This meditation is taught all over the world. It’s a grassroots type group of people who pass on the teachings of a lady called Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi and she said, it’s a process of spiritual development, development of the self through thoughtless awareness where you gain mental silence and so, when we say free, it’s never charged for. Many people around these programs all over the world, throughout Australia …
Host: All over the world?
All over the world.
– Who runs these?
People like ourselves, Paul and myself.
-Talk about peace.
Well, for me, that was what drove me to look for a practice actually and it was the fact that I didn’t have peace. So, and when I talk about that I mean just a silence inside or stillness inside. I guess I got to the stage where I had looked at all the external things, as you do, my qualifications, my business, home and husband and those type of thing. But it actually lacked satisfaction for me and in fact, I actually felt damaged by a lot of things that I’d gone for. I just needed to find the space in myself that was still. After looking at many practices actually, I went to a program and Shri Mataji was actually running that program, introducing this practice in New Zealand at the time. That was 22 years ago. Even though I guess it was, I didn’t feel a lot initially, I certainly felt a lot better and a lot of what she said made sense. So, I pursued with the practice and so we go back to that question about peace, I started to find the seeds of peace inside.
-And you found it?
Yes, I have. I can go to it when I need to, if it’s children and their growing up now and so we go through all the same issues that everybody else does but the great gift it’s given me is this ability to be able to not let those things sit on me, to be able to just live a normal life but still be able to go to a place where I can find the silence.
-That’s very beautiful, very beautiful but you talked, Paul, about mental silence. What do you mean by mental silence?
Paul: Well, many things purport to be meditation and if you look up the dictionary, it’ll give you about half a dozen, none of which actually give you a stipulation, a mere stipulation of what meditation is. Could be mindfulness, we’re very mindful all the time, we’ve got so many things we concentrate on. So, maybe they think concentration is meditation or that’s relaxing and listening to some music, They might think that that’s meditation. But the working definition and the one that was come up with at Sydney University is that mental silence, the gap between thoughts, is the state of meditation, pure meditation. Now, the tradition of achieving the state of mental silence, that goes back in so many cultures and in so many ways and all of the religions, all of the saints and sages and anybody at all wise, they said, there is a quality to silence and if you can access the silence, you can find a point of integration where everything starts to work by itself and where one feels unburdened of thoughts, of emotions, of dramas in life and really can find that peace that we were just talking about. But peace sounds like a bit of a band aid. The fact is that the nature of our being, the very core of our being, is peaceful, is joyful and silent. But it seems that in the modern flurry and worry and hurry of life that we don’t know ourselves very well, we don’t access that silence very well but, to answer your question, mental silence, a workable definition, a most laboratory definition, if you like, for meditation, because when you start to say, okay, let’s compare apples with apples, is this practice giving you the experience of mental silence and if not then it’s something else. Because all the research which has been done very, very well-done in deed, including a very big study on stress, very big study on all sorts of things.
-Where?
Here in Sydney. Sydney University, Royal Hospital for women, for instance. There’s been a number of studies. We have a great reputation worldwide for actually understanding and leading in the study of true meditation. Not some gimmick where you pay a lot of money for make believe mantras but actual verifiable, demonstrable experience that subjectively you can feel, which is essentially a sense of connectedness and in that connectedness, one becomes silent.
-Give people an idea of how they should go about beginning their meditation.
Very good. Would you like to?
Paul: Well, if you understand that the core of your being. not your body, not your mind, not your emotions but the still center of yourself is pure awareness, is pure spirit, that the core of your being is very deep, very silent, and very universal in its nature, you can begin to approach the space of what we call yoga or meditation. Now, the expression of your pure desire is the key to this experience, you need to have a pure desire. Can’t be for a new car or something more of something else, it’s actually got to be surrendered purse desire. And the nature of this energy which gives you your connection for this, is actually a mothering energy, it’s a maternal energy and it’s sitting, residing in the base of your spine, in what’s called the sacrum bone. Sacrum meaning sacred. The soft bone on the top is called fontanelle, French word meaning fountain. And if you can get this sacred energy to rise as a fountain from the top of your head, you can have the same experience, which we call self-realization.
Meditation is the state of mental silence and thoughtless awareness. Yoga means union or connection with yourself, your spirit. Spirit is the core of our being and can be accessed by Kundalini yoga. Your spirit is the reflection of the divine and it’s very sacred, precious and pure. Your Kundalini resides in your sacrum bone at the base of the spine. She’s your divine mothering power and she’s coiled there, ready to rise when auspiciously requested. She then rises and flows out the top of your head and spontaneously can take your attention into the deep, connected yoga meditation and flow and give you that abiding silence without effort.
This flow state you can confirm by feeling the vibrational flow coming from the top of your head and this is the unique discovery of Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi. She gave us the following affirmations: Sitting straight up, place your right hand on your left hip and the left-hand palm upwards stays on your lap. Here we say: Mother, please give me the true knowledge about myself. Now we move the right hand up under the left abdomen and we affirm here: Mother, I am my own master. Now we move our right hand up to our heart and here we affirm the great truth of our existence: Mother, I am the spirit. Now we take the right hand and move it up to the neck and shoulder on the left-hand side. Here we affirm: Mother, I am not guilty. Now, right hand to the forehead, we say: Mother, I forgive, I forgive everyone, including myself. Now, right hand to the back of the head, and here we say: Please, forgive me for any mistakes I have made. Now, the middle of the palm of the hand going flat on the top of the head, pressing down slightly on this fontanelle bone area we say: Mother, please give me my self-realization, my yoga or union. Mother, please give me my self-realization. Now, we lift the right hand a little above the top of the head, feeling for the flow coming from the top of the head and we express our pure desire. We say: Mother, please deepen my self-realization. Now with both hands palm upwards back on the lap we allow our attention to dissolve into that flow at the top of our head in silence, in meditation.
Paul: The essence of it is to affirm, “I am the spirit” and to ask your divine mothering power, which is within you, for please give me this experience of self-realization or connection. If you can do that in sincerity, then what you’ll find is that your energy rises, that’s the flow from the top of your head, you feel it as the cool breeze and sensation. It’s on your hands, it’s coming from the top of your head and that’s your natural meditative state, your natural state of yoga connection, if you like.
-That’s very interesting indeed. And what about all of this information on the chart there? That looks most interesting. Can you explain it to us?
Paul: Just supposing you got a new software package for your computer.
-Oh, you’re going back to computers, aren’t you?
And you plugged it in, and suddenly, had a whole understanding of yourself or of a capacity in a new way. This system here is actually within us. It’s a natural nervous system. There’s a left channel and a right channel and a central channel. And there are these, what we call, nervous plexuses, in traditional medicine but they’re also what are called chakras or energy wheels in the nervous stem which has a traditional understanding. This sacrum bone at the bottom which we mentioned which is coiled and don’t we say we check off our mortal coil? This is really what is meant – we’ve got this coil of existence, which is ourselves, so it’s been going on for a long time and in our lifetime this system is evolving. So, via living and learning and loving and laughing we participate in life and we accumulate experience. The experience that we accumulate is reflected here and so, when we say, why is Rudyard Kipling a realized soul? It’s because he’s able to operate from this high level of integration.
– Would you read out from number one, number one is?
Well, the quality of your base chakra is innocence, innocence and wisdom. It reflects like a child and say things spontaneously. The second one is to do with our creativity which is, how do I think of a new idea? How do I play my game or react in life and so it’s all part of it. Three is satisfaction, our peacefulness. So, if we say, please make me a peaceful and satisfied person, we feel relaxed in this area. The heart, of course, we know, if we get fright, we get “ah” onto our center heart. It’s the security and it’s also the place of love and compassion. And it’s said that your spirit, the core of your being is watching through the auras of your heart. Then at the throat, there is the expression. This is where we had a little tickle earlier today, this is the point of communication and collectivity. It’s the level of TV and everything is radio waves and so. At the level of the forehead, this is the narrow gate that Christ talked about, where forgiveness is the key and to be humble before the divine. And then finally, this point of fontanelle or flow, is the point of integration. That’s why we value meditation so much because if one can get into that silence, then by itself, the body will integrate, your health will improve and your stability will improve and your sense of satisfaction. All these start to manifest once this is working.
-Very interesting indeed.
Woman: I found the practice, or discovered it in Oakland in New Zealand that’s when Shri Mataji was visiting and I guess doing the practice, I’ve continued to do it now for 22 years and it’s never failed me and this ability to actually take me into silence but there’s a practice we suggest people actually go to and learn about it because it’s something that we put aside for a long time often, not a lot of us have thought about that ability. And I certainly haven’t at the beginning so in terms of practicing it and setting time aside, you need to give yourself that space but it’s very good to go to a course and people can go to www.freemeditation.com.au and find out where there’s a course running in the area.
-I think more and more people are wanting to learn to sit and think and be and sit and not think.
Woman: We’re so externalized and actually the greater connection you have with yourself, the greater your connection with others because you’re truly in yourself, you’re putting out a protected ego or you’re not lacking in self-esteem, you have to put in something or you’re not going for the next thing because it’s there. You know if you need something, you’ll get it. And I’ve found that the use of practice has developed a much stronger sense of myself and being happy with myself.
-We all want to be happy with ourselves. To you people out there, be happy, keep smiling. Thank you so much. Really lovely to see you.
You too, very much. Thank you.