Liberate yourself!

Devotee: We have different aspects of the Divine Mother we love. For example, Shakti, Lakshmi, Durga, Kali. Can you give some information about the different aspects and what they are for?

Guru: Yes, I would love to.

If you go to a hospital and you look at the board there are names of doctors, but they all come under the heading of ‘general medicine’.

[The heading is] ‘general medicine’ but if you dig deep there is a doctor of gynaecology, a doctor of psychology, and there are also surgeons; but they are all doctors. They have specialised in the field of medicine and they are all under the umbrella of medicine.

God is the many facets of this very same idea and concept.

The Divine Mother is Lakshmi, for the human being who wants wealth, prosperity, and success in their life. The Divine Mother is also Saraswati, who is knowledge and liberation. The Divine Mother is Durga and Kali in the cycle of dissolution, to destroy within ourselves the lower nature, for we have to go through these aspects. The Divine Mother Pattini is the same Divine Mother, but [She is] a facet for the healing process for the human being. There are thousands of names for the Divine Mother.

When you are going to battle against the asuras, the demonic forces, you have the Divine Mother of Mahishasura Mardini. To go to battle she emerges out of the Divine, the Trinity of God – Brahma, Vishnu, Maheshwara. She emerges out of the eyes of God so that we will be preserved from destruction.

Every human being will have a very special relationship with one particular aspect of the Divine Mother. You can feel that when you go into a temple or a place of worship. You can find that you have a special rapport with a particular aspect.

You may be born as a Christian, a Hindu, or a Buddist – whatever “ism” you like. But you have emerged from a vast empire of evolution, birth, and death. You have a lot of experience behind you, hence you are not like ordinary people. I use the word ordinary [in the sense of] getting up in the morning at nine o’clock, going to work, coming back, and eating a meal.

You want something different. Inside you, there is something urging you on, and that is your divinity, saying, “I want something more than this. I am rich. I’ve got money. What am I doing? This is not enough for me. I want something that satisfies my inner nature. What is this inner nature?” This inner nature is your divinity. You are shrouded by your attachments and your desires, you are cloaked in that.

You are like a grub that has built a cocoon around itself. You have grown up and are struggling inside the cocoon, saying, “I want to break this cocoon and fly out of it because I want liberation.” So you push your way out and eat yourself out of this cocoon, and then suddenly you see the world and you find a sense of freedom, of liberation.

All the silk threads that made the cocoon are of no importance to you. [They are only] important to the man who wants the silk road.  They are only important to the man who is running after those silks and satins. But the butterfly which has grown out of that grub and woven that cocoon says, “This is not important to me anymore. I want to be free. I want to liberate myself.”

That is what life is about. You want to liberate yourself, to discover your inner power, and your divinity. That is the drama that you are going through. You are fighting for survival. None of your attachments will help you to become liberated.

Yes, it helps to have a comfortable home, but it is impermanent. You have a nice car but it is impermanent. From the moment you bought it, it was already second-hand. The moment you buy your television set, fridge, or anything it is second-hand.

You must feel amused inside when you go to the showroom and your wife says to you, “Darling, isn’t that car nice?” You say, “Yes, very nice, but once I drive you out of this showroom it is second-hand. It has already lost about a thousand pounds.” Then after about three years, she will say, “Darling, we need another car.” You must see the funny side of this ‘darling’ process because you are going to be ‘darling’ed’ until you are old!

Everything is impermanent.

‘I’ and ‘mine’ do not exist. What is yours? What is mine? I wear a robe. I borrowed it. It’s been given on a temporary basis for me to wear.  It could be gold lamé, it could be any rag I put on my body [but] when I die, that’s it. You must be in that mindset. I will do all I can to achieve success, but it is not mine. I will do all I can with that success to pay my karma, and to help others, to help them build a better life for other people, [and do] my duty.

You must then through that success be able to build around you a vibration of love, kindness, compassion, and understanding.

Divine friends, there’s a big mistake many, many people make. They think spirituality is poverty, which is untrue. Spirituality means detachment, not poverty.

Spirituality means, you know, this is very nice (Guru looks at an object), full of stars, I may like it but I can’t swallow it. It’s very beautiful and that is my realisation. I may have many valuables, but what am I going to do with them?

It’s nice to see beautiful things. Do you know my pastime? Every Wednesday Swami and I go shopping for the community, and I go window shopping. I stand there watching and I wear a nice pair of slacks and a shirt, and nobody knows who I am.

I’ll tell you what my greatest amusement is. I stand by a shop window that is marked ‘sale’. I watch the ladies pass by and you can see the mind goes quite gaga. The word ‘sale’ means madness. The word ‘sale’ means: buy it even if you don’t want it.

You haven’t even thought, “Is it really necessary for me to go in there to buy it?” I stand there and watch them in amusement and say poor husbands and wives, they’re buying a load of rubbish.

We are in a state of impermanence. Every single gadget that is invented by man doesn’t have to be in my house or yours, because what’ll happen is that slowly it will encroach on your privacy. It encroaches on your privacy so much that you are terrified to leave it because the thieves will get in and clear it all.  

You’re frightened to move because you will say to yourself there is so much stuff around me I don’t know what to do. They are all demanding more expenditure, and so ultimately the mind is mindless.

What you have to do then and what you do normally is you go to see your doctor. The first thing the doctor does before you arrive through the door is to write a prescription for tranquilisers. You need tranquilisers and sleeping pills because you’ve spent so much more money than is necessary and you’ve got so many gadgets that make demands above your income. You don’t need a doctor but a mind-bender.

There must be a time when you have to find amusement in your life and find amusement in the stupidity of other people. See the funny side of it, and say to yourself there you go and buy, buy, buy, buy. Bye, bye is exactly what it is. Bye, bye to your mental stability. You don’t need tranquilisers, you don’t need sleeping pills. What you need is to discover your sense of reason and an element of detachment.

Simplify your life. Make it a part of your policy in life to simplify it. That is what our job is, to teach you not to complicate your life, but to simplify it.

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