By the grace of my Master I shall try to reveal a great secret or mystery which the people in general do not know. It is a great wonder when a great personality like Lord Krishna, Swamy Vivekananda or my Master changes the entire course of a man's life. It is absolutely necessary for us to find out such a guide who can lift us higher and higher by his power. This mystery is known as pranahuti - the power of transmission. This power is working through the channels of pure mind. Pranahuti is effected through the power of will which is always effective. If a trainer in spirituality exerts his will to mould the mind of the trainee, it will be effective and yield excellent results.

HOW DOES TRANSMISSION WORK? The worthy trainer by the power of yogic transmission weakens the lower tendencies in the mind of trainee and sows the seed of Divine Light in the innermost core of his heart. In this process the trainer uses his will-force which has divine infinite at his back. The trainee may not feel anything in the beginning. The reason is that he is accustomed to feel only through the senses. After sometime, however, he may feel the results of such transmission, which also are in the form of subtle changes of the working of his vital parts and tendencies of his mind.

If I may be permitted a short reference to the Upanishads particularly the Kena Upanishad, a student asks his teacher by what does the eye see? By what does the nose smell? By what does the ear hear? And so on, and the teacher replies that it is not the eye that sees, but the eye of the eye. Similarly what hears is the ear of the ear, and what speaks is not the mouth but something behind the mouth, the real speaker. The Rishi goes on to add that life itself lives only by the existence of the higher life which it contains and this is called the pranasya prana or the life of life. My Master has maintained that while the body lives by the soul, the soul must in turn have that by which it exists, and this is the ultimate life force or pranasakthi.

We have this brilliant idea in Sahaj Marg that the body lives by the soul, and the soul can go through time, as we understand it, on its journey to the ultimate. It lives by transmission. Therefore, transmission is called 'life of life'. And transmission has nothing to do with space and time.

The body lives and grows at the physical level, and so sustains itself on physical foods. The soul, being spiritual in nature, needs food of that plane. Master feeds abhyasis with his spiritual transmission and nourishes them. Master calls transmission as 'spiritual food.'

The body lives by the soul. The soul lives by transmission which we can think of as the essence of Divinity. In Sanskrit it is called pranasya prana which means the soul of the soul. Really speaking, without transmission the soul is like a dead thing. The very first transmission makes the soul alive. It is the touch of Divinity itself.

In our transmission under the Sahaj Marg system, it is this that is transmitted into the heart of the student of yoga by the divine power associated with my Master, and which power it has been possible for him to endow upon the preceptors, as they are called, who are vested with the responsibility of offering such transmission to students who come to them. This transmission is something which must be felt and which can be felt. You will agree that all life is transmission. In every action that we perform, or by which we receive, an act of transmission is involved, but in the transmission of Sahaj Marg it is the highest gift of life's life itself, and it is this that sets the Sahaj Marg system of Raja Yoga apart from other extant systems of yoga.

Our Grand Master, Samarth Guru Shri Ram Chandraji of Fatehgarh rediscovered the capacity for the transmission of yogic or life energy from his own centre of existence into the centre of existence of another individual. This art he has passed on to his disciple, my Master, who has perfected it. This transmission is something which is capable of being felt by anybody who takes the trouble of practicing this system for a brief period. In fact it is the transmission which sets Sahaj Marg apart from other yogas, and from all other systems of human evolution. My Master says that when the transmission is made with a force higher than himself, and therefore his evolution or progress becomes not only very much speedier but also becomes, in a sense, independent of his own capacity for progress. Therefore, the present condition of the individual has no bearing on what he sets out to be, and at one stroke all differences of present human situation are eradicated, because of the possibility of this transmission existing today.

As a matter of fact what pranahuti does for the spiritual uplift of the abhyasi in the shortest possible time, independent efforts cannot do even in a full decade. Serious difficulties often arise when meditation is practiced independently in accordance with the old methods prescribed in books. Under the old system of abhyas, one has to keep on struggling with the mind in order to stop its unceasing activities. The struggle continues all the time without any success in the real sense. Thus practically there is no meditation at all, and all the time is lost in mere struggling and suppressing mental modifications. In order to overcome this very great difficulty, under the Sahaj Marg system we simply connect ourselves with the power of the Master whose mind has become thoroughly disciplined and regulated. His power then begins to flow into the individual regulating his mental tendencies.

What Master transmits is His own spiritual energy which he has got access to by virtue of his own yogic accomplishment under his own Master. It has been rediscovered that one human being can transmit to another this energy which is not limited in any way just because it comes from a human, but is really unlimited, because by virtue of its real nature, it is connected with the ultimate source of all energy. Therefore this transmission has no boundaries, it has no limits, there is no end to the amount of transmission that can take place or if you like, the quantum of transmission that can take place. It is therefore possible to transmit to one, or to a hundred, or to millions, there is no limit. Also he can transmit here or he can transmit to a person wherever he is.

By this transmission, the Master is able to put into our hearts his own energy. That is, now we have the possibility of growing by someone else's energy which is put into us. We are helped with a crutch. Instead of being dependent on ourselves, we have now become dependent on Him. Because He gives that food for the soul which we need to quickly develop, quickly develop beyond what we believe to be the possibility for human beings hitherto, precisely because he is able to put his wealth into us.

It erases by his power all past impressions of good, impressions of bad, it does not matter which. Because impressions condition our behaviour, impressions condition our existence. In that sense the past is a burden on us. Every day, we are adding more impressions and, therefore, we are increasing the burdens on ourselves. Every day that lapses is one more day in the past. Thus we are adding to our burdens instead of decreasing them. My Master is able to decrease this, and often eradicate it completely, by his own power whereby he removes all impressions of the past from the mind. It is a liberation from the past assisted by his own transmission which infuses us, with his spiritual energy for our own growth and, therefore, the possibility of our development has no limits.

Master said, "It is the utilization of the Divine energy for the transformation of man." But there are cases where even the transmission is reflected back from the man who comes to take the transmission. It is as if it cannot penetrate. So, the important thing even prior to receiving the transmission seems to be the need to accept the Master. One who does not accept the Master does not seem capable of receiving the very transmission which is designed to transform him. And when does this acceptance of the Master begin? When we see him, when we move with Him, when we are associated with Him, we grow to love Him, to cherish Him, to adore Him, and the desire comes, to be like Him.

Master used to call the transmission as 'Forceless force', which I say is only his love for us because He was only transmitting love. It is not a force; it is not anything else. I prefer to believe and have reason to believe that it is His love which was being poured into our hearts which we call the transmission, which we call Pranahuti. Being forceless, it will act, not only over infinite distances to the very borders of infinity but also through eternity of time. Love alone can act, breaking the barriers of space and time. No other force exists which can do it.
The Master and his transmission, I believe, are the same thing. Because I asked him once, "What really happens when you transmit? Suppose you transmit to me, you are at Shahjahanpur and I am at Madras, what exactly happens?" He said, "My sukshma (subtle) self travels to you". Now look at this miracle, you see. If anything proves his Divinity it was this fact of transmission flowing anywhere at anytime, without limitation.

DO WE FEEL TRANSMISSION? We never feel the transmission. We feel the effect of the transmission. Because the transmission always goes into the heart, but the effect can be felt anywhere. Like we eat here, but we feel the food in the stomach, and if people have acidity they feel the pain - here. So what happens is, that like electricity, if there is a bulb - you see a light; if there is a fan - you see it turning the air; if there is some motor - it is turning. So we should not confuse the transmission with its effect. The effect can be anywhere. It should change from point to point.

Transmission comes only after cleaning. 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 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. Transmission, when you are light, gives you the feeling of going deep into the meditation. Transmission, when it is gross, produces vibrations, all these funny things, you see. The subtler it is, the more you must feel that there has been nothing happening in the meditation. But after the sitting is over you feel the difference.

Transmission cannot give stress. You see, when the system is clean, you have a state of thoughtlessness, or of near thoughtlessness. Thoughtlessness is not a spiritual condition, it is condition where your inside is evacuated of all grossness, almost all grossness, so that there is no thought to come up from inside, you see. Now you can receive thoughts from outside, you are pure now. It can be divine thought, it can be Master's instructions. They come from outside. Now they are no longer your thoughts. They cannot disturb you. In that condition, when you receive a transmission, you are able to plunge - straight, you see.

Transmission is defined as 'pranasya prana' - Life of life. Now that which was a mere mechanical 'I' before, becomes a real living 'I'. I think that is one of the reasons why, sometimes in abhyasis, we find more egoism after they have become abhyasis than they were before they started sadhana. When the sleeping 'I' becomes the waking 'I', one would assume more justifiably, that it is more aware of itself, and that is what egoism is - to be more aware of the self. Therefore, the day we first receive our transmission and Master makes us come alive to the real existence, in the life in life, that should also be the moment when we should surrender that life to Him and the new life that has come to us doesn't belong to us because He has made it. He has given us life. So it is His.

Our life began actually, effectively in a very true sense, on the day we received our first transmission at the hands of our Master. So it is in a sense our birthday that we are celebrating. When we are here on the Master's birthday and we remember the Master in a special way on this day, it is our birthday we are remembering, it is an offering of our gratitude, our love - "Master, you made me alive on this day. I am eternally grateful to you for putting me alive, when I was just an automaton which was running around on wheels, run by an internal motor, which I called foolishly 'my heart'. You made that heart come alive, by coming into the heart and becoming the heart of my heart. You made my life come alive, by becoming the life of my life. You gave meaning to my existence, by giving me a purpose."