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Sir C. P Srivastava’s Speech
Sydney Town Hall

6th February, 2006

Honoured and distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen,
Mr. Chris Kyriacou, the national Co-ordinator of Sahaja Yoga in Australia,
All members of the National Council for the advancement of Sahaja Yoga.
Ladies and gentlemen,

There are moments when it becomes difficult to express yourself, and this is one such moment.

I would like first of all to say how very, very grateful I am to all of you who are here to-day. I know how preoccupied you are. That you should find time to be with us to celebrate an occasion, which is twenty-five years of Sahaja Yoga, shows your keen interest in spirituality, in ethics and a good life. So I bow down to you again, and thank you very, very much for the great honour you have done Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi and myself, by being here to-day.

Very, very kind things have been said about me. They’re very kind. Please do not believe all that has been said. But what has been said about my wife is entirely true, and I’ll come back to that a little later.

First of all, I would like to tell you how wonderful the Sahaja Yogis of Australia are. You know, only a few weeks ago they invited us and she accepted the invitation, and within a period of about six weeks they all got together to transform a residence here into an ashram, and you have to see to believe what they have done. They have converted it into a little heaven on earth for their beloved Goddess and Mother. They’re so devoted, so true, so pure, that I bow down to them and each one of them, and convey my feelings of most abiding gratitude for the wonderful work they have done, for their marvellous hospitality, for their extreme kindness. They are my beloved people, and I call them angels. They are truly angels.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, I would like also to express my profound gratitude to Honourable Mr. Gough Whitlam, former Prime Minister of Australia. I had the honour of being received by him. I regard him as one of the most visionary leaders of our time, desperately needed by the world to-day. I thank him for very kind words about our visit here. And I extend the same gratitude to Honourable Kim Beazley, Leader of the Opposition in Australia; Honourable Morris Iemma, Premier of NSW; Honourable Alan Carpenter, Premier of Western Australia; Honourable Kate Ellis, Member for Adelaide, South Australia; Ms. Jule du Varrens, Director of the Institute of Communication Ethics; Mr. Peter Debnam, NSW Leader of the Opposition; and Lord Mayor, Clover Moore, City of Sydney. To all of them, our profound and deepest gratitude for the very kind words in which they have welcomed us here.

Ladies and gentlemen, I now come to what I wanted to mention to you. This is too important a gathering for me to miss the occasion, and I want to say what lies in my heart. But first I must tell you, this lady who is sitting here, my wife, for thirty-five years she has been running around the world, trying to convey a message, a message of love, of togetherness. Believe me, she has travelled by plane, by helicopter, by car, by bus, by bullock cart and on foot. She has gone to villages, to cities, and she has gone to many, many places in all the five continents, and she has done so out of a tremendous conviction within her that this world needs a new message. If the world has to live, has to survive, then something new has to be communicated to humankind. And with that belief in her, single-handed for many years, she went around; gradually Sahaja Yogis came along; what they saw, the worth of what she was saying, and to-day she has followers in eighty, ninety countries. Wherever I go there are Sahaja Yogis, Sahaja Yoginis, beloved children of hers, and what a wonderful thing she has done, what a wonder she has created. What is it? How do I see it, as her husband? Well then, I must say, for her to have been doing all this meant she has been away from me for a long, long time, but I knew that she was doing something wonderful work for the world, and so it was.

Now her message as I see it is simple, straight, and she says: all men and women and children of the world are the creation of one Almighty. Some people say: “My God is almighty”, others say: “My God is almighty”. By definition, you can’t have more than one Almighty. If you have two of them, neither of them will be almighty! So it’s as simple as that, and sometimes people don’t really see that. But she says: “First thing is, remember that there is only one Almighty, and that is the Almighty power of Divine love.” And then she says: “All persons who are here on this earth have been created by that Almighty.” Whether they are white or brown, or blue or yellow; whether they live in Africa or Australia or India or wherever, they’re all her children, are children of that Almighty power.

But if that is so, why not live together happily, peacefully? Why feel divided? Why feel one against the other? Now it’s one thing to believe, and she believes in that. She herself was born in a Christian family, I was born in a Hindu family, but we both believe in one Almighty power, one human family, and that’s how we are together. Now this is the message she has conveyed, and she has conveyed this to many audiences, saying: You are the creation of that Almighty, you are in His or Her image, and there is in you a congealed power which she can perhaps help to awaken. And when that is awakened, called Kundalini, then you are in communion with your Creator. And you’ll have a beautiful life then, given to ethics, morality, everything that is good. That is what it is, that’s what your destiny is. But if you want to be in communion, you can be in communion.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, the point I want to make to you is my own point. My point is, I have worked for India as a civil servant, and I have also had the privilege of working for the United Nations, as Secretary General of the International Maritime Organisation; and believe me, ladies and gentlemen, I tried to implement her ideas in my working at the United Nations level. You know the United Nations means many, many countries; countries of different growth of development, with different capability and so on and so forth, and they all come together to work together: it’s not an easy task. I was in the maritime world, and when I was elected Secretary General, I was the first from a developing country. All my predecessors had been Europeans, and people were surprised that someone from the developing world should come. The maritime scene at that time was dominated by the Western world, and the Organisation was known as a “rich man’s club”. And here was me: how could I be Secretary General of a rich man’s club, poor me? What a task it was!

I said: “Well, I have been elected so I must serve, and I must apply her message.” Her message was: everyone is the same, everyone is equal. So I made it a point to make every member state of the Organisation an equal member.They were not at that time equal. The rich countries who had shipping, they were dominating, for they had maritime expertise, many of the developing countries had not joined, and the problem was, how to make it a proper world organisation. So with that message in my heart I set about, went round, mentioned first to developed countries that it was in their interest to get the developing world in. They accepted that. It’s to their great credit that they came along, helping the developing countries to build up their own maritime expertise, to join the Organisation. Very soon they all came, and to-day it is one of the finest agencies, because it has the support of every member state of the world, every country. Now that is a premise on which I want to present an appeal to you, and the appeal is this:

The world, if you read newspapers, if you see, if you hear news, is in trouble. People are propagating hatred for each other. There’s violence in the world. What for? Why? Who will gain from that? If we are children of the same Almighty power, why can’t we live together? Why must we talk about differences? Why can’t we talk like she does of our togetherness? And it’s not an impossible dream. It is something which is achievable. But the world needs this message, her message, the message of love. And why I’m involved in to speak to you here, because I sincerely believe from my heart that in Australia there’s something unique. It’s not just to praise or flatter you, no. I would not say that if I didn’t believe it. But I believe it because I find in Australia the best of Occident, of the Western values. I’m a great admirer of Western values. I’m a proud Indian, I am proud of my heritage, but I am also a great admirer of the British people. They were rulers in India, well that’s different, but whenever you go to live in U.K. you find they’re full of values, of ethics, of rule of law, of decency. Now I find all of those values which I admire, here in Australia among Australians, but there’s something more, something more that you may not know, you may not see even, but I see, as a visitor; and that is a certain measure of Oriental dignity, humility, kindness, courtesy, and that combined creates a wonderful nation. Now here you have people coming from different countries, different origins. They’re all living together happily as Australians. This is her ideal, and that ideal I see in the political life of Australia. So I said: "Well, if I get a chance to speak about her message, why not here?”

So my appeal to you is this: she has done her job. She has for thirty-five years been running around. She has done her job, created Sahaja Yoga in eighty, ninety countries, and she has created beautiful things. Well, I’ll relate to you just one incident.

Some time ago we were in London, and one evening about twenty-five of her disciples were sitting round talking to her, and I was sitting by her side, looking round and seeing, and I began to wonder. In that gathering, (and believe me, ladies and gentlemen, it’s God’s truth), there were people who came from different countries, different walks of life, different colours of skin and different religions. Now one of them was a Catholic, one was a Protestant, one was a Jew, one was a Muslim, one was a Sikh, several were Hindus, but do you think they ever even remembered who they were before they came to Sahaja Yoga? No. They were all sitting there as Sahaja Yogis, citizens of the world, the beloved children of Shri Mataji. She had forgotten it, no difference. All together, from the heart.

Now, that kind of thing has happened, and I wanted to appeal to you, to beg of you to help this world. I assure you, the world is in trouble. Do you not see every evening what’s happening? People wanting to kill, terrorism, this, that and the rest. That has to be conquered, not by force. Force won’t work. You have to use force in certain situations, I’m not saying you cannot ever use it, but the only way for the people of the world to come together, is to come together on the basis of her philosophy, which is again based on ancient Indian philosophy: one Almighty, one human family, all to get together regardless of their colour of skin, regardless of their language, they all come together. Now if this is a message which you accept, then it must be propagated. But if this message is not given, if people don’t come to that conclusion, they continue to believe that they are different, A versus B, B versus C, there’s no end to trouble, and we have such means of destruction in this world that the world is threatened, the world is threatened to-day, the existence of the world. Let us not make light of that. It’s a very, very difficult situation. But there’s a saving for that. The saving is: let us all come together. And if you in Australia can accept first of all the sincerity of what I am saying, and then make it a mission of yours also, as she has made a mission of hers, then this visit will have been successful.

This is all that I wanted to mention to you. I know you have been here a long time. I don’t want to take up too much of your time, but if the good things have been said about me, I want to thank them very much. But all I can say is, they are nothing more than a reflection of what she has given to me. My heart has been converted by her. And before I close I’ll tell you one story of how I got converted. I’m a civil servant, I don’t ever believe in things unless I’m totally convinced. So when she said, thirty-five years ago: “I’m going to launch a movement, I’m going to change people,” I said: “Change people?” and I laughed. I said: “Do you really believe you can change people?” That’s how I began, a sceptic. But something happened and that changed me, and the story is very nice.

When I was elected to this office in London, Secretary General, I went and took up a residence, and she was with me. I took a residence just outside London, so I used to commute by train, and one evening when I came back from office I pushed the bell, the door opened, I went in, and I went to the drawing-room as we call it, or living-room of my house, and saw a young man, a young white gentleman sitting there reading a newspaper. And when I entered, he looked at me as if I was an intruder. I said: “I didn’t know that anyone was to come here.” And what baffled me even more was that he was wearing my kurta and pyjama! I said: “Something gone wrong with my head.” So I went to my wife. I said: “Do I see what I see? I see a young man sitting there. What’s this?”

She said: “Yes, yes, yes! There’s nothing wrong with that. You know I had gone to London, Piccadilly Circus, and there I saw a young man lying uncared for, sick, so I stepped out of the car and went to him. I said: ‘What’s the matter?’ He said: ‘We’re living in London without any care.’ So I said: ‘Would you like to be taken care of?’ So he said: ‘Yes.’ I said: ‘OK, get up, and come and sit in my car and come home.’”

She brought him home, and when he came home he had to be cleaned and washed. He didn’t have any clothes except mine. OK, so he was there, sitting in that fashion, and I loved her for that even more. I praised her. I said: “Wonderful that you did it!” And then, you see, we began to give Sahaj treatment to him. He was a young man, and after every week he began to change. He became flowered out. He had become addicted to drugs: drugs went away, drinks went away, and he flowered out into a beautiful, handsome young man, a new person. I said: “If this can happen to one, why not everyone?” So that converted me, and I became a Sahaja Yogi. That’s how it was.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, I won’t take any more of your time. I want to conclude by once again thanking you, expressing my profound and abiding gratitude to you for the time that you have, your precious time that you have given to us; but believe me, it fills my heart with a feeling of abiding gratitude, and if you will kindly consider my message – well, it’s not my message, it’s her message, I’m merely a carrier of that message – then maybe the efforts of those who are promoting Sahaja Yoga, they can be further enhanced, and from Australia maybe another message goes to the wider world: we’re all children of the same Almighty God, one God. Let’s live together, let’s love each other, let’s be brothers and sisters. Why have quarrel, why fight? Why not live together? That is the only way the world can live and survive and live happily.

Thank you all, ladies and gentlemen.

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