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0 By Andrew Low
Sahaja Yoga meditation has been a lifeline for me in my mental health problems. I came to Sahaja Yoga after seeing a poster at Selwyn college when I started on the medical course at Cambridge University in 1982.
Sahaja Yoga is free, and it is not compulsory. Guru Shree Mataji Nirmala Devi stresses that she cannot cross one’s freedom. One does Sahaja Yoga in one’s freedom.
Thank goodness for these mental health organisations
I didn’t pass the medical course but I had a fighting chance with Sahaja Yoga. I can brood or ruminate on the past a bit. This website has shared my story and you can see the articles:
– Living with a person with mental illness
– A barrage of coughing at members’ day
Thank goodness for these mental health organisations, these organisations that allow you to have your say and put your side of things.
Someone asked whether mentally ill people could come to Sahaja Yoga and Shree Mataji said,”Let them come.”
There is the book, distributed more than other Sahaja Yoga books in libraries, “Silence Your Mind” by Dr Ramesh Manocha, GP and researcher at the university of Sydney.
The GP writes that a patient with a mental health problem should do it under the guidance or approval of a mental health practitioner. Sahaja Yoga is a work in progress, in circumstances that develop empirically and progressively, so one can only hope that doctors and mental health nurses and psychologists will eventually take to this form of meditation.
Shree Mataji
Shree Mataji gave a talk at the Royal Albert Hall in London on 14 July 2001, this being the last time I saw her in real life so to speak, and Raj Patel, a local leader in Hounslow, gave us invitations, gilt edged cards, to distribute for a meal with Shree Mataji, saying,”Give the invitations to doctors and people high up.”
In the meantime this is a dilemma but one hopes it is not a stumbling block. We want doctors and the media, the BBC for example behind us, and hope to get the mainstream going. England is seen as the heart of the universe, which you may or may not believe, and Shree Mataji has said that the English are formal, steady people. Like that heart drug digoxin obtained from the foxglove plant that blooms with its bell shaped flowers at the beginning of the month of June and summer itself, really marking summer, the medicine has a power over the motion of the heart and this power can be used for salutary effect. This is what the physician William Withering observed.
Mother to heart
Nowadays, we say in Sahaj a Yoga that it is time to take Shree Mataji, or Mother, to heart. It would be like an “assumption” to have the English taking to Sahaja Yoga. With the help of websites like “I am 1 in 4” the news can leak out in freedom and triumph, like in The Story of Esther Costello by Nicholas Monsarrat, also made into a film. It might be like a lost person coming to his or her senses.
On the Internet there are many things for the user. Bear in mind that not everyone in the world has a computer or speaks English or Hindi or the languages Shree Mataji used. So one is lucky to start with if one has English.
There are websites such as:
1in4 UK Book Store:
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And for research purposes there is: www.amruta.org with records of the several thousands of lectures and public programs by Shree Mataji.
Vibrations
There are many, many pictures of Shree Mataji, and we believe that “vibrations” come from these pictures. Actually many things can have vibrations, or everything has vibrations. Good or bad, that some can detect spiritually.
There are books which you can obtain from Amazon. There are “Sahaja” and “Sophia” by Christopher Greaves, the compilation “Journey Within”, the “recollections” books by Linda Williams, “Sahaja Yoga” by Nigel Powell, the books by Gregoire de Kalbermatten. Once at the Sahaja Yoga centre “Blossom Farm” in Warwickshire I saw a title “The Red Lady” but I have not seen this on Amazon.
Silence your mind
“Silence Your Mind” is a journey marker really. In case the critics start slamming you, asking what evidence you have. A great introduction is the short documentary “The Vision” on YouTube (under 33 minutes). Chris Flatman, a local leader in Harrow, said was used in nominating Shree Mataji for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Further endorsements for Sahaja Yoga include the award in 1989 to Shree Mataji of the United Nations Peace Medal. In 1997 Claes Nobel thanked her for giving hope to humanity. Claes said he was comfortable with her words at a talk in the Royal Albert Hall. You can watch the speech on YouTube.
Sahaja Yoga is popular
Maybe one does not quite appreciate until one sees the stand at the Ideal Home Show in London,with crowds of people like for the food stalls at lunchtime. Three thousand people sat in front of the picture of Shree Mataji this spring at the show. On London buses on their daily routes there are “advertisements” for Sahaja Yoga with Shree Mataji’s picture. The Manchester Yoga show had a stand for Sahaja Yoga and it was reported on our community Intranet that it was popular and well attended. These are things and events done by volunteers and with the help of supporters.
Family, employers, even country regimes can be obstructive it is true. One just has to struggle on and do what the vibrations indicate.
If this is the time of the “painful birth of collective consciousness” (see “The Light of the Koran” by Flore Descieux and “Nirmal Fragrance” edited by Rabi Ghosh), we could need support. Psychiatrist Carl Jung also spoke of this collective consciousness, as Shree Mataji said. Maybe some people are strong enough to manage but I do recommend Sahaja Yoga meditation.
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