Baba Mama
Going to Chhindwara, little did I realise that the event coming up was quite cosmic in proportions – Good Friday, Persian New Year, Prophet Mohammed’s Birthday and, of course, Shri Mataji’s 85th birthday.
The celebration of Holi was expected on the day after Birthday Puja [celebration], so we dressed in our silks and other finest for the Puja, leaving “holi clothes” for the next day. Little did we realise that we were going to break into spontaneous Holi colour-smearing right after Puja.
Shri Mataji’s daughters, Sadhana Didi and Kalpana Didi, decided to play Holi with Shri Mataji right there after the birthday cake was cut. More Gulal (red powder for smearing on each other) was vibrated by Shri Mataji. The Indian yogis spared no time mixing the vibrated red powder with tons more, making packets and distributing it right away to a rapturous crowd of more than 20,000.
A new movie on Shri Mataji’s childhood was premiered just before the Puja. In February this year, Shri Mataji gave a 3-hour interview, reminiscing about her childhood and the house in Chhindwara where she was born. The house is a shrine restored without replacing most of its vibrated elements: the floor on which Mother took Her first steps, etc.
The house was a hospital for a long time. During this time, many years ago, Baba Mama [Shri Mataji’s youngest brother] took Sahaja Yogis to the building and asked them to check vibrations in various rooms to find the room where Shri Mataji was born. This Sahaja Yogi recollected that they passed many rooms before coming to a small, abandoned room which was quite cobwebbed. It gave vibrational evidence that Baba Mama confirmed as the birth place of Shri Mataji.
After the puja, Holi celebrations resumed with the folksy charm of Mukhiraam and Dr. Rajesh’s songs about Holi. It was quite a coincidence to celebrate Holi in the state of India where Holi is celebrated quite intensely: Madhya Pradesh.
The highlight of Birthday Puja was Shri Mataji’s power of transforming the remote puja site in Linga village near Chhindwara, into a hospitable place for thousands in a matter of weeks.
Ruthvick
The following is a beautiful talk by Baba Mama, Shri Mataji’s beloved brother who brought the creative arts, especially music, to the forefront in Sahaja Yoga. He encouraged and inspired Sahaja Yogis to greater and greater creative heights.
You believe that God is omnipresent, omnipotent and all-pervading. In fact, you believe that He is in every atom. As natural corollary of this belief, you must also know that God knows what you want or what your need is. If the first proposition is true, then second proposition has to be true. It would follow, therefore, that those who know that God is omnipotent and all-pervading are bound to accept that God is all-knowledgeable and therefore is aware of all your problems.
In spite of this fact, we always go to God with certain expectations. Expectations can be of various types, but are basically self-centred or are pertaining to people or relations you are attached to, and then you pray to God that He should grant you a particular relief, or a job promotion, or some benefit to you or your near ones, etc. When you go with this frame of mind, then most of the time you are disappointed. Hypothetically speaking, if your expectations are symbolised in A and what you get is, let us say, B; then A minus B is your disappointment. And then you have to attribute this disappointment to someone. The pessimists will attribute it to their bad luck and will always curse themselves for not being worthy of God’s favour.
The optimists will straight away blame God Himself, and they say that this God is not good and that we should shift to some other God. In this way you keep on shifting from God to God, but disappointment is always there. This may even make you anti-God and an atheist, ultimately. Now take a case where you do not go to God with any expectations. Therefore, the expectations are zero, and let us say that you get B as the reward. Therefore, B minus zero is B which is always surplus.
You should also distinguish between your expectations and desires, and pure desires. Pure desire is always for the benefit of the other, and therefore you are entitled to carry pure desires to the Divinity. I once remember, I was travelling with Shri Mataji from Sydney to Canberra, and it was very hot and the air-conditioning of the car was thoroughly inadequate. Shri Mataji was sweating and I was fanning Her with a newspaper, but I somehow felt that the heat was oppressive and that the weather should give some respite to Her. Reading my mind, She asked me a question as to what I was thinking, to which I told Her frankly that I was unable to see Her suffer because of heat. So She told me that I should make a pure desire and the weather would change. So I closed my eyes and made a pure desire that the weather should change.
Within five minutes, dark clouds gathered from nowhere and it started raining, and the intensity of heat was thus reduced and Shri Mataji said, “See, if you make a pure desire then it will always be fulfilled.”
Coming back to expectations, I may mention here that once you are connected to your Divinity through your Self Realisation, you should feel assured that you have been admitted into the Kingdom of God, that you are His subject and therefore He is duty-bound to look after you, irrespective of what you expect of Him. So please do not expect… Only pray to Shri Mataji that She should make you what She wants you to be.
Baba Mama, 1999