Articles by Swami Veda Bharati 
Rituals in the Modern World
16 March, 2017 @ 5:25 pm
In today’s India, and in modern western society, rituals seem to be going out of fashion, particularly rituals of a spiritual culture. People go to the church or the temple, watch someone at an altar, move his hands in a particular way, same some words in a strange tongue and gain little or no feeling for establishing a relationship with the divine.
Himalayan Tradition in Polity and Economy
16 February, 2017 @ 5:31 pm
In the 4th century B.C. the Indian empire, then as large as the Roman Empire that came several centuries later, was ruled by the emperor Chandragupta, (called Sandrogottos by the Greeks). Chandragupta’s prime minister, named Chanakya, lived in a small hermitage, following the tradition of the Brahmin philosophers.
Self-Study
16 January, 2017 @ 5:36 pm
There are two levels in the study of a philosophical system and the texts thereof:
What Really Is Pranayama?
30 December, 2016 @ 4:59 pm
Nowadays pranayama is taught as exercise of physical breath. Many different exercises, they are an essential preparation, as the body preparations are essential for sitting correctly and going into meditation but there are subtler, deeper aspects.
Night Meditation
9 December, 2016 @ 9:34 pm
At present, Thursday nights and the weekend retreats seems to be the only times . . . . Well, there is one more, and that is an opportunity to have a personal meditation. Sometimes a personal meditation alone is insufficient. One needs to hear something more. Again, in each case the method will be a flexible one, will be a different one. Some things will appeal to one. Some things will not appeal to the same one. And so on.
Art of Silence
30 November, 2016 @ 5:29 pm
We are born from silence and at the end we re-enter that silence. At the end you re-enter that silence. When three souls unite and the very first globule of the fetus is formed it is silent. Slowly within the womb subtle waves of awareness begin to form. Very subtle images of past lives, memories of the moments of past enlightenments that have been forgotten. Yes, memories of the past enlightenments that have been forgotten. Again the images of the karmic lives and again those moments of absolute silence of divinity.
Answers to Yoga Teachers’ Questions
14 November, 2016 @ 10:03 pm
We teach out of compassion. There is suffering in the world, and our vow is to reduce the suffering in the world. The cause of suffering, in the Yoga-sutras, is ignorance. Our teaching reduces, somewhat, the level of that ignorance.
Advice for Yoga Centers and Yoga Teachers
13 November, 2016 @ 7:30 pm
Just a few thoughts that I'd like to share with you, simple things, very, very simple guidelines, okay? Sometimes get letters from little, beginning, struggling centers. What shall we do? We have financial problems. We don't have enough teachers. How do we publicize? How do attract members? How do we get more donations? How do we become more effective? And all those questions are so familiar from the experience that's been developed here. And I begin to give them one or two standard answers. One, your purpose as executives, administrators, teachers of the center is not the growth of the center, nor the solvency of the center, nor that you must make a success of the center and how do we go about making a success of the center? The moment you begin to think in terms of "How do we begin to attract more people so that the center keeps running?" you have immediately impeded the progress of the center.
Communication with Students: Effectiveness
13 November, 2016 @ 7:17 pm
The title that I gave today was Communicating with Students. From what we have been saying all of this time, that should not longer be a problem. And I am going to play my old broken record all over again and will not tire of playing it. Your work is with yourself. You are working hard on your postures or your breathing or adding one more exercise to the list of those that you have mastered. But where it's at is in your emotional framework. Let me remind you here again that we are doing a whole weekend on the Yamas and Niyamas next month, and I expect the teachers not to miss it, because that's where it's at. Asana, the third of the eight limbs of yoga, comes after Yama and Niyama. And a large number of us have not even begun to give serious thought to the Yamas and Niyamas. If you have got your Yamas and Niyamas straight, you have no more problems in the world. That is the test of the perfection of the Yamas and Niyamas, because then you have somebody solving all your problems. And that somebody is called the Yamas and Niyamas. You have a referent. You have some place to which to carry your problems. You have a set of guidelines. You have a set of systems against which you evaluate and measure everything in your life. Somebody there is counseling you. This applies. This does not apply. This is effective. This is not effective.
The Touch of a Master Hand
18 July, 2016 @ 11:04 am
The intensely emotional experience of rising energy which a lover of God feels (a lover of God, that is, who is separated from Him, who does not know that he or she has any love for Him, and who is using all of that energy in whatever pursuits his mind happens to be involved in) – this energy can always be traced to its origin in divine love.