Mana and Prana

The link between them is easy to observe. When we are emotionally stirred, the breath quickens at once and the whole body reacts. When we are frightened, the breath races. Tears come; the face changes. Sadness shows not only at the heart but at the throat, and attention scatters. Every movement of feeling passes into the breath, and from there into the whole physical system.

Before realisation, the two are bound to each other, and we are tossed between them. Unless they are brought to dissolve into one, says Shri Mataji, we are left halfway. Meditation is the place where this dissolving happens.

The first step is simply to notice which side is out of place at this moment. Perhaps the emotions are agitated; perhaps, on the contrary, the left side feels frozen and heavy. Restore the balance in the way Sahaja Yogis know, raising the side that is low and calming the one that is excessive, and then feel the vibrations on the hands. When the cool breeze begins to flow, you are ready.

A comfortable seat

Asked whether one should meditate in the lotus posture, Shri Mataji answers that it is fine as an exercise, but not for meditation. For meditation she recommends sahaj asana: a natural, comfortable sitting position, with the legs as relaxed as possible. Nothing should strain.

Once balanced, turn your attention to the emotions. Do not push them away; watch them. Let them rise, one wave after another, and as they rise, place them at the Lotus Feet of the Mother.

Then something changes. Touched by that power, the emotions begin to dissolve and to expand. You find you are no longer carried by them; you are in control of them. And precisely because they are now enlightened, they become powerful: "they have a power to solve the problem," as if they had reached a shore where they received the light.

When the heart is shaken

The evening had begun with distress. A report on the cruelty suffered by children in a single city had kept Shri Mataji awake the whole night, and everyone in the room was shaken. She uses this very emotion as the example. Anyone would be stirred by such things. Rather than letting the feeling turn into helpless anguish or anger, place it, with the problem itself, at the Lotus Feet. The emotion then becomes enlightened, and what was a wound becomes a force capable of acting on its cause.

This is possible, she explains, because one is no longer an isolated individual. One has entered the collective, samashti, and it is from there that emotion acquires its power.

The ancient way of joining the two powers is through the breath; that is why the traditions practise pranayama. Here the key is attention. Keep your attention on the emotions, aware of them, and at the same time watch your breathing, so that the connection between the two is established. Then let the breath slow down.

At that point, says Shri Mataji, "the laya takes place between your Prana and your Mana. Both the Shaktis become one." Laya is absorption, dissolution: the two powers that were pulling us left and right merge into a single stillness.

In that silence, she invites a small experiment: think of your intellect, try to find it. "Where is my intellect?" It is lost; it is not working. Try again. It is working, but it has become something else: it has become the samashti, the collective. Attention has entered the intellect and enlightened it.

There is no thought. This exercise, she says, establishes thoughtless awareness within us.

Perhaps, she laughs, the best mantra to give people is simply this: "Don't think! Don't think! Don't think!"

It is meant with humour, and seriously. People are cured, uplifted, and then go away to think about it, and close their minds again. Nothing was ever healed by thinking.

Living, and loving

Silence is not dryness. In a public talk in London in 1977, Shri Mataji called realisation "a loving happening. It is not 'living' but living plus loving. Because, if emotionally you are dry, then it doesn't work out." This is why the emotions are enlightened rather than suppressed: the left side, mana, must stay alive for the meeting with prana to take place.

She described the way it then unfolds. From thoughtless awareness one opens into collective consciousness; from there into doubtless awareness, nirvikalpa; and beyond, into the complete Self, where only one thing remains: "I am." Gradually one starts feeling the love, and with it joys of many kinds, "beautiful, tranquil." What does one do in that state? "Just love."

From bondage to the collective

The Vedas call human beings pashu, a word also used for animals. It means one who is bound: bound by temper, by lust, by greed, by hatred, by the senses. With realisation, the eyes open. A new kind of person appears, one who begins to feel the collective, the samashti.

But realisation is not the only power one can live on. Other powers lie underneath, and they unfold as the old bondage is overcome, in many ways at once.

Entering another's being

Consider what has become ordinary. "Your aura can enter into another personality," feel that person's vibrations, know what is troubling them, raise their Kundalini, give them realisation. Think of someone who is not realised: can they tell what is wrong with another person in that way? This is a siddhi, a spiritual power, and it has been given together with all the others, at once. "But we take it for granted, we don't realise it's such a big power you have got."

Easy to receive, demanding to keep

"In Sahaja Yoga it is easy to get realization, no doubt, but to maintain it and to rise is not so simple." The Kundalini helps a great deal, but one still has to work it out. This is why she insists on coming to the collective meetings, not as an obligation, but for one's own sake: what has been cured can fall sick again.

Shri Mataji distinguishes two kinds of seekers. Some seek only for themselves: once they have their realisation, they are content. Others carry within them the principle of the Guru, and work for the whole. These, she notes, are always fewer.

Yet this is where the powers find their meaning. The all-pervading Power, she says, is in its very principle collective compassion. If we have not become that, we have not achieved much.

The circle closes on the practice itself. The emotion stirred by the suffering of others, enlightened in meditation, becomes compassion that acts; the powers received at realisation become means of service; and the silence found between mana and prana becomes a place from which to give.

To place one's emotions at the Lotus Feet is not to stop caring. It is to let one's care become powerful.

This page is based on a draft transcript of an informal session. Words in quotation marks are Shri Mataji's; the rest is a faithful paraphrase. See also The Culture of the Spirit, on compassion and sympathy.