Meditation with Shri Mataji for the Heart Chakra - Sahaja Yoga Seminar in UK, 1988
“Please close your eyes.. Now we will all do the meditation ..
We will work on the left hand side and the left hand towards me. Now first of all you put your hand on your Heart. In the heart resides Shiva, is The Spirit. So you have to thank your Spirit that it has brought light to your attention because you are a Saint and the light that has come in your hearts has to enlighten the whole world. So please now in your heart you pray: ‘Let this light of my Love of the Divine spread to the whole world. ‘ With all sincerity and understanding that you are connected with the Divine and whatever you desire will happen .. with full confidence in yourself.
Now raise your right hand on your Heart. Here you have to thank God that you have felt the ocean of joy and you have felt the ocean of forgiveness and the capacity to forgive as our Mother has, which we have seen is so tremendous. (Say:) ‘Let my heart expand and encompass the whole Universe and my Love should resound the Name of God.’
The Heart every moment should express the beauty of God’s Love.”
“The Spirit is expressed in the Heart, is reflected in the heart. The center of the Spirit we can say is in the heart. But actually the seat of Spirit is above here, above the head,
that this the Spirit of what we call of the God Almighty .. and you can call Him by any names which are said about the Lord who is God Almighty.”At every center (chakra) you receive different type of joy. Every center has a different type of joy. And there are names for every type of joy you receive at every center when the Kundalini rises.”
“Now because you are realized souls, not yet the Spirit – it has not yet come into your brain of course, but still you are realized souls. So what you can do is at least to watch your attention. You can do that, you can watch your attention very clearly by seeing where your attention is going. And then, controlling your attention also you can do. Very simple. To control your attention you have to just remove your attention from this to that. Try to change your priorities, all this has to be done now, after realization, a complete detachment.” (excerpts from various talks on the Spirit offered by the founder of sahaja yoga meditation)
“One of the qualities of Shiva is that He is innocence. He is extremely innocent. He is innocent like a child. He is innocence personified. So we have to put our carnal desires, dissolve them, dissolve them into the innocence, the ocean of innocence. You have to dissolve it in the ocean of innocence. Innocence is something to be appreciated, to be understood, to be enjoyed. Like you see animals, they are innocent. You see children they are innocent. Flowers the are innocent. Divert your attention to all these things.. The desire for beautiful things – we can shift our desire, material desire, into aesthetics, and have one thing but which is really aesthetically rich. Because that’s the quality of Shiva that he gives aesthetics to everything. Now supposing this looks very plain, simple and one may say mechanical (the microphone), but if it is Shiva’s job he would have done something beautiful about it. So the quality of Shiva is that he beautifies everything that is created by Brahmadeva evolved by Vishnu. He’s the one who does the subtle work of creative aesthetics.
You’ve seen my photographs many a times with so many lights, this, that, is all His job. He’s doing it. He throws lights in such a manner, he works out in such a manner, just he wants to convince you about me, it’s his job. So his job is to create aesthetics. Aesthetics of behaviour, aesthetics of poetry. Everything that is created is made beautiful, is joy-giving, by Shiva. That’s his quality.
So whatever you desire, if you start working it out desiring for something aesthetically handmade, nice thing, gradually you’ll find you’ll end up with vibrations, because all beautiful things have vibrations. And to have the vibrations you’ll have to go to pure desire. So this desire which is madness, which makes you mad, which is so much dull and boring becomes pure desire because you have to dissolve all your desires into vibration. You start desiring nothing but vibrations after sometime.. So to say that he’s a destroyer is a very one-sided statement. He has both the powers. He has the power to give you vibrations. He gives you vibrations. The Goddess is the power, Shakti. But he makes them vibrations. It’s like these are the fingers all right, but if they tickle you then it’s Shiva. The fingers are that of the Goddess, all right, but if it tickles you, no?- gives you joy, happiness, it’s Shiva, is the Bhakti (devotion from the heart for the divine). The joy of bhakti comes from Shiva.(Shri Mataji’s Talk, Chiancian Terme, Italy, 16 Feb 1991)
Simple Short traditional Stories about Shri Shiva – from the Hindu mythology – with some elements from the above Diagram with Symbols
“The great God Shiva lives in his Heaven on the snowy peaks of Mount Kailash. He has many aspects. When dealing with evil creatures, he takes pleasure in destruction. He is also the Lord of goblins, demons and restless wandering spirits.
“In his frightening aspect, he…wears a crown of serpents and a necklace of skulls. He dislikes being disobeyed and tramples furiously on the heads of rebellious demons. He is also greatly loved because death is simply a stage in the cycle of creation and represents release and rebirth just as winter is followed by spring. So Shri Shiva is ‘Mahadeva,’ which means the Restorer, as well as the Destroyer.
“Shri Shiva can change his appearance, and sometimes he has four arms and five heads with which to watch every part of the world. He is always very beautiful with a light skin and third eye on his forehead which has terrible power when Shri Shiva becomes enraged.
“When the world was being created, the many things that were to live in it were thrown up from the churning ocean of milk. The ocean’s first gift was the divine cow Surabhi, whose son Nandi, the snow-white bull, later became Shri Shiva’s constant companion. The second gift was a crescent moon which he took from the waves and placed on his forehead to decorate his hair, where it glowed forever more. The third thing to come from the ocean was a deadly draught of poison and this Shri Shiva drank in order to save the world from harm. Instead of swallowing it, he held it in his neck and the strength of its venom turned his neck blue.
“Once Shri Shiva decided to visit the Earth in the form of a man, to punish a group of ascetics (people who are quite extreme in the pursuit of spirituality) who had become unbelievers and spoke of a world without God. Their wives loved Shri Shiva’s great beauty as soon as they saw him even though they did not know who He was. The ascetics became jealous and using their combined powers, produced a tiger which leaped out at Shri Shiva from their sacrificial fire. Shri Shiva simply caught the tiger with one hand, and slung it over his body as a shawl.
“Next the ascetics made a large deer to pounce on him. Shri Shiva fielded it with another of his four hands and held it there ever after. Still determined to destroy him, the ascetics created a vicious serpent but, being himself the Lord of Serpents, Shri Shiva hung the creature round his neck as a necklace. Finally the ascetics created a hideous dwarf-demon who flailed at Shri Shiva with a club. Shri Shiva took away the club and held in in his third hand. He then pinned the dwarf-demon down with his foot. Shri Shiva was furious by this time and he began slowly to perform his celestial dance. This dance represents his five functions – Creation, Preservation, Destruction, Embodiment and Release, and it is said to cause the movement of the universe. Gradually, the momentum of Shri Shiva’s dance built up to a frenzied climax and the heretical ascetics and all the other creatures who watched its power were carried away by its beauty. It is said that they gave up everything in this and many other reincarnations for the promise of seeing it once more.”
Thak you for your work .
sister iona
thanks for putting up such good references and excerpts.
pramita
It is interesting to know what all the the elements in the diagram mean. I have forgotten where the painting originates? I missed the art & spirituality class. Would love to attend if you have it again. Thanks for providing this wonderful article.
wounderful. Shri mataji please bless us to upload such articles.
thanks very enlightening
It’s a wonderful experience to read the above nothing to say but excellent &
THANK U
Hear is what I think this article is about…
Shri Shiva… I think of Heart Centered Love… And the word Love invokes in me the idea of “Truth”… to truly be loved and to be loving is to experience the Divine… through Truth…
A hug is nice, many nice things are nice… humbleness is nice… fearlessness is nice… kindness is nice, giving is nice… receiving is nice… forgiveness is nice… they are all gifts of “self realization”…
Yet I feel that All can be reduced to one thing… LOVE… in relation to Truth… it is truth that we seek… that connects us with the Divine… and then that is shown through us in the way that we choose to experience life…
The closer we come to our Truth… the closer we come to realizing our connectedness to our True Self… and this is what I feel that Heart Centeredness is directing us toward… our ability to Truly Love.
Thank you for this work
Loves begets Love, and creates ONENESS in the name of Love of the Spirit!