I am not talking about our obvious beliefs. For example, we profess to believe in a religion; we profess to love everyone; and everything else that we say is our belief is not really a belief. Belief springs from the gut. When the unconscious, subconscious, and conscious are all in line, you accept a certain concept and then it becomes a real belief. That belief is magical. It is wonderful, highly creative. 

It depends upon what level of consciousness that we live in. If we are rooted in the physical or material world, that would be our perspective. Let us take an example. “God is all pervasive. God is in me and I am nothing but God. I am all pervasive so I say I can go through a wall.” Now any effort to prove the conclusion that you can go through a wall may result in injury to your body. Because when you are saying “I” you are defining yourself as a body and you have missed the whole point of those high truths. When we say, “God is in us and we are nothing but God,” we are not essentially talking about the body, although it is pervaded by God’s consciousness but doesn’t completely represent him. If your consciousness belongs to a higher level and then you say, “I”, you mean the essential “I”, the divinity in you. Then you say, “I can go through the wall,” you certainly can go through a wall in your astral body. Remember, you are astral first, then physical. The physical body is only an envelope. Your consciousness resides in the astral which is the home for your mind. So, if your belief has reached that point of understanding, then you will use the word “I” in a higher sense, not representing the physical body. In that case all the truths will fit in the right place and will become practical. 

Belief means one hundred percent belief. The principle holds true all the time. You are in a certain state because you think you are in that state. You are poor because you think you are poor. You have abundance because you think you are rich. The poor are poverty oriented and the rich are prosperity oriented. If a rich man loses all his wealth and starts thinking he is poor, there is very little chance he will regain his lost wealth. On the contrary, if he deeply believes he is rich, he will bounce back to his abundance in a very short time. Our thoughts create our reality. But those thoughts must be the deep seated thoughts reflecting our true beliefs. It is a very interesting psychological principle, why so many poor people wish to have wealth and they don’t have it. Simply because wishes are not horses and so the beggars don’t ride them. A beggar remains a beggar in spite of his wishes. That wish is not creative because the deep seated belief in the beggar is that he is a beggar. For example, one of the richest men in India was arrested for black marketing. All his estate and money was confiscated. When he came out of jail, someone asked him, “What will you do now?”
“What I did before.”
“But you have no money.”
“I have millions.” Then he borrowed 5 dollars from someone. He bought sugar and sold it at a higher price. He started doing this because he knew how to manage being rich. In a few months lots and lots of money came to him. Then he was called a sugar king by the media.

You are happy, not because you are happy really, but because you think you are happy. You are sad, not because you are really sad, but because you don’t know what the reality is—what you really are. Both these things are open to question—who you really are and what real sadness is. You don’t know. So when you say, “I am sad,” you are so because you think you are so. You are not really sad. So this thought can revolutionize your thinking completely. You are not a billionaire because you think you are not a billionaire. There is such a slight difference between you and another billionaire. Someone says, “If I think I am a millionaire, will I become a millionaire after two years?” 
I said, “No, you’ll become a millionaire right now!”
The person will say, “Honestly?”
I will say, “Honestly.”

Can you think that you are a millionaire right now completely? 
He will say, “I don’t have one million dollars.”
I will say, “That is why you are not a millionaire because you think like that.”

If you think you are a millionaire then the money will materialize. There was a man who thought that he would win 2 big lotteries. He got 5 million in one lottery. Then he said, “Another is coming.” He got 3 million dollars more.
Someone asked, “Did an astrologer tell you?”
“No, I know. This is my money. This is my money that is coming to me.”

The moment you say, “I want to be a millionaire,” you are talking like a beggar. Every beggar wants to ride horses so the beggars don’t have horses. But no beggar can say, “I’m a millionaire.” So when you say, “I want to be a millionaire,” your wish is the wish of a poor man. But when you say, “I am a millionaire,” then somewhere in the universe one million dollars become stamped with your name. They might be scattered in a hundred or thousand places, but every dollar is sealed with your name and you will attract it. But if tomorrow you question yourself, “Look! The guy told me I would be a millionaire if I think I am and I’m not, then those million dollars with your name will recede from you. They are not yours now because you are uprooted from your own belief. If you think you are a millionaire, your thinking will be the thinking of a rich man. After death, things appear to us the moment we think of them, because the doubting conscious mind is not there to obstruct their manifestation.

The beauty of understanding the truth is that you can practice it in your life. Think something in which you can put all your trust. In Sanskrit there is a word called shraddha. Shraddha means to have trust, conviction, belief—all together. In the Bhagavad-Gita Lord Krishna says, “Shraddhavan labhate phalam.” (“The one who has shraddha gets the fruit.”)

Something seemingly impossible happened in my life. I created God. Now you’re wondering what I’m talking about. I really created God, a God from whom you can ask anything and he would certainly give it to you. I was a student in M.A. in the second year. I was living in a hostel. The university campus was very large. Like all students we loved the campus air and roamed and explored the surrounding area. One day I went far walking. At the intersection of two roads, by the side of the road, I found a tree called an ashoka tree (the tree without sorrows). It is evergreen and is considered a very auspicious tree in India. There was a big platform around the tree. The front was bigger than the back. It was such a large space that 5 or 6 persons could sit on it. I found it a very comfortable place to sit. That day was market day—many villagers would gather to sell their things every week. As a result there was a lot of traffic of people coming and going. I sat watching them. It was interesting. As I was watching them, a thought crossed my mind, “If there was a temple in this place, it would be very good. It is such a good place for meditation.” I was looking at them; they were not looking at me. I was not a part of them; I was a witness of everything going on. I was the last person they would look at because I was hidden by some bushes. I felt very good and very peaceful. At that very moment my eyes fell on a piece of oval stone. 

Now Shiva or God is consciousness, but how many of us can concentrate on consciousness? It is impossible to think of consciousness. You can think of consciousness, but you cannot concentrate on it. You need a form to concentrate on. So in India that oval stone is considered to represent consciousness. We call it a lingam. It represents consciousness and infinity. We put it in front of our eyes, and concentrate on it as a representative of Infinity. Whenever we find such beautiful, smooth stones, we Indians grab them. So I found one in front of me. I thought, “What a coincidence. It was a perfect lingam, perfectly oval and smooth.” I cleaned it with my handkerchief; it was all right. Then a project formed in my mind. The next day I came back and built a little altar. I put the Shiva lingam there, plucked some flowers and put them around Shiva. I got some water and washed it—this is called abhishek (giving a bath to the deity). I bought some sweets and things like that for worshipping—turmeric, cloves, rice, red powder. First I washed him, and then I offered something for him to eat. Then I offered the other things.

Children can be very earnest in their play. They believe in the reality of their imagination. Their fantasies are real unless the older people tell them otherwise. If allowed to live life freely, he may make more mistakes in life but he will certainly know how to create anything he likes. 

Anyway, at that time no one was going to criticize me, and I was not going to tell anyone. It was my temple. I meditated there and left. After 2 or 3 days, I again went there. I offered a little money, meditated, and left. After a few days market day came. The people from other villages assembled close by. There was an opening between this place and the road. The villagers saw me sitting there. I had a cap on my head and a red dot on my forehead so I looked like a priest. I belong to the priest family anyway so I was not cheating anyone. They thought a priest was worshipping a deity. A few came and looked at me. I didn’t look at them; I kept my eyes closed sitting on the platform. On my right side was the lingam. They came and left some pennies there. They also put some sweets, bowed down, and went away. How fast it spread!

Next time I went, there were a lot of pennies, some sweets, and people there, too. One told the other, “There is a temple there.” It became my vocation to collect the money they left. It was my pocket money; I was the priest. I was having fun, remember. I was just having fun. I created God there. To each person who came I said, “If you have a wish in your heart, say it and the wish will be fulfilled.” I said it with great conviction. I was not talking of that Shiva which I had created, I was talking of Shiva the Absolute! They believed me. I don’t know what wishes they had. I couldn’t look into their hearts.

Twenty years went by. I found myself near the area with some friends, and I told them, “I would like to visit this place where I used to meditate so I went there. Lo and behold there was a full-fledged temple before my eyes. I went close to it. I saw the same Shiva which I had installed. There was a regular priest sitting inside. I didn’t say anything; just bowed down. I said, “A long time ago I was here; there was no temple. Now there is a temple.”
He said, “The earth opened itself up and this Shiva appeared. Ask for anything and your wish shall be fulfilled.” 
Strangely I believed him. I bowed down to Shiva. A thought crossed my mind—“What if I wish for the successful marriage of my youngest sister, whose marriage was my responsibility.” A thought crossed my mind that, “I wish my sister gets married in one year.” I offered some money and sweets, prostrated before Lord Shiva, and left. My friend also did it. Within one year my sister got married. It was the best marriage anyone could arrange. I had five sisters. Her marriage was my responsibility. The money for it came from a most unexpected source, and it was the most successful marriage of all of them. 

How did it happen? 

Let us look at what actually happened then. Looking at it superficially, man created God who has the power to bless and assure results. But obviously, “man” cannot create God; somehow God must have created Himself through a man.

Remember Baba Muktananda’s teaching: “Your God lives in you as you.”

When the creator creates something he has no ego about it. He did not say, “I want to be many.” He said, “Eko’ham bahussy?m.” (“I am one; let me be many.”) So let us review this event in slow movie fashion.

I felt peace in that spot. I found myself almost falling into meditation and thought, “This tree and the place under it where I am sitting have very positive vibrations.” Then my eyes fell on that piece of stone that looked like a lingam. I cleaned that lingam, gave it a bath, cleaned the spot and installed it as an object of worship. I performed all these rituals with great love and reverence. I meditated on it as God. I had no sense of doership or any desire to create something. I was doing everything as an instrument, without much deliberation. After meditation, I felt refreshed. At that point I wished, “Let others come here and worship Him.”

During all my life I have noticed that if I spend too much time in deciding whether something should be done or not, usually the result was not inspiring or even pleasing. When the inner purification of the senses is complete and the mind is free of negativities, there is no further need for deliberation regarding an act, the Divine takes over. Then action automatically follows thought as a reflex action, I was carried away by sheer momentum, and most of the time I marveled afterwards, as a witness, how spontaneous and easy everything was.

That is the spiritual secret, let your God, your Creator, come spontaneously out of you. Let your inner light guide you, take you to a space in consciousness where there are no doubts, no fears, and therefore, no regrets. The result may not always be to your satisfaction, still there is a peaceful feeling inside that you did your best and you don’t care about the result. The secret for success of this process is, before giving ourselves up into the hands of God, we need to see that we are not already possessed by our own mind and just following the dictates of the mind. For that purpose self-purification is necessary, such as meditation, contemplation, chanting God’s name, or selfless service.

Therefore, let us be an instrument of our inner God, our own Creator. Let a divine melody go through us without our deliberately trying to make music.