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
My first permanent teaching position was in a small country town. Sahaja Yoga techniques had always helped me to deal with challenging children, not just by reducing my stress level, but also by providing tools to gently change even the most difficult pupil. So effective were these tools that I quickly earned the respect of the parents of these challenging children.
One such mother was Kate, a single parent to one of the most challenging children that I had ever met. His name was Timothy and I taught him in kindergarten. Kate and I met on a daily basis as we worked together to try to help poor Timothy adapt to school life. Kate and I became close over the seven years I worked there. She knew about Sahaja Yoga and was open to it. She even offered to mind my baby, Jamahla, for free when I returned to work. In return, I continued to help out with Timothy.
Timothy was a beautiful boy but he had been teased since kindergarten and found learning boring compared with playing boy games outside. As a result, he had learning problems and a fiery temper if rubbed up the wrong way. He was quick to recognize hypocrisy or any kind of trickery. This made his observations on a trip home from Tamworth even more incredible.
Some Sahaja Yogis from Sydney were conducting a tour similar to the Realise Australia tour held this year. They were coming to our hometown and Tamworth, the next major town a couple of hours north. I told Kate about it and that I would be going to Tamworth to put up posters advertising the tour. Kate could immediately see the difficulties involved in doing this with Jamahla, so she offered to come and help me. She had a brother in Tamworth that she rarely saw; so, we agreed to call in and see his family on our return. Timothy adored Jamahla and he was more than happy to help out with postering before seeing his uncle.
While we were in Tamworth there was a severe rain storm. On our way home, we talked about Sahaja Yoga, the coming tour, rain and other things. As we reached the mountains our conversation stopped. We simply enjoyed the drive until Timothy interrupted the silence, “Look! There’s an angel in the sky and it’s looking at us!”
Instead of running off the road I just went silent and cautiously looked up as I waited for Kate to scream or say Timothy was mad. Neither happened. Instead, I saw an angel formed from the clouds. It was huge and we could see every detail of its face. It was a classic cherub with curly hair. It appeared to be lying on its stomach with its head resting on its hands, as it looked down at us. Its beautiful, feathery white wings were there behind its head. The three of us just stared. I don’t remember what, if anything, was said, until Jacob once again interrupted the silence, “Look! It’s flying away.” As it flew away we saw its wings and the back of its head. Even the tips of its toes were visible.
I have no photographic proof of what we saw. It wasn’t safe to stop on that winding road and, to be honest, I was so thoughtless that I didn’t even think of stopping. The proof of its reality is the fact that Timothy saw it first. As I said before, he can see straight through any trickery.
LB
(The names of some people in this story have been changed. Ed.)
“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