Thursday, October 2, 2008

Transmission

And now, what is it that our Master gives us that is like food to the human system? He gives us the very great and Divine assistance of transmitting his spiritual self into us. I deliberately use the word 'self' because the Sanskrit word pranahuti means 'offering of the self.' When can we offer something again and again to as many people as we meet, without any loss to the giver himself? Only when our resources are infinite! So, as Master says, we have to get hold of a guru or a master, whatever you like to call him, who, by virtue of his own connection with the infinite, can make that infinity available to us. Spirituality is not a progress or a search or travel in time. It is travel in eternity. So, as we continue to progress, we continue to need this transmission in greater and greater measure, and as we rise higher and higher, his assistance becomes more and more necessary until, at the final level on stage, we can do nothing without his assistance.

In the SRCM and Sahaj Marg websites (www.srcm.org and www.sahajmarg.org), Master defines Transmission as follows: What we call transmission Master once defined as 'spiritual food'. The body lives and grows at the physical level, and so sustains itself on physical foods. The soul, being spiritual in nature, needs food of that plane.

On a different occasion Master described transmission in terms other than what I have stated above. He said, "The body is alive only because the soul is in it. At death the soul flies away, and then we say the person is dead, and call the body a corpse. So the body lives by the soul. How does the soul live? I will tell you. The soul lives by transmission which we can think of as the essence of Divinity.

Dr. Varadachari has called this 'Soul of the soul.' It is a correct description that he has given. He told me in Sanskrit it is pranasya pranaha which means the soul of the soul. So, really speaking, without transmission the soul is like a dead thing. The very first transmission makes the soul alive. It is the touch of Divinity itself.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Here is something I read regarding the uniqueness of the concept of transmission in the Sahaj Marg system of practice as offered by SRCM Organization:

While we do not lay claim to originality, there are however very important and unique features which set Sahaj Marg as a system of spirituality apart from all others. What are these differences? The most important one is that in this system alone, to our knowledge, we employ what is known as transmission. This transmission is something unique and enormously efficacious in its application. What is transmitted is the Master's own yogic or life energy, which is transmitted into the heart of one who begins the practice of meditation in this system. This transmission is not something ephemeral or merely put in words but something which is very tangible, and to the reception of which innumerable practicants all over India, and an increasing number of persons in the West, can personally testify.