Seeking

Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi

Hampstead, England, 23 October 1980 (Excerpt)

 



People don’t understand that the time has come for thousands of people to get their realization. Perhaps we are not aware what time we are born. So many people are seeking God. Never in the history before there was such a multitude which was seriously seeking God and honestly wanting to get their union. Only in the modern times you find they are very honest, very sincere, and they are as if born seekers. I mean their quality is that they are seekers. Their temperament is that they are seekers. They are not satisfied with anything else but seeking.

Why this is happening? We have to think about it. Why people are not satisfied with what they have? Why are they not seeking now the materialism or the powers which are other than the Divine power? Why do they want that they should know their Spirit? What is the reason? Why such an upsurge? And why people like mad are following anyone who comes across—to try every method and experiment with everything to get that bliss and joy.

You know from ancient times people have been talking about your rebirth. Even at the time of Rama, one disciple called as Nachiketa went to the father-in-law of Rama, whose name was Raja Janaka, and asked him that, “Give me Self-knowledge.” And Nachiketa was very, very anxious, very much wanting to be the Spirit. But Janaka put him to many, many many, tests. And, the conversation between them is very interesting. So one individual is mentioned in those days, I mean that’s a long time back, Rama’s time, who was seeking.

Even at the time of Christ there was, we would say, John the Baptist, who talked of baptism. But, as far as seeking is concerned, in the multitude, there was no such urge. There was not that seeking as you find today. So, there must be something in the atmosphere.

Then another thing is that we are trying to save time. We must have watches. We must see that after every ten minutes. Oh, we have to save time. We cannot waste time. I mean, supposing somebody has to go to India, then a date is fixed, and then he must go by that plane, particular plane. If that plane is missed, he thinks he’s lost the world. Time-saving is another urge within us. Why do we want to save time? Why this urge from the unconscious is so strong that we must save time? Is there something going wrong or something is going to happen? Or is there some urgency or emergency which you feel in the time itself? Because, in the olden times, nobody used to worry so much about time. So, what is the reason for this kind of time-saving today?

We can see very clearly that there are genuine seekers. There are seekers because of the faction around. And, there are people who do not seek, who are quite satisfied with whatever mundane life they are leading, or whatever ambitions they have other than seeking. But the genuine seekers are so many in number that we have to find out why this genuine seeking is working so much. And you are so restless about it, so anxious that, without the seeking, you are not satisfied. You are willing to give up everything that is on this earth with you, or whatever is your own so-called possessions, but you want to seek yourself. That’s a fact; it’s absolute honest. There’s no doubt about it. But why there is seeking?

It is because the last judgment has started. The last judgment has started now. Many great souls are taking birth. It is very common these days, you talk to anyone about his child. They will tell two things. Either he is a grand old man, some ancient figure born in the family, and every word he speaks is wisdom. Or, the other thing they may tell you is that he’s a monster, he’s good for nothing, he is useless. Nothing in between. Now this happening also was very uncommon. Now we have seen, so many of you, who are Sahaja Yogis, that so many children are born realized.

I mean, when I was born, I found very, very few people; except for my father, I couldn’t find anyone who was born realized. And, there were many fakirs and saints who came to our house, or we went to see them, and I found that their kundalini was all frozen. They may be calling themselves saints or whatever it is. But I was amazed that there was no companion­ship with them because you couldn’t talk. They were at a very low level of evolution and they’re just trying to make money or give some sort of a technique or some sort of a, you can say, some sort of a blah-blah-blah. Even then, it was so.

But, innately in a country like India people know what to seek, what to find. Now, because of your righteous life in previous births, I believe, maybe, or whatever it is. As a blessing of that you are born in these countries where there is affluence, where your attention does not go to material things so much, but to higher things. And then you start thinking that all this is a waste, a junk and we are not going to carry the junk of our parents on our heads. Some sort of feeling crawls up, and you start seeking.

In England I don’t know how many children I have seen who are born realized, of a very high quality. Such great souls are taking birth on this earth. Why? It never happened before. And within these ten years’ time, such a tremendous in-flow of these great souls is felt that one has to realize that there is a kind of an emergency. This emergency is felt also even in those people who are not yet seeking. They are so speedy, they are so anxious, they get into stress, and they get into tensions. If you ask your forefathers who had gone out to wars, they never had tensions. They would kill ten people and sleep off nicely without thinking about it. They didn’t even have the sensitivity that you have, that compassion, and that understanding.

With this growth within, or, we can say, with this urge within, also there are many things that have happened outside that you can see very clearly. Is that a consciousness has come, a collective awareness has come, as to the idea of cruelty, wars, and also domi­na­tion of other people. Perhaps, none of you could be as old as I am here. I have seen this working out.

People are so much changed in their ideas. There’s such a revolution that you cannot think a person like Christ today to be born and to be crucified. Of course you may misunderstand. You may not like Him because He’s a carpenter’s son; He’s too simple; He talks of spontaneity; He doesn’t give you any technique; He doesn’t take any money from you; He doesn’t organize. You may not like Him, and you may deny Him also, thinking that He’s just useless, but you cannot crucify. Under any law you cannot do it. Imagine what a development of society has also taken place.

And, we understand what is wrong. For example now, Afghanistan was invaded. Everybody, everyone in the whole world was feeling that it was wrong. When one of the satellites was falling, and there were some astronauts caught up in that, the whole world was watching. I mean, they were not Indians and they were not Egyptians, but everywhere people were watching that they should come down safely. Everybody was praying in their own way that, “Oh God, they must be safe.” Because of the development outside, we are so much connected with each other. There’s such an articulation of our thoughts and our ideas and our feelings and our sensitivities that, anything happens in any part of any country, we do feel, in any part of the world, we feel. Anywhere anything happens to someone, we feel it. So, our collectivity has also become sharper and sensitive.