Address to Tunisian women. Tunis (Tunisia), 13 November 1994.
Shri Mataji: You can’t see? You can come here.
Yogi: … ladies, Shri Mataji, they all say that they have got used to You, and they love You very much…
Shri Mataji: Thank you.
Yogi: … and they want You to stay in Tunisia (Shri Mataji laughs), they want You to buy a residence – they want to buy a residence for You, so You can come more often (applause).
Shri Mataji: I see here, these are the kindest words I’ve ever heard. I’ve been here for a short time, but I really felt so close to you. You are so sensitive and so sensible and you didn’t mind whatever I’ve told you. I’m a Mother, and I have to tell you the truth and you shouldn’t feel bad if you think that I’m your Mother. That is a Mother’s job; she has to have patience, love, affection and also wisdom.
Perhaps we women don’t realize how important we are. Men can do politics, economics and all the mess of it, but women are responsible for the society. They can make the society or mar the society.
Wherever there are good societies, where children are good, families are good, and there is peace, there the women are responsible. The woman who has the job of rocking a child can rule the world. In no way a woman should think she is less than man.
Woman is like this Mother Earth and man is like the sun. Look at the Mother Earth: how She bears us, how we torture her, and how She looks after us. So the greatest quality of a woman is her tolerance, her love and her wisdom. I forgot to bring a newspaper which I wanted to show you, in which English newspaper they have shown a woman looking like a man and having few hair here coming on the face, like a man.
I would hate to be a man because a man has to please so many bosses and fight in life, while woman has to please only one; that is her husband.
So the society can only be made alright by human beings who are not men, but women.
You all can play a very great part, and a great role in your country also. Like when we had to fight the British I was only about 17, 18 years of age and I was very active. They gave me electric shocks, they made me sleep on the ice, did all kinds of things, but that time our country had to be free. But now, we have to be free from our ego and conditionings.
I’m very happy to see that you ladies here in a Muslim country, so intelligent, so advanced and so free, but in My own country there is another law for Muslims.
There’s not a common law and the condition of Muslim women is horrible. Once I was going to a place in My car and it failed on the way. And I got down from the car and there were many ladies, Muslims, ill-clad, very poor, were standing for the water from a tap.
They were all Muslims. Then I started talking to them. So they told Me that each one of them had been divorced by their husbands, they had “talaq, talaq, talaq”, finished. And some of them had even 24 children and they were just left on the lurch.
They have no way of eating any sensible food, no house, no water; so they live on the street. There were more than hundred women there and their children, and only one tap of water.
Then there was one lady called Shah Bano.
She was divorced like this and she had no way to live. So she went to some reformers [She repeats to the translator: “Reformers”], and requested them to put her case in the court, I mean, charitable organization. And this case went up to the High Court.
The High Court decided that her husband has to support her because when she married, her husband was a poor man so the man had – was very little amount; but then he became very rich, and drove her out with all her children. So now she had no way where to go. So the court decided on the common law, that she should be given one third of the income and one house should be given to her to live, because she was on the street!
Though the High Court did that, our Prime Minister who was Rajiv Gandhi, he was threatened by Muslims that “if you give money to Shah Bano we will not vote for Congress”. So the Shah Bano case was dismissed and Rajiv Gandhi said that even if one Muslim man says that ‘Alright, Shah Bano should get the money,’ then I will support the case. But no Muslim man in India supported this poor lady, no Muslim. Immediately she was helped by some charitable institution. Such fear in the minds of many also that if they had supported her case they, they would have been killed or fatwa on them.
Worse is the case in Bangladesh, [She repeats to the translator: “worse is the case in Bangladesh.”]. In one week, four ladies were buried half-naked into the Mother Earth and were stoned by people because their husbands said that they were looking at other men, you see.
Ultimately these women committed suicide. Then that you must have heard about a lady from Bangladesh; Talisma (should actually be ‘Taslima’ – ed) She’s now hiding in Sweden because she said that it’s better that we revise Koran and this harshness on women is too much and we have to work it out. So she had to run away to Sweden. Now they want her back in Bangladesh to prosecute her because there is fatwa on her. They may kill her the same way.
If you see, all over the world, Muslim women are the most tortured ones. It could not have been Mohammed Sahib who would have allowed such nonsense. He talked of Rahim and Rahimat.
The condition of these women, even in Arabic countries, is very bad. There are thousands of French women as keeps in Riyadh, thousands and the poor Arabic ladies are tortured. There’s a reaction to it also. In Arabia there are some rich widows who actually take away young boys and imprison them in their palaces. And also horrible things.
Once an Indian boy, married to one, was captured and he was arrested and kept with these ladies. They used him for one month and he came out like a mad man. We know him.
This kind of thing still going on in modern times. Now when I went to Turkey I was happy to see that Kemal Pasha Ataturk, Kemal Pasha has done a good work for ladies there. He really gave them dignity and equal rights, but unfortunately – I don’t know why – the German culture has come in Turkey; German culture.
So they import even the cakes from Germany, even the cakes, while, while Turkish food is excellent [Repeats to lady translator: “Turkish food is excellent”]. They import their clothes from Germany; everything from Germany, as if Germans are something coming from heavens. I asked them ‘Why do you do it?’ so they said, ‘If we are like this then our men will respect us.’ I couldn’t understand because after all men are created by mothers.
What discipline you give to your children should be Tunisian or Turkish, your children. They must respect your culture and not that of Germany or of France.
Whatever dress we wear is traditional from days together, thousands of years we’ve been wearing sari. Actually by travelling it’s little awkward with sari. But I can never wear jeans, whatever you may try, because this is our tradition and in our tradition, the way a woman is respectable has to be in sari.
In some cities before marriage they do wear every kind of dress, but after marriage they assume the position as a Gruha Lakshmi, meaning the goddess of the household.
She is the goddess and if she is the goddess, then all kinds of blessings come on that family. We have seen our experiences that if the woman is a Gruha Lakshmi in the pattern of Fatima, then all the good can come to that family. I went to your bazaar and bought some traditional dresses and all these girls from all over the world are wearing these dresses. Not only that they look very nice, but also, they look like ladies, you see.
There’s nothing to learn from French. If you want to know about French you’d better read Moliere or you can read Maupassant or Emile Zola. They have brought out the nonsense of French families and the woman are so aggressive that men have to go on dancing behind them. We can see from these, from these writers; they have brought out so many things. As a result, men have become very ugly in a way, because Sartre, a horrible fellow, you must have heard his name, Sartre, he’s written such horrible things that you can’t even read one page.
French women have ruined their society completely. You see the first time when I went to France they told me, ‘Mother, You look so happy and joyous, but you shouldn’t look like that, because French think you are ignoramus.’ So I started my lecture with ‘Les Miserables.’ I said, “After every lamppost you have a pub, and after every 11th lamppost you have a prostitute. Then what will happen? You are going to be miserable”. I’ve heard recently that the housewife could be partly a prostitute in France. (Inaudible words)
They say they are very tolerant society. No wonder there are so many children taking to drugs, to violence, to AIDS; all kinds of things. I blame their mothers because they are busy with their own decorations and things. They have no time for their children.
After I started Sahaja Yoga I was surprised: were many people coming from France, many girls; and they told Me that, ‘Mother, in France we have been always around the hotels.’ ‘For what?’ To, to go into the hotels and available to their customers, from the college and they were on the list of many girls who could accompany men for their holidays.
Absolutely common, it’s nothing new, it is I’m telling you at least ten years back it was going on. I mean, in such an immoral country of immoral mothers, what would happen to children?
There was one bank robber, and this bank robber was shown on the television before the magistrate and he was boasting how he went through a tunnel into the bank and then he stole. What was his name?
Yogi: Spaggiari.
Shri Mataji: They say, you see, he’s famous like Mahatma Gandhi. (Laughter, Shri Mataji laughs.) And then he was telling, he was, he told that, ‘I went to the window and opened it and jumped out’. And he told the magistrate, ‘Should I show you how I do it?’ We saw it on the television, saw it on the television. He went to the window, opened the window, and jumped down, and escaped! (Laughter.) And there was one fellow waiting for him on a motorbike down below. And he became a hero; national hero. (Laughter.) Next year I went there, all the young boys and girls were wearing his photograph on their t-shirts. The French women don’t realize what they have done to their own children, to their own family.
We, we started a school in India just for children who are in these Western countries and are suffering.
And we had one French boy, Johan, and his grandparents reported to the police, so five newspaper people came, entered inside the premises without permission and tortured that boy: asked thousand questions and the government forced us to send that child back to France. Then the boy told Me, ‘Mother, I don’t want to stay in France.’ He wrote to the magistrate, ‘I don’t want to stay in France,’ and he was asked questions by Freudian psychologist, Freudian.
You must be knowing that Freud used to teach that the first relationship, bad relation, starts with mother and they said, ‘This boy is no good as a French one, because he has no open heart.’ But this boy told me that in the school when the children go to the bathroom they open their clothes and do all kinds of things which he doesn’t like. They take drugs, hashish, everything, in school and still they want to keep the child there.
But these five newspaper people were brought to courts in India because it was trespass, and they are fighting their case in India. They made hell for our life. All the French countries were informed that we had a school where you take children from Europe, as if it is – as if it is a crime, because, you see, we are not Europeans, you see. But our Indian children studied in England, everywhere, no objection.
Now they have made it compulsory that if you come to France you must speak in French. No other language, as if French language is the last word on literature. All this should tell you that nothing to learn from French. They have ruined their society completely, entirely. No marriage is successful, children are immoral, mothers are immoral, husbands are immoral… I used to say it is the gate of hell.
You won’t believe, in the beginning, every year I used to go three times to Paris. Now we have thousands who are Sahaja Yogis because there were so many who didn’t want this, who didn’t like this. There were so many who didn’t want their children to be ruined, who wanted to have a happy married life.
So now we have lots of people who are Sahaja Yogis. And it’s surprising; they are very great Sahaja Yogis.
Why I’m telling you this, that do not get enamored by the culture of these people. This is the best way you can put down all the fundamentalist, you see. What they are saying, that these are not traditional Muslims, they do not dress up like traditional Muslims, their lives are not like ours and all that.
They say they are French; they are not Muslims. So if you show them that we respect our culture and we don’t care for other cultures, immediately you’ll be amazed that they will have no platform. What will they fight? What will they say against you people who are sensible? As I told you yesterday, we cannot have fundamentalists because we Indian women are extremely traditional.
We, we respect our culture and our chastity (inaudible words), not in the history alone, but even today. So nobody can say, even Ayatollah Khomeini used to say that Indian women are more than Muslims, used to say that, because we believe in all the auspiciousness of religion, auspiciousness. Thank God there is a word for ‘auspiciousness’ in French (laughter, Shri Mataji laughs).
So I’m just telling you that this is just the beginning. Djamel came to Sahaja Yoga long time back. And I think about 16, 17 years back he told Me, ‘Mother, there are dangerous things are happening in Algeria.’ I said, ‘What?’ ‘That the women and young girls are taking to French style of life; that women want to expose their body, and do all kinds of such things.’ I said, ‘Very dangerous! Because fundamentalists will take advantage of this’. And that’s what exactly has happened after that. Now, Algeria is in the grip of fundamentalists. They don’t know what to do, how to get out of it.
So imagine if you people decide to live like traditional Muslim living, just for the sake of it, or, as in American language: ‘for the heck of it.’ (Shri Mataji laughs) So they cannot say. What objection they can have?
And with Sahaja Yoga you can beat them hollow. Sahaja Yoga is the middle path. Neither it is the extreme West, and nor the extreme fundamentalism. It is a very essence of religion, that we don’t do anything wrong. We don’t take to anything that is wrong, or bad, or irreligious. In this country the women look very sensible and you can take a lead for the whole world of the Muslim women.
Poor one Talisma is there, who is suffering, but here you are so many. If you take up upon yourself that “we will show them that we are really religious people”, you can solve the problem of fundamentalism all over the world. This is in your hands.
Also, to bring your men-folk to the central path. They should not go to the extreme of the left side. Like Mohammed Sahib has said, you should not drink alcohol.
Now what Christians say, that Christ went to attend a wedding and there He made water into wine. So among Christians it is not sinful to drink wine – very nice, you see. (Laughter, Shri Mataji laughs) That may be the reason Mohammed Sahib has said, ‘No wine, no alcohol.’
Now, I, I had an interview, in Italy, and the gentleman is a very famous man, who interviewed Me, and he said, ‘Mother, first You give me realization, then I’ll interview You”. Romano Battaglia his name is. I said, ‘Alright, get some water,’ and I put My hand in it. He drank it, he said, ‘This tastes like wine!’ I said ‘That’s what Christ did.’ Wine, which is described in the Bible, is the grape juice – fresh grape juice. In Hebrew, in Hebrew language, it’s called wine.
Now, you can’t make alcohol instantaneously, can you? It has to rot, rot, and rot. The more it rots, the better it is. The more it smells, the better it is.
What about cheese? Horrible. There are some good cheeses, but some of them, some of the French, are horribly smelling, I tell you. And the mouth also smells (laughter), and they have a habit of kissing you (laughter) Oh, very difficult. Their hands smell because they don’t use water at all, their mouth smells.
You know My husband was Secretary General, General, of the International Maritime Organization and sometimes we had to shake hands with 700 people at a time, going in, and coming out of a drunken state, imagine it. [She repeats to lady translator: “Shake hands. ”]. And my husband would say, ‘Baba, please press my hand; it’s paining.’ I said, ‘Mine is paining also.’ (Laughter.) I said, ‘Why can’t you say ‘namaste’?’ They said, my husband said, ‘They’ll think something wrong with you, you are mentally upset, if you say namaste.’
You see, they don’t like anything like that and men kiss and women also kiss. I don’t mind the women but men also kiss, you know? (Laughter) I don’t know what to say. For us, it’s absolutely absurd.
Now the new trend has started in the West, as you know. Not very new, but about ten years back, first time. Is you must have heard of horrible things of homosexuality, I can’t understand.
You know, if they make a goal, the fellow gets very excited, is the one who makes the goal, but he can’t hug others; he has to touch with the hands. Sometimes after making the goal, he is so excited that he runs out of the field, but he can’t hug anyone, you know, he cannot express.
The women can’t hug men. Women cannot hug men. They can only hug… no, women can’t hug women, they can only hug men.
If you go to a hotel with your father, you can’t stay in the same room. With your brother also you can’t stay, but any other man you can stay, that is allowed. Such absurd people they are. (Shri Mataji laughs)
Now there was a law in England that a man can stay only with a woman, but no woman can stay with woman. Especially with parents it was so absurd, that a girl, daughter, cannot stay with the father.
We Indians can’t understand. We are not, we are not so advanced. We don’t know, we don’t know these things (laughter). They cannot trust a father with the daughter, but then I saw on the television that so many fathers and mothers and sons and daughters were fighting, that they should be allowed to have relationship with each other. These are parallel: English ones.
There was a protest and a big strike of these stupid people. In thousands mothers wanted to have relations with their daughters, and the fathers wanted to have relations with – no (?), mothers wanted to have with the sons, and the fathers wanted to have with their daughters. It is the worst decadent society. And anything stupid comes like that they accept, because they are very self-destructive.
Now there are so many, 80 persons, who have come from Western countries. For them it’s a historical event to have a breakthrough in the all kinds of problems the Muslims are having.
They all will not object to what I’m saying because they’ve seen it; they know what it is. There is no respect of women. They want to put them as nude women everywhere and women also accept. Even the parents accept. Just making money out of their body all the time. No self-respect, no sense of decency.
Women have no respect. They want everybody to look at them all the time. In India any man tries to look at a woman she’ll go and give him two slaps. That way, I must say, they have saved our country.
So, with such a decadent society, who have no moral values, who are getting destroyed, we have to learn a lesson. It starts slowly and then it, they start slipping down.
So now you have to realize your importance as the mothers of this country. Whatever Mohammed Sahib has done is to respect women. He has written more about Christ’s Mother than it is written in the Bible. For Her chastity, nobody should challenge, He says.
In Sahaja Yoga you will know who They were: who was Fatima, who was Hazrat Ali, who was Mohammed Sahib. You will now everything. All the subtle side of these great Incarnations you will know, and you will get proof. It is a tangible thing, absolutely tangible. Thus you have to believe, but for that, first you should grow in Sahaja Yoga. In India women are regarded as the Shakti, the power.
I can see it here that, you see, because of you people showing your personality, this country is very balanced. So just think of your responsibility. You can do a lot to change the fate of many women who are suffering.
I was very happy to come here. Not only that, but the vibrations were so great and flowing, that I just couldn’t even sit. So many were there, these Divine vibrations.
You are people of great Divine value; respect yourself. Respect your value system. Tell your children how to be respectable. You can do it. I know you have great capacity.
I am all with you. As you have suggested, I may buy a residence here for Myself.
(Great outbursts of joy and applause from audience.)
I have few presents for you, very few, because I didn’t know I’ll meet so many ladies here.
You see, I couldn’t get something very nice but whatever I have, this is for you, and this stone is what you call the golden topaz, and this is for the guru, is the master. All the leaders are given this.
What’s this?
Yogini: …Mecca…
Shri Mataji: I know.
Yogi: She wants to give You this from – this is from Mecca, here. From Mecca.
Shri Mataji: I know, beautiful. Thank you very much. Now. This one is… no, no, for the other lady, what’s her name? The one who has organized this. The behind… (Applause). This is the thing…
(The yogini says in French that, as Mother has said that we have be loyal towards ourselves, therefore she has to be also loyal to the other participants, and starts listing the ladies who have helped in the organization of the seminar. Then distribution of the presents starts)
These are all Indian, Indian, this thing, but this is also Western… (applause as Mother gives gift). You see, (mossia?) they call it, a kind of a small flower.
Who… She likes roses? This is a rose. (Applause) Good? This is musk, musk, musk. Musk. (Applause.)
Now who…. This is sandalwood. (Applause)
No, no, no… This you can give lastly… even gargar.
Now we have so many, for all the ladies.
This is lotus. For the younger girls we’ll give the Western… for the younger girls (Shri Mataji laughs).
[End of audio]