The Sun and the Sunflower

The Sun and the Sunflower

by Victor Kannan

Trainer, Sahaj Marg Meditation

The other day Daaji made a significant statement. It was about the general care for the welfare of humanity vs catering to individual needs.  As individual needs are specifically based on one’s skills, desires and past circumstances, the solutions are quite complex to be offered from an external source, though that source is one’s teacher, guide or mentor.  Also, while wanting to cater to the personal situation of a student, the teacher’s first and foremost duty is to the serve the entire student body as a single unit.

Though I had understood this a long time ago, it got me thinking. There is a simple principle at work here, which is the impartiality of nature, whether it is the operation of mechanical laws, physical laws, or the law of nature itself operating inexorably. Any exceptions are still within the realm of the possibilities, and any aberration that is caused by these exceptions are still within nature’s law of adjustment and the re-establishment of equilibrium.

We can say God is a principle. It helps those who can help themselves. Like any other principle, if we learn how it operates, we will know how to harness it. This idea of harnessing includes awareness, acceptance, aspiring, adjusting and ascending, on a constant basis. This is the foundation of real knowledge. This knowledge includes how to behave; hence, the finer aspect of compassion and the set of emotional intelligences are part of this knowledgeable living. 

So, if everything in life operates per the natural law, what are the dynamics of existence? This question is answered by Babuji when he says, “Be simple and in tune with Nature.”  Being simple seems to be a requirement to be in tune with Nature. So, the real dynamics of human life are the same as for the rest of the life forms. When we humans live a natural, plain and simple life, we begin to automatically orient ourselves towards the purpose which we are born to achieve, whatever it may be. 

In this connection I am reminded of sunflowers. The sunflower is said to track the movement of the sun. It is always supposed to be facing the sun. As the individual sunflowers orient themselves towards the sun, the sun, in a general way, sends out energy uniformly to all. Then each individual sunflower is responsible for taking what it needs.

In this sense, a Guide or teacher of global capacity acts like a sun, and an ideal student acts like a sunflower. 

This does not mean to track the Master daily and to know his whereabouts. It means to meditate, read, introspect and let the knowledge reveal itself as the states of knowledge become synonymous with our states of being!  Students are helped individually to the extent that they are tuned in and focused on the Real.