Sandhya and the swing

In Sanskrit, sandhya comes from the same root as sandhi or joining. 

A related perspective is two lines segments joining like so: 

/ \  

or 

\ /

Extend a bit further and you get 

.../\/\/\... or 

...\/\/\/..., 

or even further .../\/\/\......\/\/\/... 

or, finally, ..../\/\/\/\/\/\/...

This is a wave of sandhis or sandhyas, or 

a cycle, a closed set of waves.

Now think of a sandhya of light - sunlight and darkness. 

Where darkness changes to sunlight is a sandhya, udayam, \/.

Where sunlight changes to darkness is another, astamayam, \/.

Another sandhya - of heat.

Light and heat from the sun's infrared rays rises to a maximum at noon. On either side of noon, just before and after, is a rise in received heat and and a fall in received heat, respectively.

(This is not necessarily the same as the earth's heat at your location which may keep rising for a few more hours. [1])

Again, /\.

Perhaps counterintuitively, though logically, the opposite sandhya of minimum ambient heat is just before dawn when the heat of the daytime sun has had maximum time to dissipate. [1]

So udayam or uṣas has two kinds of sandhyas - 

darkness to light and coolness to heat, both expressible as \/. 

Astamayam, though, has only one - light to darkness.

But, udayam has one more sandhya too, a more abstract one - a sandhi of jāgrata or waking state and nidrā or sleeping state. At udayam the conjunction is between sleep ending or reducing to zero and waking starting or increasing from zero. This sandhi occurs the other way at bedtime.

Yet another sandhi - attention outward to inward at bedtime and inward to outward at dawn. Using that same logic, an inward activity like meditation is best done in an ambience of darkness that supports inward attention and prevents outward attention. Therefore Babuji in Maxim 1 asks abhyasis to start and finish their meditation before sunrise.

Now, think of a child's swing, a seat with two vertical ropes that are tied to a horizontal base, and moving invariably in a truncated arc, or a short to and fro arc, instead of a full 360° all the way around the base.

If you think of the vertical movement of the swing away from its lowest point closest to the ground, there's a little wave starting from that zero point that rises to a maximum height and then falls back to zero. Then, on the other side, again the height goes from zero to a maximum and back. In other words, a wave. And a sandhya, of rising height followed by falling height.

What is the best way to go faster and higher on a swing? The least effort comes from a little pull at the maximum height going backwards and a little push at the maximum height going forward. An expert swing-er tucks back the legs going back and extends them going forward. And uses the core muscles to go up at both ends.

After that long, detailed, yet hopefully clear description of such a simple childhood activity, how does that fit into sandhya upāsana or sandhya worship in Sahaj Marg/Heartfulness? 

(Please note that, in keeping with the stripped-down, simple and spare nature of Sahaj Marg, conjunction worship is a set of simple and entirely mental activities.)

Babuji put together three core practice elements, one for each of the sandhyas above - darkness-light & sleep-waking & coolness-heat & inward-outward attention, light-darkness, waking-sleep. Respectively, morning meditation, evening cleaning, and night prayer contemplation. [2]

Babuji's personal research in spiritual practice builds upon an ancient tradition of sandhya worship to accelerate the inner journey. He discovered that simple, effort-less, meditative practices at particular times were much more effective for subtilization and expansion of the brain and mind consciousness than long and often self-defeating hours of strenuous physical and mental practices.

An analogy familiar to cyclists in hilly terrain may clarify even further - speed up while going downhill so as to reduce the effort to go up the following hill. But for some of the sandhyas above, it is the reverse - uphill followed by downhill. And so, practise after the peak, on the downhill side! In either case, the effects of practice at sandhya should infuse and perfume one's consciousness till the next practice.

 

NOTES

[1] The earth temperatures can vary based on latitudinal location and the interaction between Earth's received heat and the heat it radiates. For a nice discussion, see this ThoughtCo article.

[2] In Commentary on the Ten Maxims of Sahaj Marg, in the discussion on Maxim 1, Babuji also mentions, but does not enjoin - given the heat and discomfort, sandhya upāsana at noon. Daaji remarked once that his best meditations were at noon - "took off like a rocket"!