Easter puja. Istanbul (Turkey), 22 April 2001.

Today we have gathered here to do the puja of Easter.

In the history of spirituality, it is one of the greatest days when we find Christ rose from the dead. It is very significant and symbolic that in Sahaja Yoga, also what we have done, is to rise from the dead – into life. It is to be understood that resurrection is the message for all of us, for the whole world. We have to resurrect ourselves. There was no need for Jesus to do that. But He was a model, model of a saint, model of a realised soul, model of a person who came all the way from the heavens to save us.

So this resurrection is also part and parcel of our lives. It is so symbolic, so very symbolic, that we were, in our consciousness, lost people. We had no control over ourselves as to know the way our mind told us to go. We had no balance with the mind and our physical being, no more balance of any kind in life and used to go at random, whichever way we thought was good. There was no wisdom about it.

As it is, Jesus was the incarnation of Shri Ganesha. It’s a very difficult task He has performed. He used to convince people who were absolutely ignorant about spirituality, who just knew about money and nothing else. He came in those days when people had no idea about spirituality at all, at all. But, somehow, it all worked out in such a beautiful manner that people have started understanding that He communicated that resurrection is the important point.

He knew when the resurrection takes place, the kundalini rises and connects you to the Divine Power, which is all-pervading. Then you start understanding that there’s a life beyond the life that you have made. There’s another type of life, a higher type of life, which connects you to the Divine Power. And then this Divine Power gives you the Absolute Truth. If you grow more and more, you will know Absolute Truth because so far you don’t know.

So, we have been doing wrong things, doing in the wrong way, getting lost. Also, with listening to people who were just boasting and were saying they know about the Truth. But when you yourself discover the Truth, you are a different person. Your discovery is so innate and so real that you discard all that is unreal. Very easily you can discard it and you don’t find it difficult to get rid of it.

In this conference, as you know, we have more of Muslim people, Islamic people, who have been so much misguided all over the world. They have been told all kinds of stories and hatred among people or others. This Islamic bhoots is going from bad to worse and people want to believe in it. Especially in my country there’s a very, very big problem with these Islamic influence because they are nowhere near Islam and nothing to do with Mohammed-sahib, but they are thinking that they’re correct and what they’re doing is correct. They’re trying to spread Muslim religion. What’s the use? What’s the purpose? I can’t understand. Unless and until you get your realisation, you are a useless human being, good for nothing. You can hate others, you can beat others, you can kill others and it’s going on all over the place. Surprising thing that all this nonsense is going on everywhere in the world in the name of Mohammed-sahib. So in one shot, one side you put Christ for another crucifixion, on the other side Mohammed-sahib for his crucifixion. They cannot fight, you see. They’re on the same line. They’re on the same understanding. How can they fight if their disciples are fighting so badly all over that sometimes it really brings you, when you only hear about how people are fighting for nonsense.

In His life, Christ did not marry. He did not and He never needed also. He did not marry. And at a very young age He was crucified. That crucifixion shows that He was not afraid of death and He knew that He would resurrect. This He had to do through the Agnya Chakra. Agnya Chakra is, as you know, is very constricted. And through that constriction He had to go through, for which He had to get killed. And He accepted that. He accepted with full heart that that’s the ordeal He has to go through.

In the same way, your Sahasrara can be only achieved through the Agnya and the Agnya has to be opened. But for that, you don’t have to get hanged, you don’t have to be crucified, but you have to crucify your ego. The first point is ego. We have such ego that you cannot get rid of it. We have subtle and subtle ways of having egos like “I have come from this country, I must have ego,” “I come from this kind of family, I must have ego.” All kinds of stupid things they do, which are really sinful and they think they’re very great if they have ego. This ego, you have to fight, otherwise your resurrection is not possible, your attention cannot pass through the Agnya Chakra. As long as they have given us satanic identifications, it will not work out. It’s a very subtle happening — very, very subtle happening — that you should see your own ego. After Realisation I said, ‡You know yourself.’ The first thing you will know is that you have too much of conditioning and too much of ego.

Like in India, I find people have so much conditioning of their so-called rituals — very ritualistic. Everything is a ritual with them and they cannot get out of it. That’s all the conditioning is, but ego is the worst part in the West, more in the West, where I don’t know what they think of themselves. In that ego they get lost. And they cannot see what’s wrong with them, with their own community, with their own people, who claim to be such and such a thing.

So this ego has really dominated so much. So far in the history, so many countries, nations, have been really tortured and butchered because of the ego of some people. Once they will realise how horrible they have been, how satanic they have been, how aggressive they have been, they’ll give it up. But they have to realise and, for that, I said, ‡You have to have your resurrection.’ Without the resurrection, you will not know at all, you’ll not be conscious of what wrong you have been doing. It is very, very surprising how people go on doing wrong things, advertise them and come out as egos. When I read the newspapers, I say, ‡They’re all stupid people all around.’ — absolutely very, very stupid in the sense that they have no understanding of what they are doing. They are just killing people, enjoying the killing and they’re so violent it is impossible to understand what sort of life they are going to have after death – even before death.

In this whole thing, you see the whole picture of the world. You’ll find all such countries who are still fighting for nonsense are very, very poor, are having very bad time and they are about to be completely finished. But they don’t want to see why they are suffering, why what’s happening, what is the problem. In the countries where there is affluence, lots of affluence, they also got lost. They too need resurrection. They have to rise above materialism and see for themselves what they’re doing is wrong. They are like, actually, cheats. They are cheating the society all the time. I think the whole economics is based on cheating, how you can cheat people. And in that cheating, you don’t even realise that you are doing something to make people so insecure. So this money business, also, is such that it makes you very greedy and you start giving too much importance to money.

This is one thing to be understood from the life of Christ. He was a very simple, poor man, son of a carpenter. And to Him, money was nothing but an absolutely useless thing. To Him, Spirit was everything. And He was preaching and telling people that ‡You must have spiritual awakening. Very important. Try to understand that there is life beyond all this and then you should get the best results out of this life, which you are just wasting.’ He was so intelligent and the way He discussed with all those great fathers from the Church about the religion and all that, it’s amazing how a little boy could understand so deeply about religion. He was a small boy at that time, no doubt, but He was a person from the Divine, created by the Divine. He was Shri Ganesha. He’s Aum. He’s knowledge, everything. Despite that, nobody people recognised Him because they cannot recognise the Truth. They cannot understand the Truth. They are so stupid that they can only take to something that is falsehood, that is bad. And ultimately they crucified Him.

This is a funny world where saints are crucified and the devils are given so much importance. But now the time has come for all these people who are doing wrong, who are trying to strangle others, will be strangled. They will be all exposed. I’ve told you this is the year of exposure. They’ll be all exposed if they are doing all such things of aggression and of greed. All their greed will be completely exposed and they will be thrown into hell. This is what I felt for this year especially.

This has to happen, so best thing is to take to your resurrection, take to your higher life and see for yourself ‡What are you doing?’ What is the greatest thing to have? Money? Power? It doesn’t help anyone. People don’t have great name with that. Nobody remembers anybody who’s a drunkard. They don’t have statues of the drunkard people.

So who achieves something higher? Who achieves great name like Christ? Those who have sacrificed their lives for the betterment of humanity, for helping them. But why did they do it? Because they loved human beings. They loved human being. When you love others, then you start thinking about ‡what is the best, what can you do the best for them?’

Now there are parents who are ignorant. They don’t know what to do for their children, so they try to dazzle the children with lots of things and food and this and that. But children, if they are not brought up with love, they’ll have no consideration whatsoever. They’ll go astray. But, in case they know somebody loves, for that love’s sake they will not go astray. They will not do wrong things.

So the greatest thing about Christ or anyone of these great people is that they loved. They loved the people. They loved all human beings. That is what we have to do. Do we love ourselves, only our families, only our country? Or [do] we love the whole world? Do we live for the whole world or we live only for our limited circles. We should find out ‡What are our aspirations? What are our desires? What do we want to have?’ If you are really thinking of other people as your own, with love, it’s so joy giving. You may have any amount of ornaments, may have any amount of houses, any property, any money, you may have any power, you might be the prime minister of this or the prime minister of another, but if you have no love for others, you cannot enjoy yourself. Your enjoyment only comes through love, that your capacity to love. There’s no other way you can enjoy yourself. You may have television, you may have music, you may go for dinner parties, everything, but still nothing penetrates. Nothing is there to give you real joy. That’s what Christ has taught us, that He had love for all the human beings and He wanted to prepare them for the Resurrection. He came before Sahaja Yoga came in. If He had not done that job, it would have been difficult for Me to achieve it. So He had prepared the stage for Sahaja Yoga.

That now your Agnyas are opened and through the Agnya you can take the kundalini upward through the Sahasrara and open the fontanel bone area. All this He thought of was a part and parcel of His love for people. And that’s what He did. And He cared for so many people. He’s such a help to us in Sahaja Yoga. Without Him, I don’t know how could I have really broken the Agnya Chakra. Because, as you know, Agnya is such a horrible thing. People go on doing wrong things through Agnya and they never feel bad about it, never think they have done anything wrong, they have harmed anyone, they have tortured anybody or they have made others cry. They go on with their Agnya, but they have no heart to feel what they have been up to. It’s Christ only. He shows us that you break your Agnya, pass through your Agnya. Here they call it as a third eye. The other day one lady came with a magazine of ‡Third Eye’ and when I told her what it is she was surprised.

If your third eye is to be opened means Christ is to be awakened within you, on your Agnya. That’s the third eye. Now what He does by — He creates a witness state within you. You become the witness of the whole drama. You start seeing the whole drama and you are amazed how you are silent, thoughtlessly aware and how you are seeing everything without reacting.

This is where we have to believe that Christ has taken His form in our Agnya. His birth is there. His resurrection is there, all that we have got it already worked out. Like a machinery, the whole being’s made and we have different, different chakras and centres. This is the last, most difficult centre, which was really opened out by Jesus Christ. He’s the one who dared it and who did it so beautifully that we too have now capacity to look at our ego, to see for ourselves, ‡What are we doing? Why do we think we are something very exceptional?’

Once you start seeing the ego, you will be amazed. Whatever work you may do, whatever you may do, you’ll never be tired. We get tired because all the time ego is saying, ‡Oh, you are so great. You are doing so much work for others. You have achieved so much,’ all that. So then the ego goes on all the time pointing out all this false greatness about us and we get tired that ‡We are so great and why should we work? Why should we help others?’ Like that, funny ideas start falling in our mind and what we do is that we feel very tired out. Fighting with those ideas, we feel very tired.

Now, our whole situation is made much simpler by the life of Christ. But look at the Christian nations. They are juxtaposition. They are on the other side of Christ’s teachings. They are the most aggressive countries. They aggress people so much that in the whole world they are regarded as something very great and like they’re the kings or something. I know this because we were in slavery in India and I was surprised that these people came from outside and were nicely become master. They were masters and used to treat us so badly, used to really make slaves out of us.

So the slavery started and then all such things started in India, as well as abroad. Everywhere people started thinking that they are great – and they were Christians. They used to go to church and from the church what did they learn? How to dominate others, how to show them down, how to take away all that belongs to the poorer people or to the less stronger people. It’s a thing we have seen ourselves.

So this happens to people who have this ego, very, very powerful. And they try to take over things that belong to other countries. What right have they got to take somebody’s country, I can’t understand. All these complications are there. In the modern time they’re the worst. It was never so bad as it is today. We had Hitler. We had people of that kind once in a while. But the whole world was together on one side. Nobody was confused. Nobody knew that we have to fight all the time. Now, maybe because of newspapers, I don’t know why, nobody knows which side is correct, which is not correct. It’s being such a dispute about everything and people don’t try to understand the reality of the problem. And they’re killing left and right all kinds of people. It is very surprising how, in this world, human beings are killing each other much more than the animals do. We are the worst, worse than the animals, that we are killing ourselves, our own clan, our own people. In India also we are surprised how they are killing — Kashmiris are killing Kashmiris.

In the same way, everywhere you go, you find they are fighting among themselves. If you go to Africa, you will be surprised how they are fighting among themselves. I mean, now the principle of fighting has come up very strong and people think fighting is a very important part of human beings. Anything you say, immediately fighting will start.

Now look at Christ and His life. He didn’t fight anyone. He didn’t argue with anyone and He accepted, accepted the death on the cross. He accepted it because He knew that it is for the resurrection, for not only His, [but] for the resurrection of the whole world.

And this is what we have to learn. We have to be the models of resurrection. We see all these things happening. We’re upset also about it and when after Realisation people see that surroundings are full of this, their own people are like this, they start fighting for nothing at all and they realise that ‡These are my own people who are doing this nonsense.’ You can’t correct it. You can’t do anything.

But if your Agnya is clear, if your ego is finished, if there is no domination of any kind in your mind – and also [if] your conditioning is finished, then you become the channel of creating peace. You are the one, wherever you are, you can create peace. This is something, a special thing for Sahaja Yogis to know, that if you have no Agnya, you may look like you are suffering, but you are not. You are doing it for others, for surroundings, for your friends, for your neighbours, you can say for your countrymen, for all of them. When you have no Agnya you become such a big source of Divine Force that it can work out anything. It can change, transform people. It can happen like that and it has happened to many people before, individually. But now collectively I’m sure all this anger, all this temperament of aggression and all these challenges from all these nasty people can be brought to an end. With the people who have no ego, with the people who are not justifying their wrong things, with the people who have a clear cut idea as to what is the Truth. They may speak. They may not speak. It makes no difference. Whatever they are, but they are such a big shield against those aggressive forces, which are ruining the peace of the world.

So Christ did it for the peace, to bring peace on this Earth. It’s very important there should be peace, but if there is no peace within, how can you have peace outside. It’s very surprising how so many countries who talk of peace are engaged in wars and fighting. How can you have like that? They have no solution. They don’t understand. The only solution I find is to transform them in Sahaja Yoga. That’s the only one. You have to take out their ego. You can see in many people, it resists. It is there and working. This ego is a very, very dangerous thing people have.

So this one was the one which was really handled by Jesus. He tried to neutralise your ego. He tried to take out the problems of the ego to make you a humble, mild personality. To say that a humble and mild person is always intra [into] danger is a wrong thing to say. See them. When the people are aggressive and people are trying to dominate, the humble man is the winner, not the one who dominates.

So main thing is now to watch out for your Mr. Ego, how it works. It’s very interesting, very interesting to see how it makes a drama. how it tries to cover up things, how he tries to show that you are superior to others. It is to be seen. It is to be seen very clearly what this Agnya is up to. It’s a very, very mischievous thing, very harmful thing and most embarrassing also.

So these egoistical people are like that and ultimately they become nervous people — very nervous and think no end of themselves. First they try to control others. But then they are needed to be controlled. They are like that because they are all the time trying to control others and they don’t know how to control themselves.

Who is the child crying so much? Why is he crying? Must be something wrong. Normally children keep very quiet in my lecture.

Now this ego is also like this child. It doesn’t hear anything, doesn’t understand anything. It just goes on disturbing everything. In the same way, our ego also behaves, without having any collective knowledge, without having ‡What are you up to? What you are doing? Who, are you harming?’ — nothing, just a satisfaction, such a blind satisfaction that you are doing something to assert your personality. You see, if you just watch your ego, you’ll laugh and enjoy the buffoon, you’ll see what a thing it is. ‡It has been befooling me so much, what a horrible thing this ego was.’ At the time when Christ was there, the people have such a lot of ego. Nobody talked about it. Nobody said anything.

So this was the best way that He could show us that you can break your Agnya by sacrificing your life — not in Sahaja Yoga, not in Sahaj Yoga. But in a way, in Sahaja Yoga also, if you have an ego you should first of all [be in] the witness state. It’s the other way round. If you have ego, you cannot have witness state. If you cannot have witness state, you can have improve your ego. It’s a very confusing thing. Now supposing you develop a very big ego, then you go on justifying it all the time. You think, ‡Whatever I have done is good. After all, it’s very good for everyone, good for me.’ Self certification starts. With that, you can never see what you are doing to yourself, what you are doing to others. It’s something, such a blind-folded nonsense.

When this ego comes up in that way, then, I mean, we can have Hitlers, we can have all kinds of things. Any small point they take and form a group of people doing this kind of thing – anything. They will say that ‡Now, we are people who are spiritual. So we have a group and we are spiritual people and whatever we do is the right.’ But who says it is right? By what law is it right? And we have had so many cults and this like that, everywhere, where people joined them, kill themselves, had all kinds of problems. How can that be spiritual? In spirituality the first and foremost thing is that the person becomes very meek, very humble, very humble. His heart — humility is the power. His humility is the one that works and his humility is the one that glorifies. It is not the aggression. See, Hitler came and died. Who worships him? Others also came. Like Mussolini came, died. Who worships? There are so many like that who came and went away. They don’t even want to have their statue, so bad as they were.

So those who have this ego are really very stupid people in the sense that they do all wrong, thinking it is the right thing to do. Ultimately, they are recognised as absolutely very, very wrong type of people. People don’t want to take their names even.

So the time can prove what are they and what they’re doing. It’s a very, very calculated work of the Divine. You shouldn’t play into the hands of their ego. Try to see yourself. ‡Oh, Mr Ego, so you are there.’ Try to watch. And that time, if you take the name of Jesus, ego will go away. Just say the mantra of Jesus and ego will disappear.

Another side of this horrible ego is the conditioning. That also has a very, very, very subtle — for example, supposing if somebody comes to your house and starts saying that ‡Ah, what a dirty carpet. I don’t like this colour. That thing I don’t like’ without understanding that you are hurting another person. Talking like that, he comes inside. And then, you see how stupid he has been because nobody likes such a person who is talking like that. But to him, it is very important that he should correct because he has a conditioning that a particular type of carpet is good and another is not. That conditioning works. And he goes on talking nonsense that ‡This is not good, that is not good.’ You cannot enjoy anything. You cannot enjoy anything. You go to any home, you don’t like it because there’s conditioning. You know of something else which is good. No – so they can’t enjoy. Everything they decide on their conditioning. [There] Is nothing independent. It has nothing to do with the intrinsic personality. Intrinsic value of that thing. Just like that, ‡Oh, I don’t like it.’ It’s not good. It should not be said by Sahaja Yogis. Never use this word. You can find out from Me. I never do that. Whatever it is I say, it’s all right. I never criticize it. This criticism business comes from this conditioning because you have had such conditioning. Supposing you are an Englishman you have English conditioning. Now, correction comes. Their cows got this disease. How did they get the disease when you are such perfect people? Then in Europe the animals got one disease. How is it they got this disease when you think you are the cleanest people living ever? Just watch out why? It’s all their own conditioning that ‡We know everything. We are the best in the whole world and we have a right to rule everyone.’ Now have it.

Now those who are very rich people, like America and all that, used to think no end of themselves. Now what has happened? Suddenly it has become a country where everybody has to pity. Why? What is the reason? Why suddenly it has happened? It’s always the nature which corrects you by giving the other side of it. Anything you try to boast of or you try to put your conditioning of others, you keep it – it comes up. It works in such a great manner that you can’t imagine. And then it does not work out, then there are earthquakes. All kinds of calamities come.

There were a group of people who were white-skinned near the River Mississippi and they were called as rednecks because it was always hot, their necks were always hot, they were such angry, hot-tempered people. And these rednecks were known to be very cruel. They used to kill people and put the blame on some other people from aboriginal people and arrest them and destroy them. It went on and on and on. But one day this Mississippi got flooded, so much flooded it entered all the houses of these rednecks, you see, and I saw them running away with all their belongings which they could not carry also. Some they were leaving behind, some they were running and, while running also, they were losing it. Like that, the whole chaos took place of these rednecks. And now, I am told, they are much better. All that nonsense they had of killing all the black people and torturing them, now has come on their heads. Mississippi has taught them a lesson.

So how the nature also doesn’t like conditioned people — conditioning is creating a big problem now, even now, in all the countries, like racialism. Racialism is a very bad conditioning. I mean, if somebody’s black or white or red, what does it matter? God has made that person. I always say that in America, if they removed all the people who are not white-skinned, what would be left there? They don’t know how to sing,. They don’t know how to play. They don’t know how to operate. All the Indian doctors and Indian nurses will come away and what will they do? Imagine, thinking no end of themselves, they are great racists. Even now, they are, but gradually they’ll definitely improve because they should know their deficiencies.

This world is one and you need people from every country to help each other. But this conditioning of thinking themselves to be something great is a very bad conditioning. It is a mixture of ego with conditioning, conditioning giving the ego that ‡we are the best.’ But I am very happy to know that after Realisation, it so happens that this resurrection, Sahaja Yogis start thinking, understanding what is wrong in their own community, what is the mistake they have been committing. They just become like that — alert. And they start telling they are the ones who are doing this kind of nonsense.

Imagine. It is very surprising how you become conscious of the defects of your own country. It is so important, is Agnya. That’s what I think Christ had realised, that Agnya should break. Unless and until Agnya breaks, people cannot go further and that’s why He crucified himself and then resurrected because without killing the Agnya, you cannot resurrect.

All these things have worked out so well now that the whole world is seeing you like a panoramic view, of complete destruction of the nonsense. They are seeing this very clearly and you see now these people who would not even look at us, who had a very stiff nose and stiff lips and stiff neck — all is relaxed. They are wondering why this is happening. ‡From when did we get this curse?’

So for the Europeans specially, they have to understand the beauty and the love and the greatness of other human beings and then that will so much satisfy them. Why there is so much problem now of this recession, how it is come. Recession is nothing. It is the same Mr. Ego. It is the same conditioning, which was like a snake was eating up. Now it has receded. It is full. It doesn’t need any more. It’s quite full. And maybe it is now in danger of getting indigestion, I think. So that these two snakes that were eating human beings are receded. It’s the best time where you can see the drama. Drama of ego and your conditioning. How these two things have eaten up human beings. One should feel shy. One should feel a little bit modest about it. When you are full of ego, you don’t even see anything. Or putting a conditioning on others, it’s horrible, I tell you. I can’t understand how can they put a conditioning on others.

It is now, you people all enjoy, say, for Indian music. But when the British were ruling us, they used to think it was a horrible noise going on. They could never understand. Now they are paying such a lot to attend the program for music. That is also a kind of a rebuff, but also they don’t understand. Still they will go because it’s regarded as a very big fashion to listen to Indian music. So it is your ego also is so stupid that God knows when it will give in. Today it will say, ‡This is the best thing.’ Tomorrow it will say, ‡No, no, no, no. We should take the other one. That’s much better.’ In this, I see, they have no discrimination. Basically, people have no discrimination. Those who have ego are indiscriminate. They cannot discriminate between evil and good. And such people have been now, thank God, have been punished quite a lot.

But it is the life of Christ, His model, proves that your resurrection is so essential, which is so innate, that unless and until you get it, you are lost. Whether it’s a country, whether it’s a person or any organisation. This ego that you have can ruin, ultimately, is now been proved, can completely take you away from reality. That is the thing that blinds you, which can — another ego can blind you also. Like we have those priests, we have those mullahs and all these people. They are the ones who have this tremendous power to misguide you because your ego has no discretion sense. It doesn’t even think like that. And when they are specially, not so much on the ego side, but on the conditioning side, it’s even much worse – much worse. Because when you are conditioned, you start believing into all kinds of nonsense. And you start ruining your health with that.

It is a very, very surprising thing how people understand and like things which are very destructive. But you can manage. These are the modern times, where you can advertise, you can do all kinds of enticement, everything and you can manage this Mr. Ego very well, which pampers you. In this pampering, ego gets completely drowned and it loses its control over its own personality. Thus, many by people get lost into it.

Now Christ has sacrificed His life and then He resurrected. In the same way, all such people who have ruined their lives have to come up through resurrection — there’s no other way out — through Sahaja Yoga. When you understand your own value, you’ll understand everything. Otherwise, what is it? You are looking through your eyes or somebody else’s eyes? You’re hearing through your ears or somebody else’s ear? It should be your own, so know thyself. When you know thyself, everything will work out very well. Out of this only, out of this category of people who know themselves, Sahaja Yoga can be built up — not by people who do not know themselves.

It’s a very, very long subject. I could go on on these two subjects, but the main thing is we have to be thankful to Christ for bringing this resurrection into play so that we get our discretion. Divine discretion, we’ll get it.

It’s such a struggle, such a path He created, that we could go through this ordeal very easily, which will kill our ego and our conditioning.

I am happy Sahaja Yogis will realise it and respect it within yourself, that you are seeing your ego and superego so clearly and that you could be above it.

May God bless you all.