Maha Shivaratri Puja Pandhapur – Feb 29 1984, with Shri Mataji in India on tour, was a most auspicious and special event for us as Sahaja Yogis and for all Humanity. It remains indelibly cut into my being and is my most often replayed video talk. It includes the penultimate revelations and insights into the Spiritual Reality and into the progressive realisation of God-Self experiences. It was not only informative, but transformative, and at its core is about who Shri Mataji is and why She was on Earth, working out the possibility of enmasse God Realisation through Kundalini Sahaja Yoga.
About Pandhapur. India is the Yoga Bhoomi, the Great Land of Yoga, and Maharastra is called the Land of Saints. Pandhapur is known as the religious capital of Maharashtra, and there is an annual pilgrimage to the revered Vitthal Temple, on the banks of the river Bhima. Lord Vitthal, an incarnation of Lord Krishna, God of Yoga, appeared there to a devoted son and Shri Mataji spoke of this story as a lead-in to talk. Great Saint Dnyaneshwar sang praises to Lord Vitthal. He released Hindu scriptures from Brahmanical control, especially the Gita, which he popularized by translating into common people’s languages. Saint Tukaram was another great saint, a devout man who led in the propagation of the Bhakti doctrine. Shri Mataji speaks of him in this puja.
Before the Puja. We the travellers on India tour, mainly international Sahaja yogis, were travelling around Maharastra in a convoy of about 4 Indian ‘red buses’ and staying in clean, well-catered circumstances, whilst Shri Mataji conducted incredibly crowded public speaking events, as well as organising us to visit holy places, and give talks to the yogis, and to conduct some pujas. This particular Puja we knew was to be very special and a site had been set up on the Bhima riverbed, some short distance from the town and temple. Our camp was also slightly out of town and we had an easy day to prepare for puja that evening.
The vibrational momentum began to build all day and by the time we had our dinner quite a crowd of locals had gathered at the yogi camp. We had also quite a crowd of Sahaja Yogis and some family members and some children with us. It was decided to use the buses to ferry us down to the riverbed puja site and so the buses filled up and we the touring yogis were not on the first convoy. As those buses did not return quickly it was decided we should walk down through the town to the puja place, and so we set off.
The problem with powerful spiritual experiences is that they do defy description. This location, our intention, the attention, and the company of yogis setting off on foot in this holy place to worship our Father God with our Divine Mother, elevated us all into a high state of Grace and Presence. We were not sure where exactly we were going but wafted down into the town together and we were actually feeling and sharing this Grace pouring through us and from us as we walked. I was aware that a few great saints had trod these streets and somehow I felt in their company as we walked. After some time we paused in our journey and when we got to something of a small square or intersection, not sure exactly where to go, we decided to Bandhan our situation.
Divine providence is sought when you ‘put something in Bandhan’. Within a minute a white car came into the area and stopped alongside. It was Shri Mataji in person! She smiled and took our few kids in Her car and gave us directions and was gone, just like that. We walked on and were relatively close but still paused again as unsure, and again put on a Bandhan, and again in that moment, Her car appeared! There’s no timing like Divine timing. Her driver gave us further help and instructions and soon we were at the puja site. As we settled into meditation the Vibrations really welled up as Shri Mataji Herself spent some time in deep silent meditation and we all went very silent too.. Her opening words were “So now we all have arrived, its all right.”
The Mahashivaratri Talk by Shri Mother began with a reiteration of how ‘topsy turvy’ these modern times are. How difficulties are inherent and how we must have patience and understanding. She referred to the local story about Shri Vittal and the temple and the stone and then She began in absolute earnestness to explain about God.
“That God Himself is capable of all sorts of miracles” and so began the greatest spiritual dissertation that you are ever likely to hear. Her monumental insights range from beginner’s Kundalini experience and stages, up through vibrational awareness, bringing enlightenment to your brain, and the final nuances of becoming, up into Non-Duality.
FULL Maha Shivatri Puja Talk is Below
I would like to convey if we can the depth, the profundity and strength of the Vibrational impact that we experienced during this talk, and then we went further during the three part puja process that followed, where Shri Ganesha, the bedrock of Innocence was worshipped, as was Shri Gauri the ever pure or Nirmala Mother of this Life and Reality, and Shri Shiva, God the Father, or Source of Consciousness, and Witness of Her Divine Play, was worshipped and celebrated.
There are great moments in your life that you regard as, or understand, are pivotal. In much the same way as I had first heard Shri Mataji, less than a year before this puja talk, speaking to me about the relationship between Shri Krishna and Shri Jesus, from inside a pyramid church in Huston, She was now there again, but in person, answering my most in-depth questions about the Sprit, Awakening, the Kundalini and Becoming. How I felt during this talk was beyond words. My Sahasra was opened to such an extent that I literally felt almost cut into, down through the brain and opened up into another dimension.
Afterwards, as we walked out onto the riverbed sand, I had such feelings that I was rendered speechless and trudged slowly like a somnambulist. I do not remember what else happened after that. I was just somehow removed from everything. It was only well into the following day that I was again coherent. Subsequently we heard that Shri Mataji had gone into a very deep slumber after the puja and attendants were not sure She was exhibiting life signs for many hours. It was an extraordinary event and one that you will get some of that experience if you pay full vibrational awareness to this video talk and puja celebration.
Mahashivaratri Puja, Pandharpur (India), February 29th, 1984
FULL TALK “Detachment & Enlightenment of Brain,”
So now, we all have arrived, it’s all right.
Now, this place has been chosen because they said that there are lot of horrible people the other way round. Still, we are having their problems (laughing). All right. You see, you must know these are modern times, and modern times have lots of complications. (Translation from Marathi: “Has everyone arrived? I will first speak in English, then in Marathi.”.)
In these modern times, a place which is supposed to be a holy place becomes the most unholy place. It’s such a topsy-turvy condition these days. And when we are trying to establish something very fundamental, it’s like a little seedling that has to come out of the stones, you see. It has to fight lots of things, so we have to keep our brains intact and be sensible about everything, and try to see what we can achieve through our patience and understanding – is very important.
Today I think is a very great day for all of us because this place is the place of Viraat, of Shri Vitthala. Is the place where Shri Vitthala appeared to a devoted son and when he asked Him that, “You better stand on a brick”, He stood there. And they say that He stood there waiting. Some people say that the statue that we see came out of the Mother Earth on this sand and that’s what Pundarikaksh carried saying that, “These are the ones who came to see me and my parents; and I was busy with them, so they are standing on the same brick which I threw.”
Now the whole story has to be taken in a very sensible way, with the common-sense in it. That God Himself is capable of all kinds of miracles. We, who are created by God, are doing some things which look miraculous. Say, if you take about hundred-year-old situation of this world, we can say that today we are seeing many things which could be miraculous. Hundred years back, nobody could have thought that they could have all these arrangements done here, in such a far-fetched places.
But all these miracles come from the power of God. So we are the creator of that wee bit, very wee bit of that miracle. So all the miracles of God cannot be explained and should not be explained. They are beyond our minds, and, to make people feel the presence of God, God can do anything.He can move into all the three dimensions and also in the fourth dimension. He can do whatever He feels like. That’s what you have seen now in your every day-to-day life, how many miracles take place to all of you, and you can’t understand how it works out. Even it works out on things which are not living, and people are quite amazed how these things happen. So we have to believe, now, after seeing all this ourselves, that He is God, and He can do anything that He feels like. And we are nothing. We are nothing. There should be no rationality about it – of understanding God’s miracles. “How can it be? How could it be?” You can’t explain. Only when you achieve that state of mind where you believe, through your experiences, that God is all-powerful. It’s very difficult. This concept is very difficult because we are limited people, we have limited powers, and we cannot understand how God could be all-powerful because we, we haven’t got the capacity. So, this God who is our Creator, who is our Preserver, the One who desired that we should exist, who is our existence itself, is an all-powerful God, all-powerful. He can do whatever He likes with you. He can create another world, He can destroy this world. It’s only if He has to desire.
My idea of coming to Pandharpur for Shiva Puja was this: that Shiva represents the Spirit, and the Spirit is residing in all of you in your hearts. The seat of Sadashiva is on top of your head, but is reflected in your heart. Now, your brain is the Vitthala. So to bring Spirit to your brain means enlightenment of your brain. Enlightenment of your brain means the limited capacity of your brain has to become unlimited, in its capacity to realise God. I will not use the word ‘understand’ – but ‘to realise God’ – how powerful He is, how miraculous He is, how great He is. The another is that the brain of man can create – of course, out of the dead; but when the Spirit comes into brain, then you create living things, living work of Kundalini. Even the dead start behaving like living because you touch the Spirit in the dead.
Like the nucleus inside every atom or a molecule has the Spirit of that molecule. And if you become your Spirit. We can say the brain of a molecule or an atom is like the nucleus, body of the nucleus. But the one that controls the nucleus is the Spirit that resides within the nucleus. So now you have got the attention, or the body – the whole body of the atom – then the nucleus, and inside the nucleus is the Spirit. In the same way – we have this body, the attention of the body. And then we have the… we have the nucleus – is the brain. And the Spirit is in the heart. So the brain is controlled through the Spirit. How?
That around the heart there are seven auras which can be multiplied into any number, seven raised to power sixteen hundred, which are the ones which watch the seven chakras, raised to power sixteen hundred – sixteen thousand (716000), sorry. Now this Spirit is watching through this aura; watching – I am again saying “watching”- through this aura.
This aura is watching the behaviour of your seven centres in your brain. Is also watching all the nerves that are working in the brain – “watching”, again. But when you bring the Spirit into your brain, then you go two steps ahead, because when your Kundalini rises, She touches the Sadashiva and Sadashiva informs the Spirit. Informs in the sense – reflects in the Spirit. So that’s the first state where the watching auras start communicating through your different chakras in the brain and integrating it.
But when you bring your Spirit to your brain – this is the second state – then you really become self-realised, in the full way, in the full way because then your Self, that is the Spirit, becomes your brain. Action is very dynamic, it opens then the fifth dimension in the human being. First, when you become Realised, collectively conscious, and start raising the Kundalini, you are in, you cross the fourth dimension. But when your Spirit comes into your brain, then you become the fifth dimension – means, you become the doer. Our brain, now, for example, says, “All right, lift this thing up”. So you touch it with your hand, you lift it up. You are the doer. But when the brain becomes the Spirit, the Spirit is the doer, and when Spirit is the doer, then you become a complete Shiva – self-realised.
In that state, if you get angry, you are not attached. You are not an attached person to anything whatsoever. If you possess anything, you are not attached. You cannot attach because Spirit is detachment, is complete detachment. You don’t bother about any attachments whatsoever. Even for a second, you are not attached. Now, I would say, to understand the detachment of Spirit, we should study ourselves very well, clearly: “How are we attached?”.
We are attached, firstly, by our brain, mostly by our brain because all our conditionings are in our brain, and all our ego is also in our brain. So all emotional attachments are through our brain, and all our egoistical attachments, also, are through our brain. That’s why it is said that after Realisation one must try to practice the Shiva Tattwa by practicing detachment.
(Translation from Marathi: “Please, give me the shawl. It’s so cold because of Shri Shiva”)
Now, how do you practice this detachment? Because we get attached to something, of course, through our brain, but through our attention. So we try to do what we call Chitta Nirodh, is to control your attention: where is it going? In the practice of Sahaja Yoga, if you have to rise higher, you have to improve your own instrument, and not the instrument of others. This is one thing one should know, for definite.
Now you just watch your attention, where is it going. Watch yourself. As soon as you’ll start watching yourself, your attention, you’ll become more identified with your Spirit. Because if you have to watch your attention, you have to be your Spirit, otherwise how will you watch it? So, now, see where is your attention going. First, the attachment is, in all gross ways, to your body.So we see Shiva – He has no attachment to His body. He sleeps anywhere. He goes to the cemeteries and He sleeps there because He’s not attached. He can never be caught up by any bhoots or anything, nothing of the kind. You see, He is detached. The detachment is to be watched and seen through your own attachments. Now, because you are realised souls, not yet the Spirit, has not come into your brain, of course, but still you are realised souls. So, what you can do is at least to watch your attention, you can do that.
You can watch your attention very clearly, by seeing where your attention is going. And then, controlling your attention also you can do. Very simple: to control your attention you have to just remove your attention from this to that. Try to change your priorities. All this has to be done now, after Realisation – a complete detachment. So the body demands comfort, try to make body uncomfortable a little bit. Try. What you think it to be comfortable, try to make it little uncomfortable. That’s why people went to Himalayas. You see, coming to this place itself has caused us lot of problems (Shri Mataji laughs). But going to Himalayas – you can imagine. So after Realisation, they used to take their body to Himalayas, “All right, go through all this. Let’s see how you act”. So what you call the penance side starts now in a way. It’s a penance which you can do very easily because now you are realised souls. With enjoyment, little try to make this body… For Shiva, it doesn’t matter whether He is in a cemetery or in His own Kailasha or anywhere.
Where is your attention is, you see. That your human attention is hopelessly bad.
Very entangled nonsense it is. “We did this because of this”. There’s an explanation. Or others have to give an explanation. No explanation is needed to be given, or to be accepted, or to be asked for. No explanation. To exist without explanation is the best way. In a simple Hindi language, “Jaise rakhahu taise hi rahu”: “Whichever way you keep me I’ll remain in that state, and I’ll enjoy”. Further in this poem, Kabira says, “If you make me go on an elephant” – means the royal conveyance – “I’ll go. If you make me walk, I’ll walk”. “Jaise rakhahu taise hi rahu”. So no reaction on that point, no reaction. First no explanation, no reaction.
Now, second is about food. But that’s the first seeking human beings had as animals. No attention on food! Whether you have salt or not, whether you have this or that – no attention on food. Actually, you should not remember what you ate this morning. But we think as to what we are going to eat tomorrow. We consume food not for running this body, but for sort of a more satisfaction of tongue pleasures. Once you start understanding that pleasure is a sign of gross attention – any kind of pleasure is a very gross sensationalisation – sensations. Very gross it is. But when I say, “No pleasures”, means, doesn’t mean that you should become serious people and people of, sort of, as if somebody is dead in your family! (Laughter, Shri Mataji laughs) But you should be like Shiva. So detached. He came on a bull, which was running very fast, to get married. He was sitting on a bull with His two feet like this, you see, and the bull is running fast and He is holding the bull. The feet like this! (Shri Mataji laughs) And He’s coming for His wedding. And with Him are coming people with one eye, without noses, all kinds of funny people coming with Him. And His wife feeling quite embarrassed at the nonsensical (Shri Mataji laughs) things people are talking about Shiva. He is not bothered what’s His reputation would be, this thing. But that doesn’t mean that you become hippies. You see, this is the problem is: that once you start thinking like that, you become hippies.
Many people believe that if you try to behave like Shiva, you become Shiva. Many believe that way: that if you take ganja, you become Shiva because Shiva used to take ganja. Because He used, He was consuming all that to finish off from this world. For Him what does it matter whether it’s a ganja or anything? Give Him anything, He’ll never get drunk, no question. He is consuming all that. Or they think if they live like Shiva, the way He was detached about things, least bothered about His appearances. What appearance Shiva needs is that, whatever He appears as His beauty. He doesn’t need anything to be done.
So, attachment to anything is ugliness. Is ugliness, is nonsense. But you can dress up whatever way you like, or even if you are in the most ordinary dress, you will look the most magnificent person. But it’s not that if you, if you say that, “All right, so under these circumstances, let us go about on a one sheet wrapped around”. The beauty that has evolved within you through Spirit, gives you that power that you can wear whatever you feel like – makes no difference to your beauty, your beauty is there all the time.
But have you achieved that state? And that state only you achieve when your Spirit enters into your brain. With ego-oriented people is more difficult, and that’s why they cannot enjoy things. At the slightest pretext, they topple down. And Spirit, which is the source of joy, just doesn’t come in, doesn’t show. The joy is beauty. The joy itself is beauty. But that is a state one has to achieve.
Attachments come by various methods. If you go little ahead with it, then you have attachments of your family, “What will happen to my child? What will happen to my husband? What will happen to my mother, to my wife?”, this, that nonsense. Who is your father and who is your mother? Who is your husband and who is your wife? For Shiva, He doesn’t know all these things. To Him, He and His Power are inseparable things. So He stands as singular personality. There is no dual… duality. When there is duality, then only you say, “my wife.” You go on saying, “my nose, my ears, my hands, my, my, my, my.” Go, go, go deep down. Till you say “my”, there is some duality. But when I say, “I, the nose”, then there is no duality. Shiva the Shakti, Shakti the Shiva. There’s no duality. But we live throughout on our duality, and because of that, there is an attachment.
If there’s no duality, what is the attachment, you see? If you are the light and you are the lamp, then where is the duality? If you are the moon and you are the moonlight, then where is the duality? If you are the sun and you are the sunlight, you are the word and you are the meaning, then where is the duality? But when there is this separation, there is duality, and because of this separation, you feel attached. Because if you are that, how will you be attached? Do you see that point? Because there is a difference and a distance between you and yours, that’s why you get attached to it. But it’s me, who is the other? This whole universe is me, who is the other? Everything is me, who is the other?
But it’s not that, it’s a brainwave or a ego brain wave. So who is the other? Nobody! That’s only possible when your Spirit comes into your brain, and you become part and parcel of Viraat Itself. Viraat is the brain, as I told you. Then everything that you do – when you show your temper, when you show your affection, when you show your compassion, anything – is the Spirit that is expressing, because brain has lost its identity. The so-called limited brain – it has become the unlimited Spirit.
I do not know, I really do not know how to give an analogy to a thing like that. But what we can do is to understand it, that if a colour is dropped in the ocean, the ocean becomes colourful – is not possible. But – try to understand, if a little colour, limited colour, is dropped into the ocean, the colour loses its identity completely. Think of the other way round. If the ocean is coloured, and is poured into atmosphere or onto any part, any – any little wee bit, or onto any spot, onto any atom or anything, it all becomes colourful.
So the Spirit is like the ocean, which has the light in it. And when this ocean pours into the little cup of our brain, the cup loses its identity, and everything becomes spiritual. Everything. You can make everything spiritual, everything. You touch anything, is spiritual: this sand becomes spiritual, the land becomes spiritual, atmosphere becomes spiritual, celestial bodies become spiritual. Everything becomes spiritual. So is the ocean that is the Spirit, while your brain is limited.So the detachment from your limited brain has to be brought in. All limitations of brain should be broken, so that when this ocean fills that brain, it should break that little cup, and every bit of that cup should become colourful. The whole atmosphere, everything, whatever you locate, should be colourful.
Colour of the Spirit is the light of the Spirit; and this light of the Spirit acts, works, thinks, coordinates, does everything.
This is the reason today I decided to bring Shiva Tattwa to the brain. The first procedure is to take your brain towards the Shiva Tattwa by telling it, “See, where are you going, Mr. Brain? You’re putting attention to this, you’re putting attention to that, getting involved – now detach, become the brain yourself, only the brain. Detach! Detach!”
And then, take this detached brain, completely filled with the colour of the Spirit. It will automatically happen. As long as you’ll have these limitations to your attention, it will not happen. So one has to really, deliberately do this tapasya, every individual.
I’m with you; so you don’t need any puja that way. But that state has to be achieved, and for achieving that state, you need the puja. I hope so many of you’ll become the Shiva tattwas in my lifetime.
But don’t think I’m asking you to suffer. There is no suffering in this kind of an ascent. If you understand that this is the complete joyous state, that is the time when you become Nirananda. That’s the joy named in the Sahasrara, the name of the joy is Nirananda, and you know your Mother’s name is Nira. So you become Nirananda.
So today’s worship of Shiva has a special meaning. I hope whatever we do in the outward way, in a gross way, happens also in the subtler way. I’m trying to push your Spirits into your brains, but I find it rather, sometimes, difficult because your attention is still involved. Try to detach yourself. Temper, lust, greed – everything. Try to reduce. Like in food I told today Warren, “Ask them to eat less, not like gluttonous people”. You see, once in a while, on a day of a big banquet or anything, you eat more, but you can’t eat every time like that. It’s not a sign of a Sahaja yogi. Try to control. Try to control your speech. Whether you express temper in your speech or you express your compassion or you are artificially compassionate – try to control. I know, some of you may not do much. It’s all right. I’ll try to tell you many-a-times. I’ll try to help you. But most of you can do it, and you should try that.
So, on a deeper level, from today we start our Sahaja Yoga, where some of you may not attain. But most of you should try to go deeper. Everyone. For that, you don’t need persons who are very well educated or well placed in life. No, not at all. But people who meditate, dedicate, go deeper, because they are like the first roots, which have to reach for others much deeper, so that others can follow.
Now for today’s Puja, we’ll have a very short Ganesh Atharva Sheersh. Just a – not washing my feet or anything much on it, but is a saying of Atharva Sheersha, and you can put… (Translation from Marathi: “That is during Shiv puja there is no need to wash my feet, as it’s already pure”)
Shiva is all the time clean, pure, immaculate. So what are you going to wash the Immaculate? One may say that, “Mother, when You wash Your Feet, we get Your vibrations in the water”. But so detached that there’s no need to wash, at a state where you get completely washed, completely cleaned out.
Then we’ll have a Devi Pujan because Gauri, who is Virgin, is to be worshipped. So we’ll say the hundred-and-eight names of the Virgin, then we’ll do the Shiva Puja. I’m sorry, I cannot tell you everything in one short speech all about this, but detachment must start expressing itself in your Realisation. Detachment. What is surrendering? Is nothing because when you are detached, you are surrendered, automatically. When you are holding onto other things you are not surrendered, that’s all. What is there to surrender? I am such a detached person, I don’t understand all that. I mean, what am I to get out of you? I am so detached. Nothing.
So today I hope we all pray that, “Oh Lord, give us strength and that source of attraction by which we give up all other attractions of all the pleasures, of joy of ego, of everything that we think of, but we should fall into the pure joy form of the Shiva Tattwa. Absolutely.”
I hope I’ve been able to explain to you why I am here today, and why today is a very big day. You all who are here, are specially very lucky people, who should think that God has been kind to you, that He has chosen you today to be here to listen to this. And then, once you get detached, you’ll start feeling responsible – abhiyukt – responsible. But a responsibility, not giving ego, but responsibility which is executing by itself, which is expressing by itself, manifesting by itself.
May God bless you all.
Shri Mataji: As Bhavani, as the consort of Shiva, She doesn’t wear anything very ornamental. As if the oneness with Shiva sucks in all that is manifesting outside. So not much ornaments or anything are to be used. Again this is to make you understand – on rational level it’s difficult. But all this manifestation is when you are not one with Sadashiva. But once you become one with Him, then your identity is lost, no duality anymore remains. So the question of “me and my power” does not arise, “me and my power” become one.
Yogi: Shiva Shakti Swarupini.
Shri Mataji: Shiva Shakti.
Yogis: Om twameva Sakshat Shri Shiva Shakti Swarupini Sakshat Shri Adi Shakti
