Shri Bhavasagara Puja, Brisbane (Australia), 6 April 1991.

This is the first time we are having a puja in Brisbane, and I’m happy so many have come here from various places.

You know that by puja, you excite the chakras within Me and you get lots of vibrations, and you achieve, suddenly, a height in your awareness. You do achieve that, but after some time they say that: “Mother, again we come down.” Also, they were saying that: “When we go to India we are all right, and when we come back, again we come down.”  Luckily, now we have an Ashram, which is a very good thing. To have an ashram itself is a, I must say, is a very, very positive thing because that is how Ganesha is established here. So Ashram is here for a collective living, but [a] collective living of spirituality. It’s not just living here, but it is of spirituality. And we have to know certain things about the discipline that we have to keep, [which] is very important. It’s not just a house where are,  some people have gathered together to live together, but it has to have a discipline. Then only you’ll be helped – because if you do not come to the Ashram with this idea that you are going there to ascend yourself, it will make no difference whether you stay in the house or you go in the Ashram.

So there are two types of meditation, two types, where one is the meditation where, we can call it the “antar mana” [inside view], that we meditate inside ourselves. To see for ourselves what’s wrong with us, and how we have to correct, what we have to do about it. And another is “bahir mana” [outside view], [which] is outside, how we have to live outside. You have to have a discipline, which is not imposed on you but, very happily, which you have accepted and have imbibed. For any art, say in India, I don’t know here, but you have to put yourself into a rigorous training to achieve any height. You cannot haphazardly move about it. You cannot take just easily everything. In Sahaja Yoga there is no tapascharya [asceticism], there is no penance for you. It’s all blessings. But one should not get lost with those blessings if you have to really get into yourself in its full depth.

So, for the “antar mana”, it is important that you all should meditate, morning and evening, every day. Is all right even if you do not brush your teeth, but you must meditate is an important thing. That is the reason I find that in the West people go on catching, again cleaning, again catching. Every time I come [I]  find somebody is suffering from either-  for some sort of a conditioning, or say, some sort of a badha, or sometimes it’s ego or something. It comes and goes. It is not something that is detached permanently. As we have to take our bath every day, we have to wash ourselves every day, in the same way, we have to wash ourselves within. So meditation is the “antar mana tapaha”, as you can call it, but it’s not such a “tapaha” [pain] even. You don’t have to go to [the] Himalayas and sit there. You have to just do this meditation early in the morning.

In the Sahaja Yoga system, I would say the best that is working out is in Germany and in Austria, these two; and also England, but not to that extent. I would say these two are working out the best; and thirdly, in Rome.

They too have ashrams of the same kind, but for them, it is very important to achieve the heights of Sahaja Yoga. Absolutely. Nothing is more important.

Invariably, in all these ashrams, I’ve seen people get up at four o’clock. I also get up every day at four. Then I may sleep later on, but at four o’clock I am up. They take their baths, get ready for the pujas, and then sit down and do about five, ten minutes [of] puja of the photograph, and then meditate. Then they go and have some breakfast or something. Then when they come home from work, also they sit down together to meditate, that’s the collective part of it, or discuss whatever is to be done, what, how are we to propagate Sahaja Yoga. They just talk about Sahaja Yoga, or they decide what should be done, what is the best way to solve the problems of Sahaja Yoga. And then in the night, before sleeping, invariably all of them, all of them, one and all, even children before sleeping, soak their feet in the water, sit for meditation, and sleep. That’s why I find Austria has come up so well, and Germans. You know, Germans are like that. If something gets into their heads, for them that’s the most important thing; then they do not sort of fickle out. There’s no, – they don’t have any compromises on those points. And they make their body work hard.

Now, what is the Tapa in this thing here – the penance?  That our body is used to some sort of a life. India also, we are all like that in India – everybody will get up in the morning, and they will sit for puja, or they will sit for meditation. I mean, that goes without saying, you don’t have to tell them. Because that’s the traditional thing to do in India: always when they get up, have their bath, they always do some puja, all of them. If they’re Christians, also, they’ll sit down and pray. Muslims, they’ll do Namaz. That’s a kind of a practice and the breeding of the family.

Here I find that the parents do not take the responsibility to pass on any information to children about disciplining themselves, because children are also extremely aggressive. They don’t want to know about it. So the parents also dare not tell them that: “It is good for you, please do it this way; it is better that you meditate.” They’re afraid that they may lose their children if they tell them like this. Or, “You pray”, or “You get up at this time”, you dare not tell them that you get up at this time. This is the greatest crime in the West if you tell them that: “You have to get up at four o’clock” – amah! It’s like the worst punishment. But once you start getting up in the morning, you’ll get the habit, and then you’ll sleep early. Then you can sleep early. Getting up in the morning, really, will help you for the whole day. So start this kind of a practice.

You must meditate every day, and this is the reason why I find people, whenever I come, they’re again caught up, something has gone wrong. This is wrong, that is wrong; they’re caught up here and there. Why should you? Day by day, you must rise. Day by day, you should be at a much higher state, and this new breeding has to come within us, that we are Sahaja Yogis. And we are not here only, just to have good food and to have a nice time or nice meetings, but we are here to become those unique personalities, which are required to raise the humanity to a higher state. So you have to be, now, responsible for yourself. You have to look after yourself and you have to tell yourself: “Mr. So-and-so, Mrs. So-and-so, please now behave yourself.” Otherwise, Sahaja Yoga is lost to you. It’s not going to help you much. We might increase in quantity, but quality-wise we’ll be missing, and one attack of negativity can finish such a quantity that we think is too much – it has happened once.

So now, all of you must develop that dedication to yourself, to find out what’s your problem, and how you have to correct it. If it is done every day, I can assure you, you will have no problem of any kind. Your thoughts will stop, your problems will be solved, and you’ll have no catches at all because you’ve washed them off. But if you leave them on your being, then they grow, and they become big. So there should be no lethargy, as far as meditation is concerned, but joyfully you’ll start doing [it] after some time. You won’t be happy if you have not done it. But in the beginning you’ll have to goad yourself, and tell yourself that this body has to be cleaned; but more than that body, this mind and intellect, both of them, are to be corrected.

To be an instrument of God, you have to be perfect, [a] perfect personality, otherwise, we may not be able to communicate the message of Sahaja Yoga in the proper way. Many people say that: “We are surrendered to Mother, and we are surrendered to Her, and our surrendering will get everything.” But what are you surrendering? Is that a clean heart, or a heart full of all kinds of wrong things? Or is that the intelligence, which is a very superior type of clean intelligence? Or else, are you coming out with all your arrogance? So though there is the Ganges of Sahaja Yoga flowing, still you have to have the depth of a pitcher. A stone cannot fetch any water. Same with children. Of course, as they’ll be going to India, I’m sure they’ll form proper routines, and they’ll form proper meditation methods.

It is obvious that we have never had the sense of Divinity in the West. Whatever we had, whatever we got from the church or from any synagogue or something like that, which was only Sunday to Sunday, Sunday to Sunday; for a Muslim, it is Friday to Friday, Friday to Friday, finished. But that has led them nowhere. So we have to do something about it. Problems will be solved in no time. You don’t have to sit down and contemplate for worry: how will you solve your problem? It will be solved. But what cannot be solved is the habits you have developed, habits of lethargy.

I can understand in London if the people are lethargic, but they are not. They have become extremely, extremely hardworking, active, and also dedicated. How they have achieved it? Only by knowing that this dedication brings forth all the cleansing, and all the powers. Now, supposing this instrument is not clean. You won’t be able to even hear Me, it is useless. So our instrument has to be perfect to manifest Sahaja Yoga. If it is not, all the defects can have double effects; like, first it will affect you, you can never feel the full advantage of Sahaja Yoga, and secondly, it will affect the people who will meet you, and gradually they’ll find out there’s something wrong with you. “Some sort of a subdued madness”, they’ll say, “this Sahaja Yoga is because I don’t find anything great about this man. He’s halfway here and halfway there.”

Once you start getting deeper into your being, you’ll be amazed that you can develop such capacities that you’ll be amazed at yourself. Of course, there are blessings, [and] there are miracles, but think of your own capacities. What are your capacities? How far are you able to do something about curing people? We have few people in Bombay, and very few people in Pune also. But they are available for curing. Some of them are going to villages. Now they have asked Me to give them a jeep, so they could take a music party to the villages and sing there, and achieve a greater number of Sahaja Yogis. But when they come back, immediately, whether they come in the daytime or in the night, immediately they wash their feet before the photograph.

Also to protect yourself, you have to give yourself a bandhan, all the time. It is not you should say: “Now, I’m all right.” You should not say that: “I am perfect.” You should not say: “Now I’m a Sahaja Yogi.” Never, never think like that. The moment you start thinking you are perfect, you are finished. So before going out, you must give a proper bandhan. Also before sleeping you must give a proper bandhan and put your attention to your Sahasrara and then sleep.

It’s very amazing how things work out. Immediately you will know [whether a person is meditating or not, immediately! It’s like this: a person who has given a bath to the child, though he has given a bath to the child, still he has not taken a bath. You can make it out the difference between the two. In the same way, those who have been meditating every day, morning and evening, not much time needed – you see, we waste all our time in something nonsensical. When there is [a] complete understanding of yourself, and complete understanding of these vibrations, then only you can handle them properly. All this knowledge is for you. Is absolutely free as you know, and all this mastery can be yours. So do not just get satisfied: “All right, today’s Sunday, we’ll go to the church, take the hymn book, let us sing this hymn number such-and-such, again sit down, get up, sit down.” Finished. Come back home just the same.

So today I have really thought of telling all of you that you have to develop the depth within yourself. And if you cannot develop that depth, then you are still a mediocre. Actually, all these great secrets about the Goddess or Her powers were not told to anyone like that. Never. Only when they had completed their oneness – I would say the full idea, full understanding between the oneness of God and your relationship with that, absolutely – nobody would do anything before that.

Now the days are, of Sahaja Yoga, are so simple that as soon as you get realization, you can start giving realization to others. Immediately. Just under your hand, you will see the Kundalini will move. You put your hand on somebody’s head, and you’ll find that person gets realization. It’s a fact. It just works that way. But that means, for many: “Oh, there’s nothing to be done. After all, is all done by Mother, we have just achieved something.”

You can always understand that Mother can only work out a very good instrument, and not a weak instrument. So now, we have some very great Sahaja Yogis who have gone very deep into it. Invariably, whenever I asked, they say: “Mother, every day we worship. We worship morning and evening, every day. We wash our feet and sit down before Your photograph and worship Your photograph, or else in the morning time also we do something like that.” And amazingly, you can make them out immediately. There may be six hundred people at the airport, but immediately I know who has been meditating every day.

Now, it is for us. We have been doing Sahaja Yoga for the last, now, more than twenty years, and now we are entering into [the] twenty-first year, we can say; but I’m ready, you see, it is like that, because now it was 1970, and now it is 1990, so it is all this thing, plus ninety-one.

So much time we have had. Of course, I would say, you didn’t get your realization at that time; but whatever time you got the realization, I did not judge how far you were in it. I said: “First let them have their Realization.”  They got their Realization. So once they got their realization, you see people who have really felt the responsibility, from the very first day they got to it, from the very first day. I didn’t have to tell them. I’m not talking about Indians, I’m talking about others. And they’ve done, they have shown tremendous improvement, tremendous.

We have been sending you Indian boys from there, Indian girls from there, just for you to know that they can also help you in Sahaja Yoga. It definitely can help you. You have to have a proper type of a person, and you’ll be amazed at the way they are, that they can impart everything, and they are least bothered about their ego. There’s no ego at all. So you are not achieving all this for your ego. You are achieving it because you are a seeker, and now you have become a Sahaja Yogi.

So it is to be understood that it’s not something like a[n] advantage in money wise, or something that I have to have a power, this, that; because if you do not meditate, your attention will go to such things. Immediately you’ll start thinking: “Can I become the leader?” All right, if not: “Should I debase the leader? How can I insult him? How can I fight for that? How can I do that? How can I work it out this way?” You try to insult also. If not possible, you might use violence sometimes, anger, because you are not yet, I should say, that much evolved, so much mature, so much wiser.

So now, what you have to do is to- at the very first shot when you get up in the morning, you first say that: “Let me see, what is my responsibility, as a Sahaja Yogi?” After some time you will start enjoying it because it will give you such tremendous powers, such tremendous experiences. Now then, you just sit down with a very humble mind, and first of all say: “Mother, if I have any ego, please take [it] away. Mother, if I have any conditioning, please take [it] away; because I’m a seeker out and out, I don’t want all these things.”

But if you do not meditate, then this Mr. Ego will secretly crawl upon you, and you may try to become the leader, or some sort of an assertion you’ll do, some sort of a stupid ego actions, which we have many in Sahaja Yoga.

If you write them down, you’ll not know how to stop laughing. So to warn yourself, I would say that the only way to protect yourself is to do the meditation in the morning and evening, and also to keep yourself in complete bandhan. Yours is a very important role and a very important time, extremely important. You have no idea, that in the history of spirituality no one could do so much as you can do.

So, if you really do the “antar mana”, if you really see inside yourself, while meditating you see yourself, your chakras and all that, and then you find out this introspection: “Why am I like this?” Just separate from yourself, see for yourself: “Why am I like this? Why I did like this? Why do I think like this? Who am I?” These questions when answered you will know all your worth, your value.

I do not know how much I should stress, how much more is needed to stress the importance of meditation, every day. Like these advertisements you see, every day they just go on bombarding on your head, and: “Buy this, buy that, buy, buy, buy, buy, buy.” It acts. In the same way, you have to every day bombard yourself: “Now, meditation. Get to meditation. Get to meditation.”

Then you’ll be surprised that when you’ll go out, you’ll see something beautiful; immediately you’ll get into thoughtless awareness. Don’t have to do [it]. As soon as you’ll meet a Sahaja Yogi, [you] immediately [go] into thoughtless; the other person, you both will go. Everything you start enjoying in a very different manner. And such beautiful feelings come in, such beautiful security is built up that you’re surprised: “How I could be like that?

How I could feel these securities just expressing themselves in such a beautiful manner?” Because if you are, say, washed and clean – simple thing, everyday life – then before touching everything you are careful that you don’t again spoil them. If there’s a sari, which is dirty, absolutely dirty, then if there are two spots or hundred spots, makes no difference. But when it is absolutely clean, then even the slightest spot you can see, you get worried because everybody will see that. In the same way, unless and until you cleanse yourself every day, you will not know what’s wrong with you.

I hope you’ll pay full attention to what I’ve said here, with full attention on your inner being projecting out, like a witness to yourself. Just see how you talk to others: “Why should I talk like that? What is the need to talk?” And then you’ll start understanding that behind all this is some sort of a funny thing going on in my brain, and this brain has to be corrected – Very important.

Now, at the end of the day, we should find out: “What good things I have done for Sahaja Yoga?” Also, we can find out how I have been not up to the point in Sahaja Yoga. If it could be done, you find out: “How far I have gone with these powers to spread Sahaja Yoga? How far I can go?”

It’s really remarkable because, as I told you, in Austria we have some boys who are all the time researching about Sahaja Yoga. They have read the book of Adi Shankaracharya, which I have not yet read. They have read all kinds of things, just to find out how far they are, and as a result, they themselves went on developing very, very deep into their beings; but the way, you see, you go on developing deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, and you’ll be amazed the deeper you go, you won’t show off, you won’t show off. It will just emit.

Like, one gentleman once came to My house and they said: “Mother, some cooler has come inside. It looks ([like] some cooler has come inside. Ya, there’s a cooler coming.” He didn’t say anything, didn’t do anything. Just walking inside the house: “Some cooler has come.”

It is felt, you know; like in the forest, if you go, and you find complete silence, even the birds are not twittering. They know there’s a tiger sitting there. Tiger doesn’t do anything, just sleeping maybe, poor thing. But the whole place is awed by his presence, you see. In the same way, a Sahaja Yogi, anywhere, will stand out. Look at these saints, they didn’t know how to raise even the Kundalini, but they were very pure people. They never raised anybody’s Kundalini.  They never gave Realization to anyone. They were extremely pure people. There was no impurity left in them. And so, how much they could produce: what poetry, what work, what spiritual ideas, what sayings; I mean, tremendous – such depth in whatever they did, such effectiveness.

Now, we are here to gain our spirituality, not to gain money, not to gain positions, powers – nothing. We are here to gain our spirituality, and in that spirituality, it’s all there.

All the satisfaction, everything is there. It will have an effect on the children. It will have an effect on the surroundings, in every way, and the personality. So it’s not a question also individuals doing that, but collectively doing it. The collective should look [like] a beautiful thing. So you should have, I would say, in an ashram, a collective meditation.

In Austria, they do it early in the morning, [at] four o’clock, collectively. So they know how many are there, and how many are missing, this, that. But I said: “Don’t point out. Let’s see.” When those who have been doing meditation like that rise so high, others start following them.

So don’t think about others: what time he got up. It’s I; I have to look after myself. It’s very selfish: “Swarth”. You have to know the meaning of “Swa” – that is selfishness – and when you know that meaning, then you are not bothered whatsoever anybody might say, whatsoever one may try to do. Supposing your husband is funny: “Oh, doesn’t matter. He’ll come round.” Supposing your wife is funny: “Doesn’t matter, she’ll come round.” It is nothing important. To you, this is the most important thing to do, and all those who have thought like this and have acted like this were above everything. Nothing can put them down.

So, today is the first day of Brisbane. I bless you all, that you should have this full idea about yourself, why you are on this earth, and what great work you are supposed to do. Each one of you is capable. Each one of you can do it, but you- I would request you, that you imbibe these qualities within you, which are already there. I mean, I wouldn’t say “imbibe”, but you manifest them, and once you start manifesting, see your temperament how it is.

We’ll look after your children; don’t worry.

May God bless you.