Editor
When you have your self-realisation and have that connection with the All-pervading Power of Divine Love, all of the elements of nature help you to feel that love flowing through you.?
For me, sitting on the Mother Earth is very powerful. First you sit down and place both hands down on the Earth and pray to the Mother Earth to take away all of your problems. Then ask her to kindly fill your entire being with her gravity and her quality of purity and innocence. Slowly you feel yourself becoming thoughtless, and your whole body is soothed down by a beautiful flow of vibrations. This is the energy from the Mother Earth nurturing you and soothing down your whole Subtle System. After some time which feels timeless you feel that connection with the Divine Love so strongly. This is when you grow spiritually and become one with truth.?
Just as we have our own Kundalini energy which nurtures us, so too does the Mother Earth. We are all connected.
L Lingard
My dread of death and birth came to an end
When the Lord in his glorious hue
Revealed himself to me.
His light shone within me
And darkness disappeared.
When I contemplated within I obtained
The rare gem of the Lord’s Name;
In the wake of my bliss
All miseries fled away.
The jewel of my mind became absorbed
In the Lord’s love within;
Whatever now happens, O Lord.
I accept as Thy will.
One who lives in Thy will
Merges in Sahaj.
Says Kabir: My sins have become ineffective,
And my soul is suffused by the One
Who is the life of the entire creation.
Kabir
In this poem Kabir describes the devotee’s state of bliss on attaining God-realisation. His rounds of transmigration finally come to an end, the dark shadows of doubt and delusion melt away and he is free from all miseries. His mind, initially an obstacle on the spiritual path, becomes an ally when it starts relishing the spiritual joy within. Purified, it becomes still; from tinsel it emerges as a jewel. Realising the supreme authority of the Lord, the devotee accepts all that comes in his life as the Lord’s will, and thereby merges into the state of Sahaj.
Recently there was a gathering in London of members of the international Sahaja Yoga theatre company, known as the Theatre of Eternal Values (TEV). As next year is the 250th anniversary of the birth of William Blake, TEV’s next production will be a show based on his life and work.
On Friday a group from TEV went to the Clore Gallery, part of Tate Britain, where they were allowed to view, up close, around 30 original Blake drawings, paintings and engravings not currently shown to the general public. These included several of the Illustrations to Dante’s Divine Comedy, as well as versions of The Simoniac Pope, A Vision of the Last Judgement, Whirlwind of Lovers, The River of Life, The Four and Twenty Elders and many others.
The pictures were placed, unprotected, on stands where viewers could sit and get as close as they liked. The vibrations were astonishing, and to see these works in their original form, rather than reprinted in a book, was like being in Blake’s own presence. The drawings seemed so fresh and alive, that one could examine every intimate detail, imagining that his hands had made those impressions just moments before. The apparent ease of his complex artistry fills the heart with awe, and one goes immediately into meditation.
The group then went to the public areas where just a few more of Blake’s paintings were displayed, including Elohim Creating Adam, Newton and Nebuchadnezzar.
Before we went into the gallery, although there was no rain, several of us witnessed a tiny rainbow directly overhead, lining the clouds that were being illuminated by the afternoon sun. It is extremely unusual to see such a rainbow directly above. In one of Blake’s paintings, The Four and Twenty Elders, the exact same image of a tiny rainbow appears at the top of the painting.
The following day the group enjoyed a guided tour of many of the William Blake sites in Central London, seeing where he had lived and worked, where he had taken his birth and where he died. We felt a shower of vibrations throughout the day as we walked in Blake’s footsteps.
The afternoon concluded with a visit to Bunhill Fields Cemetery in City Road, where a headstone in the middle of a paved pathway reads, “NEARBY LIE THE REMAINS OF THE POET * PAINTER WILLIAM BLAKE”. This is the only memorial to him.
There we were met by Carol Garrido who was able to take us to the unmarked spot beneath a tree where Blake is actually buried. Despite efforts by scholars and others over the years, the exact site had never been discovered until Carol and her husband, Luis, set out to find it a couple of years ago.
Carol unfolded for the group the wonderful story. Carol and Luis discovered the spot purely through vibrations. “We were suddenly aware of a fragrance, as from flowers, but there was no source nearby that could explain it,” explained Carol. Afterwards they were able to prove the location of Blake’s grave historically through many months of painstaking research and detective work. The proof, which has been accepted officially by the Blake Society as well as by the Corporation of the City of London, confirmed exactly the spot where the vibrations had led them.
The aim is that by 28 November 2007, the 250th anniversary of William Blake’s birth, the grave itself should be marked with a proper memorial.
On 14 October 2006 the opening premiere of the movie about the life and work of Shri Mataji, “Freedom and Liberation”, took place in the ARRI movie theatre in Munich. Munich is an important film production point in Germany, and hosts more companies producing technical film equipment than Hollywood.
Carolin Dassel, the writer and director of the movie, has worked relentlessly for the last two years to realize this incredible piece of work, based on the idea of Philip Zeiss. Carolin started the first shooting in September 2003 in Cabella with her film crew. This included a two-hour interview with Shri Mataji and her husband, Sir CP Srivastava, in the Palazzo Doria Castle. It was literally the last public interview that Shri Mataji gave. Then Carolin and her team shot for several weeks in India in Ganapatipule, Pune, Delhi, the Sahaja Yoga health centre in Vashi, and many more places. Interviews with Shri Mataji’s daughters, Kalpana and Sadana, give us a very personal glimpse of the family life of Shri Mataji.
The film was produced on state-of-the-art professional standard (Super 16mm) film to ensure maximum quality, with some inserts shot in Super8 black and white. The film also includes some original footage of Shri Mataji’s talks on video.
Together with Sepp Reidinger, head of several technical departments at ARRI Munich, the production company, DEVI-Film, was set up at the beginning of production. Funding for the film came from the Film and TV Fund of Bavaria, the public TV program, Bayerischer Rundfunk, and the Munich Film Academy where Carolin graduated with this film.
With the support of Sepp Reidinger, the film premiere was held in the prestigious ARRI cinema in the heart of Munich. An audience of about three hundred people waited eagerly for the movie to start. The audience greatly enjoyed the film, and some were deeply touched.
After the screening Thomas Menge, who hosted the event, introduced Carolin who called the crew and some of the interviewed people on stage. After that, Thomas led a small program for the remaining audience of about one hundred people who had the chance to get their self-realisation. Many of them actually felt the cool breeze.
The official TV screening was held on 22 October 2006 on Bayerischer Rundfunk, the third program of Public German Television.
More information is available on the official website (for the time being in German), www.nirmaladevi-film.de.