“Mahamaya Swarupa,” Sahasrara Puja. Cabella Ligure (Italy), May 8 1994.

Today is a unique combination of Mothers’ Day in many countries and Sahasrar Day for Sahaj Yogis.

I think this is the most important day in the history of human evolution because all other events, incarnations and ventures in the spiritual atmosphere have been of no avail. On the contrary, they have gone into a kind of a cocoon which has no door; banging themselves against the walls, creating problems out of something very auspicious and extremely, beautifully spiritual.

It’s not possible to find faults with the incarnations in whose names all the religions came in. But this cocoon is the Mahamaya, I think; cocoon is the one which is ignorance. We can say that Mahamaya does not create it. This cocoon is created by the basic ignorance of human beings and their misidentifications.

So, the human nature is such that it identifies itself easily with untruth. Anything that is truthful, human beings find it very difficult to compromise. And the trouble with the truth is that it cannot compromise.

So, all kinds of ignorance, all kinds of falsehood, all kinds of destructive forces gather together, somehow or other, to attract the human mind. It is perhaps the ego of man that makes him feel so attracted to those things, because they all pamper his ego.

As it is, the most difficult centre that we have to cross is the centre of Agnya. This centre is the one which takes us either to the left or to the right if we try to push it too much. Thus, we’ll land up into the hold of ignorance, which is being looked after by Mahamaya.

They say that at Sahasrar, when the Goddess will appear, She will be a Mahamaya. Is it possible to be anything else, as the world is today, to come on this Earth? Any other type of incarnation would have been in great trouble because human beings, in their ego, are the highest in Kali Yuga, highest. So, they are quite stupid and they are capable of doing any harm, any kind of harm, any kind of violence, to a Divine personality. It is not at all possible to exist in this world as anything else but Mahamaya. But it also acts upon the people who are seeking.

It has many facets. By one facet, it covers your Sahasrara. The seekers are tested. If you are more enamoured by people who are something odd, who wear odd dresses, who show odd things, as so many false gurus have done; or absurd or something very cheapish, that attracts the attention of human beings because of Mahamaya, or we can say that it is the Mahamaya which judges a person.

Mahamaya is like a mirror: whatever you are, you see yourself in the mirror. [The] mirror has no responsibility. If you look like a monkey, you look like a monkey. If you look like a queen, you look like a queen. It has no power, or no intention, of giving you wrong ideas or giving you something that is false. It is there: whatever is the truth. So, in a way, to say that, “Mahamaya is the one which deludes us,” is wrong. On the contrary, when you look at the mirror, you see yourself as what you are. Now, supposing you are a person who is a very cruel person: your face in the mirror will look like a cruel person. But the problem comes in [because], when the Mahamaya acts, you don’t see your image, you turn your face away from it, you don’t want to see it, don’t want to know. You look at the mirror and you see something horrible; you just turn [your] face and you deny the truth: “How can I be like that? I am not like that. I am very good, nothing wrong with me. I’ve done nothing wrong. I am perfectly all right.”

Then the third aspect of Mahamaya is that you are again attracted towards it, in a sense that you again see your mirror. You go on seeing that mirror again and again and you see the whole world also in that mirror. As a result, you start getting a feeling, “What am I doing? Who am I? What is this world? Where am I born?” And this is the beginning of your search. You don’t feel satisfied with it. So, it is a very great help of the Mahamaya.

I have seen people who come to me for the first time: if they see me taking water like this they say, “Ah, how can She be something? She just needs water!” Or if I am taking, say, Coca Cola, as you all take, they’ll say, “Wah! How can She take Coca Cola? She should never take anything like that, She should only take nectar!”

So, another aspect of Mahamaya is, say people come to see me, some of them start shaking like this, so they think, “Oh, we are great energy, that’s why it’s happening to us.” It has happened with many people. So, they get wrong impressions because of their own reactions to it. Their reaction is: “Wah! We went there, got all the energy. We were shaking, shaking, shaking, so we are something great.” This kind of a happening makes them more egoistical, but, on the contrary, if they see somebody else shaking – it has happened – and ask them who you are, so they will say, “We are certified mad from such hospital!” Then they will start relatively thinking, “Oh, God, we are also mad or what? Why are we shaking? We should not shake. If they are certified mad and they are shaking and we are shaking...” then they start relatively seeing things. On one side there’s a mad, certified mad, shaking; [on] another side you are shaking, so there’s something wrong, definitely, with you also. So, the relative understanding helps to overcome that kind of a curtain that you have that you do not want to face the truth.

So, once it starts happening to you, relatively you see, compared to other people: yesterday, as you saw in the drama, compared to other people, we are really a sane, wise, sensible, matured people. Once you see that relative ascent, then you start settling in Sahaj Yoga.

Mahamaya is very important: without that you cannot face me, you cannot sit here, you cannot talk to me, you cannot get into the same car which is driving me and also you cannot drive me. Everything would be impossible. I would be hanging in the air somewhere, you will be all here, and it would be a big mess! (Laughter) I don’t need to travel by train. I don’t need to travel by car. I can just fly out. I need not [be] before you, I can be just here in nirakaar, in formless form. But how to communicate? How to have a rapport? For that, one has to come in the form of Mahamaya, so that there’s no fear, there’s no distance and one can come close and understand. Because if this knowledge has to be given, if Realisation has to be given, people have to at least sit before the Mahamaya. Otherwise if they all run away, what’s the use?

So, to create that human, extremely human personality in the Sahasrara, She comes as Mahamaya.

Sahasrara is the most powerful chakra because it is the seven chakras combination and many others. With the Sahasrara you can do anything. You can manage the sun, you can manage the moon, you can manage the Earth, you can manage the temperatures, everything.

But, through Mahamaya, things work out very normally, very normally; and they should work out normally. For example, somebody can say, “Mother, there is atmosphere full of all these horrible ecological problems, why don’t you clear them?” If it is cleared, people will go on producing. It is the problem of the human beings and if it is corrected by me, they’ll take it for granted. They have to face those problems; they have to change their habits; they have to understand that they are the ones who are destroying themselves. Otherwise, if somebody’s there just to cleanse it out, they will never change.

Also, miraculously, one can do lots of things. One can say, “Mother, as you solve the problems of Sahaj Yogis, why don’t you solve the problem of others?” No. To solve their problem is not the end of my work, nor is the purpose, but to make them equipped so that they can solve their own problem: that’s what I have to do.

As I have said that you have to be your own doctor, you have to be your own guru. Without Mahamaya, you cannot do it because She knows how far to go in correcting, how far to go in controlling. Because human beings, at large, have their own freedom. Sahaj Yogis have not that kind of a stupid freedom, but they have the freedom of the Spirit, so to solve their problems is perfectly all right because they must have more freedom and more freedom. But what’s the use of giving freedom to other people who are going on and on and on without realising what wrong they are doing to the whole world? So, for them, it is necessary to come to Sahaj Yoga and that’s why it’s a Mahamaya Swarup. Maybe if I had come as Mother Mary or Radha or somebody like that, they would have been all here nicely singing songs and all that. That’s not the point.

Now, you have to mature, you have to be something, you have to grow. For that, it is important that you have to come to Sahaj Yoga first of all, then you have to grow in Sahaj Yoga. Otherwise, this Mahamaya will go on acting and playing tricks with you.

(Shri Mataji takes a drink of water.) Again, taking water! (Laughter)

So, they also once said so, that “Why does She need water sometimes? She should be living on the air or something.” It’s a big play. Sahasrara, as you know, is Virata’s area Virata and Viratangana. Virata is Vishnu, who became Rama, then became Krishna and then Viraat. So, His is a Leela. He’s Leeladhara. It’s a play. And to make the play all right one has to be in the form of Mahamaya.

But there are so many loopholes also sometimes. People can discover things very easily. One of them is this Paramchaitanya: this Paramchaitanya acts, shows my photographs, exposes me in all kinds of unbelievable manners which has never happened. I am myself amazed the way it thinks of exposing me all the time.

This time when we were in Brisbane, they took a photograph of a rainbow outside, outside the ashram, and what appears there in the sky is very remarkable – it’s going to come that photograph, too – is a painting which I have always liked of Mother and child, Madonna and the child, in the sky! That painting! Now, can you beat that? How does it know that I love that painting and all that? And it was in the sky.

So, this Paramchaitanya is trying to expose this Mahamaya Swarupa just to make you understand what is Mahamaya. It is trying to express itself.

I have not in any way told or asked this Paramchaitanya to do any such things, but it is doing it because it thinks that, even now, the people who are following Mother are not of that level as they should be. Some of them do falter horribly, surprisingly: how far they can go, I cannot believe! After coming to Sahaj Yoga, after seeing all my photographs, after everything else, they still can go to any limit of stupidity. That’s a fact.

So, this is going on. I don’t know how far this Paramchaitanya will be spontaneously acting like this, but it shows one thing for definite: that it wants you to be perfectly settled down in your faith, which is not a blind faith.

But most of these photographs can be challenged. Anybody who’s an intellectual can find out some ways and methods that can challenge, that, “You must have done this!” But, as Sahaj Yogis, you know that we have done nothing of the kind and it has come out.

So, what is the purpose? We don’t show them to outsiders. We only show this to the Sahaj Yogis. So, what is the purpose? That Sahaj Yogis should now try to understand that they have to grow.

Now this growth has to be two-sided.

One [side] is yourself: “How much time do I spend thinking about Sahaj Yoga and how much about my personal life, my education, my business, my duties, my jobs, my family?”

Because it is important, as the brain has to think and Viraata is there. So, in Sahasrara, how much energy do we use to think about Sahaj Yog? How can we spread Sahaj Yoga? What should we do? What should we work out?

“How much I should support? In which way?”

“How it can be my every moment living?”

“How [when] I look at everything, I see Sahaj working in it?”

“What is the Sahaj culture? Am I in the Sahaj culture?”

“How much I am impressed by other cultures and fashions and things?”

“And what have I to gain to grow in my mental capacity to be a Sahaj?”

For example, a person who is a Sahaj personality, in everything he sees Sahaj, in everything, whether it is flowers, it’s carpets, lights, statues, pandal, anything, it sees the Sahaj. How see, now: these pillars (tent poles) are standing at an angle. Just imagine, to support it you had to bend on one side. What do we do in Sahaj? We have to bend towards Divinity. Like that, all ideas go moving towards Sahaj. The whole thinking is Sahaj.

Such a married life also, between husband and wife, I have seen. If both are Sahaj, they all the time talk of Sahaj. No frivolous talk, not useless talk, but only about Sahaj, “How it is Sahaj to be husband and wife, what is the relationship that’s the most interesting in Sahaj.” Like that, everything that you do you think on Sahaj way.

So now then you can judge yourself in this Mahamaya: how far do you care really to think about Sahaj? But all other worries would be like this, “How much I will get money out of it? How much business I’ll get? How much pleasure I can get? How much physical problems can be solved?” All these gains are nothing compared to your maturity in Sahaj Yoga. But the mind takes over; it starts thinking and thinking and it goes on wandering on various things: maybe your wife, your children, your house, this, that. But if you think in a Sahaj way you will think, “I should do something that my children should be Sahaj. I should make a house which is useful to the Sahaj. I should behave in such a manner that I am Sahaj.”

The maturity in you should grow in such a way that you can feel it.

Firstly, is the peace: when a person is not peaceful, his mind is like a wobbly instrument. He cannot think properly, he cannot see properly, he cannot understand properly. You tell him something, he understands something else. Now the whole world today is wobbly, whole world. Here this new party has dismantled the other old party in politics. It is this one is to be dismantled now. Everything is going upside down. That, too, is through Mahamaya.

One has to admit that the way the world is in turmoil. It’s not war, it’s not cold war, but it’s a kind of a funny type of a warfare which cannot be described in words.

Now, what will you say to what is happening in Italy today? What will you see to what is happening in Bosnia, or any other place where you find stupid problems coming up and people killing each other, no peace, no sense of security? You find in the world, you open the newspaper: we had an English newspaper, today I couldn’t read, so many women were raped, so many men were killed, this thing happened; individually also! President doing nonsensical things, like that. I mean, all sorts of things you see today: is absurd. When we were of your younger age, we never heard of such things. People were dignified, sensible people.

So now what has happened is they are just shattered. There’s no peace in their mind to see what they are doing, where are they, what is their responsibility. (25:58)

Horrible things are being expressed. Media is taking to all horrible things. It was never so before. We have read beautiful articles of beautiful things in the media itself. But today it was very different.

Then it is a very materialistic world, extremely materialistic: marketing this, marketing that, marketing human beings. Then they are taking away children, taking away women, they are selling the children, they are selling the women: all kinds of things going on. Marketing God. Marketing spirituality. Marketing – I don’t know what to say, but – their own children.

This kind of a perverse world is today. For that is needed Mahamaya, by which She shows that you have to pay through your noses for what you are doing, in this lifetime. Say, a man who is very wayward, destructive, who drinks, smokes, goes about with women and all that, within two years he’s bankrupt. So, the reward is already there. Whatever he was doing is there to see.

Another man, “What’s wrong? What’s wrong? What’s wrong?” Goes on with nonsensical things. He gets AIDS or he gets other diseases of a very incurable nature. We call it Rokula Devi: means cash payment, cash payment! The Goddess who gives cash payment. “You do this? Alright, have it. You have done this? Alright enjoy this.” Like that.

It is really this Mahamaya, specially, who is now very much sort of active. Sometimes I get a fright from Her, because the way She is punishing people is a bit too much. But it is so. If you do rash driving. “Oh, I’ll enjoy rash driving.” “Alright. Finished.” You end up with a limping leg or a broken hand.

So, the laws, the Divine laws, are at work through Mahamaya.

It was not that fast before, as it is today. Supposing there is a president of America, such a big position. I mean imagine! He is being challenged by any third-rater from the street. How is it possible? Nobody could do that before. Because Mahamaya is using all its freewill to check the freewill of human beings. The so-called freedom that we are trying to enjoy is brought to an end and people start thinking, “What is it?” Big people, you know. There was some boxer, very well known, people use to run after him, now he’s in jail. Another fellow who was doing this Grand Prix, which I was against, always, died suddenly. Now [for] people he’s a hero, this, that, but nobody will now do that, “All right. One hero is sufficient! Not me sir! I’m not going to take to this Grand Prix business, had enough of it!”

So, though one hero is created, but the fear of doing this kind of a nonsense [is now there]. Then they go for skiing: now in the skiing also somebody died and somebody got a lame leg. I think in the royal family something happened. So now from England, very few people are going for skiing. Now only the Swiss have to learn a lesson, I think.

It’s something...you just keep your eyes open. Today you read somebody boasting very much about himself, tomorrow you find him in the jail. It was very surprising, there was some minister in Italy who wanted me to meet and I said, “Baba! I don’t want to meet him.” He’s a very bad past. He’s in jail already, so I can’t meet him now! (Laughter)

They are falling into their own traps. This trap is Mahamaya. She creates from your own...It’s through your own because you don’t want to face yourself, you don’t want to know the truth, you want to evade the truth. So, this is the aspect of Mahamaya that immediately you have to face yourself. How many things have happened? Think of it. These big, big tycoons are in jail. Very famous people from, say, drug [barons], great, rich people. They are in jail. All such things are happening. Why? Because this Mahamaya is the one who wants to teach a lesson. By teaching a lesson to one person, it shatters at least thousands because that person sees the point; as death comes to it or whatever comes to it. Maybe he may not learn the lesson because he’s already dead to learn anything anymore; but others are.

How it spreads. So, in a way, the media also, that always gives bad news, in a way does not know how much good it is doing through Mahamaya.

Now, for your information, many things we are saying about, say, smoking is already going out. Drinking will also go out. What did the Sahaj do? Nothing. But a Mahamaya. They get cancers. Doctors have got the idea now, they have got cancer, and they have asked people that, “Now don’t smoke otherwise you will get cancer.”

So, the Mahamaya creates that kind of an incident. A single incident is sufficient for people to be extremely cautious.

Moreover, it is such a panicked world, so insecure today. Suddenly you find the cows are giving poison in their milk, there’s something else happening, the water is getting polluted. Then suddenly you find there are needles which are infected. So, everybody is so nervous and thinking about saving their lives, so they start thinking about it.

But in Sahaj, if you come, none of these things can trouble you because this is the aspect of Mahamaya, that She protects you. She protects.

Nobody can destroy a Sahaj Yogi, unless and until they want to be destroyed. It’s their desire. Nobody can touch them.

Now when they talk about miracles. Like the other day, one boy from Australia, a new Sahaj Yogi, was going on a motorbike and suddenly he was at a great speed and from both the sides two trucks came and they hit him. But instead of getting hit, he was just pushed out like a shuttlecock and he fell on the other side and he was not at all hurt and he got up and they were surprised. His bike was shattered, everything and this fellow was perfectly all right. They couldn’t understand how this boy has saved himself. There are so many, so many stories like that. That shows how this Mahamaya is protecting Sahaj Yogis — protection, very caring.

Also, in dreams, She protects.

It’s very surprising how people get dreams and how they get their medicines, how they get their treatment, how they understand about the dangers that are there; how, in dreams, they are told about how other people are, how they behave. You don’t have to know it in conscious mind; but into the very, very deep Sushupti state in dreams, you know what is good for you, what is bad for you. Somehow, they know. And it is that knowledge, which is intuitive, we can call it [which] comes through Mahamaya. She’s the one who gives you this intuitive knowledge, what to be done, what is to be done, how to get out of problems. And you do. Whether you manage it or not, you get out of it.

There are so many examples of this: thousand and one. One of them I’ll tell you. It comes to my mind now. In Australia there was a very, very nice Sahaj Yogi, very great Sahaj Yogi, very learned one, but a simple man. And another horrible one told him that he should buy this particular land and particular thing called Lilydale and “We can start Sahaj Yoga there. We can do this and we can do that.” So whatever earnings he had, he put it there to begin with and the bank said, “We’ll give you money.” But in that report, he had written that, “We have Sahaj Yoga properties, my properties, anything, that this is there, available in case we fail.” When I saw this, I thought, “Now, it’s too much.” So, I asked the lawyer and he said, “It is better that you leave it in the newspaper, otherwise nobody can take your land or anything or your property, but one thing is for sure that you will have to go to courts for years together. So best is to give in the newspaper that you have nothing to do with this Lilydale, not Sahaj Yoga has anything to do with it.”

Now this gentleman got very upset because the bank would not give the money and then the people who were selling it put a suit against him. He was already a bankrupt. He didn’t know what to do and he was very much in trouble. I said, “Don’t worry. You are under protection.” And you’ll be amazed that, despite all kinds of fears people had that he might be arrested or – God knows – whatever house he has will be sold out, everything. On the contrary, that Lillydale, somebody offered money to purchase it at a much higher price. So, he got a higher price. And so, he sold it. But you have to have patience and you have to have faith and courage. He said, “Mother, I know nobody can destroy me.”

And this is how the protection of the Mahamaya. The first part of Mahamaya was to make this man expose this bad Sahaj Yogi to all the people. There was a big following for him and because he was a good speaker, this and that. Then all they dropped out.

So, it works also on the collective side. There’s someone who tries to trouble the Sahaj Yogis: all right, the Mahamaya allows him to trouble up to a point and then suddenly She acts. So, the people are amazed, Sahaj Yogis are amazed, “How this man has become like this?”

This Mahamaya is always like my sari, as you say, is protecting you. She’s beautiful. She’s very kind, caring, compassionate, affectionate. Delicately She handles you. And She’s very, very angry and kills the people who try to spoil the work of God, like rakshasas and devils, and keeps you clean, out of all these bad hands.

Another very good aspect of Mahamaya is that She transforms you. Everything is in the brain for human beings. If you are a crook, you’re a crook in the brain. If you are a person who hates others, it’s all in the brain. If you are addicted to something, it’s all in the brain. It’s a very complicated conditioning in the head.

So, the Sahasrara is very important, no doubt, but the power of Viraata and Viratangana can only be effective if there is Mahamaya rupa. And She, in Her own sweet ways, opens and dislodges all these conditionings which make you ugly, which make you horrible, which makes you hot tempered, non-Sahaj Yogis.

She is the one who really, like the Mother Earth, gives all that She has to make you really very joyous, happy; so that you enjoy Nirananda, nothing but ananda, nothing but joy. And this is what is the Sahasrara.

But it’s only possible when your Brahmarandhra is to be opened out, otherwise, you cannot enter into the subtleties of Divine Love, compassion, of that ever-flowing Mahamaya.

From the outside I have told you what She is, but from inside, when you enter, penetrate into Her, through the Brahmarandhra, then this Mahamaya which is an incarnation, as you know, of this All-pervading Power, becomes very different. On one side She tries to teach you lessons, She tries to destroy [all] that is evil, all that is harmful, all that is destructive; and on the other side She loves you, protects you, very delicately guides you. Her love is without any expectations. She loves because She cannot help but to love.

So, in that love you are drenched, you enjoy it. Everybody knows that they are close to Her, absolutely close to Her. Whenever they want, they can always ask Her help; wherever they are, they are supported by Her.

So, the Sahasrara is very important because through this, only, we react. Through this we accumulate all kinds of nonsense. In the world of this nonsense that we are living, we have to be something like the lotuses, who cannot be tarnished, who cannot be affected by all the ills that are going on. This is what is the test, is the pariksha (परीक्षा): that at this time, at this difficult time, we can blossom and create fragrance and get so many others to this beautiful atmosphere.

It is a kind of a beautiful, playful war, I can say, against what is supposed to be negative.

What is the power of this negative is?

What is the power of these conditionings?

What is the power of this stupidity that anybody can see?

So, you develop the sight, the vision so clearly – you understand so clearly – that you are the ones who are responsible, you are the cells of this Sahasrara, of this brain and you all have to act.

I was yesterday enamoured when you said that these lights have to enlighten many lights. This was really a great promise to me. So, coming to Sahaj Yoga is not just for your personal, limited personalities and their problems, but, as I said, it’s you [that], on one side, has to grow; and, on the other side, everyone has to grow through you. So, this is the second side which you should look after.

Today, of course, I am very happy that, in my lifetime, I could see the manifestation of Mahamaya in such a beautiful way: that this door that is opened is now just able to enter into the Kingdom of God and to enjoy the heavenly bliss and the protection. But have faith in it. Have faith in it. Do not get disturbed by small things and I am sure it will work out in a very great way; if you get that complete faith and a complete surrendering, I am sure it will work out very well.

May God bless you!

So, we will have a little Ganesh Puja and then a Sahasrara puja.