“You have to grow vertically,” Easter Puja, Eastbourne (UK), 22 April 1990.

Today we are here to worship the resurrection of Christ; and also to thank Him for giving us an ideal life of a saint who has to work for the benevolence of the whole world.

We talk of Christ, we sing of Shri Ganesha, we say we believe in Him, specially Sahaj Yogis feel He is the eldest brother that they have. And a tremendous surrender I find, among Western Sahaj Yogis specially, for Christ; because they were born in Christian religion perhaps, maybe; or maybe that they found Christ’s life a very special one. But to Sahaj Yoga He has to be much more than that, and to you Sahaj Yogis.

Many people believe in many deities. Like some believe in Shri Krishna, some in Shri Rama, some in Buddha, some in Mahavira and some in Christ; all over the world, they do believe in some higher being. But this belief is without the connection, to begin with, and becomes a kind of a falsehood that they think that Christ belongs to them, Rama belongs to them or Shri Krishna belongs to them, that they are the possessors of all these deities because they have obliged of believing into it. And that is how most of the faiths have come. 

And, though they ardently believe in Christ, all these faiths have failed because when they believed in Christ, they believed that, through Christ, they can get their cheques cashed: it was like a bank. You pray to God: “You get me all right.” “All right.” Then: “Get my mother all right,” “my father all right,” “my sister all right.” “Get me so much money!” “Get me so much wealth!” or health or anything; thinking that because we believe in Christ He’s so obliged that He has to pay for it and He has to look after us and that we are rightful possessors of His blessings.

Then they form churches, temples, mosques, clubs believing that, “Now we belong to Christ!” “All this group is a very special chosen one!” or, “We belong to Rama,” or to Krishna or to someone like that. And to whomsoever they may ‘belong,’ the one to whom they belong, does not know anything about them! Christ has said, “You’ll be calling me, ‘Christ, Christ,’ I won’t recognise you!” It’s a big warning to people who say, “We believe in Christ.”

So, without the connection, if  you believe in someone, it has no meaning: it’s just like some sort of a mythical, romantic idea that the other person whom you believe in has a special relationship with you. So this assurance that, “I believe into something,” or this assumption that, “I believe into something, and because I believe into something, I have every right to get all the blessings that I ask for,” is a myth, as you must have realised after Sahaj Yoga. 

But when you become a Sahaj Yogi, then you have got your connection with all of them and with Christ. But this connection again, in a subtle way, is the same style. For example, what we try to do is to ask again that this should be done, that should be done: “my Agnya is caught up. Mother, please clear it out!” or “I’ve got headache so please put it right!” 

Because you believe in Sahaj Yoga, you expect Sahaj Yoga to feel obliged that, “See now, they believe in me, it’s such a great obligation!” “So Sahaj Yoga must do something for me!”  Whether you do anything for Sahaj Yoga is not important. Only because you believe in Sahaj Yoga, because Sahaj Yoga has given you Realisation, so Sahaj Yoga has every obligation that it should look after you, “I am in Sahaj Yoga still, why should I suffer? I am in Sahaj Yoga, why is my mother be all right?” “I am in Sahaj Yoga...” as if [it’s] sort of an organisation where you have paid money or something and you are supposed to get all the rewards.

But now, let us see, after Sahaj Yoga, what should be our attitude which is sane? The first is that, “Now I’m a Sahaj Yogi and now I’m connected to Christ: so what is my responsibility?” Christ felt responsible for the whole world! He’s described in the Devi Purana as the support of the whole universe. 

As soon as you are connected with Christ, the whole attitude has to change.

So to be connected with Christ means what are the qualities of Christ you have imbibed in yourself? That’s the minimum of minimum. What did you get out of His life? Is it that He has cured people, all right, so you should get cured? He gave eyes to people, so you must get your eyes back?

Shri Mataji: Do you mind removing this [incense] for me? (Mother doesn’t like the incense smoke.)

Or is it that His life, which you have enshrined, should also make you something that could be enshrined, that could be respected, that could be called as a reflection of Christ’s life?

Now let us see His life, what kind of a life He led. We read Bible, I mean we carry Bible everywhere and even I saw the Bible in the hotel as if it’s a part of the thing, like a soap is kept and Bible is! Of course, I read it: I don’t know how many read it. 

But then it doesn’t become to say you are a Sahaj Yogi, if through His connection you have not received any one of His qualities. For example, this is now connected to the mains, so you are getting electricity through it. This [microphone] doesn’t give electricity to the mains, but it receives. So you have to receive something from Him and what you have to receive is the qualities that He had. You might say, “Because, Mother, He was Divine, He was the son of God.” But He was also a son of His Mother and you are also son of your Mother.

So mediocrity in our character cannot say that we are connected with Christ because there’s no energy of Christ flowing in you. When energy of Christ flows through you, you express it. Like yesterday the gentleman was playing (Nishat Khan was playing sitar) and I think the power of Saraswati started flowing in him and how beautiful he played! He couldn’t control his fingers. He said, “It’s all happening here: I don’t know how!”

So throughout, if you see His life, He was a person who was all the time bothered about the benevolence of the world. How clearly He went and talked to the priests and told them that, “You don’t understand me because you are blind.” He told them that He knows His Father and His Father knows Him, “But you do not know me, nor you know your Father.” So openly, blatantly, He was talking. He was not afraid that He will go to jail. He was not afraid that, by saying such a thing, the ego of others will be challenged; because He was not pretentious. He was not doing something that was not truthful. He was telling the truth and truth has that capacity to express itself through your personality. 

But do we really believe in ourselves? Do we really believe that we are Sahaj Yogis, that we can talk to people as Christ could talk to them?

At a very young age of twelve years, He could go and talk to the priests — what courage! There was no need for Him. He should have really got married like Sahaj Yogis do and settled down with His wife and children nicely; because the main headache for the Sahaj Yogis seems to be the marriage and their children! He never married. He was so precious that He didn’t want to waste His time with these things. And He died so young: He knew that He had to die.

So in His life, you see He was not a mundane type of a personality, not mundane, not ordinary. And when He spoke with such confidence, with such knowledge of truth that people did believe Him, had to believe. They couldn’t help it. This power you too have, and you can do the same. But the way He used His power, why can’t we use? Because we are not intense about it. Our attention is on something else, which is quite frivolous, which is useless.

All right, we are Sahaj Yogis, so what do we think about? First thing we’ll think, “Now, today’s a puja, what should I wear?” Then, “I haven’t yet pressed my clothes,” or, “my sari’s not all right. I have to match it,” and, “How to dress up.” All these frivolous things first come to our house, our brain. Or in the morning, when you get up in your ashrams or anywhere, what do you think? If it was Christ, He would say, “I am sleeping still? I have to meditate! I have to be one with the Divine!” He would not say, “No, no, the Divine will look after, it’s all right. The Divine will meditate for me!” “After all, Paramchaitanya, it has to meditate. Why should we meditate? We are all Sahaj Yogis.” “Everything is sahaj, so let the Divine meditate for us!” “We can’t get up in the morning. It’s difficult. We can’t,  you see, just can’t.” But then you can’t be a Sahaj Yogi! You are supposed to be connected with all the deities, not only Christ, and here you can’t even get out of your bed to meditate; while all the deities are already up there, waiting for you to get up, that’s all. And they can’t understand what’s happening to these Sahaj Yogis. “How can they be so low? After all, Mother must have given them Realisation thinking them to be something great. How did they get Realisation? They’re so ordinary, so mundane, so useless!”

The deities start wondering, “Why Mother gave them Realisation?” Because a person who cannot enjoy his meditation cannot be a Sahaj Yogi. That’s the first sign of a Sahaj Yogi: that he looks forward to that time when he can meditate. That is the time that you are really in connection with the Divine and you enjoy the most, and whenever I get a chance, I go into it. I find it so difficult to come out of it! I mean, for today it happened to me, I was first thinking that I will have to struggle out for this puja. I’ll have to work it out. I don’t know how I will get out of this meditative mood. 

But it surprises so many people, how people are meditating. Especially so many Indians told me this thing; it’s something very surprising: that they are supposed to be meditating and immediately they get up, “What cakes? What things? What have you cooked?” this, that. There’s no slumber of meditation in them and, just, they just start thinking about food. How can that be? It’s the way you cannot get out of your sleep, in the same way a Sahaj Yogi cannot get out of his meditative mood: it’s so enjoyable. You want to be there.

So one of the signs that you are not yet anywhere near Sahaj Yoga is that if you cannot enjoy your meditation. 

I mean, imagine if you enjoy a television show or anything, you have to see it, isn’t it? You cannot just say, “All right, I’m sleeping now and I am enjoying the television.” So you have to be awakened to it. But that awakening is within; and there you see your own connection. 

It’s a joy that I cannot describe really: there’s only one word for that, is nirananda, means it’s just,  ‘Nira’ means ‘only the joy’; ‘absolute joy’. And who would like to give up the joy for what? For a cake or for a tea or this thing? I mean, just think of it! The joy is so deep, so intense, so beautiful. I don’t know what else to say. You have not tasted the ambrosia, otherwise you would have said, [it’s] as if the ambrosia is trickling down on your tongue. It’s like that, the taste of it.

But what I find [is] that the depth we have not touched; which is within us. All of you have that depth, that not that you don’t have. I have not given you Realisation because you are just there, here [but] because you have that depth within you. You are special people with that depth. But you haven’t touched it. It shows you haven’t touched it. 

Supposing it’s like a well full of water, but you are still dangling somewhere in the middle, you haven’t yet touched that depth. Because once you get into that, you get completely drenched and lost. But if that is not the situation, that shows that you are still somewhere dangling in between and any time you can come high and dry.

So you have to judge yourself. This is the time for you to judge [if] you are in connection with Christ. He achieved His resurrection, by which we have to achieve our resurrection. But what have we done to achieve that resurrection which He has achieved? He intensely lived a life of complete sacrifice and complete concentration towards one goal: that He has to achieve the resurrection. Nothing else was important to Him. All that attention was on one thing that, “I have to achieve this resurrection. I have to get crucified and I have to be resurrected because the whole world has to be resurrected.”

But Sahaj Yogis, I don’t know how many think that way, how many think that dedication is needed. And the best part of it [is] that it’s so joy-giving. Every step you move forward, it’s so joy-giving. This sinking in that well is so very joy-giving. It’s not painful. You don’t have to crucify yourself, you don’t have to carry the cross. He’s done it for you. So what do you sacrifice? Is your laziness!

When it comes to the satisfaction of ego, people are overactive. They are like bullets then. And when it is the satisfaction of their physical comfort, they become – I don’t know. We had one rakshasa called Kumbhakarna, who used to sleep for six months and used to be awake six months. But here I see people sleep for twelve months, so what do you call them? 

Then they say, “Mother, we can’t keep awake!” Why? Because you are not meditating, you are not one with Christ. Then His agnya, He controls. With that Agnya, you cannot sleep. If His blessings are there on the Agnya, you cannot sleep. You won’t believe with the slightest light, artificial light specially, I can’t sleep; because still Christ is awake and I have to be awake.

So you have to be awakened to this fact that we are Sahaj Yogis. We have a special responsibility as our connection with Christ is; our main responsibility is, all the time, intensely, to think, “What we can do for the betterment of human beings? And what are we doing about it?”

First I used to say, “Count your blessings,” because that was the best way to make people understand that there are blessings in Sahaj Yoga. Now I would say, “Count your deeds.” What have you done for Sahaj Yoga? Sahaj Yoga has done so much for you. 

To say that Paramchaitanya will look after you is absolutely absurd! If Paramchaitanya could do everything why should it create human beings? One Adam and Eve were sufficient. You have to do it. Unless and until you become deep, it cannot trigger, it is helpless. It’s only through you it is going to work out.

Now if there is no instrument, electricity cannot work, can it? Now you should say, “The electricity itself must come before me and must do everything!” You have to have the instrument and you are the instrument and if you do not want to do it, how can Paramchaitanya do it? It will be something like saying, as I told you, that, “Let electricity do the job, we’ll not have any instrument.” Can I work it out? Can you work it out?

So Paramchaitanya has its own style. It can only work if you people want to work it out. It’s an energy, and you are the instrument. But the instrument is more busy with the job, with the family, I don't know, all kinds of nonsensical things. 

Now supposing this instrument (microphone), which is meant for my lecture, forgets what it is and acts like a ladle in the kitchen because it’s fond of food, say, for example: then what’s the use of making this useless instrument? It doesn’t do what it has to do. It doesn’t know what it has been made for. It has no purpose at all. It’s such a useless stuff.

So I feel there’s a kind of a lethargy, a kind of a very subtle lethargy working out, like this that, “We’ve done our job. Let the young people do it now!” You are matured, and the matured have to do the job. “We have done our level best!” What have you done so far?

So much to be done still. And somehow or other we have to touch that area where such people remain like the yesterday’s [sitar] player. He is not doing God’s work. He’s an artist and he’s working so hard to achieve perfection. He will get the same amount whether he’s perfect or not, but he’s practising at home, he’s listening to it, he’s trying to develop it; all the time working it out so that his performance should be excellent. So he’s seeking an excellence. 

Mediocrity has no place in Sahaj Yoga. Only through excellence you’ll enjoy. Only through excellence you will really become Sahaj Yogis. 

Otherwise, you could be a headache to me and to yourself; you would be a headache to Sahaj Yogis. A most non-progressive, destructive element a person is who is not alert. You have to be aware, aware of your responsibilities. 

So far I have been saying that still the preparation is on: they have to correct themselves, they have to clear out themselves, they have to work it out; still their conditionings, this ego. But now, twenty years have passed and beware! Be aware that twenty-first year is going to be a very big jump. I’m warning you again and again and again and again. And you have to work very hard to develop yourself vertically in balance with your horizontal growth.

It’s not my lecture for entertainment or anything, but should go to your heart, to your brain, to your being as this is very important. And you are not going to waste it. All the time you have to think that you are a Sahaj Yogi and you have to know what you have to do in Sahaj Yoga and how to achieve it. You should not be satisfied unless and until you have achieved that excellence. 

That’s the very important, crucial point today [that] I wanted to tell you because today is Easter Day which was a very crucial point for the development or the growth of the Spirit, because Sahasrara we could never have achieved if Agnya was blocked.

Christ could have said, “All right, let Paramchaitanya do it! Let Paramchaitanya get itself hanged. Why should I do it?” But He had to do it and He was the instrument and He’s done it.

So Sahaj Yoga is not only for exploiters — if you try just to exploit Sahaj Yoga, you’ll be exploited too — but is for the exploitation of joy. But that’s only possible if you grow, you touch your depth. If you are not deep enough, you’ll hang in the air, as I said. And that has to be worked out, that has to be found out: how best you can do it, how much you can reach people; how many people you have given Realisation, how many people you’re going to help improve their health, their mental conditions and then how much you are going to talk about Sahaj Yoga.

So that is going to work out what I call the collective ascent of human beings.

May God bless you!

To be in connection with Christ is to be enjoying your meditation. 

All right. So, puja is another thing which, I know, it helps you a lot; it gives you a definite push, I should say, but you don’t retain it. You don’t retain it. Then what’s the use? So also you have to retain, should have power to retain. That’s only possible if you have touched your depths, which you have.

I am so happy to come back to you all. I missed you all very much. I’m travelling and working very hard. I don’t know if I work hard. I don’t think about it, never. 

So once you know that this is what you have to be, then you don’t work , it just works. Then you don’t think you are working. This is a subtle point you have to understand: that everything works out and you work in a way and it works out, but you don’t work. Like the Sun shines: if you ask the Sun, “Poor Sun, you have to work so hard!” He said, “When? When was that?” So you say, “You have to rise in the morning, then you have to...”. “No, no, no, no, no! I was just with myself, nothing else. I was with myself, I was enjoying myself. When did I work?” 

As long as you are with yourself there is no question of getting bored or no question of you getting tired, nothing: you are with yourself, finished! 

But unless and until that happens within you then these problems do come up. And so please, please again I would say, value your Self-realisation, value your Realisation, value your life. 

You all are very precious people and you are the ones who are chosen. 

I hope all of you come to Sahasrar day after a very intensive meditative time. Otherwise suddenly I’ll find people who are doing Sahasrar puja with their all Sahasraras caught up.

May God bless you!