Shri Rama Puja - Les Avants (Switzerland), 4 October 1987 Today we are celebrating in Switzerland the coronation of Shri Rama on Dassera Day. Many things happened on Dassera Day. The most important was that Shri Rama was coronated as a king on this day. He also killed Ravana on this day. Many may say that how can it be He killed Ravana and He was coronated on the same date? In those days in India, we had supersonic aeroplanes and, is a fact, and the aeroplane’s name was Pushpak, meaning the flower. It was called as Pushpak and it has a tremendous speed. So after killing Ravana He came to Ayodhya with His wife and that was the day He was crowned. On the ninth day, He worshiped the Goddess to get strength, Shakti, for his weapons, and the tenth day He killed Ravana. So, you can imagine how much advanced people were there at the time of Shri Rama and His kingdom. The reason was the king was an incarnation; also He was a benevolent king as described by Socrates. Shri Rama’s story is very interesting throughout and we have now a beautiful series about Him done by our television in India, which is sold for a very good price, maybe we might be able to present you all with one when you come there. But the story of Rama they say was written before He was born. Even before there was any inkling of it; the seer, Valmiki, wrote the whole story of Shri Rama. Shri Rama’s birth and all that are brought forth by the Agni, the fire, and He was born in the Dynasty of the Surya, is the sun. So with all that, born out of the blessings of the Agni, that is fire, and also was born in the dynasty of Surya, He was one of the mildest avataras you have ever had. He’s known to be a very (I mean English language) formal person, in the sense sankoch (संकोच) – that He would go to any extent to bear upon Himself the problems than to tell others to do something. We still had many people in India like that. Like we had one Prime Minister, Lal Bahadur Shastri, and if he was sitting in the room and there are people sitting and there electricity was on somehow, say by light or something, and he wants to put it off, he would not ask anyone to put it off. Slowly he’ll get up from his seat, walk up to the switch and just put it off so that he shouldn’t ask for anything. This is one of the greatest quality of Shri Rama that He would not make anyone do anything for Him or order anything or would use someone for that purpose. See, He was the blessing of fire and born in the Surya. But what we find, those people who are born, maybe in very lowly families, in the negative families, the left-sided as you can call it, with all kinds of problems, have a terrible Agnya and a terrible Surya in them. The person who is born in the Surya has to be extremely humble. He is the one who shows that nothing can affect him, nothing can make him feel that he is something great. Now, when we see His life further, He was a very humble man. We’ve seen now people who try to despise others, I don’t like you, I don’t like, it’s not good, it’s very difficult, is a sign that such a person is extremely low in character, has no character at all but is low in character. Anybody who has any character is shown by the tolerance he has of other people. Intolerance is a sign of a person who is extremely egoistical and is vain, there’s vanity. Shri Rama was so much loved by the people where He ruled in that state and He had the most beautiful wife of the most venerated father, Janaka, and who was the beloved son of His father. But He was such an humble man, such an humble man, that in all His character you see the beauty. Like, He was going by a little boat when He went for His exile. And the one who was taking Him was an ordinary boatman. And the boatman was feeling very much upset that he’s sitting before the king of Ayodhya and he doesn’t have proper clothes. So Shri Rama, who was Himself was wearing nothing but valkalas (वल्कल) – are the clothes which are worn by the village people or worn by the people who live in the primitive areas, only kind of leaves that they have. He had to wear that because His mother, the stepmother, asked for that kind of boon from the father. And then Shri Rama just told him, “Why are you worried? I am wearing this. I am no more a king. I am sitting before you like this. You should be quite comforted. And I really don’t know how to steer the boat while you know how to steer the boat so why should you be worried?” Like that He kept even the people who we would call as low in society at a very high pedestal, which shows that He respected human beings. He Himself is called as maryada purushottama (मर्यादा पुरुषोत्तम), means He was the one who knew how far to go with someone, maryadas, how to talk to someone, how to approach someone, while we find people who misbehave, even with their husbands, with their wives, with their children, with everyone and also outside they are about to jump on others – that’s absolutely against Rama. It’s like Ravana. Even Ravana was not like this, he was also of not that nature because he had certain dharmas within him. He was a realized soul, but he had become a rakshasa because he became arrogant, but even his arrogance cannot be matched with many modern people and modern girls and men that I hear and see, that it is surprising they have really surpassed Ravana. Ravana only had ten heads but sometimes I feel that the modern men might have, or the women specially, might have hundred and eight heads! The arrogance, the amount of expression of hatred, is so ridiculous and makes a person look so useless, but I see such people very common and in Sahaja Yoga also they crawl somehow. Actually such people are absolutely despised by God Almighty. You go further with His life, see He went into the village where a very old woman who was belonging to the primitive class of Bhils (भिल्ल –tribe living in the jungles of central India), had very few teeth, and she brought some fruits, little fruits we call as ber (बेर), and she brought and gave it to Him, that - “Shri Ram, you see, I have got these for you. I don’t have anything else. And these, I have tested all of them.” Actually, in India, if you put in the mouth, it is uttishtha (उत्तिष्ठ), nobody will touch it. But she says, “I have tasted all of them by piercing my teeth into it and I have seen that none of them are sour.” Shri Rama didn’t like sour fruits, she knew, “so, none of them are sour and you can have them.” I mean, in a way, if it is done to somebody in the west, they will hit you hard.Immediately Shri Rama rushed forward and took the bers from her hand, kissed her hand, said, “All right, all right, I’m going to have them.” With such enthusiasm He ate them.So Lakshmana was little angry at that lady, ‘What’s this going on?’So Sitaji said, “Oh do you like them very much?”He said, “Yes, but I am not going to give you anything.”She said, “No, I am your half body. You have to give me.” So He gave some to Sitaji. So Sitaji ate, “Yaah, what a thing! It’s like nectar of heaven I am eating!”So Lakshmana felt very jealous. He said, “Sister-in-law, can I not have a little of it?”She said, “No! I can’t give you. You ask your brother. I’m not going to give you. I have a very little share. Why don’t you ask your brother?”So he goes to his brother, he says, “Can I have some more?” So Shri Rama smiled and gave him that ber which was eaten, or touched, or was pierced, by the teeth of a primitive woman, who is actually an outcast according to the Brahminic laws of India. The sweetness of Shri Rama, the way He used to make people feel comfortable, like I would say, an example of a oyster who gets a little stone into the body of the shell, takes out a kind of a shiny liquid and covers it with that shiny liquid and makes it into a pearl to be comfortable. Now, He didn’t want His own comfort. Rama is a little bit different that He wanted to make everyone into a diamond, or a pearl, so that the other person would shine and would look nice, and that’s how He felt comforted.His qualities, if you have to imbibe, first of all we have to understand the innate situation of Shri Rama. Shri Rama is placed on the right-hand side of your heart. Right-hand side, right heart, He is placed there. Now in a human being there is no right heart. If you tell somebody there’s right heart, they’ll say, “What, there are two hearts, or three hearts?” In our Sahaja Yoga we have three hearts: one is the left, another is the right, and one is the center.Now the right heart is a very important thing. The right heart looks after the whole lungs, both the lungs, all the throat, the trachea, the nose, the inner part. The outer side is looked after, we can say, the features are given by Shri Krishna but the inner part of it is all done by Shri Rama. They are the same, but one acts as in inner part, another as the outer part. It gives you the ears, from the inner part, Shri Rama does. He gives you the eyes, in the inner part of the eyes. Now, it’s so important to have the inner side all right than the outer side. Is an example of Shri Rama, He never cared for the outer side or the outward looks of a person. Because He came before Shri Krishna, He tried to build up the inner side of a human being. So, we can say, though He is on the right heart, He acts through your Hamsa chakra and partly through your Vishuddhi chakra in the inner side of it. Because Shri Krishna, in the inner side of it is Shri Rama, is Shri Vishnu.So, when somebody is, say, not good looking according to the western standard, according to Me the western standards are rather funny because western standards don’t look like, neither like Krishna or Shri Rama. The person like Shri Rama was a very healthy, tall person with his hands up to the knees, ajanubahu (अजानुबाहू), means the one who has ajanubahu, and He was plump, both of them were plump. They had to be plump people, because though they were born of the Agni, He was born of the Agni, but the water is the main element of Shri Vishnu. So they were all plump people, they were not thin like sticks as today’s modern ideas are, to be thin like sticks and like TB-patients.But it doesn’t mean all plump people are good. We always logically think that plump people are, if Mother says so, then plump people are good. Is not the point, the inner side of it I am saying, the inner side of it, is just the opposite. Inner side of it is absolutely beautiful and absolutely full of love, affection and warmth. A person who doesn’t have these things is a sign of a person who is not a Sahaja Yogi, first of all. A person who is very loud, talks loudly, speaks loudly, laughs at wrong places must be half mad but cannot be a Sahaja Yogi.See this softness of Shri Rama goes to the extremes where I call the sankocha, the formality, ‘the formal’, but if you see, English language, formal is not the word – sankoch. He was once – when He was fighting Ravana, He was taking out with His arrow his ten heads one after another. And if He took out one then took out the second, the first one would come back so because he had a kind of a blessing that nobody can kill him by hitting him on his head.So Lakshmana says, “You know for definite that this Ravana cannot be killed by hitting on his head, so why don’t You hit him in his heart?”So He said, “The reason is this, that just now in his heart is Mahalakshmi, the Sita. Sita is sitting in his heart. And how can I hit him on his heart? Because She is there, She might be hurt.”“So what’s the use of hitting on the head?” he (Lakshmana) said.He said, “Because, once I start hitting him on the head fast, his attention will go there. As soon as his attention will go into his head then I can hit him on his heart.” See the sankoch. See the sankoch, the way He talked. [Shri Mataji to someone: See, now, what’s wrong with you? Why do you all the time smiling and like that? Can’t you keep quiet? What is there to smile about certain things where you don’t have to smile? Keep quiet.]Now, then what happened, that He was so kind once when a very ugly woman, Shurpanakha, came to entice Him. And she said, she came to entice, she said that, “Rama why don’t You marry me?”I mean, to a person like Rama who is maryada Purushottama, to ask such a horrible questions, somebody would have really beaten her up if not anything else. So, Shri Ram smiled.He said, “Madam, I am sorry. I have a wife and I believe in one wife, ‘ekapatnivrat’ [एकपत्नीव्रत]. So I am sorry, I can’t marry you.” But mischievously He says, “All right, My brother is there. His wife is left in Ayodhya. You can ask.”She went to him and asked, “Lakshmana, why don’t you marry me?”She had become very beautiful. She has transformed herself to a beautiful woman. She must have gone to some beauty parlor or something, but she made herself like that, and she was there.And he looked at her, so angry - he said, “You, the ugly, why do you want to ask such a question?”He cut her nose. When he cut her nose, that was in Nasik and that’s why – nasika (नासिका), means the nose, and that’s why you have been to Nasik, that’s the place where he cut her nose. He was very angry. But Shri Rama did not. He said in a way that’s very convincing that, “See I have a wife and I am a person who believes in My, one wife.” Now, the another character about Him was, that He was consistent. He was never inconsistent like Shri Krishna. Shri Krishna was a diplomat and diplomacy is, in being inconsistent. [Laughter]Shri Krishna’s style was different. But-[Shri Mataji to some child: Why? What’ the matter with you? Why? What is it? You come and sit here, this side. Come along Tina, come and sit on the other side. Why do you talk to her? Go and sit at the back, go! She’s already given Me a very bad time in Puna. And now, here she is.While I am talking, please don’t talk to each other. This is the least you can do to Me. Have you seen any Indians behaving like this? It’s very disturbing.I am concentrating on you while you are not concentrating on Me. It’s alright when there is a joke, something you laugh, what’s the need to talk to each other? I can’t understand. Alright. Sorry, I had to say that. You see, at the time when I am discussing Shri Rama. Shri Rama would not have said that. [Laughter]But in Sahaja Yoga, [Shri Mataji raises Her shoulders] you can’t carry on like Shri Rama. Sometimes you have to be like Parashurama also, otherwise things don’t work out.] Now, when it went ahead with it, in His character, which was so beautiful, that you find He was such a consistent person. Whatever He said, all the life, He carried that. For example, He said, “I am the one who believes in one wife, ‘ekapatnivrata’.”Now He had a very nice wife, no doubt, very beautiful wife, but She had gone to Ravana and He was left alone. When they wanted to start a kind of a yagya called as ‘Rajasurya yagya’ (राजसूय यज्ञ) which was meant to be the conquering the whole world, then they asked Him, “You have to marry because, You have to have Your wife.”He said, “No I can’t marry because nobody could be like My wife and I can’t marry. I can forego this kind of a yagya but I can’t marry again.”So, then they said: “All right, there is only one thing You can do is, to make a statue of Sita in gold and You have to use Her, that statue, as a wife representing.”He said, “That I will agree.”He took away all His ornaments, everything, and made that statue and He did this yagya. So, whatever He said, He followed thoroughly. In His dharma, He was perfect.Another incident is that when Sita was lost, He never slept, He never slept on a bed, always on the mother Earth. Never slept on a bed, always on the Mother Earth. The pain He had of His wife is very well described by all the poets of India. And when Sita left Him ultimately, in a very mysterious way, She just disappeared in the mother Earth because, mother Earth had given Her birth so She disappeared into mother Earth. Then Shri Rama became absolutely lost and He jumped in the river Sharayu (शरयू) and disappeared in the water element from where He had come. Now this man had to give up His wife. In this contrast, you can see the wave rising and falling of a personality. The society in which He lived, the state which He ruled, had an objection for a wife who had lived with Ravana. And the public started talking about it. So, as a good king, He just, as a good King he just decided that His wife should be left forever. And then He sent Her on a beautiful chariot with His prime minister and His brother, Lakshmana, who took Her down and left Her, told Her, “This is what has happened and that Shri Rama has asked us to take You down to the ashram of Valmiki.”As a result of that She got very upset and She said, She was Adi Shakti so She doesn’t have to bother. She said, “You just leave Me here.” Very self-respecting person. She didn’t say, “No, no, no, no, I’ll come to Him or I’ll sue Him. I’ll go in the courts, get all His money. How dare He throw me out!” Nothing of the kind. That’s the grace of a woman.Graciously She said, “All right, now you have listened to your brother. I am your sister-in-law, elder too. Now you obey Me. And I tell you, as your sister-in-law, that you can now go. Leave Me here alone and I don’t want you to go any further with Me to deport Me with somebody.” And She was pregnant.Here if it happens, of course horrible things can happen, but in India if such a thing happens, the wife will kill herself or she won’t be able to bear it. I think both things are just the same, an escape. If there’s no aggression then there is recession.But She said, “No. I have to give birth to these two children. I can look after Myself, all right. Graciously He’s done it, I have nothing and please tell Him not to worry about Me.” And She told Shri Lakshmana that, “All right, you look after Him, that’s all I want.” And She told the chief minister, the mantri (मंत्री) that, “You must look after the kingdom.”See the dignity, see the balance, see the character, the personality of Shri Rama. He was called as Maryada Purushottama. And look at His wife! She was equal to Him in every way. When She was kept by Ravana, Ravana was so frightened of Her Shakti that he would not touch Her. He used to frighten Her, say- “I will do this to the women of India. I will do this to the women of the world. I will do that kind of a horrible thing. I will take another birth. I will misbehave.” She said, “Do what you like. You cannot touch Me.”He could not touch Her hand; he was so frightened! And when Hanumana brought the ring of Shri Rama and presented to Her and said that, “This is the ring of Shri Rama.”She said: “Yes, I know. How is He?”He said: “All right.” All enquiries She had about Herself.So He said: “Mother, I can take You on my back. I can easily take You. You come on My back and I’ll take You.”She said: “No. I won’t go with You. It’s my- it’s Shri Rama, who is a brave king, He should come Himself, fight this Ravana, kill him because he is evil. And then I will go with Him with all the glory.”She was not frightened of anything. For Her, the important thing was that Ravana should be killed, he is evil, and he should be killed by Rama. Such a great courage for a woman! Both sides, if you see, you’ll be surprised that how a woman’s character is such a powerful thing. It’s not a reactionary thing - “My husband is like this, that’s why I am like that” or “My husband doesn’t do this for me, that’s why I am like that. My husband is gone away, so I am finished. What am I to do without my husband?” Nothing of the kind. She stands on Her feet.She said ‘no’ to Hanumana and She stands on Her feet and She says: “When Rama will come and kill this evil and remove this evil from this earth, then only He can take Me with Him. I won’t go with You. I won’t escape. I won’t run away. Nothing. I am going to face it Myself here.”For a woman it is too much to say, to be imprisoned in a horrible person’s jail or in a place which is so dangerous for Her, to say that, “I won’t go. Whatever you may try, whatever tricks you may try, whatever you may say, I won’t go.” Just imagine! And Ravana was such a horrid fellow. He did all kinds of things to Her but She kept absolutely calm and quiet, waiting for Her husband to come back. Can we think of such women in modern times? So satisfied with themselves, so much in balance, so much full of confidence and strength. This is the message of Sita’s life.The benevolence of Shri Rama was shown when He started ruling the people. He was the one who cared for the needs of the people. For Him, it was important that the people whom He ruled should be happy and joyous. He looked after them with great love. He had two sons whom He looked after for a short time because they were lost with the mother Sita. And they are the ones who found Him out, in a way, that Valmiki taught them how to sing the Ramayana. And they went to Ayodhya and sang the Ramayana. Rama went with them. And one day in one of the yagyas, when they caught the horse of Shri Rama, Hanumana found it impossible to fight those two boys and He couldn’t understand. Here now, the character of great Hanumana, one has to describe. He went and told Shri Rama, “I can’t understand these two boys, I can’t face them. I don’t know who they are.”So, Shri Rama went there. And these boys were standing with their arrows. Then Shri Sita appeared before them and She said: “You cannot fight. He is your father.” This made Hanumana realize it. And He said: “All right, I can fight Shri Rama now. Why did He leave You (Sita) like this?” See the sweetness of Shri Hanumana who was such a great devotee, such a great devotee of Shri Rama, could see that He has done injustice to My Mother and He stood for that. Is very sweet of Shri Hanumana to do that.Hanumana is, as you know, is the angel Gabriel who is innocence, simplicity, and dynamism. His dynamism was such that as soon as He was born, He said: “Better eat this sun because the sun is scorching the people in India”. So, He went and gulped down the sun.People had to say that, “You see, though (to) the sun is scorching but it’s of great help. Please release the sun. Why did you eat it off?” So, then He released the sun.Hanumana’s whole life was spent in serving Shri Rama. And He was such a dedicated bhakta of Shri Ram. Now here the contrast is also that Hanumana had navadha, navadha siddhis (नवधा सिद्धी), navadha siddhis, nine siddhis; Anima (अणिमा), Garima (गरिमा), Laghima (लघिमा) and all sorts of things, that He could become small, He could become big, so many things He had.Despite all these siddhis and the amount of power He had, that Shri Rama once asked Him that, “My brother, Lakshmana, is being hit and he is very sick. I mean, he is just dying, so you go and get a particular kind of a sanjeevani (संजीवनी), a kind of a herb, which I want to rub on his head.”So He went there and He couldn’t find it so He brought the whole of the mountain on His hand and gave it to Rama, “Now You select. I don’t know. I can’t find it.”That is the Hanumana Shakti! And with all that power, He was such a humble person and such a dedicated person. This is the sign of a powerful Sahaja Yogi. Anybody who is powerful has to be humble and non-violent. Mahatma Gandhi used to say that, “What is the non-violence of the weak? A weak has to be non-violent, what’s so great? That’s a policy or a kind of a protection that he has. So a weak person has to be non-violent because he cannot face, he cannot protest. But non-violence of the powerful is the sign of real non-violence.”Those who are powerful, if they are non-violent, that means they are quite confident of their powers. Those people who are confident of their powers, why should they aggress others? They just stand, “All right, come along, what do you want?” Even saying that, people run away.So those who are violent, angry, hot tempered, jump at everyone, torture everyone, trouble everyone, are the people who are very weak charactered. Their character is weak. If their character was all right, then they would not have done all these things.That’s the sign of a person who is either possessed and under the influence of the possession – he is doing that; or he is too weak and he is possessed by his anger because he doesn’t have that much power to bear anything. The most powerful thing is the mother Earth because she has a power to bear. The one who has the power to bear, is the powerful. The one who does not have any power to bear, “I can’t bear; I don’t like; I this...” Such a person is a useless thing for this earth and sometimes I feel - why God created them? It’s a headache to have a person round you, “I can’t eat this; I don’t like this, I...” Then why are you here? Nobody likes you either. No one likes such a person and that’s why that person is always, “I don’t like this; I don’t like that; I...” So the power of a person lies in bearing things. How much you can bear, how much you can undergo without feeling it? Like, you are – say - in the jungle, you are happy. If you are in a palace, you are happy. If you are with this color or that color, if you are with this race or that race, if you are with this kind of life or that kind of life, you can bear it! And that bearing power gives you the caliber, the caliber to have Sahaja Yoga. It’s not that this is shown, it’s not that - is being suffered, don’t have to say, “I suffer being like this.” No, you don’t suffer. It’s just by the way! For a person who wants all the comforts, a person who wants to live with all the luxuries, but not with any kind of defects or any deficiencies, is a person is a beggar, I would say, in every sense of the word. I mean, best things to get rid of problems is not to have them. In the sense, now I don’t drive so I have no problem of driving. I don’t have – I never telephone, so I don’t have problems of telephones. I don’t go to the banks, so I don’t have problems of the banks. The best is I don’t have any income, so I have no problem of income tax! Whatever bothers you, you just don’t have it. Why do you want to have it? Have it and, then bother about it? It seems very funny that you can get rid of anything that bothers you very easily in this world, so you need not have that kind of a thing on your head. But when the word ‘problem’, specially in the European community ‘problem’ is a very common word, but in English language we never learnt this word ‘problem’. You see only the ‘problem’ was used when we were studying geometry, geometrical ‘problem’, but we never knew there’s a ‘problem’ in life! Later on, when I came in contact with European community, they’ll say, there is no ‘problem’; this is the ‘problem’. At least in one day hundred times they say ‘problem’ word. So, for a ‘problem’ the solution is not to have that thing which gives you ‘problem’. You can give up anything. Anything that you want, you can give up if you know how to detach yourself from that. Many people come and tell Me, “Mother, we have an ego. That’s the problem.” I said, “Then give up!” I mean, is simple! Why do you have it? As if, you see, they want to say that, “We have trouble with this thing but still we are clinging on to it.” Like, “We are afraid of a crocodile, but we want to put our foot into the mouth of the crocodile. And we have a problem that our foot will be eaten up by the crocodile.” Now give up! But they will search out a crocodile, open the mouth, and put the foot in it and then come to Me and say, “Mother we have a problem. My foot is in the mouth of the crocodile.” To get to problems, you have to get to it. But without getting to it, how will you get a problem? Say, for example, people have very silly, stupid problems. Now, the first problem somebody may have, “Oh I have to get my clothes pressed.” What’s the need? No problem. Wear them as they are. Who looks at it? You see there are all the people who have pressed clothes. Doesn’t matter! What is there if it is not pressed, it’s a problem for them. It’s silly things like that, you’ll see very silly things. But the greatest problem I think you have is your watch. In Switzerland, I shouldn’t say so. You see the problem is like this that now you have to go the airport. Now as soon as you tell somebody “We have to go to the airport now,” I have to go, you don’t have to – everybody gets sort of a jumping as if standing on a jumping board. You see all of them jumping like that. “What’s the matter?” “Mother, You have to go to the airport.” “So, it’s all right. I have to go. What’s, wrong with you?” “Is a problem.” I say, “What’s the problem? I have to go. You just know that you don’t have to go at all and don’t have to come to the airport. And the aeroplane, if it comes and doesn’t take Me, I am not going to come back on your heads so I will stay in a hotel. Don’t you worry.” But why are you so excited about it? The way people are excited that I must catch the plane, sometimes I feel as if they want to get rid of Me. So, this is a problem for people who are very meticulous. Now, supposing I say, I know that the plane won’t leave Me. I know, because I know many things so I have no problems, but supposing even if you think the plane, you may not get, so it may not get. But if it gets you, all right. If it doesn’t get you, it’s all right. So where is the problem? Either it will take you or it will not take you. What is in between? Where is the problem, I still don’t understand. Either it will work out or it will not work out. Keep two possibilities. That’s the only two possibilities. What is the third possibility that gives you the problem? You tell Me. Say somebody owes Me money. All right, so either he will give Me, or he may not give Me. What is the problem? The problem is that you call it a problem and want to avoid to face the truth. If you face the truth, you will know one thing that see now this man has to give me money. All right, I will go and face it. I will tell him, “Sir, you have to give me the money. You have to pay me. This is your duty and if you don’t pay me, you are doing wrong.” You get at him and face him and tell him. But you won’t do that. You will sit at home, “Oh God, it’s a problem. I have to, you see, that man is not giving money. Oh God!” That’s a problem. Sitting here, hitting your head all the time, how will you get it? If you face it directly then you will be amazed, there is no problem for anything. Say - your car fails. So, it fails, get down, enjoy yourself nicely till somebody comes along, takes you. Or, if supposing you don’t get some lift, all right, stay there overnight. What is it? No tiger is going to eat you. And if the tiger has to eat you, it will eat! Where is the problem? Still, I can’t see. I can’t see the problem. If tiger has to eat, that’s already destined that the tiger has to eat. In any case, nobody dies. You will be born again. If you look at it from that angle, then you will be surprised, most of the problems do not exist. They are like bubbles created by our own thinking, the waves of our thinking, this is the problem; that is the problem. Like today, they said “There is no hall on such and such date.” “All right. Where are you having the hall?” “There.” “If there’s no hall, let us have it in the open.” So, to make the best of it is, is the way Shri Rama shows you. Now, what is the way He has helped us, let us see. Shri Rama by His character, by His balance, His peace and His mildness and His sweetness has shown us how a king should be a benevolent king and at the same time a very loving husband and a loving father and a person in dharma. But apart from that, He went down to Maharashtra. He arranged all these things so that He could walk down to Maharashtra bare feet to vibrate the land because Sahaja Yogis will be going one day to Maharashtra and the Maharashtra has to be a vibrated land. In Ayodhya, He never took out His shoes because He was the king there. But when He went, and Shri Sita, both of them, when they went to Maharashtra, They took out their shoes to vibrate it. On His way, He saw a big stone which was nothing, but a lady cursed to be a stone, Ahilya. And He made her, just by touch, she again came back to life. Like that, one after another He was just, by the way, as if was doing, but that was the purpose of His life to go there. And that has helped a very great achievement within ourselves, is the Shri Ram. Shri Rama stands for the pranavayu (प्राणवायु), is for the vital air that we take in. For the vital air, and that vital air when it gets heated up, we have to know that we are not any more with Shri Ram. It has to be the cool air to blow through your nose and your mouth. I don’t know about you people; it happens with Me all the time. When you are angry the nostrils go up, swell up, and the hot air, the hot words, and everything hot, the heated eyes, and everything goes up like that, curled up, and you become ferocious Ravana, because you have forgotten the beauty of the nature of Shri Rama. What has He done to our center heart is the greatest thing, that He has given you a fatherhood within yourself because Shri Rama represents the fatherhood. Now what sort of a father you are, you have to decide. Those people who are not good fathers develop problems of the right heart. Also, those people who are not good husbands also develop the right heart. This right heart is so important because, specially in the west where the climate is so funny, you have to keep inside your rooms and closed all the time that you get all dried up inside at that time if you don’t have that sweetness, that warmth, that kindness of Shri Rama, you get the trouble of asthma. So many people die of asthma in the west. On top of that, you fight with your wives, ill-treat them, you take away their money, you cheat them in their money and every way you torture them then it becomes even worse. So it has something to do with money, in the sense, because Sitaji was Shri Lakshmi, and Sitaji was the one who was the power of Shri Rama. So (the) Shri Lakshmi also gets annoyed with you when you are a bad father or a bad husband. That’s why the Gruha Lakshmi is very important. But the woman has to be the Gruha Lakshmi. She should not be a shrew and then the husband is supposed to be kind to her. Then it’s spoiling. That’s very bad. The woman has to be a Gruha Lakshmi, a beautiful woman with a very sweet nature and talking to her husband in a very sankoch (संकोच ) manner and also looking after the children, looking after the family and looking after the guests who come to their house. But if you encourage and run after such women who are no good, means collectively they should be good; if collectively they do not act well, collectively if they are aggressive, collectively if they are tormenting others, then such women should not be encouraged at all, but then, Tulsidas says, they should be beaten up. Is a thing looks very bad in modern times if somebody says like that, that women should be beaten up in case they have all such qualities which disqualify them from being Gruha Lakshmis. Of course, there’s no need to beat, but I mean to say that what is it that you have to drive out all these badhas from your women, very important, otherwise if you fall in this activity of keeping your wives on right lines, you might also get a right heart and asthma ultimately. Because your wife and you are part of the society. And the society has certain laws which are very important. There is something like stri-dharma (स्त्री – wife/lady), there’s something like pati- dharma (पती – husband), there’s something like mata-dharma (माता – mother), pita-dharma (पिता – father), everything has a dharma. Those men who torture their wives have very bad heart. In the same way, those who play into the hands of their wives also have a very bad right heart. You have to be in the balance. You are the husband, and she is your wife, and both are responsible for keeping a very good family relationship. It’s not one-sided. It’s not the husband only or the wife but both of them to be in such a manner that they act according to their nature of woman and man, and respect each other, love each other, share everything with each other and exist in a way that people should see that there are two wheels of a chariot, one on the left, one on the right, there is no imbalance. They are equal but not similar as I have told many a time. Now in the case of Shri Rama, He left His wife. When it came to Sita, She left Him too. But She left Him as a woman would leave and He left Her as a man would leave. She also left Him but in a way that is suitable for a woman to do. And He did it in a way that is suitable to a king. In the same way, a woman when she acts, she has to act like a woman. The same thing she may do as the man does, but she has to be a woman, or a man has to be a man. So that’s the maryada Purushottama (मर्यादा पुरुषोत्तम), is the one who is the highest among all the men, which is all the maryadas, all the boundaries that he observes. The boundaries are such that you do not try to overpower others, or you do not try to take their seats. For example, I have seen those who are aggressive also show up in our programs, they will be the first before Me. They will be, as soon as I open the gates, they will be somewhere there standing. They will be the first in everything. That’s not being maryada. You should be at the back. Should be¦, there are leaders you have got, they can sit in front. Try to be on the back. I want to be first... then I have said once the first of the first. You know the story of first of the first. So, you become first of the first and that’s what happens to you when you try to show off. And I know all of them who are like that. To be in the background is the most respectable thing to do. To go forward first, to jump forward first, to stand near the door if Mother is coming, you see. As soon as I see the person, I said, “Oh back again!” There is some who do aartis just because to show off, some throw flowers to show off, they must be the first and, somehow or another, they get also the position because of their assertions and askings. The leaders have to be careful not to give such duties to people who really upset Me very much because of their arrogance, because of their showing offs. I have to say one thing today that, under the circumstances, we have to decide that if the leaders don’t have wives who are humble, who are kind, who are compassionate and who are Gruha Lakshmis, who are very sweet with the collective, we’ll have to cancel the husband as well as the wife from the leadership. We cannot have leaders who have wives who are horrid. We cannot, because the wife of a leader is like a mother. There are five types of mothers described, one of them is the one who is the wife of the guru or of the leader. And if the leader has a wife of that kind, it’s better in all sense he should withdraw. Improve his wife. Do whatever is possible. Till she is all right, he should not be the leader. Is a very important thing because I have seen such women bring down the men, not only that, but bring down the Sahaja Yoga, Sahaja Yogis and the whole organization of God. So one has to be careful, and the women have to understand that if they are the wives of the leaders they have to be extremely good, kind, generous, sharing, looking after, absolutely motherly, and should not tolerate nonsense and should correct when people are doing wrong. They should not report anyone to their husbands, should not take over themselves the responsibility of doing things which they are not supposed to do. If they are not of that level, they are of no use to people and they have no business to be proud of being the wives of the leaders. From Shri Rama’s life we learn a lot and from Sitaji’s life also. Both of them have done so much for us, bring forth such a great life. All their lives they suffered and suffered and suffered. They lived in the villages. They lived in the forest. While they were the king and the queen, they had never known what is discomfort. They traveled all the way bare feet. They went through all kinds of tortures of life. Sita was taken away by Ravana who was a horrid man. She had to live with a rakshasa, can you imagine? She lived with a rakshasa and there She showed her greatness. The characters of different nature, like Sita and Shri Rama, they were showing the complementary attributes that there, very complementary, and if that is so then the husband wife’s relations are beautiful in Sahaja Yoga. That’s the way it should be. I find some people are very nice. Some leaders are extremely nice, but wives can be very hard, can be very stiff, or could be very mischievous, could be troublesome, selfish. You cannot grow in Sahaja Yoga with these qualities. It’s such a luck and chance that your husband is the leader, is the highest man in your nation in Sahaja Yoga and where you have to be up to his ability, capability and his name, otherwise you have no authority. That’s why I have to tell you that on this day of Dassera, let us decide that we are going to have Ramrajya (रामराज्य) in Sahaja Yoga, where there is benevolence, there is love, compassion, security, peace, joy, discipline among ourselves. The whole disciplining is within ourselves. What I say about Shri Rama is that He Himself has put Himself into the discipline of maryadas. In the same way, we ourselves should put ourselves into the discipline of maryadas. Is a very great thing that it should happen in Switzerland because Switzerland needs it the most, the blessings of Shri Ram. The way it is going on in this country, this very selfish, non-benevolent activities going on, ruining all the poorer nations by this kind of a selfish attitude, a very narrow attitude, very low-level attitude towards the money of these poorer nations. Is important, very important for us today to pray for the emancipation of the hearts of those people who are just butchering. In these modern times, we don’t have wars but financially they are butchering people, they are killing them by depriving them of their own money and their own benevolence. So, if Ramrajya (रामराज्य) has to come, then Rama is to be born in the hearts of people who are at the helm of affairs. And that’s how we have to pray to Shri Ram that, be kind and compassionate so that you could be born into the hearts of these people. May God bless you all.