Detachment is purity, is innocence

The third thing for a guru in Sahaja Yoga has to do, is to develop detachment. Gradually you do develop it, because you find that unless and until you develop that detachment, you are not receiving vibrations in full way. All kinds of detachments have to be developed, means your priorities change.



Once your attention gets fixed up with your Spirit, the catch or the hold on things which are of no importance starts reducing by itself. For example, you have a father, you have a mother, you have a sister, this is a bigger problem in India.




Here you are over-detached, but in India people are very much involved in their own children, in their own: 'This is my son', and others are all orphans. Only your sons are the real children: your daughter, your sons. 'My daughter', 'I must do this for my son, for my father, mother' here also.




Two types of attachments are there, one through mohah, through involvement into them; that you want to do this for them and that for them, and give all the property to them, insurance for them, every sort of thing.




And another could be, the way we have here, that you hate your mother, you hate your father, you hate everyone. Both things are just the same.So a detachment must be developed. The detachment is that you are your father, you are your mother, you are everything, your Spirit is everything to you.




You have to enjoy only your Spirit, as everything. Then the detachment comes from there, and then you really do good to them by detaching, because you see the complete vision about them and about what is to be done. For example, people have also attachments to certain crazes. Human beings always become crazy after something, I mean it can be anything.




One has to understand there should be only one craze: is to be settled absolutely into your Spirit. All other crazes will disappear, because thats the greatest joy-giving thing, that's the most nourishing thing, that's the most beautiful thing. So the, all the other things fall off, you enjoy only that which is the source of all enjoyments.




So you get yourself attached to your Spirit: detachment starts working. Sometimes detachment is taken as a license for becoming dry to others, which is absurd. This is only human quality also: make everything ugly, whatever is beautiful. Actually, a person who is detached is the most beautiful person, is the extremely loving person, he's love.




Look at the flowers, they are detached. They are dying, tomorrow they are not going to live, but every minute they live, they are emitting fragrance to you. The trees are not attached to anything, they will die tomorrow, doesnt matter; but anybody who comes to them, they give shadow, they give fruits.



Attachment means death of love, complete death of love is attachment. For example, in a tree, say, the sap rises, goes to all the leaves, goes to all the necessary parts, all the flowers, all the fruits, and goes back to the Mother Earth. He is not attached to anyone. Supposing the sap goes and gets attached into one fruit. What will happen? The tree will die, and the fruit will die.




Detachment gives you the movement of your love, circulation of it.For things now, things have no value unless and until there are emotions behind it. Now for example, a sari, this one I am wearing today, was bought for Guru day, Guru Purnima, but they had no sari. The other day they wanted to have a sari for Puja, so I said: 'All right, use this.'




But I wore it again today, just to say that this was bought with that emotion that on a Guru day, Mother would like to wear something of a lighter shade: white, the pure color of silk, its complete detachment. But in white all the colors are mixed, then only it becomes white. In such a balance and unity it is, should be, that you become white, and whiter than snow.




Detachment is purity, is innocence. Innocence is such a light, I tell you, light that really blinds you to all that is filthy. You wouldnt even know that a person has come with bad intentions. You look at the person, you see, say somebody comes to you, you'll say: 'Oh, come along, what do you want?' You'll offer him tea and all that, and he'll say: 'I have come to rob you.'




'All right, rob me if you want to, its all right.' He may not at all rob you! That is what is innocence, which one can develop only through detachment. Detachment is of the attention. Do not allow your attention to get involved into something too much, even rituals of anything. ... If some mistakes are committed, what does it matter?




If you see on the abstract plane, it's love. This is just a step forward. Like somebody ran very fast and fell down before reaching me, and he said: 'Mother, sorry I fell down before reaching You, I should have not done that. But see how I prostrated before You!' Its complete poetry, detachment.




So one has to develop that detachment to be a guru, and that detachment doesn't mean sanyas or anything like that. Yes, sometimes one has to wear those dresses to announce, because if you have to do lot of work in a short time, then you have to take such intensive behavior, like Christ, we can say, Adi Shankaracharya.




All these people had a very, very short life, and in that short life they had to achieve such a tremendous task that they had to actually take a military uniform, just to avoid problems, not to impress others. Now-a-days people wear that dress just to impress others that they are detached, and do just the thing opposite of it.




H.H.Shri Mataji
Guru Puja, 1980

Hampstead Temple, United Kingdom
(DCB July-August 2001)