An Analysis of Sahaj Marg by an Ex-abhyasi

An Analysis of Sahaj Marg by an ex-Abhyasi

by 4d-Don

The technique of "cleansing" and "transmission" are the tools Sahaj Marg uses to create "dependency" on the system, and obedience to the Guru and his appointees. If the guru and the appointees are Masters and "perfect" then there is no logical problem with the system and there is at least the possibility that no abuse or corruption will be seen or experienced. There is still a spiritual problem however: getting something for nothing. Pre-chewed food is good when one is a baby, but the adult has to learn to deal with life. Is that not the reason we are here? To learn to control our own desires, urges, thoughts and actions ? And we know from the experience of living that there is no such thing as perfection. It's an abstraction, much like the mathematical zero, negative numbers or imaginary time, and/or an illusion much like time travel, that intellectuals love to debate, claim to comprehend and generally work with. But anyone claiming perfection should be asked to prove it.

But there are those, and most of us to a certain degree who, in our feminine or receptive side, want to believe that perfection exists, and we assign it "pele-mele" to all kinds of people, systems, technologies, societies and cultures. The more spiritual of us can "imagine" that the ONE, the ALL, the SINGULARITY, or GOD is "united" and therefore "perfect". But that is still an act of faith and certainly not a certainty. The process of the "continuum" or the "eternity" of the Universe might just be that there is no perfection at all, and that life always goes towards the "desired" mythical perfection like a "homing torpedo", not knowing where the target is but, through negative feedback loops, always getting nearer.

It seems that we are always "knocking on Heaven's door" and our experience of perfection is always fleeting and/or anecdotal. Though I have searched for it, I have never seen it, and have always found flaws with others' conception and examples of perfection. I have learned to live with life as it is, whether it was perfectly created by a God or not, and not as I want or desire it to be. Is wanting the ONE to be "different" not a desire also? I see it as a futile desire. IT is. That is all we know for sure. 

God or the perfect Guru

If there is a perfect God, and if that God is ALL, is it not contrary to that God's perfect reality, and a little arrogant of us, to want IT to be different? Is it not like saying to the lion: "OK, I know what perfection is and I want you to stop eating meat and start eating lettuce now!"? Will those natural systems not change at their "natural" pace without man's arrogant interference. Maybe it means that once the lion does not eat meat anymore, it will have fulfilled its destiny and it will evolve into something else or become extinct.

In our denseness and our arrogance, will we also blindly obey the "perfect" engineers of humanity and accept "spiritual cloning" as well as "human cloning" and become spiritually intellectually, and physically extinct? The guru will not become extinct because he still has dreams and desires. Is the gift of life not a sacred gift? And what about freedom? Have we as a civilization become so addicted, dependent and generally so ill that we do not realize that? Thankfully, most have not, but apparently, some have.

The older religions used to place their spiritual and magical powers in many gods, forces of nature, devas, stones, animals, and even today, our secular society places it (power) on science and in the "Hollywood" mythical concept of "love" that it commercially places on magical "cupid" or emotionally on the opposite sex. Some opportunists benefit from selling products and cures or solutions to humanity's ills using these myths and techniques from the past. Such is the field called "new age" or "alternative". Many of these "new agers" are not very knowledgeable in their chosen fields, not having verified analytically, the accuracy of their information or the efficacy of their products but have magically, 'lucked' onto much of their knowledge in a synchronous manner. For some the products works and for some they do not work.

Strange that some of those same people, when they become involved with spirituality, think that the "same Sahaj Marg" works for everyone, unlike what Lalaji, the (alleged but falsely so) originator of their system, use to teach and practice. He used mantras, shabda yoga (the sound), and karma yoga, and even instructed disciples to meditate on someone or something that they knew. He also encouraged people to continue in their own religion and culture, unlike Sahaj Marg today, or Chari who tells his disciples to forsake their religious practices and dismiss their cultural mores for the perfection of his. Then there are the abhyasis who organize day-long meditations on Christmas and Easter, the traditional time spent with family in the western world. There are many so-called "new agers" and "alternative therapists" in Sahaj Marg.

Magic Versus Science

Those who use the magical power of "science", disparagingly call them (the new age therapists) "pantheist, animist, superstitious, and call their so-called knowledge, "mythologies" with all their archetypes and "energies". Science sees its own solutions as transitory and to be used until something better comes along. The religious/spiritualists see their solutions as having eternally been here with us, right all along, and still right, they claim.

The problems in all these societal dependencies are obvious and many members of society evolve and leave both of them behind, forcing them both to change. These "theories" are seen as short-lived experiments that we as a civilization, in our youth and exuberance, indulge in, and then we take off our rose-colored glassed and try to live our lives in the light of reason, logic and reality, changing as we need to. Both paradigms are seen as useful at different times.

Support and Survival Mechanisms

In psychology and psychiatry, we try and get the patient to voluntarily, or with the assistance of drugs, to "cleanse" or deal with and "brush off" the physical, mental, and emotional attachments which our everyday lives sometimes become. Such are our dependencies on the support of the family, and societal dependencies such as friendships, social groups, guilds, political parties, sports, and hobbies clubs and religious or spiritual groups. If these attachments can be "cleansed" out of the patient's mind, then theoretically at least, any pill, philosophy or religion/spirituality can work as a catalyst for change. The Holy Roman Catholic Church uses "the confession" to absolves what it calls "sins". Whether the change effected is beneficial or not is an unanswered and debatable question. It depends on what replaces the dependency. If the replacement creates a dependency on itself, then we are back at square one. Such is Sahaj Marg.

Humans also have autonomous reactions to such things as pain, sensual pleasures, desires, emotions, and danger. These survival mechanisms are important to any healthy individual in any culture and should not be "cleansed" but controlled. To get rid of anger is as silly as getting rid of all pleasure and/or desires. Control is what we want, not elimination.

However, we see where some religious, spiritual and scientific techniques have "overridden" these systems. Some overrides are chemical, like pills, some are mental like "brain washing" or "cleansing" and some are spiritual and religious. Sahaj Marg is in the spiritual/mental or "spiritual psychiatry" category. This is a term used by the Spiritual Psychiatry Association, two member of which are preceptors, and on the board of directors of the Shri Ram Chandra Mission. They have done research on such things as dependency, and one has published his research on fifty-four (54) abhyasis. We see historically such system overrides in the Japanese WWII kamikaze pilots, the mass suicides of cult members and the suicide bombings in the near-east, constantly in our daily news.

Cause and Effect

In the case of Sahaj Marg, the disciple, the preceptor, and even the Guru, are all granted their "spirituality" as a gift from The Master, who represents, and is a "flesh and blood embodiment" of God, and they have not really earned it but got it through grace. We see the same thing in the catholic confessions, in the "divine right of kings" of feudal medieval days, and in the "caste system" of India. Chari is a Brahmin (the priest class), and there are complaints that his appointees are heavily from the Brahmin class. Much in the same way, the abhyasi, according to Sahaj Marg, does not get the karma he deserves because of his actions, but the Master overrides God's universal law of "cause and effect" and erases his "samskaras".

God is apparently not fair that way. He/She/It favours some people who then favour some people, and it goes on and on, as in a "pyramid scheme". It's the best the social and religious engineers can do. Again it works if there if no corruption all along the path. But, as we well know by now, power corrupts. Just by its geometry, triangles or pyramids do not process energy cleanly in a circular flow, but there is centralization or corruption of energy at the points. Also, the concept of "two on a heart", or "if you are in your heart, the master cannot come in" so vacate your heart and become a "living dead", sounds good initially but in reality, it does not make sense, and is really unfair if that is God's plan. It sounds like a "salesman's fantasy", or "too good to be true". If the cedar could become like the fir, it would be saved! Not!

Levity

Sometimes I feel like forming my own "spiritual" group. "God gave the whole Galaxy to Canadians because SHE/HE/IT (if you say it fast it sounds like a guy from the back-hills saying SHIT) likes us more that anyone else on this earth. :-)"

Conjurers and Manipulators

Try this out if you have time and friends to lose. Transmit to someone else's heart and you will see. If they like you, they might let you in, or they will feel you as pressuring or manipulating them, and they would be right, and eventually they will react. If they don't like you they will push you away as weird. We do that, share our hearts, with the ones we love, and for love we accept it. But generally, people don't like spell conjurers and manipulators. Historically, they were burned at the stake.

Without that vibration or frequency, called love, and because we humans are electromagnetic frequency transmitters and receivers, if the transmission continues for long, and at close proximity, it interferes with the person's life, aspirations and dreams. If a person cannot dream his own God-given dreams, and learn his own karmic lessons, the person could become spiritually, mentally and physically ill. It's like having someone always putting sticks in your bicycle wheels. Most people will push away those that interfere with them that way because we have a hard-wired need to be free.

That is what Voodoo-ism and Zombie-ism, which some claim, originated in India, is originally about. Overriding a person's natural defense systems, using rituals, symbology and geometry, is basically magic or spells. It is still used today by major religions, cults, covenants and some of the new movements, The Vatican has many exorcists. Sahaj Marg adherents "cleanse" other people without their permission and even cleanse neighbourhoods and towns.

Chari claims that one meditation is all he needs to affect the heart of the abhyasi. Ram Chandra, in his wisdom and experience, warned about injuring a person by not transmitting properly. Children were not even supposed to be in the same room. Now they target children and start teaching them to obey at 5 years old. Then there is the preceptor (on-line) who offers his child to the guru in a storm, and claims to transmit to an older women although she refused to meditate with him. That is un-trained, irresponsible, and egotistical, and dangerous corruption.

Signs of Corruption

There are too many corruption "tell-tale" sign in Sahaj Marg to not notice. Ram Chandra's son committed suicide. Varadachari's (guru in waiting before Chari) daughter died after an arranged marriage with a older man, 3 schisms, rumours of poisonings, innuendos. (read Varadachari's story on ISRC site) http://www.sriramchandra.org/

The number of deaths of spouses, accidents, and separations among the small number of abhyasis and preceptors I know are too many to be mere coincidence. There is stress here. The stress, separations, accidents, and deaths, could be caused by the loss or conflicts of desires, aspirations, and dreams of the abhyasis and their families. Some abhyasis even "cleanse" their neighbourhood and claim to do "environmental" work by "cleansing" the slums. There should be a study or studies.

The Master of Disaster

So the perfect Guru has to have impeccable logic, morality, ethics as well as communication skills so as to not make the mistake of "transmitting" into the "cleansed" body a "degenerate" energy that is "not loving, uncaring, detached, aloof, not there, living dead, irresponsible, and dangerous for friends and family to be around. That is not the training one gets in engineering school, or CEO school, or any of the jobs listed on Chari's curriculum vitae.

Also, writing one's autobiography does not display a lack of ego, and the purchase of castles, rather that feeding the starving children, does not display morality or ethics. Sahaj Marg says: "If there is a fire and I don't know about it, I am relatively happier than if I know about it.". Terrible ethics, morality and logic! If one's family is in the house that is burning, one has a moral, and ethical responsibility to know about it and to act, so therefore, not be a "living dead" but be "more alive" as Christ would say. But that loving feeling and that loving action, not being part of Chari, is what the disciple, as instructed by Sahaj Marg, would have called an attachment and "cleansed" him/herself of. So now, he/she is not responsible for anything in his/her life, and does not care.

Guilt will creep in eventually but it might be too late. That guilt can cause spiritual and mental dis-ease and illness. Birth and rebirth will be the only solution to the dilemma, and no Indian engineer or CEO will override that. That type of "cleansing" and "transmission", although sounding good at the onset, in the hands of an untrained or improperly trained Guru, leaves the family and society with a big hole of apathy and irresponsibility at the centre of relationships where love should abide. That will not create "spirituality" or union with family, friends, society or God in the end. It will divide as Sahaj Marg does.

The Active and the Receptive

The role of the "feminine" is to be the "receptive" in a relationship. By 'feminine" I do not mean "female", but the feminine and the receptive in all of us, male and female. That is what the women of the western world wanted us to share in, we the men in the relationship. When the "sensitive masculine", those not tied to the old religious and societal patriarchies of the Christian West started changing to accommodate that request from our feminine, that "active" vacuum was felt in the East and in the West, and the feminine or receptive of the west was targeted by the "personal growth" gurus, and/or "spiritual" movements of the East and West. The feminine, because of its nature, became receptive to the "active", and historically patriarchal gurus of the Orient, believing that, because some of the eastern philosophies seemed spiritual and logical, they would be able to fulfill our spiritual hungers.

Western society as a whole was already exposing and rejecting the corruption of our patriarchal religions, and the "old boys" networks because, in their corruption, they were not allowing enough freedom for the "receptive" in them/us. In the vacuum, we were offered and/or sold, by the invaders and proselytizers, exactly what we had left behind, and again, we were receptive to it because we had not changed completely yet. Some of us were more cautious than others.

The gurus brought a Divinity that is also called HIM (the FATHER), the succession was still male, and where the feminine or the receptive wanted more freedom, more power-sharing, more control, and more choice, we got the same dogmatic "obedience" and "Freedom from Freedom", and similar linguistics tricks made up by male religious "engineers" and social planners of little or narrow intellect, who still conceive the world in straight lines and 90 degree angles, and cannot see circles, spheres, spirals, and other higher dimensional structures..

Some of the men of our western world, as they had just recently and voluntarily left that abusive paternalistic dogmatism behind, now saw it again and raised the alarm. Some of us are still raising the alarm. The feminine in us, as it has become addicted to obedience and dependency once again, does not want to give up on the dogma of the mythical 'truth', and wants to save it.

But seriously, off with the rose-colored glasses. The Sahaj Marg system is not built on high enough logic and should go through a "reformation" as the Roman Catholic Church and many of the western institutions have. We/they, the receptive feminine, thought we had not gone far enough towards self control, responsibility, and power-sharing in a societal "union" or merger or right/left, capitalism/socialism, liberalism/conservatism, obedience/reason, and wanted to go further, not backwards. We thought of India as Mahatma Ghandhi and the philosophy of "negative leadership" and "ascetism. Sahaj Marg is not that.

A New Dark Age?

Sahaj Marg is like looping back to the 'Dark ages". The Holy Catholic Church would not dare ask for obedience to the point of "killing your mother" today, as Sahaj Marg or Chari does in his allegories. Shucks! Sahaj Marg is still teaching children that war against one's relatives is acceptable and shows acceptance of war as accepting one's destiny. That's like telling a "suicide bomber" that it's his/her destiny to kill and that they should accept their destiny.

And then there is the kid's story about Gopal, in the 'school curriculum, now being taught in India at their school. Gopal is an Indian man this kid meets in the forest and who protects the child as he crosses the forest to get to his guru. Gopal turns out to be God in person. It is not wise to assist, to finance and to teach that to children in this day and age. We must teach our children to think for themselves and "beware of strangers", and con artists. We must teach them to not rely on the Hollywood myth of "The Good Guy wears a White Stetson Hat" or a "Guru outfit". Children mix mythology and reality quite freely. That "teaching story" verges on stupidity in today's world.

If that is eastern spirituality, it's useless and should be put on the dung heap. I don't think it is. What we see in Sahaj Marg since Chari is just a vestige of the Hindu past, much as Christianity is (not the teachings of Christ). Our western secular and much of our spiritual philosophy is superior to that. Even the Christ-like "love the enemy" and "turn the other cheek", of the corrupt and morally bankrupt Holy Roman Catholic Church is much superior to that. Now, if we could only get the Christians to live it, we would have found part of the answer. At least the "Christ" philosophy is challenging and at the very least, places the responsibility on the individual and does not include "kill" once again. Sahaj Marg says "kill" as a sign of obedience. That is not spiritual and will not lead to ONE, There will always be the divisive disrespect and dehumanizing of the person killed. 

The Desperation of the Abhyasis

The reason the "devotees" of Sahaj Marg are so hurt by the Management of Shri Ram Chandra Mission, is because Ram Chandra was a humble, beautiful man. He was not God. Whether he was a perfect man is a debatable point. (He smoked as a way to keep himself in the physical...humour). But he would not abuse his position. Chari is not so humble and has been, through destiny, born, raised in material comfort and more trapped by it. Guruship is above his knowledge and Gurudom is above his ability. The abhyasis were supposed to help him grow into the position, but they were too weak and compliant and obedient and also not up to the job.

Maybe until now. We'll see.....Maybe! We have Hope!

This too will pass.....

Keep on the Sunny Side of Life...

4d-Don

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