The Environment

Now, about the environment. They are having a meeting on environment. That, too, is only solved through spirit. All environment problems can be solved only spiritual, if you have spiritual ascent. Otherwise, you cannot. You try anything; it’s like patching up the sky. See now, it’s a very deep-rooted thing that we don’t understand that spirit is the most practical thing. You see, we think spirit, we think it’s like a drunkard, you know. Spiritual man, he’s a cult, he’s a drunkard, he’s most abnormal. He’s funny. Either he hits people or runs away from them. This is the idea we have got about a spiritual personality.

But just see you are spiritual. You will find it impossible to use plastics after some time, because you will know that the plastics give you horrid vibrations. After some time you will really find it repulsive. It’s all right to sit in a train for a while on a plastic coach, all right, but, to sit in your house on a plastic all the time would be horrible and to wear a plastic coat all the time, our body will refuse. So when people will be spiritually awakened, they’ll give up all these nonsensical things.

So, they may say then, “What will happen to the machines?” Now, machines are for us; we are not for the machines. This is another concept is: whatever is created is for us and we are not for that. All right, doesn’t matter. Nothing will go wrong with the machines. Machines should be used for anything that is a public work. Like for your motor cars, for your trains, trams, all public work which is outside. For houses at the most you can use machines. But, for personal things, you must use handmade things, handmade things. For spiritual people, you like to wear something that is handmade or real. I can’t wear a nylon sari. Not that I am very fussy about things, but I just can’t wear. After some time, if I do not take out My socks, which are only nylon, what to do? My vibrations get jammed, completely. So, you won’t be able to wear next to your skin, near your skin, near your body, eating your food, everything in plastics, cooking in plastics. I mean it’s too much. Thank God, cooking I don’t think is possible, isn’t it? But aluminium is another thing. It’s very bad. Aluminium - you won’t be able to use. You’ll either try copper or brass, I think so. Now, handmade things we may have, because they are made by hand, so they have vibrations. People would like to have handmade. It is a part, so by that we remove the disparity of the world. Developing countries can do handmade things. You cannot beat them with computers. Can you? You go ahead, mad with your computers. You’ll have to come back.

You must understand the whole. If you don’t understand the whole, this is what is happening: like mad, you know computers are going ahead, ahead. Where? Into the ditch, into a big mountain. Now they have created a big mountains of plastic and they don’t know what to do with it. So, and now with computer, what will they do? They’ll create a greater mountains out of plastics. Maybe a Himalaya might be created, with the computer. So the developing countries should not try to follow these mad people on one side. They should develop their hand things and all that, because they’ll have to come back. Now, the handmade things in this country are so important and so expensive. You don’t care whether it is pressed or not. But in India you have to take nylons, because they say nylons is a symbol of development, not of over-development, perhaps, but of development. So they must take to nylons and plastics and to stainless steel and aluminium, if possible. That’s what we are doing.

When you have less things consumed like that, you use less things from your motherland, because handmade you cannot go on mad like a machine goes, like a rakshasa eating away everything and producing more. She has to live like that. It’s not economical. So when you have handmade things you have more value for your things, you look after them better, you feel better, you are comfortable and you need not be that smart, you see, machine-made. That idea of smartness is going down.

So, the developing countries should also learn a lesson. They are going after you. They are running fast. They try to run faster; they cannot. Thank God, they cannot. But they should stick on to that side. You see, one part of the country has to do something; another part has to do something else.

But, you people have to look after the side of machines, all right? I mean, handmade things, what can you make? Some ceramics, I think ─ apologies, some apologies for that. You better do what you know better and let them do what they can do better and share it. If this balance is established, there’s no aggression. Unemployment can be solved. All the problems can be solved, if you take to handmade things. You should take to handmade things as far as possible. Sahaja yogis should use handmade things. I mean, not the cars, but for their personal use. Even I would say, soaps that you use are horrid. The soaps that you get in England are not meant for your skins at all, for sahaja yogis’ skin. I can’t bear them. What you have to use is natural soaps that you get from any country you feel like, but natural soaps, which come from natural oils.

Foods also, natural food you must eat, more natural food, than artificial. All that will give you a better living and that is called as alternative, all right. That’s alternative is important, but that doesn’t mean you go on a bullock cart. You can export your trains to India, or your cars to India and get khadi from there. All right? Mutual understanding, because we are part and parcel of one whole and we just cannot exist by our only growth because then we become malignant, you see. One cells eats another. You have to. If you have a machinery, you have to eat other, because you produce so much. You must find markets for them, you must supply them, you must send over and then you must have other countries to exploit them.

People have tremendous respect for Mahatma Gandhi, but I don’t know if people understand what he said about machinery. That doesn’t mean the people who are doing machine work should give up, by any chance, but, some of them they can close down. For example, plastic toys for children is horrifying. You can’t even get wood toys now ─ nothing, just plastic. They are touching plastic. I mean, imagine, you cannot feel any plastic.

So, this is what a sane sahaja yogi has to understand. That’s how you can solve the problem of environment, also. Thank God, somehow with your affluence and too much of machinery, all the western people ─ I am happy to know, even in Portugal ─ realize the value of handmade things. But in India if you offer somebody in an handmade thing they’ll say, “Oh God, they have no money.” But stainless steel, “Great.” In a stainless steel, glass they’ll give you tea, you see – it’s very big. If you give it in a ceramic, “Oh, what this, village craft?”

They are to be told. But, if you create a demand, they’ll be all right; they’ll look after their handmade. And here you can’t do much. I’ve seen, you see, that neatness, that deftness is not there; that’s lacking; now they’ve lost it. Very few people have that left in them. Even if they have to cut one coat with their hands, they cannot do it. They have to use a machine, which cuts twenty-five coats at a time, you see.

Then this problem of, you have to have a figure exactly because these only can fit certain figures. You can’t have your own independent figure. This is all machine-like stuff, you see. You all must have that figure, otherwise doesn’t fit it. So, that is an ideal figure. So, everybody works out for that. See, there’s a new machinery comes up, you see, for that kind of a thing, then new styles come up. It’s such an artificial thing, all man-made, artificial.

From your democracy, your politics to your economics, to all your so-called ideas of creativity, everything becomes so artificial. Now people can’t paint. What they paint, if you see, you are just aghast. You don’t know what is this supposed to be. And it is supposed to be so that it looks, “There’s a hand, isn’t it? Can’t you see that?” “Yes, I can. It’s a little bit showing.” They can’t do anything. We can’t have Shakespeare, we can’t have Gauguin, we can’t have anyone of that type. We can’t have, say, Abraham Lincoln. You can have only machines, you see, bolts and nuts, fitted nicely. You’re fixed, you’re fixed, you’re fixed, you’re fixed. Everybody fixed nicely. Where do, I mean, this brain go? Where will this heart go? What will it do then? It cannot collapse. I mean, as long as you are existing, the heart has to beat. So all this artificiality has to be overcome by sahaja yogis. The responsibility is so great. Such a big building you have to bear on your shoulders, and the foundation stones have to get up in the morning to be chiseled out properly. So, I end up my lecture today. May God bless you!

H.H.Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi, extract from Talk, London, 7/6/82