As Maharaj was speaking in the Chadhas’ house on Long Island, Harjeet Singh, husband of Popat (one of the Chadha sisters) was translating for me. Maharaj said,

For electricity, you press a switch and the light goes on. The inventor won’t believe that if God doesn’t want, the television or telephone or light won’t work. The inventor thinks he has done it himself.

The dervish and the scientist are both doing research. The dervish is looking for God; the scientist is looking for mechanics, using his own intelligence.

The other day a customer was angry with Bobby Chadha. Bobby told us that the customer had cancelled his orders—what should he do? Immediately I saw in vision that he should take raq (havan ash) and jaal (blessed water). The moment Bobby would take both of them, the karma would change. That customer was then very happy to meet Bobby, and he also sent $1000 for Gobind Sadan.

The mind of the scientist is always deeply involved in asking why. Why does an object fall? The scientist’s answer is that it falls because of gravitational force. The scientist may be ignorant of worldly matters, however. His mind is deeply focused on questioning. One famous scientist used to keep his wife with him because he was so involved in his research that he couldn’t think of worldly matters such as buying tickets. Dervishes attribute things to God; scientists want material explanations for their probings. Science means finding proof for questions.

We cannot criticize a scientist as an atheist, because he is focusing on his goal. This is a different kind of meditation. God’s person also focuses on one thing: looking from the inner eye. He can foresee and tell the scientist that he will get to a certain point and not be able to go any farther in his research. God’s person will see God’s purpose in the scientist also, but the scientist will not feel, “God has given me this duty.”

The scientist will not thank God. He will say, “It is because of my genes that I had the strength to do this.” The person who meditates will say, “It is because of God.” Both are true. To say that the scientist is not right would be ignorance on our part. When the scientist meets a man of God, there will be a lot of good questions and answers.

A District Commissioner from Faridkot in Punjab once came to us and said, “I never thought to thank God that my whole family background was good.” He said he had not done meditation or scripture reading in the past, but that he would now start.

Doctors also believe in genes as an explanation; that is the whole base of their thinking. One person had an oozing wound. The doctors told him that it would not be cured for a long time. We told him to put raq on it, and it was healed. The doctors took raq into the laboratory and declared that it had powerful antibiotic properties.

Later Maharaj was making observations about the pope:

This pope speaks with some fear. He’s not free to speak about high morals among priests. He’s not so strong and upright. So many billions of people are looking at him—his every word should be powerful. But it is not. He doesn’t say those things which he ought to. He’s just sticking with safe old subjects.