Beautiful World

On Saturday, we watched a movie “The Patriot” with Mel Gibson in the main part. Americans’ struggle for independence. Many families are ruined, houses are burnt. In the middle of the film, one of the characters asked what they were fighting for and another one answered that when they were free they would get an opportunity to build a new, beautiful, world.

This phrase just did not leave my mind… Americans got freedom. Two hundred years have passed since then. What is their world now? Loss of values, extreme consuming, money-thirstiness, spiritual coldness in families – what can be called beautiful there?

I do not say through hearsay. Having lived one year in the States (I met the millennium there), I also became infected with money making (though, on returning home, thank God, my zeal was cooled down).

Another example. India. The previous century. A struggle for freedom. India got physical independence by many victims. Not much time has passed since then (what are decades for history?) but what is happening in this country now where spirituality have been nurtured for centuries? Spiritual values are being exchanged for cheap aspects of western culture.

As being known everything that we create is the reflection of what we are inside. Only a pure (dharmic) person can create beauty around. As far as the beautiful world is concerned.

***

…Interviewer: The theory that scientists say that man came from a little cell from heaven know where; how did you feel about those?

Shri Mataji: It’s a fact, it’s a fact. He (man) came through a cell, evolved through a cell. How did he evolve? Why did he evolve? What is the purpose of his life? It is not all answered by science. What is the power that males you evolve? Also, that is not answered. So, in Sahaja Yoga you know all that. Not only you evolve but with the same power you go higher.

Interviewer: What is your theory about that then? Why are we here or, why are we so long in the process?

Shri Mataji: You see anything that you create, even human beings for example, you have created things. A beautiful lamp is to give us light, isn’t it, the power. So, that’s how God has created us, to give His power to us that we feel Him and know Him in our awareness and understand and we emit His powers and enjoy it; to say in the words of Christ ‘to enter into the kingdom of God’…

Interviewer: Is it what Self Realization means; that You mean as a Realized Soul?

Shri Mataji: Yes, Self Realization means when the Self, which is talked about in all the scriptures, starts emitting its manifestation in our conscious mind; means that time when we become aware of it. To this extent our central nervous system starts recording the power of our Spirit, of oneself and we start feeling the breeze-like vibrations of the Spirit which is called in the bible as the ‘Cool Breeze of the Holy Spirit’…

Interviewer: Two very interesting thoughts come to my head at this point. One, is it through being Realized that one gets to knowledge of what’s on the other side of death, as it were and two, whether one really through this Realization that one finds a little bit of God inside oneself?

How to Speed up Spiritual Growth?

An Egyptian Family.

During the two weeks while we were in Saint Petersburg and Moscow we stayed at our friends’ places. Spiritual growth is known to go really quickly when you are living with other people. I do not mean living with your wife/husband and kids. I mean friends, acquaintances or even people you did not know before.

Sometimes it seems that such society really makes our already hard life harder. But if we look deeper, we will realize that when being put in the circumstances when you have to face each other several hours every day, “sharp corners” of the whole company are gradually getting round. And one day you notice that being in the collective really brings you joy.

The issue I am speaking about is topical for the West, I am sure not for the Eastern countries like India. I remember living in Bristol in a collective house/ashram for two weeks. We were five there: an English lady and an English man, a Hindu and we (two Russians). We had no problems living together as we are all Sahaja yogis and thus understand very clearly that the disadvantages we see in somebody else for sure exist in us as well (otherwise we would not notice them and react). This experience also gave us a chance to look at the conditionings of each other (I mean the conditionings we got due to the countries we live in) and, what is more important, discuss them. What means trouble for a Hindu (for example, a forced marriage) is never a trouble for a Russian. We also learnt that in India it is quite natural to have big families, I mean from grannies to grandchildren. In Russia it is considered a torture in most cases.

It was the case with us as well as we have been living with my father and grandfather for 3,5 years already.

Buddha’s Spiritual Seeking

 Buddha Jayanti (also known as Buddha Purnima because it is celebrated on the full moon) is the most sacred festival to Buddhists, marking Lord Buddha’s birthday, enlightenment and entrance into Nirvana. It is also known as Vesak (derived from the Sanskrit name for the month in which it falls – Vaisakha) in Sri Lanka and other Buddhist countries.

This year Buddha’s birthday is celebrated on May 2.

Till the time I read “Siddhartha” by Hermann Hesse I had known nothing about Buddha except for his name, nationality and the fact that his spiritual seeking had led him to the Truth and that is why there are lots of Buddhists nowadays who are seeking the same but, because of some reason, do not find it.

And the fact that Buddha has found the Truth inspired my respect to him.

I remember that when in the university we discussed the Buddha’s teaching. But from that seminar I grasped, frankly speaking, nothing except for the impression that nobody, including the teacher herself, completely understood what exactly Buddha had realized when he got the enlightenment.

We have recently watched the film “Little Buddha” with Keanu Reeves playing Buddha. In general, the film is quite dull but the scene of the Spirit’s fight with everything alien and the further enlightenment is very beautiful and attractive. There are three main ideas in the film:

Perceive God with Inner Joy

There once lived a great (as he was considered by his contemporaries) philosopher, Bertand Russel by name. He thought the idea of becoming one with the ocean (i.e. a person’s spirit becoming one with God/Brahman) “conventional stuff and unmitigated rubbish”. He wrote about R. Tagore’s lectures: “I regret I can not agree with Tagore. His talk about the infinite is vague nonsense”.

What would you tell Bertand? Would you agree or disagree? In case of the latter, what explanation would you use to contradict him?..

Ok, no more questions… only the last one: are you interested in what Tagore (1861-1941) answered him?

TAGORE’S LETTER TO BERTRAND RUSSELL
37 Alfred Place W, South Kensington, London, 13 October 1912

Dear Mr. Russell,

…I read your article on the Essence of Religion in the last issue of the Hibbert Journal with very great interest. It reminded me of a verse in the Upanishad which runs thus:

Yato veiche nivartante aprapya manasa saha Anandam Brahmano Vidvan na vibheti Kutushchama.

“From him words, as well as mind, come back baffled. Yet he who knows the joy of Brahman (the Infinite) is free from all fear”.

Through knowledge you cannot apprehend him; yet when you live the life of the Infinite and are not bound within the limits of the finite self you realize that great joy which is above all the pleasures and pains of our selfish life and so you are free from all fear. This joy itself is the positive perception of Brahman. It is not a greed which authority imposes on us but an absolute realization of the Infinite which we can only attain by breaking through the bonds of the narrow self and setting our will and love free.

Yours sincerely,
Rabindranath Tagore

Thought for the day: “Why are you wasting so much time with trivial and unimportant nonsensical things? What is your destiny?” (Shri Mataji)