The Newsletters
Sixteen years ago I made a New Year’s resolution to join a meditation group. I rang a couple of the more well-known ones from the Yellow Pages but they didn’t answer. Maybe they were on holidays. I kept trying all during January. By the time February had arrived I had given up on them.
I was feeling stressed, having just gone through a marriage break-up. I had read many self-help books, been to counselling, and joined various groups on assertiveness, self-esteem and similar topics. I had had health problems for many years and had tried all sorts of things from vitamin supplements, to books advocating affirmations to cure the various illnesses. Some things I tried were a little helpful but I was becoming confused as they were not consistent with each other and were even contradictory. I thought there must be some ultimate truth. That’s what I needed to find.
I had decided to look for a Buddhist or Hindu meditation group. I had been brought up a Christian but had not been convinced by their arguments and had never felt that going to church or praying had been helpful to me. I had done Hatha Yoga in my teenage years and had found the relaxation techniques we did at the end of the class beneficial. The yoga teacher had spoken about Hinduism and Buddhism and I had found it interesting. I was looking for a meditation that would make me feel better, help me to find peace and enable me to forgive and to stop feeling angry and bitter.
I had heard about Sahaja Yoga but didn’t know anything about it. I decided that as nothing else had worked out I would go along and try it. The first class I went to was interesting and the people were friendly but I didn’t feel very much. They said that Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi, the founder of Sahaja Yoga, was visiting Australia and was holding a free public lecture the following week. I decided to attend.
A half hour before I had to leave I still hadn’t organised a baby-sitter. Out of the blue my ex-husband rang and asked if he could take our son to Cubs. I said, “Yes”, and asked if he would like to have our daughter over for a visit as I wanted to go out. Suddenly I was free to go.
I sat in the front row at the Canberra Playhouse and after an introductory talk by a Sahaja Yogi, all of a sudden a great stillness fell over the hall and there was absolute silence and a feeling of great anticipation and expectation hung in the air. It gave me goose bumps. At that moment Shri Mataji slowly walked onto the stage from behind the curtain.
I was surprised that Shri Mataji looked like a very soft, natural, gentle and unassuming, short, Indian woman. I liked her instantly. I had been expecting someone much more made-up, more sophisticated, harder, more brash, more like a saleswoman. I thought she looked like a simple and naïve woman and I hoped that this sophisticated and intellectual Canberra audience wouldn’t heckle her. I needn’t have worried. I now realise that what I saw then as naïvety was an absolute confidence based on total innocence and complete fearlessness.
She gave a lecture in which everything she said related to my life. She spoke about how a lot of Christians were not as they were supposed to be, which had been my experience, and she talked about how in these modern times men had women fooled. She spoke about acupuncture which I had had that day and about how Sahaja Yoga cures illnesses. The lecture answered all my concerns and I felt as if it was directed at me. She had an incisive intellect, she was an excellent speaker and her lecture was wide-ranging, humorous, surprising, insightful, witty and delivered with great passion and conviction.
We went through the Self-realisation process, and again I didn’t feel the cool breeze at the top of my head. I didn’t really expect to, I suppose, as I wasn’t sure if it was real or if it was some kind of a con. Then Shri Mataji said that she was happy to meet anyone who would like to meet her. I had never followed a guru before, being wary of them after seeing exposés of various gurus in the late 1970s, but I felt that Shri Mataji seemed to be a person of dignity and integrity. She didn’t appear to be a charlatan.
When my turn came she was smiling at me as I walked towards her. She had her whole attention on me and I felt like she was pouring huge soothing waves of love and compassion over me. She looked at me as if she knew me very well and she didn’t say anything for a while as if she was waiting for me to recognise her and remember who she was. She seemed to know me so well I started wondering if I’d met her before anywhere, but I hadn’t.
Then Shri Mataji asked me to put my hands out, palms upward. She looked intently at my palms. She asked if I had felt the cool breeze. I lied and said, “Yes”. She knew I was lying and asked incredulously, “Did you?” Again I lied. She said, “Oh well, now you’ve got it. You must keep on with it and fix it all up”. And then she turned her attention to the next person in the queue and I felt like the floodlight of her love and attention that I had been bathed in was suddenly turned off and I was left in cold, hard reality.
Shri Mataji had had an enormous impact on me. She was so natural and down-to-earth, so wise and knowledgeable, so soft and unassuming, yet so strong and powerful. She had infinite patience, meeting each person in the long queue and giving each of them the individual attention she had given me. She was caring, compassionate and full of loving kindness and understanding. And so generous as she didn’t stand to gain financially from this free lecture.
I realised that Sahaja Yoga was vastly different from the various New Age philosophies I had been dabbling in, and that I had paid a lot of money for, and I resolved to give Sahaja Yoga a serious go.
So, for the last sixteen years, since that time, I have been practising Sahaja Yoga, meditating every day and clearing my chakras. I have found not only what I was seeking, but much more. I am less stressed, my health has improved, I am no longer angry and bitter and I have learnt to forgive. It took a while but I now feel the cool breeze at the top of my head. I have discovered the essence of the teachings of Christ, Buddha, the Hindu sages and all the great prophets, and found that they are not contradictory. And best of all, I have found joy, peace of mind and a sense of real meaning in my life. Thank you, Shri Mataji!
Kay Alford
You have your emotions, your feelings like flowers that you have to keep to yourself, which are part of the same ocean of your heart. And, once you are ready, everything is done. If the whole house is ready, now bring the flowers, the emotions, the nice things, the beautiful things and nourish them.
One must learn. I think there should be some books about how to say nice things to others. We should try to find some books like that or should write some books, how nice things could be said, how we can take care of others, how we can make another feel our love, the expression of love and that work. Such a book will really help people to understand that this is nice to say. And once you say something nice to another, that niceness comes back … like the ripples that touch the shores come back, and then you feel very happy.
Go on saying things which are nice, which are pleasing, will be very much appreciated. But if you say it with sincerity, not just to tease someone or to say something just to be so superficially good … then you will be surprised that the heart of the other person will open and from that heart will flow those beautiful flowers of emotion that are stored.
So on one side, you have to expand your heart and, on another side, you have to reserve or preserve all the beautiful, nice, delicate feelings within yourself, absorb from everywhere and then to pour them out at the right moment. That’s the art… This is the way we have to be with ourselves in our heart because human beings are very delicate, very beautiful things and to beautify them you have to say beautiful things. This tongue is not for saying harsh things, for making fun of others, for teasing others, but is for saying something, such a beautiful thing that the other person also imbibes that beauty. I’ve seen some nice things people have said and that lingers in My mind. And I said, “When will I have the chance to say these things to others?”
So think about it, that, “Now this is a very nice sentence. This was a very sweet thing they said. All right, so now where should I use this …?” To find these nice feelings and nice emotions and nice things said, then what do you do? You collect them, all these things, give them and use them at the right time, at the right place. This is what is the wisdom of Shri Ganesha. Innocent people are the most sincere people, innocent people. Those who are clever and cunning cannot be sincere because they enjoy their cunningness, they enjoy their so-called brilliance. They can never be. Those people who are simple, who are loving, who care for love more than anything else, can only say very nice things sincerely …
When your heart is large, then whatever you do for others, you enjoy. You enjoy doing good things. You enjoy saying nice things. So we should have the choicest flowers of beautiful sayings. We should have the choicest emotions which we should be able to express to each other.
Shri Mataji, 1990
(Photograph: eastriding.gov.uk)
The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, who lived to be 92 and spent much of his life in the aristocratic splendour of Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire, famously opined that the life of primitive man was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”. Jacques Rousseau, on the other hand, in direct contradiction to Christian theology, was convinced that man had been born good, and that primitive man was indeed the “noble savage”.
Rolf de Heer, a maker of small, quirky and interesting films (“Bad Boy Bubby”, “The Old Man Who Read Love Stories”, “The Tracker”), probably doesn’t subscribe to either notion. In this exquisitely photographed tale from the mythical past he lets the Aborigines of the Arafura wetlands, Arnhem Land, tell their own story. Apart from David Gulpilil, who provides a gentle, teasing voice-over, and his son Jamie, all the parts are played by non-professional actors from the district. Apart from the voice-over, all the dialogue is in the local Aboriginal language (don’t worry, there are sub-titles).
While on a goose egg hunting trip, Older Brother, who has noticed his younger brother’s interest in one of his wives, tells Younger Brother a story from a much earlier time, of another younger brother who yearned after his older brother’s wife. Without giving the story away, the moral is “be careful about what you wish for, you might get it”, but much happens in between. It becomes evident that these “savages”, as well as possessing a robust sense of humour, have a legal system that minimises the damage done by crimes. It seems that neighbouring tribes, whose language our tribe scarcely understands, will play by the same rules. Once honour is satisfied, the matter is at an end. The story gives us an insight as to how Aboriginal society remained stable for so long prior to contact with Europeans.
It is hard to comment on the acting, other than to say the characters seem completely authentic. The tribe’s sorcerer, for instance, likes to choose a bone to wear in his nose to suit his mood or the occasion, just as your local GP might like to select a bow tie before opening his surgery. But I have to mention Crusoe Kusddal as Ridjimiraril, the older brother in the myth. His language means little to us, but his expression everything.
The scenes on the goose-hunt, which book-end the main story, are in black and white, a tribute to earlier photographers in Arnhem Land, but most of the film is in colour, which does full justice to the landscape. This is no Garden of Eden and the necessity to build tree platforms while camping in the swamp is evidence of that (though we see no actual crocodiles). Yet the Aborigines manage to live within the environment without despoiling it or each other. Theirs is a patriarchal society but women are protected by the rules as well as by their menfolk. The movie is a fascinating glimpse into the culture, told in a disarmingly humorous fashion, by the people themselves. One should not be too misty-eyed about this since the cast probably watch “The Simpsons” via satellite at home, but they have given us both a droll tale and some food for thought.
[Australia, 2006]Author: Philby-3 from Sydney, Australia
(Photograph: magnetictimes.com)
It is now widely acknowledged that our life and what happens to us on the outside, in our relationships, at work, at home, depends on the state of our being on the inside, that is, how we think and feel and how we act, whether it be with kindness, selfishness, anger or compassion. This is because all human beings have inside them a “subtle system”, which is a blueprint that incorporates all the ways we should conduct ourselves in our lives. Our lives on the outside are a reflection of the condition of this subtle system. If we live in accordance with this blueprint and are able to balance our subtle system, then our lives will be happier, healthier and more productive.
Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi, who founded Sahaja Yoga in 1970, has given many public lectures about this subtle system and how it works. The subtle system consists of seven chakras, three channels and the residual life force, which is a dormant energy called the Kundalini which resides in the sacrum bone at the bottom of the spine.
Each of the seven chakras has certain qualities which manifest in our lives when the chakras are clear. For example, if our heart chakra is clear we will show the traits of courage and compassion in our lives. If there is a blockage in a chakra, it manifests in our lives. For example, a blockage in the Nabhi chakra may lead to us having problems with money. When the Nabhi chakra is cleared either the financial difficulties will disappear or we just won’t be worried about them any more and we will find a way to manage.
The three channels need to be in balance. When the left side and the right side are balanced we can operate in the central channel, which is the present. In order to be in the present, we need to achieve our Self-realisation, which occurs when the Kundalini rises up the central channel, through the limbic area in the brain and out of the fontanelle bone area at the top of the head to unite with the All-pervading Power of the universe.
When this happens, we become connected to the universal, Divine power that created us. We become more knowledgeable about ourselves and are able to know the state of our subtle system, our chakras and channels. As we begin to meditate and strengthen this connection after attaining our Self-realisation, we become “thoughtlessly aware” and our Kundalini flows through our chakras, clearing them. As a consequence we become better people, we automatically act in more constructive ways and all our bad habits drop out. We begin to demonstrate the positive characteristics of the chakras in our behaviour, and the positive qualities of the chakras manifest in our lives.
Recent research has shown that people are happiest when they demonstrate the “virtues” in their lives. It is already well-known that people who are happy have stronger immune systems and are healthier than those who are not. Investigation of over 200 religious and philosophical texts including the Upanishads, the Koran, ancient Greek philosophers and Christian texts has demonstrated that there are six universally accepted traits that are regarded as virtues that are revered in every society. They are wisdom, courage, compassion, judgement, self-discipline and forgiveness. The universality of these traits indicates that they are innate and are part of the blueprint of human beings. The fact that people feel happiest when they express these virtues in their behaviour also indicates that they form an innate part of the human experience.
It is time that we looked inside and looked to our roots, in order to find happiness and fulfillment that will be for our good, and for the good of our family, our town, our country and ultimately for the good of the whole world. As Shri Mataji considers it the birthright of every human being to have their Self-realisation and the knowledge of the subtle system, Sahaja Yoga is always taught free of charge.
Kay Alford
(Photograph: wikimediacommons)