Summary meeting CC with national coordinators, 29-30 August, Mongiardino
Present and past members of the CC invited all national coordinators to join them for a two-day meeting in Mongiardino, near Cabella, on August 29 and 30, 2016.
Thirty-three national coordinators, members of national councils and other representatives, as well aseleven members and ex-members of the CC, as well as members of NIPC and of the World Foundation, all from 28 countries attended the meeting, mostly both days (see list at the end of this summary).
Moderators: Philipp Zeiss and Alex Henshaw.
All sessions started and ended with a short meditation and took place at the Feet of our Holy Mother. The organisers would like to thank the team of Mongiardino for its perfect and loving logistical and gastronomic arrangements, as well as all yogis who came to present a theme: Sandeep, Marco, Horacio, Eric, Alan, Nigel.
The agenda comprised the following points.
Morning 29 August.
- Introduction, presentation of the CC, distribution of the list of communications of the CC, all participants
introduced themselves - World Foundation: presentation by Sandeep Gadkary and Horacio Albertolli
- Annual puja schedules: methodology and preparation for 2017
Afternoon 29 August
- International Marriage Committee: presentation by Marco Arciglio
- Methodology of selection and rotation of national councils
Morning 30 August
- NIPC (Nirmal Intellectual Property Corporation): presentation by Alan Pereira, Horacio Albertolli, EricDeladoey
- Organisation, management and use of funds originating from Guru Dakshina or other donations, mainlyat pujas
Afternoon 30 August.
- Inner Peace Day: presentation by Nigel Powell
- Externalisation of Sahaja Yoga, creeping ritualism
- Havan.
Below you can find the minutes from each of the topics discussed.
World Foundation (WF)
A description of the different organizations of the World Foundation was presented. Casa Madre was founded over a year ago as the operative arm of the Foundation. The purposes of Casa Madre is to house all operations and in this way also to ringfence the properties of the World Foundation. It is headed by Duilio and Ezio and it belongs to the World Foundation. All activities, Pujas, School, Wellness seminars, Festivals are managed by Casa Madre that takes care of all voluntaries, school teachers, etc.
Main need: improved quality of communication in transparency and in-depth information to describe the activities and range of the WF. It contributes to the financing of schools, buildings in Cabella, etc…
Ideas: to name an “ambassador” in each country for WF affairs or even specific topics (schools, finances, etc…) , in charge of keeping up to date. They must know English. The WF communication team should set up a system to communicate with them, by email and during live meetings. It is then up to them to translate the information emanating from the WF in their own language. From the board, Marco Arciglio is delegated as the communications person.
The WF team should also communicate regularly at the national coordinators’ meetings taking place before each international puja held in Cabella.
Puja schedule, methodology and preparation of 2017.
More than hundred international pujas (hereunder shortened as “puja”) have been celebrated with Shri Mataji in Her physical Form in Cabella. This illustrates the importance She was giving to Cabella as a location for pujas. For this reason, to maintain Cabella as an international centre of major relevance, and also to obtain enough funding to maintain the buildings, school, etc… four to five pujas must be celebrated annually in Cabella.
Canajoharie in the USA is the only location beside Cabella where pujas can only be celebrated in summer. It also needs getting better known in the sahaj world and would also need funding for the maintenance and improvement of its buildings. The participants and the CC will consider further how to accommodate both somehow conflicting needs of Cabella and Canajoharie. The US Council is invited to write to the CC if it wants a puja to be performed in the US, like any other country.
An appeal is launched to all participants for the countries to send their wishes to host or co-host a puja in Cabella or elsewhere before September 15 to the CC. The CC explains how it proceeds to establish its sched ule for the next year., following the needs of the WF, the Indian calendar and recommendations from Indian yogis for the dates, the wishes expressed by all countries, and common sense, in transparency.
International Marriage Committee (IMC).
Marco makes a short presentation then answers many questions. He explains that Mr. Nalgirkar is training yogis in all continents to take over the marriage process, including the ceremony itself, so that marriages can be organised in various continents and regions. The matching process though must be centralised, in order to have the critical mass of candidates necessary for it to be credible. The workload of the team handling the matching process is enormous, despite an intensified rationalisation of the candidature forms upstream. The IMC is considering all options to simplify this work, though at the end the vibratory checks are indispensable and time consuming for a serious process, following as closely as possible the way Shri Mataji was handling it.
Ideas:
- To establish “focal person/s” in every country, belonging or not to the national council but nominated by it, to deal with all marriage issues.
- To create a group of persons helping the IMC, not for the matching process but for all administrative and communication aspects of the IMC’s activities. This group would communicate with the focal points, send them the latest forms, make sure the registrations come on time, follow the whole process also after the matching announcements, etc…
- Once matched, the couples should sit in front of the stage where a space should be kept for this purpose, but not on stage, as it is putting a certain pressure on them.
Methodology of rotation and selection of national councils.
It is observed that all countries follow different standard operating procedures. In several countries of the participants, they have reached a satisfactory way of operation and are satisfied with its results. In others, the result is not satisfactory but it is better not to intervene and to let time lead to a more harmonious result.
As a consequence, it is summarised that:
- We should proceed as it would please our Mother;
- We do not need to copy outside systems nor use democratic systems;
- There is no such thing as a vibrational democracy, though the leaders are chosen in a democratic way in
most countries; Sahaja Yoga is not a democracy, it is a culture of the Spirit; - For the rotation, people whom everyone trusts should choose the others (co-optation): one must be aware that if there is an automatic rotation, people who yearn for power will volunteer and enter the councils;
- It is suggested that the people who had been chosen by Mother should suggest new names: if the vibra-
tions of these people are unanimously approved, they should enter the councils; - Common sense is very important: new people lacking experience, or not active on the collective, or lacking the proper behavior, should not be elected. And certainly their names should not be put in envelopes for a vibrational test;
- The whole process must be done in a connective way (to Mother), we are caretakers of SY, which belongs to God and not to us;
- We need to preserve Her culture but we must also be ready to evolve; SY IS WHAT IT IS; it is our responsi bility to preserve and forward SY into the future;
- The whole process of governance must be SINCERE, BALANCED, SPONTANEOUS, in UNION TO HER FEET; done with heart, keeping the whole of our collective in consideration for the benefit of all.
NIPC
“Now you have it, you have to protect it” -HH Shri Mataji
Alan, Horacio and Eric describe the history of NIPC, how Mother donated Her intellectual property to the sangha, NIPC’s mandate given by Mother to preserve, optimise and distribute with discretion all Her talks and writings, in audio, video and texts and protect all copyrights. Thank you for the immense work accomplished by the team of NIPC
Structure: NIPC, created in 2005, has a board of 21 members representing the sangha, it is a non-profitcompany registered in Delaware. The seat of president of NIPC was occupied by Shri Mataji and will always be held by Her in Her Nirakar form. A Vice-president is chairing the board as the Chief Operating Officer (COO).
NIPC has approved a strategy which needs now to be summarised and communicated to the Sangha. NIPC is there to give access to the Teachings of Shri Mataji for the collectivity to use it in a proper and auspicious way.
The operative arm of NIPC is Nirmala Vidya, formed in 2011, is a limited liability company. All those work-
ing for Nirmala Vidya are volunteers.
Devi Production, supported by Nirmala Vidya, is based in Austria, it is doing the actual work on Mother’s videos, preserving, optimising and digitising them, coordinating the collection of missing recordings and the transcriptions and subtitling. A similar work is done for Her audiotapes.
The whole process of cleaning the tape, digitising, optimising and producing a master takes a full week.
There are about 700 events missing from the archive, most of them in India, but also in USA and Australia.
It is not possible to optimise MP3 (audios) and MP4 (videos). All the rest can be optimised. There is no restriction for all yogis to have access to Her knowledge. All talks are free but people are called on to donate. A company in India, NITL, has the archives of Mother’s talks in India.
Budget: About euros 200’000 per year, distributed between preservation (through Devi Production), and legal protection and distribution (through website, database and web services).
There are lots of actions to protect the name of Mother in the world and it costs about euros 30’000-50’000 per year (lawyers expenses against sites and negative attacks). Optimisation requires about 150’000 peryear for salaries (at the moment, 3,5 full time employees), storage in double, etc… The website costs about 30’000.
To finalise the main part of the work will take about 5 years, so to cover the expenses regular donations are needed. The aim would be to have 40 to 50 countries donating regularly and predictably. Donations are made to Nirmala Vidya (NV) who supports Devi Production (DP, 3,5 employees).
Website: The database of the website could not be updated since more than one year as the volunteer who developed it could not work on it anymore and no one else could manage it.
At the moment 7’000-10’000 yogis are registered on NV. We are working on a new database which will compile the content from the amruta.org and nirmalavidya.org database. Later on it will integrate the database of Devi Production and be managed centrally by a team worldwide. It will serve the various websites and apps on iPhone and Android. Its purpose will be to become the reference for the whole Sangha.
Several yogis put videos of Shri Mataji on YouTube without discretion and some of them are not suitable for the general public (Puja extracts, marriages, specific talks on individual Sahaja Yogis or specific topics). As we know we cannot present Sahaja Yoga in the same way in India and for instance in Iran or USA. To watch videos from YouTube encourages those who are publishing them to put more, so one should try to avoid using YouTube and rather connect to our Sahaj websites. Also, people using YouTube do not necessarily feel the need to contribute financially to NV and its budget is very high as explained above.
“Every day with Shri Mataji” is an iPhone app connected to our app Nirmala Vidya.
Copyrights: Various names have to be protected: Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi; Sahaja Yoga; Sahaja (though it is a public word); Vishwa Nirmala Dharma. Regarding Web protection, about 133 domain names (DNS) are registered either for further use by the collectivity or simply to prevent misuse by non Sahaj institutions or people. The names have been registered by NIPC in Europe and now our task is to bring all other registrations of these names under the umbrella of NIPC as well as completing the registration worldwide in order to improve the protection.
Help is needed from all countries to contribute to the protection of copyrights and trademarks. Each coun-
try must protect these names on a national basis. We need to register them under the ownership of NIPC as
NIPC has not enough funds to finance a worldwide registration. For instance, Brazil has contributed by pay-
ing for the registration but in the name of NIPC. Other countries are invited to do the same.
A lawyer works with us since ten years on the protection of copyrights and trademarks worldwide.
Legal advice: If there is a problem in a country, please contact NV (see hereunder) who will support you legally on the question of copyrights. This concerns only the works by Mother. All other works and books do not enter into the scope of NIPC.
The printing of books written by HH Shri Mataji and translated in local languages should be announced to Eric (see attached pdf for address).
If a country needs to have a hard drive of Mother’s talks, please contact Eric (see here above) or Radek.
There are more than 1500 videos and 1500 audios on the hard drive.
Appeals: Appeal for missing audios and videos. Transcription and translation is a big task, accomplished by volunteers. More volunteers are needed. Each talk is checked 3 times. Contact the transcriptions email at nirmalavidya (see attached pdf for address)
Appeal for regular donations for supporting the work of preservation, protection and distribution of Mother’s Legacy. Nirmala Vidya is collecting donations. The preservation of Mother’s Legacy is the most important for the future. Donations are for our nabhi.
Appeal to use Amruta or NV, not YouTube.
Appeal to contribute to the protection of copyrights and trademarks.
Guru Dakshina and other donations at pujas:
All we offer to Mother is for ourselves: flowers for our moolhadara, bhajans for our vishuddi, money for our nabhi, etc… Each country has adopted a different practice. The important is always to be transparent, to avoid ritualism, to help SY nationally AND internationally.
The Inner Peace Project (was presented by Nigel from UK):
Originally started by the Italian collective in Rome to celebrate the birthday of Shri Mataji on 21st of March to give realisation in Schools. The Inner Peace project has now grown into a global initiative and has been extended beyond a single day. It was proposed to use the Inner Peace branding to reach more schools and the general public and particularly where the traditional Sahaja yoga would not be able to be done such as muslim countries.
The other main reason is to help counter the Mindfulness meditation movement that has been growing rapidly around the world and is now supported by the NHS (National Health Service in the United Kingdom) in the UK.
Inner Peace is not a replacement for Sahaja Yoga but facilitates the giving of realisation in situations where traditional Sahaja yoga is not possible to run. Currently there is a dialogue with UNESCO and it is hoped that other government organisations can be contacted for running self realisation programs particularly in schools. Its aim is not to create Sahaja Yogis but only to give realisation so it is important to keep it independent of SY. Meditate to Regenerate has also been used successfully to give realisation in Jordan, Lebanon & Egypt where SY is normally difficult to do.
Inner Peace initiatives were recently run in Belgium schools with the support of the Italian collective after the recent airport bombings in Brussels. Different modules are being developed for different age groups and community groups. Shri Mataji’s photo is optionally used and depends on the situation but discretion should be used. Generally, it is easier to give realisation and to clear people if Shri Mataji’s photo is used. It was recommended that vibrations be checked to determine the schools that would have Inner Peace programs run. Yogis can determine where Inner Peace initiatives can be run and if they can extend beyond the 21st of March. Inner Peace has also been run in prisons and it is planned that a number of discrete modulescan be developed for different situations.
CEL is another initiative for giving realisation that Shri Mataji endorsed for giving realisation to the corporate and business worlds. Inner Peace initiative will produce brochures and a website to provide a consistent message. If countries are interested in running Inner Peace initiatives, they can contact Nigel from the UK.
Externalisation of SY and creeping ritualism, preservation of Sahaja Culture – Puja, Havans & Rituals:
Since Shri Mataji was silent and in the period after her Maha Samadi we can see that in the ceremonies ofSahaja Yoga there is a tendency to externalise and become ritualistic. For example, some yogis coming backfrom Vashi have introduced new havan protocols and practises. Some people also feel that the Pujas con ducted in Cabella are becoming more ritualistic with processions bringing the photo from Shri Mataji from the Castel to the hangar in the palanquin.
Human beings tend to hang on to rituals in a superficial way. For example when someone goes to invite Shri Mataji to the puja and keeps waiting for Her to tell them when She’s ready. Some also have concerns that a few pujaries dominate the pujas. The puja should be done in purity and simplicity with the connection to Shri Mataji fully established. We have to be innocent and pure and maintain our connection to Shri Mataji so that we do not get caught up in the externalisation of rituals.
The seminar ended in full vibrations and joy with a powerful havan and songs, accompanied at the guitar by Wolfgang. There were two “encore”: a performance on Wednesday evening in front of a packed hangar of “The Brave”, i.e. all the remaining participants singing a few oldies, which ended with a standing ovation for the joy and fun they brought to all. They also met on Friday high in the mountains for a beautiful meditation and a joyous lunch.
Though no formal feedback has been asked, the impression is that all enjoyed themselves, learned a lot and bathed in auspicious vibrations which led to more friendships and networking between various countries, cultures and yogis. Maybe Sri Mataji be thanked for giving us this beautiful opportunity and blessing it with Her Divine and Loving Vibrations.
Your CC team, with much love and respect.