What is Raja Yoga?

In Raja Yoga the aim is to calm the mind through meditation where the mindfulness is established on an object, mantra, or concept. Whenever the mind wanders it is brought back to what ever is the object of concentration. In time the brain will stop wandering and become entirely motionless. A condition of focused continual concentration will occur. From this condition the yogi will eventually unite with the higher SELF. Please note that this whole course may take hours, weeks, months, or years of conforming practice before the complete merging with higher SELF...or it could happen in an instant. It just depends on the yogi.

The Raja Yoga system known as "Sahaj Marg" is still practically obscure in the West, even among Yoga aficionados. This is largely due to the fact that Sahaj Marg has been a low-key, word-of-mouth mode. Works by the ancestry of Sahaj Marg Masters, published under the auspices of the Shri Ram Chandra Mission (SRCM), are hard to locate, and beyond the abhyasis or practitioners of Sahaj Marg, few are conscious that SRCM centers have been stable worldwide since the Mission was founded in India fifty years ago.

What is Sahaj Marg? There are no easy answers to this question, just as there are none for questions like "What is Zen?" or "What is Sufism?" Sahaj Marg (which may be translated as "Natural Path" or "Simple Way") has no surface and its surroundings is Boundlessness; thus by meaning Sahaj Marg resists definition. Given the despair of description, then, we must remain satisfied with classifying, comparing, and giving historical accounts. These are outer matters and have little to do with the basic nature of Sahaj Marg, for spiritual Sadhana is not only a "study" but also a "way," and as such can be understood only through actual test.

Though its procedure may seem novel to some, those familiar with with the great Dharmic traditions will find Sahaj Marg a unaffected extension of the continuing refinement and compromise that living yoga has always marked. Sahaj Marg is an orderly method intended to give the direct experience of awareness, right here, right now, in the nucleus of our daily situations. This has always been the heart of all spiritual traditions, as Vivekananda noticed: "Religion consists in awareness. We all know as a truth that nothing will content us until we realize the Truth for ourselves. However much we may debate, however much we may hear, but one thing will content us, and that is our own awareness; and such an feeling is possible for every one of us, if we will only attempt."

All religions initiate with the experience of God, the awareness of a single person such as Christ or Buddha or Mohammed. After the founders pass on, their followers classify their teachings, and if this education is deep and true and useful enough to stand the test of time, inevitably they crystallize into a religion. But the first experience of its founder remains the bedrock of each religion, and to the grade that his followers can share of that encountering themselves, the religion remains valid and transformative, somewhat than becoming different into a set of mechanical rituals or a dry frame of moral rules and social expectations.

We should not ridicule religion, for religions are regulating systems for societies and the preliminary schools for spirituality. My Teacher is of the belief that while it is an amazing thing to be born into a religion, it is a calamity to die in a religion. We must rise above mere thought and conformity, and feeling the Truth of the records for ourselves. My Teacher told me that Christ, for instance, to keep his encountering alive and to pass the light along, had to send this encountering to someone, a human being who then would be the transitory vehicle of the essence of his Teacher, until he in turn passed it on to the most suitable of his own disciples, who would pass it on again, and so on, down through the ages. Whether Christ in fact transmitted this to Peter we do not know, but the Catholic Church has at least recognized the necessity for a living Teacher and the reality of such transference in the doctrines of apostolic succession and the office of the pope as vicar of Christ.

Sahaj Marg also affirms the need of a realized Teacher in human form to assist most people in their expedition Home. A true Teacher comes to serve, not rule, for as my Master's own Master taught, "God is the real Guru or Master and we get light from Him alone. But as it is radically difficult for a man of customary talents to draw motivation from God directly, we pursue the help of one of our fellow mankind who has established his association with the Almighty." In Sahaj Marg, "Master" simply refers to one who has mastered himself, and who has the competence to make Teachers like himself. Thus, though the Masters of the Sahaj Marg lineage are each unique in terms of physique, character, taste, and temperament, in their most fundamental Nature they are one and the like person.

Sahaj Marg is generally presented as a refinement of Raja Yoga. Ultimately, however, it must be grasped as an essence of the yogas of Jnana, Karma, and Bhakti as well. As delineated in the Bhagavad Gita, these four principal yogas (there are dozens of other yogas in India and the West) are adapted for varying natures. Bhakti Yoga, the yoga of love and devotion, is designed for those with powerful religious or emotional temperaments; Jnana Yoga, or the path of discriminating intelligence, is said to be the path for intellectuals and philosophers; Karma Yoga is for those with active natures who are having a preference toward movement and service; and lastly, Raja Yoga (called the "King" of yogas, as it involves the mind or "king" of the body) uses an experiential approach through which the yogi directly realizes oneness with the Absolute.

The deviation from truth common to the Aristotelian Western mind is to separate these paths into four immovably exclusive systems. The fact of experience is unlike, for at a certain level these four paths all intersect and blend: Jnana or knowledge pushed to its greatest becomes Bhakti or love, which at its fullness is common sense; Karma Yoga in its highest form is but the expression of Jnana and Bhakti. The sincere way of Raja Yoga very quickly dissolves into the other three, since only a fool would attempt this practice without a qualified leader, and soon the techniques of Raja Yoga are lost in the greater actuality that is the love for the Teacher, a merger in Him which is expressed by the great dictum of the Bhaktas, the Vast Tat Tvam Asi, ("That art thou"), and propelled equally by the discriminating wisdom of negation expressed by the Jnana Yogis as Neti, Neti ("Not this, Not this").

These four yogas reach a destination at a location where all paths end and merge, which we may call whatever we satisfy, since words don't matter at this point: the realm of God, the Origin, the Center, or the Impersonal Absolute. This is why Vivekananda advised yogis to be like a bird, have Bhakti Yoga as one wing, Jnana Yoga as the different wing, and Raja Yoga as the guiding tailfeathers. We could extend his fable and imagine the display of flying as Karma Yoga.

Sahaj Marg reminds us that yoga, and in specific Raja Yoga, is a not and never was a frozen practice, established at some point in the distant past and codified by Patanjali around the Second Century AD in his Yoga Sutras. Even the highest concepts and majority honored methods must evolve as the situations of men change. Methods which were suitable for a bull-cart association may not be so suitable in the vastly different world of the late 20th Century. The Way to the living God is not a Procrustian bed that forces all to fit into its fossil methods or die trying. One of the reasons the Divine descends again and again in the form of Masters is to provide us with an approach that is more natural to our time and place, to enliven the great traditions and honor the spirit of the methods by bringing a flexible and workable revision to the letter of those traditions. After all, the purpose of any method is to bring men and women back to the Source from which they have come. A method has no value beyond that. Indeed, as Buddha taught, the method can be dispensed with once that goal is accomplished, just as the boat is left behind once the river has been crossed.

Those acquainted with Raja Yoga will be familiar with Patanjali's Eight Limbs, the Ashtanga steps of Raja Yoga. These have usually been viewed as steps leading to the final coalition of self with Self, of human with divine -- which is what the word yoga, or "yoke," implies. Whether Patanjali ever intended his "Eight Limbs" to be considered as sequential and consequential stages is debatable, but Sahaj Marg takes a simultaneous and global approach to the practice of Raja Yoga. A classic image of the practice of Raja Yoga is that of climbing the rungs of a ladder: First one works on Yama and Niyama (the moral and ethical limbs), then Asana (posture), then Pranayama (movement of energy through breath), then Pratyahara (withdrawal from senses), and then Dharana (concentration) and Dhyana (meditation) to culminate finally in Samadhi (absorption). An image more apt for the practice of Raja Yoga under Sahaj Marg might be that of a sphere augmenting from its center, for Sahaj Marg begins at Patanjali's Seventh Limb, Dhyana or contemplation, and allows the rest of the practice to grow naturally from this seed.

Different to some notions, Sahaj Marg teaches that meditation is easy and requires no introductory steps for anyone who has a normal state of mental health -- in fact, Sahaj Marg teaches that only by meditating can we learn to meditate! The psychologically risky aspect of Pranayama has been superseded in Sahaj Marg by Pranahuti (prana-ahuti, correctly "offering Prana"), by which an individual can transmit spiritual reality directly from the center of his or her existence to the center of additional individual's existence.

Pranahuti should not be confused with the more familiar spiritual transmission known as Shaktipat. Pranahuti is a very subtle transmission, described as a "forceless force" or "powerless power," and is devoid of all qualities, as well as even the Shakti (power) that informs Shaktipata. Nor is Pranahuti equivalent to what is termed Diksha, since Pranahuti does not confer or connote initiation by the Guru. In short, it is the use of Divine energy for the transformation and evolution of human beings into Divine beings. Pranahuti is a very gentle process and is imperceptible to every but the most sensitive recipients, although anyone can sense its effects as they gradually develop over time. As my Master told me, normally we do not feel Pranahuti; we feel only its results.

The yogic transference of subtle or Divine energy by one whose own life-force, or Prana, is realized at such a high vibratory level that it can awaken the dormant Prana in others crosswise any distance by the merest thought or Sankalpa was known to adepts in the distant past, but had fallen into a sort of honored disuetude until it was re- discovered as a useful technique for 20th Century by Shri Ram Chandra of Fatehgarh (1873-1931). Lalaji, as he is affectionately known, is said to have completed realization of the Absolute in a period of just seven months, to have had no Master, and no former incarnation. Lalaji remains a mystery; he was known only to a few in Uttar Pradesh, but was beloved by both Sufis and Hindus.

The art of Pranahuti was transmitted by Lalaji to his most fit disciple, who by coincidence also bore the name Ram Chandra. This disciple, now known as Shri Ram Chandra of Shahjahanpur (or more simply as Babuji, since he worked all his life as a "babu," or clerk) perfected the practices of Sahaj Marg, distilling a natural and simple method of meditation from the traditional procedures of Raja Yoga, established the Shri Ram Chandra Mission in 1945 in honor of his guru, and upon his death or Mahasamadhi in 1983 transmitted his essence to his disciple, Shri Parthasarathi Rajagopalachari.

Chariji (b. 1927) now embodies the Master and carries on the work of Shri Ram Chandra Mission. Like the other Masters of his lineage, Chariji is a family man and had worked all his life in an ordinary job until his retirement a few years ago. The usefulness of ordinary life is emphasized not only in the philosophy of the practice, but has been demonstrated practically by the Masters of Sahaj Marg.

Ordinary life is the accepted arena of spiritual practice under Sahaj Marg. As a bird needs two wings to fly, so a human being needs two wings of existence, the spiritual and the material. If either is neglected for the other, life becomes exaggerated and unnatural. Neglect of the material existence results in dependence, and neglect of the spiritual results in a fundamental unhappiness. To realize complete perfection, we must balance both sides of our lives, and treat everything that comes our way as part of our spiritual Sadhana or practice. Sahaj Marg emphasizes that realization is for everyone, not just for sannyasins, lamas, monks, or nuns. Indeed, family life in one's own home is an ideal ashram for learning sacrifice and love. Sahaj Marg flatly rejects the romantic notion that to realize God or Self we must renounce society and adopt arduous practices. God dwells not in the Himalayas, Babuji used to say, but in the human heart.

Sahaj Marg insists that the highest spiritual attainments can be realized by anyone at any time in any place. In recognition of this understanding, Pranahuti or yogic transmission can be received not only directly from the Master, who is an adept in the art, but also via preceptors who have been personally prepared by the Master to serve as conductors of Pranahuti. Over 900 preceptors now serve worldwide. These preceptors can be likened to transformers in neighborhoods that direct and regulate the energy from a distant power plant for indivi- dual use. Preceptors are themselves abhyasis (practitioners) who are still evolving at varying levels of spiritual maturity. It's entirely possible for a preceptor to give a sitting to someone who is at a much higher stage than the preceptor himself. The term "sitting" is used in Sahaj Marg to describe a meditation in which the Master or a preceptor meditates in the presence of a group or with an individual to clean the subtle body and transmit Prana. This is normally done while sitting face to face -- or more precisely, heart to heart.

Those who have attempted to establish themselves independently in a longterm daily rhythm of meditation may appreciate Babuji's observation: "Serious difficulties arise when meditation is practiced independently in accordance with methods prescribed in books. One has to keep on struggling with the mind in order to suppress its unceasing activities. This continues all the time and there is practically no meditation at all, since all the time given to meditation is lost in struggling against thoughts and tendencies. What Pranahuti does for the spiritual uplift of a person and removal of complexities in a short time, independent efforts cannot achieve even in a full decade." In Sahaj Marg, this "removal of complexities" is called, simply enough, "cleaning." The habits, tendencies, and hardened impressions (Samskaras) which defeat our efforts toward realization are gently yet thoroughly removed. The effectiveness of subtle cleaning cannot be understood until it is experienced.