Shri Mataji: The nonsense of Christianty ... has nothing to do with Christ, be

[Guest guest]

One night I found myself in a very difficult situation, and in

desperation and as a last resort I appealed to God, in whom I didn't

believe, saying, " If there is such a thing as God, you've got to help

me " .

 

I had been brought up in a Christian family and had to go to church

most Sundays but I'd never felt it helped me or gave me any peace. I

felt worse for going, actually, as the idea of original sin and all

the rules meant I could never feel good about myself. Because of my

negative experiences with the church, which was Protestant, I found

it difficult to believe in Jesus Christ and God. So I considered

myself an atheist, I suppose, although I was idealistic and had high

moral values.

 

I still had an interest in spirituality, however, and thought that

there must be some metaphysical answer to the ills of the world and I

was searching for the key that would unlock the door to the mysteries

of life. I felt that there was some force (which I thought of as the

life force) which looked after all the animals and plants on the

earth without them doing anything. I thought that as I was, surely,

just as important as the plants and animals then that force was,

hopefully, looking after me too. I felt that if I could be more in

tune with that force, without thinking, just like the plants and

animals, then I could be healed as well.

 

So I started looking for a Buddhist meditation group. Buddhists don't

talk about God, I thought, but they seem to be people of integrity

and very much at peace in meditation. But it wasn't to be. All the

groups I rang didn't answer their phones. Eventually I decided to go

to Sahaja Yoga, which I had heard about from a friend.

 

As it happened, Shri Mataji, the founder of Sahaja Yoga, was coming

to my city the following week. Her lecture was extremely interesting

and covered a wide range of topics including God and Jesus Christ. I

thought, " Oh, no! " I was surprised, however, to find that rather

than urging us to go to church and become Christians, Shri Mataji

openly stated that many Christians were not as loving and forgiving

as they should be and that their intolerance and hypocrisy had turned

many people away from Christianity because they were not following

the teachings of Christ as they should. That had been my experience!

When Shri Mataji spoke about God I thought, " I'm not interested in

having anything to do with God or religion " . But I was so impressed

with Shri Mataji and she spoke about all sorts of other interesting

aspects of spirituality as well. I decided I would put aside her

references to God and try Sahaja Yoga.

 

I have never regretted my decision. Sahaja Yoga has been the most

wonderful experience of my life. Over time I have learnt that the

original teachings of Jesus Christ are quite different from the

teachings of the Church which has twisted and distorted many things

over time. I have also discovered the mystical aspects of

Christianity, some of which were recorded in the Dead Sea Scrolls and

kept secret by the Vatican for many years. I do not have to follow

the dictates of priests or ministers who interpret spirituality for

me, tell me what to do and have power over me. I find real comfort

and peace from meditating and from a personal connectedness that I

never felt in the church. And, yes, I have learnt from my experiences

that God does exist, and has taken many forms over the millennia, not

just the form of Jesus Christ.

 

So if you, like me, have had bad experiences or have become

disenchanted with the Church and feel nervous about the mention of

God, don't worry about it. Just put it aside and try Sahaja Yoga.

True spirituality involves much more than the narrow view of God and

religion that has been promulgated by Christian churches.

 

And if you like, you too can ask the question, " Does God exist? "

or " Is there such a thing as God? " and see how the answer unfolds in

your life.

 

Kay Alford

 

 

“After Peter, the centuries roll by, full of controversies, any one

of which today would involve immediate recourse to Rome for a

decision . . . We have already noted that not a single Father can

find any hint of a Petrine office in the great biblical texts that

refer to Peter. Papal supremacy and infallibility, so central to the

Catholic church today, are simply not mentioned. Not a single creed,

nor confession of faith, nor catechism, nor passage in patristic

writings contains one syllable about the pope, still less about faith

and doctrine being derived from him.”

 

Peter de Rosa, Vicars of Christ: The Dark Side of the Papacy

Bantam Press, 1988, p. 206.

 

 

“You do not judge God from the people who talk about God. Anybody can

talk about God because they think there is no law that can catch

them. They can talk for Him, against Him, or they can do what they

like. They can even make money by talking against God and against all

the Prophets. So, first of all, we have to be a little independent to

be free.”

 

Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi

First, Know Thyself, London, U.K. — August 1, 1989

 

 

“Pope is another horrible fake guru sitting here. Then we have

another one which is of Canterbury sitting there. All of them are

false gurus — know nothing about Kundalini, don't know anything of

Brahma, . . . So they want to propound that they are the solution,

achieving nothing, spoiling the name of Christ, and doing all kinds

of things against Him stupidly, without knowing the Divine.”

 

Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi

You are Gurus, Guru Puja, Gmunden, Austria — July 6, 1986

 

 

" But in the West we still are very much attached to the nonsense of

Christianity. It has nothing to do with Christ, believe Me, and this

fanaticism which is lingering still in your mind must be given up,

otherwise you do not do any justice to Christ. That by no chance means

you take to another religion like Hinduism or any other nonsensical

Jainism, or anything. The essence, the Tattwa, of Christianity is

Christ. And it is so thickly clouded by all these nonsensical things

that you really have to drop this word " Christianity " from your

vocabulary completely, and from your mind. Otherwise you can never go

to the essence. It is a fact; take it from Me.

 

And even now the attention of all the people is on what Christ said,

or Mother Mary has said it, and which has come through these horrible

people to us. So to learn about other Deities and other great

Incarnations, we neutralize. We must try to neutralize too much

attention by learning about other Deities, say, Shri Ganesha. If you

talk about Shri Ganesha, He is the essence of Christ, and Christ is

the manifestation of Shri Ganesha's Powers. So, if you go to the

essence of most things, you see, that is better. Then, of course,

Christ is there but we must see in Him, as He is, which very few

people has seen before. But now in Sahaja Yoga you should see Him as

He was. He was the Holiest of the Holy. You accept that position. "

 

Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi

Christmas Eve Talk, Pune, India — December 24, 1982

 

 

“A growing feature of the debate has been the stress on cooperation

rather than competition between the disciples of Jesus and those who

follow other ancient Teachers of the Way. Followers of Jesus who

advocate such cooperation insist that they are no less committed to

the universality of his person and message than are advocates of the

traditional methods of conquest through evangelization. The

universality of Jesus, they urge, does not establish itself in the

world through the obliteration of whatever elements of light and

truth have already been granted to the nations of the world. For

whatever the proximate and historical sources of that truth may have

been, its ultimate source is God, the same God whom Jesus called

Father; else the confession of the oneness of God is empty. Jesus was

the Man Who Belongs to the World because he made it possible to

appreciate more profoundly the full scope of the revelation of God

wherever it had appeared in the history of the world, in the light in

which his own message and meaning acquired more profound

significance. In the eloquent paradox articulated by Archbishop

Nathan Sderblom in his Gifford Lectures of 1931, “the uniqueness of

Christ as the historical revealer, as the Word made flesh, and the

mystery of the Calvary,” which are an “essential unique character of

Christianity,” compel the affirmation that “God reveals himself in

history, outside the Church as well as in it.” So drastic a revision

of the traditional Christian understanding that “there is salvation

in no one lese [than Jesus], for there is no other name under heaven

given among men by which we must be saved (Acts 4:12), would

inevitably invoke vigorous discussion.

 

Such proposals for redefining the universality of Jesus came just as

scholars in the West were giving new attention to the languages and

cultures of other traditions. In 1875, Friedrich Max Muller began the

publication of the monumental Sacred Books of the East in fifty-one

volumes, opening the riches of the eastern religious sages to readers

who could not study the originals. In 1893, a World Parliament of

Religions was held to draw the religious implication of the stubborn

fact that the human race was not exclusively European and therefore

not exclusively Christian. As the percentage of Christians in the

total world population continues to decline, it seems inconceivable

that the Christian church will ever replace all the other religions

of humanity. If Jesus is to be the Man Who Belongs to the World, it

will have to come by some other way.”

 

Jaroslav Pelikan, The Illustrated Jesus Through The Centuries,

Yale University Press, 1997, p. 246.