Author: ahymsin

[This is a transcript of recording #2474 from the series “Loving Meditations” (1984) by Pandit Usharbudh Arya (later Swami Veda Bharati). It was previously published in the November 2019 edition of the AHYMSIN Newsletter.]

One who is world-weary often needs no other instruction. His world-weariness, called vairagya (dispassion, disinterest) itself pulls him to something ever more interesting. And his spaces become infinite. By abandoning the finite, he gains the infinite. By throwing away the limited, he becomes endowed with unlimited riches, as one fortunate enough who may exchange his glass bead for a diamond. Such a one is truly blessed. And no one has to instruct him in the relative value of the glass bead and the diamond.

As he goes to this “Secret Grove” – remember the “Secret Grove” we found?¹ – again, and again, he discovers more interesting things about it: which blossom came, which tree bore fruit, which leaf died, where a bird sat, what shoots are cropping up, how the fragrances change with the seasons, how the earth smells after a drizzle in that grove. What silly people of the city do not understand is why he goes and runs to the wilderness and cannot be found. They think he is lost. He says he has found! And his mind turns again and again and again to the same inward grove, that fragrant garden. And whatever he looks at, whatever he observes, whatever he tastes, touches, smells, sees, hears reminds him of that which he has discovered within himself.

He is like a man who used to make arrows. From morning until night, he would make arrows. His mind was absorbed in making arrows. We have a saying in the ancient texts in the Upanishads: “Your mantra is the bow. Your Atman, your Spiritual Self, is the arrow. Set the arrow well on the bow and shoot. And as an arrow becomes one with its target, so let your Atman, the Spiritual Self, become one with the Supreme One who is the target of your shot. The arrow is the Self.”²

So this man used to make arrows. And he used to supply the whole army, and all the commanders, and even the king himself – whom he had never seen. He had heard of the king, but all he had seen was arrows. And one day the king came out in procession, going through the city. And the arrow-maker sat, making his arrows. And for a moment he glanced up, and he saw more arrows. And he kept looking at the arrows until the arrows passed. And the king’s policemen came to him and said, “The whole city rises, and the king passes, and you just sit there gaping?! Have you no respect for the king?!” And he said, “King? What king?” “You fool, the king who just passed in procession!” “Oh!” he said, “Was it the king who was bearing the arrows? I only saw the arrows that he was carrying in his quiver. I never saw any king. From morning till night, I make arrows. I have heard that these arrows have also been received well by the king. Something drew my attention, and I looked up, and I saw these arrows. And I was examining their quality and how they looked, and how the parts fit together. I had no idea there was a king passing by.”

The beautiful wife of a rich man of the city quarreled with him and walked out into the marketplace. A Buddhist monk, named Matisa – so say the Buddhist texts – sat meditating. He was going through one of those “applied” meditations that are so deeply and commonly taught in Buddhism. And his meditation was, at that moment, on the skeleton. Can you see your own skeleton – what you look like inside this plastic wrap? It’s one of the very profound Buddhist meditations. The beautiful woman passed. She was laughing. Her teeth were showing. The monk sat meditating on the skeleton. The rich man was looking for his wife with whom he had quarreled and had gone away. He went around the city looking for her and asked the monk, “Did you perchance see my beautiful wife?” The monk said, “Beautiful Wife?” “Yes,” said the husband. “She’s a very beautiful woman.” The monk said, “I saw someone’s teeth. I was meditating on a skeleton, and I did see a skeleton wrapped in skin. Of beauty I know nothing.” You might think this to be a little extreme but, you see, we all have our own notions of beauty.

Did I ever tell you the story of the two beautiful fishes? Anyone here knows that story, have heard it? No? Well, you know, we have these two rivers in India: the Ganga (Ganges) and the Yamuna – and they both flow from the Himalayan Mountains. And after flowing for some thousand miles, at a certain point they join together. It’s a very holy place. So a fish from the River Ganga (the Ganges) and a fish from the River Yamuna met at this confluence, as we often meet at confluences. How many confluences are there in our lives? And at those confluences we meet the fellow fish from other streams. So at that particularly holy confluence, a fish from the Ganges and a fish from the Yamuna met: “Where are you from?” “I’ve come down the Ganga River.” “Yeah, I have heard of you ugly fellows.” “What? Us ugly fellows? We have heard of you ugly fellows from the River Yamuna. Everybody knows who is ugly and who is beautiful.” “Us? We are the most beautiful fish anywhere in the world.” So there was a dispute as to whether the fish from the River Ganges or the fish from the River Yamuna were beautiful. Which one of those two was particularly more beautiful? So they said, “Let’s not fight here. Let’s get some arbitration.” So, that particular area of the river is well known for its turtles. So the two went to a turtle and said, “Sir, excuse us, please. We are sorry to disturb you. You are known for your wisdom” — because, you see, we have a saying in the Tradition that a turtle who withdraws all his limbs is like a wise man who withdraws all his senses. “We are very sorry to disturb your withdrawal, but would you please tell us which one of us two is the more beautiful?” And the turtle with his little neck looked this way on one, looked that way at the other, and looked at the two of them again the way that turtles look at things – and laughed. “What do you two have to do with beauty? If you want to see beauty, look at a turtle!”

So we all have our opinions about beauty and ugliness. And I don’t want to challenge your concept of beauty, but the monk Matisa, who was busy at that time meditating on a skeleton, saw a beautiful woman passing by laughing, and all he could see was the ultimate end of the body.

So your mind turns again and again and again to that truth that you cultivate. That is called bhavana. The word bhavana in Sanskrit has two meanings. One meaning is “to cultivate through contemplation,” to cultivate a certain thinking, to impress the same thing upon yourself, again and again and again, until it becomes your nature. And then you have a wholly altered worldview. The other meaning of the same word bhavana is “sentiment” – because all sentiment is something you have cultivated. If time permits, I’ll talk more about sentiments.

Quite often you may have cultivated a certain sentiment for a long time, but somewhere along the line your mind wanders. You become drawn to something other than what you were previously cultivating. You are sidetracked. You go through a diversion. You gather a different karma. You are born, you live in a new physical body, and sometimes for years nothing might happen. The world weighs heavy. The duties must be done. Exams must be passed. There is the serious business of growing up. There is marriage, children, a job – all of that. And if you do not do all of those things and do not take care of them, the karma weighs heavy, and you feel there is something, there is something, there is something yet to be done, yet to be done. And you sit down to meditate, and the mantra alternates with the words “yet to be done” – mantra, mantra mantra – “yet-to-be-done, yet-to-be-done, yet-to-be-done” – mantra, mantra, mantra – “yet-to-be-done, yet-to-be-done.” And so long as there are these “yet-to-be-dones,” in your meditation, this alternating of your mantra and your “yet-to-be-dones” will continue. And when you have all the yet-to-be-dones taken care of, then, like Krishna, you say,

3.22 – na me pārthāsti kartavyaṁ / triṣhu lokeṣhu kiṁchana
nānavāptam avāptavyaṁ / varta eva cha karmaṇi
3.23 – [yadi hyahaṁ na varteyaṁ / jātu karmaṇyatandritaḥ
mama vartmānuvartante / manuṣhyāḥ pārtha sarvaśhaḥ]³
3.24 – utsīdeyur ime lokā / na kuryāṁ karma ched aham
saṁkarasya cha kartā syām / upahanyām imāḥ prajāḥ

“O Arjuna, there is nothing in the whole universe that I have to do that is yet to be done, nothing that I have not yet attained that I have yet to attain. Yet I continue to perform actions. For beings everywhere follow my path and imitate me. Were I to cease to act, then all the worlds and all the beings will be removed from their rightful path.”
(Bhagavad Gita 3:22-24)

So when all the yet-to-be-dones are done, then the actual yet-to-be done begins. And that is compassionate uplifting of others. Then universal love begins.

So sometimes a person with intense spiritual commitment may be born and not be aware of that spiritual commitment for years and years and years of his life – never even think about it because he is too busy taking care of the past karma, the past debts that he has got to pay off. The woman he had promised to marry and did not marry – at a certain confluence they meet: “Excuse me. Have I ever seen you before?” “No.” “Did you live in Minneapolis?” “I’ve never been there.” “Hum? Very strange! You seem familiar.” Do you know that some people look like they looked in their past life? You would be surprised.

Among you sometimes I recognize some people who were my students. The subtle body shapes similar bodies. Do you know how the shape of the body comes? Oh, it comes from the genes; I forgot. I’m sorry. (Laughter). I’m trying to be scientific. I’m from the East, you know. (Laughter)

The thing is that the modern scientists explain the “how.” The spiritual scientists explain the “why.” And the “how” and the “why” have to combine to produce you, okay? The understanding of “why” does not cancel out the understanding of “how.” Nor should the understanding of “how” ridicule the understanding of “why.” Nor should the understanding of “why” make you so “holy” that you lose all understanding of “how.” You see?

So for years and years and years a person may proceed and carry on with the worldly activities. And at a certain juncture, when a certain heavy load of karma is already paid off – the large debts are already paid off – suddenly a “re-cognition” comes! Something somewhere reminds you. It may even be five minutes before the death of this body. It makes no difference. If five minutes before the death of this body, you have found your Self, then you have found! Life has been worthwhile.

There is the story of a man who was a carpenter. He was a carpenter who specialized in making the “bed legs.” That’s all he made all his life. So his name in Sanskrit is Khaṭvāṅga, which means “the leg of a cot.” Khaṭva = “cot.” So he was nicknamed “Cot-legs.” And all his life, Cot-legs the carpenter made cot legs. And the great sage came by and said, “Hey, Cot-legs!” “Yes, Sir?” “Put your tools away.” “I should put my tools away? Why should I put my tools away?” “Put your tools away. You’ve got only forty-eight minutes left.” “Forty-eight minutes? Forty-eight minutes to what?” “Forty-eight minutes to your death!” Cot-legs put his tools away and put his cot legs away. At that moment he put them away. He really “put them away!”

And when you put something away, put it away! We keep carrying the subtle body of everything with us. Do you follow? And that is our problem. So even at the happiest place, we cannot be happy. So when he put his cot legs and his hammer and his saw away, he really “put them away.” And when you have really “put them away,” what happens?

He said, “Death?” And he turned his mind inward. And for forty-eight minutes…because all his debts had already been paid through his whole life through his carpentry, through his work, through his service to the people. He had done it all intensely. It was already paid off. And when it was already paid off, then the saint appears on the scene, just forty-eight minutes before his death. And the word “death” reminds him of his reality. And he puts away the worldly tools, and he enters into himself. And in forty-eight minutes he achieved the highest realization, enlightenment, and died an enlightened man. “Cot-legs” the Carpenter. We read many such stories.

In the Sankhya system of philosophy, there is a famous name in all the Sankhya philosophy texts. Sankhya philosophy is the philosophy of discrimination – the discrimination between matter and spirit, between non-Self and Self. And in this particular tradition, among the highly realized, a name occurs: Piṅgalā the Prostitute⁴ – a very high name. They say, “May enlightenment come to like it did to Piṅgalā the Prostitute – in one evening!”

By the fact of some past karma, Piṅgalā lived the life of a prostitute. That was her life, that was her reality, her living, her survival. One day Piṅgalā put on all her makeup and her attractive clothes and stood outside her house, waiting for a possible customer to come by. Every time a man comes by, every time she sees a man coming down the road, she says in her mind, “This must be the rich man I’m waiting for.” The man passes by her and goes his way. She sees the next man coming. Her heart jumps with hope: “I hope he’s a rich man and he’s coming for me.” And he passes by. And her heart sinks. And the whole evening, she went inside the house, came out of the house, stood there – her heart jumping with expectation; her heart sinking with disappointment – jumping with expectation, sinking with disappointment until past midnight – her legs aching. And she went into her house, and she sat down, and she said, “What a life! – a series of expectations and disappointments, and expectations and disappointments. I’m weary! I’m world-weary! Even if I were to give up this particular type of life, would I then not have this continuous cycle of high expectations and really low disappointments, and expectations and disappointments? In no other kind of worldly life do I see myself delivered from these cycles of expectation and disappointment. What? Day after day? All the time? I have to keep living through this kind of an evening I have lived today no matter what I do? And immediately the realization came to her. That day, that moment she became world-weary – because that was the day that all of her karma was done! And one night, waiting for customers, and disappointed in that, Piṅgalā the Prostitute became enlightened.

There must be some hope for the likes us. You see, I go by this theory: “Others have been delivered, why won’t I be?” People say, “Others have been delivered, but one such as me has no hope.” Why not? In fact, when the right time comes, you’d better respond. There comes a moment in life when you have no alternative but to respond, for at that moment your life itself will be terminated. Because what you had to do with the physical body, so far as the worldly duties and the worldly desires are concerned, has already been done. And this body is of no use – except for spiritual pursuit.

There is a community in India called the Sikhs. The word sikh means a disciple. The founder of that particular line was a great guru named Nanak. One day Nanak, together with one or two of his disciples, realizing that right time had come, came to the house of a disciple – called upon him. The disciple’s name was Mulah. Mulah’s wife saw the guru coming, and she thought, “Here he comes. He’s going to take my husband away.” Now we have in India these cow-dung cakes, used for fuel. The cow-dung is shaped into cakes and dried. It’s a really very good fuel. It saves wood and is excellent. So where she used to keep the supply of these cow-dung cakes was the fuel storeroom. And she calls her husband and says, “Go hide in there.” So Mulah went and hid in there. So when Guru Nanak came to the door and asked for Mulah, she said, “Sorry, he isn’t home.” Guru Nanak knew what was going on and said, “Alright.” The guru left the village and sat outside the village under a tree, chatting with his other disciples, waiting for the bad news. And very soon the wife came, disheveled, crying her eyes out, because in that fuel storeroom where she had hidden her husband, he was bitten by a snake and had died. See? So when the call comes, it has to be responded to one way or another.

And as I was saying the day before yesterday, some people are lucky to have found fortune from misfortune. The story of a very holy family of the 13th century – the father, a very highly realized man, the mother, four children: Nirvṛttinath, Sopanath, Jñānadev and their sister Mukta. Going on a pilgrimage and through a forest, they saw a lion and ran helter-skelter – ran for their lives. And then they all united, except for the elder one, Nirvṛttinath. He could not be found. They thought, “Oh, he’s been lost in the forest, or eaten by a lion.” Chased by a lion, Nirvṛttinath runs into a cave, and his would-be guru Gahininath says, “Come in. I’ve been waiting for you.” Some are chased into the guru’s cave by a lion!

After some time Nirvṛtti came out, returned to the family, initiated his brothers and sister. His brother, writing his books, never mentions the name of his brother as a brother. Everywhere he refers to him as his guru. Nowhere does he say, “My brother taught me.” He speaks of his guru. And all of them, the brothers and the sister – enlightened! One of the brothers, Gandev, writes about the initiation of his sister. The commentator speaks of the death of the sister, but I don’t believe that. He is writing about the initiation, because the initiation is a death. He’s writing about the initiation of his sister by the elder brother, the guru: “The powder of pearls was thrown in the skies. There was a brilliant flash of lightning. The sky was clothed in beautiful purple. The brilliant blue point began to shine. A serpent’s young one” – Who is a serpent’s young one? “A serpent’s young one began to dance. In dazzling thunder, the lightning disappeared in itself.”

I wish I could read to you the writings of these great saints. Muktabai, the sister, tells us that she was leading merely a blindfolded life, but she was awakened to spiritual consciousness by the grace of Nirvṛtti, the brother, the guru. She compares the grace of Nirvṛtti to the bank of a river, across which, and by the help of which, she was able to swim to her goal. She tells us also that she saw an ant floating in the sky, and that this ant was able to devour the sun. “A great wonder it was,” she says, “that a barren woman gave birth to a child. The scorpion went to the underworld and the serpent fell at its feet. A fly was delivered and gave birth to a kite.” At these experiences, says Muktabai, she laughed. It’s a very highly symbolic language of internal experiences, somewhat similar to the “Showings” of Julian of Norwich. She asks us, “Who has been able to see the moonlight by the day, and the hot sunlight by night?” as she has. She tells us, “As the trees in the forest become fragrant by a sandalwood tree which is in the midst of them, similarly people begin to love God when there is a devotee in the midst of them.”

There are a lot of times when the sandalwood objects you buy are not sandalwood objects. They take ordinary wood and put it in between sandalwood. And the fragrance is imparted to the ordinary wood, which is then carved and sold as sandalwood. This example is always given to speak of the glories in grace and blessings that come through what we call satsanga, the love of the saintly, the company of the saintly – that in the company of the fragrant sandalwood, ordinary wood becomes as fragrant as sandalwood and fetches the price of sandalwood. So by ever sitting in the company of the pure and the saintly – who knows? – you too might pass for a saint. The beauty of it is that sometimes it is helpful – because sometimes you first begin to do saintly deeds because you have to keep up the image. (Laughter) Well and good – because after a while it becomes a habit. Habit becomes nature. Nature changes your personality. Your personality creates your destiny. Quite often a hypocrite ends up being a saint by this very process. No harm. Every donkey needs his carrot. (Laughter) We all need our carrots. We all need our hidden motivations. By whatever motivation you follow the path, follow it. Walk a little on it. Walk a little on it.

And it is not necessary – it is not even advisable – that you should abandon the yet-to-be-dones. The yet-to-be-dones must be done. And at the same time, in a hidden recess of your personality, your sadhana, your personal practice must go on. Sometimes it may take a long time. Sometimes just a little desire may linger.

One of the great siddhas… There is a list of 84 siddhas (adepts, accomplished ones) in the Tibetan tradition. One of them was Sarahapa. Sarahapa said to his wife, “Would you mind cooking today some radishes? Cooked radishes are really a very nice dish.” She said, “Fine,” and she went out to get the radishes. Now, waiting, waiting, Sarahapa went into samadhi. And it is said in the narrative that he went into samadhi and for twelve years he did not rise. And after twelve years, he opened his eyes, and his wife was around – twelve years older. He looked at her and said, “Where are my radishes?” “What?” his wife said, “In this season?” “What do you mean, ‘in this season’?” “Do you know what day and time and season it is?” He said, “What?” She said, “Since you asked for the radishes the last time, it’s been twelve years.” So twelve years passed, but the desire for radishes did not go. (Laughter). She said, “Twelve years you sit in samadhi, and you still ask me for radishes – and in the wrong season?”

So it is that a desire may linger. (Laughter) So if it’s only a desire for radishes, get the radishes cooked and eat them, and forget about it. Live in the world. Do your duties in the world, perform all your yet-to-be-dones, love senselessly, give selflessly.

Are you a little larger than this morning? This morning we said, “Try to become just a little larger.” Are you a little larger than this morning? That would be nice to hear.

And quite often not performing the worldly duties becomes the obstacle in the way of spiritual progress. Quite often, performing the worldly duties is no obstacle in the way of spiritual progress because in the inner recesses of your personality, there are very still places which always remain still, while on the exterior surface hectic activity continues. Without ceasing the hectic activity, learn to enter the still places.

Some people are successful only in this world. Some people are successful only in the other-worldly matters. How about being successful in both? That is the highest ambition. Some of the highest names in metaphysics are of the tradition called the Royal Sages in the Sanskrit texts, the kings who are sages, the kings who were highly enlightened – that the hermits sent their disciples to study in the palace, rather than the princes [of the palace] going to the [forest] ashram. There is such a tradition! There is a tradition of the gurus from the ashram sending their sons and disciples to study in the palace from the king to learn metaphysics. And these are the highest names, those teachers.

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Editor’s Note

¹⁾ For “the Secret Grove,” see Swami Veda’s talk, entitled “Your Own Secret Grove by the River” (#2473) in this same series of talks: Loving Meditations (1984).

²⁾ “Holding the bow of Upanishadic wisdom, the aspirant should fix the arrow of mind, sharpened with meditation, on its target. Draw the string with full absorption and shoot at the target. O my friend, remember immutable, eternal Truth alone is the target.” Chapter 2, Canto 2, Verse 3 in Wisdom of the Ancient Sages: Mundaka Upanishad by Swami Rama.

³⁾ Swami Veda does not recite Bhagavad Gita 3.23 in Sanskrit; however, he does include the essence of this verse in his English translation. Elsewhere he has translated these three verses of the Bhagavad Gita as follows:

3.22 – O Son of Pritha, in all the three worlds I have nothing that is yet to be done,
nothing not attained or yet to be attained; yet I, indeed, continue in action.
3.23 – If I were perchance not to continue in action without lassitude, O Son of Pritha,
and since all human beings follow my path in every way,
3.24 – All these worlds would perish if I were not to perform action;
I would be the cause of disorder and would kill all these beings.

⁴⁾ The story of Piṅgalā the Prostitute is found in the Srimad-Bhagavatam, Canto 11, Chapter 8, Verses 22-44.

[This is a transcript from the lecture series: “Unblocking Yourself” given by Swami Veda Bharati. It was previously published in the July 2019 edition of the AHYMSIN Newsletter.]

People are interested in finding out how we free ourselves; how we unbind ourselves from our state of bondage. It is easier to loosen the knots if you know the structure of the knot; then you don’t have to spend hours unraveling it. In the process getting more knots and binding ourselves in new ways. If we understand the process by which we bind ourselves, two things will happen. First, it will be easier for us to loosen the existing knots, and second we’ll avoid tying further knots in the future. The process of coming into bondage daily, every new bondage, each day, is a subtle and sinister one.

We do not even notice when we start tying ourselves in this bundle of knots nor do we notice how we keep tightening the knots. We find ourselves in a certain mental habit, and then we say, “I am unable to get out of this habit; this is the way I now am. There is a certain kind of thing I simply cannot do.” A sense of defeat occurs. Each time you say, “Such and such I simply cannot do,” you are impressing upon your mind that very habit. You are forming another knot, the knot of defeatism. By such means our thinking becomes constrained. We want to feel free of a situation, of a habit, of a condition, an environment that is around us, a certain something that is blocking progress in a given relationship, that we remain stuck, tied up in a knot.

In families for instance, the same argument will occur over and over and over again for years and years. Husband keeps saying the same thing to the wife for ten years, twenty years; wife keeps saying the same thing to the husband twenty years, thirty years. They should celebrate the anniversary of when, “Darling, I said this nasty thing to you first time.” We have made ourselves into tape recorders, and the same tape keeps playing in the head. In our words, our letters, our actions and all our compositions of life’s rhythms – music symphonic and noises cacophonic—the same tape continues. Sometimes we catch ourselves, “What have I been saying? What have I been doing, sleepwalking?” Sometimes we catch ourselves and with the realization of how many years we have been saying something, comes also the questioning of our spouse,

“Don’t you understand I’ve been saying the same thing to you for twenty years, and you still don’t understand. It’s all your fault.” I’m sorry, it’s the other way around – it’s the speaker’s fault, not the spouse.

We are always so defensive. We always have a ready explanation for everything: for all our flaws, for all our faults, for all our failures, for all our lack of freedom. We don’t realize when we first set the trap for ourselves. The great Tagore wrote a poem¹ which goes something like this:

“Prisoner, tell me, who was it that bound you?”

“It was my master,” said the prisoner. “I thought I could outdo everybody in the world in wealth and power, and I amassed in my own treasure-house the money due to my king. When sleep overcame me I lay upon the bed that was for my lord, and on waking up I found I was a prisoner in my own treasure-house.”

“Prisoner, tell me, who was it that wrought this unbreakable chain?”

“It was I,” said the prisoner, “who forged this chain very carefully. I thought my invincible power would hold the world captive leaving me in a freedom undisturbed. Thus night and day I worked at the chain with huge fires and cruel hard strokes. When at last the work was done and the links were complete and unbreakable, I found that it held me in its grip.”

Such traps are so subtle, so sinister, that we don’t realize when we have begun to entrap ourselves. By a single word, by a single thought; which word, which thought; thought first, the word after, and that the third. Which thought, which word, which act we have planted as a seed, then we water it with more thought, more words and more acts. When we have uprooted all the sweet melons and planted all the bitter gourds, we then complain that the garden produces nothing ‘sweet. We need to recognize these traps. They consist of constrained thoughts, limited thoughts, negatives, and denials of all kinds.

There are limitations of place binding our minds. There are limitations of time placed on our mind. There are limitations of geography, nations, states, religions, belief systems, cultures, languages, and, above all, our own personal experiences. We believe that the experiences we have had are the only valid ones for us, “I have become what I am because of the experiences I have had. I have not become something more or better because of the experiences I was deprived of. My father was a child abuser; that is why I simply cannot keep my hands away from the rod and take every opportunity of beating my child. It is not my fault.” I do not accept them.

People say, “Well, I had a shock early in my life, when I was young and innocent. It was from that shock that I never recovered and that makes me who I am.” But the Buddha had three shocks in his life, one after the other, and that’s what made him the Buddha.

The Buddha had three shocks in his life, one after the other, and that’s what made him the Buddha.

He had three shocks in his life: when the Buddha was born his mother was on a journey. Swamiji, our guru, says, “The Buddha was born under a tree, was enlightened under a tree, and, though a prince, he died under a tree.”

This was a peculiar time in the history of the world. It was a time, sixth century B.C., when the Buddha, the Enlightened One, was teaching in India, and Lao-tse was teaching his message of the Tao and wrote the Tao Te Ching in China. It was the time when Pythagoras established the first philosophical academy in the West. He founded the Western system of philosophy, music and mathematics, initiated Western civilization. He also taught reincarnation. It was a time Pythagoras, first founder of western metaphysics.

You know Pythagoras’s Theorem is found in Sanskrit texts eight centuries before Pythagoras’s time. He had left the island of Samos because of the tyranny of the kind and had wandered off, says Herodotus, to the countries of the east, and then returned to Greece, the island of Samos in Greece, in the Aegean Sea. It was a time when Zarathustra, also known as Zoroaster was teaching in Iran. So it was a very peculiar time in the history of the world. The Egyptian civilization was decaying at that time; there is no record of a great teacher in Egypt. The pre-Muslim Iranian civilization was ascendant at that time. And the Indian civilization and the Chinese civilization, there was no Western civilization as yet; it was just beginning to start.

So when Buddha, the Enlightened One, was born, seven sages visited him and prophesied that he would either be the king of the whole earth or he would be an enlightened one. He was a prince, and his father had no use for a son who would don the robes of a monk and wander about preaching with a begging bowl in hand. That would be an ignominy, an insult to the royal house.

So the father, the king, made sure that the Buddha heard nothing of metaphysics, no ugly news of the world, and that he came across nothing that was unpleasant. They put the child prince in a huge orchard in a lovely grove surrounded by four walls in the greatest comfort possible, so he would have only positive views about worldly comforts. As the prince grew they surrounded him with beautiful maidens from all over the kingdom, and covered him with jewelry, gems, garlands and necklaces.

His teachers were surprised that he had to be taught so little. Because he had wisdom, he didn’t need intellect. Wisdom is the easy part of education. When you do a mathematical problem, you like to learn what rules apply. A wise man, before learning how to do the mathematical problem, learns how to use the mind. Your whole education system, you have never been taught how to use your mind. Not on intellectual, nor psychological, philosophical or scientific problems, nor on your emotions or your relationships. There is no training on how to use the mind, which is the science of all sciences.

If you are born with the innate wisdom of how to use the mind you will learn all the principles of mathematics in one-tenth the time that anyone else would take to learn. You will not have to go to business school, and yet you will make the best business man. What business school does is constrain you.

What the schools of social sciences do is to give you a certain view outside which you can’t see. So when you have a problem in mathematics, go to someone who does not know mathematics, he is more likely to solve it for you. Go to a philosopher who knows the art and science of how to use the mind. He will interpret the problem in terms of philosophy and will answer it in terms of philosophy. You can then translate it back into the terms of mathematics. The would-be Buddha, born as prince Siddhartha, would attend classes only because he had to.

When the time came to test him in all the princely sciences, he excelled in them all. When time came for him to be tested in archery, though he did not practice, he picked his bow, picked his arrow and in the first attempt shot right into the eye of the target. While others learned how to use the bow, how to use the arrow, how to take aim at the target and how exactly to shoot, he learned how to use the mind.

When it was time for the prince to be taken out in procession so the would-be subjects could see the crown prince and he, in turn, could be exposed to his subjects for the first time, strict orders went out from the king to the police chief saying, “Nothing ugly, nothing unpleasant, nothing depressing about this world must cross the prince’s eye. Nothing at all.” The city gleamed, every door had flower garlands and wreaths; water was sprinkled on all the dusty streets. Lampposts were erected along the prince’s route and women stood on balconies showering flower petals on the prince as he passed by. Musicians marched in front of the prince on his royal elephant. The prince, inspecting his kingdom for the first time, was amazed at all the sights and sounds: he’d never before been outside the boundaries of his palace.

“What’s that?” asked the prince.

“Oh, nothing, Prince; nothing at all.”

“What is it, what? Why is that man not walking on his own?

Why is he being supported by others?”

“Oh, it’s nothing, Prince,” said the ministers. They were afraid of violating the king’s orders. “It’s nothing, Prince; these are not matters for your attention. Look instead at all the beautiful women sprinkling flowers on your head and realize how this kingdom loves you.”

“Oh, Prince, he’s just sick.”

“Sick? What’s that?”

“Well, it’s… well, it’s something that happens to the body.”

“Oh. Why did it happen to him?”

“Oh, it can happen to anybody.”

“Can it happen to me? To this body also?”

“Well, Prince, yes. It can happen to you.”

“To this handsome young body that everyone claims to love?” The prince was shocked and saddened. He cut the procession short and returned to the palace. He contemplated on the knowledge of this body that can get sick; how that man was sick and was being carried by others. He could not walk. Whatever for? Why does this happen?

The king, his father, arranged some entertainment for him to help him forget that which he had seen. The police chief must have been demoted, for permitting such a shock. “Why?” The question was not answered.

Later, when the King thought that the prince had forgotten the incident, he decided it was time for him to see the prosperous kingdom once more. So the prince once again went out in procession to see the well-prepared city. The prince, Siddhartha, is happy; he’s overjoyed. Everything is wonderful, the people love him, and he likes the music being played. Then his glance falls. Once again, it is said in the Buddhist scriptures, it was all the contrivance of the gods; it was no human being, it wasn’t the police chief’s fault. The gods and angels wanted to aid in the prince’s enlightenment and so had taken the form of an old man, an old man with a bent back walking with a staff. The second shock occurred, “What is that?”

“Oh, he’s old,”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, it means he’s lived many years.”

“Oh, so everybody blesses me, ‘May the prince live long. Long live the prince.’ And I thought that was something beautiful, something great, something wonderful. That man has lived long. How long has he lived?”

“Well, maybe eighty years.”

“Eighty years? So that is what happens when people live long?”

The ministers tried to deflect the questions and avoid answering directly. But the prince asked probing questions, “You can tell me.”

“Well, yes, that is what happens, that is how the body goes when one gets old.”

“Everyone gets that way?”

“Well, prince, yes they do get old.”

“I will get old?”

“Well, prince, everyone,”

The prince was saddened and came back home. He was given more entertainment. And a third time, he went out and saw not a sick man, not an old man, but someone lying prone and being carried on four shoulders.

“What is that?”

“Oh, prince, you don’t want to look at such a thing. Look at the lovely faces of all the healthy people here.

“No, no, no, tell me why that man is being carried on a stretcher?”

“Oh, he’s dead.”

“Dead? What’s that?”

“The life has gone out of him.”

“The life has gone out of him? Why has life gone out of him?”

“Well, when people have lived very long, they become sick, they become old, and then they die.

“What are they going to do with him?”

“Bury him, cremate him.”

“Is that what they do? Is that what they will do with this handsome body also? Is this the end of everything?”

“Well, prince, you have very long to live.” The prince came back. He was entertained even more enthusiastically and zealously. And a fourth time when he was taken out in procession, his glance fell on a shining, happy face, a glowing brilliant face. It was someone wearing orange robes, and with a shining face with the splendour of the sun; cheerful with no depression and no sadness possible in that face. “Who is that?”

“Well, prince, he’s a sannyasi, a swami, a monk.”

“Why in this world full of misery?” he says, “In this world full of misery,” he says, “in this world full of sickness, old age and death, how can that man be so cheerful, so glowing, and so happy? It looks like the sun itself has incarnated. What makes him happy? I want to find out.”

“No prince, you have many princely duties, you don’t want to find out.” The ministers were all trembling fearing what the king would do because a monk came within the sight of the prince. The prophecy might come true, that the prince might become an enlightened man instead of king of the whole world.

One night Prince Siddhartha walks out of his palace. He called his charioteer, Chandaka by name. “Prepare my horse.” The groom accompanied him for a while, and then Siddhartha turned him back saying, “Tell my family that one day I will return.” The king, the father, waited. His son grew up without a father. His wife waited. Years passed.

Forty-nine days and forty-nine nights in meditation Prince Siddhartha sat absolutely still. When he opened his eyes from the forty-nine days of meditation, being enlightened, do you know what he said? The first words he said were, “Aha. Aha, I’ve found the house maker. He shall no more build me a house.” That’s what he said. He was enlightened and became Buddha. He broke the bonds and loosened the knots. The knot of the heart was burst; all doubts sundered. The force of karmas dwindled, and that One who is beyond and in the universe was seen.

This house of clay is that in which you live, and that to which you keep returning in many shapes and forms in incarnation after incarnation, until you no longer need it. Buddha said, “I’ve found the house maker. He shall no more build me a house.” He gathered a band of followers and monks around him and traveled and taught. The news of him traveled to his father’s kingdom.

One day the Enlightened One decided to visit his old kingdom. The news went to his father, an old man now, “Your son is returning, your son is coming.” How the father was overjoyed. His son was also overjoyed. The city was prepared. Once again it was preened, roads were sprinkled with water, and garlands and wreaths were hung on every door. When will the prince enter? In his own good time; perhaps tomorrow. Right now he is out in a monastic camp, away from the city, because monks were not allowed to enter the city except to beg for their alms. When tomorrow came, someone ran to the Buddha’s father saying, “Majesty, your son already entered the city.”

“How can that be? I wanted to go to receive him, but no one told me.”

“Sire, he came early in the morning. And he’s been begging.”

“What!”

“Your son has been begging; your son the prince has been begging from the citizens. He’s begging for food!”

“My son? My illustrious son who was to be the king of this kingdom, he’s begging for food?”

“Yes, he comes and he begs for his food. He takes in only one bowl full of whatever people give him and goes away. Once a day he begs, and that is all he receives.”

The father, King Suddhodana, trembling with shock and rage, sent a message to the one whom he still claimed as his son, the crown prince. He says, “There is no greater pleasure for me than that you return to this kingdom, but what is this about your going out and begging from your own citizens? Have you forgotten your illustrious lineage of solar kings? Have you forgotten and brought shame to our house?”

The Buddha sent back a reply typical of an Enlightened One only. He said, “Father, I have not forgotten the lineage to which I belong. I am very true to my illustrious inheritance. I am very true to the lineage of all the past Buddhas whose path I follow.” That is the reply he sent. And then the Buddha initiated his own son, who was the second in the line of succession after him, into monastic path. “He is my true son. He is my spiritual son.”

¹⁾ From Rabindranath Tagore’s Gitanjali

If you are not doing well, your meditation must not have been doing well. Use your meditative tools for your success; don’t use competitiveness for your success. Don’t use competitiveness for your success; use your meditative tools for your success. See? In skillful action there is no competitiveness. Put aside that.

The only competitiveness is in the story, a very well-known story of Akbar and Birbal. Akbar is a great Mogul, the emperor of India, and he administered very, very intelligently, wise and witty, wise and witty; and a minister named Birbal. There are all sorts of anecdotes about them.

Everybody was jealous of this Birbal because the emperor was a Muslim; Birbal was a Hindu. And “How come this heretic is being given such prominence?” and so on, and so on. So there were mullahs around who were so very jealous of him. So they asked the emperor, “Well, how come you give him such honor and so on. He’s not even one of us?”

He said, “All right, I’ll answer you later.”

So a day or two later, the emperor came to the court and said to his counselors, “Well, Counselors, today I have a problem for you all to solve.” So he drew a line on a board, and he said, “Anyone here, would you please shorten that line?”

So it was very simple for anybody to get up and erase a part of the line. It’s shorter.

“No no, no. I don’t want anybody to touch that line. Don’t do anything! Don’t touch that line, but I want you to shorten that line.”

Well, how do you shorten a line without touching it?

And so every counselor and every minister and everybody in the court tried, and they couldn’t figure out a way to shorten the line without touching it. So at the end, he said, “Give up? Birbal, come on. Shorten that line without touching it.”

Birbal said, “Your majesty, may I have your chalk please?” Birbal takes the chalk and he draws a longer line: “Your majesty, your line is shorter.”

And that alone, anything, anywhere in life, that alone should be the rule for your competitiveness. Draw your line longer. Don’t bother with somebody else’s line. If you know to discover what your utmost capacities are, you just work with those capacities. And you don’t have to say anything. You don’t need to compete. You don’t need to downgrade somebody, you know. You don’t ever discourage somebody. You don’t ever speak ill of someone. You don’t have to be angry with them. None of that. You just find your utmost in capacity, to the optimum benefit of everybody, taking care of all the other balancing factors, and do the best. You write an examination; you’re not going around checking what everybody else is writing. Whatever best you know you can, you do that.

So what’s the competition about? And if you have that view, and with that for your success, use the meditation tool. The deeper and more intensive your meditation grows the more your work will succeed. This formula is a time-tested formula. And if you’re having problems, ask for a spiritual practice. And intensify that. These are the subtler forces that the meditator connects to. Just learn to connect to those interior forces. All right?

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Editor’s Note

This is a transcript of a talk.

Prophet, Soothsayer, Sage,

What will the next thousand years be like?

I did plant thornbushes;
Won’t you bless me with lilies as I wander in this time path?

I made of my offspring marauders,
Won’t you pray for them to be wise
So they flourish, prosper, and sweeten the bitter seas.

Will they, or will they not?
What will the next thousand years of my generations be like?

Prophet, won’t you prophesy?

The prophet from the divine thunder roars;
The Sage within our soul whispers.

The next thousand years will be whatever you have chosen today to make of them.

Uproot the thornbushes now; plant the lilies instead and the time paths of your generations will be paved with soft fragrant petals, each petal an achievement from your labour at interior purifications.

Sweeten your minds and the waters of the earth will remain sweet, and be sweeter still by the year.

The plants and trees will flourish, will provide shade, yield fruits, hold the soil fast to fasten the clay against erosions and rampant floods; the plentiful herbs will remain potent to grant remedies for illnesses.

The earth’s breast will be suckled and not be cruelly dug into, nor shall Gaia be sold as a slave girl for the price of a puff of chimney smoke.

The streams and waters will flow fresh and clear, granting life to all whose roots or lips sip of them gently. The rains will quench and soothe and not burn the skin nor scorch the vestment.

The earth’s blue silk scarf will wave unstained and unfurl the un-bethought vigour that only Mother’s love can confer.

The nutrition will be obtained from foods fresh, gathered sans hurt and violence, not dripping blood, nor sucking the life from those who till the earth, and this food will nourish as accorded by the season, first your mind and thereby the physical self.

Our brother kingdoms of the four-footed, the winged, those who crawl on the belly and those that dive with fins shall not be held captive nor shall any from our kingdom spill their blood, not for gluttony nor for a warped urge for recreation. The human species having forgotten the smell of fear, all species shall roam in amity with humanity with cordial right of way mutually accorded.

Relationships shall be nurtured so as to pay all one’s debts, to learn from those in a different age group, gender, family station, and not for one wielding power and the others tremblingly yielding to reasonless display.

The law of love will enforce itself, needing no exterior enforcers.
The virtue shall be its own power of defence needing no defender.

The matters of polity will provide occasion to test one’s inclination for consensus and not to confront and contest. Any contests will be to test one’s own depth in virtue.

Humanity shall embark on expeditions of unceasing conquests over its interior maligning forces driving deep the one-pointed lances of silence.

All the boundaries dividing the earth shall have crumbled like the wall of Berlin. All regimes will have fallen, only the cultures shall govern themselves in mutual honour and sharing of all that is inspired.

Everything in the polity, economy, commerce, community and social order shall be established so as to be conducive to the bond of affection within a family unit and all that may cause rupture therein will be scrupulously avoided in law and in love.

The children will be honoured for their purity, not that their wings be clipped in mid-sky-soaring, nor shall entertainments sully their white mantles of innocent light. The primary teaching will be to help cultivate a personal philosophy of life, and the secondary; to enjoy the pleasure of living by that philosophy and the highest education will be the realization of spiritual self.

Education will be designed to free the souls from bondage of the identities of matter. It shall not be a privilege of the few, empowering of the yet fewer, enslaving of many to the drudgeries of the meaningless simply to provide bread to a starving table. Women, philosophers, sages; it is they who will educate with assistance from the instructors who are guided by love to an intuitive entry into the hearts of their mind’s beloved children.

Because the ancient mind arts will be revived en masse, the knowledge of all sciences shall be gained in very short time periods, not weighing the minds down with burdensome loads but gaining access to the hidden chambers by the shortest route.

Those who delve into the mysteries of nature’s realities and discover truths unbeknown before shall link them also to an unveiling of the mysteries of spirit’s realities, so a soul shall give life to the bodies of sciences.

No group shall be denied entry into the ceremonial, ritual, celebration, sacrament of another, nor shall any criticize nor be forced to adopt whatever is alien to one, but is fulfilment of another. All shall bow in reverence to the alien thought, word, act, and person.

All religions will share space in the same temple-synagogue-cathedral-mosque, all congregating side by side, each worshipping by his book, his revelation. Each shall thus honour in reverence the priest and the celebrant, the monk and the devotee of the other. All will sing glory to saints of all centuries, of all the chosen peoples, making votive offerings of silence or of song, knowing God by No-name, and by all Her names.

The bards and poets, and not analysts, will preserve the epic and the song which they will sing and recite by heart by bon-fires burning all the nights in all the villages and communities and suburbs, nor shall any tongue be considered lesser than any other.

The entire humanity will tirelessly dedicate itself to collecting, preserving, passing on as invaluable inheritance the texts of all that is wise and sacred. Each individual will value these repositories of knowledge as wealth to be gathered, as gems to be treasured.

Recreation and entertainment shall be an enriching of the soul’s beauty and not a restive commotion produced from and feeding the mind’s cravings for the un-nameable, momentary, fleeting satisfactions by sensation. Trading in human bodies shall have ceased, for, all will worship the soul housed in this form. So shall commerce in sport be abolished, for sport to be an enrichment of human value.

Knowing the body’s cure to be in the body and the whole person’s health in the mind, the malignancies of malign emotion shall first be prevented and then eliminated if still risen. By the juice of the whole herb and the root shall the body’s wellness saps be nurtured, by harmonious nutrition enriched, nor shall they be weakened by unguarded indulgence.

The light in the mineral, the ambrosia in the thorn, weed and thistle, and the nectar in the venom shall be extracted by the sanguine to oil life’s flame, to add liquid lustre to every fluid drop that courses in the vein, but in season, by the lunar phase, with prayer seeking permission to take the least, not plundering to extinction. Currents of energies, guided by the waves generated in the deep repositories of the mind and brain shall be re-channelled to impart to every cell and organ the glow of health and the blessing of longevity.

The speech will be soft, not carrying ego-nurtured assertiveness, nor threatening, nor louder nor more verbose than absolutely necessary for benevolent effectiveness.

The crafts will fulfil the soul’s longing for beauty, the goods produced to cater to need and never for greedy hoarding. Nor shall possessions be the measure of a person’s worth but of his capacious heart given to sharing in charity and love. Nor shall position be an exhibit of power but a way to satisfy the innate urge to serve in humbleness of love.

Occupations and the economies will be pursuits to add to the earth’s green mantle, to help all to savour the opportunities for beauteous creativity devoted to granting comfort to the relatively deprived. Nor shall any fetus suffer from absence of micro-nutrition, nor shall a single seasoned aged elder curl up to sleep hungry, alone, uncared-for. There shall be no wasting of the surplus, thereby no dearth of the essential.

The cities of today shall be remembered as cancers that have been cured, all cells restored, life saps replenished. People shall make their dwellings least visible, partially underground, and above these shall flourish green gardens where the beings of all kingdoms of the earth roam freely, lounge in the shades of trees, drink amply of the streams restored to invigorating freshness.

This past millennium shall be remembered as the dark ages bereft of enlightenment, this cluster of centuries as the most destructive ever, the memory of which causes not a savour but a shudder. The nations that war inside each human skull shall have signed a treaty of perpetual peace within, and thus shall the spectre of war, famine, untreated disease, shelter-less-ness cease for the vast masses whose hurt will now be assuaged with prevalence of love as the primary qualification for the masters, nay, the wisdom-endowed guides, of polity.

The science and the soul having been reunited so as to be conducive to human affections, all work will be done through vastly refined electronics and communicated by means of harmless rays. Nor shall any human endeavour cause to pour even a particle of killing poison into the air held sacred.

Men and women shall worship each other’s beauteous souls that have rendered their forms so magnetically charged. It is in worship that they will learn to unite and not in the throes of lust that is unmindful of the Deity whose temple the partner in embrace is. From such a union that is a sacrament offered to Divinity, the future generations shall be brought forth in consideration of the earth’s resource.

Dissenters and disputants will learn the art of merger of diverse faces of truth, each one learning to stand where the opponent stood and shall espouse his cause against one’s own.

All that was considered opposite heretofore shall be revealed as complementary, to be savoured in its richness, so that a mind shall not be coerced into having to choose between its night and its day but shall value equally the day’s lights and the night’s silences, even carrying light into the night and bringing forward silence into the day, for life’s completeness.

Whether the human embarks on adventures into outer spaces or stays firmly rooted in earth, his journey into vast internal spaces shall be his primary adventure. Here in this depth of the interior sky shall one view wonders of micro-worlds and macro-universes of uncountable varieties.

The beings shall live not by the contemporary temporal, nor by the restricted spatial but by the ever expansive perennial.

Each individual will value and preserve all that is conducive to harmony, gentle thought, beauteous speech, modest claim, realisation of the spiritual self within.

The human kingdom shall lay no claim to the possession of the planet.

In trust alone shall we hold it,
for, the civilization will be governed
by the love and wisdom of the woman,
by the understanding of the philosopher,
by the vision of the sage and the saint.

And it shall be so, because the minds will have been guided into a contemplative, self-observant, aware habit and the meditations will have replaced all negative imageries that sully the stream of clear reason, pure intuition, grace of revelation.

It shall be so henceforth. So shall it be in the year 3001, if you so choose to make it.

Grace and blessing of Divinity’s Infinity, and of all Her Mind’s children, the saints of all ages and peoples, will guide, nourish, nurture the millennium if you will it so in surrender to the Perennial.

The lily petals of your meditations will make your time paths, and of all the generations to come, beauteous and fragrant.

Such shall be the next millennium.

If you simply will it so.

So shall it indeed come to pass.

Swami Veda Bharati
11/23/99 South Africa

Copyright © 1999 Swami Veda Bharati

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Editor’s Note

The Perennial in the Millennium by Swami Veda Bharati is available in Kindle from Amazon and Amazon.in. For inquiries about purchasing it in booklet form, please contact Himalayan Yoga Publications Trust (HYPT) at hyptbooks@gmail.com.

Once upon a time there were two donkeys. The first one going in front was carrying a load of salt on its back. Crossing the river it lolled about in the water for a long time and would not leave despite all tail-twisting, ear-twisting and even a whack or two from the owner.

The other donkey at the river bank saw the tail-end of the event. He shouted at the first one why he had insisted on lingering so long in the water despite the pain inflicted by the owner.

The first donkey replied, I was lightening my heavy load. The longer I stayed the more salt on my back melted. Now the reduced weight was worth the pain I had to take.

The second donkey followed the first one’s example and lingered in the water as long as he could because it would be worth the pain to lighten his heavy load. Upon reaching the other shore his load was so heavy he could barely drag himself out and brayed at the other one for giving such bad advice. His load had doubled in weight. He was carrying cotton.

This is how we increase our burdens.

Everyone sit straight. Try to make your posture as comfortable, as steady as possible, but keeping your spine straight. Sit in a posture from which you don’t have the need to shift and move too often. Sit with your head, neck and trunk straight, and bring your mind’s attention to where you are sitting. Withdraw your mind from all other places. Withdraw your mind from all other spaces, and become aware of the space that your body is occupying from head to toe. Become aware of yourself from head to toe. Withdraw your mind from all other times, from the memories of the past and from the anxieties of the future, and become aware of just this moment in time. Observe the passage of time, moment by moment. Observe your breathing. Observe where each breath begins, how it begins, how it flows. Observe how each breath ends. Observe how your next breath begins. Do nothing. Only observe the breath flowing. Observe the process of your breathing. Observe how your thoughts arise in your mind. Relax the thought of your thought, your brain center.

As I name your various limbs, bring your attention to the limb. Relax your forehead. Relax your eyebrows. Relax your eyes. Relax your nostrils, and exhale and inhale, slowly and smoothly. Bring your attention to your cheeks. Relax your cheeks. Relax your jaw and the corners of your mouth. Relax your chin. Relax your neck. Relax your shoulders. Let go of your shoulders more. Relax your upper arms. Relax your lower arms. Relax your hands. Relax your fingers. Relax your fingertips, and breathe as if your breath is flowing all the way down into your fingertips, and all your tensions are dripping off of the fingers. Breathe slowly and smoothly. Relax your fingertips. Relax your fingers. Relax your hands. Relax your lower arms. Relax your upper arms. Relax your shoulders. Relax your chest and your rib cage. Relax your cardiac center. Relax your cardiac center and breathe slowly and smoothly. Relax your stomach. Relax your navel. Relax your abdomen. Relax your thighs. Relax all the muscles of your thighs. Relax your calves. Relax your feet. Relax your toes, and breathe as if your breath is flowing in all the way down into your toes, and exhaling all the way through your body, as if your entire body is breathing. Relax your toes. Relax your feet. Relax your ankles. Relax your calf muscles. Relax your knees. Relax your thighs. Relax your thigh joints. Relax your pelvis. Relax your abdomen. Relax your navel. Relax your stomach. Relax your cardiac center. Relax your chest and your rib cage.

Relax your shoulders. Relax your shoulder joints. Relax your upper arms. Relax your lower arms. Relax your wrists. Relax your hands. Relax your fingers. Relax your fingertips. Relax your fingertips. Relax your fingers. Relax your hands. Relax your wrists. Relax your lower arms. Relax your elbows. Relax your upper arms. Relax your shoulder joints. Relax your shoulders. Relax your neck. Relax your chin. Relax your jaw and the corners of your mouth. Relax your cheeks. Relax your nostrils. Relax your eyes. Relax your eyebrows. Relax your forehead. Relax your brain center, and exhale and inhale, slowly and smoothly. Feel the touch of your breath in the nostrils. Feel where the breath is touching inside your nostrils, as you breathe out and as you breathe in. Let there be no break between your breaths. Breathe out and immediately breathe in, feeling the flow and the touch of your breath in the nostrils.

Keep your body relaxed. Relax your cardiac center again. Relax your shoulders. Relax your jaw. Relax your forehead. Continue to feel the flow of your breath in the nostrils, without a break.

Now, take the yoga word, “so ham”, which means “I am who I am”. Exhaling, think “ham.” Inhaling, think “so.” Keep feeling the breath in the nostril without a break and exhaling, think “ham.” Inhaling, think “so.” Let there be no pause between the breaths, no break in the mental repetition of “so” with the in breath, “ham” with the out breath. Without breaking the awareness of the breath in the nostrils, without ceasing the repetition of “so ham”, slowly open your eyes to your hands, remain relaxed in your entire body. God bless you.

Remain aware of the flow of the breath in the nostrils and maintain the touch and the thought of the word, “so ham,” and you may move your body as you wish.

Come a little closer, please. I would like to recommend for your practice two things between now and tomorrow, and also, from tomorrow until next week, Tuesday, when we meet again.

All of this, all kind of distortion of the body posture – “put your legs here, put your feet there” – I think is a little too much on the first day. On the other hand, the problem remains that, unless you can sit straight with your spine erect, you will have a great problem observing your breathing and coordinating your body, breath and mind, which is the first step in meditation. So, for now, I would recommend that you practice, or develop your practice at this stage with a smaller step. Don’t try too much about adjusting your legs in all sorts of distorted shapes, which will come later, perhaps, if you want to do it. Sit on a chair if you want to sit on a chair at home, or as was suggested, take a cushion and your hips on the cushion. Find a firm cushion, not a soft cushion – a soft cushion will not work – a very firm cushion, and then sit ordinary cross-legged, keeping the body straight. A body in meditation is always erect, and the spine is in that correct position. You can start sitting on a chair and slowly develop the posture on the ground.

The second thing that I would strongly recommend your trying to practice is this diaphragmatic or abdominal breathing. Observe my breath, I exhale from here. You can watch my stomach and I’ll inhale. First, the exhalation. Like this. Exhalation, inhalation from here. Do not think that nostrils are the chief apparatus of breathing. They’re not. They’re only tiny holes at the end of a long apparatus. So don’t breath, don’t pump. Don’t breathe from here. Breathe from here, the navel and diaphragm area. Push out the breath, pull in the breath there. And you can try this lying down, flat on the ground. You can try it standing up. You can try it sitting, in whatever way, observe your breathing. It’s the first requirement for good physical health, for a good constitution, and for an emotional balance. First requirement to establish an emotional balance in your life is proper, even and deep breath, and then first requirement, also, for the practice of meditation.

So posture erect back, breathing. That’s two.

Three: the relaxation. The relaxation that 1 led you through tonight was not exactly as I like to do it, because I like to do it in a very slow, very, very low voice. I didn’t have the things right with my system, microphone system, but I strongly recommend that you obtain one of the discs, records we have here available. You play it twice a day and practice the relaxation from that until you have mastered it and then you will not need the record anymore and you will do it on your own.

Also, you can begin the reading. The first two titles, the Lectures on Yoga by venerable Swami Rama of the Himalayas who is my guru, and the guru of this meditation center, and the second book, the Superconscious Meditation by a man named Usharbudh Arya. His last name is omitted here. I would strongly recommend your reading these two books to start with and then you can move on to the rest of the reading: Yoga Psychology by Swami Ajaya. At least, these three books and the record should be considered essential reading if you have the time to do so.

If you don’t have the time to do anything, do the relaxation and the breath awareness. Wherever you are. You are sitting here now. Bring your awareness of mind to the feel of your breath in your nostrils. Breathing out, breathing in. Without a break, without a pause. Now that is where we begin. This is only the very, very first step in the practice of meditation as it is taught here. And slowly, gradually, as you master one stage, then you are led on to the next stage. As you master the second stage, you are led on to the following stage. One thing I always say in the beginning of my courses is that this course never ends. It begins, but does not end. There are people here who have been studying for the last three years, four years, with me. They keep on. There’s no end to knowledge. And, as you will move on, you will find that more questions will arise. As your inquiry grows, more questions will arise. As more answers are received, the more questions will arise. But these questions are not questions of an intellectual type.

The questions that arise in your mind are questions relating to your own Self. Meditation we describe as a journey of the self, through the self, to the Self. A journey of the self, through the self, to the Self.

Most people lead a life in which their entire consciousness is outward flowing. You relate to that object, that object, that object over there. That person, that person, that person over there. I was just holding a class downstairs, my second course after the beginner’s course, and I said; “Most people are in this position.

They say, ‘Well, I am told there are seven people in this room. Well, one, two, three, four, five, six. Now where is the seventh? One, two, three, four, five, six.'” And they can’t [see] the seventh person. In all your life, in all your relationships, in all your activities, in your consciousness, in your awareness, in your actions and your reactions, there is this attitude. “There are seven people, I’m told. One, two three, four, five, six. Where is the seventh?” From the very childhood, in our system of training through the parents, through the schools, through our entire education, we are trained and we are taught about all the things around us, but nothing about ourselves. We have never been taught to observe ourselves. You are sitting here. How many people even are aware of the surfaces of their bodies? How often do you think you have a back? How often do you think you have toes in your feet? How often do you think you are breathing? How many times in your life have you really ever been aware of your process, the process of your breath. How many times in your life have you observed yourself thinking, “Here I am thinking. What am I thinking? How are these thoughts arising in your mind? From where are these thoughts arising in your mind. Why are they arising? Why am I thinking this instead of thinking that something else that might be more positive and more beneficial to my life?”

So, the process of meditation is a process of training yourself to turn a little inward. Looking at yourself and finding out: What am I? Am I a rock? Am I a mountain? Am I a river? Am I a stone? I am a human being. What does that exactly mean? What is the difference between a cat and being a human being? How do I observe myself and know myself? What are my potentials? What are the capacities in my mind? When I speak a word, when I say “I”? Now, you say this word in your mind. Say to yourself in your mind “I am”. Now, you don’t say it to anybody else. Say it to yourself. The question arises: Who is it that said “I am”? Did your mouth say “I am”? Did the mouth initiate that thought, that word, that action of speech? Most people think from this end. We hear somebody say “I am”, so we watch his mouth. But that’s not where the “I am” begins. Where does this “I am” begin? Even before the thought of the word “I” is initiated into your brain, who is it that is there, that says to the brain, “Create this electric storm that becomes the words, ‘I am!’” When you have this electric storm in your brain, “I am”, who is it that initiates that storm, who says “I am”? Who is it there even before the word “I” enters the brain? Whose consciousness, whose will, sends the idea into the mind, into the brain to say “I am”. Before you feel in the heart of your hearts, “I am”, you say to your husband, “Don’t you realize, I am something.” Before you say to your wife, “Don’t you understand something? I, too, am here.” Before that emotion comes surging into your heart and says “I am.” Where does that begin? Who says it? You say “I.” Show me the “I.” The dead man can’t show me that “I.” Where in you is that “I”? Meditation is a process of exploring and searching for this “I”, who I am, and that is why we begin with the first common mantra for many people, “so ham”, “I am that for which I’ve searched all my life,” When I look for light in a room, it is not the light outside that I look for. It is the projection of the light that is within me that I look for, and that is why I like light and not darkness. When I look for love, it is my own Self I am looking for. Find that Self and you depend on nobody else and on nothing else. Stand on your own two feet. All these dependences people have, constant need to depend, constant striving to find a leaning post, making your girlfriend your leaning post, making your boyfriend your leaning post, and when the leaning post is withdrawn, dropping down to the bottom of depression. That is not the way of a person of meditation.

What I’m trying to say is that you are, at the moment, as you know, tossed around in a storm. From morning to night, your life is a storm. You find no mooring. Constant uncertainty. Uncertainty about persons. Uncertainty about yourself. Uncertainty as to what you actually identify with. Constant searching, but not knowing for what you are searching, because the moment you are searching for something, you’re searching for something, the moment you find it, you abandon the search and you start searching for something else, don’t you?

Your search, your desire, is never fulfilled. The moment the object of desire comes in your hand, you have no more desire for it. You have desire for something else. You look, you see a beautiful dress in a shop window, and say, “Oh, I think, I’ve got to borrow some money or I’ve got to steal something. I’ve got to have that dress.” So you burn with that desire. You burn with that craving. All suffering in life is craving and expectation, both of which end in frustration. Craving and expectation. Both of them end in frustration. You go. You find that dress. First day you put it on. Second day it’s an old thing. You have no more desire for it. The intensity is gone. Because the human desire can never be satisfied. There’s no end to human desire. You have a good meal in the best restaurant in town, and you stuff yourself with pies and order one after another of the courses. The moment you are filled, immediately, the process of the emptying of the stomach begins. The desire begins to build up again. In another few hours, you are exactly as hungry as you were five hours ago, six hours ago. You take your life’s problems. Ten years ago, you had a problem. Whatever the problem was, you had one problem, you had another problem, you had another problem. Whatever that problem was doesn’t matter, you said to yourself, “This is my greatest problem, if I could solve this problem, everything is going to be alright.” Right? “If I could overcome this problem, everything would be alright.” And now you don’t have that problem, not quite that one. That problem is gone, is everything alright? As soon as you climb that peak, as soon as that problem was solved, second problem begins. You forgot about the previous one now. “Oh, this is the problem. This, this is the problem. If I can solve this one, then everything is alright.” From day to day, from hour to hour, from day to day, from week to week, month to month, year to year, and I believe in reincarnation, from life span to life span, it is the same cycle.

Somewhere, somewhere along the line, you’ve got to learn to step off this whirling wheel. Step off. How do you step off? Your entire life is this stimulus-response. Stimulus-response. Stimulus-response. Your senses are tied down to the material world, because they, too, are made of matter. The like attracts like. The light in the eye, the light in the room. They must attract each other. The capacity to hear in the ear. The sound in the surroundings. They must attract each other. The senses must go outwards. But there is something inwards. Some people call it “a divine Self.” Some people call it “a super mind.” Some people call it “God.” Some people call it “Factor K.” Some people call it “the unknown in me.” Whatever it is, there is something inside you that calls. Otherwise, you won’t hear. It’s not The Meditation Center that called you. It’s something inside you that has called you. When you go to the church, it is not the church bells that call you. It is that someone inside you that calls you. When you go to a university library and take out a book about man and his nature, to understand what you are as a man, it is not the library nor the book that calls you. It is that one inside you that calls you.

In the storm in which you are living, there’s an eye in the storm. There’s a central being which is not buffeted by these winds, which is changeless among all these changes. Think of yourself as a tiny seed. The ovum, the sperm join together. How large? That is what you were, that is what I was. Think of yourself as a seven-month fetus. Can you imagine yourself as a seven-month fetus? What was your consciousness then? Can you go back? What was your awareness then? What was your desire then? To kick inside mother’s belly. Think of yourself as a three-year-old child, and a 15-year-old, and a 17-year-old, and a 50-year-old, and a 70-year-old, and all the way through. Through all of those changes, there’s one thing you have in common. You say “I am. I’m the same one.”

People ask me questions on reincarnation. Now, you don’t have to believe in reincarnation to practice meditation, but I’m just bringing it in as an illustration, you know, the ring around the bathtub is a proof of reincarnation. A part of your dead skin is scrubbed off every day in the bathtub, and new skin comes up. Every cell in your body, from the moment of your conception to this day, have been changing, changing, changing. You don’t have the same body.

Then who is it that says, “I am the same I”? Who is that unchanging, permanent something that says “I”? Meditation is a search for that “I.”

You would say, “I don’t want to withdraw from the world.” You say, “This world is a place of action. I would rather serve others than to start instituting an inquiry into the nature of myself. What is this escapism? What is this running away? Why should I look into myself?”

And my answer is: The most unselfish thing you can ever do in your life is to know Self. If you do not know your own self, you cannot know anybody else. If your own emotions are not in balance, you cannot bring happiness to anybody else. If you have not found in yourself where is the source of love and joy, you cannot give love and joy to others. All you will give is a demonstration of your ego. You will go and help the whole world and say, “What a great man I am. How unselfish of me to go and serve so many people. And nobody pays me any attention. Nobody thanks me.” It seems as you are working for thanks.

Ego is not self. Ego is the enemy of Self. In the meditative philosophy, drop the ego. Discover the Self. Drop the ego. Discover the Self. That is the only way that you can find your nature, and then you can find what your mission is in life.

What is ego? Ego is the false identity that you and I assume. We hear so much of identity crisis. Why? Because your identities have become dependent on things around you and not on yourself. Your identities have become dependent on things around you and not on yourself. You put on a red tie. You assume a particular identity. You put on a turtleneck dress. You have a different identity. You clip your hair short. You have one identity. You let your hair grow long. You have another identity. Identity is gained with combs and barber shops, and tailors. That is not your identity. Very cheap, very easy identity. Cut hair here. One identity. Grow hair here. Another identity. Very quick. And you stand before a mirror and say, “How beautiful I am.”

When you pass through a process of meditation, you will find that those things are not your identity. Things that are influences of the environment on you, on the surroundings on you, is not your identity, that there is something in here, in the space between your heart center and your eyebrow center, the seat of your emotions and the seat of your thoughts, somewhere from where your identity comes out. It is not something that is imposed. It is not something that is fed into you. It is something which you lend to your surroundings.

But how do you discover that one, unaffected, permanent, real Self? Meditation is a process through which you go from the grosser to the finer, from the outer to the inner.

Do you think you could give peace to your neighbor or to your family if you were not at peace? If you are an unselfish person, could you give peace to others if you were not at peace? First, make yourself at peace. And then, you will be able to give peace to others. And when that will happen, what they will give to you will be four times as much peace as you previously expected and never found from them.

Have you ever observed how your own tone of voice over the phone brings exact response. You call up somebody, say “Hello.” “Hello.” Or you call up somebody and say, “Hello!” “Hello!” Whatever sound you give out on the phone comes back to you from the other end. Do you notice that? Next time you call somebody and watch yourself say hello, and see what comes back to you. It will be exactly the same tone of voice.

The world is your mirror. The entire world, and all your relationships, are your mirror, and if your face is shining and clean, the face of your reflections is also clean.

Now, the meditation is a process of cleaning the face of your mind which is you. The philosophy of meditation says that you are primarily your mind. Can you show me anything else in yourself without the mind? What else are you? Take away the mind from it and you are a dancer. What is it? It is your mind that sends that motion. It is your mind that learns that motion. And whatever position a dancer is in, take away the mind. He will freeze right there, drop dead. What is it that tastes good food? Not your mouth. Your mind. What is it that loves? Not your hormones. Your mind. What is it that decides? Your mind. What is it that accepts or rejects, expects, fulfills, or is frustrated? Your mind. The history of mankind is the history of human mind. The tools that man has made have come from the imagination of somebody’s mind, and this mind you have forgotten. In your home, you have a place to feed your body. You have a place to bathe your body. You have a place to rest your body. Do you have a place in your home to feed your mind, except before the tube? Do you have a place to bathe your mind every day? Do you have a place to rest your mind? No. No wonder that there’s so much distraction, there’s so much storm, there’s so much frustration.

Meditation is a feeding of the mind, resting of the mind, washing of the mind. For 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes a day, rest your mind. Step off the whirling wheel of your problems, expectations and frustrations of the day. Step off. Step off and stop this constant, continuous stimulus and response. Something touches you. You react. Somebody looks at you. You react. Somebody in a room full of people, in a party, somebody at the other end of the hall whispers your name to somebody else and in all that noise, your ears perk up. You react.

When will you start acting? Moving from a center from within you. So long as your consciousness is tied to this object, that object, that person, that relationship, so long as your identification is with this short hair or long hair, your identification is with that chair or that chair in my office, you will not act. You are reacting to those things, and each time you react, you lose your touch with your own, inner, pure identity.

The teaching of yoga meditation, in spite of all this philosophy, is primarily a practice. Today was just an introduction to start you off, and I’m sure it raises more questions than it answers. But maybe, slowly, slowly, you will move towards more answers, too.

We speak of a pure Self. The language in which the teaching of yoga was passed on has been passed on in a master-discipline tradition for over 35 centuries. And, in a family tradition, I sat with my father for one hour of meditation every morning at the age of 4½. And it is passed on through a language called Sanskrit, which is the oldest surviving language of what we call the Indo-European language family. The texts and so on, very few of them are available in English, and those that are are not very reliable translations. But much more so than the texts, it is the oral tradition, direct contact, teachers and disciples, teachers and disciples, long line. What I learned from my father, he learned from his father. What I learned from my spiritual master, he learned from his spiritual master all the way back because it is something in which we sit together.

We have a rhythmic word, phrase, describing the nature of Self: Ever pure, ever wise, ever free by nature is your Self. I would like you to go tonight with this thought. Ever pure, ever wise, ever free. That is my Self. So ham. I am that.

And all else that is there is an accretion. It is an accumulation of all kinds of things coming into my mind from outside, and when I sit to meditate, I empty my mind completely so that that mind may be filled by something, someone deeper within, not by these empty, hollow things that keep coming into me through these holes called senses. You go and look for that source of great energy and strength and love and joy in there. It is not a religion, although I, personally, regard it as test of religion in some ways. If there is a God everywhere, then that God is within me. I want to find that one there.

Some people come to these classes here because they just want to relax, so some of the physical relaxation exercises and so on will help you. But you cannot really lead a relaxed life without a philosophy. Now when I use the phrase, “relaxed life,” you think of a life somewhere in Florida. What I mean is relaxed while you are behind a counter selling something. I mean relaxed when you are standing in a queue buying something. I mean relaxed when you are driving your car through a traffic jam. I mean relaxed when you are writing your examination and your paper. I mean relaxed when you are working 18 hours a day. Because in this storm, you’ll find an eye, a calm eye from where you act, from where you draw energy, from where you draw the power to keep yourself balanced. So when you are driving your car from here tonight, or you are waiting at a bus stop, do remember this, because the first word in our practice is “mindfulness, awareness, remembering.” And keep your body relaxed. You can say, “How is that possible? How can I be driving my car and keep my body relaxed? How can I be standing at a bus stop and keep my body relaxed?” It’s very simple.

Observe yourself. Be aware of your breathing. Just to start with that is not the last practice in meditation; that is not even the alphabet of meditation. That is just the letters A-B-C and D, perhaps. You will start from here.

You are sitting here, right? I am speaking. I should be more tense than you are. But I see here wrinkles on your foreheads; you don’t see any on mine. Because through the process of meditation, among other things I have learned to use only those faculties. When I’m speaking, I use only that part of my mind and only those muscles which are for speaking. Now, I don’t speak with my forehead nor do I hear with my forehead. Now why is it that my forehead should get wrinkled? I neither speak nor hear with my shoulders. Now, how is it that all the tension rises in my shoulders? And the speech goes on. See?

So you observe what you have, what you are doing, how your mind is functioning. Relax certain parts of your body and act from a depth within you.

You see, for example, my hand. Would you say now it’s as tense as possible, right? Okay. Now I’ll ask you. Lift my right hand. Watch my left hand, and you lift my right hand. Lift it again. Lift it and drop it. Lift it and drop it. Is there tension in my right hand? You can test me on an electro-biograph. You’ll find the same thing. So, when I’m saying remain relaxed behind your counter, I mean it. When I say remain relaxed in your office, I mean it. When you’re talking to your client or your patient or your doctor, relax. And slowly, gradually, you will deepen the practice.

Just starting out tonight, you can acquire one of those records and practice the relaxation exercise. Try it twice a day to start with. Play it on tonight and go to sleep with that. Start your day tomorrow morning with that. And then, tomorrow night, we’ll meet again and we’ll go a step further, both in practice and philosophy. Any questions for now?

Question. (inaudible)

Answer: Okay. There are two levels to your question. One is when my guru walks in, which is entirely different from when my wife walks in. When my wife walks in, I have all sorts of mixed emotions. All sorts of excitement. And when my guru walks in, that’s an entirely different kind of a relationship. Someday, if you… [come] around after this course and continue to study, which I hope some of you will, then I will talk to you what my relationship with my guru is. He is one person I love the most in my life and more than my love for him, he loves me. When my love reaches the same level he has for me, I will become a guru myself. I mean it. When you have the same love for Christ that Christ has for you, or if you are a Buddhist, if you have the same love for the Buddha that Buddha has for you, or if you’re an atheist, if you have the same love for superconscious mind as superconscious mind has for you, whatever terms you want to use, makes no difference. Then you become, at that moment, the superconscious mind. You become the Buddha. You become Christ-conscious. See? And he is one person I seldom miss. There is such a presence of spirit with me that……. I’m speaking to an unbelieving society. What can I say? No, his presence for me is a very calm spirit presence. There have been times……I’ll give you one example. There have been times when I talk to him. I speak to him on the phone almost every day because this organization, everything, takes its guidance from him, wherever he is. I say, “I have this question, and this question, and this question.” I used to do that a lot before. And he said, “Alright, alright. Write down all your questions. Make a list. Next time I’m here, I’m there, I’ll answer every one. Sit down. Okay?” And I say, “Alright, fine.” So I sit down and write all my questions meticulously. Write down. He would come. “Swami, my questions.” “Alright, tonight 10:00, huh?” So I go to my room. Tonight 10:00. I go. He says, “No, not tonight. Tomorrow.” So I go tomorrow. He says, “What is it?” “Swami, questions.” “Questions! your questions! Come tomorrow.” So, finally, I manage to sit down there. “Okay, now what are the questions?” I look at the questions. There are no questions! The questions are silly. I have the answer. A person who has reached a superconscious state…. in his presence, conflicts cannot remain. Sometimes he brings out your conflicts to show them to you, and helps you to harmonize them. That is the effect he has on me and on those who are his close disciples. So, it’s an entirely different thing, it is that stillness of Self in which I and he are one, in which I and you are one. Sometime later we’ll sit and meditate together and you’ll find, during that period of meditation, there are no thoughts, no questions. It’s a field of stillness shared by everyone here alike. Because in that stillness that is I – ever pure, ever wise, ever free, I and you in appearance are like two different bulbs of the same lamp. The electricity flowing through us is the same one. I am life force, and in saying this, I include you, this I, am life force.

Let’s close our eyes for a few minutes. Let go of your body. Observe every muscle in your body from head to toe. Let go of every muscle. Relax completely. Let go of your forehead, eyebrows, eyes, nostrils. Relax your cheeks. Relax your jaw. Relax your neck muscles. Relax your shoulders. Relax your shoulder even more. All the way down to your fingertips, relax your fingertips. Relax your hands. Relax your lower arms. Relax your upper arms. Relax your shoulders. Relax your chest. Relax your cardiac center. Relax your stomach, navel and abdomen, and all the other muscles of your body. And breathe slowly and gently, as if your breath is flowing all the way down into your toes, and back to the top of head, as if your entire body is breathing. Feel the flow of your breath in the nostrils. Breathe out, breathe in without a break between your breaths. As you breathe out, think “ham”. As you breathe in, think “so.” And keep feeling the breath in your nostrils without a break. Keep your cardiac center relaxed. Relax your shoulders, jaw and your mouth and keep feeling the flow of the breath in the nostrils, maintaining the same thought of the word “so ham.” Relax your forehead completely, and without breaking the awareness of your breathing, without breaking the thought of the word “so ham”, open your eyes. But remain aware of the feel of the breath and that word in your mind, and do so as often in the day as possible. Bring your attention to yourself and let go all your muscles.

As you drive, as you stand, do not waste your time. Remain aware of the breath, and God bless you.

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Editor’s Note

This is a transcript of Nature of Personality by Pandit Usharbudh Arya, who became Swami Veda Bharati upon taking sanyas. It starts with a guided relaxation and then moves into the lecture.

Basic Relaxations and Nature of Personality by Swami Veda Bharati are available for purchase as downloads at cdbaby/Swami Veda Bharati

Also inquiries for these recordings can be made to Himalayan Yoga Publications Trust at info@yogapublications.org.