Makar Sankranti – Shri Surya Puja. India Tour, Bombay (India), 10 January 1988.
It is a very unique opportunity, I think, for Me to meet you again in Bombay when you are all leaving this country, and this kind of a special type of a puja that we are having today. This is the puja done to the sun, and is called as Makar Sankrant. “Makar” is the tropic of Capricorn, Capricorn is Makar. So now the sun is moving from the tropic of Capricorn towards the tropic of Cancer, and is always a fixed date because it’s a, it has something to do with the sun. This is the only date which is fixed in the Indian calendar, because they have to deal with the sun.
But this time, I don’t know why, what has happened that they have put it on the fifteenth of this month – it’s always the fourteenth.
Now today is, they are changing, I would say that the seasons are going to be changed. We’ve got six months when this moves, sun moves towards the southern hemisphere and makes it warm, and it comes to the northern hemisphere from tomorrow. So today is the last day, which we say that is the day which is the coldest day, according to Indian understanding. After this the heat will start growing and all the – we can do anything that is auspicious, any auspicious things can be done after this puja is over, during the summer-time. Though it’s very hot in summer, still people wants the sun to rule us and to give us warmth because, because of him only all the fields and all the vegetables, all the fruits, everything grows. And that’s why when the six months the sun is not here, we call it as “Sankrant,” meaning a “calamity” in a way.
That is when of course in the, in the European countries or say in England or America, it is a calamity at that time when the sun is not there. But even here it is regarded as a time today, it’s the day that the end of the Sankrant, means the end of the calamity is over. And they give something sweet to eat which is also mixed with sesame seeds, because sesame seed is heat-giving. So today being the coldest day they want to give sesame seed, also want you to retain the heat and to adjust yourself to the heat that’s coming up. This is all thought of in a way, in a very gross level, on a very gross level, that we should keep the people warm enough. Also it is said that the warmth of love should be expressed at this time for people, because it is the coldest day. So they say that “We give you this special thing for you to say something sweet” – that is “goad goad bola” – means “you say something sweet to us.”
And the people who live in warm countries are sweeter people than the people who live in colder places, because the nature is rather very unkind to them. I don’t blame them for their temperament, because the nature is so unkind. In India you can live anywhere: you can live under a tree, you can live in a forest, anywhere you can live quite happily, as long as there is water to drink and water to bathe. And there’s not such a problem as we have to face in the other parts of the world, where if you have to go out of the house you take about fifteen, twenty minutes to dress yourself up. Here you just can walk out of the house, you can keep your houses open during the summer-time, and there’s no problem of any kind as far as the nature is concerned. Nature becomes very kind during summer-time here because the trees are lush and lot of greenery, people feel very happy during that time, and all the activity becomes more with the sun’s energy.
But in the West as you have seen that the sun is much less. Because of that, people keep more to their houses, to artificial heating or other heatings, and the doors are closed, the hearts are closed, and it’s difficult for them to communicate with other people. As you go down south more in your countries also, you’ll find people are warmer, simpler, very hospitable. With the sun you get the heart which is very open heart, and a kind of a inviting heart. Now if you see on the Sahaja Yoga style, the sun line is the right side and the moon, moon is the left side. On the moon line one can desire but cannot act. Apart from that, on the moon line if you go too far it can be destructive. Because if you sit in the house doing nothing – and also these days there’s unemployment, say for example, no work – then you start thinking too much, and this thinking is just the desire energy working out, no action. And without the action this energy can become very destructive. That is why we find that people, they say that “empty mind, empty mind is the devil’s workshop.” Where people have, do not act, when the action doesn’t take place, then it can be quite destructive ….
So the whole situation is different in a country which is warm, and a country which is not warm. But in a country where it is very warm also, like Africa, there are complications due to too much of heat. Like we have the tropic of – I mean the equator passing through, and it heats up that area so much that it becomes full of jungles, very high trees and tall trees; and the whole place is covered with foliage so much that there’s no possibility for any sunshine to penetrate through, and it’s quite dark, it’s full of darkness. So that extreme also comes in the same category as the extreme of the cold season. Now such people live there and they, naturally because the sun is less, so they do not grow much; and they can be primitive people and they can be quite aggressive, like they learn things from the animals and they could be quite aggressive. So the balance has to be struck, and the balance is that, that we should desire and act. But the trouble is in human atmosphere there is a division of labor, I think, that one part of the country is thinking, another part of the country is acting. Under these circumstances nothing works out. So a balance has to be struck where you have the Sushumna working out. Now the Sushumna Nadi is the one where one would say is the equator – it’s not, is not the equator, but is the axis of the Mother Earth. Axis of the Mother Earth is the Sushumna, and that has to act; and when it comes to that axis then we should understand that we have to be on our axis. So we are on the axis, it is the one that balances.
Actually there is, there is, there is nothing like a big pole inside the Mother Earth which we can call it as an axis. There is nothing that is material inside the Mother Earth that we can call it as an axis, but it’s the energy force which acts in such a manner that the Earth moves with such tremendous speed when the cosmos is all spread out so much. It not only moves but it creates day and night for us, so that day-time we can work and night-time we can sleep, to give us a balance. Only also it moves in such a manner round the sun that half of the countries get the sun during the summer-time, and half of them get it during the winter-time. That’s the axis that acts and works out everything. Apart from that, this axis keeps all the distances necessary from other planets and other moving bodies in the cosmos.
This axis is the intelligence of the Mother Earth. It is not only the intelligence but it is the fragrance, and apart from, it is the Sushumna Nadi, you can say, of the Mother Earth. Now through this axis only all these swayambhus and all these great happenings of earthquakes and all that takes place. This axis is the one which moves. It’s an energy, we can call it axis as the energy, moves the lava into different directions and pierces through different areas to create earthquakes, and also to have … volcanoes, volcanoes. And all these things happen because the axis has sense what is to be done. This axis is the one that loves us. Because of this axis we, we have seasons. The seasons are created beautifully to give us different, different varieties of food and varieties of things. The heat of the Mother Earth if it is lost, then we’ll have nothing on this Earth, it’ll be all frozen and there will be all snow, and we’ll have no food, nothing, and it will be like moon living here.
Now it has been specially created: first the Mother Earth when it was created through the heat of the sun, so we can say that the sun is the father of the Mother Earth. Then she was brought very close to the moon so it cooled down, absolutely it cooled down, it was all snow.
Then it was brought closer to the sun and moved at a point where life could start working, and that’s how the whole thing was organized beautifully to make life grow in that area.
Now when the life started growing, gradually we know that how the carbon was formed. Now the carbon is formed by the same axis, because there’s heat in the axis, the energy of heat that converts the plants into carbon. Now this carbon is, later on forms the basis for, we can say, for the production of carbohydrates, you can say, or all organic matter. But to create life we had to have another help, is the nitrogen; and this nitrogen was also, you’ll be surprised to know, that was created by the same axis, by its movement. And when it created this nitrogen, the nitrogen gave us the amino acids; and when the amino acids were created within us, then we started our lives from amoeba and all that. Of course this was done in the ocean, because in the ocean with the movement, nitrogen was created and life was created, and then through the ocean it’s emitted out, and that’s how we have amino acids. With the amino acids, the formation of amino acids gave us the combinations and permutations, different lives. So in the whole evolutionary process the Mother Earth has played a very big part through her axis.
In the same way in human beings, the axis is the most important thing. That’s the main principle of life we have got, is our axis. We have to stand on our axis. Those who do not stand on their axis, stand more towards the left or towards the right, are capable of complete destruction; because either they will be destroyed by too much of right side or too much of left side. So our axis has to be properly dealt with.
Now those people who do not have a proper axis can have problems of different chakras, of different kind of quality in a person. A person who stretches his axis too much, puts back his head like this, is a person who is very right-sided and creates problem with his ego; and the one who absolutely bends down like a slavish person also is a person who goes towards his destructiveness. Now there’s a big problem between these two types of people, one trying to dominate another, and when they start dominating another person they actually destroy themselves, as well as destroy the ones whom they are dominating.
For example now, we have seen that we had Britishers who came here and ruled us. We have seen the French went and ruled some other people, then there are Portuguese who went and ruled some other people. But everything that they did to dominate and all that has double reactions. First of all by their domination, say, Indians became very slavish, Indians became – even today they are extremely slavish, and they do not have that independent axis as they should have. Extremely slavish people they are. I mean, especially I’ve seen in the West, I am surprised when the Indians go from here, I find they are so very slavish. They try to sort of do all kinds of slavish acts to please the white-skinned people. The white skin became sort of a very adorable stuff in India. That added to the ego of the whites, added to the ego of the whites, and today you see what’s happening is all that ego is destroying them. They are on the verge of destruction because of their ego. So it is so unnatural and it is so superficial. One has to understand that what is the best within a human being is his axis, and everybody has an axis, and one must respect the axis of every person.
In Sahaja Yoga I don’t know you by your faces so much; I know you by your chakras, by your Sushumna, what sort of a Sushumna you have. If you have a deep Sushumna, I know you as a deep person. If you have a superficial Sushumna, I know you as a person with a very superficial type of a Sushumna. And even if you make up something by sort of being very nice or good, or talking about Sahaja Yoga or knowing too much about Sahaja Yog, and saying things which will baffle normally anyone as if you are masters of Sahaja Yoga, I know how deep you are.
So the depth on the axis is more important than anything else. Your axis has to be very deep. Now you will say that “Mother, the axis is the same as it is, so how can it be deep?” So the, in the axis as you see is made in human beings, is like a three-and-a-half coiled paper-like thing, and the inside of it is the Brahma Nadi. The Brahma Nadi is a very, very small little, we can call a very, very hair-like thing where only a hair-like Kundalini can pass through. But when the person is deep this Brahma Nadi is bigger, and all the rest of them which are coiled into each other are smaller; while the people who are not deep, their outside what you call the foldings are bigger than the inside small thing.
Now such people could be apparently very dynamic, may look very intelligent, may look very smart, may look to be very good-looking or whatever it may be outwardly, but inwardly they are not deep. Inwardly if they are deep, their whole attitude is beautiful. They are very joy-giving people, they are very joy-giving. And the more if you meet a person of another kind he may look joyous, he may try to give you joy, but the joy won’t be really that deep; it would be like a joy-killing.
So it is important for us to make our axis deeper, and that is where we lack the proper assiduity, the proper effort we have to put in.
Now some people have automatically a very deep axis, and some people have very, very what you should say, a very constricted type of the axis. This axis has to be grown. Now when you come for My puja and all that I do expand it, I agree, but it is temporary thing. To retain it at that point one has to work at home, in the collective also. One has to work very much at home with meditation. But it should be done seriously. It should not be just a joke, to be frivolous, to be stupid – that’s not the way. It should be done very seriously, in the meaning that it is a devoted task you have taken, it’s a meditative thing; it’s a prayer to God we can call it, it’s a puja to God. Is to be done with that reverence, because reverence is the key of achievement. If you have no reverence about yourself and no reverence of others, then it cannot be done. But first you must have reverence for your own life. “What am I doing with my life? Where am I wasting it? Why should I waste it? Why shouldn’t I be deep? After all, there must be some purpose of my life. Am I serving my purpose, am I doing that?”
All these things if they pop into your head, then you will understand it’s very easy to fight out your ego, because normally on small, small things people fight. I’ve seen that in Sahaja Yoga also people fight on things like, I mean which are so useless, absolutely useless. To Me it sounds stupid to even mention the way people fight over small things and quarrel. But a deep person, even if he doesn’t speak much, even if he doesn’t show off much, even if he doesn’t sit in the front line, he expresses himself through his depth, because I can work out better through that.
So to develop this one must meditate, important thing is to meditate; every day, every day, every day. You may not eat your food one day, you may not sleep one day, you may not go to your office one day, you may not do anything that you are doing every day – but you must meditate every day. That’s an important point, to develop the central constricted part into a bigger area. Now when that happens that you start developing it, the first thing you will notice about yourself that you do not care for any comfort, you’re not bothered about any, any material thing. Whatever it is you are above it, you just don’t bother your head – let it be. You just don’t want to put your neck into a thing where you do not belong. You just get out of it, and you think that “Oh God, this is too much for me, I just don’t care for it.”
So your whole attention now moves inward. When the attention starts moving inward then it expands more. It’s the inner part which is called as the Brahma Nadi, and starts expanding and expanding.
Now in small, small things also: say for example if I have not mentioned somebody and mentioned somebody else, then they feel, “Oh, why didn’t Mother mention my name?” It’s too small a thing that it doesn’t matter. As long as you have a deep axis you are with Me, I am with you, absolutely one with each other. But these outward things are, “Oh, She gave a nice sari to another one, She never gave us a sari, She didn’t do this, didn’t do that.” All those things if it comes to your head, that means absolutely it’s true that there is something lacking in you. Or if you try to complain, “Oh, I went there, I had to go by a bus and I had to stand on this thing,” that shows that you are not comforted at all. This widening comforts you. That’s the comforting thing, and that really makes you feel so comfortable in any circumstance, in any position, in any lifestyle, and you do not want to have any other comfort. And this one has to develop, through meditative effort.
Secondly is, we have to know that Sahaja Yoga as it is today is a collective happening. I find especially among Indian men, they never do any work with their hands, which is a wrong thing. Because they don’t use their hands at all their collectivity is poor, very poor. Indians have the worst collectivity. If you have an ashram, I don’t know why should we build the ashram, nobody is going to stay there. They want to have their own houses, their own families, their own children; they are the worst of all for collectivity. The reason is, Indian men never do any work with their hands. They cannot nail one nail – there are many like that – leave alone repairing anything. They will stand with their hands on their hips and would just tell work to other people, you see. There’s a Marathi saying, a very interesting: “Untta varun shelya hakne” – that is, “To sit on a camel and to drive the goats.”
So that is very typical of Indian men. They cannot repair anything, they cannot do anything. Now if supposing somebody is spreading something, they’ll just stand like this, watch, they’ll never put their hands to it.
So for every Sahaja yogi it is important what we call as shramadaan. They have to do some shramadaan. “Shramadaan” means the giving of some labor, and that is what we lack. That even if it comes to that you’d better clean your house, you’d better clean the outside of your house, try to put some garden around your house, try to paint your house, do some sort of a work with your hand which even if you don’t have anything, you can even brush your hair or something like that. Whatever you think is the easiest you can start with, because I don’t think people even do that. Even they don’t shave themselves, they get the person to shave them – I mean, absolutely lazy lumps as they are.
Now, but on the contrary we see in the West people use their hands. Because of that, you see, because they can use their hands, they are very collective. So they score a point on being collective, while the Indians score a point because they are Indians and they have a heritage and they know what is Kundalini, they know about Ganesha, they know everything. So they score a point this side.
So it’s the left side is the desire, the right side is the action; again we come back to the same position where we have an imbalance, that the action takes place in the West, and here is only thinking – “all right, we’ll do this” – planning. Everything is a planning point. Nothing works out. You go on planning, planning, planning. Now we are building one single ashram in Delhi for the last, I think, ten years. It is like Taj Mahal, I tell you! And it’s so difficult, you see, to understand why they have taken so much time when it’s not a very big place, nothing. But it is not only the Sahaja yogis but other factors also, because everybody is like that, everything is postponed, everything is to be done tomorrow. “This we will do tomorrow.” Then one person will come, another person won’t come. Like we used to have in the school, we would get a sum like that or something to solve that, see, there were: one house was built, three persons came to work and one ran away. Then two persons came to work and one stayed and two ran away; and then five persons came to work and two persons ran away. So how, when will the house be finished? Never! With such runaways it can never be finished. It’s like that.
So this is what, where we lack collectivity. I was saying that all Indians must find out some place where they could go and plant something. Get hold of some sort of a place where they could go and plant some nice banyan trees, water it together, work it out together. Now the Indian women are that way better. They do lot of work as far as the cooking is concerned and all that, but the other part is missing. The other part is intelligence, it’s the other part is to think. Now if all the time what they are thinking, “Oh, my husband likes this, I must cook this for him,” and now if the husband has to have a, say, a lemon with his food. Now there’s no lemon in the house. This woman would run up and down all over the place to get the lemon for the husband, otherwise he will not eat the food. Doesn’t matter, once in a while if he doesn’t eat it’s all right. But the women will try, because you see they must keep their, they understand one thing that you must keep their palate all right. Then they are quite sensible in India because here they’re real tigers, all the husbands are like tigers, so you have to keep them feeding; otherwise you see, God knows when the tiger will jump on you.
The other way round in England or America I’ve seen, the husbands are like, just like goats and the women are like tigers! And the Westernized Indian women also are like that, and when they go to West, even simple women I’ve seen they become like tigresses. Something surprising how they change immediately to the position, even if they may not wear the jeans and all those things, but they become like that. So this imbalancing starts in a human being when he doesn’t understand that you have to be a axis of the Mother Earth, and neither the Capricorn or the Cancer. This balance comes through our depth, and that depth has to be improved. Not through just by talking about it, by talking about Sahaja Yoga, but actually seriously doing meditation, actually seriously doing meditation.
Secondly, we must do some collective work. Now we have in India, say, architects. They have never touched anything with their own hands. They are sitting and drawing, you see, that’s all – finished. Now after the drawing, do what you like. And now they have problems, practical problems, they cannot nail one nail. All are what you call them as white-collar, phandhar peshya, absolutely useless for any handwork. They cannot do any handwork whatsoever. Even if they have to lift, say, one of these chairs and stretch them, they cannot do it, normally. So under these circumstances one has to understand that we come from a society which is absolutely ruinous as far as collectivity is concerned, so let us be collective. Let us try to do something collective.
But the collectivity is so poor in India, so poor that even they do not treat their wives nicely. They’ll not talk to their wife nicely, to their children nicely; to them it is absolutely adharmic to be kind to their wives.
Now the other side is that the Western people care so much for collectivity that whatever it is they try to compromise, and try to keep the family life all right. So it’s the two extremes as we have. Despite that somehow, thanks to the wisdom of Indian women, the family life is going strong. But if you see such men in England, I can tell you nobody will stand the nonsense that Indian men do to their women here. Absolutely, it cannot be forgiven the way they behave.
So the balance between the women and men: what is the axis, is the home. Home is the axis. In the home, what sort of talks you have? What do you think about, what is your problem? Where is your attention, what do you discuss? That’s very important to see. In that you’ll find out what is going on in the family. Say you are talking ill of each other, if you are telling your child against your husband, husband is telling the wife against, telling the children about, against the, against the husband, like that. If it is going on like that, then what happens, that there cannot be the axis which is all right. The axis is love, axis is love, but not exploitation nor spoiling – it’s love. In country like ours, you see, what is the axis we have? The axis of our country is adhyatma [1]. We have to now get over this hankering after money, development, this, that. First take to adhyatma. If people get realization before they are developed, there won’t be the problem of creating another America here. We don’t have to become communist, we don’t have to do anything like that, because communists are just the same as Americans, there’s no difference at all in temperament. If an American is allowed to stay in Russia he’ll behave the same way as a Russian behaves, and if a Russian is sent to America he behaves the same way as the Americans behave. There’s no change at all.
Now if the axis of adhyatma in any country where a person achieves his spiritual ascent is, becomes the most important thing and is achieved, then any amount of development, any amount of all these things cannot destroy that country, cannot create wars. There will be peace everywhere, there will be enjoyment everywhere. So on this day of Makar Sankrant let us say now the Sankrant is over, and we have to look forward to the new age of a new moon blessing us, and the great sun coming over to give us all the energy we need, to celebrate the advent of the golden age of Sahaja Yoga.
May God bless you all.
Now for the puja, the Makar Sankrant Puja is very little, it’s the puja of the Surya Devata, I don’t know ….
From the foreign country, who is going to stay after the 11th, that is on the 12th? On the 12th – after the 12th. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten … seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty. All right, let’s put it, who is going to stay in Bombay after the 11th? When are these people going? Those who are going to stay in Bombay after the 11th, when are they going, when are you going? You are coming to Pratishthan. All right. What about you, John? Do you want to stay here in Bombay, or you want to stay in Pratishthan?
I mean, there’s no arrangements here, so all those who are not going on the 11th or 12th, like that, in the near future, how many are those who are going to stay longer? About thirty-four. How many men and how many ladies?
So we have decided that the men can come to Pratishthan, and the rest of the ladies can go to Alibagh. The reason is Pratishthan is still extremely spartan. It’s not meant for ladies at all, and I have only one room where I live. So best thing would be to send all the ladies …. Let them go to Alibagh, and let them pay for their stay in Alibagh to people who will be looking after them. Those who are coming to Pratishthan, how many there are? The rest of the men, about fifty. Fifty, all right.
So when are you going back with the whole thing? You see, because it’s such a liability, this work. You can come to Pratishthan if you want to take some photographs or things, but it’s a liability for us because, you see, unless and until you go back, it will be a liability on our head all the time. So best thing is that you come to Pratishthan, do a little photography or whatever you want to do. And then you’d better book yourself, because this must go out of our country, otherwise they’re always on our head, and they are following us. So I am sorry, but you’ll have to go with this … stuff that you are carrying. So we will have to do it in three, four days’ time. You can finish the photography there, and you fix up your going.
So for all the ladies who are going to stay on, can go in Washi or can go to Alibagh. Alibagh is better …. They can go to Alibagh and stay there in Alibagh, about thirteen or fourteen ladies ….
All right, so done. Now let’s … Atharv, Ganesha …. Twenty-one people from America have to go, so we’ll try to finish the puja as soon as possible, and they can leave.