Author: ahymsin

There are phrases in the English language that have a long spiritual history. Even though their current usage is with a different meaning, the original usage carries deep mystical messages and may even refer to special meditational practices at the beginning and advanced levels.

Two of these phrases are ‘navel-gazers’ and ‘lotus-eaters’. Of these, ‘navel-gazers’ is more commonly used and one may have to search deeper in literature to find the phrase ‘lotus-eaters’.

Let’s consider first ‘navel-gazers’. Its current usage is somewhat, but not fully, far removed from the original meaning. The Webster’s Dictionary defines it as “one who stares fixedly at his navel to induce a mystical trance”. According to the American Heritage Dictionary, navel-gazing is “excessive introspection, self-absorption, or concentration on a single issue”. These definitions are somewhat distorted from the original content of the phrase.

The concept of the navel as the ‘centre’ of anything is a very ancient one and is common to the entire Indo-European language family and its tradition of ‘myths’. The centre of a wheel is its navel or a nave.

In the Vedas we read:

I ask thee of the far end of the earth.
I ask, where is the navel of the Universe?
I ask thee of the seminal power of the fecund steed.
I ask of the supreme space of the Word.

This fire altar is the far end of the earth.
This fire-sacrament (yajna) is the navel of the universe.
This soma (juice of the king of plants) is the seminal power of the fecund steed.
This revealed speech is the supreme space of the Word.

Rig-Veda 1.164. 34,35

Elsewhere in the Rig-Veda (RV), there is a seer, a sage, a rishi by the name of NaabhaanedhiShTha whose name means ‘one who is closest to the navel’. He is the seer of hymns 61 and 62 of the tenth book of the Rig-Veda. He is the son of Manu, the first Archetypal Man. He declares about his realization of Truth:

This is my navel.
Here is my companion kinship and home.
Mine are these shining ones (devas).
This ALL am I.
[Though] twice-born
I am a first born child of Truth…

RV.10.61.19.

The holy location of the Oracle of Delphi in ancient Greece was called the navel of the earth. From the descriptions of the trance-like states of the Oracle, one can discern that these were states of meditation, perhaps arrived at by concentration on the navel centre of consciousness. The representations or replicas of the icon of Omphalos (the navel) available in Delphi today look like the icons known as lingas in the Hindu temples but wrapped in a net. These connections, obviously, are very ancient.

Navel gazing is not about gazing at the navel with the eyes. It requires at least two steps:

1. Breathing, not from the chest, but from the abdomen and diaphragm (the muscle between the stomach and the lungs). One observes the movement of that region with the slow and gentle rhythm of exhalation and inhalation.
2. Out of thousands of methods on the practices of meditation, one consists of concentrating the mind inside the navel region. It has many variations for different purposes. For example, one may visualize a red flame inside the navel, or remember one’s prayer or personal mantra while the mind remains focused inside the navel region.

These practices are well known to masters of the yoga meditation traditions. But that is not all.

The practice of hesychea, stillness, is an important way of internal worship in the Christian tradition, in Greek and Russian Orthodox churches. This requires concentration on breath flow with a prayer like Jesus’s prayer. It is extensively taught in a series of volumes titled Philokalia in Greek, and Dobrotolubiye in the Slavonic and Russian Church – literally means, ‘love of beautiful things’. Several English translations are available.

It is the main training manual for the contemplative monks of Monastic State of Agion Oros (Holy Mountain), Mount Athos, an autonomous republic of monks in Greece. It is widely followed in the Christianity of Greek and Russian Orthodox churches. It has had an unparalleled influence next only to the Bible. It teaches the techniques of meditation based on breath awareness with Jesus’s prayer, and in some techniques, the breath is observed flowing from the navel region. This path of inquiry into contemplation led to the Greek phrase Omphaloskepsis.

The text of Philokalia consists of the writings of masters of hesychasm (the path of hesykia, stillness) from 4th to 15th century. Its philosophy, devotion and practices influenced such Russian authors as Nikolay Gogol and Fyodor Dostoevsky. The text answers almost all questions and challenges about meditation that are raised by our contemporaries in modern societies.

One of the greatest proponents and teachers of this path was St. Gregory Palamas in the 13th – 14th centuries. His chief opponent Barlaam dubbed the hesychasts as omphalopsychoi – they whose minds were in their navels! From this the phrase may have gone through a few changes and later became the derogatory ‘navel gazers’. Or, the British colonial rulers speaking of meditators in India, looking down upon them, probably thought of them as mere idlers sitting and doing nothing. The phrase came to be used more widely in English from the 1900’s onwards.

There are millions who use language as an unconscious habit. Then there are those who use it consciously. When they look at a word, its entire history and idiomatic associations flash in their minds as a single picture. They are the ones who use the language meaningfully. The same applies to using the phrases like ‘navel-gazers’. The phrase is a suggestion to meditate by the methods described above.

Let us all be navel-gazers.

A less commonly used but known phrase is ‘lotus-eaters’ or ‘lotos-eaters’, depending on whether one uses the Latin ‘lotus’ or the Greek ‘lotos’. The legend of lotus-eaters (lotophagoi in Greek) is well known in western literature.

The earliest reference is to be found in the 9th book of the Odyssey of Homer composed circa 8th century B.C. Here the winds blow Odysseus’s ship towards North Africa where he and his sailors land in the country of the lotus-eaters. The hospitable people of that country offer them the only food they know – lotus flowers and lotus fruits/seeds. The Greek sailors succumbed to a state of inner satisfaction and inactivity. They no longer wished to sail back home but wanted to dwell there among the lotus-eaters. Odysseus forced them back onto the ship, made them fast till the effects of the lotuses they ate had dissipated before they were able to sail homeward.

The most well-known and detailed description of this is in the English literature in the poem of 173 lines of Lord Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892), Lotos-eaters. It also, like Homer, describes the indolent and languid state of the lotos-eaters. An allusion to such indolence is found also in the 5th chapter of Ulysses by James Joyce. Similarly, Edith Wharton’s novel, The Age of Innocence (6th chapter) uses a comparable allusion.

In the age of mythology that is long gone little facts were woven into intricate and complex myths. It is possible that in the 8th century B.C., the stories of the meditation masters of India were floating about in the then known world. India was a land of mysteries to the Greeks at that time. The maps of the world eastward of Egypt were hazy. The myths and stories floated about and triggered the imagination of bards, wandering singers and story tellers.

While Egypt was known for its copious lotuses, it is in India that the full mystical and symbolic significance of the lotus developed. We suggest that the legend concerning the yogis of India became distorted as it travelled and floated to far away shores on wings of many story-tellers’ imaginations.

It has been suggested by some critics of poetry that the land of the lotus eaters as depicted by Tennyson does not have a physical reality and is more like a vision. For example, his lines 16-17:

Three silent pinnacles of aged snow,
Stood sunset-flush’d; and, dew’d with showery drops,

surely describe some symbolic mountains with three snow-topped peaks. Neither Homer, nor Herodotus who locates the area to be somewhere in Libya, mention the three snow-clad pinnacles. The question is – what might these three pinnacles symbolize? On that, more will be said at another time when space for a full analysis of the poem is available.

In between the veils of myths, some facts shine through. In Tennyson’s poem, we read lines that suggest less of the common lassitude but more of the trance-like state of meditation or even yoga-nidra (art of conscious sleep, sleepless sleep known to yogis). We read:

…To each, but whoso did receive of them
And taste, to him the gushing of the wave
Far far away did seem to mourn and rave
On alien shores; and if his fellow spake,
His voice was thin, as voices from the grave;
And deep-asleep he seem’d, yet all awake,
And music in his ears his beating heart did make.

A person not immersed in meditation and not trained in yoga-nidra can only interpret the states of mind described here to be that of involuntary lassitude and a dullness of senses. However, to a meditation guide these lines suggest a completely different state of consciousness with which Homer and Tennyson are not familiar, nor is obviously James Joyce.

Tennyson’s poem describes four experiences of the sailors who tasted of the lotuses. Let us look at these from the viewpoint of a meditation guide, a yogi.

1. To him the gushing of the wave
Far far away did seem to mourn and rave
On alien shores;

The poet, not knowing of the meditative states, has given a negative and sad interpretation to the experience. In reality, it is well known to the deep meditators that during meditation the sounds coming from outside seem to become faint and as though from far away. In the scientific research on meditation, it is common to test a meditator by producing a sudden sound and checking the brain’s response to the same. In the case of accomplished meditators the brain’s response is very faint unlike those that are in a common wakeful state.

The second condition is:

2. and if his fellow spake,
His voice was thin, as voices from the grave;

Here the poet is incorrect; never having heard the voice of a person in the state of meditation, he is giving vent to his imagination. Indeed, in such a state the voice changes and becomes deep, as though coming from within the navel centre and the heart centre, and not from the throat and the vocal chords. For a further understanding of this topic, please refer to this writer’s recordings of two courses titled “Cultivating a Meditative Voice”, taught to those being trained to teach meditation. It becomes a deep, ‘grave’ voice but not thin.

3. And deep-asleep he seem’d, yet all awake,

This is indeed an absolutely correct description of the state of yoga-nidra, yoga sleep or sleepless sleep. The yogi produces the delta brain waves in this state, the slowest ones that the brain produces. Common people produce them when they are so fast asleep that they cannot be awakened. But the yogi, while producing the delta brain wave, appearing to be fast asleep, is fully conscious of his surroundings. This has been tested in psycho-physiological research laboratories and found to be correct.

4. And music in his ears his beating heart did make.

From a yogi’s point of view, this line may be explained at two levels:

a. It is well known even in the case of not very highly advanced meditators that one hears the sound and rhythm of one’s heart during meditation. Some meditation systems, both yogi and Sufi, even teach the aspirants to listen to the heartbeat and do the japa (mental recitation of a divine name) with the rhythms thereof.
b. Those on the path of nada-yoga (yoga of sound) are familiar with the phenomenon of hearing an internal music.

Another theme of the poem that we have not quoted above is that the sailors have lost interest in worldly matters. They are content with this state of internal fulfillment and do not wish to return home.

In the chorus they sing:

Why are we weigh’d upon with heaviness,
And utterly consumed with sharp distress,
While all things else have rest from weariness?
All things have rest: why should we toil alone,
We only toil, who are the first of things,
And make perpetual moan,
Still from one sorrow to another thrown;
Nor ever fold our wings,
And cease from wanderings,
Nor steep our brows in slumber’s holy balm;
Nor harken what the inner spirit sings,
“There is no joy but calm!”—
Why should we only toil, the roof and crown of things?

This is a well-known description of the state of dispassion that one embarking on the spiritual path undergoes. It is the repeated sentiment of vairagya, described in Buddhist and Vedic traditions. It is, however, not an invitation to lassitude and laziness but to a state of inner calm. Tennyson’s line:

“There is no joy but calm!”

is identical to the teachings of shama, inner peacefulness and quietude in the traditions of yoga and the Vedas, the same as the Buddhist path of shamatha. This state can be achieved by a lotus-eater.

How to eat lotuses?

The answer to this question will unveil the mystery of the lotus-eaters. Only those well-versed in the philosophy and methods of kundalini-yoga will comprehend what is being referred to below.

In this system are described seven primary centres of consciousness, located more or less at the: (i) base of the spine; (ii) genital region; (iii) umbilical region; (iv) cardiac region; (v) throat region; (vi) between the eye-brows; and (vii) in the corona of the cranium. Each centre fulfills and controls specific psycho-physiological systems and operations in the personality. These centres are known as chakras (wheels) or lotuses. In the coloured diagrams in the Tradition, they are always depicted as lotuses with letters of the alphabet as mantras inscribed in petals.

As one progresses in meditation, one of the most advanced meditations consists of leading the mind’s concentration through the petals of the lotuses in a prescribed order as initiated by one’s meditation master. For each petal there is also a mono-syllabic mantra, consisting of the letters of the Sanskrit alphabet, to be visualized in the petal. In the process, there is (i) a downward progression from the eye-brow centre or the throat centre to that in the base of the spine, and (ii) the upward progression in reverse sequence.

After these progressions have been fully mastered, and their effects realized, the petals are eliminated, the lotuses have all been ‘eaten’ or ‘consumed’ and their energies merged into the main stem, the mainstream of the current of kundalini. Thus does one become a lotus-eater.

This fact is illustrated in the stories of Parvati. In the Tantra system, Parvati is known as the personification of kundalini. Kundalini that lies coiled up at the base of the spine is undertaking ascetic endeavours (tapasya) to meet her eternal spouse Shiva who dwells in Mount Kailasha that is the thousand-petal lotus. She first fasts on fruits, and then on leaves and petals. When she abandons even consuming the petals and leaves, she becomes known as ‘a-parNaa’, ‘the one without petals’. She becomes slim, as the central sushumna stream of kundalini becomes a luminous streak of lightning like a lotus stem. Only then does Shiva appear before her and they are wedded.

This is the hidden story behind the ‘legendary’ lotus-eaters. Parvati is the first lotus-eater and we all imitate her. This is also an illustration of how commonly used words and phrases often keep concealed in them spiritual secrets which open themselves to those who do abhyasa, repeated endeavours of spiritual practices.

We were speaking of pain. Because people say, “I love this world. I like its pleasures. Now what is this ‘withdrawal’ from them?” First of all, meditation is not a withdrawal. Closing the eyes is closing nothing. Silencing the speech is silencing nothing. To close, you close the outward eyes and open the inward eyes. Even when your eyes are open, they’re open to what – a very tiny patch of the sky through the prison cell. How much of reality do they see? Ask the physicist if you are seeing right when you are seeing a solid. He says, “No, there’s no such thing as a solid.” He says, “Everything is a field of energy.” Your eyes don’t see it. Your eyes don’t see reality. Even what you experience with the senses, of the world of senses, is nothing. Your experience is limited and full of misleading cues. Closing the eyes to this world of limitations in order to open them to a world of unlimited consciousness is something very natural to man – to look for something greater, something expansive. Man has done it all along. The scientist does it when he studies the universe. The communist does it when he worships Lenin. And, as I said yesterday, an atheist American does it when he buys a Superman comic and identifies with that Superman in his daydream.

You stand by the sea. I happen to be a scuba diver. That’s why I bring so many of my analogies from the sea. You stand by the sea. Across a little span of the sea, you see an island. You know that it is another nation. Yet, you say that the entire world is one. But it is only a theoretical knowledge. You don your scuba gear and you go down to the beach to the sea bottom, and people say, “Look at him, withdrawing, hiding.” But you walk down below the water and emerge on the other side, on that island, and you know that the earth was one and that there’s no such thing as an island. It’s not something separate. Underneath the sea it is the same land over which a little water is flowing.

When you dive into the depth within, then you know the oneness of all being. Many, many years ago, the city of Birmingham in England had a conference in which they invited the people of various religions to discuss the theme of leisure for modern man from the point of view of religion, because man has an increasing amount of leisure time at his disposal now, but he doesn’t know how to use it. So they invited Christians and Buddhists and Hindus and so on. I started my presentation with these words, which I think are appropriate. It goes like this. “You look a little tired, Sir. Are you not going for a holiday this year?” “Yes, indeed I am.” “Where? When? For how long? What will you do?” — “Here! Right now! For an eternity! Deep-sea diving within!”

I tell all my students that I personally regard my entire life as a vacation. I’ve never done a single thing, ever in my life, that I don’t enjoy doing. If I don’t enjoy doing it, I don’t do it. I have two rules. Have a vacation every day – 24 hours. Total life, my whole life is a vacation. I enjoy it. Secondly, I have no discipline. I teach yoga discipline to everybody, but I practice no discipline. I’ve never practiced any discipline in my whole life, never. If it feels like a discipline, I don’t do it. I do absolutely whatever I feel inclined to do. All have done, however, is train my inclinations. There are some things I am just not inclined to do. To others, not doing those is a discipline. There are some things I am inclined to do. To others, those things are a discipline. To me, those are natural inclinations. When you were a child, brushing your teeth every day was a discipline. Today, can you manage without brushing your teeth?

So, when you start on the path of meditation, sitting for meditation every day, is a discipline. But, to me, it is like sitting down and writing a romantic love letter to my beloved. It’s not discipline; it’s my enjoyment. It’s my pleasure. It’s the only pleasure, the greatest pleasure – that pleasure from which all other pleasures arise.

What is pleasure? Did I speak about it before? What is pleasure? In the yoga philosophy, the word “pleasure” is synonymous with one word, “concentration.” There’s only one definition of pleasure and that is concentration. There’s no other pleasure but the pleasure of concentration. Whatever you concentrate on is pleasure. Whatever you concentrate away from is pain. Because you feel a natural concentration towards something good tasting in your mouth, it’s pleasure. Because your mind goes to the beautiful innocence, love and joy of a baby, holding a baby is a pleasure. What is the pleasure of sex? You hold someone in your arms. You are concentrating your mind and heart on her, on him. That is pleasure. If you held somebody in your arms, but you were not concentrating on that person, would that be pleasure? Can there be the pleasure of sex without concentration? In the highest moment of sexual pleasure, a climax is what – a few seconds of absolute, total concentration, and nothing else. Can you have concentration without pleasure? I don’t know of any concentration without pleasure, no. If you can find one, let me know. All pleasure is concentration, and pleasure is heightened with more concentration. So when you sit down to eat your meal, concentrate on the taste buds and you will see how much more you will enjoy your food. And a yogi who is a married man knows more of the pleasure of sex than anyone else in the world, because he concentrates. So with meditation you can concentrate on or you can concentrate away. When you want to hear, you hear more. When you don’t want to hear, you hear nothing. When you want to smell, you smell more. When you don’t want to smell, you smell nothing. Your mind and your senses are under your direction, under the direction of your will. How much you want to apply of which sense, and when – that is pleasure.

But otherwise, everything else about pleasure, besides this element of concentration, is painful. Take any pleasure of the world and tell me if it has no pain associated with it. Your life comes in packages of pain and pleasure. People are dissatisfied with their personal package. They always want to exchange it with their neighbor’s package: “Give me yours. You take mine. Your package seems to have more pleasure in it than mine. My package seems to have more pain in it than yours.”

Once upon a time, God got tired of all these constant complaints of “You’ve given me the heaviest burden. You have put more pain into my package than my neighbor’s. Unfair.” So God said one day, “Okay, all of you, bring your packages and dump them in this one storehouse.” So everybody brought their packages and dumped them. “Now, you go around, each one of you, and find the lightest one. Carry that one away.” So they went around and each one was “heavy, heavier, heavier – and this seems the lightest.” And each one ended up with his original package. At least it was familiar. Rockefeller’s package has no less pain than yours.

The pleasures of the world are painful in three ways. It seems like after a philosophy of joy, we’re getting a little pessimistic tonight, but we must face this part of our reality also. The pleasant things of the world and the pleasant experiences of the world contain three types of pain. There are three ways in which they are painful. In order to obtain that pleasure, one has to go through pain. Can you think of any pleasure that you have enjoyed for which you have not had to go through some pain, some painful effort, something you wanted to run away from, something you would rather not do if you could? You have to put gasoline in your car. You have to pay a penny, or 25-cents, for a bus. For every pleasure, there is some painful effort that is required. It is a prerequisite of any pleasure in the world.

Why? Because this world is based, is built, is created on the principle of duality. It comes from unity, from infinity, and it returns to unity and infinity, but in the middle, it is duality. It is always two things. There’s a pain; there’s a pleasure. There is satisfaction; there is frustration – a little satisfaction; a little frustration. Every desire you have, the excitement of the fulfillment of the desire, is only an expectation. The moment the object of desire is attained, your interest in it goes away. The moment the desired object is attained, your interest in it disappears, goes. You’re very excited to marry a woman, very excited to marry a man. You marry. Fine, you discover a little something about each other. After six months, you say, “My God, why did I ever marry you?” The moment the desire is fulfilled, it’s nothing. “That shirt I saw in the window, I’d just like to have it.” The moment you have it and you put it on, it’s an old shirt, and you want the next one.

The Bhagavad Gita, the Song of the Lord, says in one place, “Desire is never satisfied by satisfying desire.” Like fuel in fire, desire demands more and more and more. No matter how much fuel you feed to the fire, the fire is never, never satisfied. It will consume the whole world. Extinguish the fire of desire. Nip it in the bud. This goes, for example, with your sexual fantasy. You experience one thing. You fantasize about the next step. You go out with one boyfriend, you go out with one girlfriend, and you hold hands. Your desire is to kiss. When you have kissed, your desire is to go further. When you’ve gone all the way, you have a desire to try another person, and the whole round starts again. And if you taste it with 500 persons in your life, at the age of 80 you will still want 501. Those who have tried it will tell you that, too. There’s no end to desire.

There is only control and finally pacification of the urge. Not suppression of the urge, but pacification of the urge. That pacification comes through meditation, because the mind calms down. It knows the highest concentration in which there are not two, but only one. So who shall desire whom? See? So, remember, there’s no end to desire.

And all frustrations arise from expectation. This is the second stage. While you are making an effort to gain a pleasure, the effort is painful. You expect the pleasure. When the pleasure comes, you say, “Oh, was this what I was going through so much trouble for? I expected something better than this.” So, while you’re enjoying the pleasure, you have a two-fold pain again. “The pleasure is not as intense,” you say, “not as complete as it could be. I wish just this little thing had more added to it.” “The house I have bought, it’s okay, but I wish it had marble columns.” When you have a house with marble columns, you wish something else from it. So, this is one kind of pain while you are enjoying the pleasure. While you have that pleasure, there is some frustration in it, and there is also the knowledge that this pleasure is not permanent, that it will end. There’s a threat. There is a fear. There is this insecurity. All the while you want more of that pleasure; you want the intensity of that pleasure, and you say, “It could be better than what I have.” And then you say, “What I have is constantly threatened. Every minute it is threatened. It’s not going to last. Something else is going to happen.” And it does happen. Can you think of any pleasure you have enjoyed in your life for which, one, you did not have to make a painful effort? And, secondly, can you think of any pleasure which was as intense, as full, as complete as you could think of, and a pleasure that lasted forever, that never ended, and while that pleasure was lasting, you did not have this insecurity and this threat? — “It’s going to end. How shall I grab onto it? How shall I keep it? How shall I prolong it?”

So, this pain during the pleasure, and then there is the result of that pleasure, the end of that pleasure, which is in itself painful, and sometimes, bringing painful results. You enjoy your pie and you take another piece and put a load of ice cream on it, and in the night you ask your wife, “Do we have anything for stomach pain, Darling? Can you bring me a pill? I think I’ve got to take some yoga lessons.”

The pleasure of meditation is of a different kind, “Well,” you say, “that is too painful. My legs ache, and as soon as I sit down to meditate, my body begins to itch.” The itches you never thought were there, they come up because you become more conscious of yourself, you see. You withdraw and you start to pay attention to the body. The first thing you do is come to the surfaces of the body, so naturally you discover the little, tiny irritations. Slowly, as you go inwards, those irritations disappear. Then the mind begins to itch. There are all kinds of mental itches, see? You cannot avoid them.

All desire is an itch. It’s very pleasant to scratch an itch, isn’t it? How pleasant, really? The desire, a desire, a craving is an itch of the mind. The more you scratch it, the more intense it gets. You end up peeling off your skin. Take any craving, any irresistible urge. Whether it is for sex, or it is for alcohol, or it is for drugs, or it is for property, or it is for money, or it is for a kingdom, whatever. Do you have enough money? Do I? Nobody here has enough money – not even the richest man in the world has enough money. No one has enough. Do you know who has enough? One who has renounced desire has enough.

You will say, “What do you want to make of us, a jellyfish?” A jellyfish has no depth of consciousness. Here we come to the very root of our existence. In meditation, you have the highest concentration, which is pleasure. You can train yourself to make that concentration last as long as you wish, slowly, gradually. How long does Christ remain in Christ consciousness? How long does a Buddha remain enlightened? Tell me. Forever! A Buddha’s pleasure, a Christ’s pleasure, even when wearing a crown of thorns is unlimited. Jesus suffered, but Christ never suffered. The Son of Man suffered. The Son of God never suffered.

We have, in Sanskrit language, two words, for pleasure and pain: sukha and dukha. Sukha means “good to the spaces.” Spaces? Empty spaces, like the empty space of a nostril, or the empty space of the ear. The Empty space of the eye. The empty space of the mouth. And whatever feels good to these empty spaces is pleasure. Whatever does not feel good to these empty spaces is called pain. But there is another word. When we refer to the divine pleasure, we use the word ananda. The names of great swamis often end with the word ananda – joy, bliss, perfect bliss. Sukha and dukha are antonyms, but for the word ananda there is no antonym. Pain is the opposite of pleasure. Pleasure is the opposite of pain. But for ananda there is no opposite, because it is “the Perfect taken from the Perfect merging in the Perfect.” It is Infinity, taken from Infinity, going back to Infinity. It is not reduced. It is not increased. Seek that pleasure which has no antonym, which has no opposite principle.

Ordinary life is always in packages of pleasure and pain – always. You derive a pleasure; immediately at the same time you derive a pain. There’s always a little regret at the end of a pleasure also. You see, there are two kinds of pleasure in the world: the pleasures of excitation and the pleasures of tranquility. The pleasures of excitation are those in which there is a great output of energy and then a great letdown. There’s a great rising of a wave and there’s a great trough down, a big up and a big down, a great gathering of forces and then a great scattering of forces. You feel very energetic and then you feel very tired. You feel very exhilarated and then you feel very depressed. The higher the mountain of pleasure, the deeper the valley of pain. The higher the mountain of expectation, the deeper the valley of frustration. Take any pleasure – the pleasure of sports, the pleasure of wearing something new, the pleasure of winning something, the pleasure of gaining something – there is a great output of energy and then a feeling of great loss and a letdown. And sometimes even the highest pleasure becomes a pain.

In India, people have a bad habit, like smoking here. They have a habit of chewing a particular leaf called a betel leaf. There are little, small, street-side vendors selling these things, very poor people. They don’t make much on selling these green leaves. It’s not a narcotic; it’s very digestive. It’s like some people here who enjoy chewing rubber, because of the need to get rid of oral energy. People don’t have others to talk to, so they chew rubber, sugar-coated rubber. When I first came to the West, I asked, “What’s this?” So here they use oral energy this way, and in India, they use oral energy by chewing this particular leaf. So, one particular man – I’m telling a true story – he entered for a lottery. He was a very small, street-side, pawn vendor, the leaf vendor. He never really thought he would win. How often do people win lotteries? Are they called lotteries here? Sweepstakes? But it so happened that he really won, and he won 700,000 rupees. The telegram arrived. He opened the telegram and he was so shocked that he died. He died on the spot. What do you call it? Is it a loss? Is it a gain? What is it? See.

So, the terms “pleasure” and “pain,” “loss” and “gain,” they’re all very relative terms. What we are saying is that in meditation you find something in which there is equanimity; there’s something level about your emotion. There’s not too strong an output of emotion, such as an anger you can’t control or a desire you can’t withhold so that you suffer as a result. Every day, people come to me for counseling, and there are people who come and I really have no answer to their problems. “I don’t like the job I am in. My boss doesn’t like me. I’ve served there for 10 years. They couldn’t do without me, but they don’t treat me well, and I’m very upset.” My son doesn’t come home.” “My husband, I don’t like him. He has some very bad habits, and he doesn’t treat me well. What should I do? What shall I do?” What shall I tell them to do? What advice can you give them? When you marry, you know that you are imperfect and you also know the other person is imperfect. Well, two imperfect people marrying, can they make a perfect marriage? How can you do that? But you can seek perfection. As Christ said, “Be perfect, as your Father Who is in heaven is perfect” [Matthew 5:48]. You can seek that, but how can you remain imperfect and yet expect a perfect relationship? You have to accept that imperfection. While being imperfect and expecting something perfect, you have to be frustrated at the end. The same thing also happens in organizations and in churches. You are sitting here and are listening, and you say, “Yeah, this sounds sensible” and so on, and so forth and all the rest. And you take a mantra initiation. You join the organization and you find all the weaknesses of any human organization, and you say, “This is a great letdown. I thought I was entering a perfect community.” A community made of imperfect human beings has all the imperfections you will find in any country, any society, anywhere. No church is perfect, no society is perfect. You expect perfection where there’s no perfection. You end up frustrated. So calm down and lower your expectations a little and then be content. Again there is the pleasure of excitation and the pleasure of tranquility.

Surfing on the crest of a wave is a pleasure of excitation, but if you go 15 feet deep into the sea, there are no waves. Just 15 feet below the surface, there are no waves. It’s absolutely calm, and there’s a feeling of freedom, silence. You can go down. You can go up. You can go in any direction. It’s a different world. That is a pleasure of tranquility. Going to a party is a pleasure of excitation. Enjoying solitude is a pleasure of tranquility. A lot of people suffer loneliness when they could be enjoying solitude. Did you hear this last sentence? I think I’ve said this before. A lot of people suffer loneliness when they could be enjoying solitude. Think about it. That is pleasure of tranquility.

Meditation is the pleasure of tranquility, the pleasure of calming down. Peace is a pleasure of tranquility. If you get nothing else out of your meditation, just the relative stillness and peace you can enjoy for 20 minutes a day in itself is worth it. Then, try to keep that going a little into your life. Mix it the way you mix milk and water. Mix it, and then you will not know them as being separate.

The pains you suffer in your life are the result of ignorance. Craving is all pain, and that craving arises out of ignorance. There is a word in the yoga philosophy for ignorance called avidya, non-wisdom. Non-wisdom is ignorance. And avidya, ignorance, is defined in four ways. I will recite from Pantajali’s Yoga-sutras, the particular text which is the main text of Raja Yoga, the fifth sutra in the second chapter: Anityāśhuchi-duhkhānātmasu nitya-śhuchi-sukhātma-khyātir avidyā. Ignorance is

1) to mistake the permanent for the impermanent and the impermanent for the permanent,
2) to mistake the pure for the impure and the impure for the pure,
3) to mistake pain for pleasure and pleasure for pain, and
4) to mistake the Self for the non-Self and non-Self for Self.

This is the four-fold definition of ignorance, and the first three arise out of the last one. To mistake the Self for the non-Self and the non-Self for the Self is the greatest ignorance.

(Board work: the drawing of a point around which there are numerous concentric squares. Cf. Usharbudh Arya’s (Swami Veda’s) book Superconscious Meditation, pp. 21-22.)

Can everybody see? The point here in the center is the Self. The Self is the pure Life-force, the pure Consciousness Principle, ever-pure, ever-wise, ever-free, that pain never touches, the One that never craves for anything because it is in tune with the Perfect – and the Perfect can crave nothing. Now around this point, let us say, is the subconscious mind. Around that square I draw another square for the conscious mind. Here, another square, is my brain. Here, another square around it, let us say, is my senses of cognition (eyes, ears and so on and so forth). And beyond that, let us say, are my active senses (hands, feet etc.) You see, we are going from inwards to outwards. Here, [before the cognitive senses] is my breath. Breath comes before the cognitive senses. Here is a square incorporating all my active senses and the frame of my body, my skeleton, bones, stomach, liver, lungs, whatever. Here, around it, is another sheath, let us say, of the clothes I wear or the furniture I carry, or whatever possessions I have. Let us say, here is my family and house. All these squares are made of matter – one, two, three, four, five squares – gradually, progressively more outward and grosser – my home, my house, my family. Here, let us say, is my city. Here, let us say, is my country. Here is a continent on which that country is located, whether it is China – my country – or India – my country – or America – my country – or France – my country. Here is my planet. Here is my solar system. Here is my galaxy of which this solar system is a part. Here is my entire physical universe – all the billions, trillions, zillions of light years. Now, here in these squares, which one did you say is “I,” and how much did you say is not “I”?

You see, yesterday we said, “Here is some food on my plate.” I said, “That food, that cake, looks delicious.” It was that cake I was going to eat. So, let’s say, I take that cake and I put it in my mouth. Now, what happens to the cake? If walk about in the world, I don’t say “I and the cake are going to ride in a train.” I simply say, “I am going to ride in the train.” And with the dress that I took off from that store dummy and put on this dummy, I don’t say, “I and my dress are going to ride the car.” I say, “I am going to ride the car. Now I look beautiful.” There is some confusion between “I” and “non-I” isn’t there? You say, I desire. I want.” But who wants? You and the shirt? You and the cake? What happened to the cake you ate three days ago? It’s now part of your taste buds. Did you know that? So, the cake tastes the cake. I don’t taste the cake; the cake tastes the cake. Matter tastes matter. Spirit tastes nothing. Everything of this body that you have is the cakes you have eaten. Like attracts like, so the body attracts food. But where is the pure Self?

All right, let’s go further. You live with your family. You and your mother are having a quarrel. You say to your mother, “Look, I am I, and you are you. You do things your way, and I’ll do things my way, okay? Let’s get that straight.” As everywhere, you have a love-hate relationship. The next day you are walking on the street and someone says a bad word about your mother and you say, “You’re hurting me. I’m hurt.” Now, how can you be hurt about that mother with whom you were quarreling yesterday? Let’s say a husband and wife are fighting with each other, but the next day, somebody says something bad about your husband or wife. You say, “I’m hurt.” Why do you say, “I am hurt”? You live in a country, and you put your president on trial or whatever you want to do with him. But then you travel in France, and somebody says something bad about your country and its presidents. You are hurt. You say, “I am hurt.”

Now you have to straighten out your “I” and your “non-I.” So up to which square did you say “I”? Right now, at this moment, you couldn’t care less about one third of the world’s population that is starving, but if Martians invade the Earth, you would say, “We, Earthmen, will stand against them.” So, you shift your ground. You don’t know how far your “I” extends and where the “non-I” begins, or where the “non-I” ends and your “I” begins. Sort that out in these squares. Find out. Where is this “I”? You utter a bad word from your mouth, and next day you say, “That couldn’t be me. That’s not like me. I don’t do those things. Something came over me.” What is it that you really are like? The yogi says that all of these identities you have assumed – the identity of a nation, the identity of a family, the identity of a planet, the identity of a husband, wife, son, daughter, everything, the identity of a dress in the way of clothing, the identity of a culture — all of these that you have assumed, none of these is true “I”. They are mere assumptions.

You, the pure Self, were never born and will never die. You have no name. You have no form. You have no configuration. You are a being of light living in a body made of matter to whom you lend a little of your self. Somebody borrows money from you and then shows off that money and says, “I’m a rich man.” So the body and the mind borrow life and consciousness from you and then show off themselves, saying “I am living. I am conscious. I am aware.” Know that Self. That knowledge is pleasure. That knowledge is joy – a pleasure of tranquility and a joy that has no antonym.

So, when you close your eyes to one of these squares and look inwards to the next one, you eventually come to the breath. As you make your breath tranquil, you come to something finer: the conscious mind, which is grosser than the subconscious mind. Then, slowly, the subconscious reveals itself. And then you come closer to your own Self, away from the subconscious and closer and closer to that Superconscious from which that central point of your true being derives its own Light.

Om. Shanti. Shanti. Shanti Om.
God bless you.

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Editor’s Note

From the Nature of Personality series, 1976

Now, the struggle to purify one’s thoughts during meditation can be a hard one. People struggle with these waves upon waves of emotions and commotions arising in the mind and become very discouraged during their meditations, or about their meditations.

I’ll give you one bit of advice about it and that is this: You will not eliminate these waves of the mind during meditation by fighting them. If you ask me how I stop them, I will say that there is no way you can stop them. That seems very discouraging, but it is not. Really, it’s not. You see, think of the ocean. You stand on the beach and you watch the ocean – mighty waves, storms, waves, ship-tossing, waves rising and falling. Ask a child to draw a picture of the ocean and he will draw waves. That is everybody’s idea of an ocean: waves and thundering sounds. But Jacques Cousteau wrote about the same ocean, and he named his book The Silent World.⁽¹⁾

One of my hobbies is scuba diving, and if a diver wants to go diving and experience this “silent world,” what does he do? Does he stand there in the boat and say, “Look at these thundering huge waves; how do I stop them?” There is no way he can stop them, so he puts on his gear and takes a jump into the sea, and twenty feet below the surface there are no waves. It is a silent world. All you hear is the sound of your breathing. You are in the silent world. And you go down to the depth of two-hundred feet in some nice tropical waters and you look up. And there is this boat, and people tossing and turning and hanging onto the sides of the boat, scared and afraid to fall into where you are enjoying yourself. See?

Many years ago – 1965, I believe – I was teaching in England in the city of Birmingham. The city council organized a conference on the problem of leisure for modern man from a religious point of view. And they called people from all different religious viewpoints, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Moslem and so forth. And I went and opened my presentation with these sentences – nothing very profound, but you might like it:

“You look a little tired these days, Sir. Are you not going for a vacation this year?”
“Yes, I certainly am.”
“When? What will you do? For how long? Where? When?”
“Right now. What will I do? Go deep sea diving.”
“For how long?”
“Eternity.”
“Where?”
“Within.”

You can go deep sea diving within anywhere you are. You cannot stop the surface waves. But only a small part of your mind is actually involved with those waves. There is a vast depth to your meditation where it is linked to infinity. Don’t fight the thoughts that are arising. Keep coming back to doing what you have to do. All that the diver needs is his breathing gear. Focus on your breathing. Observe the breath. Continue to feel it. Maintain one single word or your personal mantram. Keep coming back to it. Keep coming back to it. Keep coming back to it. And you will learn to dive past that area of the ocean of your mind which is filled with these stormy waves.

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Editor’s Note

⁽¹⁾ The Silent World (French: Le Monde du silence) is a book by Jacque-Yves Cousteau published in 1953 that was made into a documentary film (1956). The full title is The Silent World: A Story of Undersea Discovery and Adventure.

You may also enjoy reading Silence Can Be Your Wishing Stone by Swami Veda Bharati.

Swami Veda Bharati (Pandit Usharbudh Arya) is also the author of the book Superconscious Meditation.

My dear Ashram family,

In the current big ocean of commotion and noise this ashram, by the participation of you all, is known as an island of peace and silence.

In order to continue to maintain it that way, do please contemplate and assimilate the following story from the Hindi newspaper ‘Amar Ujala’ (16th April 2015) translated here for you.

It is a story from long ago.

On the banks of the Ganga river near the holy city of Varanasi there lived a certain person in a colony. His name was Kashyap Goshal. People used to say that anger never visits him. Truly, no one had ever seen him getting angry.

In the same colony some people conspired: let us get him angry.
They organized a small group. Someone from that group offered to Kashyap’s servant: If you can get Kashyap angry you will receive a big prize from us.

The servant agreed to the offer. He knew that his employer did not like a crumpled bed. So, that night he did not make the bed. Next morning Kashyap only said to his servant: the bed was not well done last night.

The servant replied: Oh, sorry, I forgot. I will remember in future.

But next day and the next day and the 4th day also he did not make the bed.

Then Kashyap said to the servant:

“It seems like you have become bored with the task of making my bed. It doesn’t matter, I have now become used to sleeping on an unmade bed. No need to make the bed every night anymore.”

Hearing this the servant was stunned. He stood in front of his employer with joined hands, asking for forgiveness.

He also told the members of the conspiring group as to what had transpired. He also told them what Kashyap said to him:

“Whenever something unpleasant happens or is done by someone I begin to think what worse could have happened or could have been done in the case.”

Story written by Bhikshu Dharma-rakshita. (He was a leading Buddhist monk and leader in India in the last century).

I pray that you would see the episodes like the above as the true teaching of yoga and not be content with postures and philosophy notes. I pray that you thus continue to help maintain this island of peace.

Beloved child of the goddesses of affection, pacification, non-anger and forgiveness.

Swami Veda Bharati

18 April 2015

A seeker has sent me a question about the nature of dreams.

It is a long topic and will take a whole book to explain. You may inquire about my recordings from the 1970’s at The Meditation Center in Minneapolis. It was a series on philosophy of sleep or art of sleep. You may listen to that series. That comprises very old material.

As you will read more of our Gurudeva Swami Rama’s literature and whatever I have written and spoken many of these questions will be answered slowly.

I am not one of those who try to find future by looking at my dreams. There is a variety of different kinds of dreams.

1. Some very rare ones, very very rare ones are divine dreams.
2. These may come from God and from one of His/Her manifestations or Incarnations. An example of these is to be found in the description given by Vachaspati Mishra in his commentary on Yoga-sutra 1.38 (see Swami Veda Bharati’s commentary on the Yoga-sutras, vol.1). Or, Jacob’s dream of a ladder to heaven (Genesis 28.10-19).
3. Some dreams may be messages from one’s own Guru.

Such dreams are extremely rare and are received by (a) very pure minds or (b) the minds that have paid off some of their karmas, burnt off their heavier samskaras (imprints from past life that constitute the ‘store house of karma’ –karmashaya) and are at a place where they can respond to the divine call.

But many people in their ego like to think that every dream is a divine message – it is not so!

1. In the second category are the dreams wherein a divine message is mixed up with one’s own emotions, samskaras, impressions in the unconscious mind. One does not know which part is which. It can be so very misleading as one starts looking for answers to one’s questions and problems in these dreams. These all create many confusions.
2. Then there are dreams that come purely from unconscious mind. There the brain is working out the stuff of emotions that it has not completed during the wakeful state so during the dream state the mind tries to work them out; the brain tries to work them out. It is done in symbols and not in language.

It is not being done in a conscious state specially during the REM sleep (rapid eyes movement phase of sleep). Just lights and shades are received by the eyes and then go into the brain. The brain interprets those according to its emotional states.

To Freud, who developed the modern science of dream analysis, dreams of snakes are sexual.

To me dreams of snakes are of kundalini.

To some Buddhists, the dream of a snake may be that of Naga Muchalinda who coiled himself under the Buddha when a flood threatened to dislodge Buddha from his meditation seat under the bodhi tree.

For a Christian, dreams of snakes are of the devil. But then there are the descriptions of (a) Moses’ staff becoming a serpent (Exodus. 4. 3-4) and Aaron’s staff becoming a snake as part of a miracle (Exodus 7.8-13).

For a Hindu, dreams of snakes are of the naga-devata, serpentine demi-gods, the divine in the forms of serpents and the kundalini.

So we cannot have one set interpretation. Then at some point Freud said: “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar” which is often misquoted as “and sometimes a snake is just a snake”.

Allow me to share something I have discovered in my experimentations with sleep and dream. Please understand that the image of the entire body of all its cells, all its vessels, all its nerves, the image of this entire personality and its constituents, like a somato-sensory homunculus, is maintained somewhere in the brain. There are places in the brain that maintain the consciousness and awareness of this entire system.

That is a very active part of the brain and of the mind.

Then, in sleep when the external influences are not being fed into us through the senses (so there is no disturbance from outside), the mind scans the whole body. It scans for what is happening in the body and then according to what is happening in the body, it creates an image. Because it does not work in our scientifically descriptive and definitive language, it works in visualizations of symbols.

So, you are dreaming that you are flowing down a river. It is probably the mind scanning a blood vessel. Now, while flowing down the river you have come across a log. Maybe it is a clot you are encountering. On the other hand it may just be symbolic of some obstacles in the fulfilment of some of your wishes.

I am diabetic and have to be very careful about my high and low blood sugar level. I dream that I am giving by self a blood sugar test. Then I wake up and I know it is a message: “Check your blood sugar”. I check it and it turns out to be low.

Or, I am dreaming that I am buying food. I wake up and I check my blood sugar level. Yes, indeed, I am in need of food.

These kinds of dreams have saved me so many times from the fatal effects of hypoglycemia.

So there is this scanning of the whole body that the mind undertakes nightly, and likewise the scanning of the whole mind that the mind does. It scans the whole brain: what are the unfinished emotional businesses, and all these other things in the unconscious that the mind has to catch up on, sort out, to un-tire and dis-fatigue itself.

So a dream is not always a divine message or a prophetic indication of the future. There are many many types of dreams.

Here I have not included the philosophy of wakefulness, sleep and dreams as taught by our Gurudeva Swami Rama, nor the many ancient texts like the Brahma-sutras (3.2.1-6) or lyrical chapters after chapters in Yoga-vasishtha. Of these at some other time.

So it is the best to practice stillness. Samadhi is the state above what? Above jagrat, svapna and sushupti – wakefulness, dream and sleep. A yogi aspires to rise above these three and have all three under his control.

God bless you that you may wake up from the dream of this worldly existence (samsara).

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Editor’s Note

These days often following the silent evening group meditations from 5.30 p.m to 6.45 p.m. Swami Veda Bharati sometimes feels inspired to say a few words, or to answer a question or two that seekers have sent. Below is one of such presentations by him, edited and somewhat expanded.

At Swami Rama Sadhaka Grama, 10^th April 2015.

MA!

Thine eyes smiling at your feminine consorts,

thy glance,

ever so compassionate towards me,

Divine Mother mine!

– – –

I pray to Mother in you

to glance at me in compassion

as

the Mother in me ever and ever

sends you Her loving glances.

… …

May all those who are motherless

today and always

Feel loved by Mother

through you and me.

Glory to Mother!

SVB

Mother’s Day 2015

‘Oh I am sitting in beautiful posture.
Look how I am doing it properly.
Incense is smoking.
Candle is glowing.
Visions are coming.
Is this not samadhi?’

No, this is not Samadhi.
Samadhi is not in this room,
This body, this mind. Samadhi
Is not such a thing.

– Swami Rama to Doug Boyd in the book SWAMI p.33

Can I have samadhi? Can I have samadhi by the year 2024? Can I have samadhi now?

This will be the theme of our whole Sangha gathering in 2016 February 21st to 26th.

Since my childhood I have heard and read from the yogis that if you can sit absolutely still, without the slightest flicker, for 3 hours and 36 minutes you will enter samadhi. Gurudeva Swami Rama has also confirmed the same many times.

I can imagine that some who are reading this will now start to attempt to sit still with the determination that ‘I shall not move for 3 hours and 36 minutes’. But then after 25 minutes what to do with that horrible itch in the nose and twitch in the knee and whew, I have got to scratch my mind’s itch as well. ‘Oh it didn’t work today but I am going to try tomorrow again’.

The question is not “Can I have samadhi?” The question to ask is what goes into enabling oneself to sit for 3 hours and 36 minutes.

Even if you do not get to massage your knees or put on that anti-itching cream, just a suave (the word used here in its French and Italian sense) mind will do it.

But more details on that when we meet for the 2016 sangha gathering.

We will also start on steps to practice so that you can begin those itch-and-twitch-free meditations.

• There will be sessions about preparations.

• There will be long sittings and meditations.

In the meantime homework:

• Continue with the 5 year homework that was given in 2013

• Try to achieve even 21 breaths, or however many you can, without a pause between exhalation and inhalation.

• Give all your leg muscles, right from the hips down to the toes a thorough and deep oil massage everyday to be able to sit long.

• Do joints and glands exercises

Who knows, someone may even be able to sit absolutely still for 3 hours and 36 minutes. I will wish you success.

Since our motto is “YOGAḤ SAMADHIḤ” let us get serious.

However, there will be some interruptions in your pursuit of samadhi as there will be Elections of Ahymsin so that a place to take samadhi in can be maintained.

Do bring everything that is needed to give your mind a suave look, and leave behind all that mars the beautiful suavity of your mind.

• This time upon your arrival a special small meditation rug would be made available to you for you to use in the ashram and then back at home. Please secure one as soon as you arrive, from the bookshop.

These days our ashram gets overfilled for all events. We are having to turn people away for lack of accommodation. Please make your interest be known as early as possible by writing to ahymsin@ahymsin.org

May you continue to be sweet-minded, madhu-manah.

Swami Veda Bharati
An incomplete human being still being baked in the Guru’s oven where disciples are baked.

April, 2015

I ache as a mother aches when she holds an ailing child.

I ache at the suffering of those I have loved all over the world. Like children, they won’t listen!

If emotions remain our tools wielded with a craftsman’s skill, they remain wonderfully sweet poetic sentiments and make life a moonlight on the lake. When they put a noose around us, a bridle in our mouth, and we follow them around and chase after each one of their faces and phases, we are bruised. They become an addiction, with all its symptoms and consequences. Loosen the nooses and undo the bridles; do!

Declare your independence of them. Let them follow your commands.

Wherefore is your ocean running after ripples? There is a place in you which is a reservoir of strength; draw from it as a thirsty person would draw from a sole water well in the desert. How? How? Did you ask “how” to suckle at mother’s breast at your first hunger? What is this howl of hows I hear everywhere! Knowing is in you.

I wish you the enjoyment of your fulnesses, not dwelling on vacuities. May you look within your depths and be filled.

[August 2011]

A recent issue of Scientific American Mind, November/December 2012 (pp.30ff.) gives a random list of geniuses in history. All names are western except one Arab (Ibn Khaldun) and one ancient Egyptian (Imhotep). Obviously, from this ‘scientific’ writer’s point of view, India and China never produced any geniuses!

Here I take a different approach. While the IQ scores are reported to be rising, the modernity also makes us lose some of the abilities of our brain. We no longer want to do mental work; we want to depend on calculators and computers.

Our parents and grandparents, in the east and the west, did mental arithmetic as a matter of course. Their minds were trained to do so. Now, calculators are allowed in the examination rooms (at least in the Western countries) so that the students no longer need to depend on their memory work of the Tables (pahaRas in Hindi).

Then there is the mnemonic ability. The western priests perform their religious services by reading from a book. Even the village pandits of India perform the entire hours and hours of rituals simply by memory. They recite the Vedic hymns because their minds have been trained to do so from childhood. I have not come across a single western priest who could perform High Mass in Latin by memory alone. I do not know if there are any in the Vatican to do so.

When I went to the West for the first time sixty years ago, wanting to learn of the Christian culture, I went to the famous St. Paul’s cathedral in London for a Sunday morning service. I was shocked and surprised that the priest read his homily from a written paper. I had been giving spontaneous discourses on the Vedas without writing down a single note to help me prepare for a lecture. Even when teaching at the University of Minnesota, I never used any notes to give my lectures. So, it was indeed a surprise when I discovered that every western speaker, whether speaking on science or on religion, has to write down his lecture!! I never saw a piece of paper in the hands of Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Patel or Maulana Azad (leaders who escorted India to independence in 1947) when they addressed crowds of thousands and thousands, even from the Red Fort.

Griots of West Africa, the keepers of oral histories, can recite these histories from memory in all night sessions. So do the hafiz recite the entire Quran by heart.

Here I tell you a story I heard in the city of Patiala. The kings of India were well known as patrons of arts and sciences. Guru Granth Sahib is the sacred book of the Sikhs with 6000 ‘songs’ or hymns. The sikh king of Patiala asked the chief granthee (the one who knows the text by heart): Is there anyone who can sit in one asana (one posture) and recite the entire holy text? The learned granthee replied: if you can sit in one asana for all those hours, I shall recite the holy text for you to listen.

On the appointed day the audition took place. Both the reciter and the listener sat still in one posture all the way through, motionless. After the recitation, the king arranged for the venerable granthee to be sent home in the royal palanquin as a gesture of honour.

On the way the holy man was amazed and surprised to see unusual expressions of reverence of the people. He was puzzled.

When the palanquin arrived and the learned granthee alighted, he was shocked and surprised that the king himself was one of the palanquin-bearers.

It is through such veneration for knowledge that the traditions have continued.

I still cannot understand why the wise presidents and prime ministers of the nations today need electronic cues to give their speeches. More shocking, in the country of Gandhi and Nehru, the present prime minister also reads out a written speech. What has happened here?

However, the pandits still recite the hours of liturgy from memory and most Indian public speakers speak extempore without any notes in front of them.

I came to India after a sixteen year absence in 1968. I knew of the tradition of ‘pandas’, the priests who are the keepers of family genealogies. There are thousands of ethnic communities in India. I knew that our family priests resided in the city of Haridwar. So I went to the sacred spot called har ki pauri where one is sure to find one or two of these priests. I addressed the first one I saw and asked: I am a Saraswat Brahmin of Kaliya clan; my ancestry is in the town of Nurmahal in district of Jalandhar in Punjab. Where will I find our family panda?

The priest immediately told me which way to go, where the house is and so on. And I could easily find it. I have had similar experience in two other holy places. Once in Kashmir at the Martand (Matand) temple and also at Gauri-kund on the way to Kedarnath. Now, the question is: of the 1.2 billion people of thousands of ethnic communities in the country, in which computer do these pandas keep the records that they can instantly guide a seeker even to the house address of his/her own family’s priests? What is that mental skill?

I find that many discoveries of mind sciences nowadays are based on the handicaps the people in the West, oops, in the modern societies, suffer; modern India being no exception.

I was walking in the science museum in St. Paul, Minnesota. There was an experiment one could participate in. It was a recording one heard with earphones and at the same time read a few paragraphs that were different from the recording being played. The assumption was, it was taken for granted, that one could not read aloud something different at the same time as listening to a different recording.

The ‘scientists’ had not counted on a meditator. I had no problem doing both at the same time and can prove it in any laboratory. It is a simple matter of withdrawing the mind from one sense and applying it to another.

This is nothing! There is an assumption that one cannot be reciting one thing while hearing something else at the same time. We prove that wrong each Shiva-ratri (Shiva’s Holy Night) when we go to the Virabhadra temple around 2 or 3 a.m. The space inside the shrine is about 10 ft by 10 ft. Often, 20 people are squeezed in there. When we arrive, the priests of some yajamana (officiant) are already performing the worship liturgy, reciting the hymns and so on. We go and our priests start reciting their own liturgy. The two groups go on independently but simultaneously and at optimum volume. Nobody gets confused. Each worship liturgy is completed with satisfaction.

This is, again, nothing. We were in the Kedarnath Temple in the high mountains. There was a group of maybe 70 people from USA. We asked for puja (worship) to Shiva to be performed for us. When we arrived in the sanctum sanctorum, three other liturgies were going on, one on each side of the shrine. Ours was fourth. The recitations are at high volume. All four groups of priests performed their own worship without any confusion. Dr. John Clarke, chairman of our Himalayan Institute in Pennsylvania, even commented about it. Then there are ‘moderns’ who say that they cannot meditate in a crowd!

We have also tested in our Ashram laboratory a traditional reciter (veda-pathin) of the Vedas. It is ‘normally’ unthinkable that one would produce alpha brain waves, symptomatic of total relaxation, while speaking. But the Veda-pathin, when reciting with eyes closed, was also producing alpha waves and we have recorded that in our Lab data.

Now let us take the case of shatavadhanis in Maharashtra, Andhra, Karnataka and other states. ‘Shatavadhani’ means a person of hundred concentrations. A shatavadhani sits down in a session with people. He may be asked a hundred questions one after the other. In between, someone may ring a bell ten times. Someone may ask that the master recite a verse starting with, say, the letter ‘P’. After all the hundred events have taken place, he answers all questions in the same sequence in which they were asked; at the right place he says that at this point the bell was rung ten times. At another point he recites the requisite verse starting with ‘P’. And I have even heard of sahasravadhanis, those of a thousand concentrations.

These are examples of mind’s capacities in the traditional societies, but there seems to be a conspiracy in modern education and social systems to impair the minds so that this kind of acuteness, intentness and concentration is lost in the on-going generations.

These feats of the mind are achieved without notebooks, calculators and computers. Sadly those with modern education do not even know that these traditions yet continue and there is something to learn from them. There is an attempt in modern India to laugh off the priests who recite many hours of the liturgy by heart and how many of us do really know about the shatavadhanis?

Now back to the talk of ‘genius’. There is quite an imposing list of geniuses in the history of India. Varaha-mihira (505-587 A.D.) who wrote on trigonometry, astronomy, astrology, planetary movements, eclipses, rainfall, clouds, architecture, growth of crops, manufacture of perfumes, matrimony, domestic relations, gems, pearls, and rituals (Wikipedia). King Bhoja of the Parmar dynasty (died 1055 A.D.) who wrote on medicine, architecture, poetics, literary criticism, and even about building of flying vehicles using heated mercuric vapour as fuel.

But, the purpose of this article is not to count the number of geniuses and polymaths in India or China (I should ask my friend and initiate Shi Hong about Chinese geniuses). What we are talking about is the application of mind without the help of any modern ‘apps’ and such.

One prime example is Panini whose date is somewhere around 6th or 7th century BC. (Indian post office issued a stamp commemorating him). He is the founding father of meta-grammar and structural analysis of language. He analysed the entire Sanskrit language in 1959 sutras, or succinct formulae. I memorized this text at the age of 6, as do all the ‘real’ traditional grammarians of India. He invented algebraic markings for his analytical work. He has been called the only human computer ever born. I cannot begin to give you examples of his genius. One example:

I pose a question in English grammar. How does the verb root ‘be’ morph into the formulations ‘is’ and ‘are’. What is the phonetic connection between ‘be’ and ‘is’’?

Panini’s sutras, ‘computer codes’ if you will, have to be applied in a certain sequence. So, to go from the verb root ‘as’ (meaning ‘be’), to present tense third person singular ‘asti’ (meaning ‘is’) 27 rules have to be applied in proper sequence. Miss out on one link in the chain, you give a wrong ‘computer command’, you will not get ‘asti’, whatever else you might get. These processes are called siddhis in grammar. I had to learn to do these siddhis at the age of 7 with every possible word in the language.

Of the 2000 verbs Panini listed from existing lexicons and his own ‘field researches’, each verb, following Panini’s rules, can form 20000000 words. Multiply 2000 by twenty million (two crores), 40000000000, that is the number of words a Sanskrit grammarian versed in the formulae of morphology, can form if he has mastered Panini. Imagine the riches of such a language. And one who knows this system, learning a language for him is a child’s game. People ask me the secret of how I learnt to guide meditation in Italian in half an hour, never having learnt the language before. Once, when I was teaching Latin (somewhere—I need not give you the history), I invented/discovered the rules by which the Latin irregular verbs operate. (An irregular verb is one which does not follow the norms of established rules).

How did Panini accomplish this? Patanjali, the great commentator on Panini’s grammar, says (I paraphrase):

[Our] authority is the master himself who would sit at a pure place, having ritually purified himself, facing east, and brought forth the sutras.

‘Facing east’ suggests that it was a work accomplished through intuitions received in meditative states. It is still common in India to sit facing east for morning prayers and meditations. No computer language of today can yet match the ability of Panini all by itself without the agency of a Sanskrit grammarian trained in Panini’s system.

Fortunately the system still continues to be taught through the self-sacrifice of masters, who live in great austerity and who may not know a word of English and cannot operate a computer key. These are glimpses into a different civilization which I represent.

We use more than two dozen computers in my Ashram, including the meditation research laboratory, but I do not abandon my Paninian training in analysing all different areas of involvement. That goes to show that there need not be a conflict between the ancient and the modern. Both can enrich each other. Oh, how I wish the ‘moderns’ knew to ask us ‘ancients’.

Modern science has made incredible strides, but in understanding the capabilities of the human mind it is still in infancy. We the ‘ancients’ can help.

[March 2013]