Heartfulness/Sahaj Marg prayer - a logical perspective

(Disclaimer: Not an official explanation. And not for the blindly-devout/superstitious sans experience or practice either.)

(Please read a beautiful quote below from Babuji first [1])

The Heartfulness/Sahaj Marg prayer is mysterious, many-faceted, and its effects change with practice and attitude. Its three lines are deceptively simple:

O 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.

It has tied up abhyasis and preceptors in polemical knots while they strive to explain the seemingly straightforward meaning without coming across as proselytisers. Especially to those who either detest or avow this Commandment from the Old Testament: You shall have no other Gods but (or before) me.

I found it strangely inconsistent with Babuji's writings on Brahman in Reality at Dawn, where brahma-laya - devolution into Brahman - is termed the final state. He describes no God or Guru as an intermediary there.

Yet, a different perspective came up when the real goal was considered as a spiritual condition or state:

• Master refers to the inner Master.

• The inner Master in an abhyasi's heart is linked to the inner Master of a Guru.

• A Guru whose inner Master is in brahma-laya can transfer, through this link, increasingly subtle experiences and conditions to a regular practitioner, as the practitioner advances.

• For the Guru, brahma-laya is both infinite and dynamic. There is no final static state.

• Inner Master-inner Master transfer is completely controlled by the practitioner's interest and regularity of practice. The transfer may then occur naturally and automatically by osmosis as the abhyasi matures and needs less hand-holding.

• Interest leads to cooperation with the Guru.

• Trust and faith develops from experience, leading to surrender (pejoratively known as blind obedience).

• A practitioner who does not have sincere interest, cooperation, or surrender, unwittingly blocks, or cannot accept, what is transferred over the link.

• And even if something does get transferred, it cannot be retained or assimilated. [2]

Babuji describes a simple algebraic expression for laya or merger: if A = B, and if B = C, then A = C.

Since there are layers of saṁskāras around the heart, with regular cleaning (by the abhyasi, preceptor, and Master in Sahaj Marg), the link becomes more and more clear, or less and less clogged. It is then able to transfer more and more faithfully what the inner Master of the Guru continually gets from the Source. Until, at the highest,  A = B, and then A = C.

Algebraically, all very well!

But a jīva is subject to wishes and as long as he's a slave to them, he is unable or unwilling to co-operate, let alone surrender. How then can he progress? From practice, and practice alone, comes everything else. And this practice is nothing but simple attention, from irregular to regular meditation and thence to witnessing. Also called constant remembrance.

In sum, to get or attain a spiritual condition that is the base of all human existence, if I have a spiritual link with someone who has it, the most effective way for me to get that condition is by focusing my attention entirely on the link. Thus the "only God and power" bit. [3]

NOTES

[1] God alone is in fact the real guide or guru, and we all get light from Him alone.
     But only he who has cleaned his heart to that extent feels it coming therefrom,
     while a common man engrossed deeply in material complexities feels it not.
     He therefore stands in need of one of his fellow beings of high calibre to help him in that direction.
    We may call him guide, guru, master or by whatever name we like,
         but he is after all a helper and a supporter,
         working in the spirit of service and sacrifice.
    His role is by far the most important, for it is he who, as a matter of fact, pulls the real seeker up
    and enlivens him with the light which is lying in him under layers of grossness.

    ~Babuji

[2] Sufis, per Idries Shah, say spiritual evolution has its own incontrovertible rules. If an aspirant is spiritually deserving, a Master cannot refuse him. Per contra, if he is not deserving, a Master cannot serve or help him. Especially not the way he wants. Or how he thinks he deserves to be helped.

[3] Babuji said that God has no mind. So for "only God and power", if puruṣa-viśeṣa or Special Personality is under reference, this inner Master is īśvara, one beyond saṁskāras. Yet, perhaps not inactive like the puruṣa in classical sāṁkhya . Whence the power part in "God and power". But I am still working out this explanation, so don't take it too seriously...

The absolute - time, space, and causation - redux

[Background: Stages in Vedanta - time, space, and causation]

The phrase - time, space, and causation - is often used by Vedantins to refer to Brahman or the Absolute as something beyond the three. But without clear definitions or real-world or commonsensical examples, people like me simply read and imagine a funny state of enlightenment! One without basis in understanding, let alone experience.

An attempt at a logical explanation:

Time is better phrased as Change since time does not work without change. Change of one thought to another makes one aware of thinking, for example. If the number and variety of one's thoughts increase, one perceives the thinking instrument or thinking mode is working faster or in less time.

Many terms used in time are recursive and difficult to define from first principles. E.g., duration or length of time or a unit of time is based on counting a repeating event. So many oscillations of a Cesium atom is one second. How do scientists know the Cesium atom oscillates eternally and so the number of oscillations is constant without referring to or measuring the time taken? Think about it!

It is easier to understand change, though. Change could be with respect to anything - space, time, thoughts, ideas, parts of one's system, direction, movement, and so on.

From observing constant change comes the idea of something that does not change at all, and is the backdrop against which other changes occur. E.g., when an object moves from one place to another, there is change in space and time. When it stays in the same place, there is change only in time. When it stays the same as directly observed over thousands of years and as indirectly observed over an even longer time, one may consider it eternal or even beyond time.

Now a problem is nothing tangible or physical seems unchanging in time. Even if change is gradual and over millennia, it still occurs. So humans started abstracting away things or attributes that change. At the same time, they had revelations or inspirations, or even better, internal experiences of subtler and subtler states with fewer and fewer attributes. This led to something having only three basic and very abstract features (not even attributes which may change): 

• it exists or is existence itself
• it is consciousness itself, and
• it is bliss itself.

Perhaps, these three can even be combined or reduced by saying consciousness and bliss exist eternally, before time. (Or perhaps not, see below). By eternally we mean quite simply that everything we sense and think about - around us and inside us - comes from something that exists positively (i.e., not absent or virtual or non-existent) before Creation and returns to it at Dissolution.

There is a very subtle problem here. Why should Creation, or better, Manifestation, occur at all? And if Brahman is static, what causes it to move and become this incessantly moving universe? There is no satisfying answer. Just two observations, or experiences, of eternal stasis at the transcendental level and eternal movement otherwise.

Thus far about Change and Time.

Space is independently arrived at, by observing things that have a limited shape or body, and then seeing spaces - empty areas or volumes between those things. Initially, air was probably considered as space. Later, air and space get separated since that which occupies space - matter, including air - moves around while space does not. Thus space manifests first, and then the things that occupy it manifest.

So far, so logical.

Going to an even subtler level, from the idea of existence itself comes something a bit more concrete and amenable to objective measurement (distance, direction, dimension, etc.). And here's the amazing part - since space manifested from Brahman - existence, consciousness, bliss - space gets them for free. That is, space now exists, is conscious, and is "bliss-y". Anything else that manifests also has these three features. Except that the degree of Consciousness and Bliss may vary. Arguably, I as a human - a volume of space encased in flesh and blood - am more conscious than a bit of outer space. And more bliss-y, as in more intensely happy.

From Change, leading to time and space, has come the idea of something beyond time and space. Now for causation.

When something is beyond time, or exists before time started and after time ends, it is beyond our usual notions of cause and effect. Normally, we look at simple, short intervals of time for cause and effect. Thus, I move my hand and hit a glass, which falls down, and breaks. So, my hand is the cause of the breakage of glass. Or if I am a glassmaker, I might make a glass and replace the broken one. Again cause and effect. Now, if something exists eternally - beyond Change or Time, would the question of its cause - how, and so when it occurred - arise at all? Obviously not! And hence, that something is beyond causation as well as beyond space and time.

Please note I don't claim this argument is the Truth or Reality. Just that it is possible to understand why time, space, and causation are oft-repeated like a mantra in Vedantic commentaries. And is more commonsensical than one would suppose from the bare phrase.