Today is a great day to come to Brighton,
because it’s the day of Buddha’s birthday.
Today is Buddha's birthday, Lord Buddha's birthday.
We all have heard about His birth
and that His mother dreamt of an elephant,
of a large white elephant before the birth of Buddha.
And then it was predicted
that a child will be born in your family
who will be either a great saint
or a very great King,
as in Sanskrit called ‘chakravarti' - means the one who
is the ruler of the whole world.
So the father got worried,
and he thought he must get the son involved into the family life,
into material life
and give Him all the pleasures of life.
So he built a very special place for Him,
a beautiful palace to live in.
And where he got Him married to a girl called Yashodhara,
was a very, very beautiful woman,
gave Him all the pleasures of life,
everything that he could do to entice this boy away from asceticism.
Also you know the story of His going
one day on the road, how He found three types of people,
and how He felt that ‘Why a person should become old?'
‘Why should a person suffer in life?
and ‘Why should people die?’.
So all these three things put an enquiry into Himself
and He started trying to understand
why these things happen to human beings.
With this the enquiry started.
So He reached a point where
He could not bear any more the comforts and the, all the attachments
that were entangled around him by His father.
He had a son whose name was Rahul;
and He left the son and the wife in the search of the truth.
Now, He started from a wrong end, I should say,
for the search of the truth because
He wanted to know, why there are miseries in the human beings.
And so He started from collective towards the center.
When we see miseries all around us,
many people I have seen, they say: “What about others?
Will everybody get realization?
Will everybody will have this, you see?
This comes from the wrong end I feel because
first of all we must know, are we all right?
Have we - are we perfect?
Are we full of joy?
Have we received the absolute knowledge?
If you start from this point, it’s always better.
Because He started from the wrong point,
searching it from the collective
to remove the miseries of the people
He had to go in a very round about way.
So He read all the books and Vedas and this,
He went to big pundits,
to all the great knowledgeable people to meet them,
to ask them the answer, “Why there are these three things?”
that is the ‘roga’, is the
health or miserable physical body,
then the death and the old age.
He went and asked so many people
And they said: “You have to die because your are born."
And then they said that you have to
become old because you are born like that
and you have to suffer
because you commit sins.
He was not satisfied with this answer.
So He went on searching and searching and searching.
Then He got tired, absolutely fed up.
Then He went to a place called Gaya, very near
Patna it is, I've seen the place and the tree.
And He sat under a banyan tree where He slept off,
because He got so tired of His seeking.
And after the sleep He got up
and suddenly He got His Realization.
And He thought the whole drama is over.
Now His Mother Herself was Adishakti, who gave Him the birth
and She died just after the birth of the child.
And He got His Realization.
Now at that time when He got His Realization
there was nobody to tell Him what it is,
that what it means Realization is.
Nobody to decode
or talk about anything that was to be understood by Him.
But because of His tremendous seeking
and such ardent desire
that the shuddha iccha, the Kundalini itself rose,
but of course the Adishakti blessed Him
and He got His Realization under the banyan tree.
Now any incarnation, which came on this Earth
had to 'samayachara' - according to the time,
the need of the time had to act firstly,
secondly the need of the
incarnation to come on this earth
was first created in the human beings.
So supposing at a time when there was too much of ritualism,
Brahmanism or priesthood
and people were trying to take everything
onto those artificial rituals and all that,
an incarnation had to come on this earth to correct those ideas.
Like Krishna came at a time when He said, “This is all leela",
the puja and everything He canceled.
Nothing doing, no puja nothing,
you just have raas, enjoy yourself.
It's all a joke going on, you see.
So He brought that concept at that time in the awareness of people
that the whole world is a leela,
is a play of God's own whims.
So you just enjoy it.
And that's how He created this wonderful festival of Holi,
which we had
in Delhi. I don’t know- anyone of you was there for the Holi? No.
You were there?
Sahaja Yogi: Two years back.
Shri Mataji: No, but this time you were not there.All right.
You might get the pictures of that. All right.
So in the same way when Buddha came in
first problem was that
He thought that it's better not to talk about God.
Because in His search everybody told Him
the answer was, “Oh it’s God who does it.
He punishes you. It’s God who gives you this old age.
It’s God who does it.“ But what is this God after all?
Why does He do it?” They said, “You better ask the God."
“Where is the God?”
So everybody put every blame on God, as usual.
Even that’s done today, nothing so, so new
and nothing unusual I should say.
So this must be done by God, you see.
If you cut your throat:
‘God put my knife in my hand and He cut my throat’.
So you see, He thought better not talk of God.
Because everybody is going towards God.
Then the people whom He met they said,
“Now I have become God.” He said, “How?”
He said: "I am God now.” “For what? Why?”
Because he could mesmerize people,
he said: “I have become God.” Just imagine!
So He thought that it’s very dangerous to talk of God
because people take God in the hand and use it
for their own purpose,
always say, “Oh this is what the God has to do
and it’s God has
done it and I’m in connection with God and I’ll tell God.”
So He got a fright and He said that, “Better not talk about God.
Because that puts the attention of the people on ritualism,
artificial things, they are building temples after temples,
and just doing all these horrible things
which one should not do. Like if you go to the south you’ll find
in the temples they shave their heads of the ladies,
they shave it completely.
And they have to -
it’s all cobbled along the sides of the wall,
some walls of the temple.
And the ladies who shaved their heads
are just rolling along the sides, you see.
They have to do sometimes 1008 times, rolling - imagine,
and the water is poured on them.
God knows what is the ritual, from where it has come!
So the poor women go on rolling, rolling, rolling like that
and somebody is pouring water on them all the time,
buckets after buckets.
Her husband and her brother and all they’re doing one after another,
you see one is finished then another one.
Poor ladies rolling like that,
on that muddy sort of a cobbled area.
I mean, I was shocked when I saw this. I said: “What’s this?”
And then later on you see they became modern,
so they started selling the hair, you see, abroad,
so the whole thing became a big industry in Madras, you see,
the hair was made into this bouffant and all they call it, here,
and they sent it to England and other places.
So it’s, I mean, in the name of God ridiculous things were done,
ridiculous things were done!
So He just thought: Better not talk about God.
The first step is Self-Realization.
He was a great Sahaja Yogi I must say.
Because He said nothing doing, don't talk about God or anything,
first you get your Realization.
That was the first condition, establish it.
Unless and until you have established your Realization,
- nothing doing.
So He just started His own method of propagating Buddhi
Buddha's knowledge or you can Buddhism you can say as they call it.
Of course it became ‘ism’ later on.
So all that He started
with the idea that people should first become Buddha.
Buddha means realized, Buddha is ‘to know’.
So "Buddha" means the person who has known,
means the one who is a Realized soul.
So what He says, “Buddham Sharanam Gachhami”,
I bow, no I surrender – ‘sharanam’ means surrender,
I surrender to the Buddhas - means to all the Sahaja Yogis.