Attention is chitta and God is attention

"Today I am going to talk to you about attention: what is attention, what is the movement of attention and what are the ways and methods of raising our attention. Keep it in broad ways. All right? But when I am saying also the attention that you have is the only way to know the reality. Your own attention is important, not the attention of others or your attention on others... 

So today as I am going to speak to you about attention, you should know that your attention should absorb all that I am saying. It is not meant for anybody else. You better sit in thoughtless awareness, that's the best way, so that it goes into you. Otherwise it's like a lecture, you know. That you listen to me has no effect. Every lecture will transform you because, after all, I am speaking. But because you always think of others and you think of your problems all the time - something nonsensical is going on, about which you are worried - and the attention is so overloaded that whatever is said to you doesn't go into you. So just now utilize it by being attentive and knowing that all these nonsensical things have no value. Is your attention that has to come up and has to grow.

So, attention is the whole of the canvas of your being. Is a complete canvas, is the attention. Complete canvas of your being is the attention. How much you have gone into it, how much you have discovered it, how far you have raised it is a different point.

Attention is chitta and God is attention. How far your attention has been enlightened is a different point. But your attention is God, if you become enlightened to that extent. It is like a canvas. You can say it is like a canvas which is spread out for a film. And whatever aptitudes or, you can say, the drags or movements of your attention has, shows on that canvas. I don't know what is the word for vritti in English language. It's not aptitude, but a person gets prone to, or his attention is dragged to - I don't know there is a word like that in English language - vritti.

So our attention is just a pure, completely pure canvas, and is acted upon by the three gunas we have, to begin with. And the three gunas come to you, as you know, one from your past, one from your future sense and one from the present. Now whatever have been your experiences about a particular thing or a particular occasion, so far is completely recorded in your memory. For example, if you see the black color, all that goes with the black color is recorded in your memory. As soon as you see this black color, quite a lot of it comes up. That means, as soon as you see this with your attention, the attention gets muddled up. Or you can say the attention gets colored with all the memories about this black color. And then your action takes place according to the way your attention is affected. For example, just now something was burned by these flames. Now all of you became aware of it. Next time whenever you will see a flame, first thing will happen will be that you will be cautious about it. It is not going to happen again, but the whole memory will come to you and you will try to be cautious or warn others, because your attention will become aware of that as soon as you will see that. Because that canvas of your attention itself will start throwing out these pictures of itself, through your past experiences, on to the canvas. This is a living canvas. "

Shri Mataji Nitmala Devi   May 26, 1980   " Attention "  Dollis Hill Ashram  London, U.K.

Is there any purpose of our life?

"I bow to all the seekers of truth. I came to San Diego long time back and I'm very happy to come back here. When we talk of truth we have to understand that truth is not what we understand through our mental projections. Mostly the mental projections give us illusions. There is no reality behind them. Truth is an experience of the central nervous system. For example if this is cold I can feel it, it is cold. Even if a child touches this, it can feel it, it is cold. If it is hot we can feel it on central nervous system, that it is hot. In the same way the truth is to be known on central nervous system, not through mental projections. While we live on mental projections some people come and talk about truth, we think he is the man standing on truth. He represents truth. Somebody talks about compassion - we believe he's very compassionate he's very peaceful. But compassion does not speak, it is silent, it acts, it works. So one has to understand that to get to truth, to get to reality one has to cross the barrier of mental activity. Unless and until you understand this simple point, is going to be difficult to give Realization to people.

This is the basic trouble in the western countries that they think that they can conceive truth through their mental projections and that's why they have many types of truths. So how do we achieve it? How do we conceive it? What is the way? How did we become human beings from amoeba? Scientists must ask this question: "How did we become and why did we become? What was the purpose? Why the nature works so hard to make us human beings? Is there any purpose of our life?" We have not achieved our purpose. Is something in transition still. That's why there is confusion. There is confusion because we live on relative terminology, relative world. We are not in the absolute. Everything becomes absolute when you feel it on the central nervous system.

Now the confusion also comes because we always accept something that comes to us very new. Anything new we want to jump into it. Anything new we see, try it, why not? If you say: "Why do you do it?" they'll say: "What's wrong? We are seeking God, we are seeking the truth... " Anything new we try, but not in our lives we don't do that way. When we have to discover something about anything, say about electricity - we do not just try something new, but we try through the knowledge of the past, through the tradition of finding it out. We try to find out how far it has gone and where have we to reach.

But in spirituality we want to try everything that is new. And the shopping starts because we have not known what is the truth."

Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi May 29, 1985 Public Program San Diego, U.S.A.

The Relative and The Absolute

So, we have this mechanism, as I told you, for your last breakthrough. If we had known the absolute truth and if we had the absolute knowledge, there would have been no quarreling, no different “isms”; there would have been no wars. But because we haven’t got that, we are separated by ignorance, and everybody thinks “I’m right. Whatever I am doing is the correct thing and whatever I am thinking is the correct thing.” But there is no way to judge whether it is correct or not. 

Like when you say it’s a one meter long, then we have a meter, as you know, in the Museum of Paris which is kept as one meter all the time. But that, unless and until you discover we are living in a relative world without any absolute (reality). That’s why there is chaos; that’s why there are problems. 
- Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi   April 11, 1991   Public Program   Melbourne, Australia 

A replica of the platinum-iridium bar in Paris that was the international standard for length before 1960.