Bulletin No: 2015.89 – Saturday August 8, 2015

Bangalore Tour

Sunday 26th to Tuesday 28th of July 2015, Tiruvallur to Bangalore

We always want the best for ourselves. Why?

Master Chariji used to say that rains are signs of divine grace pouring. The celebration at Tiruvallur saw heavy downpours, literally. Brother Krishna was mentioning that the heaviest one was the equivalent of twenty-five percent of the rains of the entire year!

Kamlesh bhai spoke about an incident that happened during the bhandara. One of our brothers, an elderly, simple person, unknown to most, comes regularly to the ashram, meditates and does volunteer work. During the bhandara, many tents were flooded due to the heavy rains. Our brother was resting in the dry part of one of the tents. When he saw a family with a small child coming in looking for some dry space, he moved out of his dry area into the wet area to make space for this family. He simply spread a plastic sheet and his bedding on the wet area and continued his resting. The old man offered the best he had got and moved on. What to say of this? What a heart!

Kamlesh bhai asked the question, “We always want the best for ourselves! Are we ever willing to part with the best we have? In one tradition, the Lord tested his devotee by asking him to sacrifice the best he possessed! How many of us can pass such a test?”

After noon on Sunday the 26th, Kamlesh bhai started for Bangalore from Dwaraka. He reached Hosur by around 6:30 p.m. and conducted satsangh in the meditation hall. By late evening, he reached Bangalore.

On the 27th and 28th, Kamlesh bhai was busy giving sittings, meeting elderly abhyasis and children and preparing preceptors. There were many informal discussions about Heartfulness and its developments in one of the institutes in Mumbai. Sahaj Marg is now further building into a large independent movement. In the late evenings he went for walks with group of abhyasis, again discussing and enthusing all to participate in spiritual work.

During one of the evenings he was sitting with abhyasis. It was an interesting group. He said, “There are more children than abhyasis here,” and told children, “You are also like abhyasis. You do not meditate and they also do not meditate.” There was loud laughter! This interactive session touched so many aspects of spirituality.

Here are some questions and clarifications from the session:

Child: Master, where is Brighter World?

K: In your heart.

Child: Master, in what form do we go there in the Brighter World? Like babies or something else?

K: The soul reaches the Brighter World along with the subtle bodies it possessed.

Abhyasi: Master, do we have consciousness in the Brighter World?

K: Yes, they all have their subtle bodies with them.

Abhyasi: Where do we go during sleep?

K: During sleep or the samadhi state our subtle bodies become fine-tuned with each other.

Abhyasi: Master, most times I am aware that my reactions are the reaction of the ego. Yet many times I succumb. How to make sure we do not get involved in those reactions?

K: Be generous. Being generous not only means giving money. Be generous in letting go. Your reaction should be, "You be happy," and let go.

Abhyasi: Master, when somebody does harm to me he is actually doing me a favour, but he is getting a bad deal and accumulating bad karma. I feel bad for them.

K: Why do you worry about them? You can only pray.

This nice evening session ended with a call for dinner.

Sahaj Marg is simple

In one of the informal sessions, he narrated the story of the Guru who would make a disciple go through so many tests. Like building a hut or a cottage as much as five times, each time finding a fault and asking him to redo it. He would even physically beat up the poor disciple! All this to tame and prepare the disciple!

Kamlesh bhai mentioned that fortunately the Sahaj Marg method is simple. Anybody can take it up. Transformation comes through cleaning and transmission. We have only to cooperate by taking interest in our spiritual growth and constantly observing and adjusting ourselves.

The session kept going till late night, covering the topics of polarity, invertendo and many aspects of the Heart Region and how it encompasses all other regions within itself.

Wednesday, 29th of July 2015, Bangalore

Sahaj Marg is a movement

Kamlesh bhai was up and ready by early morning and met groups of abhyasis. During breakfast he mentioned that Sahaj Marg has to become a spiritual moment where all are involved actively with a sense of unity and loyalty towards each other. In such movements, all are equal and dedicated to a cause without hierarchy. Organisations are driven by a few individuals, where as movements are driven by all for a common cause.

What is the cause of Sahaj Marg? The spiritual awakening. The spiritually awakened individual leads a life full of Heartfulness.

Around 7:30 a.m., Kamlesh bhai left for the zonal ashram. On the way, he was training a sister on how to approach the Heartfulness workshop she was about to conduct for folks from the army.

While talking about the belief in God, he said, “There is nothing wrong in belief in God; we need to believe in God, but it should not become blind faith. I must move to the next level: I have this belief, but when will I ever realise that presence in the form of experience, and how to feel it?

“You can say, ‘We will meditate using the same method twice, once without pranahuti and once with pranahuti. The first time it will be a placebo sitting, and the second with the essence of Sahaj Marg.’”

He further said, “People have beliefs but these beliefs are without the backing of personal experience. The more the experience, the better the experience, the better the backing to our own beliefs. Without this backing, our beliefs are shallow and unconvincing, even to the person who believes. So, I would only request you not to be satisfied with beliefs. Take the next step of experiencing. We are here to make you experience. If you like it, we shall continue.”

He reached the zonal ashram by around 8:30 a.m. A long drive was covered very smoothly and even the traffic was relaxed and cooperative. Thousands of abhyasis had gathered and were waiting silently for this occasion. At 9:00 a.m. he conducted satsangh and gave a short talk.

“Sahaj Marg, as you all know, is a special path giving equal importance to the spiritual and material existence. Importance is given to lead a life without any exaggeration in any field. There should be absolute moderation in everything we perform.”

“Every now and then, through meditation, the cleaning process, constant remembrance, somehow we are again and again reset into a slightly higher mode of existence. Each experience transcends the previous one. Then, when we go out into the world with such experiences and conditions and perform our daily duties as doctors, as nurses, as IT professionals, as drivers, as whatever we are, we must infuse that condition. When I cook, if my hands touch that food and my eyes meet the person I am serving, it must infuse that condition that I have enjoyed and been gifted by my Masters. Even when I am shaking hands with someone, something from me must radiate out, consciously to start with and then it becomes an automatic reflex action.”

He further elaborated on how to make use of the condition gifted by the Masters:

“I would like you to ponder over how this can happen. Even when looking at people, serving people, listening to people, let it touch their hearts and ooze out. Let it touch others; let it touch their hearts. Thus, whatever has been instilled in us, that condition is magnified through such dynamic action.

“The static condition, which otherwise would have gone into our subconscious mind and been lost in oblivion, now we are consciously trying to make it come out, exteriorising it, and thus intensifying, magnifying whatever we have received as gifts from above.

“It is very easy to make such static conditions dynamic. Our interest should be that, ‘Yes, I must magnify this.’ There is no point in receiving something and letting it go into some sort of a cemetery, the inner cemetery. The heart then becomes a cemetery of conditions. We don’t want that to happen. However great a condition may be, it must not become a dead object. It must become dynamic. Its fragrance must go far and wide through our contacts.

“These contacts need not just be immediate. When we think of someone, we can pray to Master that that person is also imbibing the conditions that I have earned today. Let us be generous not only with money but with such conditions.”

Love all and hurt none

After satsangh, Kamlesh bhai was attending to various matters and at lunch there was a discussion on the banner displayed in the meditation hall, which read, “Love all, hurt none”. Kamlesh bhai said, “This is a divine law.” He further elaborated that hurtful words cause more pain and damage then physical hurt. Thoughts have power to hurt; hurtful thoughts with feelings are curses.

All abhyasis are equally responsible

At 5:00 p.m. Kamlesh bhai conducted satsangh and gave a talk inviting all to participate in the great spiritual movement.

“Good evening. I would like to share with you all a very important idea. Please think about it and then you can explore it further. You know that our Mission was established in 1945 by our Pujya Babuji Maharaj. Prior to that, Lalaji Maharaj trained a few of his friends in the same town, and his relatives around Fatehgarh. It was mostly a local affair, restricted to one or two districts. That little movement assumed the form of an organisation in 1945 under the auspices of Pujya Babuji Maharaj as its first president. Our Master took it to the world in more than one hundred countries where we have very dedicated abhyasis.

“With this growth, there is joy and at the same time there are problems with which we suffer. One of the biggest drawbacks with the structured, organisational approach is that there are various functionaries – ZiCs, CiCs, RiCs, and so many in-charges – and somehow it is taken amiss that these are the only people who will be looking after the Mission. This is an inherent problem with organisation, the structured programs. The general membership tends to remain quiet and less interested in routine affairs in an organisation.

“If Sahaj Marg is a movement, not an organisation, and if the Sahaj Marg movement has to really touch the hearts of people, all of us will have to become conduits. That must become our cause and how are we going to do it? People say, ‘Oh when you sit by a saint you feel calmness, but who has time to even sit with you?’ These days are special. Our own family members find it difficult to have two minutes of our time. So we have to make conscious efforts at least with our family members, and let’s implore and demonstrate the worth of Sahaj Marg in a very scientific way.

“Suppose a person has been meditating for a number of years in system X, whatever may be that system. We invite such individuals to ‘Come, experiment with us. Since you are already meditating, you know what meditation is, and the effects of meditation. I will give you our method.’

“First meditate with them as per our method, but without transmission. Then we walk them through the process of relaxation that is found at www.Heartfulness.org. Download it, walk them through the relaxation and immediately start them on meditation.

“I know that only preceptors can introduce others, but I am requesting you to start it in such a way that we are not infringing on the principles of Sahaj Marg. Suppose your friend is going to take a sitting as an experiment. Call one of your preceptor friends and say, ‘I am going to sit with a friend of ours. Please do the work from wherever you are. He wants a sitting at this time.’ Time is precious and once that person has undergone this experience he will himself say, ‘How it is possible?’ because he has been meditating for a number of years.

“So I wish you all to take this as a spiritual movement, a spiritual awakening throughout the world. Let the world know that there is Shri Ram Chandra Mission and there is Sahaj Marg, that is here to make a difference in their lives.”

Kamlesh bhai had sent two abhyasis who were travelling with him to conduct Heartfulness session for a government services division. In a single session a new batch of 350 seekers joined this meditation movement! Most of the participants were from the same region as the facilitator abhyasis. It happened automatically without prior knowledge: a masterly stroke.

Thursday, 30th of July 2015

Kamlesh bhai was up, ready and working in the early morning. He then conducted sittings for the group of seekers from the previous day’s Heartfulness workshop.

Presenting the practice of Sahaj Marg in stages to newcomers in Heartfulness programs

After breakfast he sat with a group of abhyasis and within minutes the discussion was on how to reach more and more seekers. He gave a practical demonstration of how we can help newcomers, saying: “The first introductory class should be about why meditation, then we teach them how to meditate, then we give them the method without transmission, relaxation, the method with transmission, letting them have comparative experiences. They can then feel that, yes, transmission can make a difference.

“Then you can talk about what is the source of this transmission, so that automatically Master’s role comes into the picture after few classes. Then we teach them how to do the cleaning after one or two weeks, to deepen the experience in meditation. “Now let us do cleaning,” and walk them through the cleaning. Don’t just give the method, hold their hand and walk them through it, like the way we give commands for relaxation.

“Like that, you tell them to sit alert, be fully alert all throughout the body, and then focus only on the back side from the top of their head to the tail bone, imagining their back from where complexities and impurities are going away. This should be done very slowly almost like dragging. ‘All complexities and impurities are going away in the form of smoke or vapour. Increase the speed of this process accelerate it.’ Let this go on for fifteen to twenty minutes and then say, ‘Now that you are feel lighter, imagine the sacred current from the Source is descending and entering your system, helping you do this cleaning. The same sacred current is pervading throughout your body, and now your whole system, your entire body, is becoming sacred and purified.’ This thought should be there. So you walk them through the process of cleaning from the beginning till the end. Do it on two or three occasions and then they cannot make a mistake.

“Then of course the prayer: you walk them through it line by line the same way. And there is something else we should tell our abhyasis. Almost all of us try to offer prayer at bedtime, as this is the prescribed time. But our lifestyle is such that by the time we hit the bed we are so tired, and when we attempt the prayer we are gone at the first line. So there is no time to think of the meaning of the prayer or contemplate on the meaning of the prayer or slip into the mood (Vo aata hi nahi hei). So we have to practise prayer when we are fully alert around 3 p.m. or 4 p.m. or 6 p.m. so that we understand the meaning, and then in the night we will be able to grasp it better.”

It was 9:00 a.m., time to start the next part of the tour. Kamlesh bhai left for Anantapur. So much happened in such a short tour. Master uses every minute for our betterment. Sahaj Marg and its Masters are precious gift to humanity.