Shri Mahasaraswati Puja: A subtler attitude towards creativity

Auckland (New Zealand)

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Shri Mahasaraswati Puja, Auckland (New Zealand), 23 February 1992.

I see many more New Zealanders, very happy to see all of you here.

Today I thought we should have Mahasaraswati’s Puja. Would be a good idea, Because we did Mahalakshmi, let’s have Mahasaraswati. So, Mahasaraswati Principle is on the right side as you all know. First is the Brahmadeva’s Principle, which is the Saraswati Principle, and then this Mahasaraswati takes you to the principle of Mahabrahmadeva called as Hiranyagarbha. Now this Hiranyagarbha Principle is very important for Sahaja Yogis. First of all, those who think too much or those who create too much without realization, those who express themselves in poetry or in literature or in music, you can say, in paintings, in all kinds of arts; if they are not realized souls, then they go to the left to the extreme or to the right. So for example if there is an artist, if he goes to the right gradually his paintings will become extremely violent expressions. Would be very much showing something very violent and also rather, I would say he would be a man who would be inflexible. He’ll have his own style; he can’t move into another style. He’ll use the same style and he will not get into any other style.

Kind of a austere nature he develops in his productions and then when he gets tired of it, then he will take to something you can say like abstract art but without realization the abstract art can be something very absurd and funny. I have seen the extremes of it that I’ve seen people who put big canvases on the ground and poured lots of oil paints one after another and roll over it, is supposed to be a painting. They say this is spontaneous because they fell on it or they rolled on that so is spontaneous painting that’s come out. Now this spontaneous painting should come from a spontaneous personality not by rolling on thing or something, I mean, all sorts of things they do but there’s no end to it to which nonsensical things they think of. And they think they have achieved a lot and they’ve done a lot and also they sell it to people who have too much of right side. They like it. So… they put in lot of effort to create this kind of a painting. Also that today’s pop music also, which is very aggressive, is from the same outcome because you cannot ascend, so you move to your right. And this pop music then starts now it’s becoming so horribly noisy, I don’t know what to call it. Absolutely it can deafen your ears if you listen to it and the whole thing is, the whole gestures and all that are so ugly and so aggressive as if they’re going to eat the mike sometimes I feel the way go on with the mike and things.

And see then these people also impress such people who are very right-sided and so they become popular. But the popularity is not the sign of real success. It will come and go away. All such artists and painters come and go away they have no, no standing, they are there for a short time. And then the history talks about them those who have been in the center54 never about the people who went to the extremes. God knows how many must have come and gone. And those who are today also painting or singing in that way tomorrow they will not be known. One after another you see the craze comes in one comes and goes away another so they are crazy people and they create a craze and the crazy like them enjoy the craze. So it amounts to something that is just wasteful creates no impression in the history. So this is the right-sided nonsense that comes out of the right side movement of the sympathetic going too far with your creativity and also your writing.

And there were many writers in English language you know from Shakespeare you can start who showed the futility of human endeavour like we call an avadhuta, the one who has reached a very great degree of development in his spiritual life. He can see the futility of human endeavour and then he brings them to the point that they have to rise above these stupid and human endeavours and take to some sort of an endeavour, which will bring them something higher and also will create something of an eternal value. Then also we have, I think in English language I have said, [INAUDIBLE] to Somerset Maugham and all that. They’re very centrally placed people, also Cronin was I would say, but then this Hemmingway came, and he started moving towards the right. Now I don’t know I don’t read now modern novels because all full of filth. So it moves to the right. So one is which moves to the right and talks about all kinds of violence this that, that also is absolutely not palatable to human consumption I tell you. But still they write and people like it. People want to read about Hitler, they want to read how people were killed, war stories this that. They want to see pictures which has full of violence, who are killing this and that, so that their own desire to be violent is satisfied in seeing those things in films and in, otherwise also reading such books of that kind.

On the left hand side when they move you see these artists then same about musicians as I said that the musicians become sort of a absolutely suffering from Greek tragedy all the time. They go on crying and weeping and saying that this is sort of, we have been very sad and this sadness and the tragedy of life, I mean they go on crying and make you cry also. So there’s no hope for them and they just go on doing such stupid things. Then we have you see many artists also of the same kind specially French. French writers as well as French poets also and French painters if you see. They are very left sided because they drink a lot. If you go in any France village after seven o’clock you can’t find even one person on the road and even if you want to find out the road and you knock at the door and request them that you would like to know some road and all that, they’re all drunk already at seven o’clock. So with this thing they become extremely over-romantic type and they sing songs of romance, have no romance in their life you see, they just, some sort of a imaginary romance they have and they live in that imaginary world of pain and sufferings and they have their own ideas about their own romantic models that they formed in their heads you see with their left side. So the poets and the writers go to the left side like that and in say for example in our India we had those Muslims used to drink a lot then they started a thing called as gazal 113 and that gazal is nothing but crying. Even in certain poets you see, we have this kind of a thing in the other places where there were many poets who were seeking God and were crying, “Oh God, when will I meet?”

and in separation they are singing, not in the meeting, not in the yoga but in separation they sing, ‘When will I meet You, oh God?” and all that. And all such people who are still seeking like such songs going on. Up to this much is all right but then you get lots of grotesque type of writers also who write such horrible things that you feel you are in hell the way they describe things are horrible. And in Sanskrit called as bibhatsa (बीभत्स)create a bibhatsa-ras (बीभत्स रस). And it’s the description of very filthy things which were never before even in English language. Never I saw that but now some books are full of filth and dirt and horrible sex descriptions that you just can’t bear it. So all this comes with the left side movement that, because you see society also moves from sometimes to the right sometimes to the left. So when it moves to the right they like right-sided things sometimes they move to the left they like left-sided things. So also there are people with two types of temperaments so that’s how they start appreciating these things and unnecessarily they believe that they are tragic.

As you know about the Greek tragedy which is a very sort of a fundamental thing I would say for a Western Western literature is a Greek tragedy where a woman marries a man but she doesn’t love her husband so she loves somebody else and that tragedy is there. I mean it’s artificially created tragedy that shows that you are married to some man and you should be happy with him. Of course I mean if the man is very bad and troublesome and all that then you can give him up. But what’s the use of pining for another man, living with one other man? Sort of a thing as you must have heard about Tolstoy who was another great realized soul. He’s written Anna Karenina and ultimately he saw that Anna Karenina commits suicide. Because what she was doing a wrong thing you see, so he brought the whole thing so beautifully out and such an introspection all the time you see going on and also the futility of this kind of a romance that was there. So all this shows to us that there are people at the same time who are in the centre I would say in French writers also Maupassant was one of them whom I would put in the centre. He showed both the sides and he showed the right side also. So we have had Goethe, we had many sort of people in Europe and England also in English language because I am talking about English language.

But also same in Sanskrit, in Hindi, in every language we have the same type of people but more in Sanskrit. We don’t have many people with this right or left side. The reason is: for literature there are some rules and regulations. It’s not the Western idea in India that we should be abandoned people. That’s not accepted. So even in literature there is a kind of a restriction. What is a literature? Sahitya, it’s called as sahit (सहित), means which will be benevolent. Sahita (सहित) means which will be benevolent. If it is not benevolent then it is not sahitya, it’s not literature.

Then it is trash. So that restriction you see, which is there which is given to us by great saints and seers, is still accepted. Of course, some people deviate a little bit, little bit they deviate, but once they deviate it goes out of the society, people just don’t read it. Say for example some people must have written this Karma Sutra or something long time back but we never knew about it, we never read about it till the Germans came and made such an ado out of it, we never knew there are such books. Even now I don’t know who wrote it or I’ve never read such a book, I’ve never seen it with My own eyes but we have heard about it that people wrote such things. But actually if you ask a ordinary human being in India who is maybe a scholar also, he will say, “What’s that? I’ve never heard about it.” But the Germans or the Japanese very particular on these things, they want to find all such things. So these creations of ugliness I should say, or of vulgarity, all these are a compensation for people who are very right-sided also because a right-sided man will always take to drink. Because you see he wants to compensate so the right-sided man also will like such horrible things just to quench his thirst for power you see.

He’s so mad and then he would like to little bit neutralize that movement in such a way that his right-sided behavior is little bit compensated by the left side. So the people who are right-sided take to drinks very much. You will see people will work very hard and two nights, Saturday and Sunday night, they’re just drunk. Then Monday they’ll come out with a hangover. See it’s very interesting to note how human being are. For five days they will slog, slog, slog, slog, slog and then two days they’ll just go into a kind of a hibernation as they say and absolutely lost to the whole world. Whether they are doctors or professionals, they don’t care. So whatever they earn in five days they’ll spend it in these two days in drinking and finish it off. So that’s how the total gain in all that creativity comes in. Now, when these extreme things start showing results and then the artist gets just fed up with this kind of thing going on all round he sees and all that.

Then within him rises a subtler attitude towards creativity, towards art, towards books and all that and then he starts in that, reading about the true knowledge pure knowledge. He wants to see paintings or he wants to listen to music which sings of Divine or divinity. Whole that madness makes him really think that now we should start doing something better and then the Mahasaraswati Principle starts working out. But in that also when they start thinking of God, they fall into traps. Like you see somebody might fall into some sort of a religion. Now as you know these religions so-called are just money-oriented or power-oriented. They are not at all in no way spirit-oriented. That’s the reason when they are not spirit-oriented what they give people is a kind of a personality which is all mental. You ask them about Upanishads they will recite verses after verses. Gita they’ll give big lectures on that hours together.

For this Chinmoy you see if you hear him, he speaks for hours together on Gita you get tired and bored stiff with his lectures. He can speak about it but nothing inside. Nothing inside and whatever they speak has no effect on others also because they are not awakened people, they are not connected with the Divine and whatever they do is just mental. So when the Mahasaraswati Principle is awakened you start seeing it clearly that “This is mental, this is not the truth, there must be something higher.” They read about all the spiritual works in their own religion in which they are born, then they start moving out and reading about some other religions also. Then this thing that every religion says the same thing then it comes to the Agnya point. When it comes to the Agnya point only there then suddenly they realize that there is something wrong, that people are mentally only accepting this religion and there must be something beyond this. At that point if somebody gets the realization, he just takes to it. But this Mahasaraswati Principle has to be awakened in all the people who are musicians, who are artists, who are this and that and that. And those who have reached that state, then suddenly they can get realization very easily.

I’ve seen some people, very great artists they are today but when they came to Me first were not at all well known or anything. But when they came to Me while singing only they got their realization just singing. Or there was one gentleman who was just playing tabla before Me, I would not so good, all right, and then I was in Pune where I saw him, and in Pune he was playing very well and I said, “He’s the same fellow.” But somebody said, “No, no, Mother, he’s not the same, he was not such a great player.” I said, “All right.” I had taken some flowers for these musicians so I sent it. He came running and touched My feet. “Mother, have you not recognized me or what?” I said, “I have, that’s why I have brought you the flowers.” I didn’t know what to say.

But the way he had improved, now he is a world famous tabla player, world famous. It has happened with many others also the sarod people with the sitar people, so many people have achieved a lot. Musicians they after coming to Me they have asked Me that “Please, do something that we should be able to enhance our creativity.” I just said, “Take to Sahaj, that’s all.” And when they were awakened very surprisingly today most of them are very well known musicians and very famous in India. Of course, the Western musicians I don’t know where to lay My hands because I don’t know, till they the way they are screaming these days I think their throats will be out may be something then they might come to Me. But on the whole My own idea is this, that those who have reached Mahasaraswati level through reading or through creativity, but through writings or anything, when they reach a certain state of Agnya, then either they get disappointed go to the left and absolutely think that this is all useless. Or else if they get realization they become really very dynamic artists, very dynamic writers and people who are creating something of an eternal value. So many Sahaja Yogis who have never spoken on the stage, who have never been on the stage they said, “We had a fright for the stage.” They all, surprisingly now have become great orators and speak very well and know so much.

So this is the Mahasaraswati Principle. Now this makes you a person much subtler and you start becoming aware that the gross understanding we had about our art or our creativity has to be subtler, we have to be subtler people. And then such writers only appeal to people who are subtler. Like William Blake* was regarded as a mad poet. I mean in India I never read about him. I did read on My own but in the colleges university they never had William Blake or in any book as such there was no William Blake. But when you go to these people and talk to them, there was one called Mascaro fellow, he has translated Gita into English, is a very wonderful person. He is, actually I think he is a Italian. Now he is no more. He lived in near Cambridge.

I went to see him, he was very anxious to meet Me and when I went there you’ll be amazed, he did My aarti, and he said a mantra in Sanskrit that “Oh God, You have come to my house! What have I done in my previous lives that You are in my house?” Such a beautiful poet, you see, and he said in Sanskrit language, he was a master of Sanskrit. So I asked him, “From which book you have taken this couplet?” He said, “I’ve composed it myself.” So beautiful it was, and then he said certain things from Gita and all that. And he said, “Mother, I don’t know You might be …” He was very old that time. He was eighty years of age. He said, “Mother, maybe You might be able to change these English, but I don’t think I’ve done anything. Even when I translated Gita they are just reading only.

Reading Gita, that’s all. So what’s the use of my translation? Just like Bible. Now they are reading word by word Gita. So, finished! What’s the use of doing this work?” And he was so disappointed with the whole thing. So he said, “What will You work out? How will You work out?” I said, “All right, I’ll try.”

He said, “Of course, You are there; You are an Incarnation.” He just recognized Me. “I know You’ll work it out.” He wrote a very nice letter to Me also and then he died. But such a nice man and he suffered a lot. Nobody tried to understand him. He said, “I talked to so many scientists and things and they’re absolutely useless and very superficial. So I don’t think in this country of England You’ll be able to do much, is a very superficial country.” There were at least twenty English Sahaja Yogis with Me sitting there listening to it. He said, “They are extremely superficial, this language is superficial, they don’t know about anything about Spirit or anything about Kundalini.”

And he was a very well read man very deep person and he told Me that while he was studying gradually he felt this Mahasaraswati Principle the way he didn’t say Mahasaraswati339 but he felt there must be subtler knowledge subtler knowledge. So he took to books like Gita, this, that, and then suddenly he felt that it’s all reading again. It’s just the same like translation and specially when he translated Gita he was amazed that people were just reading it like Bible then. Then he said that “Mother, I don’t know how but one day I was praying to Mother Mary and to the Holy Ghost and I got my realization.” So he was a realized soul and he saw Me in dream, you see. He said, “In dream You came and gave me realization.” It’s surprising. He saw Me in dream and he got … There’s another few people who have got it, but specially him. I was so surprised so when I arrived in his house he recognized Me immediately.

He said, ” I saw You in my dream. You came and gave me realization, You awakened my Kundalini 354 and You gave me realization.” So you can imagine that this gentleman was so beautifully placed so subtle, he was that at the Agnya point. He just got the dream and he got realization. And he said, “All the knowledge is now revealed to me so much more.” And then he sat down with Me. And he said, “Can you stay for some time?” I said, “I am now going away.” But at least for five hours he was talking to Me. He was not tired, he would not leave Me.

Such an old man was sitting at My feet. I was telling him, “You sit on the chair.” “‘No, I’m very good. I’m very much all right You sitting there.” So this is what happens with this Mahasaraswati Principle developing within us. But we should allow that to grow within us. So in Sahaja Yoga we are not told that we are not to read any book, not at all. We have to read, but in that book we have to see the subtle points and see for yourself. I don’t read any scriptures, because I don’t need to read. But when I started reading the, you see, these intellectuals, what they have to say, I was amazed that they are saying the same thing.

There’s nothing new. What I know, what I say, that’s what they are saying. There’s nothing new about it; there’s nothing special about it. Just what all the scriptures have said, they have said the same thing, and these people are saying the same thing. But by saying these things, how are they going to propagate? Nothing. It will be just again something that will happen outside and it will drop out. It doesn’t become part and part of yourself, so it has to become innate. That’s only possible if your Spirit comes into your attention. There’s no other way out.

So luckily you all are realized souls and your Mahasaraswati is very much there, but I would say you must read. Read books of value and understand how it is absolute Sahaja Yoga there, how it is there. Anything you take up you’ll be surprised that all these books are talking about Sahaja Yoga. May not be all of it, but part of the Sahaja Yoga is there. All of them talk of some part of Sahaja Yoga but not the whole of it, because they came at different times. And now the Sahaja Yoga is the time when you have to know the complete, integrated knowledge of this religious thought that was there. Complete integrated. And that’s how you understand that all religions are integrated. So one should, in Sahaja Yoga, after you come, people don’t take to any reading. Is a wrong thing.

They should read and understand what others have said, where have they gone wrong. But not these nonsensical people. You shouldn’t read these nonsensical people which you know are nonsensical. But so many, the other day I got this book of the Christian Science. It’s all Bible nothing special about it. They are saying you should not do this; you should not do this, and all that. It’s all written in the Bible. What new things are you telling? Nothing. You don’t need a science for that.

It’s just there. But they are making money out of it by explaining and this and this. No explanation needed. Because that has to come within yourself is the point which is not there. So now, this Mahaswaraswati Principle is awakened within us and we have to read and see the subtle side of this growth of thought, how it grew up and how it became subtler and subtler, and how so many people in the world have contributed to it. So many artists, so many musicians and so many, we can say, writers who have really contributed to the central path of Sushumna416 because they became realized souls. They were realized souls. Some were born, and some became, and then they completely wrote about the yoga. For example Rabindranath Tagore, in the beginning he writes, “How, when will I meet you my friend?” and all that.

What you call the separation song, [INAUDIBLE] yoga. And then after some time, suddenly he gets his realization, because he becomes subtler and subtler and subtler. Then he writes about his meeting, his meeting the Spirit and he writes about it. So these things work out in such a manner for some people that by their subtleties they arrive at a point of realization. Same thing happened with Buddha. He did the same thing. He renounced everything, renounced His family went out, read Upanishads this, that. Everything He read and ultimately reached Gaya where He was sleeping under a banyan tree. And while sleeping only, He was so tired and fed up, He got his realization. And that’s what is very important.

But for the Buddhists what He did before going there is important. So they also want to also renounce this and become sanyasis, this, that. But by becoming that, nothing is going to happen, this going to Gaya and sleeping there- also won’t happen. It has to happen because He was a pure seeker, true seeker and that’s why it happened. But for Sahaja Yogis, they don’t have to do anything of the kind they just get it, realization. Because I think most of them in their last lives have crossed most of their problems, and have known that it’s nothing, it’s all nonsense in all these things. Or maybe in this life also they must have realized it’s all nonsense. And then they must have come to Sahaja Yoga. So, it’s a very great luck for you that you are here and you’ve got your realization and that you are enjoying yourself.

May God bless you!

Another side which I have left over is the political side – on the right side, you see. Even in politics, the growth becomes subtler and subtler. Like in say, we can say, in Russia when it was such a power-oriented thing. It’s not money-oriented. The Communism was so power-oriented it reached a place that person like Gorbachev was to be born who would put it in a proper sense, and he came on a central path. He didn’t want complete democracy as it is in America, it’s a demonocracy, but he wanted a balanced thing. So far he has not been able to manage, but I’m sure one day he will be managed, but he will be known all over the world for his great, great thought and great work of reducing the pressure between the two great,or say between the two ideologists. And he’s done such a good thing that now there’s no war, going to be no war, as I mean not a very big world war but could be little bit here and there. That also is coming up which is a problem of fundamentalism, is not due to political but fundamentalism.

So now the problem today is fundamentalism and that also comes from the right side, absolutely. Fundamentalists are all right-sided people and this right-sidedness takes them to any extreme of violence could be or, in some cases, it’s really crazy and madness. But a new disease has started now those who go too much to the right is called as a yuppies disease where the whole conscious mind goes out of order and you become like a reptile. I’ve seen people being carried like big fishes on the shoulders you see and put in a seat and they just know everything, by brain is all right. But they understand everything. They can talk well but they cannot move their hands, cannot move their feet if they want to. Unconsciously they may, but consciously they cannot, and this disease is the one which is a warning to everyone. So we have be careful in Sahaja Yoga also, we should not go too much to the right is also very dangerous, too. Some people become very fanatic and start teaching Sahaja Yoga in a very fanatical manner and sort of you see, make a … I don’t know what to call that.

But sometimes I see some people speaking in a manner that one should never speak that way because we are Sahaja Yogis. The main thing is love, compassion, which is a living force and must be done everything, with that force, which is a beautiful, living force which creates these flowers, which does all kinds of beautiful constructive things. It should not be in any way a oppression, domination or in any kind of command. You should not do like this, and organization, nothing of the kind. It is something so spontaneous, so beautiful, just works out. But as these trees have to be embedded in the Mother Earth, in the same way you should be embedded in the principle of Sahaja Yoga which is compassion, love, and divine grace. If it is not there, then you’ll have problems with leadership and you’ll have problems with … Anybody who’s a violent person cannot stay in Sahaja Yoga. He has to disappear. Either he should change himself entirely or he has to disappear.

It doesn’t work out with people who are violent. So one has to understand that you may be in any position, you may be anywhere, you may be a very poor person, you may be very rich but makes no difference for a Sahaja Yogi. The best thing to judge yourself is that whenever we are doing anything for anyone or saying anything, is it benevolent or is it violent? Is it for our self-propagation or self, holier-than-thou sort of a principle or it is for the goodness of others? Once you start judging like that, you’ll be amazed that your whole system will change, your way of talking, your way of working it out. For example today you see there was a lady who wouldn’t allow Me to talk at all. She was talking all the time about something which was not important. But still I was working it out because I knew that there’s no need to talk now. With this gentleman I can work it out. So it is always so that you should try to see the whole thing as a complete play and take a very, a witness state, in a witness state you should watch.

If you watch everything in a witness state then you can handle the whole situation very nicely, even if you do not talk, if you do not say anything still in a witness state you become very powerful, and in that witness state you can easily solve lots of problems. May God bless you!

*(about William Blake)