Shri Mataji
The Mona Lisa, the best-known painting in the world: it has held a certain mystery to all who have seen it. The beautiful face is commanding in its beauty and compelling in its atmosphere. A controversy still remains, however, as to whose portrait Leonardo Da Vinci actually painted. A Florentine matron? Who?
Compare the painting with the photograph of Shri Mataji. This photograph provides the answer, if someone only has eyes to see. Shri Mataji’s beauty, gesture and mood all speak of the secret of the Mona Lisa. Da Vinci, a realized soul and genius, has painted the ideal woman, through thoughtless inspiration. The identity of the actual model for the work seems unimportant in comparison with the resemblance of the painting to the photograph.
The painting (completed between 1503 and 1506) has been an object of contemplation and admiration for centuries. The painter’s use of many layers of transparent colour gives a subtle brilliance to a realistic face of a woman. This technique of sfumato (half-light) puts the woman painted seemingly in two worlds: sitting in a chair, in front of a natural, almost primeval landscape.
The photograph of Shri Mataji: the soulful eyes, the part of the hair, the clasped hands, the pose in the chair, even the way the tapestry and the open land beyond give a sense of depth similar to the painting’s landscape! The qualities of pure beauty and intelligence that radiate from the painting in a quietly mystical way say, “Who is She?” And finally we know.
Source: Light of Sahaja Yoga Newsletter
Once as a child I had read a story about some birds. A net was cast and so many doves, they were caught in the net and they discovered that, “We are misled, misguided.” They saw some grains and they were misguided. So how to get out of the net was impossible for them. It was an impossibility. One could not get out. One tried to get out, others got more entangled and he gets even worse.
So what to do? They all said, “Why not we all fly out with the net itself and then with our beaks we’ll cut out this net and we’ll be freed, but first get out from here. Put our energy together, all of us, and let’s fly out.” And that’s what they did. They spread their wings, all of them put together, and took off and off they went and they were freed.
Today’s Sahaja Yoga is that kind of a trick. One person cannot work it out. It is impossible. If one person has to do it, it’s an impossibility…. One has to become a whole group to lift up the society higher, so that you can really get rid of the shackles of this bondage.
Shri Mataji, 1982
“The basic seeking power is humility… If you think you know everything, you cannot humble down … and you cannot seek. Even if you seek, you don’t want to follow anybody else’s path …you’ll do whatever you want to do.”
“One thing is very important in your humility … you should be a humble person … not think that you are something special … or some sort of a self-important person… once you think you are important, then you are not part and parcel of the whole… If you start thinking like that, anywhere in your journey of Sahaja Yoga, then I must say that you are not in the Sahaja Vasta, the Sahaja State.”
“Those who are humble can only become friendly with each other, can share their problems with each other. So humility can only help you to articulate, to have rapport with your friends. But humility should not be sympathetic – it is a detached quality that does not get attached to any person.”
“Only a person who is not guilty will be really humble, because guilty people are aggressive … are sarcastic… A humble person is a free person, free to be humble, to be kindly, to be gentle, to be compassionate – that sort of Sahaja Yogis you have to be. When people meet you they will be impressed. Humility doesn’t have any subservience, and is very different to compassion. Humility is a very human quality, is a special quality only the bhaktas have. It is such a beautiful quality of taking the showers of bliss, and a person who cannot take, is so lonely. Such a person cannot get companionship with anyone.”
Shri Mataji
You must pray to God and ask what you want. Ask for:
“Complete satisfaction in my heart, joy in my heart, bliss in my heart, so that the whole world becomes blissful.
“Give me love, love that I could … love the whole world and that the whole world becomes one in love.
“Give salvation to this … humanity , which is suffering.
“Take me to Your Feet.
“Cleanse me … with Thy love.”
Now see if there is God or not. You can feel it within yourself. He hears you. He understands you. He’s the glory of all the glory. He loves you. He protects you. He guides you. He created you to reveal His love, but accept it.
Any time any thought is coming, you pray and you will be moving in the waves of that ocean which is the unconcsious mind, which starts with thoughtless awareness.
If you cannot become thoughtless, you pray:
“Forgive me for what I have done and forgive those who have done harm to me.”
Shri Mataji, 1975