Shri Krishna Puja. New York (USA), 8 June 1997

Today we have decided to have Shri Krishna Puja in the land of Shri Krishna.

Though this is the land of Shri Krishna, people ask Me why the people are not spiritual.

How is it they get entangled into different types of seekings which are not leading to truth? Why is it the people in America [are] not so alert as to recognize what is the truth and what they have to find?

Shri Krishna’s time was, as you know, at least two thousand after Shri Rama. And Shri Rama created lots of disciplines for human beings to follow in the path of their ascent.

According to the time everything works out.

So people were extremely rigid, disciplined, and it so happened that people lost the touch with the truth. They would leave their wives, ill-treat their wives, do all kinds of things in the name of Shri Rama; because always human beings take to something which is not right.

The another side they never saw, how Rama went after Sitaji to find Her, and He fought the horrible rakshasa Ravana to get back His wife.

So the other side people never see. Only this side they saw that He was very strict with His wife, and if the wife stayed over in some function He got so angry, and He shouted at Her and He threw Her out, and all those things.

That is how Shri Krishna came in. Always incarnations come one after another to correct themselves only. When Shri Krishna found that it is on the other side, of ego – that men thought they were very powerful people and they could do whatever they liked, and they had all the power to judge their wives – so Shri Krishna came with a new diversion, or I should say, from a new idea about life.

He talked of freedom, He talked of abandonment, and He talked that life is for enjoyment.

Radha was the source of joy. “Ra” is energy, “dha” means the one who sustains energy. She was the source of joy, and His idea was, to enjoy life is the best way to live.

And that’s why He said that you should play Holi, you should enjoy yourselves, you must have Raas, by which you enjoy group dancing and freedom.

So people thought that’s the way one has to live – is to be absolutely free, live as you like, specially in America.

They thought that to enjoy life is complete abandonment: no discipline, no bindings, you can divorce your wife eight times and husbands ten times.

That sort of a life started long time back, but it really prospered in America. The prosperity of this kind of a culture came to such a level that now we don’t know what’s going to happen to the family system, to the joy part of it.

Again here people forgot the other side of it. Adi Shakti first created Shri Ganesh. Shri Ganesh is the source of wisdom, He’s the source of auspiciousness. Through Him we understand auspiciousness. And He is a child, He is an eternal child.

And this behavior of abandonment is very destructive if there is no wisdom. First thing was to establish wisdom within ourselves.

But we start a theory or a kind of a pattern of life without thinking have we got the wisdom or not? Are we capable of following that pattern of life without any development of our wisdom?

But the worst was when the freedom became the criteria of life, people became extremely dominating and egoistical.

The first answer always you will get it, “What’s wrong?”

You ask them, “Why are you doing this?”

“What’s wrong?”

“I mean, it’s wrong because it is not auspicious.”

“What’s auspiciousness is there?” – absolutely like you can call them, people without any brains, brainless people. “Brainless” means there is no wisdom.

What is the power of brain is wisdom. So life started drifting into a destructive pond, we should say, of no return. And every kind of filth was accepted as a blessing, and nobody would think that this is wrong, this is not for human life.

Even the animals are all not like that.

Added to that came the stupidity of drinking alcohol. I don’t know how they discovered alcohol long time back, long, long time back, but they say it came out of the manthana and out of the churning of the ocean by the suras and asuras, by the rakshasas and by the devas.

Must be some trick to get these rakshasas drunk, and to somehow or other manage to get the kumbha of, the pitcher of amruta, ambrosia; so that these rakshasas will be lost drinking and then the devas will get their due, which was amruta, which was ambrosia.

That might be one of the reasons that it was created out of the ocean, or among all the fourteen things that came out of the ocean. So kind of a oppositions, opposite quality of things were created.

Another thing they created were prostitutes.

One may ask why prostitutes came out of that manthana – because now you have freedom.

You are given freedom to choose, and so you must have full vision whether to choose an auspicious life, a holy life, a divine life, or to choose destructive life.

This opposition came forward because your freedom had to be respected, that was very important. In the growth of human awareness it was very important to respect the freedom of human beings.

Because animals, if you see, they have no freedom: a snake will be a snake, scorpion will be a scorpion, lion will be a lion. They live with their own qualities, gunas; you cannot make them do something that other animals are doing.

We have passed through all these different animal yonis and now we are human beings, and now we have freedom.

Now why freedom, one may ask – because these days they ask such questions for everything you say – why freedom needed?

Like I always told you before that in the school they teach you two plus two is four, and you have to remember it. But when you grow and when you go to college, you are supposed to have freedom to understand everything yourself.

In the same manner, your awareness was to be brought to that level that you could use your freedom wisely.

Now, you have to have temptations. How can you judge a person whether he is blind or not blind? Supposing you ask a blind person, “Is this a flower?” He might feel it, say, “No, no, it’s a bee.” So he has to have his eyes to see, and once you give him the eyes he goes amok. He doesn’t know what to do, what is good for him. So he chose all that was not at all good for him, auspicious for him, and detrimental for his growth.

So the drinking started, and with drinking you don’t know how we get abandoned. I have heard people, that they lose their sense of relationship with brothers, sisters, mothers, everything, if you get drunk. So many drunkards have told Me this. That is why in this country we have funny type of relationships – one can’t understand, how can it be? But it is so. By drinking, all these things have happened that they don’t know who is your sister, who is your wife, who is your mother.

In India also we have but different type of thing, that they will ill-treat their mother, they’ll ill-treat their sister, ill-treat their wives; the other way round also. (15.47)

But here they do not ill-treat, they love, but in a very perverted manner.

Just see the reaction in two countries.

So this grew up very much, and today we see a country that is America in a complete chaos.

So this freedom without any wisdom at all growing, starts creating a terrible ego.

When auspiciousness is given up then Shri Ganesha sleeps and as Christ, who is the incarnation of Shri Ganesha, also doesn’t bother.

So the rule of Christ is finished. So what rules is the ego, this ego which thinks it is free. It doesn’t know it is bound by all kinds of enemies of very horrible types.

At the time of Shri Krishna He said that the worst enemy human beings have is anger, but I think in modern times the worst enemy human beings have is greed and jealousy.

Greed has no meaning these days.

I mean, what do you say to a person who has three thousand shoes – I mean, pairs of shoes? Must be mad!

There are all sorts of things, you know, in greed you see these days. You don’t know how people are really behaving. No one can explain. I know of someone who has five thousand dogs. What is she doing with those dogs I don’t know, but she has.

Like all countries, even in America I think it’s much worse, much worse.

Now you may call it anything, consumerism or anything like that, or your economics which is, I think, very faulty, it doesn’t understand human beings – whatever it may be, it can never bring benevolence, neither to the person who thinks he is rich, or to the people whom he is exploiting. As far as spirituality is concerned, they are all away from the realm of divinity.

Now the mind starts working with ego.

Ego takes over like a computer, and it starts suggesting ways and methods by which how much money you can earn. So when you start earning money, then again the same Ego Mister tells you how to destroy yourself with this money.

They do all kinds of things when they have money. I mean, that money is not a Lakshmi prasad; it is some sort of a money that becomes like a rakshasa or a devil and which devours you.

It takes you to all kinds of wrong places. It takes you to such horrible theories that nobody would accept such theories. This ego makes you feel that – ah, yes, you are perfect, you know everything, whatever you are doing is the best.

But with all that doing, what happens? You become restless, you cannot sleep. Now with the problem here is that people have this so-called tension, stress.

In our young age we never heard of this word, what is tension, stress is. Even now in India very few people know about it.

Because you yourself, you are destroying yourself. So with this money, say, you want to entice some woman – take a very low-level thing. Then you’ll run after her, give her this, give her that, and spend all your money till you become bankrupt. And then you’ll start sitting and crying. And this is a common story.

I don’t know why don’t they make films like this, to show actually what happens to a person who runs after money, and he goes on then spending that money. He doesn’t know what to do, you see; money also eats him, I think. On the other side we have people who are extremely miserly. So all their – with the money only, they become so much greedy that they keep their money in seven locks and keys. Now, they see in the world there are people who are suffering so much, who have so much problem. Why not spend some money on them? So then there are agents come up, like our Swiss bank. Swiss bank is the outcome of our greed, completely our greed; because we have so much money we don’t know what to do, so we put it in the Swiss bank.

Swiss bank says, “All right, we’ll look after it.”

Because we are greedy as well as we are miserly. I mean, miserly people are another crackpots, I should say, the way they live. But also the people who have money are really crackpots. They have no sense of self-respect, neither self-esteem.

Now imagine eighty, ninety-year-old women going for a shake dance, as I told you.

Because they have money they think they should do this, competing with the young people, because they have money.

If they have money, if they get it without any, I should say, cheating or without deceiving someone, if it’s a real good money they should give it to some good cause and try to propagate goodness. But money itself seems to be something very bad, like poison, because either this money makes you mad how to spend it, or mad how to save it. As if you become a slave of this money business, and in that slavishness you go on drifting, drifting, drifting.

I’ve seen people when they talk, you don’t know why they talk like that, you know. Then you discover that they have a bank account, that’s why they are talking like that. If you don’t have bank account then you won’t talk like that.

I mean, more than that also. This country is overflowing with money, with all kinds of money transactions, permutations and combinations and this and that, and what you can do with money – because Shri Krishna is Kubera. He is the Deity, or we can say He is the God of wealth. But at the same time, He is a very mischievous God.

You can see clearly: this is supposed to be Shri Krishna’s country which is overflowing with money. At the same time you find horrible things happening, worst in the whole world.

I mean, no one can beat Americans, they say, in stupidity, in vulgarity, indecency, exploitation.

So this is the curse of money on human beings, which is to be understood, that freedom without wisdom is the most dangerous thing to use.

It is better not to be free if you have no wisdom, because God knows what you will do if you have freedom and no wisdom. I’ve seen here, heard about women who are killing their children. I mean, nowhere you will find such a thing like that, killing small children. Now how this money makes you so dry that you have no, I would say, no love, no feeling. Just for killing’s sake also, people kill here.

Now there are – there’s another thing that this money does: it creates a disparity. There are some who are very rich, there are some who are very poor. So those who are very poor are against those who are very rich. They can’t understand why should these people have so much money, so they think it’s a matter of right to snatch all that money from them and use it for themselves.

But the same money can destroy them also. So snatching that money with violence or grabbing it is not going to give you any blessings.

So what is the purpose of wealth? That is very important for people who worship Shri Krishna to know.

In Shri Krishna’s life, He saw that the women who were creating buttermilk and butter were carrying all that all the way to Mathura, where in Mathura this horrible King Kamsa was reigning. And they used to give to all the soldiers there.

He didn’t want them to do that. Because they would fetch much more money, they would be paid much more, so these women were greedy about it. Instead of giving them to their own children, to their own families, they used to collect all that and take to Mathura.

From very childhood Shri Krishna used to throw stones at those pitchers and break their pitchers, because he didn’t want that to go all the way to Mathura to feed those horrible soldiers.

This is what it is we have to learn, that if we have, say, surplus money or something, you have to think what you can do with it and what joy it can bring, by sharing with right type of people.

Not in the pubs, no, no, I don’t mean that, but sharing it for their needs and what they want.

Actually a disciple of Shri Krishna should be a self-satisfied person. Look at His life, how self-satisfied He was. Every episode about Him talks of His complete oneness with Himself.

For example, when Arjuna asked Him that “Why don’t You join us Pandavas to fight with us?”

In modern times in the competitive life, you see, if you see those races, they are so anxious to win, to have the higher position.

Then all the big, big politicians are trying to bring down other politicians, to have their own power. But what did Shri Krishna say, that “I will be your charioteer. I’ll drive your chariot, but I will not lift My weapon against anyone.”

We can’t think of anyone like that today. See, people will never say that, “All right, I will stay down and you’ll be on the throne.” Very difficult even to see one person who could behave like Shri Krishna.

Because whether He is a charioteer or He is the one who was Arjuna, or He was the captain of the whole thing, He knew what He was. What was the need for Him to become this or that, and that? But these days, you see, to become something is such a struggle going on. Someone wants to be, say, the prime minister – that’s the highest, I think, I don’t know. But then some want to dislodge the prime minister. Then you start from the peon upward, everybody wants something higher, higher, higher, higher.

This is another very subtle type of greed which is working out in our minds.

Even in Sahaja Yoga I’ve seen that the leaders – now are settled down of course, much better – but used to be such a terrible fight for leadership. It’s all a myth, actual myth, but they used to fight. And they would write letters after letters.

There were groups: one group would write against another group, another group would write against this group, and I used to just laugh, because there’s no truth in it.

Leadership is no truth, it’s just a joke.

But even if I told them it’s a joke, they would not understand it’s a joke and not to be that serious, and to fight about it.

Gradually it’s settled down normally – better, much better, it’s not so much bad.

But that is what is there, this greed. That was the mistake, I think, of Shri Krishna, that instead of anger He should have put greed as the worst thing. Actually, you see, these incarnations don’t know much about human beings, and they would not know how far they will be going – same happens to Me. But they are absolutely unaware that what these human beings are, what you tell them, what they will make out of it.

Their brains are so sharp that they’ll pick up whatever is wrong for them, and never see whatever is right for them.

Shri Rama tried something – it was of no use. Shri Krishna tried something – it was of no use.

So we come to Shri Jesus Christ.

Nowadays the people who are something else are ardent disciples of Christ. They have no wisdom of any kind. Like mad they are going about.

You read there about their organizations, you read about things that they do, you are amazed at it; you see, how can they be disciples of Christ?

In no way they have any right on Christ to begin with, because they don’t know anything about Christ. First to know and then to imbibe His qualities are something very, very, I should say, impossible thing these days.

Some would say, “Why was He born in a poor family? He was born in a poor family – He should have been born to Mr. Ford.” Some say – I mean, you see, finding faults and criticizing is the only thing left to us now because you can’t do anything else, that’s why.

Then they would say, “Why did He get himself crucified?” He didn’t crucify you. He should have crucified you, but actually He crucified himself, that was His mistake.

It is also very difficult for human beings to understand incarnations, because they are in juxtaposition. They are very different things, so human beings can’t understand. Now they are there to lead them, they are there to tell them what is to be done; but the way they understand, you see, it’s just absurd.

For example, you know in Chicago I met the head of the Hare Rama fellow. Another puzzle he was to Me, really, because he came in a very thin dhoti and it was so very cold, and he was shivering before Me.

So I said, “Sir, why are you wearing such a thin dhoti? You are shivering, I am very sorry.”

He said, “Why? My guru has told me that I should have a thin dhoti.”

“Why?”

“To go to heaven, to achieve my ascent.”

I said, “Really? He told you like that? But Shri Krishna never wore a thin dhoti.”

“But I am not Shri Krishna,” he said – see how the human mind tries to avoid. So now, then he had shaved his head and had a big pony-tail behind. I asked him, “Why have you shaved your head?” So he said, “Because my guru told me that you have to shave your head if you have to go to heaven.” So I said, “But Shri Krishna did not shave His head.”

“No, no, but He was incarnation. I have to shave my head so I have to go to heaven.”

So I told him, “See, Kabira has said, ‘These sheep are shaven and shorn every year twice. And if they all go to heaven where will be a place left for you?’ ”. So he never understood Me. He got very angry with Me, and he said to Me, “Mother, You are talking ill about my guru.” I said, “I am not talking ill. I am your Mother, I am just asking Me that what’s the use of wearing this thin dhoti, that’s all. A Mother has a right to ask.” He got very angry, he went away. And he’s the head of these Hare Ramas!

So to understand the incarnation also you have to be a realized soul, otherwise you cannot, because they look very absurd.

Without asking any questions if you can become a realized soul – if you ask questions it’s one degree less – without questioning if you get your realization, without any questions, then you have the highest marks. But if you, after questioning and this thing and that thing, then you have less marks, because your mind is very active, and the person whose mind is active cannot achieve something beyond the mind. You have to achieve it beyond the mind.

This is one thing at least if you all understand, I think My work is done.

All tricks tried by Shri Krishna, all disciplines put by Shri Rama, all the gurus who tried their level best to tell you what to do, is only to make you a yogi by taking you beyond the mind.

And then what happens? Then you are in connection with this all-pervading Power which is looking after you, which protects you, which helps you; in every way you are absolutely in charge of this Paramachaitanya.

Now supposing I do not take the citizenship of America – of course I may never take, but supposing. Then this government is not in charge of Me. But if I take, of course they’ll tax Me, do all kinds of things, doesn’t matter, but at least they’ll be in charge.

But this Paramchaitanya when it takes over, it is love, is absolute love: love which thinks, understands, coordinates, cooperates, works, and extremely sensitive. It works – I’m sometimes so surprised the way it works, without fail, without making any mistakes. You don’t have to even tell, because you are there.

But to believe that we are there also is a difficult task. With all the experiences you should believe that you are there, but that is also quite a difficult task.

So when we say they’re established Sahaja yogis then what we mean is this, that they are completely one, under complete charge of Paramachaitanya. That’s what we have to be.

If you want to save this country, you have to be that. No argument, no explanation, nothing; no fighting, no strikes, nothing.

No placards is needed. You are the ones who will advertise Sahaja Yoga. Every one of you should understand that your life is very important at this juncture. And you have to become that special person who reflects reality through the divine love.

May God bless you.