The salon of the Cabella castle was luminous, the gathering welcoming, the mood serene, the vibrations present. Members of the CC who had convened this meeting with national coordinators and Foundation directors were happy to receive rewarding testimonies of appreciation for its communications and the general acceptance of the CC’s work during these four first years of activity.
The CC shared a vision. The global sangha is not like a planetary system which revolves around a central body at its core, in this analogy that would be an institution, a structure or a place that determines the movement of the system. Rather it is similar to a scintillating galaxy, not fully explored, with multiple sources of initiatives and action, controlled by the energy field of the Paramchaitanya. The heavenly leaders of this holy global spiritual sangha are the deities.
The CC occupies a space to share and defend this vision and resist the temptations of institution building, administrative control or deriving material benefits from roles or positions. Such lower materialist understanding of our beliefs and faith must be given up.
To understand the role and activities of the CC it was necessary to turn to its genesis and the dilemma that surrounded the creation of the CC. Having received clear instructions from Shri Mataji to constitute the CC at the end of the Guru Puja 2008, the group of yogis to whom She spoke directly faced the opposition of Mr Srivastava to the establishment of this body. To avoid polarisation of the collective or disturbance in the durbar of Shri Mataji, the yogis entrusted with this task looked for consensus building. Hence the establishment of the CC was postponed until July 2011. Its constitutive assembly and first membership benefitted from the clear support of the majority of countries.
However in the footsteps of the opposition described above, a small group of yogis felt that they needed to follow other instructions given in the name of Shri Mataji during the decade under review and they maintained their disapproval of the CC in various ways. The CC is convinced that the test for all yogis is to emerge from a legacy of division and restore unity. If we are all bhaktas of the Devi we know She wishes that bhaktas love each other. The CC identified four conditions emerging from the teachings of Shri Mataji that represent a solution for conflict resolution. They can and must be applied by both parties to a disagreement:
1) Restore whenever possible the legacy of unity and love (love being the comfort zone of the yogis anyway).
2) Faithfulness to the truth (also represented in the Shri Kalki Avatar) and no com promise with falsehood.
3) Merciless introspection towards oneself.
4) Forgiveness towards the other.
In complement to this presentation, each CC member was requested to express her or his experience. In short they greatly valued the opportunity to enjoy together the quality of relationship among themselves and service to the collective in the context of the CC viewed as a spiritual (not an administrative) body.
In reporting on its activities the CC provided examples of successful and failed mediations. When proposing a mediation it acted as a facilitator and did not substitute itself to a party or take decisions that must be left to the parties’ responsibility. The CC has no enforcement authority. It is not necessary to speculate here whether, in the future, the collective would wish the mediation of the CC to be more effective and more akin to an arbitration process whose conclusions must be enforced through prior mutual consent. The way forward, if any, depends on consultations with the yogis.
Further to its 30th communication, the CC also reported on the International Puja Schedule. During these four years, events have been blessed as witnessed and experienced by so many yoginis and yogis. A minimum level of coordination is needed. In this respect, to clarify a confusion created about the Diwali puja that some wanted to take place in Greece, the CC explained that it is willing to take on this option for 2016 if conditions permit but that the 2015 puja was assigned to France which accepted it. The Greek leadership is free to organise a national puja a week ahead of this date if it so wishes.
At the same time we may agree that a competition between pujas is not the preferred manner to bring our common worship to Our One Mother. In this respect ongoing efforts of CC members to encourage a better integrated puja schedule in India have not yet brought results.
All CC members present shared their experience turning to the issue of the renewal of the CC membership, the methodology chosen has been the following: consultations with yogis over a period of one year, tabling a proposal on the basis of common sense and sound judgment, validation with vibrations. In this respect the manner of doing it was to be centered on the Sushumna, connected through sahasrara and together at the Feet of Shri Mataji without the help of hats, envelopes or other innovations. We all agree no one can impose his or her method on the other and we preferred to follow the methods we used when Shri Mataji was with us.
Consultations brought forward the principle of balance between change and continuity. Members of the CC who accepted to stay for a second term did so at the request of the departing members and this was also in conformity with the wish expressed by the country coordinators in the country coordinator meeting at the sahasrara puja 2014. New members were requested to join, none of them had indicated in any way that they wanted to do so. Hence, without excessive reliance on complicated procedures, the result presented at the Feet of Shri Mataji and validated by beautiful vibrations is presented below.
Countries do not have reserved seats on the CC as is the case in the UN Security Council or General Assembly which are political bodies. Rather, please kindly note the nomination process selects the person and not the country. This would be more similar to the existing practice of international expert groups, but, above all, it is in conformity with the way Shri Mataji proceeded. So the country the member is associated with is simply for information.
CC membership:
i) Remaining members: Alex Henshaw (Hong Kong/China), Hanuman Kaluzny (UK, Switzerland), Sidsel Mugford (Norway), Philip Zeiss (Germany).
ii) New members:
Vladimir Chorny (Ukraine), Francisco Fenili (Argentina), Ruth Flint (several countries in Europe, Asia and the Middle East), Ann Maes (Belgium), Pascal Shrestaputra (Thailand). Steve Wollenberg (USA).
The group expressed its gratitude to the departing members (Duilio Cartocci, Wolfgang Hackle, Gregoire de Kalbermatten, Eduardo Marino). The CC prays for the protection and guidance of Shri Mataji to chart the way forward for the next period (2015-2019).