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0 By Andrew Low
Shree Mataji Nirmala Devi,the guru of Sahaja Yoga,gave a talk in a public programme on 9 July 1982 in Birmingham,England.It was called “Confusion:the subtle slavery” and Shree Mataji (Mother) says how confused we are in these modern times.You can see this talk on the Internet and it is the sort of video that can be played at local weekly Sahaja Yoga meetings.
Sahaja Yoga meditation helps me think and feel more clearly,and there have been some undoubtedly confusing events in my life.
The sound of coughing and traffic are right up there on my list of “nasties” and so too are the words of some girlfriends,so-called,girls who steal your heart and capture your attention,reviews from bosses and line-managers,and the sense of security cameras drilling into the mind while at work.Psychiatrists and doctors and psychologists are also confusing.
There are the “repressive cough” of the bully in the novel The Cruel Sea by Nicholas Monsarrat,and a “most malicious cough” in Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens,the latter an author strongly recommended by Shree Mataji,which you can see on the “amruta” website.This knowledge provides some direction.As Nicholas Monsarrat also said,”Sailors,with their built in sense of order,service and discipline,should really be running the world”.Maybe Sahaja Yogis should.
There is the tormenting noise of “hooves and feet and wheels” in the book “Culloden” by John Prebble,where a bridgehole punishment cell makes the feet swell and the head ache from the noise.It would probably have been cold too.A servant girl called Anne M’Kay was punished there for helping two soldiers.
These aspects of life seem to be beyond psychiatry and medicine.I saw a psychiatrist first in August 1986 (Dr Julia Wilkinson at Graylingwell mental hospital in Chichester) and asked her about guilt and embarrassment because of being seen picking up pornographic litter on the outskirts of Cambridge when I was a second year medical student .There was just a wall of silence,nothing,no words of advice.My face felt and looked awful to me,but she said that was just “perception”.You might think psychiatrists could say something useful about guilt.In 1997 I broke down completely in a pharmacy after a poor review and feeling embarrassed because of flirting with an erection,and was admitted as an emergency to Graylingwell.I ran up and down the corridor in the ward and wanted help and for people to take notice of the story,but it does not work that way.I was a “revolving door patient” that year and then in the new year (1998) I was violent when “sectioned” and kept in for six months.There must have been ample time for the psychiatrists to address my problems and provide guidance and direction.Even now there is little help from psychiatrists,just the medication,which may be damaging my kidneys the GP said.There is no mercy from these drugs.
Ladies can be confusing.This is not such a great problem for me now as when I was younger.There is something false about the advances of what I saw as lovers.There is,to draw from literature,something of a Hamlet and Ophelia situation,where one half is brutally scorned.It is like Eugene Onegin by the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin,where the young girl’s letter is embarrassingly derided by the worldly wise Onegin.There was an “unstreetwiseness” about the bookish but rash country girl but she did not deserve that treatment.It leaves her as a record of a heart in distress.There is a picture at home of a young Russian lady with flowers in an open golden field that I see as I pass in and out of the house.There is in the world,definitely,a heart,my own,in which Pushkin lives.That superfluous man came down to the innocent country from the city.He wrecked her heart.
Reviews of performance at work can be a thorny issue.That time I broke down in 1997 I had been given a review the year before in which under category 1 (a) “Man management” I was scored as underachieving.It hurt my pride deeply,and maybe was true.Who knows? A review should contain no surprises they say but that was a surprise for me.
Two years later a family friend and retired GP died,and I read on his death certificate that the 1 (a) cause of death was renal cell carcinoma (kidney cancer) and the review from my boss came back to me in a morbid sense.What if,like Shree Mataji says,cancer is caused by cruelty? A review with 1(a) man management could go round the world causing huge distress.That mental pain could throb away in the head like a galloping cancer.Cancer could be studied in that light.It’s not a careless trifle.Like,a foul smelling fungating breast that has developed from a cancer not treated or disclosed puts you in the mind of a trifle of the dessert variety,red and fatty and awful.Then it goes on the form or certificate in terms of a number and a letter,1(a) or 2 (b).It could be a friend or a relative.
Christianity is a botch job Shree Mataji told us.Jesus did sacrifice his life for us,for humanity,and the story is full of symbolism.After his crucifixion there came the apostle and leader Paul,and here confusion steps in very subtly.Like a thief in the night or an opponent slipping past you in sport.In the Sahaja Yoga books by Gregoire de Kalbermatten the author tells us that Paul caused confusion.Soo too does Christopher Greaves in the book “Sophia” where very clearly he says that Paul was a devil.So there we have tremendous inner confusion.Was Paul the right way or was he confusing the followers of Christ?Modern theologians will sometimes say that Paul is difficult sometimes but certainly at the moment he holds a revered place in the Christian church.I recently watched the film “Paul Apostle of Christ” and put aside what I know in Sahaja Yoga and was moved by the story.The Greek physician Luke comes in secret to record Paul’s words when he is in prison in Rome.Paul says when Luke comes to his dark cell,”I did not expect to see your face.Getting here must have come at a great price.Surely the money could have been put to better use for our brothers and sisters.I am grateful.” The physically shattered apostle says,”I’ve become an old man inside these walls.Every bone is wracked with pain.My eye sight has become even weaker.”The film ends emotionally with the story being copied by the Christian community.”It will help many people,” says one Christian lady.The music lifts the audience.At the end of the film Paul is executed under the eye of the Roman prison governor,a former commander of a Legion,who has become impressed by the Christians.He shakes Paul’s hand and arm in a sincere clasp.We are told that Paul travelled 10 000 miles over 30 years and established Christian communities throughout the ancient world.That’s a lot of people.Nowadays as a commentator said on BBC Radio 4 the largest organisation in the world is the Roman Catholic church.It is the vision of Shree Mataji that we follow Her and I saw it that She would like 40 per cent of the world to follow Her.If it’s numbers you want,there is the book “Silence Your Mind” by Dr Ramesh Manocha,GP and researcher at the university of Sydney.One Sahaja Yogini wrote on our community website that this book is in a large number of libraries,I can’t recall how many,but this medical book outnumbers the other books by a factor of about fifty.This is information that can be accessed by those who know how and one can keep tabs on what is happening.One can see what direction the libraries go with Sahaja Yoga books if one knows how to do the research.I’m not so fond of doctors and have my issues,but the media is full of doctors and people do look to them for solutions to problems and good feelings.
Whether or not Paul was a good man,I can relate to that pain:”every bone wracked with pain”.It is like the rack of olden times.There have been the punishment by coughing at Cambridge as a student,and now things like constant attention from closed circuit television and an abusive domestic situation.It does leave you feeling physically battered as well as mentally and emotionally.I feel closed up and defensive.I feel I want to curl up like a little worm,as my own mother said once.
So there are themes of bullying and trickery,the dirty tricks department,death and cancer,faith,who to believe,confusion,doctors and leaders and managers,and where we are going,what is the proper way.Are we “slave” or “brave” ? Once again I would recommend Sahaja Yoga but we can’t force the listener or reader,we can only recommend.
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