Overnight they gave up their drugs, their alcoholism
[Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi, the Incarnation of the Holy Spirit, recognized in the Native tradition as the White Buffalo Calf Woman, assails us with the undeniable Truth of the deep dangers of alcohol and drugs for all of humanity.]
"All the saints in the world have said that alcohol is very dangerous for life. The reason is that it goes against our awareness, this is a fact, you know that after taking a drink our awareness becomes blurred or excited, it is not normal, that's the reason they said no." (H.H. Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi, 2nd Sydney Talk, 27/3/81)
"Alcohol, as you know, has different variations depending on the habits of the person...alcohol is very dangerous because it finishes off your liver; it finishes off your awareness; it makes you very clumsy; your attention is fuzzy, because alcohol makes a person in such a way that he loses all his dharma." (Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi, Advice on the treatment of virus infections, Pune, 1/12/87)
[Tenskwatawa, the Shawnee Prophet, gives a powerful depiction of a time of great despair followed by a breath of hope for himself and his people.]
"My brothers! My sisters! I have been given a great power. I have been told by Our Creator to use this power to save you. My name is Tenskwatawa (He-Who-Opens-The-Door). I have been shown how to open the door that has shut us out from happiness.
I died and went to the World Above, and saw it. I had done every sin against my people and myself. You knew me! I was a sinner, I was a drunkard! I had another name then. That name is so smeared with the filth of my old sins that my mouth will not utter it, for my mouth is now pure! Tenskwatawa has never spoken a lie or an obscenity, and never will. I have come back cleansed. I am as we were in the Beginning! In me is a shining power!
In the Beginning, we were full of this shining power, strong because we were pure. We moved silently through the woods. With a silent arrow we killed the animals and ate pure meat. In silence the fish swam in pure rivers, and we caught them in silence and ate them. In silence our corn and beans and squashes grew from the earth, and those we ate. We drank only clear water, after the milk of our mother's breast.
I have heard that lost silence. You have not heard it because you have not been dead. Up under the roof of the sky, there is that pure silence!
In the beginning, our people broke that beautiful silence only to pray to the Great Good Spirit, or to speak wisely in council, or to say kind words to our children and our elders, or to give the war cry when we avenged wrongs.
Our Creator put us on this wide, rich land, and told us we were free to go where the game was, where the soil was good for planting. That was our state of true happiness. We did not have to beg for anything.
Our Creator had taught us how to find and make everything we needed, from trees and plants and animals and stone. We lived in bark, and we wore only the skins of animals. Our Creator taught us how to use fire, in living, and in sacred ceremonies. She taught us how to heal with barks and roots, and how to make sweet foods with berries and fruits, with papaws and the water of the maple tree. Our Creator gave us tobacco, and said, Send your prayers up to me on its fragrant smoke. Our Creator taught us how to enjoy loving our mates, and gave us laws to live by, so that we would not bother each other, but help each other. Our Creator sang to us in the wind and the running water, in the bird songs, in children's laughter, and taught us music. And we listened, and our stomachs were never dirty and never troubled us.
Thus were we created. Thus we lived for a long time, proud and happy. We had never eaten pig meat, nor tasted the poison called whiskey, nor worn wool from sheep, nor struck fire or dug earth with steel, nor cooked in iron, nor hunted and fought with loud guns, nor ever had diseases which soured our blood or rotted our organs. We were pure, so we were strong and happy.
But, beyond the Great Sunrise Water, there lived a people who had iron, and those dirty and unnatural things, who seethed with diseases, who fought to death over the names of their gods! They had so crowded and befouled their own island that they fled from it, because excrement and carrion were up to their knees. They came to our island.
Our Singers had warned us that a pale people would come across the Great Water and try to destroy us, but we forgot. We did not know they were evil, so we welcomed them and fed them. We taught them much of what Our Grandmother had taught us, how to hunt, grow corn and tobacco, find good things in the forest.
They saw how much room we had, and wanted it. They brought iron and pigs and wool and rum and disease. They came farther and drove us over the mountains. Then when they had filled up and dirtied our old lands by the sea, they looked over the mountains and saw this Middle Ground, and we are old enough to remember when they started rushing into it. We remember our villages on fire every year and the crops slashed every fall and the children hungry every winter. All this you know.
For many years we traded furs to the English or the French, for wool blankets and guns and iron things, for steel awls and needles and axes, for mirrors, for pretty things made of beads and silver. And for liquor. This was foolish, but we did not know it. We shut our ears to the Great Good Spirit. We did not want to hear that we were being foolish.
But now those things of the white men have corrupted us, and made us weak and needful. Our men forgot how to hunt without noisy guns. Our women don't want to make fire without steel, or cook without iron, or sew without metal awls and needles, or fish without steel hooks. Some look in those mirrors all the time, and no longer teach their daughters to make leather or render bear oil. We learned to need the white men's goods, and so now a People who never had to beg for anything must beg for everything!..
Many of us now crave liquor. He whose filthy name I will not speak, he who was I before, was one of the worst of those drunkards. There are drunkards in almost every family. You know how bad this is.
And so you see what has happened to us. We were fools to take all these things that weakened us. We did not need them then, but we believe we need them now. We turned our backs on the old ways. Instead of thanking Weshemoneto for all we used to have, we turned to the white men and asked them for more. So now we depend upon the very people who destroy us! This is our weakness! Our corruption! Our Creator scolded me, "If you had lived the way I taught you, the white men could never have got you under their foot!"
And that is why Our Creator purified me and sent me down to you full of the shining power, to make you what you were before! As you sit before me I will tell you the many rules Our Creator gave me for you. I will tell you how I went to the World Above. When I tell you of the punishments I saw, they will terrify you! But listen, those punishments will be upon you unless you follow me through the door that I am opening for you!...
No red man must ever drink liquor, or he will go and have the hot lead poured in his mouth! You know I have been a slave to liquor since first I tasted it. But never again will I take any! If ever you saw me taste it again, you would know that what I tell you is false!...
Turn your backs on the whiskey sellers and the traders!"
Tenskwatawa - Shawnee
http://www.firstpeople.us/FP-Html-Wisdom/wisdom.html
[The Dhammapada speaks of the results of cravings and intoxicating drinks:]
246-247
One who destroys life,
utters lies, takes what is not given,
goes to another man's wife,
and is addicted to intoxicating drinks-
such a man digs up his own root even in this very world
335- 336
Whoever is overcome
by this wretched and sticky craving,
his sorrows grow
like grass after the rains.
But whoever overcomes
this wretched craving,
so difficult to overcome,
from him sorrows fall away
like water from a lotus leaf. [1]
[Although alcoholism was never a part of the American Natives' original tradition, their immense struggle with the newly-introduced white man's alcohol has continued, throughout the intervening years, to take a devastating toll on their people:]
"Like many tribes, the Blackfeet never used drugs or alcohol, even during religious ceremonies, until white men introduced it in the mid 1800s," Whitegrass said.
"The fur trappers who introduced alcohol to the Indians were either alcoholics themselves or they used alcohol abusively," Masis said. "So Native American people learned to use alcohol to get drunk."
http://www.gannett.com/go/difference/greatfalls/pages/part8/blackfeet
"Strong liquor was first sold to us by the Dutch, and they were blind, they had no eyes, they could not see how much it hurt us. The next people who came were the Swedes, who continued to sell us strong liquor. We love it, so we cannot refuse it. It makes us wild; we do not know what we are doing. We abuse one another; we throw one another into the fire...Through drinking, seven score of our people have been killed. The cask must be sealed, it must be made fast; it must not leak by day or night, in the light or in the dark."
Okanicon - Delaware
http://www.firstpeople.us/FP-Html-Wisdom/Okanicon.html
"We gave them forest-clad mountains and valleys full of game, and in return what did they give our warriors and our women? Rum, trinkets, and a grave."
http://www.firstpeople.us/FP-Html-Wisdom/Tecuseh.html
"Alcohol was used as an enticement, as pay and as a weapon against Indians whose goods, lands and rights were wanted by the government and private business alike."[2]
In a Minnesota country newspaper article, subtitled: "300 gather to note the toll by alcohol abuse", Melvin Eagle, the traditional Chief of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe is quoted as saying: "Alcoholism is not our traditional way. We need to try to pull together and away from alcohol because it is destroying our people." [3]
http://www.aaanativearts.com/article683.html
"We are no longer alert. We continuously lie to our children and teach them to be liars. Easter bunnies, Santa Claus, denying what their senses tell them, these are all lies. If you're well educated you'll work to hurt people, you'll do the work of big institutions. You'll work to make alcohol, drugs, TV, schools, religion, things to put people's minds to sleep." - Grace Spotted Eagle Inuit Native American (1985)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/adishakti_sahaja_yoga/message/6509
[Underlying all the historical and cultural reasons for the Natives' enslavement to alcohol there is, however, an inherent understanding of the need for a return to the spiritual discernment of the past.]
"Since we listen to the voice of the Great Spirit we are happy." Tenskwatawa Shawnee
http://www.naigso-aa.org/Daily%20Meditations.html
Clifford Calf Tail
"But we need to be healed spiritually before we can be healed physically," he said. Without a strong spiritual underpinning, Calf Tail said, Native Americans are powerless before the poverty, illness, premature death and abuse so common in the community.[4]
http://www.gannett.com/go/difference/greatfalls/pages/part8/blackfeet
"Handsome Lake declared alcohol the greatest source of sin...Alcohol was the biggest force of sin in changing the lives of the Native people."
Reg Henry, Cayuga faithkeeper, Six Nations Reserve [5]
"Alas, many are fond of it and are too fond of it. So now all must now say "I will use it nevermore as long as I live as long as the number of my days is, I will never use it again, I now stop."
Handsome Lake Iroquois
http://www.naigso-aa.org/Daily%20Meditations.html
I am happy to learn that you have been so far favored by the Divine Spirit as to be made sensible of the things which are hurtful to you and particularly that you and they see the ruinous effects which the abuse of spirituous liquors have produced upon them. It has weakened their bodies, enslaved their minds, exposed them to hunger, cold, nakedness and poverty, kept them in perpetual broils and reduced their population.
President Thomas Jefferson "Letter to Handsome Lake"
http://www.naigso-aa.org/Meditation%20%203-3-08.htm
[The use of alcohol with its destructive results affects all nations as can be seen in Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi's observations:]
"The greatest problem of Europe is ' real problem ' that they drink...Now this is a curse of Europe that they all drink, and drinking is something very difficult. They can't give it up, poor things, they are slaves, slaves of drinking...This is the biggest problem of Europe, but do you know it is much worse in America.
So this is the big problem. You should openly talk about it to everyone, that what is drinking is stupidity. You see, in India we,I don't know, somehow we have solved the problem. People don't drink so much because from the very beginning there, the drinking is regarded as a very bad thing. If a girl could know that the fellow drinks, she will never marry [him]. So society [in India] doesn't accept drinking, is a good thing.
Indians who do not drink in India, here they come and drink. When they come here, then they think it is something ideal and they drink. I've known many like that who came abroad and started drinking.
Have you seen a man who is drunk? What do you think of them? They are more than mad people. People are mad because something gone wrong, but these are mad because they have been drinking. So you have to tell them, 'You are all mad. You are going to ruin your country.'" (6th Night of Navaratri 2007, Sydney, Australia)
[This February 8, 2008 Australian newspaper article clearly confirms Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi's prescient warning on the 6th Night of Navaratri 2007, Sydney, Australia, "You are going to ruin your country."]
"Abuse of alcohol an epidemic", PM warns Mark Metherell, SMH,
February 21, 2008
BINGE drinking has reached "epidemic" proportions, the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, has said, as he foreshadowed action to combat the growing problem of alcohol abuse.
Mr Rudd said yesterday that police across Australia had expressed their concerns to him that alcohol abuse "lies at the core of increasing spates of urban violence around the country". He foreshadowed talks with the state governments and said he had already spoken with the federal Health Minister, Nicola Roxon, about what might be done.
His remarks have been welcomed by the Alcohol Education and Rehabilitation Foundation, whose recent survey found one in 10 Australians were frightened by a drunk during the festive season.
The foundation's chief executive,Daryl Smeaton, said Mr Rudd's comments marked a breakthrough in recognition of the scale of the problems created by alcohol abuse. "No prime minister has said anything like this before," he said.
The estimated cost of the alcohol toll had doubled in the past eight years to $15 billion. Demands on police services had also soared with alcohol-generated problems now thought to account for as much as 80 per cent of police work, Mr Smeaton said.
Mr Rudd told Brisbane radio yesterday: "I am concerned about what I would describe as an epidemic of binge drinking across the country. "It is not good for young people's health ... But the key question is, what do you do about it? Moaning and groaning about it is one thing ... How do we act effectively on these?"
Mr Rudd said the response could only be done in partnership with the states and territories, "but frankly I think it is starting to get somewhat out of control ... I think we are dealing with a growing problem, not a static problem and therefore I think we have got to sit down as governments and work out an appropriate response".
Labor has already pledged to establish a national preventive health taskforce that would investigate unhealthy behaviour including excessive drinking and will take responsibility for developing a national preventive health strategy.
The taskforce would initially focus on the increasing burden of chronic disease caused by alcohol, obesity and tobacco, Ms Roxon said. The Opposition Leader, Brendan Nelson, said he was concerned about the abuse of alcohol by young people and the Opposition would consider responsible measures to address the issue.
The Family First leader, Steve Fielding, who has Senate approval for an inquiry into alcohol promotion, says he will ask all state police commissioners to inform the inquiry on the impact of the alcohol toll.
Senator Fielding welcomed Mr Rudd's call for action on alcohol and also his plans for a study of poker machines.
He has introduced two bills into the Senate to tackle both problems, including a ban on alcohol advertising on television before 9pm and health warnings on alcohol labels. The legislation would require advertising to be approved by a government body and outlaw ads that linked drinking to personal, business, social, sporting, sexual or other success. Senator Fielding said he was confident that Mr Rudd would act on both alcohol and pokies. "There is such a community groundswell, " Senator Fielding said.
"People will be looking for more than just words."
--------------------- End of newspaper article.
"If the majority is stupid, then all the stupidity is regarded as great. They have no brains, they have no intelligence to understand how can these things help? Alcohol for example. I mean alcohol, it has done no good to anyone, but alcohol - without alcohol you are no good.
They won't talk to you, they say that unless you have alcohol you cannot talk. And it is so rampant, it is so much in the society that all the parties I attended, except for me and my husband, everybody was drinking, and drinking much more than normal because it was free.
They are all poisons, these are all poisons spoiling us completely from one to another. This one is a taboo now for cigarettes, imagine - why to smoke? I don't understand, like a chimney people are smoking. But they have no courage to give it up now. Everywhere, no smoke, no smoke, no smoke. When will they start `No alcohol'? Everybody sees that it's so dangerous. It is against human awareness, everybody sees it. You see people falling down, you see people cursing each other, fighting. I tell you, if you stop this alcoholism, all this shamelessness will go away, because when you take alcohol, your awareness is abated." (Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi, Shri Ganesha Puja 1997)
[Warnings about the evils of alcohol [drugs, gambling] are found throughout spiritual writings.]
"An earthen pot full of nectar and a gold vessel full of wine. Think a while and decide what will you opt for."(Tukaram)
"Even if wine is made from the water of the Ganges, O Saints, do not drink it." (Ravidas, Guru Granth, p1293)
"Those who are deluded by sensual pleasures...and enjoy wine are corrupt." (Kabir, Guru Granth, p335)
"Cannabis, wine, all wear off in the morning. But the intoxication of Naam [the Lord's Name] stays day and night forever." (Guru Nanak, Guru Granth )
"One who trades in this Nectar [Divine Bliss] - how could he ever love the wine of the world? (Guru Nanak, Guru Granth , p360)
"They question thee about wine and games of chance; say: in both is great sin and some profits for men; but the sin of them is greater than their usefulness." (Qur'an 2:219).
http://sahaj-az.blogspot.com/search/label/Alcohol
[Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi corrects and expands our understanding about Christ and alcohol:]
"Where, in what book ' I mean like Bible or any book ' is said that drinking is good? Did Christ drink? They will follow Christianity, they will follow Christianity and not follow Christ. It's like that. Christ never drank. His parents didn't drink. Now what makes them think that they have a right to drink? Specially for Christians. Stupid they are if they think that drinking is their right. And then they have problems with drinking." (Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi, 6th Night of Navaratri, 2007)
"The only thing they have picked up from Christ that He went to a wedding, and created wine out of water, and distributed. Now this wine is just the juice of the grapes. It's also called wine in the Hebrew language...Instantly, you cannot create alcohol. It has to rot, rot, rot, and the more it rots, the more good it is, they say. They write it down, this is 25 years old, so is the price is much. But if it is 300-year-old the price is exorbitant. So it has to rot and smell like hell, then only it's a good alcohol; it's a fact. How could Christ create that instant, that moment - alcohol?
But now what I find is this, that if somebody dies they will take champagne to celebrate, what, good riddance of bad rubbish? Or when somebody is born they will do it, but on Christmas day especially, after coming from church, don't go to any Christian's house...All such ideas have come from where? Is because the English, and the Portuguese, and the French brought Christianity to us. Now, by any chance, are they Christians? What business they had to bring Christianity to this place? They took Christianity to all the places, specially Spanish. Spanish, Portuguese went round the whole world to spread Christianity and today is the mess that you see in those people. They are nothing but drunkards.
Yesterday I was going back, and the sea was full of happiness and joy, and the water had reached a very high level; it happens with Me. But what I found, there were four, five Christians coming, singing carols, and just completely drunk, and I was thinking they'll be drowned in this water very soon. This was the great boon of Christianity on human beings that you can drink as much as you like.
Now this drinking has come, I should say, from where? God alone knows, but it has come also from the Christians. And the Muslims also drink, no doubt, but they hide and drink. They don't openly drink, and don't call it a religious duty that you should drink.
Imagine in the church when they give communion, they give you some sort of a dirty smelling wine. After that, how can you have communion? Once you are drunk you are finished." (Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi, Christmas 1995, Ganapatipule,India)
"But it's absolutely wrong and nonsense that He [Christ] created alcohol. What He did was to change the water into the taste of grape juice. Alcohol is called as grape juice in Hebrew language. I mean, you can say, it is not called, but wine means alcohol as well as grape juice. But it cannot be, because instantly, you cannot create alcohol. Alcohol takes time. It has to rot and rot and rot - then it becomes an alcohol...So many people, specially in Christian religion, believe that Christ sanctified wine, which is absolutely wrong. He never sanctified alcohol. He changed the grape juice into wine taste." (Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi, Shri Ganesha Puja 2000)
[Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi tells us that we cannot know the meaning of our life until we are connected to the Power that created us. That connection, called Self-Realization, comes about only through our pure desire and since our awareness becomes spoiled through drinking, alcohol can be considered "the greatest enemy of our Self-Realization" as seen in Her statement:]
"I think the greatest enemy of our Self-Realization is the drinking. Drinking, if people take to drinking, they become such slaves; their brains are not all right. So I think at Sahasrara [they] must be also spoilt with drinking. So drinking I think is the worst enemy." (Sahasrara Puja 2001)
http://sahaj-az.blogspot.com/search/label/Alcohol
[Yet, despite the ravages that alcohol, drugs, smoking and gambling wreak on humanity, the power of Kundalini, which is the reflection of the Primordial Mother, the Holy Ghost, is such that, "it has worked even on people who were drug addicts, who were alcoholics and who were very immoral," with the saving grace being that "they all had intense and pure desire to secure self-improvement, Self- Realization. So many of such people achieved their goal of Self- Realization. Overnight, they gave up their drugs, their alcoholism."
Indeed, the Incarnation of the Holy Ghost, Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi, (White Buffalo Calf Woman of the American Native tradition), has come in this Age of the Last Judgment, the Resurrection Time, for the Redemption of ALL Her children everywhere!]
"There are also many, many people who have given up their bad habits of smoking, drinking and drugs, sometimes overnight. So many people who were drug addicts have given up drugs because they have found that power of the Spirit within themselves that helps them to enjoy their own being and also gives them power to stop them running after these enjoyments which are very, very transitory, have bad reactions and are destructive in the long run. It is not a rational or mental understanding, but the light of the Self which gives power and expels the darkness spontaneously. Many people who are being harmed by the false gurus, cults and anti cults are absolutely cured and have become very great people in their own fields. So many have achieved great heights in their accomplishments."(Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi, Book/first small/English, Chapter 1, Sahaja Yoga)
"The power of Kundalini is the pure desire of attaining your self- hood. If someone doesn't have it, you cannot force him because the Divine respects the freedom of that person if he wants to go to hell. Self-Realization can be attained easily if the people have a sincere and pure desire to get their Self-Realization. But if they stick to some of their ideas, which are fixed, the Kundalini won't rise. Also it cannot work for idiots or for immature people. It works for people who are wise, who are more in the centre, and it works very fast.
I was amazed to see that it has worked even on people who were drug addicts, who were alcoholics and who were very immoral. But they all had intense and pure desire to secure self-improvement, Self-Realization. So many of such people achieved their goal of Self-Realization. Overnight, they gave up their drugs,their alcoholism.
Thus you become very powerful and at the same time you understand that you are now glorified and you start behaving in a very dignified and a very sensible manner. This is how a new style of life where you become innately, I say innately, righteous. Nobody has to tell you : "Don't do this" and "Don't do that". It is all achieved through your enlightened attention. This enlightened attention is also full of power. Wherever you put your attention it works, it created peace, it creates harmony and also it creates a new dimension of collective consciousness.
So to [blame] your genes for your mistakes is not going to work out anymore because these genes can be changed in their database and can go through to the level of a very righteous, angelic personality. The ego and the conditioning of a person gets dissolved by the ascent of the Kundalini and he becomes really a free bird. Absolute freedom is achieved in reality and his behaviour changes tremendously with great faith in himself. He becomes a witness of the whole drama of life."
Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi,
13/9/95 Beijing (Pekin/China),
Inter Regional Round Table,
Fourth World Conference on Women
References:
[1]Acharya Buddharakkhita.Dhammapada.Malaysia.Sukhi Hotu Sdn Bhd. pp.162,216,217. ISBN 983-9382-13-6
[2]Green, Rayna, The Encyclopaedia of the First Peoples of North America.1st
Canadian ed. Groundwood Books/Douglas&McIntyre, Toronto, Ontario, M5S 2R4, 1999p.7 ISBN 0-88899-380-3
[3]' COPYRIGHT 1999 Great Falls Tribune, a division of Gannett Co. Inc. http://www.gannett.com/go/difference/greatfalls/pages/part8/blackfeet
[4]' COPYRIGHT 1999 Great Falls Tribune, a division of Gannett Co. Inc. http://www.gannett.com/go/difference/greatfalls/pages/part8/blackfeet
[5]Green, Rayna, The Encyclopaedia of the First Peoples of North America.1st Canadian ed. Groundwood Books/Douglas&McIntyre, Toronto, Ontario, M5S 2R4, 1999 p.8 ISBN 0-88899-380-3
NOTE: If this page was accessed during a web search you may wish to browse the sites listed below where this topic or related issues are discussed in detail to promote global peace, religious harmony, and spiritual development of humanity:
' Divine Feminine (Hinduism)
' Divine Feminine (Christianity)
' Divine Feminine (Judaism)
' Divine Feminine (Islam)
' Divine Feminine (Taoism)
' Divine Feminine (Buddhism)
' Divine Feminine (Sikhism)
great-spirit-mother.org/ ' Divine Feminine (Native Traditions)
