Personal experiences
Many thanks to Greta and Melike for their report on the joyful day at Woodstock Community Centre in Burwood, Sydney, where Sahaja Yoga participated in Burwood Council’s 2008 International Women’s Day celebrations.
“Everything in Sahaja Yoga is always sahaja, i.e. spontaneous, and this day wasn’t any different. Room 2, upstairs, was allotted to us. Just as we had set up the room the way we wanted, the organiser came to tell us that we had to move to Room 1, downstairs, because the television set was too big to be brought up. Dismantling quickly, we set up again in the new room, only to realise that it was much better and perfect for our needs! We were located just off the main auditorium with a lot of traffic. We had planned to screen a lecture given by Shri Mataji which was on DVD but when we got to Room 1, we found only a video machine. So once again, a change of tack was required, and the three meditation sessions scheduled before the screening of the film turned into one long session while the right equipment was obtained.
The organisers were very helpful and supportive of our efforts, steering people towards us throughout the day. About 40 to 50 people got their Self-realisation. There were many interesting activities which vied for visitors’ time, thus preventing many from participating in the meditation sessions. However, handbills for the film, Freedom and Liberation, flyers showing the nearest Sahaja Yoga public programs, and Sahaja Yoga information pamphlets were distributed, with everyone expressing a sincere desire for follow-up.
The meditation session helped to clear the atmosphere in the room, lightening it as the heart chakra opened. Just as we finished the meditation, people flowed into the room for the screening of the film, only to find the fuse had blown! This created another glitch, with most of the people streaming out again to get refreshments. By the time the electricity problem had been solved an almost new group of people had settled into the seats. These people watched the screening of the film, The Vision, and enjoyed the experience of the guided Self-realisation meditation. Everyone felt the peace and quiet of the Cool Breeze of the Spirit. Many of the women live locally and expressed their desire to attend the free Sahaja Yoga programs at the Belmore Community Centre in Burwood.
Somewhere in the morning I found a few minutes to get a cup of tea. One of the ladies who had come in during the meditation session came up to me and said, “I don’t know if I’m imagining it or not, but I am moving much more freely”, indicating that she felt much freer in the joints. I looked at her smiling, calm face and told her that it wasn’t her imagination but that this is what happens when people do Sahaja Yoga, and that there is often an instantaneous relief of whatever problem they may have had previously. It was very satisfying to know that we had made a difference.
No-one left without feeling the Cool Breeze, and right up to the last minute people were coming to take their Self-realisation. A few women’s organisations asked for introductory meditation sessions to be held at their own venues. We also left flyers and brochures on the community centre’s information table for any future visitors to the centre.
A special thank you to Aunty Joy whose initial research had made it possible for Sahaja Yoga to contribute towards the celebrations for International Women’s Day 2008, “Women’s Business: Celebrating 100 Years of Paid and Unpaid Work” sponsored by Burwood Council. We would also like to thank the staff of Burwood Council for making our participation an enjoyable event. ”
Greta and Melike
Many of us, looking at the current situation with Australia’s Indigenous population, could form the view that their condition is a reflection of much deeper problems facing modern society – dispossession, displacement, disadvantage.
I found myself at Martin Place on a grey and rainy Sydney Wednesday morning, with a surprisingly large number of my fellow citizens, listening to the Prime Minister’s apology to the Stolen Generations of Aborigines. There was a real sense of the unity and wellspring of community goodwill, which has swept our nation over the preceding few days, which could not be manufactured. It has been invigorating to witness this spirit unfold as a spontaneous, collective community expression of the highest principles and ideals. The unity of all people, the importance of reconciliation – it was a time when people across our country, separated by race, have become united in something beyond the mundane, commonplace, and routine, by the need to apologise and to heal.
At times it has felt similar to the spirit which pervades a large gathering at a Sahaja Yoga event, being felt and experienced right across our country. People everywhere were experiencing collective awareness, and were sharing the joy of an open-hearted expression of real forgiveness.
As Shri Mataji has indicated, a conflict between the forces of evolution and those of devolution are ever at play. The day of apology was an occasion when the heart triumphed over the head, a time for love to triumph and to purge hatred and division from the body of our country, and to move away from racism, discrimination, segregation.
The day of apology was a time for the expression of a much more enlightened view of a type rarely seen in public. The opinions of our national leaders were focussed more towards introspection and self-evaluation, on the question of the moral integrity and spiritual wellbeing of our nation.
Popular wisdom was that as soon as John Howard had retired, the new Prime Minister – of either political persuasion – would induce Parliament to apologise to Aborigines for past wrongs, and so it turned out to be the case.
Will its contribution mean an end to Australia’s particular form of apartheid, in which Aborigines are reduced to invisibility in everyday life? Except as issues, not many of us know a single Aboriginal face. They are truly the invisible men and women of Australia, usually only seen or read about in the news.
It is hoped that the official, heartfelt National Apology is one of those “great-leap-forward” concepts our nation can pursue, in its efforts to enable Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples to see one another more clearly.
Many events pull our citizens onto the streets – days celebrating sporting success, or commemorating a great historical event. These are days of joyful celebration. But this day, when so many were united in our community, celebrating something much more important and unique, was a mighty day, more important perhaps than many others before it.
J.K. Galbraith once remarked that the tribulations at the margins of society would eventually upset the contentment at its centre. It seems as if the time has come when the Australian Government realised that the human spirit has to be nurtured through forgiveness, together with a renewed commitment for the future.
As one walked through the city on this day, people in business suits and those in shorts and T-shirts, all seemed to be equally affected by the gravity of the occasion, the magnitude and depth of this moment in our history. By all measures it was a stunning day, and hopefully its great purpose will succeed if it provides a new beginning, and insights into the dignity of Indigenous culture. With our positive desire it will also play a larger role in reconciling a range of issues relevant to all Australians.
This was a coming together of people of varied backgrounds, and a collective expression of an apology freely offered and graciously accepted. It gives us a glimpse of what a wider, enlightened society may one day be like, one where the values of selflessness and social improvement, enlightenment and inclusion for our Indigenous population as the great body of the first Australians, can be renewed.
It seemed that this one day in our history, filled with noble words and deeds and with that most healing of words, “sorry”, was somehow pitted against years of mean observances, of broken lives, and of families rent asunder. And by some miracle of the human spirit, many of those who had suffered most terribly, found it to be most worthy.
Chris Kyriacou
(Photograph: metro.co.uk)
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
The following is a beautiful talk by Baba Mama, Shri Mataji’s beloved brother who brought the creative arts, especially music, to the forefront in Sahaja Yoga. He encouraged and inspired Sahaja Yogis to greater and greater creative heights.
You believe that God is omnipresent, omnipotent and all-pervading. In fact, you believe that He is in every atom. As natural corollary of this belief, you must also know that God knows what you want or what your need is. If the first proposition is true, then second proposition has to be true. It would follow, therefore, that those who know that God is omnipotent and all-pervading are bound to accept that God is all-knowledgeable and therefore is aware of all your problems.
In spite of this fact, we always go to God with certain expectations. Expectations can be of various types, but are basically self-centred or are pertaining to people or relations you are attached to, and then you pray to God that He should grant you a particular relief, or a job promotion, or some benefit to you or your near ones, etc. When you go with this frame of mind, then most of the time you are disappointed. Hypothetically speaking, if your expectations are symbolised in A and what you get is, let us say, B; then A minus B is your disappointment. And then you have to attribute this disappointment to someone. The pessimists will attribute it to their bad luck and will always curse themselves for not being worthy of God’s favour.
The optimists will straight away blame God Himself, and they say that this God is not good and that we should shift to some other God. In this way you keep on shifting from God to God, but disappointment is always there. This may even make you anti-God and an atheist, ultimately. Now take a case where you do not go to God with any expectations. Therefore, the expectations are zero, and let us say that you get B as the reward. Therefore, B minus zero is B which is always surplus.
You should also distinguish between your expectations and desires, and pure desires. Pure desire is always for the benefit of the other, and therefore you are entitled to carry pure desires to the Divinity. I once remember, I was travelling with Shri Mataji from Sydney to Canberra, and it was very hot and the air-conditioning of the car was thoroughly inadequate. Shri Mataji was sweating and I was fanning Her with a newspaper, but I somehow felt that the heat was oppressive and that the weather should give some respite to Her. Reading my mind, She asked me a question as to what I was thinking, to which I told Her frankly that I was unable to see Her suffer because of heat. So She told me that I should make a pure desire and the weather would change. So I closed my eyes and made a pure desire that the weather should change.
Within five minutes, dark clouds gathered from nowhere and it started raining, and the intensity of heat was thus reduced and Shri Mataji said, “See, if you make a pure desire then it will always be fulfilled.”
Coming back to expectations, I may mention here that once you are connected to your Divinity through your Self Realisation, you should feel assured that you have been admitted into the Kingdom of God, that you are His subject and therefore He is duty-bound to look after you, irrespective of what you expect of Him. So please do not expect… Only pray to Shri Mataji that She should make you what She wants you to be.
Baba Mama, 1999