Question: Could you say something about the path you are on with Gnyan Vidhi?
Jan: It is called "Akram Vignyan". It is a path that manifested itself through Dadashri, the first master in this lineage. All other paths are "krama", which means they involve effort. "Akram" means there is no effort involved in this path. "Vignyan" means it is the path to knowledge. So Gnyan Vidhi initiates an effortless path to enlightenment.
Q: So you don't have to do anything? Don't you meditate every day?
J: Akram Vignyan does not require you meditate. I meditate out of habit and because I enjoy being in the bliss. I just sit in bliss. I take things very easy now; I used to work hard on my sadhana and meditated many hours a day, and so on.
Q: There are paths where you do not have to do anything, because the master takes over. This is for example what Poonjaji did. Is this what you mean, that the guru takes over your sadhana?
J: Not at all! Nobody takes anything over from you. This path works by you being given Selfrealization in Gnyan Vidhi.
Q: But is Selfrealization not the end of the path? You seem to be claiming it is the beginning.
J: That is what is so remarkable about Akram Vignyan. You are given the end goal for free. All you have to do is attend the Gnyan Vidhi session with alert attention and sincerity. What seems to cause some confusion is that while you have been given Selfrealization, the state can not fully manifest itself because of your old layers of ignorance. So though you have been given the goal, there is a path involved as the Self automatically clears away all the stuff that covers it. Already during the Gnyan Vidhi ceremony a tremendous amount of the covering is burned away.
Q: So you really don't have to do anything? The Self takes care of the whole process?
J: Exactly.
Q: This sounds too good to be true!
J: It is true. I speak from my own experience. You can feel the process going on.
Q: I can't help thinking about calling it Selfrealization, if you are actually not Selfrealized. I mean, you still have a path. There is still a process going on before it manifests fully, as you said.
J: It manifested fully in me at once. I was speaking about how it is generally experienced. In the previous two satsangs I have written about the state I got. The fact is, that thanks to Gnyan Vidhi I experience the Self continuously, I am no longer identified with Jan. This is stable and permanent. Initially what was unstable was that I experienced the Self in everything around me in various ways: sometimes it was emptiness, sometimes it was joy, sometimes it was pure bliss. What was most unstable was the bliss. Mostly it was not there, then out of the blue it was back for no apparent reason at all. When the bliss was not there, there was an emptiness in Jan, which was not nice. A longing. Today the love-bliss is my natural state. This is the fastest spiritual path I have ever been on, and the easiest and most enjoyable.
Q: Vivekananda said that the spiritual path does not end with samadhi, it begins with samadhi. Is this what you are talking about?
J: No. Samadhi is when you so to speak break into the Self from the outside and you get a more or less short period of bliss. In Akram Vignyan it is the other way round: The Self awakens and begins to break out and bliss begins to pour into your body and mind all by itself. You can still have samadhi, of course, and will have it more frequently than before.
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