Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi

Dollis Hill Ashram, UK
26 May 1980 

Today I am going to talk to you about Attention. What is Attention what is the movement of Attention and what are the ways and methods of raising our Attention. Keep it in broad ways. Alright? But when I am saying all these things you must know that I am talking to you individually. It is not about others. Always the first thing human beings do is, when I am speaking to you, you try to find out about whom Mataji is speaking. This is the best way of putting your Attention on to something else. If you put your Attention to yourself — that „this is for me, and me and me alone‛, then it will have an effect because these are mantras’. And that is why it is wasted, because whatever is given to you is thrown onto another person. So the Attention that you have, is the only way to know the reality. Your own Attention is important, not the Attention of others or your Attention on others. This must be clearly’ understood. If you understand this point that the whole thing is to be consumed by you, through your Attention, to raise yourself to a higher situation, it will work out; otherwise, it is like giving food to you and going to another person who is getting nourished, while you are getting nothing. And that person also may not be able get nourished because he does not know that you are throwing it to that person.

So today as I am going to speak to you about Attention, you should know that your Attention should absorb all that I am saying „it is not meant for anybody else‛. You better sit in thoughtless awareness, that’s the best way, so that it goes into you, otherwise it is like a lecture, you know. That you listen to me has not effect. Every lecture will transform you because after all I am speaking. But because you always think of others and you think of your problems all the time — something non-sensical is going on, about which you are worried — and the Attention is so overloaded that whatever is said to you, does not go into you. So just now utilise it, by being attentive and knowing that all these nonsensical things have no value. Is your attention that has to come up and has to grow.

So, attention is the whole of the canvas of your being. Is a complete canvas — is the attention. Complete canvas of your being is the attention. How much you have gone into it, how much you have discovered it, how far you have raised it — is a different point.

Attention is Chitta’ and God is Attention. How far your Attention has been enlightened is a different point. But your Attention is God; if you become enlightened to that extent. It is like a canvas; you can say, it is like a canvas; which is spread-out for a film; and whatever aptitudes or, you can say, the drags or movements of your Attention has, shows on that canvas I do not know what is the word for Vritti’ in English language. It is not aptitude, but a person gets prone to, or his Attention is dragged to — I do not know there is a word in English language for Vritti’.

So our Attention is just a pure’, completely’ pure canvas, and is acted upon by the three Gunas we have, to begin with. And the three Gunas come to you, as you know, one from your past, one from your future sense and one from the present. Now whatever have been your experiences about a particular thing or a particular occasion, so far is completely recorded in your memory. For example, if you see the black colour, all that goes with the black colour is recorded in your memory. As soon as you see this black colour, quite a lot of it comes out. That means as soon as you see this with your Attention, the Attention gets muddled up or you can say the Attention gets coloured with all the memories about this black colour. And then your action takes place according to the way your Attention is affected. For example, just now, something was burnt by these flames. Now all of you became aware of it. Next time whenever you will see a flame, first thing will happen will be that you will be cautious about it. It is not going to happen again, but the whole memory will come to you and you will try to be cautious and warn others because your Attention will become aware’ of that, as soon as you will see that; because that canvas of your Attention itself will start throwing out these pictures out of itself, through your past experiences, on to the canvas. This is a living canvas.

Or may be, that if you have got some ideas which you have premeditated, or thought of, of the future — for example, you must have thought of somebody that if I meet that man I will tell him like this. As soon as you will meet that man, your Attention will start bubbling out with those ideas that are coming about this man and you will start addressing to him accordingly. It is all stored up within you whether it is about the future or about the past — is given out of the Attention through that bubbling process, which depends on your dragging nature, where you are dragged; that is called Vritti’, but I do not know what you call it in English language, I do not know. What you are prone to’. Vritti’ is a very neutral word. It does not mean anything bad. It means where you are drawn to. Vritti’ means a temperament by which you are drawn to. Whatever is your temperament, it acts like that. For example, if you see a man walking, say blindly, he cannot see things. One person may get angry with that person. Another may have pity for that person. Third man may come forward to help him out. Is the Vritti’, is the temperament that you have developed through your three Gunas. That is why this Attention becomes identified with you and when you are identified with this, your „Vritti‛, your temperament, then you are still in a misidentified area. Let us take a case of somebody who has been possessed before. Now coming to Sahaja Yoga his possession goes away. But the memory remains in the brain that he was possessed and the memory is stronger in a person, left side is stronger, then that memory lingers on and as soon as that person comes in contact with anyone which has got something to do with the past possession it clicks, and the whole thing starts coming into you, bubbling out and you think you are again possessed. It is the memory which gives you, it is a myth’. It is the memory that tells you Oh! you are again possessed.’ Because your left side is weak, means, you always live in your memory — your memory is stronger than yourself. If you could make yourself stronger than your memory, nothing can possess you. But after you get your realization, you are not still identified with that state of mind in which you see your ego and super-ego as myths. Still you get caught up into your ego and super-ego, and that is why your attention is still in a mess. In a pure simple way of Attention, in an innocent child, he sees everything in „Pratyaksha‛, means in actual experiencing of something, for a child, because he has no memory. So he will have to burn his hand to feel that this burns. He has to touch something cold to know that it is cold. His memory is not yet built up. So into the actual experiencing of it, he lives, but that actual experiencing’ becomes memory. And once the memory is built up stronger, the whole personality is effected by memory. All the conditioning of all kinds comes through that. Your reading, even the whole atmosphere can come to you. You see sometimes you smell a particular soap, or say a rose you smell it, when all the memories of smelling such a rose sometimes comes to you and you may feel really’ elated — sometimes, may be sometimes very unhappy, whatever may be the situation. So you may feel happy or unhappy. Because whatever experiences you have had, has given you a memory. This memory might have given you a super-ego, or might have given you an ego.

This cunning might have taken place. If it has been a ego and a super ego, then may be that if it was ego you must have felt happy. If it is satisfying to your ego you feel very happy. If it is not, if it is super ego, if you are suppressed by this then you feel very unhappy. So both things — like happiness or unhappiness are the states where you are still in the myth. Still the myth exists, you have to still go beyond’. So if you feel happy about some situation, you should know you are only happy before realization, because it is giving some support to your ego to bloat. And if you are unhappy, then you should know that there is some sort of suppression on your ego and there is a super-ego developing.

So both the situations have been of no help’ to you. Of no help’ to you for your growth, except that both these institutions develop so much that you are away from the real experiencing. The real experiencing stops, because your Attention is so much, muddled up. So on one side if you move — on the left hand side — your Attention is muddled up with fear, with pain, with unhappiness, with hopelessness, dejection. The other side if you indulge too much — on to the right hand side — little bit also, you start getting elated, excited, over-dominating. The colour of the left side is blue, and the blue colour starts changing to the black. While on the right hand side it is, to begin with, yellow, light yellow or you can say golden. Then yellow, then orange and then red. So you go to aggression on the right hand side. On the left hand side you go into a complete state of entropy you can call it; or a state where you are separated from yourself into complete frozen state. So one side you become completely frozen, on the other side you become completely heated up. Both these things are again movement on the wrong direction. Even in the centre when the Attention is kept, that you keep your attention more’ in the centre; there also because it is a very’ sensitive point it does not stay there. For example, when we say, use fire, we can use it for burning the house. In the same way we can use it for creating smoke. But we can also use this fire in its proper way, if we use it, in its proper proportion for cooking the food, for giving us light. It is too much, it can burn like a big fire. If it is too little, it can burn like smoke. But in the centre when you know how to balance it, then you can use it for your own purpose — for cooking or for giving light, and then for a Puja too.

So in the same way when we really balance’ our Gunas properly, then we become gradually the master’ of the whole situation.

The Attention does not get dragged into things that we have been doing or that we have understood through our memories, or through our experiences or whatever it is. And is not also dragged towards too much on the right hand side that we try to overpower, or try to dominate someone. Because if you move too much that side you have seen it becomes blood. It is difficult for people to understand how, when we become very religious minded, like now Iran. the movement is on the right — all the austerities, all that, everything. Now blood-shed. Christians also did the same. Brahmins did the same in India. Buddhists did the same, even they talked of non-violence they got to bloodshed, because movement started right hand side.

Left hand side movement will take you to very sly and dark methods. So right handed sided people like big nations who are supposed to be developed nations, they justify war. „We must have weapons to face each other‛, but You all each other are the same people from God’s point of view! Why are you fighting? I mean, God asks you, „Why are you fighting, what is the need? Why don’t you sit down properly and listen to each other? What are you fighting about? You are fighting about land — is it your father’s land? It belongs to God! God has created this land. Why are you fighting?‛ But your Attention is such that immediately you say Oh! This is my land, this is my mother-land, this is my father-land, this is my brother-land. But what about your’ land which is within you? Is it not your own?

So if you go on telling these people that we should have no war they would not listen. Realisation is the only way. By realisation your attention gets higher and gets separated from that strata from where these things bubble in. You understand my point now?

The strata goes higher. The Attention goes higher. At a higher state. and these things that used to bring in — by right side movement you get (vikshépa) confusion. Must you get confusion? Every intellectual, whatever brilliant he may be, he is confused.

And the more confused he is, the more he asserts himself; because he is confused, he is not sure of himself, so he asserts: This is the thing, this is the thing’. I mean, if it is so, why should you assert it? But he goes on asserting „this is the thing‛. Then understand that he is now going towards lunatic asylum. Absolutely. And the way he asserts, and goes on talking about it, all the time, that means he is not sure. He becomes like a possessed’ personality. When he explains everything through his brains. That this is the thing, this is correct, we must all do this is what…’ and he convinces many others who are confused like him. They depend on him; he becomes a leader because you see they are much more confused and they find somebody who is not so much confused outwardly’. They stick on to him, and all of them get to war or some sort of a blood shed or some sort of — they want to see blood. They become heartless, passionless, compassionless, you can say Compassionless’, loveless people. The other movement is the blue side, the blue is like the blue moon-light? So further romanticism starts, you see. Sitting in the moon-light, you see! The ideas start coming from Lord Byron. And they come into your attention, then it becomes very strong passion’ with you. You think, „Oh, I am still, you see, I have to find out my loves, you see,‛ and you go on in search of your loves and this and that. These things really are not giving joy. That is why so many poems have been written that love is the most’ painful thing, is worse than death and all sorts of poems are written like that, so why did you get in it? I mean, it is already written down. Books after books! Still why do you get into it? You are already warned about it that,don’t go after love, love is deception, love is this, that, it is very temporary, it is for the little while you get that …’ By chance, if somebody could stop at a point by marrying somebody who is sweet enough and realise that love and marriage and all these things are in the centre’; are like the fire in the kitchen, are like the fire in the temple, looks after it and does not overdo something about it, then may be that this may be utilised.

In the same way the right-side movement of the Sun-Line, if people think that, yes, Sun is important. We have to have Sun in the house, but you are not to become naked and insult the sun and get your skin cancer! Sun is not for your skin cancer. But if you over-do, it is also it is dangerous. A person who exposes himself too much to planning, and doing that, and doing this, and doing all this — can land into very’ great difficulties. So you have to balance that side also and this side and you have to be in the centre, in the equilibrium’.

Now this word equilibrium does not exist in our day to day life, it exists only in the fiction or may be in the so-called scientific research. But as far as human beings are concerned, they do not know what equilibrium is Because’ of this, the Attention, though after’ realisation comes up, still on the sides they just go down — this side or that side according to your vrittis ( ) And when these identifications still act in them, they are prone to go down again in their Attention. And again start bubbling out the same thing as they had. Now, one has to become lighter in one’s own mind and should think that we have dropped all that now, why are we there?’ One should become lighter, with all that load flowing out, because you are here to raise your Attention to higher and higher’ so that you come up to a point where you become One with the Attention of God. Already your Attention is sparkled because through your Attention you can see what is wrong with you, you can see what is wrong with others and you can see how far you are going with yourself. But the progress is retarded because you do not know that this Attention is pure form and all that you get into this attention is a mythical stuff, is a myth. If you drop this myth gradually, treat everything as a myth, and not depend on becoming unhappy or happy, just seeing the thing, your Attention will take a flight and it will be at a much higher level residing there. Instead of that every’ movement you go this way or that way, you see, it goes on like that and the movement upwards is much less.

Even in Sattwa-guna, when you rise, you can go much worse in that condition also. For example, if you say that I am trying to be Sattwa-guni. In Sattwa-guni it is that you start seeing everything, discriminating through your understanding, — not through vibrations, through understanding. „Should we not somehow or the other take out our Attention from here? Should we not give up this? Should we be charitable? Should we go and serve the people?, There are people, who think Oh, we are going to do something great’, like your salvation army, you see. Let them be salvaged by themselves, I do not know what salvation they are going to do. So these ideas, — ideas’ I am saying — of Sattwa-Guna can also immobilise you and can really’ freeze you down once for all and that also can’ work in you in such’ a sly manner, we can say, in such a secretive manner that you will not feel it. All these ideas of helping each others, being charitable, „lets have a charity association,‛ — finished! Once you work in a charity association, your Attention is finished there.

But if your Attention goes higher, say my Attention is „I am only nothing but a charity, I mean what am I it just flows. You just become the charity. So the difference between a person who is a realised and a not realised is this that the Attention which was giving myth as reality to you is gone now, is gone higher. It can see that it is myth, the Attention can clearly see that it is a myth. And you can see that yourself and you can remove yourself. That — of course I have to give you a push no-doubt and I am working hard on that: to give you a push — but you should also know that mythical things must be dropped out, otherwise you will not grow. All’ mythical things must be dropped out. And the best way to do it is to be in thoughtless awareness; because as soon as you transcend these three Gunas you become thoughtlessly aware. You have to cross Agnya, and once you have crossed Agnya these three Gunas, absolutely’ you go into a state where you are Gunatit, you are beyond gunas. So you do not deliberately do anything, but it just works out.

But analysis is one of the diseases of the West. What are you analysing? What are you analysing — you ask yourself. I feel like laughing at the whole analysis that goes on. See, they will sit down take out a hair, splitting the hair into hundred, and, great analysers are sitting now.’ They can not even say how the chromosomes have that spindle action and — I mean at that minute level the things are worked out. They cannot say how a cell divides. What are they analysing sitting down here? Now, they have analysed for a purpose, also done for God. Through their analysis now my things are recorded. Through their analysis I can go to the TV — if they allow me any time! Because of analysis it does not fit into me, they wouldn’t allow, they may not. It might be expedited. But say, for example, if you had not discovered these things — for example take it like that — and the science was not discovered, your Attention would have been at least better off. Because of science, your Attention is also very much in confusion. So I do not know which one to praise — whether the science or the primitiveness. See when you raise yourself to science also, you got to another extreme as usual. Till you burnt out your complete Attention you were not satisfied. I mean if you had kept your balance in science also it would have helped, but the balance was lost there. Give anything to human beings and they know how to make the worst out of it. They will go to the extreme. You give them a horse, they cannot go ordinary trotting or galloping they must have a double gallop till they fall and die. Every thing you see, they are just on the run all the time. So first thing needed is to steady down yourself and tell yourself: „Now all these mythical things I am not going to allow to come to my Attention.‛

All these things are nothing but myths, but you are giving too much importance to myths. You are taking them bit too seriously. They are just mythical. Now, I mean, when you are realised now you laugh at people who just go mad over say, a moonlit night; alright? But ask the fellow who is doing that — he will say „you are heartless, you have no feelings‛, he will give you a big poetry out of it. You go and see anyone of these people who are riding a high horse, who are at the helm of affairs and you will feel like laughing at them. But they will think that „you are useless, you are doing no work, you are good for nothing, you are just wasters.‛ So now for you, because you are enlightened now, is to understand that our Attention has to move higher and’ higher, at a higher space.

Now, actually what has happened in realisation — your Kundalini has risen and has come up. Just like you can say a small, thin hair — one hair, say. And that has broken your Sahasrara. And now the grace is flowing into it. But it is a very small’ movement that has taken place — of course which is a very difficult movement no doubt; but it has taken place. Now you have not expanded like this. Your Chakras are only pierced in the center, but the rest of the Attention is still intact. Actually it is so intact, that you do not even feel that it is pierced. Now you have to expand’ that. Open it out so that more strands of Kundalini can rise and your Attention, which is in these centres, expands. By expansion it drives out all that is mythical on the sides. On every centre we have our Attention which is being enlightened in the centre through this light passing through. But the light is too small for the darkness that you have collected.

Specially for the people of the West I would say, your confusions …you must get rid of them. But still you identify. Because if I ask you any thing — „how are you.‛ Means what? Means you are still confused. Alright? Confusion should go. One confusion was there that „this is realisation or not.‛ I hope that is over now with you people. At least now you believe it is self-realisation, I had to tell people,‛ No, no you are self realised now, you „are‛ still they would jump up like a jack in the box. They will say, „No, we’re, not Mother. How do you say this is realisation?

We expect this’ out of realisation and that’ out of realisation, that we’ll be flying out of the door if we are realised‛ or some thing nonsensical like that. Thank God, these ideas have gone away.

But when we are realised, there is light that has come in us, we have to grow it, only’ by separating our Attention from the myths. It is all’ mythical. I also play with you. Because unless and until you are sure, I am not going to give you a wrong idea about yourself. I want to see how far still’ your Attention is moving. And I know; still you are not sure. Still you are not sure of yourself. That is why the confidence is not there.

First of all you have to learn how to drive, then you are tested.

There will be five stones put together, the distance will be only that hardly a car can pass through and the fellow will say you bring it zigzag — and you cannot do it. Why? That is how he makes you a master. The mastery of your Attention will come when you will start seeing’ that it is all a myth that upsets you. It is all a myth that upsets you. Just throw it away. Just throw it away and understand that you are „the eternal Attention.‛ That you are the,,eternal life.‛ That only thing that keeps you away from it is ignorance, and the ignorance is too simple to understand that you have accepted myth as truth. Just drop it, it is all myth. You will be amazed how your Attention will rise and you will see all these non-sensical things which used to frighten you or to elate you, will drop out, and you will just smile at it. And then only’ you are going to enjoy yourselves fully because your Attention would be completely drenched into the bliss of „Self‛. I am saying: you will, I say: you are’ already drenched into that bliss. Keep it up.

Now, how to do it?

Actually, in every day-to-day life how to kill the memory of the past? To kill the memory of the past, is to have new memories. You must remember when you first got your realization. Always think of it. Whenever any such memory comes to you, you try to think how you got realisation. Any’ memory that is troublesome or even so-called elating, you just try to remember: „how realisation has come to you.‛ When you feel aggressive about something or angry about something, just try to remember how you felt the joy of surrendering. Just think of that joy of surrendering, of dissolving yourself. So the new memories must be built up. If you start building up new memories. then you will start collecting moments to establish other moments which have such memories. Like a memory when you tried to help somebody, you raised the Kundalini’ of someone. Now the problem would be that when you would be raising the Kundalini’ of others, you would be in thoughtless awareness — there wouldn’t be any thought — and thought is the only thing which impresses. But that time you can record’ the joy of raising the Kundalini.

If you could record the joy of raising the Kundalini of others, you will feel a new wealth of these beautiful moments will be accumulated. And all these moments which were giving you confusion or fear or so called unhappiness and happiness will drop out and pure’ joy will remain. Because now most of the experiences you have had are more of joy. Joy has no thoughts.

It is just an experience — „Pratyaksha‛. That is why I said you keep your eyes open. I hope you’ll understand what I mean by that.

May God bless you all.