Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi

Geneva, Switzerland
25 August 1982 

Now, this is in the West. Now, the women are intelligent and the women of the west being intelligent and educated have developed a kind of a very complex situation around themselves. These things have made them a kind of a man without manliness, and that is why their whole behaviour becomes extremely odd. Sometimes I just don't understand, but now I've started understanding, that the way the women are, they want to dominate men. But they don't understand that by dominating you cannot create good relationship.

Now, to dominate a man one way could be just to go on behaving like a man, you see, pushing him around and all that, saying, «Don't do this. I don't like it. This is not good. That is not good». But that is not so sophisticated. So, the other way is to all the time talk about the miseries of your past. «I am like this. This is wrong with me». All the time she's sick. All the time she's miserable. All the time she's insecure. All the time she's so dependent, she needs her husband. She wants the attention of the husband. The husband must look after her. Ultimately, I think the husbands must be getting absolutely fed up and running away from the wives. And that must be why the prostitution is so strong here, because at least the prostitute tries to please the husband and not to make him miserable, because she has to earn her living.

And I think it is just the other way round in India. There the men will fuss. The men will say, «This is not good». They will say, «We are sick and you must look after us», and all that. They don't say that we have to look after you. They say that you have to look after us. And the women think that, because they are their wives, they are their Shaktis and they have to bear it upon themselves and give them the joy.

Now, the women here have another very bad capacity, in Sahaja Yoga I have seen it, that they always say that the negativity attacks, all the time, for any rhyme and reason. Like just now somebody told me that when you have a child you feel more attacked by negativity because you are on your own. Imagine! When you have a child you have such a great company of your child. I mean, for an Indian mother, as soon as she is pregnant she feels the happiness. When the child is born, she feels the company of the child. For her nothing more is needed than that her own child is there, and then, through her child, she learns how to love other children.

But here even when the children are born they put the same nonsense on them. «Oh, how bad is my husband, he has done so much to me, and how bad is this world, and how bad was my mother…» And this is how they try to dominate the children, making that child absolutely miserable. That is how we get to these «Les Miserables». From where it has come? The sources are here.

Now, if they are uneducated they are even worse, because they have a complex. If they are less intelligent there is another problem. They try to play all dirty tricks with the husband and with other people. If their husband has any relationship with anyone they don't like it. It is most surprising, isn't it? Like friendship; or if the husband wants to talk to some other men, not women of course, women you can have some objection, but I can't understand, that they don't like friends of the husband, to come in the house. It is the other way round in India. The husband's friends are very much welcomed and looked after by the wife, and there is a sweet relationship between them, and they call her the sister-in-law. It is very sweet.

But here it is just the other way round. They just abhor all the relations of the husband, and this is something most surprising because the husband is not single. All his relations are part and parcel of him. He is obliged to them, related to them, or he is attached to them, and if she really loves the husband, then she should accept the other relationships also.

Then, all their lives they have lived like this, by making, I would say, a show that they are miserable, and they continue with it after they are married. And in Sahaja Yoga also, I have seen the way they behave.

Towards any calamity an Indian woman will stand up. She is the one who will stand up, at the time of calamity. Otherwise she will not show. She is not on the scene. Nobody will know there is a woman working, she is not the one who will talk first.

For example, if my husband and I are sitting and there is an interviewer, he will say that this woman is deaf and dumb, she doesn't talk. Really, many people who have seen us together say, «We never knew about you. Your husband never said a word about you.» You see, like that, it is very common, woman just keeps outside. People didn't know that I could be Mataji because those who had known me otherwise had never seen me talking, because you are not supposed to talk when your husband is talking, you just keep quiet.

Here it is the other way round. If there is an interviewer, the woman will talk first. The man will be sitting like a big mouse, looking round and opening his mouth a little bit to say something. The aggression of these women is very subtle. They come up with such sinister questions, anything they say has a sting and then you get fed up of such a person and that is why there are divorces.

The men of the west are much better than Indian men. They are not dominating. They understand the value of women. They have given so much freedom to them. They have given them so much prestige and honour. But if you give something to women, they should be capable of bearing it up, isn't it? What is the use of giving everything equal to them when they have no capacity to bear it? That is why it is such an imbalance, I find, for women the way they are so sinister about the whole of life.

Life is beautiful, full of joy, happiness, bliss. Morning until evening if you go on making somebody miserable  then you are against life. You are against God. This they must realize. The whole thing is that they have got equality without evolving themselves up to that point.

It is rather like the Arabs. They got the Cadillacs. First they were on the camels or on the donkeys, then they became rich Arabs and they had Cadillacs. Now, by sitting in the Cadillac you don't become a cultured man.

You see, in the same way if the women are suddenly made to feel, oh, they are equal, this, that; they have not developed that panache, as you say in your language. They haven't developed that sophistication. So the inferiority works out and they go on pinching the men all the time. Every word, and the tongue also doesn't have that sweetness.

But in our Sahaja Yoga we have seen some very great Sahaja Yoginis, who are really senior women, I would suggest. Like you can say… — a solid woman, very solid woman, very solid woman, and she understands things very well. Like……she is a good wife, no doubt, she makes her husband happy. — …. is another one. See, these people have that sweetness about their husbands and I have never seen them telling me about their miseries or thinking about their past or anything. Never. Never.

Always they said we were happily married…..told me, «we were happily married». Her husband was a Russian, and they had a problem because of the war, but she never said that my husband made me miserable, or this thing, that thing. Never. I never heard them saying like that. And even if that is the case, or something is there, you should be happy. Even if, say, your husband is a bad man, he is not a Sahaja Yogi, you should be happy.

In Sahaja Yoga it is compulsory that you should be happy, you should be joyous and you have to be joyful. There is no place for people who are miserable. If they try to go on with this they will have to get out of  Sahaja Yoga. Take it from me. All of them will be thrown out. If you do not want to come up, you will be out for good.

So, it is a challenge for all the Sahaja Yoginis in the West that you must be joyous. You must be happy people. Now, you see that in any case like this they build up their ego very subtly. If you just say that, «No, that is not good», immediately they start crying, you know they are upset. Men don't know what to do, because these women have picked up their own images and they want to do whatever they think, and if men see something more than they do, and say, «Do this, this would be better», they are finished.

They get identified with these things. So, you can't say that they are left-sided, but they are egoistical. And in this ego there is a sinister attitude by which they make the men and woman and children miserable.

So, this must be stopped now. Anymore of this misery is to be stopped in the West. Nothing. What is this misery you have got? You should go and see the women of India who are smiling and laughing. They have children to look after. They have ten, eleven, twelve children to look after. They have no money. Early in the morning, at four o'clock, they have to get up and take their bath because of conditions in India. They cannot laze out like you do. And then they go to the well, fill the water and bring it home. You see beautiful, see their faces shining. They come home, put the food down there, slowly wake up their husbands, put things for his bath, look after their children, clean the house. By the time the children are up they see the clean house, you should see how much they work hard. And you will not know that they are working. Absolutely silent. You have seen how these women used to cook. Did you ever hear any body outside? As soon as people are coming they are serene. They are looking after them. They are intelligent, I mean,…… is an income tax officer, do you know that? ……is an income tax officer. They are officers, but how do they behave? Have you ever seen them anywhere in anyway asserting themselves? Never.

In India education is very strong. Most of the girls in India are at least graduates, actually. At least. But there is no ego about it. They understand their position as wife and as a woman, and they know that they are the ones who are the source of  joy, and they have to give that joy to others. Here the women don't understand how much they can give joy. After all your Mother is a woman and if She can give so much joy why shouldn't you be able to?

And this is what it is. I just don't understand, such a great potential. such a great source just cut. Just cut. That is why, you see, the motherhood is lacking, nothing else but the motherhood. The women are all right nothing wrong with them, it is the motherhood.

Even a little child in India — see our Anupama is hardly now six years old. She came to speak in my ear, «Who is this baby here sitting smiling?» I said his name is Machendra Nath. «Ah! this is Machendra Nath.»! She is a six year old girl, she doesn't know how to carry, you remember, she took the baby.

Then she wanted to give him something to eat. If you have any child bring it home. These two girls will look after it, give food to it, they will look after it. They are just all the time, you know, nursing the children. Even to the grandfather, «Now, can I feed you?» Grandmother of course, but to the grandfather! «Can I feed you? Would you like to have this?» I take my bath, I come out and she is there with the powder to sprinkle on my feet and to wipe them with the towel. All the time they are running up and down. You can't imagine how motherly they are, to me. To me, they are motherly. To their grandfather they are motherly.

Early in the morning — this Shumi was about two and a half years old, very small — so early in the morning she used to see the grandfather sitting there. She used to go into the room, take his newspaper — just hardly used to walk, you see — and his spectacles and bring them to him. What does it take?

But if the attention is all the time to extract others, it comes from some sort of very sinister idea. It is very repulsive. It is not that I have seen it once, but when I talk to them. I really feel very disgusted sometimes. And I feel, oh God, these women when they marry what will happen? And when they marry, I see. And that is why the men here don't know what to do. You see, if you have any problem, a woman has to bear it.

Indian women have great courage. Like when the war started in India, a woman, who was a widow and a queen, she rode on horse herself, she tied her sari, she took her child at the back — she was a queen — and jumped from the fortress about a hundred feet down and she fought the British. She died, of course. The British killed her. But the Britisher himself — the general — wrote that, «We won the battle, but the victory and the glory was that of Lakshmi Bai.»

Not only that but there are many women like that. Wondrous. But they would only show up if there is a calamity. When things reach the cusp of just drama, that time they come up. Otherwise they are quiet.

You see, that kind of thing should be the womanhood. I mean, if I have to tell you about Indian women, I will have to give you a big lecture. Really. And you have seen how they behave. how dignified and how sweet and … I must take my hat off to them. They are mature in the womanhood in the best possible way, the potential of women.

See they have worked so hard. If you remember a little girl who was married and she invited us for breakfast, about three  years back, a little one, very small. We had gone to a canal and she said, «Tomorrow, Mother, you come and have breakfast at my place»., and I said, «'No, it is too much, We are so many people, about thirty five people, How will you feed us?,» And apart from that the other leaders were also there. «Oh, I will manage», she said, and when we went there she gave us such a nice breakfast. And all the neighbouring women – you see, they got up at 4 o'clock, did everything — and all of them in really great joy, that Mother is coming to our house and they were so enamoured about it.

That is called as «fondness» in India. There are no words for joy here. There are no words for different joys, but it is this fondness of people, and they were feeling obliged that we were eating. And I ate and ate. I said, «No, I am too full, I can't eat any more,» and they said, «Mother, you didn't like anything, or what?» — and giving and giving. So sweet. And so many, I think I told them thirty five, there were fifty. Arranged like that also, and in a small little house, they arranged in front of the thing. Very silent, very silent. Very efficient, because of the efficiency, you see, of love, that they could manage it.

It is so sweet, and little, little things they do. It is so much energy that goes in. So nice. And this time I am going to write even to the Poona ladies, that they should arrange our food, not in the Rajwade Karyalaya and you will see how they will arrange it. They will get all the best vegetables of the market, the best chickens of the market, and the best of everything and do the best that they can, put all their heart into it. «The saints are coming to our house, the saints are coming to our house».

The beauty is this, and despite this, many people think that Indian women are very much suppressed because of their goodness. They don't mind. They say our goodness cannot be suppressed. Goodness is a thing that is more important than suppression and oppression and all that. They don't take to all these nonsensical ideas. Not at all.

It is so nice. And then the husbands feel attached. You see, my daughter, now she receives her husband's phone calls practically every day from Saudi Arabia. Look at my husband. Now, he is an old man of sixty-five years. If you leave it to him he will telephone to me ten times. I tell him don't telephone all the time, but he will go on telephoning. You see, that is the source, so you want to talk and you want to have something.

But here it is the other way round, they want to extract from you. What is there for men to give? It is women who have to give. Women have to give. They don't realize their potential and they go on eating somebody's head all the time. How can they love him? They cannot.

And that is what I think of when I tell Indian men to marry western women. They shudder a bit, because why should they make themselves miserable? Just think, if they know about western women as they are.

So, this must change. We are Sahaja Yogis. We have nothing to do with western ideas of women and all that. I don't know, whatever book I have read about western women, about the heroines and all that, they were never like this. This is something else I am seeing actually from what I have read.

Question: Could western women imitate Indian women?

Also they should, but there is no need to imitate, because you are Sahaja Yogis. You get it spontaneously. Just accept that. Now accept that. Whatever is the past is past. You can do it.

Our job is to make everybody happy and joyous. That is it.That is our job. That is the source we have got. We are the source of joy. Accept this situation. We are the source of joy, of confidence, of love, and affection, and kindness and gentleness. Then, once in a while, if the husband does wrong you have a right to tell him. He will never mind it. But all the time if you go on coaxing him he will say, «Oh, this permanent, mundane, every day.» This needed saying. Even Australian women should be told. This is very common. But they are very sweet, ah?

Don't trouble the girls, if they don't trouble you, then you shouldn't trouble them.