Periodically I’ll surf around the Internet searching for stuff on Sahaj Marg. As anyone could guess, the results vary widely and one is likely to find everything from the official sites of the practice to old “news” about scandals and blogs that report things like brainwashing and manipulation. I’ll say, though, that it isn’t terribly often that “new” results turn up in my searches. One thing that did turn up a number of months ago, which I hadn’t seen previously, was a video of our current guru, Parthasarathi Rajagopalachari. He’s affectionately known as Chari-ji and the aforementioned video really warmed me – I think partly because of his tone and word choice To me, he really sounds like the intonation of Wisdom), but also because of the actual message which I believe to be one that is unique to Sahaj Marg.
As it turns out (and I didnt know this until about 72 hours before this posting), the video is a snip-it of a three-part interview series Chari-ji granted in Northern India in May and June of 2011. I’m now reading a book called, “Sahaj Marg Meanderings” and you can imagine how pleased I was when even before page 15 I found myself reading words I had practically memorized from the video. This felt quite serendipitous!
I’ll add the video to this post so that you may enjoy it, too. In case accents are challenging for any listener / watcher of the video, there are subtitles. In “Sahaj Marg Meanderings,” there was a question about how the yogic transmission in Sahaj Marg works and why it’s effective. The sections of the interview (in the book) that brought about this explanation discussed briefly murti worship and the benefit of our yoga in using prefects to transmit to abhyasis, which is where the video comes into play.
My favorite part of the video is when Chari-ji briefly explains to his interviewers something that is really special. You see, throughout Hinduism one will find certain emphasis on one taking charge of his own destiny. Cultivating self-awareness and owning one’s karmas are immensely instrumental in that process – in fact, these things are vital. However, also throughout Hinduism one will find a tendency to lean on the gurus for that progression. We go to them and, placing our supposed “faith” in them, calling out the equivalent of “Save me – Save me.”
In Sahaj Marg things are somewhat different. In much the same way that home mandirs are viewed to be extentions of one’s local temple, in Sahaj Marg so are the abhyasis and specifically the prefects within Sahaj Marg. We are the temples of the One and our practice, in creating the conditions for unloading samskaras, allows us to essentially build and beauty our temple – which is really just a returning to a condition which has been concealed and covered up. Additionally, I find that the explanation in the video is quite practical and reasonable and I hpe it makes sense to you, dear reader.
There are other components of our practice, of course. And these elements have been veritable life savers for me in the last 6 weeks or so. But the real “where it’s at” in our practice, the element which is what enables our progression toward liberation (and even beyond that), is the transmission spoken of in the video.
Aum Shri Mahaganeshaya Namaha
Aum Shanti
Sthapati Samanvayam 