Kew Ashram 1983

I congratulate all the Sahaja Yogis of Melbourne for doing such a wonderful job of this ashram and working it out with such dedication. Dedication is a very great rewarding effort. Nothing can be more rewarding than dedication, it’s so joy giving and peace giving and satisfying effort or work you can call it. When it comes from the heart, with love, when you try to do something, it works out beautifully and it shows its aesthetics, expresses, and anyone who sees that can see that it is done out of dedication. ...

Melbourne I think is a word called from mala [meaning dirt or impurity] born, we can say born out of mala and that is the name of the lotus, that it is born out of the dirt and the filth. Mala is the dirt or impurity. So this beautiful thing has come out of that and you can see that this place was inhabited by people who were really in a mess. And out of that mess you have created such a beautiful thing like this ashram. And is so much one with the name of Melbourne that this is a place is created by you people like a lotus comes out of the pond which is full of dirt and filth and then this lotus fills the whole atmosphere with such fragrance that everyone forgets about the mala. They just think of the Nirmala which is this flower, and this is what I felt about your ashram, the way you have done it with understanding, it’s so good with such a lot of beautiful things and admirable it is really, to see how your dedication has done.

[yogi: There's a lotus for you there, Mother] I've seen that in the morning also. Beautiful. I told her that it will have fragrance. I can see so many lotuses sitting before me. It’s so beautiful. So this is all in dedication you see, this comes out of that mala just for the worship of God. And this K-mala [lotus] out of the mala, it is called as K-mala it means the one which is created out of mala. Same is the name of Melbourne I think, the way it is said. I don't know how this name has come Melbourne, but you can say Mel-born, can be mala born, could be K-mala like that. And it is really this place has become like that. Let anybody else come and see this and they will be amazed, how the whole thing is so beautiful, so comforting, so vibrating and so assuring. ...

I find the people in Melbourne are very simple people, are extremely simple and very expressive. The simpler you are, you are much more expressive. The more complicated you are, the worse it becomes.

H.H.Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi, Puja at Ashram, Melbourne, 9/3/83

note 1: the city of Melbourne was named after the British Prime Minister, William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne, who took his title from the Lamb family home, Melbourne Hall, near the village of Melbourne in Derbyshire, England. The name Melbourne means "mill stream" (or "mill spring"). It was first recorded in the Domesday Book (1086) as a royal manor.

"The little settlement of the year 1835, out of which Melbourne grew, at first bore the native name of Dootigala, but it was presently renamed after Viscount Melbourne, premier of Great Britain at the time of its foundation. In June 1836 it consisted of only thirteen buildings, eight of which were turf huts." (Encyclopedia Britannica, 1911 edition)

note 2: the building housing the ashram had previously been a nursing home.