Pipe Distribution

Image taken from Google Image search

 

I receive a number of emails daily from the Sahaj Marg. There are newsletters, and daily inspiration emails, as well as a number of other kind of emails that are issued daily.

In one email from last week, something caught my attention. It is a Daily Reflection email and while the quotes recently have been a lot of things from Kamlesh-bhai, this one was something our last master, Shri Parthasarathi Rajagopalachari ( Chariji ), had said. I’ll share his words below. (The source is Heartspeak 2004, Volume 2, Chapter “Giving Without Restraint”)

“So it starts with your heart being a tiny pipe. The more you distribute, that pipe becomes bigger and bigger. It becomes a six inch pipe, a twelve inch pipe, until the whole universe is a pipe.”

The thing that caught me about this is the use of the word distribute. I chewed on it for a minute by myself and then reached out to one of my favorite preceptors locally. She started to email me a response and then we agreed to chat about it after that evening’s meditation (it was Wednesday). That night, after meditation and after most of the others had gone, she and I chatted about this. I now can’t do our discussion justice – we discussed, among many things, what I have come to call a “vishwaroopa moment.” The immensely successful Oprah has what I think she calls “Aha moments,” and I think this is my mind’s equivalent of it.

For anyone unfamiliar with the Bhagavad Gita, it’s a conversation between Arjuna (a warrior and taxi driver) and Krishna (god, in a human body). Arjuna is pretty messed up and right there in the middle of the battlefield Krishna tries to enlighten the despondent Arjuna. He offers one approach and then another, example after example, and Arjuna just ain’t gettin’ it. Finally, Krishna’s like, “Look here, you fool….” and reveals his “true” form. Arjuna is given a vision of Truth and how very all-encompassing It is. He sees, literally, everything. All life forms, cosmic structure and activity, stars, teeth, eyes …. all before him – EVERYTHING. And, as expected, he freaks out and want Krishna to turn off the fireworks because they’re more than overwhelming. These moments (Oprah’s “Aha” and my “Vishwaroopa”) aren’t exactly synonymous. But for the purposes of this blog and this post, they are. They both represent a widening of knowledge and wisdom and understanding and experience. My conversation with the preceptor touched on a vishwaroopa moment, kinda.

She explained many things to me and collectively they added up to a very complete answer to my question – an answer so complete, in fact, that sooooo much was encompassed in it that when I tried to comprehend it as a single unit my mind’s eye kinda just stepped back all wide and whatnot and was like, “WHOA.” I’ll try to share, in a rather abbreviated way, what I took from our conversation that night.

1. A part of the Sahaj Marg / Heartfulness practice is the rearranging of one’s consciousness.
2. The movement involved in rearranging consciousness creates a kind of “vacuum.”
3. In the aforementioned vacuum, there lies potential for greater and greater transmission, increasing in proportion to the growth of the aforementioned vacuum.
4. The more we clean and practice this path of Heartfulness, the bigger (progressively) our “heart pipe” becomes.

This might not sound too fantastic from where you sit, but from where I currently sit on this path it’s incredible. It’s a Vishwaroopa Moment. Our lineage masters place so much hope in the abhyasis. Enormous faith is placed in us that we can be as effectual as they are – and so much of the picture has been revealed. You practice, rearrange your own consciousness (and in that process manage various impressions / samskaras and their related karmas), create the vacuum which is refilled with divinity of pureness, and as all this happens it continues and self-perpetuates – the pipe widens and eventually engulfs all and All. And so we come to know, experience, and be what Hindus call Brahman.

It’s amazing how much can be communicated by a master / guru in so few words.

Aum Shri Mahaganeshaya Namaha | Aum Shanti

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Hanuman Jayanti

I find that as I dive deeper into my spirituality I’m less and less inclined to outwardly celebrate most religious holidays. I still do celebrate religious holidays – and plenty of them. I observe Easter, Christmas, Diwali, Basant Panchami, Pancha Ganapati, Ganesha Chaturthi, and Sankatahara Chaturthi / Sankashti (on a monthly basis). Outwardly, for most of those holidays listed, I celebrate in the form of eating too much food and hanging out with my family. Inwardly, however, these holidays and others hold great significance and meaning and I’ll likely never give that part of them up no matter how the outward observance evolves.

One of the blogs I subscribe to is a food blog. Recently, that blog published two posts dealing with two Hindu holidays. One of them is the celebrated birthday of the god Hanuman. Hanuman is known as the “monkey god,” but I never call him that because linguistically it feels like it suggest he’s the god of monkeys. Like calling Ganesha the “elephant god.” It’s just not the cleanest fit. Anyway, if you want to read that post, you can click here and do so, but I thought to share some things about Hanuman Jayanti with you here.

So here’s a bit about Hanuman Jayanti you may not have known….

1. It’s date can vary significantly. It is celebrated as early s January 9th and as late as mid-April.
2. It is said that a few thousand years before Ramayan time (in the latter part of Tretayuga – 2 million years ago), several divine souls came to Earth and modified the bodies of ape like creatures through evolutionary methods so that the animals could play the role of vehicles for these divine souls. That’s how the Vanara race with reddish orange color (hues of deep orange and light red) was established before the Ramayan.
3. On Hanuman Jayanthi devotees visit temples and apply sindoor (kumkum, a red powder) to their foreheads from Hanuman’s idol as Hanuman himself was of that colour.
4. Hanuman is the symbol of strength and energy. Hanuman was born at sunrise. He is totally selfless and without his own agenda.
5. There are only two Gods with the power to control the nine planets, especially the influence of Saturn. Lord Hanuman is one of them.
6. By giving solace to Sita he is a symbol of hope to suffering, oppressed people. He is a true brahmacharya with control over the senses and chiranjiva, the immortal, or ever living.

Aum Shri Mahaganeshaya Namaha | Aum Shanti

Sams-karma-s

Image taken from Google Image search

 

So… the title of this post is a real botch job, don’t hate me. I was combining the word karma into the word samskara. The terms are very different and yet intimately related. Karma, in its most dummied down translation, is “action” and samskara, in like form, means impression – a subtle impression that is carried with us. Have you ever reacted in a certain way and almost felt you had no choice? That was probably the influence of some kind of impression / samskara. Obviously, something like that would influence your actions (reactions) and so you can see the two are a closely knitted pair.

The Heartfulness path (aka Sahaj Marg) deals heavily with both of these concepts, although quite extensively with samskaras. The “magic” of this path and our practice is that the samskaras are “scrubbed” away through the diligent employment of our practice.

Recently, through a couple Daily Reflections delivered into my inbox, I received a nice lesson. Everyone thinks about karma and samskara in regard to thing you have done or might do. But our guru, Kamlesh D. Patel, helps us understand that there’s another side of the coin: Inaction. I guess this might mean those could’as, would’as, and should’as. The things you didn’t do or say that you should have or really needed to (not for your benefit but for the benefit of others). Many times when people speak of regret they speak of something they wish they’d said or done or somewhere they’d gone. Sometimes this feeling of regret really sticks to a person – like a subtle impression. And obviously, the application of all this is not limited to regret. After all, we’re talking about very subtle components of life. Many people wander through life practically oblivious to really blatant and mundane things, so it’s no wonder at all to consider that these impressions formed from inaction wouldn’t necessarily be on one’s radar.

In the second edition of Designing Destiny (2015), Shri Kamlesh-bhai said of inaction, “It is not only our actions that promote samskaras. Our inactions can create lethal samskaras that are worse than those created by our actions.” In the same chapter of that book, he also states, “Samskaras created by inactions, deliberate inactions, amount to the heaviest of the samskaras in our system. They can be removed, no doubt, but then a commitment of very high order is required. Your cooperation at every level is required.”

I think these quotes communicate some very serious and helpful information. Kamlesh-bhai uses the word lethal. That’s a heavy word. Means deadly, right? Without further research I won’t guess at what Kamlesh-bhai fully meant in the usage of that word, but from where I sit I see a connection to the usage of that word within the context of samskaras. For as long as we carry these impressions / samskaras, we’ll be saddled with karma. And as long as either applies to our existence, our existence will be tied directly to the wheel of samsara – which is the cycle of death and rebirth. Because death is not the opposite of life, but rather the opposite of birth, Kamlesh-bhai’s use of “lethal” seems to point directly to that connection between death and rebirth.

There are a number of things to take from our guru-ji’s words but this one implication – inaction being lethal – is really enough to give everyone pause and serious consideration to why you sometimes don’t do the things you don’t do.

Aum Shri Mahaganeshaya Namaha | Aum Shanti