Babuji and Lalaji

Taken and translated from an article by Élodie: "Babuji et Lalaji",  on her blog in Europe: Pour Que Vive Le Sahaj Marg.


January 6, 2014

Babuji and Lalaji

Lalaji was the first Hindu representative of a long Sufi tradition characterized by its syncretism with the Hindu Santmat.  A disciple of Mawlana Fazl Ahmad Khan, he (Lalaji)  became the 35th master of the Naqshbandiya Mujadidiya Mazhariya.  Among his own disciples, his family moved towards Sufism and are at the origin of the Golden Sufi Center and NaqshMuMRa (a branch of the Sufi lineage: Naqshbandiya Sufi Brotherhood), others moved towards the (Hindu) Santmat, and mainly towards the Ramashram Satsang.

Having never rubbed shoulders with Lalaji (he met him 3 or 4 times), Babuji followed for many years the teachings provided within Ramashram Satsang.  Imagining himself  "hunted" by some of them who (allegedly) would make attempts on his life, he moved away and dreamed about Lalaji and Vivekananda having chosen him to found the Sahaj Marg (Easy Path), which he performs in 1945.  The myth has it that Lalaji would have detected in him the "special personality" that the spiritual world was then waiting for.  In a letter of 1963, Babuji explicitly breaks all ties he had kept with the Sufi masters, judging them to be totally overwhelmed.

A disciple of Kasturi claims that Babuji had Sahaj Marg, and Lalaji had Santmat. Later, Kasturi herself confirms that Sahaj Marg has nothing to do with Lalaji, Sufism and Santmat. So why does SRCM and Chari maintain the myth of a close link between Lalaji, Babuji and Chari, the so-called three masters of the Sahaj Marg mission?

Sahaj Marg, founded by Babuji has been completely revised and altered by Chari and the medium of "Whispers from the Brighter World" with the objective of a New Age and spiritualist globalization. Seventy years after its creation, Sahaj Marg has nothing to do with its origins, there has been a complete overhaul.  Everyone has rewritten history in their own way, each has re-shaped the teaching.

Ultimately, whether this be the time of Babuji or of Chari, when the doctrine of the moment of the SRCM is always something new and recent, hence we see the importance of maintaining a myth that takes its roots in the deep past of major Hindu and Muslim saints.

Élodie 

 .
.