Spirituality

The term 'spirituality' has nothing to do with religion, as commonly understood. In fact, according to Sahaj Marg, spirituality begins where religion ends. While the basic education of man can be undertaken by religion, his further development when he has reached what may be termed adulthood, can only be offered by spirituality. Religion enforces an externalization of the mind in man's search for God. Mysticism or spirituality internalizes the search and directs the mind to the heart of man where the search should really commence. God is not something external, waiting with a rod in hand to punish us for our transgressions. He is inside us and being inside, if He punishes us, He has to endure that punishment Himself. Spirituality, therefore, focuses man's attention on the divine effulgence radiating in one's own heart, which effulgence is created by the presence of the Creator Himself in the heart. This immediately presents the Divine in an altered light and brings Him to proximity with one's own person which can hardly come any nearer. Being within us, such a Being is not only always accessible, but readily reachable and all that spirituality requires of us to achieve the sense of oneness with God, is to focus the mind inwards and approach Him with love.

It is generally believed that meditation requires a lot of preliminary sadhana (practice) and preparation. Sahaj Marg on the contrary says that meditation is a simple thing and it does not require any preparation. In fact meditation can alone prepare the mind. In meditation, mind is not controlled but regulated. The mind is brought to bear upon a single subject, and disturbing and intruding thoughts are allowed to drop off by non-attention. Non-attention is the greatest weapon to avoid thoughts, as thoughts without human attention have no power. The mind, therefore, is not being destroyed, but is gently diverted to communicate with the ultimate.

Yoga, which means union, is the culmination of the spiritual practice and not merely the practice itself. The perfection of the imperfect is what is to be achieved before the union is possible. This is achieved by the cleaning process in Sahaj Marg. This is where the need for a spiritual Master comes in most. It is the spiritual Master who is able to remove past impressions from our mind and provide the input of divine energy into us which nourishes the soul.

Once a state of spiritually elevated consciousness pervades the individual self, normal worldly life goes on while spiritual progress also follows hand-in-hand, thus bringing into play harmonious and balanced development of the human being in the twin fields of existence, finally culminating in our achieving the goal of human perfection.

 The Sahaj Marg System

The average human being of today gives a great deal of thought, and applies a great amount of energy, to attain high levels of material welfare. But notwithstanding even success in this endeavor, there is yet much unhappiness, discontent and misery pervading the lives of the people. Why is this? It is the result of unbalanced application of effort. The human existence consists of two planes of existence, the material and the spiritual, and both these are important and essential for the harmonious well-being of the individual. As a bird needs two wings to fly with, so a human being needs two wings of existence, the spiritual and the material. If either is neglected for the other, such a life becomes unnatural. Neglect of the material existence results in poverty and in sickness, and the neglect of the spiritual, which is the case with most of us, results in horrors of man-made diseases and sufferings. To correct this sorry state of affairs, we have to bring back balance into our lives.

Sahaj Marg (the Natural Path) is the system of practical training in spirituality used by Shri Ram Chandra Mission. It is in essence the well-known old raja yoga (yoga of the mind) remodeled and simplified to suit and help the man of present-day world to achieve inner perfection, which is a synonym for God Realization. According to the teaching of this system, God is simple and therefore, the way to reach Him must be simple. Mind is the key instrument in a human being and by proper regulation of mind through meditation under practical guidance and support of a spiritual Master, one can evolve to the Highest. There are no rituals and ceremonials. Do's and don'ts are also few and there are no rigid methods of austerity and penance.

The Sahaj Marg system is specially developed for the average householder. It teaches that normalization of all functions leads to saintliness. Every faculty in-built in man has its legitimate function and must be used in the performance of that function. Therefore, celibacy is not prescribed but a normalization of the generative function is essential. It is in the world of family that almost all of man's powers are perfected. Therefore, this system does not recognize differences of race, differences of sex, or indeed any other differences between individuals, and all are qualified to practice it, the sole qualification being willingness to participate in it.

 Transmission

The most unique feature about Sahaj Marg is called transmission (pranahuti). Masrter Lalaji, the adi-guru (first guru) of this Mission, is said to have re-discovered the capacity for the transmission of yogic or life energy from his own centre of existence into the centre of existence of another individual. This art has been passed on by him to his disciple, Master Babuji, who has perfected it and in turn passed it on to his successor, Master Chariji. As power can be transmitted, as thought can be transmitted, as speech can be transmitted, so also spirituality can be transmitted. Transmission is defined as the utilization of divine energy for transformation of a human being. When the transmission is made into the heart of the practicant (abhyasi), the practicant is filled with a force higher than himself and therefore, his evolution or progress becomes not only very much speedier, but also becomes in essence independent of his own capacity for progress. This transmission gives the practicant the possibility of growing without limitations. Secondly, it erases by Master's power, all past impressions (called samskaras) which we have built up in our mind and which conditions our behavior and existence. When the past impressions are eradicated, material existence falls into its proper place as does every facet of existence.

This transmission is something which is capable of being felt by anybody who takes the trouble of practicing this system for a brief period. In fact it is transmission which sets Sahaj Marg apart from other yogas and from all other systems of human evolution. Transmission under the Sahaj Marg system can be received directly from the Master who is adept in the art, or from preceptors who are also endowed with this power of transmission by the Master.

 Preceptors

A preceptor is an abhyasi who has been prepared and permitted by the Master to introduce people to the Sahaj Marg system and conduct group meditation. Preceptors also give individual sittings which clean the deeper impressions and impediments of the abhyasi (spiritual aspirant). Just as the daily impressions may be cleaned by your own efforts, the deeper impressions can only be removed by a capable Master. The Master works through the preceptor to do this deeper cleaning. In order to begin the practice of Sahaj Marg meditation, it is necessary to contact a preceptor to receive the introductory meditation sittings.

The Practice

I shall explain the basic practice of Sahaj Marg for the benefit of all. There is first the practice, second the attitudes. The practice consists of three steps: morning meditation, evening cleaning and night prayer meditation.

 Morning Meditation

Sit in meditation for an hour thinking that divine light is present in your heart. Do it in quite a simple and natural way without forcing your mind, never mind if you do not see the light there. Start with a mere supposition, so to say, and sit meditating in one posture with your attention turned towards the heart in a natural way without any effort to concentrate. Try to be unmindful of the thoughts arising at that time.

Meditation means to think continuously about one thing, and we are supposed to take as the object of meditation that which we wish to achieve. And here, because we are involved in realisation, God realisation, Self-realisation, therefore the object has to be of that nature. The goal of Sahaj Marg is an abstract goal called the Ultimate Self. Therefore we cannot have any name or form for meditation. Nor can we have even any qualities or attributes of Divinity. However, Master felt that for most people it would be impossible to meditate on the abstract. So, in Sahaj Marg, our Master has taken as the object of meditation what he thought, what He knows, what he has experienced to be the subtlest thing that we can have for meditation without making it gross or with a form or with a name, and that is: Divine light in the heart. So this has to be very clearly understood that in Sahaj Marg, the object of meditation is Divine light in the heart and nothing else.

And as I already told you, meditation means to think continuously of the same thing. What we do is to sit comfortably with our eyes closed, and have the thought that our heart is filled with Divine light. We sit comfortably because during the period of meditation the body should not interfere and break our meditation. In the Sahaj Marg system there is no special asana (posture) prescribed. Patanjali himself described asana as something which you can hold comfortably over a period of time. So we are allowed to choose a position in which we can comfortably sit for one hour. But we are not allowed to lie down and meditate; because if we lie down and meditate, the relaxation produced will put us to sleep. During meditation, if we have to change our position it is permitted, because the object is to be in such a situation that the body does not disturb. Regarding the light in the heart, we are not supposed to see it or try to see any light in the heart. As Babuji Maharaj has explained, it is a mere supposition that the light is there.

Now we are supposed to have this idea, or the thought, continuously for one hour. The prescribed period is one hour and not less. Nor are we supposed to meditate for more than an hour at one time. But if we have spare time, there is no harm in breaking the meditation, relaxing for ten minutes, and then meditating for another hour again. After the first hour... you may break it for some time.

When we sit for meditation, we will of course have disturbing thought. We are taught not to attend to those thoughts but to ignore them. Because Master's research shows that when we attend to thoughts, the thought takes power from us, and become stronger and stronger. So, when we ignore the thought we find it drops off! There may be another thought in its place, but it is treated in the same way. Master says, "Treat them as uninvited guests and they will go away." If we do this systematically and with alertness we will find that in hardly a few months we can reach a state of thoughtlessness. Here, it is necessary to understand that all these thoughts come from inside us, our own thoughts in the form of samskaras (impressions). If we attend to the thoughts when they rise, they become powerful, they multiply and they go back inside. But when we are not attending to them, we allow them to fall off, the inner store of samskaras becomes exhausted quickly, that is how we reach a state of thoughtlessness during meditation. It is of course necessary to remember that thoughtlessness is not our goal.

So I think that I have dealt with the morning meditation, except to say that it should be done before sunrise as Babuji has instructed. Master has clarified that at the time when the night meets the day and the day meets the night, there is a balance in Nature. And when we meditate at that point of balance in Nature, it helps us very much in our progress to achieve quickly our goal. Of course, this applies to normal situations when there is a day and a night! Please don't ask me what we should do in the North Pole or the South Pole! But wherever and whenever possible, this is how it should be done.

 Evening Cleaning

Sit for half an hour with a suggestion to yourself that all complexities and impurities including grossness, darkness, etc. are going out of the whole system through the back in the form of smoke or vapour and that in their place the sacred current of the Divine is entering your heart from the Master's heart. Do not meditate on those things which we want to get rid of Simply brush them off.

Now we take up the second thing, which is the evening cleaning process. it is to be done when our whole day's work is over, not before that. During the day's activities and thoughts, we accumulate so many impressions. By doing the cleaning when the day's work is over, we try as far as possible to get rid of that day's impressions. So essentially, the evening cleaning process is to remove the accumulation of impressions gathered during that day. The older and deeper accumulation which is more gross - they are not just impressions, they have become grossness - that has to be dealt with by the Master and the preceptors.

The way of doing your cleaning is to sit comfortably like in the morning meditation, and to imagine that the day's impressions are going out from behind in the form of smoke or vapour, and that in its place the sacred current of the Divine is entering into your heart from the Master's heart. Now the word 'imagine' should not be misunderstood, because it is a very active process in which we are supposed to use our will power. It is therefore a process where we use our will power to remove our own impressions. In the morning meditation there is no use of the will power, please note carefully. The cleaning process involves, very specifically, our will power. It removes the basis which is formed in us in the past, and which manifests as present tendencies. Progressive regulation of the mind helps us in not forming further samskaras by gaining a certain degree of control over that mind ourselves.

Meditation and the cleaning process balance each other, support each other, for our evolution. Meditation in itself, without cleaning, is to my mind useless. It would be like having a powerful car bogged down in slime and mud. And cleaning by itself, is like having a beautiful road with a car on it without any engine. There is a progressive refinement of the motive power in man, which is his mind, which produces his thoughts. And the cleaning removes all the impediments in the way of that progress. This is to be remembered very carefully because we will find that in the religious history of humanity, meditation has been going on from time immemorial. There is not any very great record of achievement. Because as Babuji explained, whatever be your progress in meditation, if the samskaras are not removed, they remain as seeds which can come out and flower when the appropriate environment is created for it. That is how even those who rose to very high levels have often fallen, because at that level the samskaras suddenly found an environment proper for their flowering, and they blossomed out.

The other point is that so long as the samskaras are there, if you have more power, the tendencies become more powerful. So, as Babuji explained, "If you transmit to a thief, he will become a perfect thief." So, that is the very great importance of the cleaning process in our system.

 Prayer-Meditation

0, Master!
Thou art the real goal of human life,
We are yet but slaves of wishes
Putting bar to our advancement,
Thou art the only God and power
To bring us up to that stage.

We now come to the third thing: the prayer-meditation at night. It is a simple thing. We are advised to sit on our beds for about 10 minutes, repeat the prayer a few times and meditate on the meaning of the prayer. This prayer-meditation is to be done for 10, 15 or 20 minutes and then you go straight to sleep. It should be the last thing we do before the day is brought to an end.

Now, coming to the use of the prayer. It is to be repeated only once before we start our morning meditation. It has no place in our evening cleaning process. It again finds a place in the night prayer-meditation when it is repeated a few times mentally. It is not to be used like we use mantras when we do meditation, to be repeated again and again throughout the day, as is done in many other systems involving mantra-repetition. Some people ask the question: "If it is so effective what is the harm in repeating it?" Master's answer is that there can be too much even of a good thing, and repetition makes a thing grosser. So, please note, prayer once in the morning before meditation, a few times at bedtime mentally repeated, for making the meaning clear for meditation.

Now I would like to say something about the prayer too. Some people have the understanding that we are praying to God for something when we say this prayer. But if you say it properly and think over what you are saying, you will find that it contains just three statements of fact.

The first line says: 0 Master! Thou art the real goal of human life. We are merely stating a fact. Here, the word Master refers to God, as Babuji himself has written in his books. Master has written very clearly, "The real Master is He and He alone." I am clarifying this because some people ask: "How can we address a man as a Master or a guru as a Master, when we are not addressing God in the prayer?" Masters, as Babuji explained, are the representatives of God, so there should be no difficulty about any abhyasi, from any religious background, using this prayer for this purpose. So the first line of the prayer really says: God! You are the real goal of human life, and in a sense, we are reminding ourselves of what the goal is which we are trying to achieve.

The second line of the prayer says: We are yet but slaves of wishes putting bar to our advancement. We are not asking God to remove the wishes, or to change our wishes or anything like that. We are again making a statement of fact. That is, we are saying, with an attitude of humility, that we recognize that we are the problem creators ourselves. We humbly state that our wishes are putting bar to our advancement. If effectively used, this prayer will prevent us from developing wishes for the future.

The third line says: Thou art the only God and power to bring us up to that stage. Here, we recognize the fact that by our own effort nothing is possible. We are stating to ourselves the fact that He alone can help us to take us up to that stage of existence. Again, please note we are not asking God for any help whatsoever.

So the prayer consists of three statements where the first one puts before us the goal. The second one tells us what is the only impediment that is an impediment to our progress, namely our wishes, and the third one states that the goal, that is God Himself, has to assist us to reach Him. You will all remember that Babuji has said: "Prayer is begging." That is the traditional way of prayer, which is begging. This prayer of our Mission has no element of begging or demanding or requesting, nothing in it.

The prayer states this very beautifully because the first line says: Thou art the real goal, which means YOU are the real goal, not your powers, not your beauty, not your riches, not even the universe, but YOU (the beloved) are the real goal.

The last line of the prayer reaffirms this very forcibly. It says: "Only the beloved can give Himself." You cannot ask a mediator to bring the beloved to you. We can therefore put our Mission prayer in ordinary worldly language, and say:

"My beloved, you are the real goal of my life. What is standing between us are my foolish wishes and desires for your powers, your beauty, your wealth. You alone can give me yourself."

This is all that our Mission prayer says, nothing more.

 Constant Remembrance

Now that is the practical aspect. What are we to do in all this? The first responsibility is to do the practice thoroughly and systematically, regularly. Morning meditation, evening cleaning, night prayer-meditation, they must be done every day irrespective of whether you have sittings with preceptors or not. The second thing is to try and develop constant remembrance, which will come in any case if the practice is systematic. Master has clarified that when constant remembrance becomes established, then meditation loses its importance. As an example, I can say it is like focusing a microscope on an object. Because cleaning removes the objects which we don't need, meditation regulates the mind and the two are put together, as one.

Constant remembrance too is only a step. It is meant to develop love for the Master. As Master said, "We remember that which we love. So to create love, remember it first." So from the base of the practice, we come to the level of the tendencies which are cleaned off, leading to constant remembrance that must now progress to a stage of love for the Master. And if and when this third stage is achieved, our work more or less is finished. Because as Babuji explained, the beloved now begins to remember the lover. Our love knocks on His heart, and when His heart opens to our love, our work is over. And as Babuji repeated so many times, that is where spirituality really begins. By now you will have understood that this is correct because all the rest was practise: mental practise, physical practise, mental attitudes, change of attitudes, all with the purpose of developing love for the Master. I will request you to note this carefully, because in the past there have been many systems where love was not an aspect of the yoga or the system of meditation or tapasya (ascetic practice). There was no love behind it.

So, if you carefully study what was the achievement of the past great people in hundreds of parts of the regions of so-called spirituality, it was only powers, ability to perform miracles, fight wars, things like that. So what they achieved was an approach to Divinity from which they asked for certain things you see, and got those things, but they did not give love, and they did not get Divinity itself. My Master says, if God gives you the entire universe, it is still a waste unless He comes with you. You are familiar with the various temptations. You have heard of the temptation of Christ, the temptation of Nachiketas, Yama offering something. In all these cases, they offer unlimited life, unlimited dominion over the world, only to tempt man away by gifts rather than by the Self - simply to tempt them away from themselves.

We must be very careful that we don't ask our Master for gifts of power, gifts of happiness, but we ask Him for Himself. Only Love can make this possible. We all can go to our friend's house and come back with a bottle of wine or a piece of cake. As Babuji used to say so beautifully, he used to tell people who had come to Shahjahanpur and were leaving, and were very unhappy to be going away, he used to say, "Either you remain with me or you take me away with you." But nobody does either of these two things. So, in a relation of love between two persons, either the lover goes to the beloved or the beloved comes to the lover, only so that they can be together, not to take things away from each other.

 The Ten Maxims

Now we come to the attitudes. What are the attitudes we have to develop? Our Ten Maxims have stated this very clearly. We have to have, basically and essentially, an attitude of human-ness. We have to try to maintain this attitude, recognizing the fact that we may not already have it but we are trying to develop it. I say this because Babuji has told us that we start life as animal human beings, and then we have to develop to normal human beings, and then we have to go on to Divinization.

The greatest benefit of the meditation in the morning is that it trains us to regulate our minds. As Babuji Maharaj put it, instead of our being the slaves of our mind, we have to become the Masters of our minds. So, by holding one thought in the mind during meditation, we slowly gain, progressively, more and more ability to regulate that mind. We use the mind to regulate the mind. Many people are confused as to how this is possible. But one example will make you realise that this is what we do all our lives.

If you have a dog and you want to train it, you use the dog itself to train it. Similarly, to master a horse, you have to ride it again and again and again until you have mastered that horse. In fact, I must say that the modem educational concept of training coming to us from.outside has somewhat perverted our thinking on the subject. So there can be no training program, in that sense. Any program has to be used to train ourselves, to regulate ourselves. This is incidentally the problem with the Ten Maxims. We appreciate their value, we recognize their merit, but we don't apply them to our lives.

For our western sisters and brothers, the first maxim is the stumbling block. But Babuji once explained that if you are not able to do the first one, it is not necessary to forget all ten. Go on to the second, go on to the third. Whichever you can do, please do it first. There is no importance, specifically, in the sequence in which we adopt them. We can start anywhere and end anywhere. It is not like a staircase that you have to climb the first step first, and then the second step after that, then the third step and so on. It is not like that. The important thing is to start somewhere and train your will by doing something positive.

The will is strengthened every time we do something, and it is weakened every time we fail to do something that we have to do. So meditation helps us to regulate the mind, and by regulating it 95% of our problems are solved. Meditation is therefore a process, not a goal in itself. But it is a process which helps us immensely and therefore we do it.

The Ten Maxims of Sahaj Marg

1. Rise before dawn. Offer your prayer and puja at a fixed hour, preferably before sunrise, sitting in one and the same pose. Have a separate place and seat for worship. Purity of mind and body should be specially adhered to.

2. Begin your puja with a prayer for spiritual elevation, with a heart full of love and devotion.

3. Fix up your goal which should be 'complete oneness' with God. Rest not till the ideal is achieved.

4. Be plain and simple to be identical with nature.

5. Be truthful. Take miseries as Divine Blessings for your own good and be thankful.

6. Know all people as thy brethren and treat them as such.

7. Be not revengeful for the wrongs done by others. Take them with gratitude as heavenly gifts.

8. Be happy to eat in constant divine thoughts whatever you get, with due regard to honest and pious earnings.

9. Mould your life so as to arouse a feeling of love and piety in others.

10. At bedtime, feeling the presence of God, repent for the wrongs committed. Beg forgiveness in a supplicant mood, resolving not to allow repetition of the same.