Shri Mataji
When you first attend a Sahaja Yoga public program, you receive your Self-realisation. After this you will be able to meditate immediately. Before you leave the program, you will be shown how to meditate at home each day. Also, you will receive a diagram of the Subtle Body, showing the seven energy centres or chakras, the central channel which goes up the spine, the left and right channels and the places on your hands where the chakras are connected to the nerve endings in your hands.
Self-realisation is the term we give to the initial complete rising of the Kundalini within a person’s spine and out of the top of the head. The Kundalini (a Sanskrit word meaning coils) is the creative power, or energy, which has created this world and everything in it. It is the female energy of the Divine, God, Brahma, Jahweh, or whatever name is used in the great religions to denote the highest spiritual Power.
When a baby is in the womb, it is the Kundalini that creates it. Babies stop growing about two weeks before they are due to be born, and that is when the Kundalini coils up in the sacrum bone at the base of the spine.
So, everyone has his or her own Kundalini coiled up in the sacrum bone. When the time comes in your personal evolution to grow from being a limited human being operating from the level of the brain, to an unlimited spiritual being operating from the level of your own Spirit (the reflection of the Divine), the force that created you, your Kundalini, makes that growth happen. It is your own desire that causes this. Your personal desire to have something more than you have now – some sort of inner peace – will cause your Kundalini to rise up the central channel, inside your spine.
This happens at the Sahaja Yoga program because the person conducting the program is guiding you at this stage. As you are desiring it to happen, your Kundalini will rise through your chakras and out of the top of your head, connecting you to the Collective Unconscious, gently and sweetly. At this point you may feel a cool breeze coming out of the top of your head. This cool breeze is referred to in the scriptures of the world’s major religions, as being the sign of the “twice-born”, i.e. people whose Kundalinis have risen. The cool breeze you can feel is your Kundalini. Thousands of people are now at the stage of their personal evolution where this happens. The founder of Sahaja Yoga, Shri Mataji, calls this mass level of evolution “the blossom time”.
The Collective Unconscious was so named by the psychologist, Dr Carl Jung, because it is the area from which we receive all the wisdom of the Divine. Some of the dreams we receive come from the Collective Unconscious; some do not. The wisdom received by the great souls who wrote the scriptures came to them from the Collective Unconscious when they were in meditation.
When your Kundalini comes up it connects you to the Collective Unconscious. When you learn, at Sahaja Yoga programs, how to keep your Kundalini up all the time, you will receive wisdom from your meditation, which will improve your daily life.
The most important time of your life now is when you receive your Self-realisation. You have it because you deserve it. It is wonderfully exciting to have one’s Self-realisation and be continually growing spiritually.
The essence of all the religions, of all the prophets, of all the incarnations, is compassion and is placed in this chakra of Heart. Thus we understand that in the second era now, we have to have compassion. It’s the manifestation now of the compassion.
If God Almighty had no compassion, He would not have created this great universe. Actually, His power, or the Adi Shakti, is the embodiment of his compassion. And this compassion has brought forth all the evolution to the human level…
And compassion is always completely covered with forgiveness, so you can see the trinity meets at this point… God Almighty, who is the witness; the Mother, who is the compassion; and the Child who is the forgiveness – all of them meet at the Heart chakra in the Sahasrara…
The next era is of compassion… All the chakras that are within us are to be looked after, to pay attention to every chakra and put compassion, the feeling of compassion on these chakras…
To manifest compassion, you have to ask nothing but one thing, that, “O God of innocence, give innocence to all the people of the world.”
Shri Mataji, 1984
The reason for dreams is that when you are sleeping your attention moves either to the supra-conscious side or to the subconscious side. Your attention starts moving and then you start seeing things which are connected with your subconscious or your collective subconscious…. You may go into your supra-conscious side where you see your future and all these things.
Bu the reason why you get your dreams actually is that the unconscious pushes within you, or we can say the Kundalini or your Atma is trying to guide you to the right path. And how does it guide you to the right path, is through dreams.
But these are misunderstood. How are you guided by these dreams? Understand these dreams, because you are so confused.
First you go deep into yourself and you touch the unconscious, sushupti. But from there, you come out. And then when you are coming out, you touch your subconscious or maybe the supra-conscious. So whatever anabhuti [feeling] you had or whatever experience you had of the depth of the sushupti gets confused. And you don’t know what you dreamt and you don’t understand and you forget it.
But those who are realised souls, go to their sushupti and see exactly what they have to know. Like many people in Bombay when I came, they didn’t know I was coming, but they were at the airport because they got the dream.
So at the sushupti level, at the deep level, you get the communication with God if you know how to go in and come out fully aware. But if you get confused with supra-conscious or subconscious areas … your chitta [attention] is not so clearcut. Then there can be a big confusion.
Shri Mataji, 1983
The whole human race should take to Kundalini awakening because it will assist us not only in sorting out our immediate health and family problems, but also in resolving global problems. There is only this power and mechanism within us that works out things for our individual benevolence, auspiciously and equitably.
At the moment we are not in control of many aspects of our lives. We are at the mercy of technology. That technology we collectively created now sits on our heads like tonnes of bricks. Entire economies of countries are run by it. Our attention is completely tied up with wrestling with the monster. You will be able to relate to what I mean if you’ve found yourself waiting, for example, on-line to be served by an internet service provider, a bank, a government department or a telephone company.
The bank and government departments come under the area of the Nabhi Chakra, the sustenance and satisfaction aspect of our well-being. The internet and telephone come under the Vishuddhi Chakra, the communication and collective consciousness-awareness aspect of our well-being. By handing over these two vital components of our well-being to technology, we are now running inside an invisible landscape of the mind. This mental realm is totally unreal. It is made up of what we Think. It is devoid of the realities that go with living. There is no way out of this complicated maze except via our Kundalini as She is beyond the maze. She is the All-pervading Power of God’s Love who is all knowledge, all know-how.
Within Kundalini are the many aspects of our being: these are our chakras and nadis (channels). We need to have the Kundalini flowing through them so that Her profound knowledge, Her know-how, can become ours. We can then use this knowledge to re-evaluate what we are doing.
The human form is made up of mental, emotional and physical bodies within the five sheaths. Currently, we are running with the mental body way out in front, and the emotional and physical bodies lagging far behind. They are out of alignment with each other. The five sheaths, reflected within us as our five senses, are in total confusion. This is the stress factor.
The enlightening effects of the Kundalini which triggers the light of the Atma/Sprit to shine in our attention, provides the only solution for us. As individuals make up the collective, it is at the individual level that we must first work things out.
The tremendous healing powers of the Kundalini are there to be used by us. We need to obtain our Self-realisation. Sahaja Yoga is the method, devised by Shri Mataji, which allows ordinary individuals to become enlightened. During the process of Self-realisation, the Kundalini rises from Her abode in the triangular Sacrum bone and pours Her rays of love onto our chakras, threading them like pearls; onto the nadis, drawing them back into alignment; and onto the five sheaths, purifying and soothing them down. In this way, the mind, the emotions and the physical body are restored to their equilibrium.
We need to be in equilibrium to stop what we are doing and change how we are doing things. The human race has run aground in all areas of endeavour by becoming too top-heavy, with the roots withered. Connection to the Kundalini restores the mechanism within us, allowing the roots to become reconnected to the “tree”. The sap – the love that nurtures – can then be redistributed more evenly throughout the various parts, producing a much more beautiful, balanced, healthy and vital tree.
The subtle system in Sahaja Yoga is made up of the chakras and nadis, and is the Tree of Life. Many saints, poets, authors, artists, craftsmen and craftswomen have portrayed it in their works. The Kundalini is the sap that flows, nourishing, sustaining and evolving.
We can take the vital lines of communication and technology that our lives are bound up with to a new level where our well-being is, once more, the centre of consideration. This can only happen if we obtain our Self-realisation.
Greta More
© 2007
(Photograph: world-mysteries.com)