Please enjoy the following Sahaja Yoga talk, given by Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi on the 27 March 1981 in Sydney. In Sahaja Yoga it is important to use your heart when doing things, and it is certainly also true when expressing your generosity.
This is the trouble with human beings is, that they cannot bear anything. If you give them money, either they’ll become miserly or they become wayward. If you give them power either they become dictatorial or they become destroyers. I mean, you cannot give anything to human beings without realization. Anything they get extreme, they become mad. That’s one word you can explain. Now Krishna has said, “Yoga kshema mahatmyam.” He has said I give you yoga, that is union with God, Self-realization, and then I look after your kshema, and kshema means your well-being. This well-being is brought forth with this Laxshmi, with one hand that is giving, the another is the protection. This hand which gives, should not, the other hand should not know. It should be so done so gracefully, graciously.
Today only I was telling the story to some people, about my Own father, who was a very generous man I’ve ever known. And he had a habit on a Sunday afternoon he used to go, he used to call all the people and say that I have to give away lots of things, I have too many things in the house. He’d take out all the blankets, sometimes all the utensils and sometimes food, anything that he felt like he used to give way. So people would come and he would pass on and his head was bent like that, and some people told him, what’s the use, some people are taking three blankets, some are taking two blankets, you don’t even see what’s happening you are just giving away, please at least raise your head. So he said: “The problem is like this, because I don’t give, it’s God who is giving, I’m just standing in between. And they all are saying that you are giving you are giving and thank thank so I feel very shy, first of all. And secondly it is the lookout of God who is giving these things to see whether one gets two or one. Why should I bother. I’m just standing in between, I’m not supposed to see who takes two or one.” Such generosity I’ve seen, in my own lifetime. And I have seen, the more generous he was, the more generosity flew into our house. I mean, that like if you open this door from the other side it starts flowing.
But some people have sixty shirts, but still they’ll go to the market and buy shirts. And they’ll say: “Oh I have a weakness for shirts.” Now I don’t understand this weakness of heaping up shirts after shirts. It is ridiculous, isn’t it. Some of these things really are ridiculous, that I have a weakness for shoes, now you go and see the shoes are from top to bottom, you can open a shoe shop, or, it’s like that, what’s the use of getting so many shoes because your foot has got the same size for years now, it’s not going to change, even after realization. So there is no need to, I mean if your shoes give way is all right but, I too have the same problem. That I, my disciples know that they should give me a shoe, I don’t know why, they give me a shoe, all the time I go there they give me chappal or a shoe or something. I said now I’ve too many now what to do? They said: “Mother return it to us we’ll keep it for vibrations.” I said: “That’s a good idea,” because I have no place to keep all these shoes, I mean I am not a cobbler, I cannot do anything with it. So it is useless. Best thing is to give flowers so that I can again send them back to some ocean or to some river.
So even in there, when we go on accumulating, and I must have this, you go to the shop the people are like this like this, watching everything. What is there to watch. You see whatever you want to buy you go in the shop see what you like, you have it. But sort of I must have this, I must have that. I have known a person who had ten ironing boards and twenty iron in his house. All locked up. I said: “For whom?” So she said: “Maybe my children.’ I said: “You have only one child, God has been very miserly about you, you have only one child. And now what are you going to do with this? You’d better throw them away.” And with the electrical I mean appliances you know they go off and all that. But she would not. She could not, she used show everyone: “See now I’ve got it.” Not antiques, all modern stuff, you see. And this is how the things go on accumulating which has no value aesthetically or in any way.
Actually you should buy something only to give it to someone. That’s the best way of enjoying it to the maximum, you see. And anybody likes it – have it. You see, that’s the best way. It’s a great thing, I mean I tell you it’s rather difficult for you people to understand but I am one of them who does that very often, and my children and my husband are rather worried you know, God knows next time what she’ll give away. But you’ll be amazed I’ve so many things, so many things, despite all this, I mean the whole time thinking what to give to whom, still it’s so many things in the house, now that we have to take a bigger house. I don’t know what to do with so many things and I try to thrust things on the people, Baba you take this you have liked it. But they say: “No no no how can you give me.’ But really that gives me such a pleasure, and one must learn how to do. But I’ve have seen human beings are different. For themselves they’ll buy diamonds, and for others they’ll buy artificial things. It’s very common you know. They will buy for, they are wearing diamonds and when it is coming to giving to others they’ll give artificial. At least don’t wear at that time the diamond, at least that much decency should be there.
So you see when it comes to giving, give it with your full heart. You just feel that love of giving and you feel so happy, because you feel so big about yourself, like an ocean that’s giving so much of clouds and again it is receiving these rivers into it, and again making it into clouds, a sort of a circle of beautiful conversion into beauty after beauty starts, it’s so beautiful.
And that’s what we should try to become, a part of that circle, which is so beautiful and which is so joy giving, to yourself also. And this is what it is, and this hand is for ashraya, means for the protection.