Sahaj is the state of being that is considered the ultimate state in Gurbani. Sahaj means being in your natural state. Sahaj means living life as it comes. Sahaj means doing your duties but without being the doer. Sahaj means effortless effort. The only effort we need to make is to remove the dust of conditioning which includes our thoughts, beliefs, likes, dislikes, biases, prejudices etc etc from the clean slate that we were in our original form.
Gurbani refers to sahaj as the fourth state of being, above the three states of tamas, rajas and sattva. Tamas is the lowest of the three. Tamas is a force which promotes darkness, death, destruction, ignorance, inertia and resistance. Tamas is the lowest, heaviest, slowest, and most dull (for example, a stone or a lump of earth). It is devoid of the energy of the rajas and the brightness of sattva. Rajas is action-driven. It is never satisfied and never at rest. Rajasic people strive for more and more in position or possessions. They display jealousy, cruelty, selfishness and arrogance. Sattvic people are naturally intelligent, instinctively clear-headed, calm, contented, considerate and sensitive. Sattva is a mind type that is open and positive, always willing to learn, eager to help and generally happy.
Sahaj is the fourth state. It is the state of being when the mind rests in its conscious state. Having become absolutely calm and peaceful it is grounded in its most natural form. In this state you live a natural life, taking care of your basic needs without attaching emotion to it. You live as life comes to you from one moment to another, without thinking of the past and dreaming about the future, for the past is dead and gone and irreversible, and the future is not yet, may or may not happen, and absolutely unpredictable.
In the state of sahaj when you get rid of all the external frills and trappings of dreams and desires of the future and grudges and grievances of the past, you live in the present moment. In this moment alone you are truly alive. You vibrate with life and overflow with love.
The kind of life each one of us has to live in society is almost all pretence. It is the need of the society that we pretend to be someone other than our self. Suppose, someone says something nasty to you, your instinctive response might be to slap the person, but you are not supposed to do that. So, you repress your anger and pretend to be civil to the person whereas in reality you would have behaved otherwise. You may have succeeded in repressing your natural instinct but it does not disappear; it goes down into your unconscious mind and creates problems for you without your realizing it. Thus you get torn between what you really want to do and what you actually do. These are compulsions of living in society because you have to respect others’ rights as much as you want to enjoy your rights. As long as we live in the world of men and women we have to abide by these norms. Even if we were to go to the forest, we would still have to live by some norms, which may be simpler, but are there all the same.
Then, what is the way out? How to come to the state of sahaj while living in this world? The answer is simple. Just become aware of it. Know that you are only abiding by the rules, and don’t get attached to it. Don’t identify yourself with the task you are performing. Just as you don’t spare a second thought when you are driving on the left side of the road, go about doing your duty in the same detached manner. If you drive on the wrong side of the road, no God will come to punish you but you are likely to hit against something or someone and get hurt. Similarly, when you do good you feel good and the bad that you do to others makes you feel much worse. Here, rewards and punishments are inbuilt. These are all cash transactions. Whatever is, is here and now. There is no point brooding about the past or dreaming about the future. Sahaj is living the now moment. Sounds easy but once you start practising it, you will realise how difficult it is. But, it is only difficult, not impossible. It would have been impossible if it was not your intrinsic nature. Then there would have been no way to impose it on you. But, the fact is that all the other things have been brought from the outside. All the memories and the dreams have come from the outside and covered your basic nature of sahaj. All you have to do is to remove these external obstructions.
And, the method to remove this burden is to look at it squarely in the eye and it is gone. These dreams (desires) and memories exist because they are stored in the darkness of the unconscious mind. Bring them out in the open and they will vanish. They survive in the darkness; let them come in the light and they will disappear along with the darkness.
There is darkness inside which invites the three mind types to play their games without any hindrance. Each one of us has a combination of tamas, rajas and sattva attributes. The difference is only in the balance. Some might have more sattvic gunas and the others might have more rajasic gunas or tamasic gunas. The difference between them is only of degree and not of kind. We are bound by them and have become slaves of them. We have mistaken them to be our intrinsic nature. We allow them to dictate our thought, speech and action. We have allowed this darkness to not only exist in us but to grow to tremendous proportions. How? Why have we let these gunas take the reins in their hands?
We have let this darkness grow because we never look in.
All we need to do is to change the direction of the eyes, of our sense of sight. All our senses function outside. Our eyes look at things that are outside; our ears hear the sounds coming from outside; our nose smells outside things and so on. They are the doors and windows that connect us to the world. Now doors and windows are two-way passages. The same door has ‘pull’ and ‘push written on it. The same door allows you to go in and go out. The difference is only in the direction. Exactly the same happens with our senses. They function outside. This is how Nature has made them, because they are our tools to connect with the world.
In order to change the direction we have to make an effort. The eyes are only the windows. It is you who looks through them. It is you who is right behind the eye looking outside. All you have to do is to take an about turn and direct the arrow of your vision inside. When you look within you are not just an observer but also the observed because you are looking at yourself. It is an arduous task and will require a tremendous amount of effort because you have to change the flow of the current. But, ultimately when you become the object of your observation you are in a state of sahaj. Sahaj is when the observer becomes the observed.
An arduous task indeed! Therefore you need to have immense patience and the capacity to wait indefinitely. The more you go in the harder it gets because even things which had been buried deep in the unconscious mind also start popping up. All thoughts, feelings, emotions, moods are from outside. They will pull you outward with all their might. Therefore, you need to be patient and keep persevering. A loving and prayerful attitude will help. Just remain determined to watch everything no matter what the distractions. Your attention will be distracted, take it in your stride. Come back to observing when you remember to do so. Keep at it, no matter what.
You don’t need to do anything else. There is no need to go anywhere. All you need to do is watch everything. Become aware of everything. Become a witness. Become a sakshi. Don’t let anything go by without looking at it. This is your prayer: Look at everything that life gives you! This is the state of sahaj.
Sahaj is looking at each moment as it comes. If it brings joy, look at it without being affected by it and without getting attached to it. If you get attached to it you will run away with it, you will get absorbed in it and you will go away from the moment and you will not be able to look at it. You can only see that which is at a distance from you. You have to learn the art of looking, which entails looking from a distance. You need to create a distance between you the observer and you the observed.
Gurbani says this state of sahaj is the ultimate state of being which everyone covets. The pundits, priests, yogis and siddhas are all aiming to achieve this state, but often they go astray, because they try to change their demeanour in order to change their attitude. They make changes in their life style; they leave their homes and give up the world. In other words, they try to bring changes inside through external behaviour, which is putting the cart before the horse. The conduct that is imposed from the outside is only skin-deep. It cannot last long. Only when the transformation happens inside, the outward demeanour will change automatically. As long as you are wandering in the maze of these three gunas, you are in delusion; you will go on moving in circles and reach nowhere. Sahaj is only in the fourth state.
Gurbani insists on the need of a Guru who can help the seeker change his attitude. The guru is the link between the seeker and the sought. The guru is one who has walked the path and can show you the way. But, it is you who have to walk on it.
Gurbani talks about the apparent paradox that exists in sahaj as in everything else in Nature. Everything is so inter-connected and inter-dependent that no one can give any explanation to prove their point. For example, no one can say whether the chick came first or the egg. No one can say with any amount of certainty whether the seed comes from the tree or the tree comes from the seed. They exist in a chain of cause and effect. Similarly, gurbani says sahaj is the ultimate state and yet you cannot even begin your spiritual journey without being in a state of sahaj. So, sahaj is the first step and also the last step. Sahaj is the means and the end. It is only when you are in a state of sahaj, in your natural state that you will be able to look at the moment; only then you will be able to listen to the Guru’s Word; become loving and prayerful, become passive and patient to receive the divine blessings. It is only when you are in the state of sahaj that you will realise your true self, you will know who you are.
