While holidaying in Vietnam recently, I had the great honour and privilege of meeting with Sahaja yogis in Ho Chi Minh City and taking part in some of the Sahaja Yoga programs being conducted there.
Music of Joy concert, Ho Chi Minh City
I arrived in Ho Chi Minh City one week after the very successful tour by the Sahaja Yoga Music of Joy music group from Australia (Click here for a video clip of the Music of Joy). This visit was part of the Realise Asia Tour that was conducted throughout the Asian region, visiting Sri Lanka, Myanmar (Burma) and China, as well as Vietnam, in July 2010.
About 1000 people had registered beforehand for the Ho Chi Minh program, scheduled for 3 July. As the hall was not large enough to accommodate such a large number, a second concert was organised for the following day. Five hundred people attended the first concert, and a further two hundred came back the next day for the second concert.
A joyful experience for the audience
After Music of Joy performed, a Self-realisation session was provided. The joy on the faces of the people attending was wonderful to behold. This joy soon expressed itself in spontaneous dancing.
Since then, follow-up programs have been held for those wishing to find out more about Sahaja Yoga and its benefits, and learn how to meditate. It was one of these follow-up programs that I was privileged to attend.
The follow-up programs are held on Sunday mornings, as this is the most convenient time for people to attend. Vietnamese people work very hard, and most people work from Monday to Saturday. On the day I attended, there were actually two programs offered. In the group I joined, there were about sixty people who were attending Week 4 of an eighteen-week course on Sahaja Yoga, while in the second group there were about twenty people attending Week 2 of the course This group consisted of people who had received their Self-realisation at the Music of Joy concerts.
Ben Tanh Markets, Ho Chi Minh City
The session I attended was run by Katie from Malaysia, who spoke to the group in English. Her words were translated into Vietnamese by Tuyet and Giang. The subject for the day was Kundalini, the primordial energy within all of us, residing in the sacrum bone. Kundalini can be awakened by the presence of someone who already has his or her Kundalini awakened. If a person has the desire for it to happen, the Kundalini will awaken, rise through the spinal cord and come out of the top of the head, at the fontanelle bone area. When this happens, the person becomes connected with the All-pervading Power. This process is called Self-realisation.
Shri Mataji
After the session on Kundalini, which was preceded by a guided meditation, we watched a short video of a talk by Shri Mataji, the founder of Sahaja Yoga. After that, we had another beautiful, deep meditation. At the end, there were lots of questions from the participants, with people wanting to find out more about Kundalini, Self-realisation and Sahaja Yoga.
Ho Chi Minh City at night
It was a wonderful experience and a great honour for me to take part in this follow-up program. The Vietnamese are very sweet and loving people, and it was a great pleasure for me to share this experience with my Vietnamese brothers and sisters.
Opera House, Ho Chi Minh City
I was also fortunate enough to be in Ho Chi Minh City at the time of Guru Puja. Guru Puja is celebrated around the world, and is a time when we pay homage to our gurus. In Sahaja yoga, our Guru is Shri Mataji. Happily, through Sahaja Yoga we also attain the ability to become our own gurus. During the Puja, we watched a video talk by Shri Mataji where She discussed the qualities of a guru, how we can tell who is a real guru, and the qualities we need to develop within ourselves so that we can become our own gurus. These qualities include patience, wisdom and discretion.
Vietnam is a very beautiful country, and I really enjoyed my visit there. Ho Chi Minh City has many wonderful parks, gardens and street plantings, gracious old buildings, built by the French, and modern skyscrapers. It is a vibrant, beautiful city.
Vung Tau, Vietnam
I also visited Vung Tau, a lovely beachside resort city, about one and a half hours away from Ho Chi Minh City by fast, modern ferry. An International Food Festival, which attracted huge crowds, was held while I was there.
While I greatly enjoyed my visit to Vietnam and look forward to visiting again in the future, the high point of my trip was the opportunity to meet and spend time with the Vietnamese Sahaja yogis.
Editor
Tags:
Guru Puja,
kundalini,
Meditation,
Music of Joy,
realisation,
Realise Asia Tour,
Sahaja Yoga,
Vietnam
August 19th, 2010
Shri Mataji
What is important is that you should know reality. You should know exactly what is right and what is wrong. For that, there is this great power of Kundalini within you. She is the one. She passes through all these centres – enlightens them first of all, so your awareness gets enlightened. And when she pierces through the Sahasrara, she joins you to this All-pervading Power, which is knowledge, which is love, which is truth.
So after that, you immediately know … that what we have been thinking so far, of separating ourselves from others by thinking that they are not all right, they are wrong, they are whatever it is. This disappears. This disappears completely. And then you realise that your awareness itself is dominated by so many circumstances – for example, where you were born, what your parents taught you, what experiences you have had. And then you realise that it was all wrong because it is not reality.
Whatever feelings you have, whatever ideas you have about another person or about another nation, all of them are not correct because now your Sahasrara is awakened. It is connected now to the All-pervading Power. So this starts flowing into you. This enlightened awareness, it starts flowing down into your being, in your brain and then on your nerves you can feel that awareness…
When your Sahasrara is enlightened, whatever you had gathered – knowledge, whatever you thought was right, whatever was your dream and your aims of life – all these aspirations, they melt away. And then you take to reality and you start seeing the reality of everything.
Shri Mataji
Tags:
awareness,
enlightenment,
kundalini,
reality,
truth
December 16th, 2009
Shri Mataji
Your Kundalini rises. She is your mother. She is your individual mother and she gives you the second birth. That’s how you get connected to the Divine Paradise.
All this, if it is told without Realisation, has no meaning. But people were given great ideas about it and also were promised that “one day your resurrection will come.” It is the greatest happening for you. It is the greatest event of your life and one must consider it is very fortunate that you have been able to achieve it. All this is because you desired it.
In many of your lives you have been desiring the heavenly paradise. People have been going around in the hills and dales seeking, doing all kinds of things. That is already done by you. You do not have to give up anything….
Life is not that difficult for you. Your job is the easiest thing…. You are all realised souls and you have to create the Divine Paradise on this Earth.
Shri Mataji 2000
Tags:
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kundalini,
realisation,
resurrection,
seeking,
Shri Mataji
October 15th, 2009
Shri Mataji
First of all, it’s important to know what the truth is. You find so many people are seeking the truth, but they don’t know what to find and that’s how they are twisted around, taken to some sort of false rites. It is important, first of all, to know what is the truth we are seeking.
The truth is – if I tell you, it’s very simple – that you are not this body, you are not this mind, you are not this intellect, you are not these emotions, but you are the pure spirit. That’s what you have to become – the pure spirit.
And another truth is that the power that leads you to the state where you know the truth about yourself, about everything, is within you. This power [kundalini] is within you. It is your own, born with you, with every human being.
That’s surprising. If all the human beings in the whole world have this power within their triangular bone [sacrum], how can we differentiate them? They are all just the same. Everybody has a power based in their triangular bone known as the sacrum….
She [kundalini] pierces through and gets you connected to the All-pervading Power of Divine Love.
It’s all love, nothing else but love. Truth is love and love is truth. And when She becomes one with that, you are a transformed personality….
The greatest thing that happens to you is that you become a new personality with collective consciousness….
Once you are transformed, you become a person of tremendous love and patience. You love everything. You understand everything through love. It is not love of some sort of an expectation. It is a love of giving. You just enjoy giving, giving. Everything is so enjoyable at that time, that state and you become so peaceful….
Shri Mataji, 1992
Tags:
Divine Love,
kundalini,
love,
sacrum,
seeking,
spirit,
truth
June 30th, 2009
