The Living Yoga

Sahaja means "born with". Shri Mataji opens her talk with the simplest image of it, a grain of wheat that carries within it everything it needs to grow.

"From this wheat, a germ is born. That’s something that is born with you, that is innately built in you, which sprouts by itself in you, which manifests itself."

From this point of view, the yogas are not rival schools or separate limbs to be practised one after the other: "Now all other yogas which go along with it, are part and parcel of Sahaja Yoga. They cannot be separated from this to that."

To make this understood, Shri Mataji follows a mouthful of food through the body: the taste, the saliva, the long way down to the stomach and the intestines, the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems working together. Nobody can take the digestion out on one side and the brain on the other.

"It is one integrated form of organization which is a living organization, which understands each other, which reacts to the demands. You cannot separate these systems."

Yet this is exactly what the analytical mind tries to do with yoga: "But as it is, our brains are so disintegrated or they are good at that disintegrating everything within us and without, that we want to disintegrate the living thing which is Yoga."

"Yoga is not a dead organization. It’s a living process. Absolutely a living process. When it is a living process, you cannot do anything about it, so, it is “sahaja”."

Like the Japanese gardener with a young tree, we can at most guide its shape a little. The growth itself is not ours: "But whatever is living is working out spontaneously within us with many complicated organizations which are living themselves and are aware of what they are doing."

She often compares Self-realization to plugging a cord into the mains, and then adds: "But do you think it is that simple? You believe that?"

The Kundalini is not a mechanism. She is a living energy that knows each of us, through this life and the lives before. And this is precisely why her rising is so delicate.

"If she is so capable, and if she knows everything then she is entity by itself. And if she has to come up to your head, is it easy?"

"It is the most difficult thing." A stone can be picked up and thrown anywhere; even a little worm moves out of the way. But a bull that has settled on the ground will not rise, whatever one tries. "This kind of a Kundalini that exists within us must be the most difficult person to rise. Has to be."

The reason lies in her very nature: "Because this Kundalini is “absolute Dharma”, is absolute righteousness, absolute purity, ideal-most personality that you could think of, which does not tolerate any nonsense, falsehood, untruth, anything like that."

Nirmala

"She is Nirmala you can call Her. She is Pure, She is Purity personified."

"She is not afraid of anyone, She cannot be enticed, enchanted or tempted by anything. And She Loves but Her Love is that pure that nothing is higher for Her than her own love. She never reconciles to anything. And she is the one who is going to give you your self-realization."

What this purity asks of our lives is the subject of Becoming the Ideals.

Faced with a mother who cannot be forced, seekers looked for ways to please her: "What makes Her so unhappy? Why doesn’t She want to rise? They have to find out the means and methods."

From this search came Raja Yoga, Hatha Yoga, Kriya Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, Gyan Yoga and Karma Yoga. "All these are the methods human beings want to employ to make the bull rise."

Most of them copied what had been observed in those whose Kundalini was rising: some jumped, some felt heat, some felt a grip in the stomach, which was named a bandha. Kriya Yoga went as far as working on the tongue to reach the Vishuddhi. "All these Yoga’s that have come up, have been depicted from the experiences of people."

"Or on a tree you find a fruit. All the fruits are getting rotten. So, by treating the fruit, can you treat the disease? You’ll have to go to the roots."

What happens by itself

The bandhas are real. When the Kundalini rises, the centres close behind her of their own accord: "It closes down the chakras when the kundalini comes up, it closes itself down automatically so that the energy is kept upwards it is not allowed to fall down. All these things happen within us."

"These things happen as a result of kundalini awakening but by doing these things you do not awaken the kundalini."

Imitating the effects only tires the body: "So, all these tricks that we have been trying by ourselves of poking yourself here and poking yourself there, you are just spoiling your instrument for nothing at all." The centres themselves are described in The Architecture of Joy.

Shri Mataji does not condemn the old paths. She shows when they make sense.

"After realization all of them are right. Before realization all of them are wrong, before your car starts, if you start turning the wheel, or using the brake, you are spoiling the car."

"When the car has started and you know how to drive and you have become a master of driving, then everything is right."

"In the same way, the same thing before realization has no meaning. After realization only you start understanding."

Classical Hatha Yoga, with its eight limbs, began with the surrender to God: "It’s first that they should fix their attention on Ishwara Pranidhana means they must fix the attention into the existence of God. Not blind faith. But to understand that there is God, so that you humble down yourself. Then you should go to a realized soul as a Guru."

It was practised young, before the age of twenty-five, in the forest, under the guidance of a realized master, and it was carried by love: the love of the grandparents and the love of the Guru. "Their own lives were so beautifully blended with their love, with their knowledge and their whole understanding that it has a direct effect on the character and the personality of the people."

A wounded world

Today the conditions are different. "Whatever we have done we have done a lot of harm to ourselves, to our body and to our mind. Because we had nobody to guide us."

"It is a very sad affair. People are sick. They cannot do Hatha-Yoga. The atmosphere is sick. The whole place is sick. They want love, they do not want exercise. They do not want scouts. They want somebody to love them, to heal them, to cure them to establish them."

"There is no word of love in Hatha Yoga these days because you pay for it. One thing you cannot pay for is your love. Isn’t it? How can you pay for love?"

The order is reversed: first the healing, then the practice. "But after realization you can use Hatha Yoga because you are purified, you are cleansed, you are healed, your wounds are alright."

"So, one has to understand that this is the time of Mahayoga. Where all these Antar yoga means all these happenings inside takes place automatically."

What took the ancient seekers lifetimes now happens at once. "She rises with such thumping joy, you get it." The only obstacle is our habit of seeing ourselves as we were: "Now still you want to have your crutches because you are identified with them."

"So, you have to accept yourself that you are great. And that you have got it now within yourself. It is there now you are a light. You have to accept that you are a light now. You are not the same you were before and you are transformed into this flower."

"When this Maha yoga comes in, you do not have to worry about anything else. All the yoga’s are at your feet. You just raise your hands just like this and the kundalini will rise."

"This is Maha yoga. The culmination point of Sahaja Yoga." One no longer needs to retrace the long way of the old paths: "Or else you can say that now if I have to go to India, I need not go like Columbus and end up in America."

Freely chosen

One condition remains, and it belongs to each of us: "Only this thing you have to do is to be absolutely freely choosing the path of self-realization."

"In all your freedom you have to accept Sahaja Yoga."

The desire of God

The talk closes on what the Kundalini truly is: "Kundalini is the desire of God. Is not desire for God-is the desire of God itself. So it can be only awakened by that desire."

The energies that flow once she has risen are described in Mana and Prana, and the centres she crosses in The Architecture of Joy.