INO Glossary: Sahaja

“Man is born with an instinct for naturalness. He has never forgotten the days of his primordial perfection, except insofar as the memory became buried under the artificial superstructure of civilization and its artificial concepts. Sahaja means natural. It not only implies natural on physical and spiritual levels but on the mystic level of the miraculous. It means that easy or natural state of one living without planning, designing, contriving, seeking, wanting, striving, or intention. What is to come must come of itself.”

“It is the seed which falls in the ground, becomes seedling, then a sapling, and finally a vast shady tree of wisdom and teachings. The tree grows according to sahaja—natural and spontaneous in complete conformity with the natural law of the Universe. Nobody tells it what to do or how to grow. It has no swadharma or rules, duties, and obligations incurred by birth. It has only svabhava—its own inborn self or essence to guide it. Sahaja is that nature which, when established in oneself, brings the state of absolute freedom and peace.”

“It is when you are in your natural state, in harmony with the Cosmos. It is the balanced reality between the pairs of opposites. As the guru of the Bhagavad Gita says, ‘The person who has conquered the baser self and has reached the level of self-mastery is at peace, whether it be in cold or hot, pleasure or pain, honored or dishonored.’ Thus sahaja expresses one who has reverted to his natural state, free from conditioning. It typifies the outlook that belongs to the natural, spontaneous, and uninhibited man, free from innate or inherited defects.”

“In all the golden dharmas, sahaja flourishes. In Taoism, it was the highest virtue (te). In the earlier Zen records, it is the main plank of training along which the disciples had to walk. The masters demanded answers which were sahaja and not the product of intellectual thinking or reason. Truth only came spontaneously.”

“Sahaja in Chinese became tzu-jan, or self-so-ness. Taoism openly lamented the loss of the peculiar naturalness and unself-consciousness of the child.”