Satsangi
The thought always comes to mind “why do I want to follow the Swaminarayan Religion and not any other?” Before we go ahead let us clear our view of what religion is. Religion is a particular system in which the quest for the ideal life has been embodied. In other words it’s a system which we choose or are born with to lead our life to follow with. We want to live a life which is modern, healthy, simple, educated, rich, easy and straight forward. To lead such a life we want a teacher whom we can trust and also a system which could have the easiest, well defined, cheap and simple to follow. Let us now look at the system created by Lord Swaminarayan.
Lord Swaminarayan established the Swaminarayan Sampradaya approximately 160 years ago. After being born in Uttar Pradesh and travelling to Himalayas, Madhya Pradesh all the way to South India and back to Gujarat, he came across all the religions people, life in general. He met the British, Sir Malcolm Governor, Muslims, the Nawab of Junagadh, Buddha in Himalayas, Monks of Girnar forest, and vanity of people from all walks of life. He experienced all religions like Vaisnavism, Muslim, Christianity, etc and decided to simplify it to one religion which could be well defined and easy to follow. For ordinary people he asked saints to preach about Shikshapatri which consists of 212 rules of conduct. In the Satsangi Jivan every detail is given to follow right from birth to death. Even if a person commits sin, he has mentioned the solution to the sin. For the philosophers, the vachnamrut has the right material, imagine him giving to saints deep details of how human body work to creation of the world to human physiological behavior. Lord Swaminarayan converted saints like Bramhanand Swami, Muktanand Swami, Nityanand Swami who were all educated people and joined him after realizing that he was the right teacher, and also the British like Sir Malcolm governor respected him , and to date the British government has preserved the Shikshapatri given to them, which is lying at the Oxford university. Swaminarayan religion is part of Vaishnav religion because in the Shikshapatri he first mentions his respect to lord Krishna and also he clarifies that we are disciples of Ramanand Swami of Udhav Sampradaya. Considering the complications, abuse and the future to come the Kalyug, Lord Swaminarayan established the Swaminarayan religion which was simple, easy and required no money. Every day he wants his disciples to perform mansi pooja which requires no money, materials e.t.c. but just a few minutes to sit down anywhere and to meditate on the pooja, five times a day. In the Swaminarayan temples everybody is welcomed from harijan, to shatriyas to Brahmins, and all are equal.
Swaminarayan religion is also healthy because in the Mansi pooja you perform yoga in a way, to danvats and pradakshinas (circulations) whereby you perform physical exercise, to fasting regularly on Hari Jayanti, Ekadashis whereby you control the human beings eleven senses.
In the modern times, people are busy, recession are coming hard times are to be faced, Lord Swaminarayan considered all this facts and established the Swaminarayan religion where you don't have to perform expensive havans, pooja by Brahmins which require expensive materials or unavailable Brahmins in some part of world. He expects you to perform a simple pooja everyday in the morning wherever you are, and to perform mala (beads) which requires no expense. Also he wants you to sing Bhajans in the mornings and evenings which is very entertaining, nice and not boring.
People like Dada Khachar (Darbars) to saints, sadhus, found the peace in the religion.
They enjoyed every second of it that some even left their homes. In the Shikshapatri Lord Swaminarayan has details of how to handle life from handling, accounts, to dealing with relatives to handling servants e.t.c. He has considered it from every angle to make life easy, simple to peaceful.