Diwali Puja: Expression of Love Novi Ligure (Italy)

Diwali Puja, Novi Ligure, Italy, October 25th, 1998 I am overjoyed really today to see you all here to celebrate the Diwali Puja. We were to be in Portugal but it was not so – so we are here. Diwali Puja is a very small puja but extremely significant. Firstly in Diwali, the first day they buy something for the family. You can – maybe some cooking utensil could be, an ornament for the wife or something like that. Because that is the day of housewife. And that day is to be celebrated as the housewife’s, I should say, homage to her. As a result you know in India even now housewives are very much respected. Actually they are respected all over. You will be amazed that even in the protocol of the government receptions anywhere the wife is very important. And where she is sitting, what is her position is very important. Even today in the most modern and advanced countries also they have a special respect for the housewife. The housewife may not be educated, she may be a very simple woman, she may not be very modern. There was an experience for Me: in London we had a program where we all were invited, and the head of the delegation, his wife was missing. So they asked Me, “Where is she?” Because there is a seat for her, she has to sit there. I said, “I don’t know, I didn’t see her. She must be somewhere here.” Read More …

Easter Puja: Materialism Ashram of Pichini, Rome (Italy)

Easter Puja,  Ashram of Pichini, Rome (Italy), April 19th, 1987 Happy Easter to all of you! It’s a great day to come to Rome to celebrate the Resurrection of Christ. Now we have to do the Resurrection of Christianity, which is just moving in the opposite direction of Christ’s Resurrection. As you know that Christ was just Chaitanya, but He came in the body of Chaitanya. The whole body was made of Chaitanya, and He resurrected Himself to show to the world that you can resurrect yourself also, if you can fill your body with Chaitanya. There is always a struggle between the matter and the Spirit. In human life what we see that matter is all the time trying to take over the Spirit. And that is how we fail in our Resurrection. We fail in our Resurrection because we give way to matter. We have come from matter – easy go back to matter. But all the Christian nations have taken to the material development – identification with the matter, not the sublimation of the matter. Why we have gone wrong is because matter has become so important to us. We are so much identified with the matter, with our body, with all that is material for us. People are so much worried about the material things. What I find that the whole culture has become materialistic and they’re absolutely ashamed about it, but still they continue, the way it is so shameful and so degrading. It degrades human Read More …

Going Against God’s Will Hampstead Town Hall Centre, Hampstead (England)

“Going against God’s will”, Public Programme, Hampstead, London (England), 31 May 1983. From the very outset, I would like to apologise for being so late today, but I realised that when something is very important, from God’s point of view, all the negative forces work out their plans, how to delay, how to put obstructions, how to bring hindrances, how to deviate. It’s very surprising. And, today I think would be best if I tell you about God’s will and how we human beings try to go against it all the time. God’s will is extremely simple. He is Divine Love. He is Compassion. He’s Ocean of Mercy, and in His Mercy and in Compassion He created this world, and then created human beings just to give them the highest thing in life – joy; joy which is [a] single thing, it does not have duality, like sorrow and happiness, like day and night. But how we are anti-joy and anti-God and why it happens, we’ll have to see that. Our awareness, as you know, grows through our brain, downward. And whatever starts growing downward makes us away from God, in a way. Ultimately, we have to achieve God but first we go little bit away from that awareness, of being one with God, just to understand that freedom has to be used properly. Without that training, without that education, [it’s] no use giving freedom to human beings. You have seen the free countries, what have they achieved? In their Read More …