What are you seeking?

Please enjoy the following extract of a Sahaja Yoga talk by Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi which took place on the 24th July 1979.

“Yesterday, I met a lady, and she told me that she was seeking God. I said, “What do you think of God, what are you seeking?” When we say we are seeking, do we know what are we supposed to seek, and do we understand how we are going to feel our seeking complete, that we have reached the destination? As last time, I told you that seeking has to be genuine, from a genuine heart, and that you cannot purchase, or you cannot put in effort about it. But today I would like to tell you what are we seeking.

Let us see how the seeking comes within us, from where? As shown here, there is a center called as Nabhi chakra, which is here in the center Nabhi chakra, which is placed in our spinal chord, and manifests the solar plexus which is placed mid-way under your navel. This is the center that creates the seeking within us. Seeking is only possible when something is living. For example, what is the seeking of this chair? It cannot think, it cannot move, you can put it here or you can put it on the street. You can smash it and throw it away, again use that wood for some other purpose or make a stool out of it. It has no seeking of any kind. Only when a thing becomes a living being like a amoeba you can take a uni-cellular egg. It starts manifesting seeking because it is supposed to seek. Not the dead. So those who say we are not seeking are as good as dead. Those who say we are seeking are living and also kicking.

The little bit if you understand that a desire is created within a little animal, called as amoeba, by giving him hunger. Just think of it. It has no brain. It has a just a small nucleus but it can feel it is hungry. It has to eat something to grow. It also knows it has to reproduce and then it starts seeking. It also knows how to take the food in, but it does not know how it digests. That part is not his job. Even for us just the same. So the seeking starts in a little amoeba and the whole evolution is based on that seeking, gradually improving and improving the ways and means of seeking, while the desire is that of food only, alone. There is also another desire or, you can say, an emotion, in the smallest of amoeba is a sense of preservation. It knows the dangers that can finish his existence. When this little amoeba becomes a human being, in thousands and thousands of years, then the seeking is changed. In the beginning it starts, of course the food seeking is still there, that’s the basis, you must have food to begin with. Of course the methods are improved, changed, evolved for the seeking of food, but there is also a great understanding of how to preserve yourself and your clan. The clubbing starts from a very early age, even ants understand that. So they understand that we all have to club together, unite together, integrate together, if we have to protect ourselves.

And this seeking of wholesomeness also develops gradually in the human beings and the expressions of that is, you can see, all our efforts to preserve ourselves and to be clubbed together. These efforts are expressed in our political and in our economic enterprises. Now in the human being a new seeking starts: is to have power over others. Animals do not seek power, they have. For example a tiger is much more powerful than, say, a poor rabbit. He is born like that. And a rabbit does not want to become a tiger. He does not try like every Dick, Tom and Harry would like to become a prime minister. But a rabbit would not try to be a tiger, he understands “I am a rabbit and I must develop my means of defenses and my means of offences by which I exist.” In the same way the tiger acts, he is aware of his powers and also he is aware of his limitations. And some of the animals also have a power of leadership in them. They become leaders. You must have seen some birds that they have a leader, one leader going and wherever that leader changes the direction, all of them change as if they are like the tail of that leader. In the same way, the same way that goes that bird goes, the leader goes all of them follow.

So this also is expressed in human being in a very big way that there are some born leaders who lead a group of people to some destination in which they fulfill the seeking of that group. Now the seeking of the groups could be money, mostly it is. Now money animals don’t understand, this is the creation of human beings only. So for them money becomes very important because it is their own creation. We had barter systems, but then we thought it is better to have some sort of a medium which will convert one good into another, so we start the money. So the focus of man’s attention from food goes to power and from power to money. Sometimes if somebody has lots of money, then he wants to have power. It’s but natural. There is nothing wrong in it, as such. Fundamentally, it is a thing which is natural for human beings to run after money and then run after power or vice versa.

But beyond that starts another seeking, is the seeking of knowing why are we here? What are we doing here? What is the purpose of our life? Why God has created us? To what purpose, to what end or it is just a joke going around? Are we just foolishly being born, getting married, having children and dying like amoeba? Or have we any other purpose? Many human beings do not go beyond money or health, they want good health. I mean animals don’t take any exercises as far as I know. But human beings can go to any extent to preserve their health, but for what? I mean, you may be a wrestler, for what? Just to fight each other? You might be the healthiest person living on this earth, but for what? You are just a waste. What is your use? You may be the wealthiest man going in the best cars and the whatever you may call it, all the so-called luxuries of life and material well-being, but for what? When such a question comes into our mind the new kind of seeking starts, which asks the question, why are you here? Are you here just to run in this rat race morning till evening, earning money and earning power and doing all useless activities, pleasing others to show off your money or to extract some money from others? Is that the aim of your life?

Now this is the beginning of the fourth enquiry, or the fourth dimension in your awareness. This enquiry is also the flowering of the same rudimentary thing called as hunger: hunger for spirituality, hunger for God, hunger for higher things of life. It starts within us, that I call is the genuine happening. In this seeking, we get confused, because by the time this seeking starts in you, you are already famished and finished. How? Because you are already conditioned by all kinds of nonsensical things going on. You may be calling yourself a British or a Indian or some sort of an Australian or I don’t know all sorts of things that people call themselves, but in the eyes of God, you are just a human being, You are, I mean you don’t have a tail to begin with, and you don’t have your head bent down like this you have your head upright. Whether you are in Africa or India, or in England or America, it’s just the same. As long as your head is up like that and you don’t have a tail (of course some people must be having, the way they behave), you are definitely a human being. And if a human being if he is evolved through various experiences of life and realizes that none of these experiences have really given him the fulfilment and the answer to his question “Why are we here?” then the turning point takes place in his life, and he becomes a seeker. Not before that.”

HH Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi