Following is the text of shiva pooja lecture given by Mataji Nirmaladevi in Pune.
Tonight we have gathered here to do Shri Shiva Puja. Those people who have a clean heart can only do Shiva Puja. Those whose heart is not clean cannot do Shiva Puja. It’s a simple principle of Shri Shivaratri. As you have seen yesterday, we have snakes, or, these are horrible snakes guiding behind the Shiva Linga. The significance is this – those who are clean in heart, who are full of love for others, are always guarded by the power of Shiva, which are the snakes. It’s a symbolic thing, to say, very symbolic. But I must say that animals understand Divine force much better than human beings, much better. Because they have a clean heart. Whatever is their lifestyle built by nature, they carry on with it. But there’s no malice, there’s no jealousy, there’s not all these mean things in their heart. They do it because it is supposed to be. But the quality of human beings is only one – and that is how much they love and forgive. Loving capacity of human beings are such by which they conquer all their negative forces – they can, easily, see that it’s not good to have all these qualities, or maybe that they understand it’s not noble to indulge into all these inhuman behaviour. They are not bound to indulge into all these things. Neither they are asked to be, but suddenly they get lured by such things which has got hatred, jealously and greed.
You see how Shiva lives. He lives in the Himalayas. See what clothes He wears, what He eats. He has no demand for anything because He is complete, He is perfect. Such a personality is Shiva’s. And if you are worshipping Him, you should find out within your heart what sort of feelings you have, what sort of malice you nurture. These days in India, greed has become the main point. They are so mean and so low. It’s impossible to understand that they think money is everything, which is not in the culture of Indians, no, no. In no way. But somehow they have picked it up, in the foreign countries perhaps, and it is spreading very much now, that money is the most important thing. Think of Shiva. He never thought of money. He never wanted any money. He never wanted to show off himself.
There is such a difference between Shiva and Shakti. In their whole attitude. Because Shiva is absolutely a liberated personality, he’s not bothered. If the people are indulging into wrong things, he’ll destroy – finished! He doesn’t want to cure, He doesn’t want to improve, nothing of the kind. But for the Shakti it is important, because this is Her child, this universe is Her child. All this is created by Her, so naturally She is worried and She doesn’t like people who try to take to mean things and nonsense. First of all it was human beings started indulging in power. They moved from countries to country to empower themselves. Where is that power gone? Finished. Then, after that, what happened with them is that they left their style with others. And now it seems it is very common to see people shamelessly being greedy. For them, is the solution, is Shiva. All such people will be destroyed. First of all they will be exposed and then they will be destroyed, to the last bit of it.
Shivaratri Puja, Pune (India), 17 March 2002
taken from facebook post by Nitin Tapkir, Sahaji.
