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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.
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