America, North and South, is the Visshudhi chakra of the planet Earth, knowing this, recognizing this, understanding this sheds light, on what might otherwise be darkness. An example, two guys are standing outside an apartment building on Bailey Avenue in the Bronx. They have no money, can’t afford to buy musical instruments, can’t sing. Guess what? Necessity being the mother of invention and all that, they invent hip hop. Had they lived on another continent, most probably that would have been the end of it, but they were in the Visshudhi and within ten years, their invention would have spread across the entire planet, aided and abetted by the World Wide Web, the internet, which itself spread through the Visshudhi chakra. It was not for nothing that Hollywood movies, jazz, Broadway musicals, rock ’n roll, rhythm and blues, soul music, creole music, bluegrass, country’n western, Afro Cuban, Salsa and Americana, to name but a few, plus, of course, the whole of 20th Century literature that emerged from North and South America that emerged from the Visshudhi in the 20th century.
This being so, how is it that we Sahaja yogis, blessed as we are, have consistently been unable to connect to the power of the Visshudhi through the arts to reach the public at large?
Is it worth asking, what is it that we’re not doing that we might be doing?
Jai Shri Mataji Alan
This question was posted to a number of artists, musicians and actors, outside writers and here are some of the responses so far:
Here’s an idea: Let’s make a collection of short stories. It could be a book, a website, a workshop, a laboratory of creativity.
Short stories are wonderful because they are short. They are easy to read, difficult to write.
Let’s choose a topic, something broad like spiritual ascent or awakening or revelation/realization, so that the stories are thematically linked.
Let’s see what we come up with. Let’s surprise ourselves and each other.
Richard Payment
Poornima Kirby
Thank you for asking this question - been pondering this for a while! I believe a BIG piece of the answer is that we, as yogi artists, need to find a way to be collective in our creation. Of course it’s important to strike out into these artistic industries as they exist now, and we can reach a certain level of success or ‘fame’ as individuals. But in terms of sharing the Culture of the Spirit - it’s very nature is collective, so how can we be effective instruments unless we create collectively? Even just two yogis collaborating seems to have amplified vibes - and the more we add, the more potential there is to reach the world! But it only seems to work when we keep the love and the heart open - and that’s our big project here in the Vishuddhi, and why its so powerful when we collaborate across continents and distances. Also, I think the Divine’s sense of timing is different from our expectations. Sometimes we have to plunge into things before we’re “ready”! Other times, the inner incubation is much longer than our impatience was prepared for.
Anyway, love to you all - and if anyone needs someone to read your poem, or listen to your song, or give a bandhan as you head in for an audition - I got you!
Matt Malley
Lovely wisdom Poornima! Jump - together - and see the hand of God, paramchaitanya, sweep the world!
Here are two replies, one from Tarciso in Boston and one from Australia:
Tarciso
Yes.it is really worth to ask this question. Interesting question. Two boys in NY inventing the hip hop. The potential to spread is here. Quicy Jones said it comes from Africa, the Hip hop itself. We’re not been able to connect but we might have been doing this slowly, so slowly that it would take lot of generations. In a world that everyogoes fast. The w w w speeds that up even more more. But it a good question. Sometimes I wonder if my utopia os a new spiritual society was an utopia like the modern ones.
Australia
Some questions engender silence. But after restraining myself for a day, may I take this as an invitation to the world collective to comment - because it feels to me like a world problem?
My feeling is that we have not fully evolved yet. The culture of Vishwa Nirmala Dharma is so vast and many of us feel after decades that we hardly able to articulate what we have absorbed, let alone express it in any medium which could arrest the attention of the mesmerised masses.
Meanwhile we are watching the obvious decay around us, confident that the lotus will one day become visible.
When that happens the flowering of the new culture will be so utterly different from what is now popular.
It is pretty obvious at the moment that the root, Australia, the Muladhara, has yet to develop wisdom and innocence. We are all mostly still at chrysalis stages - some emerging but with wet, weak wings.
When we are all able to take flight together the world will notice.
In Dec. 88 in Aurangabad, Shri Mataji was speaking of spreading Sahaja Yoga when she advised that as well as restoring our innocence, and although the light was becoming visible on our faces it was also necessary that "... the culture of Sahaja Yoga is to be learnt. If we do not have that culture within us, then people are not going to listen to us." "...Your faces are shining ... but apart from that, in your personality there should be that magnetism which expresses your responsibility, which is the gravity part of it. As the Mother Earth has got gravity ... so that gravity should be there within us."
In considering Alan's question in the light of our writing, I feel we have not yet fully found our voices.
To write well requires serious introspection and solitude. This seems contrary to most Sahaja Yogis, but I cannot imagine that any of those who have actually managed to write and publish whole books could have done so without following the advice She gave us that we need to keep a journal, writing in it every day.
Then to write something creative as well, one has to consider the question of address: this is still a problem for me.
I have been grateful to Richard for starting this forum and inviting me to offer something, otherwise my attempts at poetry would not have had any audience at all. It was the knowledge that the readers would be fellow Yogis who also have found it hard to speak in the general public arena might have sympathetic ears. We need such a space to hone the craft.
I keep hoping that more people who tick the "like" symbol will also find the courage to add comments.
It does take courage to write. For years I have been struggling to write a book about the women in the great epics. Only recently I realised one of the problems blocking me was to do with audience - whose ear I am actually addressing? Hardly anyone I know actually reads whole books.
In thinking about this question of address I remembered the courageous poetry of Walt Whitman - (we were speaking of the power of the Vishuddhi )- here is a segment from 'To You'
"I only am he who places over you no master, owner, better, God, beyond what waits intrinsically in yourself.
Painters have painted their swarming groups, and the centre figure of all;
From the head of the centre figure spreading a nimbus of gold-color'd light;
But I paint myriads of heads, but paint no head without its nimbus of gold-color'd light;
From my hand, from the brain of every man and woman it streams, effulgently flowing forever.
O I could sing such grandeurs and glories about you!
You have not known what you are --- You have slumber'd upon yourself all your life;"
Then a quote from Julia Cameron, in "The Artist's Way" gave me a clue - 'Until we experience the freedom of solitude, we cannot connect authentically. We may be enmeshed but we are not encountered. As we own or regain our creative identity, we lose the false self we are sustaining.'
Considering that we are collectively creating a whole new culture from which we may then speak with one authoritative, loving voice let us continue to practice and to share the fruits of that practice in this unrestricted space.
I look forward to floods of new writing from everyone ...
Some questions engender silence. But after restraining myself for a day, may I take this as an invitation to the world collective to comment - because it feels to me like a world problem?
My feeling is that we have not fully evolved yet. The culture of Vishwa Nirmala Dharma is so vast and many of us feel after decades that we hardly able to articulate what we have absorbed, let alone express it in any medium which could arrest the attention of the mesmerised masses.
Meanwhile we are watching the obvious decay around us, confident that the lotus will one day become visible.
When that happens the flowering of the new culture will be so utterly different from what is now popular.
It is pretty obvious at the moment that the root, Australia, the Muladhara, has yet to develop wisdom and innocence. We are all mostly still at chrysalis stages - some emerging but with wet, weak wings.
When we are all able to take flight together the world will notice.