Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi

Purity is your Mother’s name [1]. You know that my name is purity. And this purity is such that it purifies everything. It just purifies. The purity should be such that it should purify; otherwise that purity has no meaning.

For example, a soap purifies, but you don’t purify the soap … Water is the purifier. Water purifies us physically. And also all our poisons are driven out of our liver by water. Water is a very great element in removing all problems [2]. You use water for so many things. You know how it works out.

So this Lakshmi [3], which is purification, was born out of water. That’s why she was called as Mary [4]. And I’m also called Nira [5], meaning “born out of water”.

So one has to understand … that we inculcate purity. We should not cheat ourselves. It is easy to cheat, but we should inculcate purity within ourselves as a matter of our own maturity, as our own decoration, as our own beauty and not just because it’s a laborious thing or it is a very hard thing. It is not like that. It should be achieved with great pleasure and happiness…

We like to have a bath or to be clean and to be presentable. In the same way, we should try to clean our thoughts. Just by paying attention to them, we can clean them. Thoughts must be made clean. First of all, why have thoughts at all? But even if you have, have clean and pure thoughts. Even if you have to have, don’t have thoughts full of arrogance, aggression or of fear…

Our purification of our mind comes through certain methods of understanding. First of the understandings one has to have is that we are born in a family, born in a society … So all these fixations have put into us a certain amount of impurities, which may give us ego, superego. Anything it might give us. So to keep it pure and simple, take to the water element [5] as much as you can. It helps both ways. It helps the ego. It helps the superego. Take to the water element. And that is what Lakshmi is…

Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi, Diwali Puja, 1981

Notes:
1. Shri Mataji’s name, “Nirmala”, means “pure”.
2. The element of water is used in simple cleansing practices in Sahaja Yoga.
3. The Goddess, Lakshmi,  is worshipped at the time of Diwali Puja. Lakshmi was born out of the sea.
4. The name, “Mary”, comes from the Latin word for sea.
5. “Nira” comes from Shri Mataji’s name, “Nirmala”.