Quotations
A wise man from India said, “Just as a mother protects, raises, and pampers her only child, in the same way you should encourage and protect in yourself the most precious of your possessions, your ability to love others.”
When we love others, and when we are loved, we feel good. This demonstrates that our true goodness is revealed only in love.
If you understand that love is the most important thing in the world, then when you meet someone, you should care not about their usefulness to you but how you can help them. If you do this, you accomplish a lot more than when you think only of yourself.
Why do I believe in the law of love and follow it? What will come of it? I don’t know. But I do know that the more I follow the law, the better it is for me and others.
Leo Tolstoy, Wise Thoughts for Every Day
I tell you the story of Markandeya. You see, his father had no children and the father and mother were unhappy. So they prayed to Shiva and they said that we want to have a son. Shiva said, “I’ll give you the son, but I will have to take him back after eight years. So he’ll only exist till he is about eight years of age.” So they gave that boon to him, plus this kind of a curse. The parents were very upset that, “our child will die after eight years of age,” very upset. But they found the child very bright, brilliant, and also shining and very religious.
One day he asked his father, “Why do you always so worry? I mean, after all, I am your son.” So they said that, “It is said so, eight years or sixteen years, something like that, now I will be losing you very soon. Who can surpass Shiva? So I cannot think we can really ask anyone to neutralize the curse upon us. If you are not born to us we would not have been so attached to you. Now you are born to us, we are so much attached to you.”
He was a very wise person. He said, “No, I know someone. I know Adi Shakti.” And he went to this place where you got to see this Saptashringi. There he prayed to Her. Nobody had prayed to Adi Shakti. They would pray to Jagadamba. They would pray to all others. To Adi Shakti, who is the God, he prayed to Her… She came there, appeared from the Mother Earth. She just came out and he prayed to Her. He prayed to Her and then the whole place became so vibrated that Shiva could not touch him.
Then he wrote all this Markandeya things. I mean, he was the first who wrote about Adi Shakti. All these things that you read about Shankaracharya, he took it from Markandeya. He was the first who wrote about Kundalini, the first about realization. He was the first who did all that …
So that’s the great part of Markandeya. He took his birth later on as Buddha. Then he took his birth as Adi Shankaracharya. It’s the same personality. But he was actually the son of Rama, to begin with. He was Luv and he went to Russia and that is why they are called as “Slavs” … Another son was Kush, who went to China. That is why they are called as “Kushan”. Then they incarnated again and again, also as Hassan and Hussain, as Mahavira and Buddha, as Adi Shankaracharya and Gyaneshwara, like that.
Shri Mataji, Vienna, 1988
The most beautiful word on the lips of mankind is the word “Mother,” and the most beautiful call is the call of “My mother.” It is a word full of hope and love, a sweet and kind word coming from the depths of the heart. The mother is everything – she is our consolation in sorrow, our hope in misery, and our strength in weakness. She is the source of love, mercy, sympathy, and forgiveness….
Everything in nature bespeaks the mother. The sun is the mother of earth and gives it its nourishment of heart; it never leaves the universe at night until it has put the earth to sleep to the song of the sea and the hymn of birds and brooks. And this earth is the mother of trees and flowers. It produces them, nurses them, and weans them. The trees and flowers become kind mothers of their great fruits and seeds. And the mother, the prototype of all existence, is the eternal spirit, full of beauty and love.
Kahlil Gibran
Once as a child I had read a story about some birds. A net was cast and so many doves, they were caught in the net and they discovered that, “We are misled, misguided.” They saw some grains and they were misguided. So how to get out of the net was impossible for them. It was an impossibility. One could not get out. One tried to get out, others got more entangled and he gets even worse.
So what to do? They all said, “Why not we all fly out with the net itself and then with our beaks we’ll cut out this net and we’ll be freed, but first get out from here. Put our energy together, all of us, and let’s fly out.” And that’s what they did. They spread their wings, all of them put together, and took off and off they went and they were freed.
Today’s Sahaja Yoga is that kind of a trick. One person cannot work it out. It is impossible. If one person has to do it, it’s an impossibility…. One has to become a whole group to lift up the society higher, so that you can really get rid of the shackles of this bondage.
Shri Mataji, 1982