Master is a living example of his own credo that a human being must fly, like a bird, on two wings, one of spirituality and the other of materiality. This is one of the most fundamental and far-reaching lessons of Sahaj Marg. This teaching simply means that a person must not neglect either his physical and material existence or his spiritual life.

Master teaches that there is nothing wrong with material creation and with a human's material existence. Once a spirit has become embodied, it is committed to living out the physical existence whether it likes it or not. There is no option in this. It is not just the law, but it is a basic fact. This life is the only life we can really be sure of. It is here. We are living it. "But," adds Master, "one can regulate one's life so as to normalise all the functions of the human system so that the person develops into a perfect human being." The word 'normalise' is most important in this context. One does not aim, and is not expected to aim, at super-normal powers of the body which hatha yoga so lavishly promises. Nor is one to aim at the attainment of siddhis - such as the power to materialise objects, clairvoyance, levitation and the like - for these too are not normal to the human existence. I repeat, we are not to 'aim' for these in sadhana. Under the Sahaj Marg method of yogic sadhana Master offers precisely this training of how to normalise one's life in all the details of its functions. Master has stated that most humans start life as animals, and to humanise them becomes the first step in sadhana. The animal man becomes a real human by the practice of meditation which regulates mental functions, and thereby makes it possible for the regulation to percolate down to the physical level. It is with the mind that we have to begin. Any process which starts with the body is then obviously putting the cart before the horse. Meditation is the abhyasi's part, the part he has to play in this divine adventure. The Master's work is to clean the abhyasi of past samskaras and to transmit to him. I will not elaborate on this further as details are available in Master's published works. One important aspect I would like to emphasise is that there is no control of functions, or elimination of any of them. All that is done is to seek to normalise each and every function without atrophy of any of them. Master bases his teaching on God's wisdom. God created the universe. When he created a material universe, He must have had good reason to do so. If the material life is leading us astray and away from our goal, then obviously it is our fault in not living the material life in the appropriate fashion. So all that we have to do to get back on to our path is to restore the proper 'balance' to our life whereby the two halves of existence are harmonised and in equilibrium. The humanised man can then proceed to evolve to the state of the perfect human being.

My Master: Tolerance, p. 25-27

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What keeps the mind healthy? Lack of guilt and of negative thought (worries)! How to achieve this? By living a life of positive orientation, avoiding the pitfalls of existence! How to do it? By adopting the way of evolution rather than of growth and achievement, which only promote material ambitions to the achievement of short term goals. And how can that be done? By maintaining the body merely as an instrument for human evolution, tailoring one's material life to this purpose only, thus freeing one-self from the alluring bondages of sensuality and self-satisfaction, both terms considered in their broadest meanings. This will whittle away all dross and dead-wood, simultaneously purifying one's life, and orienting one's purpose in the right direction, the direction of evolution.

Message at the 65th Birth Anniversary Celebration, Ahmedabad, July 24, 1992

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Yoga is not only something we have to do, it is something we must do at all cost. This is what I am trying to put before you, that without sacrificing anything that you are doing, without stopping anything that you are doing, continuing to do it in the future better and better, if you also take up the inner way, spending a modicum of your daily time, about one and a half hours, we are able to establish an inner harmony and peace which is independent of our external circumstances. They go on in their way, this goes on this way, very much like the roots of a tree go downwards and downwards, the branches goes upwards and upwards; they are in different directions, but there is harmony between the two. “Why Meditation?”

Principles Vol. 12, p. 145

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There are two aspects to our existence—the material and the spiritual. The material is troublesome, noisy, misery-ridden, full of worries, etc., whereas the spiritual life is silent, internal and peace-filled. There is an abrupt transition from one to the other, in the beginning, and this can often lead to an unbalanced experience, that there is a difficulty in leading both the lives together. But like a swimmer has to swim in the water, and yet keep his head out of the water so that he can breathe—otherwise life itself could not exist—similarly we have to treat the material life as the medium in which we exist, and keep the spiritual part of our life well out of it, in the same sense, so that we use the material life to float upon and go to our destination. I am sure that you will find this analogy easy to understand, and also understand why the two parts of our lives—the material and the spiritual—have to go on side by side. Can one leave his or her head behind at home and go for a swim? The same thing faces the aspirant to the spiritual life, because we cannot make separate compartments for the two halves of our existence, but we have to unify them into one healthy and harmonious whole , and thus only is success possible in what we call “Life”. The whole problem of the modern existence is because we try to deal with only one side of life, totally neglecting the other. The ascetic denies the material life, and suffers the consequences, whereas the materialist denies the spiritual life, and suffers even more. Balance between the two has to be established.

Spider's Web, Vol 2, 10th September 1985, France

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Life cannot exist without the interplay of the two opposites. There has to be pain and pleasure. There has to be good and bad, sickness and health, sorrow and misery and ecstasy. And anyone who tries to avoid the one will have to do without the other too. If you seek pleasure you will have pain, there is no question about it. And then there is no use in rushing to your spiritual guide and saying, “Why this pain?” This is the standard question of human beings, asked from time immemorial. If you are wise enough to understand that like two sides of a coin, the head on one side and the tail on the other, life is made up of a blend of the two extreme opposites, and that you cannot avoid either ¾ there has to be pain, and there has to be pleasure. And it is like tossing a coin: which will come up heads? You don't know. It is a gamble. In this sense, life is a gamble.

Religion and Spirituality, p. 32-4 

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 Much of humanity tends to go towards the material existence, because its pull, its glamour, its glitter, its attractions, are very manifest. You look at your neighbour and you have cause for envy. The comparison with the better materially endowed person of our civilization, pulls us in one direction. There is very fortunately a latent sense in us which also pulls us towards the other heritage. This pull becomes a pull in two directions. And sometimes, if we are not able to make up our minds and respond in a very balanced way, we are either pulled towards the path of the material life, to our spiritual detriment, or, as in the ancient life, we are pulled totally towards the other side.

So this is the pull in two directions which every human being is subject to. There is nobody who is exempt from this pull because we all have an inside and an outside. There is the inner pull, there is the external pull — to which we are we going to respond? Are we going to respond to both or only one? Well, some societies say, respond to the outer one which epitomises the ‘knower' of the outside world, even including their enormous potential for astronomical research — going into the outermost reaches of the known universe, farther and farther beyond the possibilities of ever having seen something. You see with the eyes, then you see with the telescope. On the other side, we have the enormous pull of the inside — what is it that I am?

 “ Need for Spirituality”: Prin Vol 9, p. 5-7

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So if there is a need for spirituality, it is this need to restore balance within ourselves, so that we pay equal attention to the inside as we pay to the outside. Please, I would like you to listen to this carefully, because material systems emphasize one, the old Yogic systems emphasize the other. According to my Master, both have made this mistake of not restoring a balance. Either we were glorious kings and emperors and business magnates outside with total lack of anything inside, or we were totally in the inside, recluses in the forests, in the caves, away from the society, contributing nothing to society – even our families we destroyed when we left them. So they were also subject to this enormous pull. One is pulled from inside, the other is pulled from outside. I think it is my Master and His Master before Him, who rediscovered this system of ancient yoga, Raja Yoga, which is modified, which is called ‘Sahaj Marg', which seeks to restore inner balance and which says, “My dear friend, don't neglect the outer life for the inner; for heaven's sake, don't neglect the inner for the outer too. You have a body, you have its needs, you have to acquire a family, they are your responsibility. Go ahead. Deal with them rationally. It is your responsibility, but don't forget there is an inner existence too in which the family cannot participate. It is your individual domain. It is you secrete, it is your sacred heart, into which you must plunge whenever you are associated with outside, go within this, and this you do on a daily basis.”

So it's Sahaj Marg's first and most fundamental teaching: ‘Attend to both halves of your life equally. Neither neglect, over-emphasize neither'.

Need for Spirituality: Prin 9, p. 11-13