Humility

1982-1017 Talk after Navaratri Puja from Sahaja Library

"There is a saying in Sanskrit, which is very common: Vidya vinaye na shobhate. That is, Vidya, even the knowledge, is decorated (shobhate means "gets decorations" or "is beautified”) only through humility. If there is an educated man, he has to be a humble person. If he is not a humble person, then he is not educated at all, in any way.

I don't know if I have told you a story about one saint who was meditating and was blind. And a king came there and asked him, "Did you see some people around?" He said, "Yes. Yes King, my King. Sit down. I saw your servant come in, and then your minister came in, and then the prime minister came in, and then now you have come". The King said, "You are blind, how did you know? Through your meditation?" He said "No. Commonsense". The King asked, "What is the commonsense?" He said, "First the servant came in. He said, 'What, you are bogus fellow sitting down here, wasting your time.' He gave me two,three abuses, used bad language, and said: 'Have you seen any person here?' So I said, No. Then the minister came in. He didn't abuse me, but he just asked me. Then the prime minister came. He said 'Sir' to me. ...And might have said also 'Thank you', perhaps. And then came the king. And he said that, You were extremely humble. You first touched my feet, you sat down on the mother earth, waited for me, to ask you, 'what do you want', and in a very humble way said, 'If you have heard of people around you', because I am blind, so you didn't say something that would hurt me, in such a humble way, if I could tell you. But at least hundred and eight names of the Guru you took, before you asked me this. So I know you are the learned, you are the humblest, so you must be the king."

Otherwise in those days we at least never had kings or prime ministers who were box-office actors. Even the public was so innocent that they would not accept such a nonsense, you see. So this was the difference. From this story we have to derive that the more we are learned into Vidya, into the technique of Sahaja Yoga, we have to be humble. That is our decoration, that is our certificate, that is the path into the entrance of every human being, that is the way we are going to be very close to the other seekers: to be humble, to find out ways and methods of being humble. This is the key of Nirmala Vidya.”

HH Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi, Talk in Hampstead, London, 17/10/82