WHAT IS THE NEED FOR CLEANING? We are more worried today about external pollution, about the ozone layer, about the forests in Europe dying because of pollution, about the rivers not being fit even for fish to live in. What about this universe within, which we have polluted over millennia of existence from the moment we were first created, and thrown out of our Original Home by our ego? Have we cleaned it up? Have we ever thought that if we cleaned this up, it will automatically become clean? Is it not this inner greed, lust, that is polluting the outer universe of mine? Is the outer universe anything other than the reflection of my inner universe? Therefore, is not the possibility of cleaning the external universe only latent in my cleaning up my inner universe? Otherwise, I am only cutting the grass and, you know, gilding the lily, as they say. If this wisdom dawns, then who will not come to meditate? Who will not subject himself or herself to the cleaning process?

We find that our life has lost any meaning that it might have had. Our successes are but empty shells. Our wealth is but a sham and a mockery, incapable of procuring for us the things we most ardently desire - peace, happiness and contentment. We begin to understand that in effect, we are yet but animals in human form swayed by greed, lust and passion to such an extent that if thwarted in achieving our desires, few of us would hesitate to destroy anything that comes in our way. If such tendencies are allowed to prevail and to grow, then surely that which was born a human being does die an animal.

So, to humanise the animal-human being is then the first step in spiritual practice. As my Master states it, animal-man has to become human-man or man-man first, before he can think of further development of the perfect-Man. To do this, the individual's tendencies have got to be corrected and oriented in the proper direction. The impressions of the past, engraved upon mind and memory, have to be erased. Such impressions are the source of present thoughts and actions. Therefore, so long as they persist, action along certain lines is compulsive. The cleaning of the system is thus of paramount importance.

HOW ARE IMPRESSIONS FORMED? Every time we think of something, and we become attached to what we think about, an impression is formed in the mind. That impression which the thought creates becomes the parent of an action or of an activity. And when the activity is indulged in, when the activity is undertaken, the impression becomes deeper. And as the impressions become deeper in this way, we enter into what we may call a repetitive cycle of existence. It is perhaps in this fashion that habits are formed. And as these impressions become deeper and deeper they solidify. At that stage, we find that we are in a very real sense, captives or prisoners of our own past.

It is our past impressions which hold us down and create patterns of behaviour which we are unable to modify. We are the slaves of our past. We think we are free to think and act as we like but, truly speaking, this is a fallacy. We are conditioned in everything by the past. This is Lalaji's greatness that by this process of cleaning he makes it possible to completely remove the effects of the past, in stages of course. What is the use of telling a person he must change? Of course everyone would like to change, but it is not possible. Because the mind is conditioned by the past. So, change can come only by cleaning the mind of past impressions. This makes it possible for the abhyasi to be slowly liberated from his past.

HOW IS CLEANING DONE? In the evening, after one's daily routine of life is completed, sit with eyes closed, in the same posture (as in meditation) for half an hour and imagine that the day's accumulation of impressions, impurities, complexities, grossness etc., are melting away and going out of the back in the form of smoke or vapour and that in its place the sacred current of the Divine is entering into your heart from the Master's heart. Meticulous practice of this technique ensures that the individual is not adding to the burdens of the past which the Master is quietly cleaning away by his own spiritual power. We are therefore able to progress unimpaired by fresh accumulation of impressions.

A bottle which contained oil can be cleaned comparatively easily to become a milk-container. But how does one clean a scratched gramophone record? However much we may wipe it, or clean it with detergents, it still continues to play the same jarring tune. Of such scratches and deep cuts is our life composed - scratches of disappointment! Deeper grooves of failure, shame and misery! The deepest grooves of degradation and corruption! Is it then any matter for wonder that the needles of our individual destinies run but in those same worn grooves, repeating everlastingly the same disappointments, the same failures and misery, and the same degradation and corruption? The cleaning here has to go deeper. It involves a remoulding of the system to re-create a new record capable of playing the sublime music that the Master had originally impressed upon its unblemished surface.

WHEN SHOULD THE CLEANING BE DONE? Do the cleaning when your day's work is over. For men it means when they come back from their work. They should have a wash, and sit and do their cleaning. For women, well, if they are cooking they should finish the cooking, or if they are working girls, they should come back from work and the same thing applies to them.

This process of cleaning is to be repeated for about five minutes before meditational practice in the morning as well.

If you are not able to do the cleaning in the evening because you come at nine o'clock, then you are too tired, combine both (cleaning and prayer-meditation) before you go to bed. But this is an exception for one or two occasions when you are really tired, but people begin to adopt it as a continuous thing all the year round because it suits them. I have never found that any serious abhyasi had any problem about doing the meditation at the specified time or the cleaning at the specified time. So it only means that until our interest in our own spiritual development is established, we have these problems.

WHAT SHOULD WE DO IN CLEANING? I find that many people meditate instead of cleaning themselves. Here I want to emphasize something which I found many people haven't understood, that in the cleaning process one has to apply one's will. In meditation we don't apply our will at all. In meditation it is a question of fixing our attention on the object on which we are meditating. Now this is perhaps why many people find that instead of doing the cleaning they are meditating, because if the will is not applied, it becomes something of a farce. But because we sit in the aspect of meditation, in the attitude, or in the posture we normally adopt, the mind having become used to meditation, it slips into meditation. So my Master, Babuji, used to always emphasize that when we sit for cleaning, we should apply the will. And He used to make a gesture, you know, as if you are putting your hand into your heart and throwing out things, like this, from behind. That is the correct way of doing the cleaning.

DURING CLEANING, SHOULD WE REMEMBER EVERY EVENT OF THE DAY AND TRY TO CLEAR ITS IMPRESSIONS? No. When we have a bath do we remember every dirty thing that we touched and try to clean it away? It is a general thing you see.

HOW LONG THIS NEED FOR CLEANING WOULD EXIST? Master laughed and said, This depends on you. If there is complete cooperation, then the work is easy. Suppose I go on cleaning and the abhyasi goes on adding more grossness, then what can I do? So abhyasi must cooperate too. He must modify his life in such a way that it is helpful to his progress. To remove past accumulations is the Master's work. But the abhyasi should be alert that he does not add more grossness by his own thoughts and actions. So this alertness is necessary. And if the daily process of self-cleaning is followed, then by Lalaji's grace, a stage can be reached when the formation of impressions no longer takes place, and samskara formation stops. Once samskara formation stops, then the goal is in sight. The past accumulations may be there, some residue of it, but that is Master's responsibility. But as long as we are in this body, some grossness will always be there.

WHAT IS THE ROLE OF MASTER IN CLEANING? When we come to practice the Sahaj Marg system of yoga, the first thing that the Master impresses upon us, which is at the same time the most important, is that these past impressions must be removed from our mind. Now, it is natural that if we had known how to do it, we would have already done it ourselves. But while we have absolute freedom and control over the creation of impressions, we are helpless when it comes to their removal. This is precisely why we need an outside force, or assistance from an external source to help us. We call such a person who can do this for us a Guru or a Master. So the first thing is to find a Master who can do this for us. Without a Guru there can be no yoga at all.

Sahaj Marg lays the greatest emphasis upon the need for such cleaning. All impressions which lie in us, created by our past thoughts and actions, have to be cleaned out thoroughly. The Master does this by using his spiritual power to liberate us from our buried impressions. When this is done, we take new birth, as it were. We are spiritually reborn. Superficial physical cleanliness of the human system will not avail us. A deeper cleaning is essential to rid us of the burdens of the past, and these burdens of the past are nothing but the impressions that we have engraved upon ourselves by our own wrong thoughts and actions. Such cleaning is therefore liberation from the past in a very real sense.

We enter into a present, unconditioned by a past. Hitherto, our present represented nothing but the inexorable culmination of tendencies and trends established in the past. And the future could be nothing but the further inexorable trend of the same tendencies continued beyond the present. We see, therefore the effect of the past on the future! Once this cleaning is effectively undertaken by a Master of spiritual calibre, we enter into an unconditional present - a present, therefore, which can be correctly used to control and achieve a predetermined future goal. And that goal is the goal of perfection.

WHAT IS THE DUTY OF ABHYASI HERE? At this stage, we have to realise the importance of conducting our lives in such a manner that our thoughts and actions no longer have the capacity to create impressions. This can only be done by creating an attitude which my Master calls 'non-attachment attachment.' He does not preach detachment. What he teaches us is to be attached while maintaining an attitude of non-attachment. As human beings, we have our duties and responsibilities. We must not ignore or discard them as it is all too easy to do on the ascetic paths. Master says that having accepted duties and responsibilities, we have to fulfill those obligations while striving for our own growth. When this realisation comes, the sense of duty is what remains uppermost.

We no longer work for personal satisfaction or personal pleasures, or for personal success. We work because we have a duty to discharge, obligations to fulfill in respect of those whom we love and cherish - members of our family, friends, employers etc. Because our work is no longer conditioned by our desires but is undertaken only out of a sense of duty and dedication, impressions cease to be created. The past has already been done away with. It is as if the past never was. We have entered a present where our thoughts and actions are no longer creating a past which will condition the future. The present is eternal without a past to weigh it down. We have entered a life dimension which the ancient seers of India, the Rishis, called the "eternal present." Now begins the final approach to the realisation of our goal.

WHY ARE PEOPLE AFRAID OF CLEANING? The cleaning is very important in Sahaj Marg. I personally believe that without cleaning you will not get anywhere. People are afraid of cleaning for several reasons. During cleaning, you may have experiences of the past, your actions, your thoughts, which created those impressions. Some may be good. Some may be awful. Even every dream, every nightmare is something in you which is being released. You know, if a man is afraid of going to the toilet because he doesn't like what is coming out of him - he doesn't like its smell, he doesn't like its feel - and he tries not to go the toilet, he will die. Isn't it?

So, people who are afraid of their samskaras and keep it in their hearts, hidden, ashamed of it, guilty about it, afraid that when it comes out, it may re-create some scene in which it was originally created - they are like people who will not go to the toilet: they will die. And that's what happens to people who don't clean themselves spiritually. They have no spiritual future. Therefore, in a real spiritual sense, they die, to come back.

So in spirituality we say, death is only there when we have not decided to go on beyond death but to come back because of our fears, because of our attachments. So please understand very carefully that if you have been able to clean yourself of all your samskaras and, through meditation create a greater and greater illumination in yourself through the Divine Presence that is eternally there, there is no death for us. We leave the body behind, like you get out of the taxi, you get out of the train, you get out of the airplane, and go home.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE SYSTEM IS CLEANED? In Sahaj Marg we speak very specifically about the process of cleaning which refers to the impressions of the past, which are buried in us as samskaras. In a sense it is these samskaras which become the burden, tying us down to this existence, being worked upon by gravity, let us say. Now when He cleans us, Master refers to what He calls a vacuumization of the inside of our own system, so that something new can be put into it. When you remove something from the system, a space is created inside, into which He pours His transmission.

When you remove the samskaras, there is that which is eternally present, a glorious light, the Divine Presence. So we don't have to bring God from somewhere and put Him into you. It is like cleaning out the rubbish to put in the new furniture. And that rubbish, all of it put together, is the devilish part, the dark part, the baser part of each one of us.

What we are afraid of depends on the samskaras we carry inside us. Therefore when this cleaning is finished you cannot have fear any more. Therefore saints are fearless. They will go in the jungles, you know, the elephant comes, the lion goes with them, the tiger walks in front of them, they have no fear. How can they be afraid? - there is no samskara here. I am tempted by something by which you are not tempted. Temptation is not outside, it is inside. So temptation, fear, everything must go when cleaning is complete.

The physical existence with which I have come, will follow me till I am dead. Then what is the idea of cleaning? You know, if you buy a crystal glass and clean it, it does not change its form, but it becomes a fit receptacle for something you can put into it now. So, by cleaning that which was unfit, it becomes fit to receive the Grace of the Almighty. This is the correct idea of cleaning. It does not mean a poor man will become rich, or an ugly girl become beautiful, or a weak man become a strong man, though I must say, there will be normalization of all functions.
Cleaning must be understood very critically. Cleaning does not affect the physical existence, in the sense that my body cannot be changed, the colour of my hair cannot change, the colour of my eyes cannot change, etc. But the quality of my life will change. When it changes, diseases can be eliminated, because a disease is not really a physical thing. Some intelligence can be awakened - at least to the level of normalization of the human level, because there is a limit to what we call intelligence.

If you consider the phenomenon of weight, it is gravity which holds us down. If you could just cut off gravity, even mountains could fly. What is so wonderful about flight? Similarly, it is the weight of our past which is holding us down. And I may say with absolute confidence that the cleaning aspect of Sahaj Marg alone is sufficient to give us most of the blessings of spiritual practice, since ninety percent of our deficiencies, of our drawbacks of the gravitational hold of samskaras is released in one stroke.

When we do the cleaning and we remove the samskaras and our different personalities fall off bit by bit, which we call change in character - aggressiveness goes, for instance, greed goes, lust goes. One by one, all these samskaras go and our personality changes. It is as if peeling an onion. You take off skin after skin. You can say it is the peeling of the personality. When we take away everything from ourselves, we reveal what is within.

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE RITUALS OF RELIGION AND SPIRITUAL CLEANING? This, I consider, is something unique to Sahaj Marg. Though the idea of cleaning is not foreign to even religious systems, it has remained a superficial approach to physical cleansing and, perhaps, to psychic cleaning process - to my knowledge nothing more than that, nothing deeper than that. And therefore all temple rituals, church rituals, have remained merely rituals. That is why when we go there and come out, we don't feel a sense of either elation or lightness or joy, which almost without exception every abhyasi feels after the cleaning process. I hope you have all experienced this.

So that is the fantastic difference between the rituals of religion and spiritual cleaning process as given by my Master: this buoyancy, this feeling of lightness; and that is why in a sense Babuji says, "We don't see light, but we feel light." And how does this feeling of lightness come? Precisely because the weight of samskaras is removed; I therefore repeat, it achieves ninety percent of what we have to achieve under spiritual practice.

DO THE CLEANING FIRST, TRANSMISSION FOLLOWS AUTOMATICALLY: Now Babuji Maharaj has said, if you receive transmission while your tendencies are still active, only those tendencies will be strengthened. As he puts it very pithily, "If you transmit to a thief, he will become a perfect thief." That is why I have always felt that transmission without cleaning cannot achieve much, or at least it cannot achieve much in the direction we want it to achieve. Therefore I have emphasized the fundamental requirement, the most important requirement of our sadhana, the cleaning process. Therefore we also advise abhyasis: whenever you cannot meditate, at least do the evening cleaning, because it keeps the vessel pure to receive the transmission. So this is the very great benefit of the cleaning process, and whatever else we may neglect, the cleaning should not be neglected under any circumstances.

If I have stored gasoline in a bottle and I wish to buy milk in it, I have to clean it first. So when we are trying to put something into us which is of the highest order of existence, the divine essence of the Master by way of his transmission, we have to make ourselves fit to receive it. That is the cleaning process.

So, transmission without cleaning can actually damage a person. So transmission is always done only after sufficient cleaning has been done. That is why we give these introductory three sittings (sometimes it has to be more) which are devoted solely to cleaning. No transmission at all. All the lightness that you feel during a sitting is not due to transmission at all, it is due to cleaning. Cleaning gives you lightness.

WHEN YOU CLEAN A MAN, HOW DO YOU BRING ABOUT TRANSFORMATION IN HIM? You know the beautiful story of a great Caliph. He set up an art competition. He said such and such will be the prize for the best entry. There were hundreds of entries. Then came a Chinese team, and everybody was awed because of the greatest painters. And the last was an Iranian team. And they got two walls of a room with a partition in between; a curtain. So the Chinese team was asking for fabulous paints, golden dust, silver dust. Thirty days was the time given. And they were working twenty four hours, round the clock, and asking for more and more material, glittering things, polish, emerald, rubies, what not. The other people (Iranian Sufi team) were asking for many mundane things - the Caliph could not even imagine how they could be applied to art: "Anyway, let them do it, we will judge on the thirty first day." On the thirty first day, after judging everything, he came to the Chinese painting. He was gasping with wonder at how this could be produced! It was a stupendous marvel. And for about half an hour, he was just gazing, he had to be reminded: "Lord, there is one more painting, the last one to be judged." Reluctantly he said, "Yes. Let me see it." They pulled the curtain. And he swooned in wonder! All that the other group of men had done was to polish the surface so beautifully that it was a reflection of the Chinese painting! And it was better than the original thing.

You don't have to create! So, Master's first step is cleaning in Sahaj Marg. If you want to get milk, don't you wash the vessel first? So transformation is first by removal of things and then by elevation of the THING itself.

THE PRECEPTOR'S ROLE IN CLEANING: The preceptor's work in the cleaning is a very vital component of the spiritual work of the Master. Let us not belittle it to ourselves by saying, "Oh it is only cleaning, you know, I am not a sweeper!" Remember with how much love you used to prepare Babuji's house before he arrived in Denmark. How much love you lavished, how much money you spent, how much time you devoted to the purification of a mere house for His presence, where he was going to stay a few days and then leave. How much more time you should devote to this house where he is going to be eternally present?

Please remember the importance of cleaning, the importance of yatra. Without cleaning there is no yatra. It is not possible. Therefore the importance of the preceptor. People often ask, "Why preceptors? Cannot Babuji do it himself?" Of course he can. But to assist him in his work and to speed his work on the abhyasis, to make it possible for them to achieve their goal quicker, he uses preceptors to do what we might think of as the dirty work - cleaning! In a sense, it is dirty work. In a sense, it is very noble. When you can prepare a person for liberation, it is by no means dirty. So, this is the importance of the yatra, and it must be correctly understood, because without a correct understanding and appreciation of the yatra, you are not going to understand the implications and the importance of cleaning, whether for yourself or for those who come to you. Without cleaning, there is no yatra! Write it in red ink.