"One can regulate one's life so as to normalise
all functions of the human system, so that
the person develops into a perfect human being."

The average human being of today gives a great deal of thought, and applies a great amount of energy, to attain high levels of material welfare. In this endeavour the people of the industrially advanced nations have been significantly successful. But notwithstanding this, there is yet much unhappiness, discontent and misery pervading their lives. Why is this? My Master says that it is the result of unbalanced application of effort. My Master teaches that human existence consists of two planes of existence, the material and the spiritual, and that both these are important and essential for the harmonious well-being of the individual. Where one's efforts of thought and action involve only one of these spheres of existence, discontent, unhappiness etc., are inevitable consequences of such unbalanced living.

My Master says that as a bird needs two wings to fly with, so a human being needs the two wings of existence, the spiritual and the material, to lead a natural and harmonious life. If either is neglected for the other, such a life becomes unnatural and the result cannot be what we desire it to be. Totally denying the material existence to pursue a spiritual path is therefore as unnatural, stultifying and goal-defying, as total denial of the spiritual for the material life. Master teaches that to achieve one's full potential, the individual must apply himself equally and impartially to the material life and to the spiritual life. One's efforts must be applied simultaneously in both the spheres.

Most spiritual systems have sought to bring about spiritual growth by negating the material existence and denying its necessity. Sahaj Marg corrects this distortion, by emphasising the need for a proper and natural application of one's energies to both spheres of life. In this lies its universality! The name of the system "Sahaj Marg" translated into English means the Natural Way. This system offers, perhaps for the first time, a spiritual system of simple practice which makes possible the fulfillment of one's spiritual purpose in life while simultaneously making it possible to attain similar fulfillment in one's material life. All the faculties of a person are developed to perfection and the perfect functioning of all one's faculties is what my Master calls Saintliness.

NEED FOR BALANCED EXISTENCE:
There are not merely two sides to existence. The two sides have to be balanced if one is to lead a full and productive existence. All of us live, but few lives have real content, real worth in them. The bulk of humanity leads an animal existence motivated by lust, inspired by fear and driven by lower urges and appetites unworthy of being called even remotely human. So, balance has to be brought into our lives. As Master says, a bird flies on two wings. Cut off one, and the bird will crash to the earth. It is immaterial how strong the wings are. No bird can fly on one wing alone.

What my Master offers in the form of a simple analogy is one of his profoundest thoughts. When we, in our ignorance or in our one-sided approach to life, neglect either half of it, we are surely headed for disaster. It is immaterial whether we neglect the spiritual half or whether we neglect the material half of life. Both are equally necessary, in fact vital to our full existence. Without either of them, our lives are incomplete and such a life can end in nothing but the frustration and despair of an incomplete situation.

So the spiritual life must have its attention, the material life must have its attention too. My Master says, "Establish balance between the two lives - the material and the spiritual." Don't run away from the material life into the jungle and do not come out here as a gross materialist forgetting the spiritual existence. Balance it. Because anything without balance is doomed. A plane which can fly with one wing dipped, will go round and round. It gets nowhere. This is what we are doing.

All these ideas of 'Punarjanma' (rebirth) are nothing but our circling round and round the same environment - no escape. And we blame God- saying "He is blind. He is not kind, keeping us imprisoned here." God says, "Balance your existence. Make the two wings level and even I cannot stop you from flying straight." So this is the essence of spirituality. In Sahaj Marg, we don't ask you for the unnatural things demanded in other paths like sleeping on a bed of nails, and not eating food for 46 days, standing on one's head, impossible celibacy, things like that. But we do say, "Establish a balance. Give equal attention to the spiritual as to the material."

Our ancient forefathers neglected the material existence negating it almost totally. We modern ones today tend to ignore the spiritual life almost as completely. The pendulum seems to have swung from one extreme to the other with a vengeance. Our forefathers and we ourselves have both suffered in the bargain by leading incomplete, truncated lives, while all the while thinking we are following the correct way of life. All that we are doing is to do the exact opposite of what our progenitors did. And that is certainly not a wise way of finding a solution to the ills besetting humanity. Therefore it is necessary to understand that it is not important which side of life we neglect. Neglect of either is wrong and will give us incomplete and unproductive lives. Such a life will be one of dissatisfaction, misery, insecurity and frustration, giving one a feeling that one has lost the way somewhere when walking on the road of life. This is true of all human beings, whether male or female, rich or poor, sick or healthy, and whether conventionally a success or not.

We have been having ascetic practices, which say, "No family life, no house life, go to the jungle, meditate on God, become an ascetic, become a sanyasi, become a rishi." The other side of life says, "No spirituality, no morality, no values, no ethics, forget it; concentrate on material success." But here is a system which comes, I think, at a very vital moment in our social evolution - at best in our country, where it is possible to balance the aspiration in two different fields, under one common heading of personal evolution. It is my Master's repeated statement that personal evolution cannot be complete unless it is fully, harmoniously developed existence, embracing all aspects of existence.

If only one side is developed, it is like a man having a most powerful right arm, and left arm is polio-struck, and it is dangling by his left side. He can't use it. We have seen so many instances of these unfortunate people or like an intellectual giant, whose physical existence has no meaning whatsoever. Or like some of these mafia people who are enormously intelligent, have enormous power of wealth, of crime behind them, but nothing else. Or a philosopher who does not know modern life, who cannot cross a street. In every case there has been one exaggerated tendency or power, which has been exaggerated out of all proportions. My Master gave and it is one of His famous and oft-repeated quotations, a definition that 'saintliness means balance of all human faculties'. It does not mean exaggeration. Every faculty in us must be balanced.

HOW TO ESTABLISH BALANCE?
We all here have excellent education behind us. We all, obviously have good family background, good standing in society. So what is it that makes failures out of such inherently valuable, resourceful raw materials? My Master says, one half is missing; close the gap between this half and that other half, you have a complete person. And by the nature of this completion, there is fulfillment and he is not only full for himself but for society itself. So this is the message of yoga.

Man and Woman: I think essentially it is the female heart which is capable of both devotion and service. Men have to lose their arrogance, their pride, their ego, and create in themselves the finer sentiments and finer qualities, if they are to succeed. For a man his masculinity is a problem because it leads the way to domination, dominance, pride, arrogance, conquering things. So that attitude is not fit for the spiritual life. The female with her love, or a heart capable of love, is submissive. So, even though the male may be capable of love, I doubt it, but let us assume that love exists - if at all it exists, it is dominating, arrogant, possessive, conquest-oriented. You find that even in the love affairs of men, it's conquest after conquest, not love after love. But for the female, this idea of submission, of serving through submission, and the capacity to love, this combination makes a perfect foundation for a spiritual life.

So basically, it is the question of a man becoming feminine, or of acquiring a feminine mentality in some way - feminine qualities, learning to love, becoming capable of submission, without losing the powers of the male such as courage, bravery, the ability to sustain difficulties. And the woman, in some way, has to learn to become a little masculine. She must retain her capacity to love and be submissive, but also learn to face life with courage and faith and take off. I think then the two halves of humanity become balanced. Not by balancing the men with the women, but by creating that balance in each individual self. That is, perhaps, the secret of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. Tradition says that he lived as a woman for a few years, totally with the women, all the time, dressing like a woman, cooking, bringing water from the river - the Indian ladies' life. Because until you live like one, you do not know what they are really living like. So, Ramakrishna is said to have had the male and the female principle totally balanced in himself.

Material and spiritual: A person must not neglect either his physical and material existence or his spiritual life. And one important aspect I would like to emphasise is that there is no control of functions, or elimination of any of them. All that is done is to seek to normalise each and every function without atrophy of any of them. Master bases his teaching on God's wisdom. God created the universe. When he created a material universe, He must have had good reason to do so. If the material life is leading us astray and away from our goal, then obviously it is our fault in not living the material life in the appropriate fashion. So all that we have to do to get back on to our path is to restore the proper 'balance' to our life, whereby the two halves of existence are harmonised and in equilibrium. The humanised man can then proceed to evolve to the state of the perfect human being.

Ancient and Modern: Asceticism is not the right way. It is as wrong, and as anti-nature, as a totally materialistic way of life is. They are but two extremes of the scale, and neither can succeed. Then what is the correct way? Master says that the balanced existence; one in which all aspects of human existence are balanced, is the only correct way of life. In such a life material values and spiritual values go side by side, and one should not be neglected for the other. The two sides of life, the material and the spiritual, are both necessary to help us reach our spiritual destination, and the degree to which they can be normalised and balanced will determine the degree of our success.

In today's situation, under today's fantastic technological advance, none of us is safe from our neighbours. And by neighbours I mean from here to the Atlantic, from here to the Pacific. All the more reason why this idea of inner balance, inner perfection, inner morality should be understood. Morality has been unfortunately confined to the field of sex. It is a stupid thing. That is not the only morality. The morality which says that I have this and this and this and I must use it to the best benefit of those who are in this world with me, that is the highest morality.

All this is made possible not by education; I don't mean to decry education because I have the highest regard for it. Without education we can do very little. But the education must be balanced by inner tendencies which must show us how even education can be used. Education is a tool. Intellect is a tool. Physical capacities are tools. It is like a carpenter, who has a chisel and a hammer and a drill and what not. And he must know how to use, when to use and which one to use. That is balance.

Western and Eastern: The going out is science: I want a little fun, I want to look at the outside world, I want to go to the beach. All sense-oriented or intellect-oriented. I want to come back to my house: this is safety, security and love which bring us back. So, essentially, knowledge takes us outside, love brings us inside. Sahaj Marg strikes a wonderful balance here too. The principle of the two wings of the bird: love supported by intellectual balance or whatever it is; science supported by philosophy; material life supported by spiritual life. We need the two things. Therefore, Master says, "Don't neglect the material life for the spiritual life." This message is for the East. And when he comes to the West, He says, "Don't neglect the spiritual life for the material life." This is for the West. If you look at it very sensibly and very directly, don't neglect this for that. Keep both, balance both, both are necessary.

In the East you find everything internal, in the West you find everything external. It does not mean one is right, and one is wrong. The only true attitude to all this is: One has gone to one extreme, the other has gone to other extreme, both are suffering. For the East, preserve your internal beauty, but without neglecting your external beauty too. Keep your inner cleanliness, but don't make your outside a mess as we do in India all the time. Environmental cleanliness is as necessary as inner cleanliness. For the West, it is the opposite message: It's not enough to be externally clean, environmentally clean, clean your inside too. It is not enough to be externally beautiful, the surface of your body is beautiful, make the inside beautiful too. So, that is the importance of Babuji's teaching: bring balance to both.

Pain and Pleasure: The ancient traditions made the mistake of seeking pain; the Western tradition makes the mistake of seeking pleasure; in between comes Babuji and says, "Don't seek either, be balanced, take this when it comes, take that when it comes, thinking of God all the time." Because where there is pleasure there must be pain, they are two sides of the coin. If you take a coin because the head of the queen is beautiful, you cannot say, "Take away the other side and give me only the head," and another person says, "No, no, I'll have the tail side, I don't like the head of the queen," he cannot have that without this.

So my Master said, "Forget both." Happiness and pain or disease or misery are not things which we seek and find, they are things which happen to us. They happen to us! This is another thing which He made His own research and discovered that they happen to us because of our samskaras. It is like a man travelling on a road. There is sometimes sunshine, sometimes there are clouds, sometimes it is raining, sometimes we have a nice road, sometimes it's a bad road. We don't seek these things. On the journey, what we seek is our destination, all the rest is incidental. Similarly on our journey through life Babuji says, "Seek the Goal, forget everything else."

The Inner and the Outer: How are we to allow the inner self and the outer to be balanced? That is a problem. Because, at the moment, the ego has control. It does not want to permit even balance. It says, "I am the boss; I am in the chair; and I don't want to give it up, even if I kill myself." Now what can you do? You know the problem we fear; because I think of God's eternity, shall we say, because the ego knows it has a limited existence - it must know - and within that limited span of existence it does not want to give up its hold. The other thing, the voice of the conscience, the inner voice, whatever you want to call it, the Self, God, He can wait for eternity.

Nowadays, we find that many people are pulled in two directions. There is always this inner call to purity and the truth and the right. And, unfortunately, there is a much more powerful pull from outside, for gratification of the senses, for a comfortable life. And, though it is true that nothing in this universe can counteract the inner pull, the inner inducement to the right life, nevertheless, we find the tragic situation that we are not able to answer that call because it has been so badly neglected that, today, it is too faint for us sometimes to even hear it. This is why my Master called character, the balance of the inner and the outer tendencies of existence.

It is not only in virtue you need a balance, even in vice you need balance. Balance cannot be thrown out. So, all that we do here, instead of taking this transactional analysis as an example, you take yourself as the example. There is in me, the inner self, the higher self. There is me, the human self, the outer self. These two are invariably opposed to each other. What this wants, I don't want. What I want, he says is not right. Integrate! Now, what is integration but bringing the two together into one.

Samadhi: In samadhi you are like a stone. And the Shastra itself describes it as a stone-like state, pashana tulya moksha. Whereas the real state, the divine state, is supposed to be one where we are totally absorbed inside, in what is a samadhi condition, but with one very vital difference - that we are also totally aware of the outer universe. In fact, it is a balancing of two extremes, you see, absolute absorption inside and absolute awareness to the outside. And in yogic literature that is called the state of yoga nidra, the divine state where he is asleep without being asleep.

MAINTAIN BALANCE IN EVERY ASPECT OF LIFE
If we are not able to make our minds and respond in a very balanced way, we are either pulled towards the path of the material life, to our spiritual detriment or as in the ancient life, we are pulled totally towards the other side. We renounce the families, run away to the jungles, become tapasvis and then the heart cries out for the family we have left behind, the love for the children that we have renounced, and most importantly, the inner conscience which says," My dear friend, you really had no right to throw a family you have acquired willingly, knowingly, lovingly and sacrifice them for your personal spiritual evolution, which can be considered selfish."

Spirituality does not recognize pleasure as a goal. Because you see, in the whole of the animal kingdom there is no such thing as pleasure. A bull doesn't go around looking for a female. Instinct drives it. Honey badger going for honey - yes, but that is its food, it does not know that it is sweet. So in animal kingdom there is no pleasure even in sex, you see, even in mating. It is an instinctual drive. The idea of pleasure and pain comes only in the human existence, and today if you see society, all of our efforts are towards maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain. So what we are doing with our life? There should be a balance between pain and pleasure. Ideally it should be so balanced that there is no pleasure, no pain, like a no-profit, no-loss situation, which is very good.

Spirituality says, there is no harm in earning money, being a king, being an emperor, so long as your morals, your right living, your right conduct, are established in you, and then your destiny makes you a king or an emperor and at the same time you are a saint. Raja Janaka was perhaps the only example of that sort of existence, a Raja Rishi, where the two meet - the material excellence and the spiritual excellence or eminence. It is very rare, not because the life is incompatible, but because we don't aspire.

Master said, the need for spirituality is the need for inner existence. It is the need for restoring a lost balance, that we live in the two angles or two planes of existence when nature pushed us out into this world. It gave us a body but it also gave us a soul. It is the soul which assumes the body and if you are only pampering the body, only seeing the growth of the body, its pleasure, its comforts, its purification, its like a man who never baths but wears a new dress every half an hour of the day. He will still stink, sometimes. So the basic need for spirituality is, forget everything else that spirituality can give us - it is this urgent need, permanent need, to restore a balance within ourselves. It is like a seesaw which is at balance, not this way, not that way.

What is appropriateness of maintenance that is needed for the body? The Upanishad is very specific - maintain it in a fit condition, not a superlatively fit condition. Just a fit condition to take you from here to there. Because this journey, ideally we should make only once. Practically we can make only once, because we never use this body again. Even if you are unfortunate enough to come back to this world, this body is a once used body, a throw away body. So how much attention should be given to it? Well, keep it fit. Do not furnish it, polish it, paste it with badam (almonds) and pista (pistachio). It is not necessary. Simple food, simple living, simple diet, simple exercise, look at it with the minimum of attention necessary to maintain it in a condition to transport you through the existence. So the body has its place; it is a vehicle to transport me, the real Me, who is inside me, who is occupant of this vehicle, from wherever He is, to wherever He is to go.

So, in this Sahaj Marg system, in my Mission, Shri Ram Chandra Mission, there is no denial of values of life. My Master questioned himself, "I am here in a physical body, I am in embodied soul; I have to live an existence in this environment. I have to be educated. I have to earn, I have to marry, I have to have children. What on earth I am supposed to do with them? But does it mean, that I cannot, if I choose, become a rishi ?" So the perfection that we are aiming for, is nothing but balance. Balance is perfection; perfection is balance.

MASTER'S LIFE - AN EXAMPLE OF BALANCED EXISTENCE:
The Master in His life has exemplified, has illustrated - physically and perceptibly to every single one of his abhyasis - what a human being can rise to, how it can be the Ultimate itself, and even after having achieved it in the human frame, if you are worth the salt you are eating, and if you are worthy of being called an abhyasi, you have got to be prepared to face every single sorrow, every single obstruction, every single pain that the Master Himself has faced and suffered. This is the Real meaning of the two wings of the bird. I cannot look for success and avoid failure. I cannot look for pleasure and avoid pain. Am I willing to accept a life which precisely because it is life - has within it everything that life holds?

We have the twins of existence - the Dwandwas as we call them. One who wants only one half and not the other half is unfit for Sadhana. And, a dedicated abhyasi, a devoted abhyasi who wants to be like the Master in every way, must also be willing to suffer everything that the Master has suffered; undergo every torture that the Master has undergone. See, it is a very facile explanation to say that it is all maya, it is a drama that He is playing for us. I say 'nonsense.' Every second, every multisecond of the Master's life was filled with Reality. His sufferings were Real, His joys were Real, His achievements were Real. How can there be unreality in Reality?

You see, happiness comes in so many ways. When you are hungry, and you get food, you are happy. But if you get too much, you are not happy. If you have not gone to the toilet for six hours, and you are able to go, it makes you happy. You can now come to a common thing in both these things - filling a need. In both cases. One, when you are hungry, by eating you satisfy a need, and the other when you have to relieve yourself, and you are not able to do it, by doing it you get relief.

What about a person who has no needs? Living, I am talking of living. He cannot have any happiness. Can you say God is happy? Not at all possible; because if He is happy there will be a time when He will be sad - opposite. So in an unchanging condition, there is neither happiness nor sorrow. Now when human beings want happiness, they are looking for something impermanent. They are fools. But in God, everything comes to a point. It is not balance. It is the disappearance of both. Therefore, in Hindu philosophy for instance, we say we must rise above both extremes - good, bad; health, sickness; light, darkness - both. Because this is this, and this is this - the two exist together. And the more this is, the more this will be. The more happy you are today, the more miserable you are going to be tomorrow. Therefore, the saint exists in the middle. He is not sad, he is not happy; he is not rich, he not poor - middle. So this is the aim of yoga - the goal is the middle.

In Sahaj Marg we are attempting this enormously grand, ultimate synthesis of existence. And if it is successful, it will not merely produce a complete person in whom you find everything in perfect balance, it will produce a saintly individual, a masterly individual. And remember, here, Babuji's oft-repeated statement that, "The Divine life is a perfectly balanced life, no exaggeration in any direction. A saint does not have to be intellectual, or rich, or powerful, or strong. He does not have to be anything." And this is, this nothingness which spirituality promises, how, by becoming that, the quality of which is nothingness, such a person becomes capable of generating, from within himself, everything in the universe. He has no form. He has no name. He has no substance. He has no qualities, in a sense. He is divinised to the highest possible extent.

Perfect balance cannot be achieved in the human existence. If perfect balance is achieved then this life will end immediately. So we must aim for proper functioning of all our faculties. This is itself a great thing. Such proper functioning of all our faculties I call saintliness. Perfect balance can exist only in Him.