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by P. Rajagopalachari

Spirituality is the science and the art of remembrance. We have forgotten our original home from where we have descended to this world in which we are living now. We have become so addicted to material life and values that we no longer remember that original home of our father whom people call God, or by any other name.

Now, before we can return to that home, there must be something that will make us remember that home. How can someone go to a place of which he knows nothing? And how can he go if he does not remember it? People talk of amnesia, but I am telling you that here we have a permanent amnesia. Therefore I told you that spirituality is the science and the art of remembrance.

In travel back to its Original Home, the soul is the traveller. The way is the life that it adopts on its way home. The vehicle is the body in which it travels through life. Looked at in this way, we see that there is nothing to be afraid of in rebirth. Rebirth is nothing but the soul changing from one useless vehicle to another useful one, so that it can keep moving on and on upon its journey back to its Original Home.

It is therefore, something of a misnomer to even call it rebirth. What is being born? Is it the soul? No! Because as we see, the soul exists and continues to exist. Is it the body which is reborn? No! Because it is a new body that is created out of the elements for the use of the soul. Then what is it that is reborn, if anything? I can only say that the whole concept of rebirth seems to be an unnecessary one, if we view the matter from the above view-point, as being nothing but the change of vehicle necessary for the advancement of the soul to the Goal.

Religion

Religion which was generally considered to be a link between man and God, has now become a barrier instead. If we keep ourselves bound fast to a particular form or practice without a clear idea of its real significance and final approach, we are probably committing the greatest blunder.

God is not to be found within the fold of a particular religion or sect. He is not confined within certain forms or rituals, nor is He to be traced out from within the scriptures. Him we have to seek for in the innermost core of our heart.

It is not religion which is wrong, it is we who are wrong. Because religion only means it is a way of reconnecting ourselves with the Ultimate from which we have come down, with which we have lost contact. And religion is supposed to be some sort of kindergarten school which helps you reconnect yourself with that ultimacy of truth, of being, of existence, and then through the pursuit of a spiritual way, achieve that goal of going back Home to your Maker, of becoming one with Him.

It is believed that a human being must necessarily start with external worship but this is not the end of one's way of communing with God. We are expected to indulge in ritual or formal worship only for so long as we find benefit in it. After that we must necessarily seek a better approach to God, and at this stage comes the idea of meditation, when we do away with the need for an objectified form of worship by creating in ourselves the necessary instrument of worship.

According to my Master, "Spirituality begins where religion ends". While the basic education of man can be undertaken by religion, his further development when he has reached what may be termed adulthood can only be offered by spirituality. Spirituality is easily identifiable with mysticism in all its aspects.

Religion enforces an externalisation of the mind in man's search for God. Mysticism or spirituality internalises the search and directs the mind to the heart of man where the search should really commence. One of the great tenets or principles of all religions has been that in the heart of the human being, God Himself resides. Of course this may be thought to be the more doctrine of immanence; but it is true that God is immanent within us. When the search externalised, the first thing man loses sight of, or touch with, is himself. The goal is taken to be far away, very often in some far distant sphere of existence not easily accessible to us.

On the contrary, spirituality focuses man's attention on the divine effulgence radiating in one's own heart, which effulgence is created by the presence of the Creator Himself in the heart. This immediately presents the Divine in an altered light, and brings him to a proximity with one's own person which can hardly come any nearer. Being within us such a person is not only always accessible but readily reachable and all that spirituality requires of us to achieve the sense of one-ness with the Ultimate is to focus the mind inwards upon the Person. Apparently, therefore, spirituality is by far the easier method of the two to achieve the goal of human life.

Spirituality invokes no names, confers no attributes, demands no subservience to any artificially created gods of the human mind, but focuses man's attention on the infinite Ultimate source of all beings, who is nameless, formless attributeless.

It is, I believe, a mater for easy agreement that such an approach to the Ultimate can serve as an integrating force and bring together human beings of all lands and all religions in one-ness in the most fundamental aspect of human life which is sadly lacking today.

Spirituality if widely practised in this spirit of a humble approach to the Ultimate, is perhaps the most potent force that can bring about such an integration.

Balance

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? It is the result of unbalanced application of effort. 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.

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.

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 fulfilment of one's spiritual purpose in life while simultaneously making it possible to attain similar fulfilment 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 is called Saintliness.

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 for 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. 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.

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 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? 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 fulfilment and he is not only full for himself but also for society itself. So this is the message of yoga.

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 education must be balanced by inner tendencies which must show us how even education can be used. We find that educated people can be good, can be bad.

They can be philanthropists, they can be criminals. They can raise crops. They can commit murders. They can be chaste. They can be adulterous. They can be doctors. They can be both sometimes, at the same time, drug-taking doctors. Education has never been sufficient to change the character of the human being.

In the man of character, education is a good tool, a good instrument, like everything else. 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.

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. It is very rare, not because the life is incompatible, but because we don't aspire.

So you see, we must now come to the question or rather the wisdom of acquiring just enough for our purpose, whether it be of power, or knowledge, or wealth, anything. "Do I have enough? Do I have enough of intelligence to go through my life, so that I can earn enough money to live a life in which I can meditate and progress on my spiritual path?"

If the answer is yes, then stop all other activities. Because we have to fly on two wings, we cannot give up this life. Nor can we ever give it up because, you may not earn money, but you still have to eat and eating is part of this life, defecating is part of this life, procreating is part of this life. Well, who is going to stop all these things? We minimise it to the necessary level, as we call it.

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, it is like a man who never bathes 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 see-saw which is at balance not this way, not that way.

To me the need for the Master is definitely a paramount one because without a Master I don't think we can achieve anything. Why? Because even when the roads are most carefully mapped, there can be disasters which have happened since the maps were printed.

There can be changes. So as ways change, as maps change, and as ways of evolution change, as people change, the ways have to change themselves. So what was held to be something which was practicable, which was demonstrably practicable, two thousand years ago, need not necessarily be practicable today.

Here comes the need for a Master to guide us, because tradition says, people have testified to this, that Masters come mainly to modify ways to suit present conditions of civilisation, present conditions of life and, most important of all, to make or remake systems to suit the conditions of living that exist today. So in the finding of the way, we have to seek the services of the guide. And one who knows the road alone can guide us. Therefore, the guide must be one who has traversed the way again and again, helping the travellers on the path to find the way, and then accompanying them on the way till they reach their Home. Such a one is the Master of the way, and is therefore the Master of our journey. He must be persuaded to show us the way, and then to accompany us till we reach the destination. This is the need for a Master.

Because He loves us with a love, that cannot see us straying from the way, or falling down and coming to grief. His immense love for us makes Him undertake the journey again and again, only to guide us on and on to our goal, generation after generation of travellers, coming one after the other. Therefor the Master is eternal. He has to be eternal.

One who has reached his Home, and stays there, can hardly be a Master. It is only one who has reached him Home and mastered the way, but who is still willing to travel on the way again, solely out of love for those who must come eternally upon the path, only such a one can become a Master. Thus the Master is the one who makes the life meaningful and purposeful.

In spirituality we need a Master more than anything else because He is a living system. His authority is a living authority. His growth is a living growth which we emulate by our own growth. It is like teaching a child to walk - you walk with the child and teach him to walk. So spirituality says, "Now religion has ended. Begin spirituality. Go and accept a Master Live as He says."

In Sahaj Marg, Master is not only a guide, He is not only a mountain guide, tying Himself to you and risking His life for your sake, and pulling you sometimes, pushing you sometimes, cursing you sometimes. He is the Master who changes the way itself into something easy. So that is the sort of guidance and help that we get in Sahaj Marg.

So spirituality is a process. It is a method of practice. It is a way of life. And it takes us up to reality. And then on you go, on and on, Reality leading to Bliss.

(The writer is the President of Shri Ram Chandra Mission, Manapakkam, Chennai 600 116, India).

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