Understanding Sahaj Marg/The Heartfulness Way practices

(Disclaimer: This is my personal understanding and so not to be taken as official Sahaj Marg/The Heartfulness Way explanations.

The terms may be understandable only to abhyasis and the ideas probably appreciated only by regular practitioners and/or trainers.

The general direction of each element is one way - to or from the inside.)

Two elements

Morning meditation - sitting from the inner Master

Evening cleaning - sitting from myself, supported by the inner Master

Two elements with a different perspective

Morning meditation - listening to the inner Master

Night introspection+prayer+meditation - communicating to/with the inner Master

Other elements

Individual sitting - sitting from the inner Master and mind-field of another abhyasi - the trainer, enhanced and supported by one's inner Master.

Universal Prayer and other sankalpas - undergirded by the inner Master, building and enhancing a positive attitude and supportive mind-field for humanity, and individuals and groups of humans. Initially. Then extending to all life.

Constant remembrance - real-time, as-needed, sittings and communication with the inner Master. To paraphrase Babuji - everything can be completed by constant remembrance; all the time it is charging. [1]

Group meditation - individual sittings for everyone in the group, plus work on interrelationships, plus work on group as a whole. This extends across all groups sitting at the same time in different locations.

Bhandara or celebration - group meditation with Grace. Grace can descend at any time, but it is certain and especially palpable during a bhandara, to which abhyasis across the world come. Perhaps the certainty is because they will change the mind-field of their own areas when they return.

NOTES

A sitting has only two activities - cleaning of the mind-field and transmission to it. Both activities are guided by prayer, and infused with universal, positive, sankalpas. For optimal effects, trainers should be in a state of positivity, gentleness, and humility. And realise the fragility and delicateness of the mind-field upon which the work is happening.

Transmission is always the same, the subtlest possible forceless-force. But when it goes through a mind-field, that absolutely pure, universal , attributeless love may get coloured and so become grosser. Hence the injunction that trainers should clean their mind-fields before giving sittings.

[1] Babuji in Shahjahanpur - Audio CD-1-02 Point of Intercommunication

03:30: I'm telling you, everything can be completed by Constant Remembrance.

Even meditation is not so useful as the Constant Remembrance, but we must do it. It has some specific purpose also. Meditation has some specific purpose also.

But you see, this Constant Remembrance is very useful.

Now I'm telling you: all the time charging. You are thinking of God and charging is there.

Love upon silencing the emotional mind

There are two aspects to thinking - mechanical or technological, and emotional and/or egotistic.

The first is a necessary part of human life, its dharma or ṛta. Its training and application occur both formally and informally.

There are two ways I know of by which the second aspect becomes silent. This training and application is absolutely personal and informal.

Such silencing is by removal of saṁskāras [1] as in a) Sahaj Marg cleaning, or b) through the much more onerous and finicky process of choiceless observation or bhogam without ahaṁkāra.

Per Jiddu Krishnamurti, the energy liberated or made tangible by this silence is Love.

Put differently, from sat-cit-ananda emanates the emotional layer of the mind (among other things). Resolving or silencing or merging that layer back into its source is laya. Thus exposing ānanda or Love.

The memory-less aspect of the emotional layer in laya, of  ānanda, is not appreciated enough.

Chariji once suggested meeting people every time as if for the first time. With minimal, perhaps zero, bias. This is a cure or a workaround for existing biases, and is another way to look at bhogam and resolution of the emotional layer.

For prevention, per Daaji, one should behave in such a way that biases or saṁskāras don't accumulate at all. Or, re-accumulate, after they have been removed.

Maxims Six, Seven, and Eight of the Ten Maxims of Sahaj Marg from Babuji directly address the behaviour to adopt to avoid saṁskāras.

Put so baldly, it sounds like a transactional mentality.

Yet the Master of Sahaj Marg is a living example of memory-less loving behaviour. As were the earlier Masters.

NOTES

[1] Daaji's wonderfully evocative phrase  is "emotional residue".

Imagine going inward

Imagine your body, slowly dissolving, senses and organs relinquishing their places in your mind.

Imagine your mind losing the weight and the strong, gross vibrations from the body fading away.

Imagine your mind slowly becoming aware of the lighter vibrations that underlay the bodily vibrations.

Imagine a world without physical sensations, just vibrations, subtler and subtler, presences and entities in vibrational states alone. [1]

Imagine flailing around, drowning, desperately trying to make sense of a world shorn of decades, no, millennia, of familiar vibrations; trying to grab something, anything; seeking stability somehow, anyhow.

Imagine being too afraid to go to even lighter levels and frantically struggling to get back to familiar vibrations. Gasping, trembling, you come back to your body. Shaken, you swear - never again!

.

.

.

Now, imagine the same journey with a benign presence which takes you inwards, level by level, coaxing you to enjoy the ever-unfolding peace and joy. And brings you back to your body awareness gently, your mind at peace with all the levels, remembering how the weight built up gradually on the way back.

With every session, the dissolution, the laya, into subtler levels, happens more and more easily, faster and faster. Lesser and lesser effort is needed to surrender and relax consciously. The muscle memory first for body relaxation, then the mind memory for different levels.

.

.

.

Now, imagine a careless, not-so-mindful presence being the guide. One that can go instantly to a particular level and has become totally obsessed by the vibrations there. In that whirlpool of a presence, imagine your mind also reaching that level violently, unable to stop itself, or slow itself, drowned. Your mind doesn't know how it reached there or the details of the way back. But its memories across millennia of the physical vibrations take it back. Yet the sheer ecstasy of the subtler level may take your mind back, especially if that presence is around. The distaste at the violent journey lingers and destabilizes the mind, rendering the practice of regular inward journeys troublesome.

NOTES

[1] This world is reached every night by those who get to NREM/deep sleep [2],[3]. Those conscious in deep sleep can remember the experience. The others experience but don't remember.

[2] Technically, per Vedantic psychology, mental activity stops completely in sushupti. So a better phrasing may be deepest levels of REM sleep.

[3] In Indian philosophies, e.g. Sahaj Marg, that discuss post-death experiences say the non-material aspects of a human being try to return to familiar environments, basically another human body ASAP. Deep meditative experiences that go entirely beyond the physical senses give a foretaste of death.

Understanding the inner universe

 I wonder.

The simple notion that there is a universe inside each of us seems difficult to get across.

Or, that, to know it, one turns inward.

That it reveals itself is really the most difficult to understand, let alone accept.

Or that our biases and preconditions, built up so carefully over the years, colour and even block revelations.

Or that its rules are different.

After all, we're so used to the idea of struggling to attain things in the external universe. Of adding to our minds. Relinquishing is tough. Especially ideas and concepts, of ourselves in relation to others.

Acceptance and grace

Choose cheerfully and totally;

either you accept your life and advance in wisdom,

[OR advance in wisdom, by your practice, and accept your life]

or you refuse and stagnate,

and then you have the same road to walk, minus the grace.

Paraphrased from Babuji's message of Sunday, August 1, 1999 – 10:00 a.m. Entire (edited and original) whisper below.

[Edited]

Whispers from

The Brighter World

Beloved Master 

Revered Babuji Maharaj

Sunday, August 1, 1999 – 10:00 a.m.

To you we ask - endure your current life, and as much as possible with a smile. Cheerfully.

Many of our aspirants are disappointed; they thought that having a Master and being on a path like Sahaj Marg would eliminate all their family and health problems.

But if you all were to know our lives well, you would have seen that we were not spared.

You settle up the remainders of previous lives and the mistakes made in this one.

No path, no Master, whatever his stature, will be able to resolve all your small problems to your liking. The objective - of the path - does not lie there. You must understand it.

If you follow us with the motivation to remove life's problems - that will not happen, you will be disappointed.

Our goodwill cannot make you walk on a path of roses.

The roses of life, you do get them, but also their thorns.

Study the lives of all the great Masters who punctuated history, and see what they experienced to reach the highest level of holiness, and all that they went through.

It is only by going deeper and deeper inside yourselves that you will find not only answers, but also the strength to endure what you have to go through in this life.

Without this obligatory process, evolution is not possible.

Choose cheerfully and totally:

either you accept your life and so advance in wisdom,

(OR advance in wisdom by your practice and accept your life)

or you refuse and stagnate,

and then you have the same road to walk, minus the grace.

Babuji

[Original]

Whispers from

The Brighter World

Beloved Master

Revered Babuji Maharaj

Sunday, August 1, 1999 – 10:00 a.m.

To you, we ask you to endure your current life, as much as possible with a smile.

Many of our aspirants are disappointed; they thought that having a Master and being on a path like Sahaj Marg would eliminate their family and health problems.

If you all knew our lives well, you would see that we were not spared.

You settle up the remainders of previous lives and the mistakes made in this one.

 No path, no Master, whatever his stature, will be able to resolve your small problems to your liking.

The objective does not lie there. You must understand it. If you follow us with this kind of motivation, that will not happen. Our goodwill cannot make you walk on a bed of roses.

The roses, you have them, but the thorns too. Study the lives of all the great Masters who punctuated history, and see what they experienced to reach the highest level of holiness, and all that they went through.

It is by going deeper and deeper inside yourselves that you will find not only answers, but the strength to endure what you have to live.

Without this obligatory process, there is no possible evolution.

You should resign yourselves; either you advance in wisdom and you accept your life, or you stagnate and refuse, and you have the same road to walk, minus the grace.

Babuji

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.

Commonsensicality of laya

 In Sanskrit, laya means mergence or even dissolving. In spirituality or yoga terminology, laya has a very specific or technical meaning, a grosser effect dissolving into its subtler cause. This technical meaning and how laya occurs is easy to understand with an everyday example.

If I move a few chairs around for guests, I work at mental and physical levels. I - and they - may move the chairs more than once as well. In this set of actions, I think, I decide, I move a chair, I look and act physically, and I gauge and compare, and I move again, and so may the guests. But all this happens quite fast, and indeed, breaking down the mental and physical activities as I have done may actually take longer to read and understand!

We switch between physical and mental activities all the time without thinking about how we do it. Switching from physical to mental or going up or going to subtler levels of thinking is laya. It is not a physical or even a mental dissolving in the sense of an actual transformation (though that also happens). It is simply our attention going from one level of activity to its next or earlier subtler levels. This can happen even at physical levels - moving chairs generally to one location and then turning them to form a circle, for example, are grosser and subtler physical acts, comparatively. They require more and less effort, respectively. That is, more and less energy. 

It is easy to understand that mental activities take less energy than physical activities. But the continued reduction in the amount of energy as attention goes to subtler and subtler levels may not be as obvious.

What does this mean in the context of meditation? Attention moving from the world outside one's body, to one's organs (indriyas), to one's thoughts, to thoughts at subtler and subtler levels - in terms of greater and greater abstraction, less and less detail, more and more universality - transcendence - is laya. Babuji gives a simple sequence - actions to thoughts to ideas.

Those who only look at spirituality and think about it without practising it may have the idea that laya is a one-time activity. One goes up to the highest level once and that's it! Boom! Enlightenment! Life changes forever! That does happen, but not exactly as expected.

Unless one also stops existing at physical and mental levels, activities must obviously continue at those levels after reaching even the highest level. (There's also the slight problem that the highest or subtlest level keeps receding - there's always a higher or subtler level!)

Having reached a subtle level, it makes sense that one has to return to that level regularly to remember what it's like. One secret of spiritual practice is that reaching a state once, no matter how, is enough to reach it again just by willing it. But its experience may not be the same.

Laya is simple in many ways. Its theory is both elegant and reassuring. Elegant in the simplicity of the reduction of effort. Reassuring in that since we have come through those subtle levels to become who we are now, we can return at will. Secondly, and more theoretically, all subtler cause states are active in a grosser effect state. A simple example is an electric light in which subatomic particles or energy continue to be active at the subatomic level even when the light is switched on. And when it's switched off. In Babuji's terms, an idea continues to be active while we think and act. So the idea of a meeting drives thoughts and activities, including arranging chairs in a circle. We may not keep reiterating the idea while thinking or acting upon it, but it's still there.