayers to an absent deity, but through communion within.

I teach you how to know God within the very substance of your being. I teach you how to transcend your transgressions, that you may better yourself and those around you. I teach you how to be pure at heart, so that your heart may be open to God. I teach you how to feel the bliss of your being, that bliss that has been shaded, obscured by years of conditioning, layers of false identity, by memories and experiences that have left you bereft of that very thing which should found your actions.

Bliss is your birthright. This is a mantra I repeat. I repeat it because it is true. People do not attain a blissful state of being, because they do not seek it. Instead, they seek gratification outside of themselves.

Well, bliss is attainable.

***

God values your freedom, and your freedom to choose. So, while the teachings of Christ have value, the subversion of those teachings in the guise of orthodoxy does not. I do not respect the Christian church, but I respect Christ. I respect his sacrifice. He knew what he was up against, and he proceeded ahead anyway.

As you may see, I take a different approach. I have found that the more you seek truth in a scripture, a faith, or a doctrine, the less truth you find. The more you decide that the pleasures of the world are more important than than that of God’s grace, the more you find that your life is lacking the essential substance that rids you of a fear of death, and grant you the serenity to persevere through your most challenging moments. Be not afraid of the truth you will find within, for that truth is incorruptible. It is eternal. To turn away from it is to turn away from the truth and substance of your being.

God is awake and eternal. When he chooses to sleep, you will sleep. When he chooses to rid himself of the solitude afforded to the original and eternal being, then you too will lose your enforced solitude, and rejoin him in the spendour of primordial solace. While you are here, it would be wise to decide if your are willing to spend lifetimes traversing the same paths, suffering the same losses, avoiding the same truths. For, before it all comes to and end, there will be much time for you to refine your spirit; to grow, to develop, to rejoin God such that you may spend the present eternity in heaven, rather than in a hellish world of your own creation.

Hell is real. I have spent eons in hell. I know what exists of an afterlife if you decide that the external world is more important than God.

I have lived lives of infamy and lives of shame. I have abused the power granted to me. I have killed, and I have been made destitute by my misdeeds. I have brought destruction and ruin upon the world, so destruction and ruin were brought upon me. I know suffering, and I know the absence of suffering. I know the peace that exists when you accept God, for when you accept God you accept what you are.

I bring you the bliss of God for I represent Him on this plane. Through me he grants you bliss. Through me he grants you salvation. Through me he grants you peace.

I am here to bring you bliss. I am here to show you God. When I speak, God speaks. When I listen, God listens. When I touch, God feels. When you are with me, you are with God. This is a pleasure and a burden. I have died in the name of initiation. I have persisted and pursued such that I may better serve my purpose. And now I am here to serve you; I am vital essence of God in your presence.

God’s greatest wish is that you may know yourself. Yet, to know yourself, you too, must die. You need not die a physical death. But, you must die to the illusion that you have created for yourself. What you are is illusory: your personality, you identity, your life, all illusions you have created to bide your time on this plane. And the truth is, it is only through dispensing with these illusions that you may now God.

***

Bliss is the gateway to spirit. But, what is spirit, and what does it mean to be spiritual? I will tell you that spirit is not something that exists outside of yourself. Spirit lies within. It is that energy that resides within you, that energy that you can feel in your most exquisite moments of pleasure, when you lose your sense of self and merge with the spirit within, It does not matter what you call this energy. It is God. God is within you and all around you. He is with you when you wake and when you rest. He is with you at your best and at your worst. In the darkest night of the soul he is there waiting for you to see him in the distance. He is always there. It is you who choose not to find him.

So, how do you find God? What is the practice? What is the procedure? What do you have to do in order to know He who created you? Many turn to practices that degrade the spirit. They practice austerities. They deprive themselves. But why? What is your sacrifice to God? Does it make God happy that you are unhappy? Does it please God that you hurt yourself? When you hurt yourself you hurt God. How can you not hurt God when you hurt yourself? He is within you. He feels you. He knows you; much better than you know yourself.

People look outside of themselves to find God. But, is God in a book? Can you find God when you read pages or recite hymns? Can you know God by getting on your knees and prostrating yourself? To serve God you must serve yourself. This is the great secret to knowing God. God is not pleased when you are on your knees with your hands to the sky? What good is that? What are you achieving in that moment of consternation, when you are pleading with he who made you to give you one thing or the other. Does that make God happy?

God shares in your pleasure and he shares in your pain. It can be not other way as he is part of you. If you want to please God that feel pleasure. If you want to please God than experience that which makes you happy. If you want to please God then get off your knees and state your claim to the human experience. To do otherwise is to waste the experience that God gave you.

To grow, do you deny yourself? Does self denial and chastisement lead to spiritual growth? It does not. It leads to stagnation. It is the fool that squanders his existence on his knees expecting retribution in the afterlife. What afterlife is there for such a fool? There is an afterlife of confusion and broken promises. Do you go to heaven if you have spent your life in such a way as this? You do not.

To live righteously you must make the most of your human experience. Do good unto others and do good unto yourself. Do not think that because you deprive yourself of pleasure you are going to a better place in the afterlife. You are going to a place devoid of pleasure. Do no harm, but also do no harm unto yourself. To deprive yourself of the human experience is the greatest harm you could do to yourself, and the greatest show of disrespect to your God.

So, today, as you sit here and contemplate what it means to be alive, ask yourself what death holds for you if you void your life? And as you are searching for that answer, allow that spirit within to speak quietly to you. Feel His presence. If you open yourself to him you will feel him there. He is only waiting for you to let him into your life.

The world as we know it is changing for the worse. It is time now that you tap into the bliss of your being, to know your spirit, your soul, your substance. We see now what happens when man is divorced from spirit. Existing in the absence of spirit is chaos. We have lived with chaos for too long, and we grow more and more obstinate in our choice to disregard spirit in favour of the trivial pleasures of the material existence. This must come to an end.

Over the course of human history we have seen war, chaos and destruction, and we are destined for more. We can already see it coming. If there is to be a future for humanity I think you can see that this future depends on more than a gross reliance on the trivial in order to sustain existence.

You need to tap into something more. You need to be something more. You need to discover what you are before you succumb to what you are not. Death is a material illusion. You are eternal, but that does little good if your see yourself as material.

In the presence of chaos, grace lies in surrender to the infinite. Discovering the infinite within is your path to transcendence.

***

I had a dream the other night. A man jumped into that river outside. He was so consumed with the egoic need to prove himself better than his fellow man, that he jumped into that river, despite the cold, despite the obvious danger. He was so clouded by his desire to substantiate himself, to prove himself worthy of adulation, that he risked his health and his life.

So, he jumped in. He swam for some time. He swam out to the middle of the river, and then downstream for a distance. And, eventually hypothermia set in, and, gradually, his body began to shut down, until he could swim no more. He was stranded in the middle of an icy river with no means of saving himself, so he succumbed to his fate. He stopped breathing, and slowly sank to the bottom.

And I thought about this dream that I had. And, I think you can see part of the message. I think you can see that the more you need to substantiate what is, in truth, a false identity, a façade, the more you run the risk of sacrificing all that is substantial about you. This man realized, as he took his last breath, that his actions had no foundation, that he was not impervious to consequences, that he was not better. He was a fool.

We live in a world of fools. We live in a world of individuals so consumed with their individuality that they forget that it is all an illusion. The more individual you are, the further away you are from the truth of your being. The more you try to substantiate an egoic identity, the more you substantiate a falsehood, and the further in debt to this illusion you become. You are not an illusion unless you choose to be. Yet, this is the prevalent choice.

Illusion is chosen over truth. Façade is chosen over substance. Mind is chosen over soul. The world is chosen over God. The pleasures of the world are transient; they do not last. You must step away from what is transient if you are to know, with certainty, what is eternal."