"God has hidden himself inside your hearts and exposed you.
Hide yourselves and expose God! This is the real sadhana."

We work on ourselves, do what we call 'sadhana' - therefore we are sadhakas. Or we do abhyas, therefore we are called abhyasis. The teaching has never changed, you see. When Krishna was asked by Arjuna, "My mind is wandering, my mind will not remain still, you are talking of this and that, what on earth do you expect me to do?" Krishna had no other answer but to say, "Do abhyas." Except abhyas there is no other way. That was true at the time of Krishna. That is true today at the time of my Master. It shall be eternally true, because there is no other way.

TYPES OF ABHYASIS:
There are two types of abhyasis - One class is apparently highly cooperative at the conscious level but the resistance is all inside, hard as a rock. This class, Master compares to the mango fruit which has a soft, pulpy exterior but a hard stone inside. The other class are externally and consciously tough. It would appear that they do not agree with anything the Master says or does. Resistance appears to be considerable. Yet inside, the cooperation is something extraordinary. Such individuals are compared to the almond which has a hard shell on the outside but a soft, sweet kernel inside.

Sant Kabir describes two major types of disciples; manmat and gurumat. (1) The manmat type are there for their selfish aims, and such aims rarely if ever, conform to the aims of the organization, or to what is offered by the Guru. They play the game as they see it and have no concern for the general welfare of the whole. They are rarely able to achieve any worthwhile spiritual goal, says Kabir. (2) The gurumat disciple, on the other hand, has nothing but the Guru in his mind, and his sole approach to spiritual life is one of total obedience to the Guru, knowing that in such obedience lies his welfare, total welfare in all the walks of his life. They are also too few, says Kabir, with an almost audible sigh of regret, but adds that but for them, the organisation would have no need nor justification to exist.

WHEN SHOULD A PERSON COMMENCE SPIRITUAL SADHANA?
Master said, "Really speaking the process should begin with conception. Lalaji used to say this, that this was the correct moment for commencing sadhana. But how to fix the moment of conception? It is not possible, and so the work cannot be practically commenced then. Therefore what we do is to transmit to the mother while she is carrying, and the transmitted power will automatically reach the baby in correct dosage. One should never transmit direct to the child - this can be highly dangerous. But we should only transmit to the mother, to her heart, as we normally do." What Master said serves to emphasise the need for the real search to commence as early as possible - the earlier the better.

Why then 18 years has been fixed to start sadhana? We don't admit the children before they are 18, except in very exceptional cases. Why eighteen? They should be mature enough to know what they want, and why they want it. Many of us know what we want. But we don't know why we want it. That is an even stronger thing that we should develop. "Why do I want this?" We should know what we want, why we want it, how to get it. So, that age has been fixed.

IMPORTANCE OF DAILY SADHANA:
The problem of the good beginning is like the old English proverb, "Well begun is half done." Unless we are able to start the day in the right way, we cannot end it in the right way. So this is the problem of sadhana, not how to continue it but how to begin it. And, unfortunately because there are days and nights, every day becomes a new beginning. So the man who even begins well on one day is not able to catch up the next morning. If you miss one day then you are going to miss, you do not know, how many days! I know from personal experience that unless I walk everyday, I cannot walk. I miss one day, then next day I am inclined to be a little lazy - "I have already missed yesterday, what about today? Doesn't matter, two days. Tomorrow onwards I will walk a little more for a week. I will make up."

I think I must point out one possibility in nature, that there is never anything to make up. A man may not sleep for sixteen nights or days altogether, yet one night's sleep is enough. But this does not apply in spirituality. In spirituality we have to do everyday. If you miss one day, you cannot make up for it again. Because in spirituality there is no cumulative effect. It is moving on from one state to another state, and if I get stuck at one state, I lose time, and time gone is gone forever. We cannot recall the time and say, "Well, today I will run in spirituality." There is no running, there is no sleeping, there is no walking to be made up. Here that is not possible. Who is to take you too fast? So, if you are sensible and you proceed from there, the time lost is forever lost.

So, actually, what we are dealing with in Sahaj Marg, this wonderful spiritual system of ours, is time utilisation. If I lose one meditation - I know many abhyasis who come for these gatherings and try to make up for all the lost time by taking sixteen sittings in one day from sixteen different preceptors, hoping against hope that, somehow all the lost time will be made up - it is not possible. An empty tank can only be filled up once. It has to be consumed before you can fill it up again. You cannot go on allowing the tap to be opened and saying, "Twenty-four hours I will fill the tank;" it will only overflow. This is what happens when we don't do our regular sadhana and we go to preceptors who, perhaps unwisely, though kindly, give us more sittings. Babuji says, "It is useless." It is all flowing out. In many cases it just goes and bounces back, the transmission.

In fact, meditation is a process of digestion. Babuji Maharaj always used to say, "I give this much, but they don't digest it." "How do I digest?" I asked Babuji. He said, "Meditate." While there is a restriction on not meditating more than one hour at a time, there is no restriction on the number of times you can meditate. During meditation, the system absorbs all the transmission that He has given to us. The heart becomes capable of receiving more, and He is transmitting more. So it is advisable that we meditate as often as we can.

In fact, I know abhyasis who have come up in Master's estimation and have made very fast progress beyond all expectation, who used to meditate in trains and planes and cars. After all, when Master gives us so many facilities, deservingly or undeservingly, we must put them to the best possible use. Babuji prescribes one hour in the morning. The other meditations you can do even for ten minutes, twenty minutes, forty minutes, but not more than one hour at a time.

So, meditation is a process of digesting the spiritual sustenance that our Master pours into us. Therefore the more we meditate, the faster we progress. Meditation becomes a habit, meditation becomes an activity which we not only cannot stop but which we start enjoying so much that we prefer it to everything else. Then comes a time when your friend may say, "Why don't you go to the beach?" "No, I would prefer to meditate." And everybody else thinks you are a bit crazy. Perhaps we are. It doesn't matter, you see. If a crazy man can get to the goal, why not be a little crazy! Babuji has always said that a spiritual path is a path of madness. One who cannot develop this madness for the beloved, will surely lose in the battle for love.

We must be able to do our daily sadhana, especially the cleaning in the evening, do it systematically, do it with dedication, do it with a sense of purpose that, "I have to remove from my system those things which are doing harm to me, which are sort of blocking my path." I hear many people come up and tell me, "Sir, even during cleaning I have these thoughts." Ignore thoughts. Of course, when you bathe, the water flowing off your body will be a little dirtier than the water which flows on to you. But wait till clean water flows off you. That is the time to stop your bath.

There are persons who do devoted service at the various celebrations such as selling books, looking after the kitchen, serving food, clearing the premises and so on. But if they do not meditate regularly and do not develop devotion and eventually love for the Master, then their progress virtually stops. My Master has clarified that while service is no doubt good and necessary too, nevertheless, without sadhana a person cannot really progress in spirituality.

There are cases of persons who do the sadhana with obvious seriousness and with visible regularity too. In most cases there has been lack of progress and my Master has once again been gracious enough to clarify that sadhana without love for the Master has no meaning, and added in His typically gentle manner, "But I give them some crumbs of spirituality since no one can be permitted to go away with empty hands after coming to me."

So we cannot stop the sadhana. We have to do it. We have to meditate very rigorously, with great dedication to the path. We have to do the cleaning systematically, every evening. No human being has a right to think that he is too clean and he does not need cleaning. Even emperors have to bathe. It's not only the labourer in the fields who has to bathe, even emperors have to bathe.

This is the importance of sustained sadhana. A man who can bring his mind under his regulation, still it, and then go into that bliss, that ecstasy of diving into himself, only he knows what it is worth.

THE PROCESS OF SADHANA:
Sadhana is nothing but digging inside ourselves in a way, in a sense, and all the refuse that we dig out of that, are called samskaras, grossness, impressions which have covered the water over, the water of spirituality, the water, the well- spring of divinity which is covered under the grossness. In a sense it is like mining for gold: dig and dig and dig until you find it. You cannot say, "I will dig for two days and then stop." You cannot say, "I will dig for two years and then stop." There can be no time limit. All that we have is the assurance that it is there. The assurance that it is there because great people before us have found it to be there. God Himself has said, "It is there," if you chose to believe Him. But it is open to all as an experiment to see.

Sadhana is a daily affair; and this battery that we have inside us, it is not enough we charge it annually or biannually. It has to be charged every day. So, the essence of Sahaj Marg practice is the daily Sadhana - morning meditation, evening cleaning, night prayer-meditation - and if these are successfully and devotedly done, everything else becomes secondary.

Sadhana is the foundation: without the foundation there is no house and without the house there is no protection, either from robbers and thieves or from the weather, inside the home. A house becomes a home, if when you go inside it, there is love; we are protected, we are cherished, we are nourished, we are looked after. Our growth is assured.

So let us strive to first lay a firm foundation of sadhana without bothering about the result. The result comes later. In every sense, this is Karma-Yoga; "Ma phaleshu kadachana." Why? Not because God denies the phala, or Guru denies the phala, but because the fruit is in your hands. If you can have a superstructure, if you are able to build the walls, then the roof can be supported on it. If you have the roof, then you have a house in which you can live; and there if you are able to bring the Master with your love, well, your family is complete: and as that famous song goes;

"The two of us are there; The key is thrown away;
And all is bliss for Eternity."

Therefore, sadhana is a foundation for us. Like all foundations, it disappears into the ground. We see only the walls. We don't expose foundation and guild them and paint them red and white. They bear us, they support us. This is an aspect of Dharma - that which bears, that which supports. But it must be invisible.

My sadhana is to cooperate with Him in such a way that I become cleaner and cleaner, or, as my Master used to say, lighter and lighter, feeling the lightness so that the heaviness is gone eventually. I can raise in a literal sense but not in the sense of yogic raising of limitations, but raise in a spiritual sense so that the whole of human endeavour can be fulfilled.

THE PURPOSE OF OUR SADHANA:
The aim of our sadhana or what we call practice, is to become subtler and subtler, throwing off our grossness, and finally reaching that ultimate state of Divinisation. While still remaining a human being, we can still parallel the divine existence, by being inside of the essence of nothingness, ourselves. So that is the goal of the Sahaj Marg system which we are trying to practice.

All that the aspirant yearns for is to be with his Master, his true beloved. As we bestow our love, Master bestows his love on us, and this is Grace, this is Liberation, and this is the total realisation of the aim of spiritual sadhana.

Sadhana is to make your presence felt. So that He may know, 'There is something waiting to receive my Grace, my blessings.' So it is sadhana that makes us deserving. Sadhana is very necessary. Sadhana is a must; because Babuji has said, we have to do it. For no other reason except for the single purpose of obedience to my Master's wish. So sadhana we have to do, but for the Master's sake, and not believing that sadhana will give us something, but that sadhana will make us fit to receive His Blessings which He must give me.

ANCILLARIES:

1. READING OF MISSION BOOKS:
Reading means we do something for our mental level, for our intellect. So again depending upon what we take in, by way of assimilable stuff from outside, we become that which we assimilate. If it is all the modern trash, we become trash ourselves. So read that which can contribute to your growth, to your well being, to your development. Don't read trash. Let us read something that will train our minds, train our wills, train us how to think.

So I would suggest that apart from your daily sadhana, you should devote half an hour every evening, or at any time convenient to you, to a reading of Master's literature. Do it systematically, do it everyday. Every time we read these books, we find a new meaning in them. Therefore they should be repeatedly read.

Apart from your sadhana - we all have time; let us not fool ourselves into thinking we are too busy (I am yet to see a man who is too busy that he could not eat, or he could not sleep, or he could not read his "Illustrated weekly") - let us set apart half an hour every day, to reading Master's literature, in a real way of study, not as if we are reading a novel.
Let us set apart with absolute determination, inflexible determination, the necessary period of time for sadhana, the necessary period of time for the reading of the literature. And instead of asking questions to preceptors or other abhyasis and getting confused - because you will receive as many answers as there are people, who are willing to answer these questions - let us look to the source itself for our answer. By source I mean, the physical source, which is the literature; better still, the source in your heart; because if you sit with a question in your mind and meditate on it, the answer invariably comes. And that is the true answer.

2. LISTENING TO SPEECHES:
In listening to lectures, there are two things necessary. The first one is the discipline and the etiquette, that we should sit and listen when somebody is talking. And the second one is to be alert, so that we don't miss anything that may be in it, because we don't know when even a fool will talk some wise words. So, like everything in life, a thing is to be judged not by its size or length but by its content. And we cannot judge until we have heard a lecture fully. So we have to wait patiently.

When devoted people speak about the Master, we seem to go into some sort of a samadhi state, and I think that is how the original tradition of speaking, kathakalakshepa, (Spiritual discourse) arose - one of the ways of inuring the rest of the people with one's own inner condition, by reciting that or those qualities which we have fallen in love with, in the one whom we adore, whom we worship.

This is one of the ways of transmitting, I think. Even bhakti (devotion), that a bhakta (devotee), if he speaks in the sole consciousness of his Prabhu (the Lord), is capable of creating some sort of a similar condition in those who listen to him, provided they are attentive. It is like this physics phenomenon of resonance: something vibrates, and if something else is in harmonious vibration with it, you strike this and that vibrates.

And the facility with which some of the great speakers - again I repeat, not just intellectual speakers, because they don't generally convey much - but those who are able to speak with the fervour of love that is burning in their heart, it is amazing how much they can create in the hearts of a huge multitude, even ten thousand people, a hundred thousand people. Whereas the intellectual is struggling to impress, but often fails because he is demanding from the audience an intellectual reception.

Whereas a man like Mahatma Gandhi, Swami Vivekananda no doubt they were intellectuals, but they had thrown away their intellect as something like a boat with which they crossed the stream and then they now depended on the inner fires of their bhakti (devotion), their shraddha (faith), their love for divinity. And when they spoke, people heard; people not only heard, they listened. It is as if something is pulled out of them, their attention is pulled out of them and hooked onto the speaker like so many intangible waves of influence. Therefore the bhaktas, the sadhakas, the great saints have relied on speech. It is, of course, in a way transmission. Transmission of one's inner condition, not of the verbal content of what one says, but of what one has inside.

3. SERVING THE MASTER:
We are anxious to serve the Master not for his own sake but for the sake of the pleasure it affords us, or the reward that we expect such service to earn for us. In thus trying to serve him, we generally hinder him or obstruct him. So the first thing that one wishing to serve him sincerely must do is to try to ascertain his needs and wishes, and then act appropriately.

One can serve him by assisting him with the work of the Mission. The work of the Mission is his lifework, the purpose of his mortal existence. In assisting him in that work we certainly serve him in a more vital and necessary way.

I often wondered whether there was one way of serving him which one could call the highest way, or the noblest way, or perhaps even the most loving way of serving him. What is it that he wants from us? He wants us to 'become' that which he wants us to become. And in doing this lies the greatest service to the Master. He serves the Master most nobly, most lovingly, who becomes what the Master wants him to become.

4. UTILIZING TIME IN A BETTER WAY:
What has to be done today, must be done today, NOW - performing the duty of the moment at that moment itself, and fulfilling the responsibility to that moment - it is not to society, it is not to people, it is to TIME itself we are fulfilling a responsibility. Time tells, "My dear friend, I am here. I am passing." Have you answered this appeal? Forget God, forget society, forget friends. It is when the rain rains, the farmer must be ready with his field tilled, ready to sow the seed, ready to do the harvest. Otherwise he has to wait for the next rains. It may not come. Every farmer knows this, that he must be fully prepared.

"Time and tide wait for no man." And we also know ourselves the value of time. Those of us who wish to make money, say "I have no time, Sir, I have an appointment here. I have to go to the bank. I have to file the income-tax returns." They are rushing. 'Rushing' means, in one way, trying to overcome the speed of time itself, by making more use of that time, than time would normally allow us. And, we have this experience in meditation, that either time is shortened, when we have a one hour sitting and it looks like five minutes; or we have the elongation of time, when we have meditated five minutes and it looks like one hour. So, this is an indication that if man would but make the requisite effort, time can be lengthened or shortened. It is not just a mere matter of a subjective experience, or a subjective consciousness, that we feel time is lengthened or shortened.

It is my personal experience that time can be expanded in such a way that you can put eternity into one moment of time. Otherwise it is meaningless. If time is going to be like a foot-rule, the 'twelve inches' always a 'twelve inches,' what is the fun in trying to do more in less time? For one who works, time seems to be more than time itself. Like for one who wants to love or to be loved, love itself makes the way open for further love. It is the thing in which you participate, that enables you to participate in that thing itself. In some way, we have to make use of time to overcome time. And that is what we are doing in our spiritual sadhana.

What is wisdom? Live as if you are going to die the next moment. Not next day, not next year, the next moment. This is how we should conduct our lives - that the next moment I may not be here, so let me do this moment, everything I can possibly do, to ensure my future life. So that is the sense of urgency that must pervade our existence.

So we should not play the fool with time, but utilise time in such a way that we need less and less time for ourselves so that at the end of this process you feel you don't need any time at all. I think liberation means, in this sense liberation from time.

So, the message of the Master is very clear and very conclusive: Do today what must be done today, what has to be done today; and tomorrow will take care of itself. If you want to eat 20 years hence, an apple grown in your own garden, today you must plant the tree or the seedling. The more you postpone, the more you are going to postpone the result. Can you plant the seed 20 years after and hope to eat the apple on the same day? So the seeds of the future are sown in the present. And that is a daily affair. Tomorrow's business we do today. If today's job is done well, tomorrow's job is assured of success. What we do today is a foundation which is to be laid for tomorrow's edifice.

So in Sahaj Marg we have no possibility of deferring our action and saying, "well, I should do this 3 years hence, and then reap its benefits" - because in those 3 years we may accumulate so much more grossness, that we are unable to do anything after 3 years. We may become suddenly old, we may become suddenly unable to even sit down for meditation. That is why Master has said it is wise to begin meditation when you are still physically capable, mentally capable.

If you are not willing to commit yourselves, the Master is not going to commit Himself to us; because as Babuji has said, very clearly, that one who commits himself to the sadhana, to him the Master has to commit; to his progress the Master is committed, to his welfare the Master is committed. But if we just come and register our presence, I do not think that the Master has any commitment to us, in the way that He is bound to lift us up to this highest goal of human evolution. So we can commit the Master to our progress, to our welfare, to our spiritual evolution, only by our committing ourselves to His teachings.

We are familiar with the inexplicable fact that there are often abhyasis who appear to be very devoted and carryout the prescribed spiritual discipline with enviable thoroughness. But these very persons appear to stagnate. Why? An answer would be that they have confused the means with the end. To them the sadhana has itself become the goal, and they have verily missed the wood for the trees! This points to the fact that meditation can become "mechanical" and therefore static - a danger to be carefully avoided. Under the Sahaj Marg system of meditation the abhyasis are taught to avoid this pitfall. In our meditation we are required to keep the goal constantly before us. The firm idea that we are moving towards the goal is a very necessary one. It is this that makes our sadhana a dynamic process.

This brings awakening in the disciple himself because we have seen that the mental attitude of the disciple in undergoing the prescribed sadhana is more important than the sadhana itself. In fact, according to our Master a stage is reached when sadhana falls off, and that which can fall off is only a thrashed material. So the top priority is given to the mental aspect of an abhyasi's life rather than to the physical practices to be followed.

I believe that sadhana must be something which becomes germane to my inner existence. It is eternal. It goes on with me all my time, like breathing. I am not conscious of it but I am breathing all the time. So the perfect abhyasi is one who does not know he is an abhyasi. His abhyas is going on but he does not think of it as abhyas. He has a man whom he loves very much, totally perhaps, with whom he is totally identified, who is his goal, but he does not think he is my Master, or my father, or my son. He is and I am, and the two of us are journeying together, holding our hands.

So let us be sensible in our approach to the Master, let us be serious in our approach to the practice, let us be steadfast in our adherence to the goal, and let us feel totally dedicated to achieving that goal, realising that every second of our existence is precious.

So make up your minds that the day shall not break without my meditating, the sun shall not set without my cleaning and I shall not go to bed without my prayer-meditation. The rest will take care of itself.

So essentially, this is a spiritual adventure you see. We have to do our part. He does His part. As Babuji said, "If you take one step towards Him, He shall not fail in taking one step towards you." What is the difference? My one step is twelve or fourteen inches. His step is from there to here. But to make Him take that one step, we have to take this one step.

I pray that all of you will find the need for practice of paramount importance; and assiduously apply yourself to it, so that you are not lacking. Then it becomes His responsibility. We must be able to face Divinity and say, "My Master! My God! I have done what you have asked me to do; if I have achieved or not achieved, it is your problem."

"What I am doing for you is my duty,
what you are not doing for me is your duty."