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 wellspring 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.
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