Transmission - Two Historical Examples

By Radheshyam Miryala MD (Sahaj Marg Abhyasi, SRCM Preceptor)

As abhyasis of the Sahaj Marg mission, we are very fortunate to receive this nurturing transmission from our Guru. Although Transmission is unique to the mission, it is not a new phenomenon. Transmission has existed for many centuries, and there are two examples that are very important for us to learn from.

The first example is that of the exchange between Arjuna and Lord Krishna. On the battlefield of the Kurukshetra, Arjuna has a dialogue with Lord Krishna. Arjuna beseeches Krishna to withdraw from the battle.  Lord Krishna then educates Arjuna on the laws of duty and expounds on Karma, Bhakti, and Jnana Yoga in the form of the Bhagavad Gita. How was it practical for Lord Krishna to stand in the middle of the battle field and ‘reveal’ His True Personality to Arjuna and elucidate the voluminous virtues of the Bhagavad Gita?  The answer is Transmission. Lord Krishna transmitted the knowledge of the Gita to Arjuna in a matter of seconds. It is Lord Krishna’s greatness in having the capacity to transmit, but it is equally remarkable that Arjuna was able to receive the transmission. What made Arjuna deserving of this Grace? Arjuna had surrendered his will to Lord Krishna. Arjuna loved Lord Krishna. When given the choice between Lord Krishna’s armies or the opportunity to have Lord Krishna as his charioteer, Krishna chose the latter. This is the essence of the Guru-Disciple relationship. Arjuna is the consummate disciple as he had love for the Guru, faith in the Guru, and had surrendered to the Guru. This is a great example of how a disciple can prepare himself to receive Transmission.

The second example is that of the exchange between Swami Vivekananda and his Guru Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. When Vivekananda came to get the Dharshan of Ramakrishna for the first time, Ramakrishna took his great toe and placed it on Vivekananda’s chest.  At that instant Vivekananda felt a complete transformation take over him. This is another great example of transmission. From that day onwards, Swami Vivekananda spent his time spreading the message of his Guru. This is another great example of the Guru Disciple relationship. Here, the disciple receives the transmission and works hard to ensure that he was deserving of the gift. This work entails service to the Guru, the Mission, and the World. Swami Vivekananda worked tirelessly till the end of his days to spread the message of love from his Guru.

In Sahaj Marg, we are fortunate to be able to constantly partake in both examples from above. We work on ourselves with our sadhana and character formation to prepare ourselves for the transmission that we receive. In the sitting, the generosity of our Guru takes over and showers us with more transmission than we deserve. We should make use of this gift and live in service to the Master, Mission and Method. May the Great Masters Blessings always be upon us.

Egregore: Working together

By Victor Kannan (SRCM Preceptor)

A movement accelerates a lot of things. It may appear chaotic. But like never before people are empowered and encouraged to move towards the same goal. If you are in the middle of the movement, you are also moved automatically.  It creates a dynamism of its own and fresh waves push everyone ahead.

So, joyfully participating in the movement itself would seem like an egregore.

In this Sahaj Marg movement if we quickly learn how to work together, the movement will move towards the escape velocity.

Working together is not difficult. It is like knowing your neighbours and having a relationship with them. Being known to them they feel secure and confident. This promotes the feeling of trust and comradery. This promotes giving, receiving and sharing. The level of nobility rises as a result. Everything is smooth. What needs to get done, happens faster and efficiently. Everyone benefits.

The tendency to create noise to feel one’s existence is external. The sound or vibration of the communication of an egregore is internal. Hence Master is saying “mediate, learn to listen to the heart”. Inspiration comes out of deep silence. In the past year more than ever before no one can claim monopoly to any idea. The minute it pops in one person’s head, it is in many hearts simultaneously. The 100th monkey story is a humorous proof.

So, what is there in an idea? Everything is in finding the quiet joy and beautiful inner harmony in working together.

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...

Sahaj Marg question: Not "Who" but "What" is God?

By Victor Kannan - SRCM Preceptor

God is one, but religions are many. Life is a stream, but life forms are many. We need not be concerned with statements such as “religions divide” and the ranking of religion in terms of salvation. One thing is certain: these religious founders themselves did not coin their teaching into terms like Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism, etc. They tried to teach how to live and emphasized the purpose of life for the people who were under their “custody and upbringing” – theologically speaking.

Religion as it is practiced today is an expression of the struggle of humanity to keep itself moral, pure and God-fearing. It is more a struggle to instill in the hearts of human beings the love for God. The word “God-fearing” strikes a peculiar tone, as God is love, not fear.

It is quite understandable if we pray to God for basic needs. If you ask a hungry man, “What would you prefer, God or bread?” of course he will choose bread. But we are bogged down so much in solving our material problems that we see God for the purpose of solving them, and blame God if things are adverse.

We even attribute our successes to God’s appreciation of our way of living, and hence they are considered rewards. By the same token, there is punishment.

We also seem to go to the extreme of saying that those who belong to a certain religion will be rewarded and the rest will be condemned. Many religious practitioners of the modern era seem to be fanatical about it.

One wonders who is right and who is wrong.  We seem to seek God’s partnership in business. We seem to be preoccupied in asking God for material things. How many seriously inquire if it is possible to become God-like in terms of our being full of compassion, love, wisdom and purity?

If you are a friend of a benevolent king, would you beg for what he can dole out, or would you just enjoy being in his whole kingdom?

God can’t have a system of punishment and reward. He can’t differentiate between sinners and saints. He is the ultimate cause and we are the intermediate cause.

If he is all merciful, he must make sure that we are prevented from falling and from our own misbehavior. But why is this not so? This has to be understood in the overall context of Nature and its laws.

How can God give humans preferential treatment in evolution while humans also have to abide by the laws of Nature? One of the laws of the Nature is to use the faculties properly. God has bestowed mankind with two important faculties – intelligence and will power.

The improper use of these two faculties is the cause of our suffering. On the other hand, it is only by using these two faculties that we can continue the ascent back to the kingdom of God.

Religions have introduced the concept of God as something superior, omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent. Yes, it is indeed true. It is also something that watches our behavior, and hence we must be pious, loving, kind, etc.

No… Here also, the expectation of something rewarding from the super power predominates our affiliation with that God. And failure of the super power to fulfill that expectation seems to deny the existence of God.

Thus, God seems to be our creation rather than something eternal. If this is what we have made of religions, then these man-made religions have failed in showing us what God really is.

The question is not “Who is God?” but “What is God?” This is an essential difference between religion and spirituality.

While religions, in general, give us a list of Gods, Spirituality says, and also, the Masters of Sahaj Marg (Lalaji Maharaj, Babuji Maharaj, Chariji Maharaj, Shri. Kamlesh D Patel) say, God is within us and has no name and no form; it is a transcended condition, a feeling and an experience that all of us can have.

God is something that we have to become one with forever, eternally. When we ask the question, “What is God?” it brings forth the idea that God is perhaps a Principle. Like any principle, it is mindless. It behooves us to have sufficient wisdom, intelligence and knowledge to harness any principle for one’s ultimate benefit. And it is the domain of spirituality to deal with the subject of how to harness this principle of God in one's life for one's self.

Sahaj Marg can be looked upon as a science, and the individual is the experimenter, we being the laboratory, and the result is in attaining ourselves – a transformed self, a loving self, and a God-like self.

Sankalpa in Sahaj Marg

By Victor Kannan

I believe this idea of sankalpa* is unique in Sahaj Marg. It is not a mere will. It is not just a mere intention. It is also not just a plea, a condition, a loving compulsion or a resigned expectation; perhaps it’s a unique combination of all of the above.

Let us look at the components.

It is an act of will, because it requires a focused action on the part of the individual. But will alone is not going to get the job done, especially in the areas of inner human growth and transformation. At times, one would say intention is important and intention alone creates a field for action. But we all know the saying, “The way to hell is paved with good intentions.” Though cynical it may sound, it seemed to have been born out of human experience. It suggests that intention alone does not get us to the intended place or result.

Sankalpa also has the element of a plea or prayer or submission, because the required change is beyond one’s strength and capability. If a change is well within one’s own capacity, one must exercise one’s full strength and capability to achieve it. But more often than not, one resorts to prayer to a higher power for a desired change that is beyond one’s ability. Accepting the need to change is a very important aspect of this sankalpa, and a prayer to a higher power is needed. Moreover, with the inner condition of humility, admitting one’s powerlessness over the change process, the dependence on a higher power is emphasised.

This aspect of loving compulsion is nothing but the intense desire for transformation and the acute dependence on a higher power to effect the change. And after all this, a resignation to His will! Wow, if we can reach that state, I think all our mundane ills are cured! That is sankalpa to my mind’s understanding.

Kamlesh D Patel says, “When certain conditions have to be created inside us, sankalpa is the best thing. This is the best way to create something inside yourself or remove something from yourself. And it has to be prayerful, that, “My Lord, may this be removed.” It is like a prayer.
– Designing Destiny, p.100

* “Sankalpa means a conception or idea or notion formed in the heart or mind; a solemn vow or determination to perform; a desire, definite intention, volition or will” - Wikipedia