Sadhana and Service in Sahaj Marg

By Victor Kannan (SRCM Preceptor)

Sadhana (Spiritual Practice) and Service are the two pillars of one’s existence. Practice and Service are integral parts of one’s duty and purpose of life here on earth.  Service without Sadhana cannot be sustained in quality or maturity and sadhana without service will lack the depth and perspective of universal brotherhood, one of the cornerstones of Sahaj Marg.

A balanced existence in Sadhana and Service, is essential. Once the goal is determined, direction is set, flight has to take place to reach that destination in the shortest period of time. No amount of service will benefit if it is not supported by dedicated sadhana.

We are given unprecedented opportunity to serve at various levels. Service gives us recognition and satisfaction.  Unless such service is performed devoid of ego and the need for recognition, these opportunities could pose a challenge to overcome, if we are to continue our march on spiritual path.

So, how to develop a depth in us that we not only serve but also produce lasting and desired results. This is possible only if we meditate and meditate more. On weekends and holidays we should meditate more often. After retirement we should meditate often. If we are teenagers, we should meditate more during vacations. Home Makers can meditate at noon and Heartfulness participants can meditate in the meditation rooms provided during break times.

Babuji Maharaj says the heart region is important to traverse as fast as one can. Then one can enjoy the spiritual practice even more.  So, we double up our efforts and by his grace, traverse the heart region faster, the Sahaj Marg system becomes a lot more enjoyable. Our bhogs reduce and we are slowly released from the clutches of duality.

So, let us make this very important habit to start the day with meditation, begin the evening after cleaning and end the day with night prayer. We are living in unprecedented times for spiritual growth and our efforts will bear exponential benefits.

Many of us are churning a lot in Heartfulness, totally inspired and empowered to participate in the movement. The initial enthusiasm wanes due to lack of results. This feeling of disillusionment will be substantially less if we practiced thoroughly and regularly, and it would also in some way help us to produce superior results, as our better condition due to more sincere sadhana could engender better outcomes as we do work.

So, Service and Sadhana will have to go hand in hand.

At times, we lack time to do justice to both. To gain time, there is absolutely no other way but to increase simplicity of our lives and circumstances by desiring less. In this too, Sadhana will help

So, focusing on Sadhana begins a virtuous cycle possible. Sadhana gives more time for Sadhana! Sadhana also gives better results in service.

Sahaj Marg Answers: Is God Secular?

By Victor Kannan (SRCM Preceptor)

It depends on how you ask the question. If you ask “Who is God” It is a huge problem. It then begins attract, unite and naturally divide people.  We unite to become a stronger division. The complexes set in and why would anyone believe in anything inferior. So, my god is superior to others. There goes the rut.

Since most of the human beings need a belief system to be empathetic as empathy is the corner stone of morality. But when they test this belief system and disprove it, then the religion becomes not only irrelevant but also the most exploited along with their believers by the leaders.

If you ask what is God instead, we hold a promise to discover what it is. If we discover we can harness the discovery to better our lives.  So from that point of view, God is secular.  If we define God as a principle, Nature as a phenomenon and the physics that govern the smallest of small particles to the entire universe as natural laws, then God is secular.

God can be defined in many ways. If we coin a name to where it all started, it may be a big bang. How did big bang start?  We can theorize there was an imbalance in something that burst forth to create the universe.  If there was balance, there may not have been any creation. We see this imbalance which seems to happen in cycles of the birth of a star in a supernova to a black hole creating its death.  Where there is balance, there is steadiness.

When that imbalance corrected itself it set out all the gravitation, electromagnetic, weak and strong forces etc. We have been discovering these laws of nature for thousands of years and we will continue to do so.

The believers and non-believers are equally un-biased with their beliefs. We have to know as much to believe in something, as we need to know to disbelieve in the same thing. We in Sahaj Marg do neither. It is better to keep an open mind, though skeptical, but at the same time, with a sense of wonder and curiosity.

The philosophical definition of God as a reality behind this existence is one way of explaining that there is something "out there" or "in here" behind the manifested magnificent world. The other way to explain God is in the many expressions we see in life. But these are struggles to explain the unexplainable.

If one rejects the need for religion and just wonder about the magnificence of the universe, our planet and life on earth, then also one would perhaps engender the same feeling of respect and care for the creation. If we are able to appreciate the empathetic need to be in a long term harmony with all forms of life around us, then that understanding is better than the one based on fear of a religious god.

Thus, if one observes or approaches the concept of God in this way, as a Principle, it becomes easy to understand the secular nature behind the same. Now comes the most difficult question. Are Humans Secular? God Seems to be...