Growing Together

The Diwali of 1980 fell on the day when, in India, sisters honour their brothers and brothers offer a gift to their sisters as a sign of their love. Shri Mataji takes this family feast as the key to the whole collective life of Sahaja Yoga.

"And the brotherhood and sisterhood is the base of our Sahaj Yoga collectivity."

This love asks for nothing in return. It is pure, and it rests on a simple recognition: "And as there is understanding, complete understanding, between the brother and sister in a family, one has to know we are all part and parcel of a family, born of the same Mother."

Nine years later, in France, she says it again: "After all, we are all human beings made by one God. And we are all Sahaja Yogis created by one Mother."

A relationship to be discovered

She speaks of it as a sweetness that many have never tasted: "It’s a very sweet relationship which you have not enjoyed unfortunately. But in India we have. Our brothers will give up their lives for us. And we will give our lives for our brothers."

Its condition is respect: "You must respect! If there is no mutual respect, this brother and sister relationship is not there."

In a family of brothers and sisters, nobody needs to stand out. The work is done together, and Shri Mataji already names the quality that will carry it: friendship.

"All of you have to work it out together and find out a solution working out together in complete friendship and unison."

She describes what this means in daily life: "All of you have to be supporting each other, helping to each other, not shouting at each other or getting angry with each other; trusting each other, not finding faults; treating each other with respect and love."

Behind it lies a recognition that changes everything: "You are all Saints, why don’t you recognise it? How can you insult a saint?"

The plants brought inside

She tells a story from her own house. Some indoor plants, put out for the summer, seemed dead after the first cold night. The servant thought they would never grow again. "I said, “You get four [or] five of them, put them together in one thing.” And they started growing well."

"Because whatever is missing in one person, you support from the another person. And this support is so natural and spontaneous which flows."

Correcting the other is the opposite movement, and it costs both sides: "If you try to correct others then you are draining out your energy and the energy of another person. Just try to support that person. That’s how it works out. And that’s how it sustains, it’s nourishing."

In July 1989, before yogis gathered from many countries, Shri Mataji goes to the root of collective life.

"But the basis of collectivity, the foundation of collectivity is very deep; and the deep understanding can only tell you that the basis of collectivity is detached love. Love is the only way."

Attached love shrinks: "It starts becoming smaller and smaller, then a person just starts loving oneself only." What keeps love from staying detached are our conditionings.

Yesterday is finished

The first is the culture of revenge, which keeps us living in the past. She recalls the Buddha, approached by a man who had insulted him the day before and came back to apologise: "Yesterday is finished now. You are now with me today. So, why are you talking about yesterday? It’s finished!"

Neither tense nor lethargic

The second is the pull towards extremes, either tension and rigid formality, or lethargy and confusion. Between the two lies Sahaja Yoga: "So, it has to be a very relaxed rapport between us, but relaxed never means lethargic, it doesn’t mean [that]."

She points to the flowers in front of her. No petal matches another, and yet: "There is oneness in them that they all want to give us joy. But with tension you cannot give joy."

"I tell you the only worry I have, if I have any, is this: that my children should love each other."

A friend is the one to whom we bring our worries: "If we have worries, we always tell to our friends but not to persons of acquaintance." Shri Mataji asks her children to be such friends to one another.

"Friendship is such that you could share your secrets, you could share your problems. You do that with me, and why not with each other?"

She places this bond above all others: "I think the relationship of friendship is even higher than any other relationship we could think of, because there is nothing to be gained out of our friendship." And she gives its mark: "And a friend is the one who is always, for no rhyme and reason, concerned about his friend."

What was once rare becomes ordinary: "Before Sahaja Yoga, you could have only one friend or at the most two. Three meant a crowd! You cannot have three persons as your friends. But in Sahaja Yoga, we are all friends, pure friendship."

Two stories

She remembers her father’s friend, a strict Brahmin and the head of her school, who moved into the hostel to look after her during her exams while her father was away, and secretly cooked eggs for her every morning, breaking his own rules out of friendship.

And she tells her father’s story of a son who boasted of his twenty friends. Asked to shelter a man who claimed to have committed a murder, all twenty closed their door. The father’s one friend opened his, offered his wife’s jewels, and proposed to take the crime upon himself. "Then the father said, “See now, this is my friend. You had twenty friends and I have only one friend!”"

"This is his friendship, and this kind of a friendship we Sahaja Yogis should have. I mean with a friend you cannot be tense, you cannot be! That is the first sign."

The two talks, nine years apart, meet on one point: the love that unites brothers, sisters and friends does not bind them.

"Love not of mesmerism, but of freedom. In freedom you must love each other. I never take away your freedom, that’s one thing, whether you fall or rise. First thing is for your freedom."

Shri Mataji is lucid about the difficulty. Under a spell, people easily fall in love with each other; in freedom, each one follows his own temperament, and the group no longer grows together. "You must know there must be something within you which is keeping you out from collectivity."

In 1989 she describes the way through: "Even if you have to argue, argue. It doesn’t matter. Even if you have a different view, it’s all right. But, you should not try to impose yourself on your friend, nor your friend should try to impose on you, but try to understand each other. That’s how we are going to learn such a lot."

"I hope you understand that love means complete freedom: to yourself and to others."

Such freedom opens the space for real reliance: "There’s an openness between one friend and another friend. There’s no closed-ness, there’s no tension, there’s no formality. And reliance, so much so that you can talk to them about what you want, what is your need and what problems you have."

Every living being builds the shelter in which it grows. The bird builds a nest, where the young stay together until they can fly. For the human being, says Blake, that shelter is friendship. Shri Mataji gives the same image, drawn from the gardener’s craft.

"You see, when we have got a small seed and we have to make them into saplings, we never put them separately we put them together, in a small block. If you put them separately they will never come up. Then they are kept in that condition together, till they grow. When they are grown, then only they are taken from that collective group and put separately. Have you not seen this happening? And this is what is collectivity."

The fragile stage is precisely the time to stay close: "At the delicate point when Sahaj Yoga is coming up, we have to be much more closer together."

The same instruction, twenty-eight years later

At Guru Puja 2008, Shri Mataji gives the same movement as a practical instruction: gather while young, then separate and grow.

"If you want, in the beginning, have four to five people together. Then you should separate."

The small group is first a mirror, where each helps the others to see themselves clearly: "Say four-five people can join together and they can find out from each other if they are all right or not, if there is missing, if they are catching."

And it is the form she gives to the work itself: "So it’s a very big responsibility now. You’ve got your Realization and so four or five of you should join to form a Sahaja Yoga group, giving Realization to people. Try."

From two to ten

The beginning can be very small: "First you may get two people, then three people. I started with five." And the group can grow to ten.

"You can form a group of five to ten people and start your work. You’ll enjoy it."

Like a living cell, the group gathers, matures, and divides, and each new group carries the same life further.

In 2008, Shri Mataji tells her children that she can no longer travel, and that the work now passes to them: "But now I have to say that quite a lot of you can become gurus, means teachers, and you should act as teachers."

The principle of the Guru is not carried alone. The group of friends checks itself honestly, supports each one, and shares the work. It asks for the qualities Shri Mataji names that day: "You have to be very humble, very humble with everyone." "You have to have patience with the seekers." "Guru has to be a loving person, very loving and understanding." And the gift remains a gift: "You have got it free and you also have to give it to people free – not to charge them."

In 1989 she had already joined the guide and the friend: "And so friendship, even if you are a leader, you are a friend of the people."

Innocent heroes

In the Diwali talk of 1980, Shri Mataji recalls the prophecies of William Blake’s Milton:

"The Men of God will be there and they will have their own heroes and they will not follow these Romans and Greeks and their horrible heroes. They’ll have their innocent heroes, and all those things."

Blake wrote in the Preface to Milton: "We do not want either Greek or Roman Models if we are but just & true to our own Imaginations…" The same Preface closes on the poem that ends "Till we have built Jerusalem, / In Englands green & pleasant Land." That evening Shri Mataji asks for this Jerusalem to be built from brotherhood: "So today is the day where you all have to promise and pray that, this brotherhood and sisterhood will be established." Her first words after the prophecy are: "Keep together. Keep together. Love each other."

The saints of the past did not have this support: "Before this what we had, so many saints, so many great souls were born and they were treated like singular people and tortured, killed, poisoned: they were alone, but you are not. You are all friends to each other."

The steps to begin a circle are described in From One to Many, a circle of brothers in The Brothers Circle, and the practical tools in the Tools of Togetherness, shared on request.