Category: Swami Veda Bharati

Diaphragmatic Breathing

Posted on by ahymsin

Sequential Steps in Learning to Breathe Diaphragmatically

(1) Diaphragmatic Breathing in Crocodile Position [Makarasana]

To learn to breathe correctly and to learn to relax by using the correct way of breathing, lie on your stomach, cross your arms, or put one hand on the other, and rest your forehead on the arms, or on the hand; not bending your neck.

Your toes touching, your heels apart, and ankles practically flat on the ground. Your shoulders flat. Your armpits practically touching the ground.

Bring your attention away from all other places and be aware of only the place where you are lying down.

 

Be aware of only the space that your body is occupying from head to toe.

Now become aware of the flow of your breath. Observe the flow of your breath, as though your breath is flowing through your whole body from top to toes and toes to top.

Breathe gently, slowly, smoothly; no jerk in your breathing; no break in your breathing. Exhale all your tensions and stress; inhale a feeling of fullness, relaxation, peace and purity.

Now bring your attention to the gentle rise and fall of your stomach and the navel area. Observe how that area gently lifts from the ground as you exhale; how it gently touches the ground as you inhale.

 

Observe that movement with the gentle rhythm of your breathing. This is known as diaphragmatic breathing. No break, no jerks.

 

Continue to observe the rise and fall of the stomach and navel area, with the gentle rhythm of your breathing; observe which muscles are moving to constitute that movement—and by observing that, learn to breathe correctly, so that you may always breathe in this manner.

 

You may lie in this position as long as you normally wish.

 

Continue to breathe in this way, taking note of how the movement occurs along with your breathing.

 

(2) In Corpse Position [Shavasana]

Now, gently roll over and lie on your back with your feet apart, arms separate from the body, along side the body, back of the hand resting on the ground.

 

Let your entire body relax and again, continue to breathe as you were breathing in the crocodile position.

 

Observe the gentle rise and fall of the stomach and navel area.

 

Observe how that area gently relaxes and slightly inflates as you inhale; how it slightly contracts as you exhale.

 

Place your left palm in the center of your bosom. Place your right palm on your stomach between the sternum and the navel—continue to breathe as before.

 

Observe that there is no movement under the left palm on the chest. The movement should be felt only under the right palm only.

 

As you exhale and inhale, gently observe the flow of your breath. No jerks in your breathing; no break.

 

You may lie in this position, observing the flow of your breath, 10-20 minutes two or three times a day for complete relaxation.

 

One way to quickly relax your body and your mind is this way we will go through together.

 

Do this practice for 5 minutes, or less or more than that whenever and wherever is convenient—sitting on a sofa, on an office chair, in a bus, in a car, in a meeting or alone.

 

• Either of the two exercises, or both in sequence, 10-20 minutes two or three times a day, will change the texture and tone of your life in many ways.

Beginning Meditation

Posted on by ahymsin

First Step to Meditation

Common to the practices of many schools, the first step to meditation is essentially awareness of breathing.

In this presentation, I would like to offer the first level of instruction in the method of meditation that anyone can start and practice any time and anywhere. It is seldom found in books and when suggested in books, it is less frequently properly understood. Yet it is so simple that I have found that even a three-year-old child can take to it.

Steps in the Method

I give here a systematic point-to-point method of starting the practice. Anyone at any age can begin; the younger the better. On the other hand, it is never too late in life to start. Starting even during a terminal illness will be helpful, and may prolong life, or at least it will impart peace. The practice should be done at least once a day, for whatever length of time is available.

It is not in the length of the period of sitting that success lies, but in intensifying the awareness, which comes gradually. One may also practice it at other times of the day, when one is tired and needs a quick recovery of energy, when one gets angry or frustrated and wants to be gentler, when one is busy and is consequently tense and needs to relax so one can be more effective. One may do it waiting at an airport, a railway station, or in a car when someone else is driving. There is no restriction and no limit. No harm can ever come from this practice.

 

In the Raja Yoga meditation system, as taught by the Himalayan yogis, what follows are the steps of meditation. They constitute the foundation. The reader’s ego may want to say: “I have been practicing meditation for a decade or two, I want something more advanced, I do not need elementary lessons.” This attitude is incorrect.

Many aspirants practice blanking the mind, or holding the breath like an athlete, but they have not learnt the correct method of breathing. In our system, we check everyone on the following points, and only when the foundation has been properly laid do we go any further.

 

The steps in the method are:

  1. Diaphragmatic and uniform breathing.
  2. Correct posture, with a straight spine, and no feeling of discomfort in the legs, back or the neck. One should be able to maintain such correct and straight position of the spine without encountering discomfort.
  3. Shithili-karana, or systematic relaxation. One should maintain total relaxation of the neuro-muscular system throughout a meditation session.
  4. Awareness of breathing. It has some subtler modes that one learns gradually.
  5. Using a mantra or a sacred word from whichever spiritual tradition: (a) Initially a sound that flows easily with the breath, such as the word Soham. (b) After such a step has been mastered, a mantra-diksha (initiation into mantra) is given and more advanced methods of refined japa (mental remembrance of the mantra) are gradually introduced.

Let us go into the details of these steps.

Diaphragmatic Breathing

The chief organ controlling the breathing process in our body is the diaphragm, a muscle just underneath the ribs, separating the chest cavity from the abdomen. Ideally, the diaphragm contracts so that we may inhale fully even into the lower lungs. The diaphragm relaxes to push against the lower lungs so that the exhalation from this part of the lungs may be complete. A child at birth breathes diaphragmatically, but later forgets this natural process. One has to re-train oneself to breathe correctly.

In deep and correct breathing, no pressure should be felt in the lungs, and no tension should develop. Breathing should be relaxed so that a feeling of rejuvenation can be experienced.

Diaphragmatic breathing is taught in (a) Makarasana, the crocodile position, lying on one’s stomach, and is practiced further in (b) Shavasana, corpse position, as well as in sitting and standing positions.

To learn the practice, lie on the stomach. Heels slightly apart; tips of the big toes slightly touching; or in whatever way the legs feel relaxed. Cross the right arm over the left and place them in front of you, so that the upper chest is slightly uplifted off the floor. You may then rest the forehead on the forearms near the wrist joints. Keep the neck straight and let the shoulders relax.

Bring your awareness to the breathing process. In this position, it is not possible to do chest breathing. Observe the flow of the breath. Observe the gentle rise and fall of the stomach and the navel area with the smooth flow of the breath.

Let there be no jerks, no breaks in your breathing. Let it flow like a smooth stream. Let it slow down. Observe the gentle flow, along with the rise and fall of the stomach and the navel area. Take note of the breathing process.

Resolve to breathe in this way at all times.

After doing this practice for 5 to 15 minutes, turn over on your back in the shavasana position. Continue to breathe and observe the process of the diaphragm relaxing and contracting (the rise and fall of the stomach and the navel area).

Place your left palm on the chest, right palm on the stomach. No movement should be felt under the left palm; the right palm should feel the rise and fall smoothly, without a jerk, without a break.

Let uniform breathing develop, the length of the inhalation and the exhalation being equal. When this practice has been mastered, one graduates to 2:1 breathing (where exhalation is twice as long as inhalation), but not right now.

When one breathes only diaphragmatically at all times, it is considered that the practice has been mastered.

Correct Posture

It is most important that your spine should be straight for sitting in meditation and ideally at all other times.

Unfortunately, all chairs, sofas, modern beds, seats in cars and aeroplanes are designed to force people to breath incorrectly by making them sit in positions with convoluted spines.

One often sees people sitting in prayer, in kathas and satsangs, with their spines looking sadly like a bent bow. This (a) prevents correct and full breathing, causing short breaths and reducing the life span; (b) generates or worsens many diseases like asthma and heart problems. (c) It also adversely affects the entire neural system whose central flow is in the spine.

A straight spine is not a straight line.

• It is a slightly S-shaped curve:

• convex at the lower-third part (lumbar vertebrae 1 to 5) -concave at the middle-third part (thoracic vertebrae 2 to 12);

• convex at the upper part of the back (cervical vertebrae 5 to thoracic vertebrae 1);

• straight at the neck (cervical vertebrae 1 to 4).

It should be learnt under expert guidance. But a few hints here will be helpful. One need not try to sit in the advanced postures like siddhasana and padmasana, especially if age, physical problems or lack of habit prevents one from doing so. Sitting on a chair or sitting in a comfortable cross-legged position will do quite nicely.

Unfortunately, when people sit in the cross-legged positions, the centre of gravity makes them bend their backs. The answer to that is a simple one.

Fold a blanket and make it into a neat and firm cushion. It is not to serve as your seat, not like a rug to sit on. Place it only under the sit bones, with legs or knees on the floor. This will lift the hips from the ground. Straighten yourself. If there is discomfort anywhere in the back or the neck, you need to experiment with the height of the cushion under the hips; you need to reduce or increase the number of folds in the blanket. Experiment for a few days till you obtain the optimum comfort. Resolve always to sit in this position.

If sitting on the floor is very difficult, you may sit in mitrasana – on the edge of a hard chair, with the feet on the ground. But do sit with the spine straight. Form this habit. Let it become your natural position at all times. You will notice psychological changes in yourself, such as heightened awareness, intentness, self-confidence without unnecessary pride and effectiveness in life.

Having sat in the correct posture, continue breathing diaphragmatically, with mental observation of the flow, and of the gentle rise and fall of the stomach and the navel area, with no feeling of pressure in the chest. If there is tension, the breathing is incorrect.

Systematic Relaxation

Shithili-karana, after diaphragmatic breathing, is the second step practiced in shavasana. There are numerous progressively complex mental exercises done in shavasana, which finally lead to yoga-nidra, and to the entry into the subtle body.

Let us learn here basic methodical relaxation. Lie in shavasana, with feet apart, arms separate from the body, alongside the body, palms up. Continue breathing diaphragmatically. Now, take a mental inventory of your body in the following sequence, asking each part of the body to relax as it is brought to mind.

Forehead, eyebrow, eyes, nostrils, cheeks, jaw and the corners of your mouth, chin, neck, neck joint, shoulders, shoulder joints, upper arms; elbows, lower arms, wrists, hands, fingers, fingertips. Fingertips, hands, wrists, lower arms, elbows, upper arms, shoulder joints, shoulders, chest, heart area, stomach, navel, abdomen, pelvis, thigh joints, thighs, knees, calf muscles, ankles, feet and toes.

Now in the reverse order up the body:

Toes, feet, ankles, calves, knees, thighs, thigh joints, pelvis, abdomen, navel, stomach, heart area, chest, shoulders, shoulder joints, upper arms, elbows, lower arms, wrists, hands, fingers, fingertips. Fingertips, fingers, hands, wrists, lower arms, elbows, upper arms, shoulder joints, shoulders, neck joint, neck, chin, jaw, corners of your mouth, cheeks, nostrils, eyes, eyebrows, forehead.

Remember this sequence. Go over the body in this order; relax each of these parts in this sequence. Let the different parts go limp. For example, the hands should become like the hands of a baby. If you do not succeed in relaxing them at first, or you have been so tense that you have forgotten what it is like for a muscle to be relaxed, you may use a different method of relaxation called tension/relaxation, which is also done in shavasana.

The exact sequence for practicing this relaxation exercise follows. When tensing, tense from the fingers or toes upward. Try to avoid sympathetically tensing muscles other than the ones you are working with. Between segments, pause and relax for 2 breaths. After completing the entire sequence, rest for 10 relaxed breaths.

• Tense and relax the right leg—left leg—right leg—left leg.

• Tense and relax both legs simultaneously. Repeat.

• Tense and relax the right leg and arm—left leg and arm—right leg and arm—left leg and arm.

• Tense and relax the right arm—left arm—right arm—left arm: then both arms simultaneously. Repeat.

• Tense and relax all the limbs simultaneously. Repeat.

After completing either the body sequence relaxation or the tension/relaxation, continue breathing diaphragmatically, with the observation as described before. Lie in this way for a few minutes, then sit up for meditation. Do remember to sit with (a) sit bones on a folded blanket, (b) with the spine straight.

Again, quickly scan the body for any sign of tension that might have developed in the process of changing the position. Relax. Re-establish diaphragmatic breathing.

Breath Awareness

Let your breath flow, smoothly and evenly, with no jerks, no break in the middle of the breath, no break between the breaths, no sound, no gasping. Taila-dharavat, like a smooth stream of oil being poured. Become aware of the flow. No break in the awareness.

Feel the flow and touch of the breath in the nostrils. Continue to do so, without jerk, without interruption. The awareness of inhalation should immediately merge into the awareness of exhalation and vice versa. The awareness of the exhalation is especially important.

If the mind wanders off, because of its usual habit that has been given to it over many lifetimes, straighten your spine again; relax quickly again; re-establish diaphragmatic breathing; continue with the awareness of the flow and touch of the breath in the nostrils.

Mantra or Sacred Word

To begin with, use soham. Some prefer to say hamso and call it the hamsa-mantra. Exhaling, mentally remember the word ham. Inhaling, mentally remember the word so. It means “I am That”. Those in a different religious tradition may use the word prescribed by their tradition, but it should be properly learnt from someone who knows meditation according to that tradition. Those in the Himalayan Tradition are trained to teach according to each person’s religious (or atheist) background.

Let there be no interruptions in breath awareness, nor in the awareness of the flow of the word as a thought. Observe how the breath, the word and the mind are flowing together as a single stream.

Slowly, lengthen the time—not how long you sit—but how many seconds you manage to maintain awareness of the flow of that stream without interruption. Too much effort is self-defeating. One cannot fall asleep by making a determined effort, nor can one enter a meditative state by fighting oneself. Let it flow; let it happen. Don’t do meditation. Observe and experience.

Mantra-diksha

The next step is to seek out someone to give you the first initiation, or mantra-diksha, which is often referred to as a personal mantra. After the mantra initiation, one may be led to methods of meditation individually appropriate for the aspirant. Both a mantra and a meditation mode are assigned according to the individual’s samskaras, imprints in the unconscious gathered over many lifetimes; spiritual needs, and his or her adhikara, level of qualification. There are many different ways of refining the mantra experience through various koshas, sheaths within personality, all the way to final silence. The ajapa state also occurs through the guru’s grace in which the mental remembrance of, listening to, the mantra ceases to be an act and becomes an experience occurring naturally, of its own accord.

One may be taught to proceed on the path of internal sound (nada) or light (jyoti) and to go on the path of the kundalini (a yoga of channeling energies). One may be assigned a particular chakra, center of consciousness, to meditate on from time to time, but the entry into such a meditation occurs only when the initiator mentally touches the disciple’s particular chakra.

In the chakra, one may be assigned a visualization on a certain diagram or other object, or the presence of an ishta devata, one’s favorite or chosen form of the deity, for example Jesus or Mary for Christians, Buddha for the Buddhists, and so on. At this time, the aspirant will also be taught how to merge his mantra with the energy of the given chakra and how to penetrate through its central point (bindu-vedhana). The secrets of these practices are taught in specific Tantras but understood only in the live guru-disciple relationship. The Himalayan Tradition means transmission of consciousness in a direct preceptor-student mutual presence.

Sequential Steps in Learning to Breathe Diaphragmatically

(1) Diaphragmatic Breathing in Crocodile Position

To learn to breathe correctly and to learn to relax by using the correct way of breathing, lie on your stomach, cross your arms, or put one hand on the other, and rest your forehead on the arms, or on the hand; not bending your neck.

Your toes touching, your heels apart, and ankles practically flat on the ground. Your shoulders flat. Your armpits practically touching the ground.

Bring your attention away from all other places and be aware of only the place where you are lying down.

Be aware of only the space that your body is occupying from head to toe.

Now become aware of the flow of your breath. Observe the flow of your breath, as though your breath is flowing through your whole body from top to toes and toes to top.

Breathe gently, slowly, smoothly; no jerk in your breathing; no break in your breathing. Exhale all your tensions and stress; inhale a feeling of fullness, relaxation, peace and purity.

Now bring your attention to the gentle rise and fall of your stomach and the navel area. Observe how that area gently lifts from the ground as you exhale; how it gently touches the ground as you inhale.

Observe that movement with the gentle rhythm of your breathing. This is known as diaphragmatic breathing. No break, no jerks.

Continue to observe the rise and fall of the stomach and navel area, with the gentle rhythm of your breathing; observe which muscles are moving to constitute that movement—and by observing that, learn to breathe correctly, so that you may always breathe in this manner.

You may lie in this position as long as you normally wish.

Continue to breathe in this way, taking note of how the movement occurs along with your breathing.

(2) In Corpse Position

Now, gently roll over and lie on your back with your feet apart, arms separate from the body, along side the body, back of the hand resting on the ground.

Let your entire body relax and again, continue to breathe as you were breathing in the crocodile position.

Observe the gentle rise and fall of the stomach and navel area.

Observe how that area gently relaxes and slightly inflates as you inhale; how it slightly contracts as you exhale.

Place your left palm in the center of your bosom. Place your right palm on your stomach between the sternum and the navel—continue to breathe as before.

Observe that there is no movement under the left palm on the chest. The movement should be felt only under the right palm only. 

As you exhale and inhale, gently observe the flow of your breath. No jerks in your breathing; no break.

You may lie in this position, observing the flow of your breath, 10-20 minutes two or three times a day for complete relaxation.

One way to quickly relax your body and your mind is this way we will go through together.

Do this practice for 5 minutes, or less or more than that whenever and wherever is convenient—sitting on a sofa, on an office chair, in a bus, in a car, in a meeting or alone.

Either of the two exercises, or both in sequence, 10-20 minutes two or three times a day, will change the texture and tone of your life in many ways.

Three Minute Relaxation for the Very Busy

Bring your attention only to the place where you are sitting.

Be aware of only the space that your body is occupying from head to toe.

Be aware of only this moment in time.

Very quickly, relax your forehead.

Relax the eyebrows and eyes.

Relax your nostrils.

Relax your cheeks, jaw, and corners of your mouth.

Relax your chin, neck and shoulders.

Relax all the way down to the fingertips.

Relax from your fingertips to your shoulders.

Relax your chest, stomach, navel and abdomen.

Relax your thighs, calves, feet and toes.

Again relax all the organs from the toes upwards and bring your awareness to your breathing.

Observe the gentle rise and fall of your stomach and navel area: how that area gently relaxes as you exhale, how it slightly expands as you inhale.

Observing that, feel the flow and the touch of your breath in your nostrils.

Exhaling, count in your mind ooonnne, inhaling twooo, exhaling threeee, inhaling foouurr, exhaling fiiive; inhaling fiiive, exhaling foouurr, inhaling threeee, exhaling twooo, inhaling ooonnne; continue to count your breaths one through five and five through one. Feel the flow and the touch of your breath in your nostrils, breathing slowly, gently smoothly.

No break in your breathing; no break in your counting, one to five and five to one. Maintain the count.

Feel the flow and the touch of the breath in the nostrils, and continue the practice as long as you wish, and do as frequently as you like.

Without breaking the count, gently open your eyes.

One Minute Meditations with So-ham Mantra

Simply be aware of yourself from head to toe.

Draw around yourself, as it were, three circles of light.

Resolve that the mind shall not cross these three circles, nor will any intruding thoughts and impressions enter from outside.

Remaining aware of yourself from head to toe, in just a few exhalations, relax all your limbs.

Your inhalation is for the purpose of exhalation. So you inhale so that you may be able to exhale.

In each exhalation progressively relax your entire body.

Now resolve that for the next one minute no other thoughts will arise except the awareness of the movement of your stomach and navel area, with the gentle rhythm of your breathing. Maintain that resolve for one minute.

Now resolve that for one minute there will be no other thoughts except the awareness of the path of your breath from the navel to the nostrils, nostrils to the navel; only feel the breath flow on this path. Maintaining the resolve.

Now feel the flow and the touch of your breath in your active nostril; but first resolve that for one minute there will be no intruding thought, only the feel of the flow of the breath in your active nostril.

Now resolve that for one minute there will be no intruding thought except the feel of the breath in your passive nostril.

Resolve that for one minute there will be no other thought except the feel of the breath in your two nostrils.

Now with your breath, exhale thinking the word haaammm, inhaling the word soooo.

Resolve that for the next two minutes there will be no other thought except the feel of the breath in both nostrils, inhaling with soooo, exhaling with haaammm.

Maintain that resolve so that no break occurs between the exhalations and the inhalations.

Resolve for an additional two minutes that as you feel the breath and the word, you observe how the mind and the word are flowing together as a single stream, the mind stream itself becoming the word and the breath; maintaining the resolve for two minutes.

Now eliminate all dualities of the left and the right; come to the sushumna breath. Mentally feel the spot where the nose-bridge ends and the upper lip begins. Mentally feel the spot between the eyebrows.

Inhale as though you were inhaling from the spot in front of the nose-bridge, a subtle energy flowing to the spot between the eyebrows; exhaling the same way.

Maintain the same stream of the mind, word, and the energy flow.

This flow between the two spots is known as sushumna breath.

Resolve that for one minute there will be no other thought only the feel of the flow of the stream in the sushumna channel.

Now using the center between the eyebrows as the gateway, enter the chamber of your mind and resolve for a quarter minute, half a minute, there will be no exterior thought, only the utter silence; as though your mind becomes a lake of silence, absolutely still, without a ripple.

Resolve and maintain the enjoyment of such stillness and silence for a half a minute.

Now from that lake of silence, come again through the gateway between the eyebrows; and resolve for one minute to be only in the sushumna breath.

Maintain the same stream, without the intrusion of any other thought.

Now continue in silence. Only a single ripple arising in the silent stillness of the lake of the mind, and that is the mantra so-ham in the breath.

Every two-three minutes, five minutes, renew the resolve to permit no other exterior thought.

If you have difficulty with that, you may practice the entire process that you have just gone through, in repeated segments and steps described here.

Sit as long as you wish.

Recommended Readings (to be read in the sequence given below):

  1. Living with the Himalayan Masters by Swami Rama
  2. Lectures on Yoga by Swami Rama
  3. Meditation and Its Practice by Swami Rama
  4. Science of Breath by Swami Rama and others
  5. A Practical Guide to Holistic Health by Swami Rama
  6. Superconscious Meditation by Pandit Usharbudh Arya (Swami Veda Bharati)
  7. Mantra and Meditation by Pandit Usharbudh Arya (Swami Veda Bharati)

Swami Veda Bharati on YouTube and in other Videos

Posted on by ahymsin

Here are a number of links to videos of Swami Veda Bharati appearing on YouTube and in other videos.

The Himalayan Yoga Meditation Society Hong Kong has placed a number of videos with Swami Veda Bharati on their YouTube channel.

Swami Veda 1998: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxitO6IifIM&fbclid=IwAR1toeWJfiwMR1e7aEG-PRH5km_lqvyXlki53H0GpXHa5kDe404vtwG_FKE 

Swami Veda (Miskolc, 2006): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qg7mnzStBhg

Nature of the mind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szhQVVJtWjs 

Four Purusha Arthas: https://youtu.be/QwB7uJdTXT8

Sadhana in Applied Spirituality: https://youtu.be/5r9LDK8xkSU

Four states of Consciousness: https://youtu.be/7WgUdXf628Q

Altered States of Consciousness: https://youtu.be/rNbErAtpfU0

Confluences of Karmic Forces: https://youtu.be/wYiIHhS4MRE

Individual and Universal: https://youtu.be/L9zjDVndMFQ

Touching Your Nose to Your Knees: https://youtu.be/AkuQUduIzOY

Cornerstone of the Guru’s Mission: https://youtu.be/jAVa4P00ntA

Unity in Yogic Techniques: https://youtu.be/K25argnhXFU

Symptoms of Spirituality: https://youtu.be/HUehqUXG7WA

Healing through meditation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMMSMYM1Hdw

Guidance from Gurudev Swami Rama: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyY6kcijy60

Yoga practices in the Himalayan Tradition: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=To-qEdYWIrs

Next steps in the practice of silence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNQ4-M75fpA

Mastery: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuvdUt5PYLQ

Purpose of the Guru’s Mission: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8VNfZaLDU4

Yoga and human conduct: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jaSEJFWA4Y

Who am I?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVdFvArhXu0

Natural state of being: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nReeHQN_yZI

Yoga cosmology: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Os2Us2-gL3w

DIVERSE PERSPECTIVES ON HEALING (PART 4): http://deathmakeslifepossible.com/diverse-perspectives-on-healing-part-4/

Guided Meditation with Swami Veda: http://www.himalayanyogatradition.com/video.html

Yoga Nidra #1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_ee3q9cl1A

Yoga Nidra #2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8U-HAzErCk

SWAMI VEDA BHARATI meditáció-magyarul: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MM-6mhvyM8  This is a guided meditation in English with Hungarian translation.

Swami Veda at the 2013 International Yoga Festival: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3DFQZMQGl4

Guru Purnima 2012: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZWkieotKUc

Yoga Nidra: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfaqQrCO7kM

Swami Veda’s last words to the Hungarian Sangha before his 5 years silence: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhLKB_ZN6Rs

Sacred Journey into Silence: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfBEj77dMaU

TEDxTaipei 2011 – Swami Veda Bharati: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qs7jNNlfEcQ

Comments on the debate on Science and Religion; Enlightenment Is Your Business; Peace of Mind; Peace, the Basic Urge; Recovery of the Self; Sexual Desire and Kundalini; States of Consciousness and God’s Universe; Unifying Streams of Religion; Silence: http://www.youtube.com/user/SwamiVeda

Silence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxFWVfFyMZo&list=PL07083771F7680AF5

Five Prana Eating: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWVvtKBzdd0

Intention: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bi64wocU2jU

Invite to meditation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVx4Jel0m4o

Sufi-Yogi Dialogue: http://vimeo.com/11492939

Ityukta Mantra Purna Ahuti: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CO1H23V1oQ4

la mente colletiva: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaKRxc0PSiY Note: Those YouTube recordings with titles in Italian are spoken in English.

Swami Veda Bharati – La Consapevolezza del Sé: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htF0OH25zVM&feature=youtube_gdata Note: Those YouTube recordings with titles in Italian are spoken in English.

Una pace possible…: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8HkGz5CstQ  Note: Those YouTube recordings with titles in Italian are spoken in English.

2012: cosa ci sta aspettando?:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMbFZRLjGbA Note: Those YouTube recordings with titles in Italian are spoken in English.

 Chi sono io?: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5z4wP7p43g  Note: Those YouTube recordings with titles in Italian are spoken in English.

Sulla guarigione: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZ50Wu9iK9U&feature=related Note: Those YouTube recordings with titles in Italian are spoken in English.

Resolve for the 2010-2013 Practices: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uerYaX3A-k

2010 – 2013 Practices: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjcQaEuRpug&feature=related

Swami Veda’s Invitation for 2013 Gathering: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pV6ADIY-7fc

Swami Veda closing the Shiva Sutras Study: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAdgBkDt-To

Swami Veda is with the GPIW at Cop-15, Climate Summit Copenhagen – Part 1 video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtxW5QinX4Y

A video made in April 2015 at the Silence, Shavasana Practices, and Yoga Nidra Retreat: https://vimeo.com/133511647

In Conversation with Swami Veda Bharati (this audio is in Hindi): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_N9SGtAYJJw

Vow of Silence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnoC97TWJik

Yoga and Youth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YobtwJNeGNY

Sexual Desire and Kundalini: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gf-F5pXwN24&list=PLcnGOHOhPfUINWJYFtLebUp7jRBSRVZwp

States of Conciousness and God’s Universe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5X47PLQh3g&list=PLB8EE8D56B241145B

TAT TWAM ASI THAT THOU ART: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_l2dWyaiySs&feature=share

Dr. B K S Iyengar & Swami Ved Bharati ji at Patanjali Yogpeeth, Haridwar:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1kKRLlpNU8

6 bijas Chapter7 p129:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTuy6MYkLnY&list=PLVj8kvqTzLhmWbS06r09jWCgx3p1LLfLZ

12 daities Chapter7 p137:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uJ8DI4TKSg&list=PLVj8kvqTzLhmWbS06r09jWCgx3p1LLfLZ&index=3

full mantras Chapter7 p138:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPnSyk7mjbk&list=PLVj8kvqTzLhmWbS06r09jWCgx3p1LLfLZ&index=4

Swami Veda Bharati – A View from Silence: https://vimeo.com/66598497

No contradiction in each religion:  https://www.facebook.com/ahymsinthailand.himalayanyoga/videos/1641676919191956/?pnref=story

Gayatri Mantra:  https://www.facebook.com/ahymsinthailand.himalayanyoga/videos/1621924037833911/?pnref=story

Guru Purnima Revealations Death & Dying:  https://www.facebook.com/ahymsinthailand.himalayanyoga/videos/1542172439142405/?pnref=story

Swami Veda Bharati’s last teaching in Thailand:  https://www.facebook.com/ahymsinthailand.himalayanyoga/videos/1537547822938200/?pnref=story

Tat Twam Asi  https://www.facebook.com/ahymsinthailand.himalayanyoga/videos/1537128899646759/?pnref=story

Samatha (Meditation) and Vipassana (Contemplation) https://www.facebook.com/ahymsinthailand.himalayanyoga/videos/1532476230112026/?pnref=story

Akhanda mandalakaram mantra and Gayatri mantra https://www.facebook.com/ahymsinthailand.himalayanyoga/videos/1525403217485994/?pnref=story

Your Own Beautiful Soul: https://www.facebook.com/subramav/videos/10152958983420563/

MindRose: https://www.facebook.com/subramav/videos/10152958989760563/

Prakriti Bhaskar has placed a video on YouTube which is a composite of pictures of and quotations from Swami Veda – SWAMI VEDA BHARATI:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGO7KDbCV0I

 

Silence – Save Your Breath and Live Long

Posted on by ahymsin

At some point in one’s spiritual progress an urge to silence arises uninvited; a wave that carries the mind self-wards, atman-wards.

In all spiritual traditions the aspirant is assigned periods of silence, not to speak of the masters who have maintained total silence for their entire life-spans.

Silence is not merely an absence of speech. It is a fullness of the mind; the mind filled with the flow of an energy stream rising from within. For such a silence one needs guidance, because there is a science to practicing silence that many are not aware of.

It is in such methodical and guided silence that one’s pent up emotions do not keep arising and disturbing one, bringing one to tears now, to laughter then, and to an urge to quit the retreat or the Ashram and just run away (this happens after the third day of the retreat to many participants). The guide to the silence retreat takes care of the problem from within the Tradition.

Silence is the practice of the science of self-healing even if one is not impelled by a strong spiritual urge. Let us look at it this way. What is speech, physically speaking? Place your open palm in front of the lips and speak a few sentences. You will find that speech comes in the form of erratic bursts of breath. Speech is jerky breath. It means that when we speak our entire internal system is being jerked, the lungs, the heart, the blood pressure, navel centre, and diaphragm muscle (the chief breathing organ of the body), not to speak of the mind itself. Quite rightly, then, when we want someone to stop talking we say in English: Save your breath! Don’t waste your breath!

Silence is the art of longevity. The human life span is not measured in years; it is measured in the number of breaths allotted karmically. How long would one live? It all depends on how quickly, by fast and jerky breathing, one may choose to spend out one’s allotment. Or one may spend it slowly and invest a major portion to cultivate even a deeper silence, to have yet more to invest.

The science of silence, a guided silence, includes steps, for example:

  • Using the breath to enter the state of mental silence;
  • Calming the emotions so that the urge to speak may not arise;
  • Using silence for self-healing so-that the energies commonly leaked in the process of speech may be absorbed, assimilated, channeled.

For example, unless one learns to breathe without a jerk, one cannot enter into silence. Mastering the pause between the breaths not only leads to kevala-kumbhaka (see Swami Veda Bharati’s Commentary on the 2nd chapter of the Yoga-sutras, II. 51). It

  • leads one into deep interior silence;
  • Makes one a conqueror of the forces of time;
  • Grants the mastery over death.

But how does one master the pause between the breaths? That is for a silence and meditation guide to teach. A Silence Retreat with Swami Veda Bharati includes –

  • Hatha in a meditative context, guided by his assistants (see his book: Philosophy of Hatha Yoga;
  • Guided meditations, so deep that hours may pass without one noticing the passage of time;
  • Time for pranayama;
  • Spiritual journaling;
  • Contemplative walk, guided as to the different methods (see Swami Veda’s booklet: Contemplative Walk.
  • Learning the rudiments of the science of sleeping: for example, not entering from wakefulness into sleep through the pathways of fantasies and reveries but through meditation; not emerging from sleep through tossing and turning but through the channel of the meditation state.

A silence retreat is not for learning “techniques”. Oh, would someone write a book about the correct technique for smiling, after full scientific investigation of what hormones are released when the lips are stretched quarter of an inch on both sides as against half an inch (need a control group, right?)! Write the book if your ambition is to make all smiles vanish from the earth. Techniques and methods are boats that have to be left behind after a certain river crossing – only for now the boat is needed. A silence retreat is for sadhana, intensive spiritual purification for progress.

The ideal silence retreat for a serious practitioner begins at ten days duration. Make it twelve days; one day for arrival; ten days for washing the mind’s fabric in the infinity stream; twelfth day for departure. Often, a teacher may increase it to fifteen days. Quite often at our Rishikesh Ashram, when a novice arrives with the intention of intensive sadhana, and asks for his personally tailored program, s/he is told: no schedule for three days. Just sleep, exercise, walk, sleep again; get all the fatigue out of your system, otherwise you will sit for meditation and nod off or will tie for shava-asana practice and will snore. One carries enormous amount of fatigue in the body besides all the emotions that we store in our muscles. All these need to be rinsed before one can meditate.

A silence guide embraces the participants into his/her own field of silence, and becomes a channel for the grace that ever flows from the ancient lineage of the Himalayan masters.

Swami Veda Bharati,
Disciple of Swami Rama of the Himalayas

Swami Veda Invites You to Full Moon Meditations

Posted on by ahymsin

Dear Meditator, Fellow Wave of Light,

Late in 2003 I made an experiment with all the initiates in India who all, each in his/her own home, sat for meditation with me. The responses that came encouraged me to open World-Group Meditations to all. Initiates, non-initiates and beginners of any tradition or no tradition are invited to participate and they will experience the grace and guidance of the Lineage.

There are two kinds of group meditations : 1. Many sitting at the same time and the same place, and
2. Sitting at the same time, but not at the same place.

Yoga Philosophy views the mind as Universal field; its waves passing through us and becoming our individual minds. This Universal mind is a radiant force and is also known as a Universal Guru within.

When all sit together at the same time even in different parts of the world, they connect to the Universal Guru mind and generate a strong field, like so many magnets being joined together and forming a much stronger magnet; the strength of each then equals the combined strength of all. 

Thus it is when we join together in meditation, and together enter the Guru-mind’s Field. On certain days of the year the Wave of Beauty and the Wave of Bliss flows very strong. These are the sacred days.

I have set special times on all Full Moon Days in the coming months to sit in meditation with you. Please join me at the time. Let us link together in this awakening into interior serenity.

It is definitely not this little Swami but my Guru who connects with you through this medium.

Do write me afterwards ahymsin@gmail.com about how you felt.

 

Awaiting to feel your presence in this joining of the World Group of meditators with the Guru-Mind.

Yours in service of Gurudeva,

Swami Veda Bharati
 

Please inform your friends.  Everyone is encouraged to participate in these special gatherings. 

Lokas samastas sukhino bhavantu :
“May the whole world attain peace and harmony.”

Please see “Full Moon Meditations” for a table of timings.

Mind Field: The Playground of Gods

Posted on by ahymsin
(from series on Indian Psychology)

If one were to ask: on which science the Indian sages have done the most thinking, short of meditation itself, the answer would be ‘psychology’, understanding mind. It has been done not by objective observations alone. The sages have used themselves as guinea pigs. They led their own mind through various states of sentiments (bhavas),  concentrations, visualizations, silent recitations and other interior devices and observed their effects on the mind. Of these methods and devices we shall speak later in greater detail. Here we continue with attempting to understand the definition of mind and its stages.

Here it must be remembered that there is no such thing as one single collective Indian philosophy, just as there is no such thing as one single collective European philosophy in which all philosophers may agree on certain premises and draw identical conclusions. The various systems of philosophy differ widely. For example, if we were to expound the Indian theory of mind according to the vijnana-vada or yogachara doctrine, or were to give all the thousands of charts of terminologies worked out by the abhidharma philosophers, it would take us several generations to complete this article.

 Here we are using as our resources:

  1. primarily the Sankhya-yoga systems,
  2. with a touch of Vedanta where the two merge, and
  3. the suggestions given in the epic literature ( Mahabharata including the Bhagavad-gita, the Puranas and so forth) with regard to the totality of the schema of mind and its operations.
  4. A vast area of the study of mind needs to be systematised also from the Ayurvedic texts like the Charaka-samhita.
  5. It must be remembered that no science developed in India can be studied without fully evaluating its connection with the study of mind. For example, the theory of art and literature1 is primarily a psychological one. Without the concept of bhavas, havas, anu-bhavas, sanchari-bhavas2 ( to be defined later) – the entire spectrum of emotion and its expression – there is no theory of art and literature.

It must be emphasized repeatedly that all of this vast detail about the mind can be understood holistically as one single frame only in the context of the practice and experience of meditation. Self-observation in meditation is the root, all the rest are  branches.

In other words, these statements about the mind and its functions are not to be believed as sacred doctrine, inspired word, final authority and so forth. They are to be verified  through the lab work of spirituality called meditation. By the ‘laboratory’ methods prescribed in the science of meditation, one tests the various states of the mind. If the internal test supports the previous ‘laboratory notes’ like those of Patanjali, one believes them to be true. Even if a few beginning level tests render desirable results, one proceeds with the rest. Similarly one tests the suggestions about emotional states through self observation and inner experimentation. Only then one accepts statements like “through the practice of non-violence all enmity ceases in the vicinity of the practitioner”.

In the first part of the series we spoke of mind as an energy field.

  • An energy field may be weak or strong; so a particular mind-field may be weak or strong.
  • A weak energy field may be made stronger through the application of  appropriate technology. A weakened mind may be made stronger through the application of certain methods of
    • self-experimentation in mental, vocal, and physical behaviour,
    • self-observation,
    • concentration, and
    • meditation.
  • A weakness is a weakening of some strength. A darkness cannot be removed by sweeping it out with a broom; it is only a relative weakening of light. Appropriate strengthening, brightening, of light removes the darkness. One seeks to find the strength of which a particular weakness is a weakening. Increase that strength and the weakness vanishes (This applies to individuals, societies, religions, nations or any other groupings as well).
  • A part by part strengthening, replacing individual weaknesses with particular strengths will not be holistic, complete or permanent, atyantika in the words of Ishvara-krshna, the author of Sankhya-karika. Any re-strengthening of a particular weakened area of the mind must be accomplished within the context of the strengthening of the total mind field of an individual.  This totality of re-strengthening is obtained through meditation.

These are some of  the basic principles of ‘therapy’ , or rather, personal re-construction, applied   by the spiritual guides to help elevate their beloved  students and disciples. The same may be used by parents, teachers and counsellors  (or leaders of groups and nations).

What are the signs and symptoms by which we know a (a person who has) a weak or a strong mind. Here are some of the indices.

  • A weak mind is  hard; it lacks in
    • resilience and fluidity, and
    • compassion.
  • A strong mind is resilient, fluid, and compassionate.
  • A weak mind is egotistical; a strong mind is humble.
  • A weak mind makes statements that contradict each other; a strong mind is consistent, harmonious.
  • A weak mind looks at oppositions; a weak mind seeks to see complements and helps with ‘resolution’ (samadhana).
  • A weak mind starts its sentences ( in speech and writing) with “I” and frequently repeats the various forms of this pronoun. A strong mind avoids the first personal pronoun and its variants.
  • A weak mind is addicted to the words like No, Not, Refuse, Deny, Challenge, ‘my stand’, ‘my view’, and such other expressions. When a strong mind ‘refuses’. it does not hurt like a refusal.
  • A weak mind feels that others are resisting him/her, refusing him/her. A strong mind has faith in others’ positive and good reaction.
  • A weak mind remembers what hurt and harm others have caused to him/her; a strong mind forgets these.
  • A weak mind forgets the good and kind acts others have done to him/her; a strong mind remembers these.
  • A weak mind forgets what hurt and harm s/he has caused to others; a strong mind remembers these.
  • A weak mind remembers the good and kind acts s/he has done for others; a strong mind forgets these.
  • People do not say ‘No’ to a weak mind, out of fear; people do not say ‘No’ to a strong mind out of love.
  • A weak mind defends his/her own position; a strong mind 
    • defends his/her opponent’s position;
    • finds excuses for the situation of one who has given him a refusal.
  • A weak mind forgets things for
    • lack of interest in others, and because of
    • emotional befogging;
  • A strong mind remembers what interests others, and the emotional fog does not obscure his/her ‘recall’ mechanisms.
  • A weak mind justifies his/her acts; a strong mind apologises.
  • A weak mind does not forgive; a strong mind forgives and also forgets the incident.
  • A weak mind criticises others, speaks ill of them; a strong mind does not criticise in his/her own mind but rather seeks the reasons for another person’s weaknesses and grants strength.
  • A week mind gets tense and stressed; the same stimuli that cause tension in a weak mind immediately trigger a relaxed state in a strong mind
  • A weak mind resists others and blames them for resisting him/her; a strong mind meets no resistance and his/her paths are made easy by others.
  • A weak mind is hurt by others’ angers; a strong mind sympathetically seeks to find the history of the pain and suffering that is causing anger and seeks to remedy the same.
  • A weak mind sees others’ fault; a strong mind sees its own faults.
  • A person with a weak mind is easily fatigued; one with a strong mind regenerates quickly.
  • One with a weak mind makes body’s illness into a mind condition; a strong mind introduces mind’s healing into the body.
  • A weak mind seeks others to be responsible for him, and then resents them; a strong mind takes responsibility for others without feeling burdened..
  • A weak mind follows set patterns; a strong mind invents.
  • A weak mind is lethargic and complacent; a strong mind takes initiative.
  • A weak mind is suspicious; a strong mind trusts.
  • A weak mind struggles to accomplish any objective; a strong mind does without doing and accomplishes by  his/her mere presence.
  • A weak mind finds small irritants to be too large to suffer; a strong mind has an oceanic capacity to absorb and not feel that there had been any irritation. 
  • A weak mind cannot taste the fullness of any experience and therefore his/her craving is never satiated; a strong mind, being well centred, tastes and experiences everything in fullness, enjoys ‘more of less’ and is contented.
  • A weak mind is self-centred, seeking its own pleasure and often being thwarted in it by those in whom he generates resistance; a strong mind constantly seeks the fulfilment of others, thereby ceases to evoke resistance, and it is others who then find pleasure in giving him fulfilment.
  • A weak mind reacts to small things, small events that have the duration of an instant only and are of temporary worth; the strong mind ignores such matters and holds a larger picture in a more expansive time frame (dirgha-darshin and dura-darshin), therefore is not disturbed by small events, little words, temporary situations.
  • A weak mind has a small horizon; a strong mind has a large horizon in all subjects and matters.  
  • A weak mind sees only parts; a strong mind carries the vision of a complete whole in which all atoms and galaxies, all ideas and sciences are a single interconnected Whole.
  • A weak mind finds it difficult to learn new things; all sciences are easily  opened to a strong mind.
  • A weak mind lives in fear ( of loss, repeat of natural disasters, ghosts and possessions, attacks, illness, poverty, death); a strong mind grants reassurance to all beings by his/her very presence.
  • A weak mind, suffering from inferiority, keeps reasserting his (individual, religious, national, tribal, political) superiority; a strong mind holds back on such assertions because of an interior self-assurance which embraces all opponents and opposite views.
  • A weak mind is full of inner conflicts and a thousand question about the smallest step, seeking answers to each question and each answer raising a crop of a million more questions; a strong mind flows in harmony and his/her questions have not been answered but have been resolved.
  • A weak mind demands; a strong mind gives.
  • A weak mind feels insulted; a strong mind gives honour.
  • A weak mind rejects everything; a strong mind assimilates what may seem most unacceptable in appearance.
  • A weak mind seeks its own pleasure and gratification; a strong mind discovers a subtler, more refined, more intense and more lasting pleasure, that of knowing that someone has been pleased by his/her acts.
  • A weak mind speaks loudly; a strong mind speaks only from within a depth of interior silence.
  • A weak mind struggles to choose one of many options; a strong mind incorporates the most contradictory options into a single scheme.
  • A weak mind overindulges, overeats, over-possesses, overstates, overdresses  – because it tries to fill its emptiness with exterior objects; a strong mind has an inner fullness, is therefore mild, restrained, without feeling restricted or deprived.  A strong mind under-indulges, under-possesses, understates.
  • A weak mind lives in fear of others, constantly overprotecting oneself and thereby inviting attack; a strong mind lives in love and that love alone is his/her protection.
  • A weak mind’s endeavours and relationships are unstable; in the presence of a strong mind all is stabilised.
  • A weak mind cannot concentrate on any effort, and wanders around; a strong mind is a concentrated one and thereby well centred in life and in meditation.
  • A strong mind, finally, is a saintly mind that grants to others freedom and liberates them from their own self-enslavement.

This is a very incomplete list, only an indication for assessing whether we are of weak mind or of strong mind, that is, whether our mind field is fully energised or only partly or feebly so.

Now we shall discuss later how the feeble minds may be made into strong minds by above definitions.

We are repeatedly told in the Yoga-sutras ( henceforth YS) that the attributes of prakrti, the original Nature, are inherent in chitta. These are the well known sattva, rajas and tamas. Thus a person’s mind may be predominantly sattvic, or rajasic or tamasic. We have used the adverb “predominantly”, for, all Nature’s products are constituted of all three gunas. This predominance determines the outstanding characteristics of an object or a personality. Personality means the kind of mind-field one has.   

A sattvic mind, refined and purified one, has four inherent attributes. These are :

            Dharma : inclination to virtue,

            Jnana     : knowledge,

            Vairagya : Dispassion, and

            Aishvarya: Sovereignty, freedom, mastery.

Everyone has a sattva element in the mind. Therefore, everyone is endowed with these attributes. These may become subdued, suppressed, if the predominance of rajas or tamas occurs The sattvic characteristics can be evoked through training, abhyasa. One trains them by strengthening certain natural urges  within oneself.

The path of peace, purification and spirituality is comprised of recognising and giving way to our natural urges. Some of these urges are :

  • To love,
  • To give,
  • To share,
  • To perform selfless acts without seeking a return,
  • To sacrifice oneself for others,
  • To generate peace in one’s surroundings,
  • To seek solitude,
  • To recognise the spiritual resource within oneself,
  • To aspire to purify oneself to add to the sattvic content of one’s personality,
  • To create a bonding with others,
  • To energise oneself when feeling low,
  • To postpone dying by will,
  • To heal oneself by the power of will,
  • To exercise control over one’s senses and desires,
  • To seek knowledge,
  • To seek self-knowledge – to know ‘What am I’,
  • To forgive,
  • To respond to hate with love,
  • To wish to reduce our aversions,
  • To seek to make oneself small before others, cultivating humility,
  • To reduce one’s wants and material possessions,
  • To practice cleanliness,
  • To be loyal,
  • To reduce the level of one’s anger,
  • To learn to live by wisdom,
  • To be patient,
  • To withstand the forces of opposites like heat and cold,
  • To conquer sloth and sleep,
  • To be creative and inventive,
  • To appreciate virtues of others,
  • To be grateful to other living beings for what they render to us,
  • To honour beauty and nature,
  • To create arts as expression of seeking beauty even in the most mundane objects,
  • To refine language to be poetic, expressive of love and beauty,
  • To protect knowledge,
  • To venerate and worship,
  • To harmonise the opposites
  • To reduce conflict,
  • To see and seek mother, sister, daughter, father, brother, son in the persons of opposite gender,
  • To remain calm in the face of provocation,
  • To speak truth,
  • To avoid defending oneself,
  • To teach, for the sake of sharing knowledge,
  • To increase knowledge,
  • To increase the availability of knowledge,
  • To protect the sources of knowledge,
  • To search within for intuitive knowledge,
  • To cultivate the strengths of mind as partially listed in the instalment 2 of this article,
  • To encourage and help others to develop all of the above.3

We see proof of these natural urges within ourselves in our daily desires, actions and interactions.  One may argue that we see much more of the opposite. In reply, I would like to invent or re-invent the terms love quotient, happiness quotient, peace quotient, or satisfaction quotient. Before going further, let us ask : What is love? What is happiness ? What is Peace ? What is satisfaction? These cannot be given objective definitions. One may read all the tomes on the chemistry, physiology and psychology of sleep, but if one has never  slept s/he has no way of knowing what sleep is. This is so with all the states of consciousness. They are experiential, Their physiological correlates may be measurable but they, per se, cannot be measured or defined for the satisfaction of an external observer, however well trained in the scientific methodology s/he might be.

When one has slept, one knows it. When we are in love, we know it. We know it when we are at peace, have happiness or satisfaction. Whatever the hypothalamus, amygdala or the endorphins tell us has been picked by them from our state of the mind.  How deep, how lasting,  the love, peace, happiness and satisfaction are depends on our will, our decision.4

When we act from the above defined strengths of the mind, when we give way to the natural urges listed above, and many more, it is then we feel we have loved, we are at peace, happy, satisfied. That is the true contentment, santosha. TheYoga-sutras of Patanjali say :

                                    santoshad-an-uttama-sukha-labhah YS .  2.42.

                                    From santosha is gained the unexcelled pleasure.

Only our own minds know when we have had this level of true pleasure.

We return to the counter-argument : If these are indeed our natural urges, why do we see so much in human history and contemporary life that is obviously contrary to these. The two of many answers  to this argument are :

(1) When we permit the dominance of rajas and tamas over sattva within ourselves, it is then, that the destructive and negative tendencies become manifest. Sage Vyasa in his Commentary on YS states that it is sattva that suffers. So, the sattva in ourselves constantly strives to overcome the rajas and tamas. That is what is popularly known as the strife between good and evil. The good triumphs : satyam eva jayate.

(2) Because the opposites of the above stated strengths and natural urges are actually unnatural to us, that is why their manifestations render us so unhappy. Like a spot on the clean sheet, we are trying to wash off these manifestations to restore the dominance of our true nature. We are constantly trying to reassert our natural urges against the unnatural ones.

Then why are the opposites to these sattvic attributes so dominant in the world? Our answer is that there is still more love in the world than hate, more peace than strife. A husband and wife fight over dinner, that is news; but a million households have a peaceful dinner together is , well, natural, so no news. We notice the dark spots because they do not fit in our true nature, sva-bhava . Let us re-discover this divine within that alone is our true nature, and makes the mind a playground of the gods.5

 

Editor’s Note:

  1. Ask for this author’s audio recordings of the course titled – “God in the Theatre“.
  2. Read Jadunath Sinha’s 3-volume work titled – “Indian Psychology“.
  3. A good editor may re-sequence these in a more logical order. The list is not exhaustive but only illustrative.
  4. Please ask for the author’s audio recordings titled – “Emotions as Acts of Will” from the Himalayan Yoga Publications Trust
  5. The author has presented a number of papers in many conferences on the theme of “What is Right with the World“. Please ask for copies of the same from the Himalayan Yoga Publications Trust.

How To Meditate Basics

Posted on by ahymsin

There are many misleading notions about the practice of meditation. Some people have the impression that they should sit down with eyes closed and try to make the mind blank. Others mistake practices for meditation. Many pick up an idea from books and start practicing without any actual instruction–and it leads nowhere. Others do not begin meditation practice at all because they think they will have to leave their families, homes, comforts, professions, and duties–and withdraw to a faraway cave in the Himalayan mountains in order to succeed.

In the Himalayan Raja Yoga Meditation System what follows are the first steps of meditation. They constitute the foundation. The reader’s ego may want to say:  “I have been practicing meditation for a decade or two; I want something more advanced; I do not need elementary lessons.” This attitude is incorrect. Many aspirants are practicing blanking the mind, or holding the breath like an athlete, but they have not even learnt the correct method of breathing. Only when these foundations have been properly laid can a meditator go on to more advanced practices. The steps in the method are:

DIAPHRAGMATIC BREATHING
Even breathing

CORRECT POSTURE
Being able to maintain a straight spine, with no feeling of discomfort in the legs, back or the neck

 

SYSTEMATIC RELAXATION
Maintaining total relaxation of neuro-muscular system throughout a meditation session

 

AWARENESS OF BREATHING
One gradually learns subtler modes of breathing

 

USING A MANTRA OR A SACRED WORD
Use of the word soham until one is given a personal mantra

Let us go into the details of these steps.

DIAPHRAGMATIC BREATHING

The chief organ controlling the breathing process in our body is the diaphragm, a muscle just underneath the ribs, separating the chest cavity from the abdomen. Ideally, the diaphragm contracts so that we may inhale fully even into the lower lungs. The diaphragm relaxes to push against the lower lungs so that the exhalation from this part of the lungs may be complete. A child at birth breathes diaphragmatically, but later forgets this natural process because of incorrect attitudes of adults around them. Then one has to re-train himself to breathe correctly.

In deep and correct breathing, no pressure should be felt in the lungs, and no tension should develop. Breathing should be a relaxed and relaxing process of rejuvenation.

The diaphragmatic breathing is taught in:

a. The crocodile position

To learn the practice lie on the stomach, heels touching; toes apart; or in whatever way the legs feel relaxed. Place the right palm down over the back of the left hand, and rest the forehead on the hands. The neck is not to be bent sideways. Let the shoulders relax–do make sure of that.

Bring your awareness to the breathing process. In this position, it is not possible to do chest breathing. Observe the flow of the breath. Observe the gentle rise and fall of the stomach and the navel area with the gentle and smooth flow of the breath.

Let there be no jerks, no breaks, in your breathing. Let if flow like a smooth stream. Let it slow down. Observe the gentle flow, along with the rise and fall of the stomach and the navel area. Take note of the breathing process. Resolve to breathe in this way at all times.

After doing this for five to fifteen minutes turn over on your back in:

b. The corpse pose

Lie flat on the back with legs and arms a comfortable distance from the body, palms turned up. Continue to breathe and to observe the process of the diaphragm relaxing and contracting (the rise and fall of the stomach and the navel area).

Place your left palm on the chest, right palm on the stomach. No movement should be felt under the left palm; the right palm should feel the rise and fall smoothly, without a jerk, without a break.

Let even breathing develop; the length of the inhalation and the exhalation being equal. When this has been mastered one graduates to 2:1 breathing (where the exhalation is twice as long as the inhalation).

When one breathes only diaphragmatically at all times, it is considered that the practice has been mastered.

CORRECT POSTURE

It is most important that your spine should be straight for sitting in meditation and at all other times.

Unfortunately most chairs, sofas, modern beds, seats in cars and airplanes are designed as part of a conspiracy to shorten people’s life-spans by forcing them to breathe incorrectly by making them sit in positions with convoluted spines.

One often sees people sitting in prayer gatherings with their spines looking sadly like a bent bow. This:

a. Prevents correct and full breathing, causing short breaths, reducing the life spans.

b. Generates or worsens many diseases like asthma, and heart problems.

c. It also adversely affects the entire neural system whose central flow is in the spine.

A straight spine is not a straight line. 

  • It is a slightly S-shaped curve:
  • Convex at the lower third part (lumbar vertebrae 1-5)
  • Concave at the middle third part (thoracic vertebra 2-12);
  • Convex at the upper part of the back (cervical vertebrae 5-thoracic vertebrae 1);
  • Straight at the neck (cervical vertebrae 1-4).

It should be learnt under expert guidance. But a few hints here will be helpful. One need not try to sit in the advanced postures, especially if age, physical problems, or lack of habit prevent one from doing so. Sitting in a chair or sitting in a comfortable cross-legged position will do quite nicely. Unfortunately when people sit in the cross-legged positions, the centre of gravity makes them bend their backs. The answer to that is a simple one.

DO read this with care and do not misunderstand.

Fold a blanket, and make it into a neat and firm cushion, or use a cushion. This is not to serve as your seat, not like a rug to sit on. Place it only under the hips, with legs or knees on the floor. This will uplift the hips from the ground. Straighten yourself. If there is discomfort anywhere in the back or the neck, you need to experiment with the height of the cushion or folded blanket under the hips; you need to reduce or increase the number of folds in the blanket or number of cushions used. Experiment for a few days until you obtain the optimum comfort. Resolve always to sit in this position.

If sitting on the floor is very difficult, you may sit on a chair; on the edge of a hard chair, with feet on the ground. Do sit with the spine straight. Form this habit. Let it become your natural position at all times–you will notice psychological changes in yourself, such as heightened awareness, intentness, self-confidence without unnecessary pride, effectiveness in life.

Having sat in the correct posture, continue breathing diaphragmatically, with mental observation of the flow, and of the gentle rise and fall of the stomach and the navel area, with no feeling of pressure in the chest. If there is tension, the breathing is incorrect.

RELAXATION

Relaxation, after diaphragmatic breathing, is the second step practiced in the corpse pose.

Let us learn basic methodical relaxation.

Lie in the corpse pose, with feet apart, arms separate from the body, alongside the body, palms up. Continue breathing diaphragmatically. Now take a mental inventory of your body in the following sequence, asking each part of the body to relax as it is brought to mind.

Forehead, eyebrows, eyes, nostrils, cheeks, jaw, mouth and the corners of your mouth, chin, neck, neck joint, shoulders, shoulder joints, upper arms, elbows, lower arms, wrists, hands, fingers, fingertips; fingertips, fingers, hands, wrists, lower arms, elbows, upper arms, shoulder joints, shoulders, chest, heart area, stomach, navel, abdomen, pelvis, thigh joints, thighs, knees, calf muscles, ankles, feet, toes and toe tips.

To tips, toes, feet, ankles, calves, knees, thighs, thigh joints, pelvis, abdomen, navel, stomach, heart area, chest, shoulders, shoulder joints, upper arms, elbows, lower arms, wrists, hands, fingers, fingertips; fingertips, fingers, hands, wrists, lower arms, elbows, upper arms, shoulder joints, shoulders, neck joint, neck, chin, jaw, mouth, corners of your mouth, cheeks, nostrils, eyes, eyebrows, forehead.

Remember this sequence. Go over the body in this order; relax each of these parts in this sequence. Let them go limp. For example, the hands should become like the hands of a baby. If you do not succeed in relaxing them at first, or you have been so tense that you have forgotten what it is like for a muscle to be relaxed, you may use a different method of relaxation called supine tension/relaxation, thus called because it is also done in the corpse position.

The exact sequence for practicing this relaxation exercise follows. When tensing, tense from the fingers or toes upward. Try to avoid sympathetically tensing muscles other than the ones you are working with. Between segments, pause and relax for 2 breaths. After completing the entire sequence, rest for 10 relaxed breaths.

Tense and relax the right leg–left leg–right leg–left leg.
Tense and relax both legs simultaneously. Repeat.
Tense and relax the right leg and arm–left leg and arm–right leg and arm—left leg and arm.
Tense and relax the right arm–left arm–right arm–left arm:  then both arms simultaneously. Repeat.
Tense and relax all the limbs simultaneously. Repeat.

After completing either the body sequence relaxation or the supine tension/relaxation, continue breathing diaphragmatically. Lie in this way for a few minutes, then sit up for meditation. There are numerous progressively complex mental relaxation exercises which can be done in the corpse pose. They finally lead to yoga-nidra, or yogic sleep, and to the entry into the subtle body.

As you sit in your meditation position, do remember to sit with

a. hips elevated on a folded blanket or cushion and

b. with the spine straight.

Again, quickly scan the body for any sign of tension that might have developed in the process of changing the position. Relax. Re-establish diaphragmatic breathing.

BREATH AWARENESS

Let your breath flow, smoothly and evenly, with no jerks, no break in the middle of the breath, no break between the breaths, no sound, no gasping.

Become aware of the flow. No break in the awareness.

Twelve breaths, with such unbroken awareness, without any interrupting thoughts will lead you into samadhi. But such twelve breaths are difficult to come by!

Feel the flow and touch of the breaths in the nostrils. Continue to do so, without jerk, without interruption. The awareness of inhalation should immediately merge into the awareness of exhalation and vice versa. The awareness of the exhalation is especially important.

If the mind wanders off, because of its usual habits that have been given to it over many, many years, straighten your spine again; relax quickly again; re-establish diaphragmatic breathing; continue with the awareness of the flow and touch of the breath in the nostrils.

SACRED WORD

To begin with, use soham, some prefer to say hamso–and call it the hamsa-mantra. Exhaling, think in your mind the word ham. Inhaling think in your mind the word so. It means I am That. Those in a different religious tradition may use the word prescribed by their tradition, but it should be properly learnt from someone who knows meditation according to that tradition; just any maulvi, reverend priest or pandit or rabbi will not do.

Let there be no interruption in breath awareness, nor in the awareness of the flow of the word as a thought.

Observe how the breath, the word and the mind are flowing together as a single stream.

Slowly, lengthen the time–not how long you sit–but how many seconds you manage to maintain awareness of the flow of that stream without interruption. Too much effort is self-defeating; you cannot fall asleep by making a determined effort, nor can you enter a meditative state by fighting yourself. Let it flow; let it happen. Don’t DO meditation. Observe and experience.

NEXT STEP

Seek out someone in the tradition of the Himalayan yogis to give you the first initiation, the personal mantra.

Many questions will arise in your mind. For example, if you are already initiated within a certain tradition, you would resist the thought of another personal mantra. But the way the Himalayan yogis teach, they do not like to create conflict in your mind. They are familiar with many other traditions. They will strengthen you on the path of your tradition, and will teach you how to experience the truth of your own faith.

We have given this basic manual of instruction for a complete beginner in meditation. Do start with this practice. Be diligent, and it will lead you a long way. If you already have a mantra, ask someone in the Himalayan tradition how to merge it with the practice of this awareness, so that it may go deep into you.

After the mantra initiation one may be led to concentrations or methods of meditation individually appropriate for the aspirant. Both a mantra and a meditation mode are assigned according to the individual’s spiritual needs. There are many different ways of refining the mantra experience through various levels of consciousness all the way to final silence. The ajapa state, where one has so absorbed the mantra that it repeats itself in one’s consciousness, also occurs only through the guru’s grace. One may be taught to proceed on the path of internal sound (nada) or light (jyoti) and to go on the path of the kundalini (a yoga of channeling energies). One may be assigned a particular chakra, or energy center in the body, to mediate on from time to time, but the actual entry into such a meditation occurs only when the initiator mentally touches the disciple’s particular chakra. In the chakra one may be assigned a visualization on certain diagrams, etc. At this time the aspirant will also be taught how to merge his mantra with the energy of the given chakra and how to penetrate through its central point (bindu-vedhana). The secrets of these are taught in specific tantras but understood only in the live guru-disciple relationship.

Recommended Readings:

  1. Living with the Himalayan Masters, by Swami Rama.
  2. Theory and Practice of Meditation, by Swami Rama.
  3. Superconscious Meditation by Swami Veda Bharati (Pt. Usharbudh Arya)
  4. Mantra and Meditation by Swami Veda Bharati (Pt. Usharbudh Arya)
  5. Philosophy of Hatha Yoga by Swami Veda Bharati (Pt. Usharbudh Arya)

 

Five Pillars of Sadhana

Posted on by ahymsin

The five steps or pillars of sadhana which will be discussed in this short writing are: STILLNESS, SILENCE, FASTING, CELIBACY, and CONQUEST OF SLEEP.

There are other steps or pillars of sadhana, but here, I would like to concentrate on these five. Within each of these five pillars there are many steps. If you try to jump to the highest step right in the beginning you can harm yourself. Therefore you practice these under guidance and you take them one step at a time. Take them according to your capacity or maybe just five percent above your capacity, so that the exercise of them increases your capacity.

All of the pillars are interdependent. You cannot practice only one without practicing the other four. When you practice one properly then the other four come automatically. You could just as well say that silence is the major one and the other four are its supporting pillars. Or you could say that stillness is the major one and the other four are the supporting pillars. Because of this we might say that the pillars of sadhana are a flower with five petals.

Let us begin with the pillar of:

STILLNESS

There are several possible divisions in stillness.

1. Whole body stillness 

For example, the stillness in your complete posture. It may be practiced in all three body positions:

  • lying down,
  • sitting,
  • standing.

The stillness of the posture is the stillness of the meditation posture. Then comes a state of stillness in your yoga postures. There should come a point in a yoga posture when in that position you are absolutely still. One should contrast that stillness with the movement which brings you to the center point of stillness of that posture.

2. Stillness of the active senses

For example, stillness of the hands, stillness of the feet, and so on. When you are standing, are your feet really absolutely still or are they shuffling about?  One day I was in the embassy of the Netherlands in Delhi applying for a visa, and they were allowing only one or two persons in at a time. Others were standing outside the main gate. The main gate was open at the bottom and I could see the shoes of the people standing outside. It is very interesting to watch just people’s feet, or just people’s hands, moving. You can tell much about their character. Many times when my Master taught me stillness of the active senses he would call me to discuss some matter, and he would deliberately do something to excite me. And as soon as I got excited my hands would shoot up. He would look at my hands, say nothing, and I knew that I was getting unnecessarily excited.

Stillness of the active senses has three divisions: 

a. Stillness of all five active senses simultaneously.

b. Stillness of one active sense while the other senses are in motion.

c. Within the active sense, one side active and the other side without any motion. This is learned through tension-relaxation exercises or exercise without movement in which you tense one hand and relax the other. Can you move your right hand fast but have your left hand remain absolutely relaxed?

3. Stillness of the cognitive senses

Stillness of the cognitive senses also has divisions.

a. All cognitive senses still at the same time

b. One or two of the senses are still, while the other senses are active. I am not sure if you can actually move one eye and keep the other eye still; that would be quite an accomplishment. But there are practices in which something similar is possible. For example, when we practice concentration on inner sound, we shut off the left ear and we listen only with the right ear. That does not mean that you put a cotton ball in the left ear. You just switch off the connection with the left ear. And then comes:

4. Stillness of breath

Stillness of breath is of two kinds.

a. One is that which we normally practice as the first meditative exercise, breathing, which is as smooth and gentle a flow as possible.

b. The other one that is more popular but not taught in our tradition as widely as in the tradition of Hatha Yoga, is holding the breath at a certain stage of Pranayama. Here I would like to repeat a warning that I have often given on this question of holding the breath. Holding the breath is a very powerful exercise. The first mistake people make is to start to practice retention before having mastered correct breathing technique, breathing from the diaphragm, the stomach and the navel. While still prone to chest breathing, they begin doing retention. As a result what is being held is not breath; it is a gasp, and it is held urgently. So the mind is being jerked in the process instead of being calmed through retention. Secondly, with retention, whatever samskaras and inclinations are in a person are strengthened. So if a person has the bad habit of breathing incorrectly retention will make it firmer. Psychologically, whatever negative forces are stored in a person will become stronger, so the angry person will become angrier. A lustful person will become more lustful. In our tradition we do not recommend retention until the correct breathing technique has become natural. Learning correct breathing technique also cleanses the mental contents. So for our purpose at this time, the stillness of breath that is recommended is just simply slow and gentle breathing according to the correct breathing methods.

5. Stillness of mind

This is where we enter into meditation through relaxation, concentration, and contemplation. We need to be aware of an important thing about all five pillars of sadhana that we are discussing. And that is that there is a two way progression:

from outside inwards and from inside outwards.

For example, by stilling the body you still the mind.

That is the movement from outside inwards.

The easier way is to still the mind causing the body to become automatically still with very little physical training.

This is inside outwards.

There are many students whom our Master, Swami Rama, never encouraged to take up Hatha Yoga, such as all the inner washes and so on. For example; I have never done those myself. I asked him, “Do I need to do those Swamiji, Do I learn them?”  He said, “No, not necessary. Your part is the inner part.” So I have learnt to still my body by stilling the mind. In fact, I have made no effort to still the body. I have made no effort in practicing silence. I have not struggled with the question of celibacy. I used to fast before my Master came into my life in 1969, and asked, “Why do you do all of these things! I have done them already.” Many students, many disciples, when they meet their Master, have to do all this tapasya. I have a life of luxury because my Master did it for me. My progression has been from inside outwards. When you have developed stillness of the mind, all the other pillars come automatically. Among the eight constituents of Yoga, the fifth one is pratyahara.

People do not understand the differentiation or definition of pratyahara. It is when the mind is calmed down. The power of the senses merged into such a mind becomes calm and still; that is pratyahara. The exercises that we do for point to point breathing in the Yoga text are called pratyahara because those exercises cause the mind to become calm and the senses to merge with the mind. So, this movement from the calmness of the mind to the external pillars is automatic, is the easy way.

The movement from outside in is the more difficult way. If the mind is fasting you have no desire for all sorts of food. For example, I have found that when I practice silence, the desire for taste automatically begins to disappear. Now, in such an experience

the movement can happen both ways.

The silence of speech calms the mind and then the movement from inside outwards occurs, the calm mind removes the desire for physical taste. But it does not always happen and not with every one. I have seen people trying to practice one of the five pillars and making up for that deprivation by indulging in something else. For example, on the fasting day talking too much because they are compensating by one activity of the mouth for the loss of the other activity of the mouth. Or, they may, in the days of silence eat more than usual. So you must watch that the practices of any of these five pillars of sadhana are not merely physical ones. They should lead to an inward movement of mind and the mind should then automatically create the other four pillars in you. You may do this with any of the five pillars in whatever sequence you prefer.

The ultimate aim of stillness is samadhi. It is said that if you can sit absolutely still for three hours and thirty-three minutes you can have samadhi; absolute stillness means not even a wink of an eye, not even a twitch in the body. But it does not happen without a lot of sadhana of the other practices.

Now let us discuss the pillar of

FASTING

Fasting is a kind of silence.

It is a kind of celibacy.

It is a kind of stillness.

It is stillness of one of the active senses, the sense of taste. It is a stillness of one of the inner organs. It is stillness of the entire endocrine system. They are all related to each other.

There are many kinds of fasting.

1. The best fasting is eating moderately.

Texts on Ayurveda and on Yoga give us this advice: that half the stomach should be full of food. Space should be left in one quarter of the stomach for water and one quarter should be left for breath.

2. Eat five mouthfuls less than enough to fill the stomach.

This is the most difficult fasting. Some physicians suggest that one should not have any water half an hour before and half an hour after eating except for a few sips or limit liquids to the water which is already in the juices of the food that you are eating. I have personally found this to be very beneficial. But it is up to you to experiment.

3. Partial fasting

There are special days of fasting in all cultures of the world. The Christians have certain special fasting days. During the period of Lent, partial fasting is taken on for forty days; in the sense that you give up one or two items of food. In India when pilgrims make a pilgrimage to Haridwar and Rishikesh or are en route through these cities to a sacred place in the mountains, upon reaching their destination, besides doing their puja or worship offering, also make the offering of giving up one favorite food forever. It could be potatoes or it could be mangos. This is very common practice. This is also a form of partial fasting. Muslims fast for the thirty days of Ramazan. This is also partial fasting, because they eat before sunrise and after moonrise, or after sunset. They do not take water even in the hottest desert of Arabia during that time. One day I was flying from New Delhi to New York, a twenty four hour flight. There were Muslim travelers who did not eat or drink anything during the entire flight. They arrived at New York at 3 p.m., so there were still many hours yet before they could break the fast. That kind of fasting gives you great inner strength.

The purpose of fasting may differ. Complete or partial fasting may be done for physical health or cleansing. Or there is fasting as part of a penitence.

There is a tradition in India that teaches that if you know that you have done something wrong then instead of waiting for your karma to ripen until some other lifetime you make it ripen now. There are two words related to this. One word is pashchat tapa, which means feeling an inner burning after having committed a transgression. The improper translation of this word in the west is guilt feeling. There is no guilt, rather it is simply an acknowledgment of my imperfection, my failure and responsibility. I cleanse myself of that karma by prayaschitta, which means progression of the mind, making the mind move forward. You free yourself through an act of penitence. For prayaschitta one may undertake a pilgrimage, a long period of silence, or different kinds of fasting.

4. Fasting for the collective good

Gandhi made it into a national spiritual technique. When the nation did not do what he advised them to do, he declared himself incomplete and did tapasya of fasting to purify himself with the idea that if he was purer they might listen to him. This is actually a very, very ancient tradition in India. It also happens in families and is used almost as an emotional blackmail. It is very common for people, if they are angry, to just stopping eating. This goes on for a day or two and then the whole family starts gathering around and asking, “What is the matter, come on, say something.”  It has its uses; it has its misuses; but quite often it works as a total family purification. You see, in the Indian temperament, and perhaps the Asian temperament in general, instead of acting out aggressively towards others, you transfer that force toward yourself in some form of self sacrifice.

5. Fasting on certain sacred days

In India there are also certain days that are sacred. In different families, different days are sacred. For example the astrologer may say that Mars is a bad planet for you. Now, the astrologers in India not only give predictions, they also give a preventative measure or remedy for the negative forces. The astrologer might give you a special mantra to do 125,000 times that will pacify the angry planet. At the same time, you might be asked to make a donation of 11 pieces of 1 1/4 yard red cloth, or a donation of a certain type of grain such as wheat or sesame seed, or you might be asked to give away a measure of a particular oil or a particular metal:  gold for the sun, copper for Saturn, and so on. The astrologer may also tell you to fast on the day of Mars, that is Tuesday. So people fast on a certain day for a certain period of time. People also have their favorite form of divine incarnation and certain days of the week, or of the year, which are the sacred days of that divine incarnation. Many people right here in Rishikesh fast on Tuesday because it is the day of their favorite deity Hanuman. Many people in the spiritual tradition fast on Thursdays because it is the day of Jupiter, the guru of devas, gods, and in this way the guru is honored. For each of these types of fast, you decide on the degree of fasting; it could be only on fruits or it could be only on juices and so on.

6. Physical limitations on fasting.

There are certain diseases during which one should not fast. Or, during certain types of diseases one can take special fasts, such as having certain types of juices. Fasting is internal cleansing. If you undertake any kind of a long fast, make sure that you know the principle of internal cleansing. Some of the practices of Hatha Yoga are useful for this. During a fast you will need to decide which postures and how much of them you can do. For all of this you must consult an expert. Never enter any spiritual practice with the ambition that you are going to do the highest, the utmost, the extreme. Be moderate.

7. The complete fast

Again, the complete fast may have a physical purpose and it may have a spiritual purpose. Between the two, physical and spiritual, the fasting will help the practice of the other four pillars of sadhana. I have experimented with all kinds of complete forms of fasting and observed their effects: for fifteen days eating only vegetables, for fifteen days living only on milk, for fifteen days drinking only water mixed with a little lemon juice and a little honey. These are experiments you can make. As with any other of the four pillars you should gauge your capacity and stay within that capacity.

There is one final purpose of fasting. There are certain religious traditions in India such as the Jainas. Among them this purpose of fasting is very well known. This is when a monk of a very high spiritual standing decides that he has accomplished the spiritual purpose of his life, and he or she then decides to give up food and water and slowly, while spending the time in deep meditation and japa, finally leaves the body. Do not confuse this with suicide. Suicide is a result of disturbance of mind but this kind of abandoning of the body in the Jaina tradition is a result of complete peacefulness of mind.

The third pillar of sadhana is

SILENCE

Like the other pillars silence also has many levels.

1. The principle of silence in practice is part of our proper cultural upbringing everywhere.

We are taught a certain amount of silence right from childhood when our parents tell us not to shout so loud or not to gossip about others. These are all parts of the principles of the practice of silence. In some matters we automatically keep silence. For example, certain things between conjugal partners, are kept silent. A wife is not supposed to bear witness against her husband, and vice versa, in a court of law. One does not have to break marital confidence. So often when we are surrounded by noise we long for silence. The principle of silence is extended to moral and ethical silence. You know somebody’s secret; you keep silent about it.

2. Every night we are forced to become silent for eight hours.

Sleep is an involuntary practice of silence.

3. The practice of silence can also be a part of the practice of patience.

For example, when someone is angry and you are patient with him and do not shout back. Here, silence becomes a part of forgiveness.

4. Silence concerning selective spiritual matters

For example, one does not tell one’s mantra to anyone; one is silent about it. The purpose of that silence is to absorb the mantra to oneself by retaining the energy that you would otherwise lose by speaking.

5. Silence about spiritual experiences

One does not speak to others about the spiritual experiences one has had unless you are a teacher and some reference to some spiritual experience will be helpful to a student. Make especially sure that you are not speaking of any spiritual experience out of ego to show off, “Oh look what great spiritual experiences I have.”  Just as husband and wife do not speak to others about certain matters between them, teachers and students and gurus and disciples do not speak of certain matters that are between them. The guru knows the secrets of your mind and keeps them concealed from others. Or the guru does not reveal prematurely anything about the future that he knows. He could sit down and tell every event that is going to take place in a disciple’s life, but he remains silent.

6. Silence is also appropriate in the relationships among disciples.

For example, you know that your spiritual preceptor scolded a fellow disciple. You keep silent about it. What passes between the preceptor and another disciple is between them; you have nothing to do with it. Another aspect of silence between the preceptor and the disciple, concerns the disciple growing more and more sensitive to silent communication on the part of the preceptor. It may be done in the form of actions done by the preceptor which indicate something to the student without the preceptor saying so in words. Or it may be one small gesture that gives a very detailed direction to the disciple who has become sensitive. And then there is teaching in silence without any action and without any expression in which direct knowledge is passed from the guru to the disciple’s mind.

7. Periods of time when you choose to be silent as a spiritual practice.

Whatever principles you apply to fasting you may apply to silence. Let us say that you have two hours in the house all to yourself and you decide to be silent. There is nobody to speak to so you say you have practiced silence. It’s like the story of a very religious man I read about a long ago. Three days a week he used to fast because of a religious conviction. He was very, very, very poor and he said, “I am so glad I am a religious man who fasts three days a week, otherwise I would have to starve.”  Starving is not fasting. So what is the difference between starving and fasting?  In one there is intention and in the other there is not the intention. Without the intention it becomes a suffering; with intention it becomes purification. It is the same with silence. When you begin your silence, even for one or two hours, you must do in your mind a sankalpa; you must express the intention, “I shall be silent.”  The mere silence of speech is no silence at all. Silence must be the silence of the mind. It must be a peacefulness of the mind. Also during that one or two hour period, what kind of silence are you practicing?  Are you turning on the television?  Then it is not silence. Pacifying the emotional turmoil, pacifying the conflicts of thought during that period is silence. Slowly you can deepen the practice of silence, not listening to a cassette, not  reading a book, not writing a letter. But also not sitting there and getting bored. Do something with your mind, practice contemplation or do your japa. Slowly you increase your period of silence. It may be half a day, a week, or longer or more frequently. And one thing to watch out for is that many people who are not used to the practice of silence do become emotional. If you are ambitious, then you can set yourself the goal: in three year’s time or five year’s time to take a forty-one day silence.

Silence is of two kinds.

a. One is called akara mauna where only the speech communication is suspended.

b. The other is called kastha mauna where there is a level of silence in which one expresses nothing, even with the eyes or hand gestures.

Then there is also a different division of two kinds of silence.

a. Maintaining silence of speech is one level.

b. The other level is that in which you practice the silence of the mind without having to practice the silence of speech. This is the most difficult kind of silence. In this practice of silence the mind is kept silent and only a very small part of the mind is used for speaking. A meditation teacher needs to be a master of this kind of silence. It is with this kind of silence that one can run organizations, one can sit in board meetings, and one can do all of one’s activities and still be silent. You also need this kind of silence when you are confronted with the negative emotions of others. You can even protest and express anger if necessary while maintaining silence of this kind.

There is a word in Hindi, kiriya. It is used when someone swears by some thing. It is short for saccha kiriya, that is an “act of truth.”  An act of truth is performed by using the accumulated power of some form of secret you have kept for a long time. There are many stories about such “acts of truth.”  Here is one of those stories.

It is said that emperor Ashoka, in the 3rd century BC, was standing by the river Ganges (Ganga) near his capital. In the history of India Ashoka is well known as the most noble king.  Being an emperor Ashoka could naturally follow whatever whim he wished. So he said to his ministers, “I wonder if it is possible for anyone to make the river flow back towards the mountains!”  The ministers, not wanting to offend the emperor, very gently told him, “Sir, many things are possible but perhaps this is not one of them.”  A courtesan was passing by. She said, “You are all wise ministers, and who am I to speak in the presence of a great emperor, but may I have permission to speak please?”  So, she was granted permission. She said, “Even someone as lowly as myself can make the river flow backwards.”  They asked her to demonstrate. She stood there, closed her eyes and did a saccha kiriya, an act of truth. And the emperor saw that, indeed, the river was flowing backwards towards the mountains. “That is enough,” he said, “Let the river flow naturally.”  And she let the river flow. The king and his wise men asked her what her secret was. How could a prostitute have such power?  She said “When I was younger and circumstances led me into this kind of life, I said to myself that there is very little good I can do in this life to raise myself, but I must do something. So I made one vow to myself, that though I lead the life of a prostitute, whether a prince comes to me or a leper comes to me, in mind and body I will treat them absolutely equally. And I have kept to that secret truth in my life. I have not let it out to this day. It is by the power of this truth that I have been able to make the river flow backwards. However, for this kind of power you must keep your truth a secret.”

Now we come to the very difficult topic of

CELIBACY

There is a whole detailed art and science of celibacy. This is the most difficult practice for modern people. Celibacy is in the same category as stillness and fasting. It is a kind of silence. It is a silencing of one’s senses because sexual activity is an activity in which the five active and five cognitive senses and the mind, all eleven, are totally absorbed at the same time.

So whereas fasting and silence are partial practices, celibacy is the totality of fasting, silence and stillness.

The tradition of celibacy is found in all the religious and cultural traditions of the world. Unfortunately I find in the western world that the poor Catholic nuns and monks are not taught the reason for it. Nor are they taught the fine art and science of the practice of celibacy.

1. One form of the practice of celibacy is marriage.

Being celibate in relation to all men and women except the married partner is a form of celibacy. In India it is still the common rule that eighty percent of men and women have had no sexual experience before marriage. So that when they take the vows of renunciation it is much easier for them. There is no point in fasting or keeping silence while your other senses remain restless. By mutual agreement a husband and wife can set aside one day of the week for prayer and rise above the flesh. Further, because marriage is an initiation and sacrament, for the first three nights after the wedding the bride and bridegroom in India always remain celibate in preparation for the sacred life ahead. The marriage is not based on rushing into the relationship of flesh but is understood as something deeply spiritual.

Again just as with silence and fasting, so with continence within marriage, go slowly. I have seen people thinking that celibacy is an essential part of spiritual progress, so they suddenly become celibate within marriage, and then boast about their accomplishment. But this only creates immense tension in both partners. Be moderate about it. Reduce the frequency and thereby increase the intensity of love. In this way you can appreciate the other partner beyond the physical appearance. There are many other subtler things for husbands and wives to enjoy in each other. In deciding to set aside a day of celibacy, just like a day of fasting or of silence, where the two sit in silence together, the richness of that nonphysical silence will be such that you will realize what the spiritual union of two persons means. You may choose to slowly increase the frequency and duration of such stillness, silence, fasting, and celibacy.

2. In India it is customary to refrain from sexual activity at least one night or three nights before any sacraments or during sacred days.

For example, the parents giving away their daughter as a bride is a sacrament. They maintain celibacy on the previous night and fast on that day. Only after the bride has been given away do they break the fast.

In the traditions of India we have four stages of life.

The first stage is brahmacharya, the period of the celibate student seeking spiritual and secular knowledge.

The second stage is grihastha, the stage of householder in which you practice celibacy by exclusion. One gives oneself as a gift exclusively to the person one loves.

The third stage is known as vanaprastha or the forest dweller. People who take the vows of this forest dweller stage, may stay right at home, but the husband and wife thereafter become friends rather than marriage partners. They agree to devote the rest of their lives together to finding God. Let God and the spiritual Guide be the link between us. Let our human love rise to the level of divine love. In ancient times those who took such a vow initially slept with a stick between them. It is a more difficult period of life spiritually than the period of renunciation. One may fail, one may succeed, one may fail again, and then may succeed more and more often. When my Master advised me to take the vow of vanaprastha he said, “Sex is just a habit and like any habit it can be changed” . So vanaprastha, the forest dweller stage is the stage when husband and wife spend time together in prayer, in sadhana, in spiritual practices, encourage each other, help and guide each other and share God between them.

The fourth stage which a very few rare ones reach is the state of renunciation, sanyasa, when stillness, silence, fasting, and celibacy all come together and become natural.

Once upon a time there was a king. The king had a brother. The brother had left the kingdom long ago to go and become an ascetic. Having received blessings and powers through his tapasya he returned and lived on the other side of the river from the royal palace. He lived in a mud hut as an ascetic, as a sadhu.

The king’s wife became pregnant. Now, in India there is a tradition that a pregnant woman should spend her time in spiritual pursuit, so that a spiritually awakened child is born. And there are certain practices, certain things the woman does during pregnancy, which the family helps to make possible. The king’s wife had the strong desire to sit at the feet of her husband’s brother the saint. She expressed this desire to her husband. “Oh yes,” he said, “go tomorrow and spend the day with my brother on the other side of the river.”  The tradition is that you never go to a holy man empty handed, you always bring him some gift, some fruit, some such offering. So in the morning before leaving, the king’s wife prepared some food and was ready to go. As she had to cross the river, she said to her husband, “Have you arranged a boat for me?”  He said, “What do you need the boat for?”  She said, “To get across.”  He said, “No, no you do not need the boat. Just go stand by the river and do a saccha kiriya, an act of truth.”  She said, “What act of truth?  I don’t have any powers.”  He said, “Take mine. Go, stand by the river, close your eyes and say in your mind, ‘Since my husband the king was initiated by his Master three years ago, if my husband has never broken his vow of celibacy, by the power of that truth, may the river part and let me go across dry’.”  “The king’s wife was very puzzled because she was carrying his child, but she went and stood by the river and made the act of truth. And right in front of her eyes the river parted and made way for her to cross. She could not understand it.

She went to the sadhu, served him, received his teachings, fed him the food she had prepared and in the evening it was time for her to return to the palace. But again she had no way to cross the river. The sadhu said, “Do a saccha kiriya, an act of truth. Stand by the river, close your eyes and say in your mind, ‘If the sadhu, the master whom I have served this day, has never since his initiation by his Master broken his fast, may the river part and let me go across’.”  The king’s wife was again puzzled because she had been feeding him the whole day. But she went to the river and did the act of truth and, for the second time, the river parted and she went across. Now, really confused, she went to her husband and asked, “What is going on?  I am carrying your child and you make me swear by your three-year celibacy. I fed the sadhu, your brother, the whole day and he makes me swear by his fast.”  Then the king, who was also a wise man, explained, “Lady, mind is a vast force. If in one little corner of the ocean there is some small amount of dirt, the rest of the ocean is still clean and pure. Mind is even vaster and deeper than the entire ocean. Others live by only that little part of the mind which is active. They see only that part of the ocean, that tiny corner where there is some dirt. So to them the mind has no fasting and the mind contains no celibacy because they have been breaking the vows. For them, that little portion of the sea being dirty, the whole sea is dirty. Those who are on the path to enlightenment know the rest, the vast expanse, of the mind. And with that awareness the little indulgence in marital duties or the little eating in the day does not break their celibacy and does not break their fast. Myself and my brother, I as a king and he as an ascetic, have understood this and in the major portion of our minds we are always celibate, always fasting, always silent.”

The fifth pillar of sadhana is

CONQUEST OF SLEEP

Why is the conquest of sleep necessary?  For one thing, if you could sleep two hours less, how much more you could do. But more than that the conquest of sleep is conquest of the second state of mind out of the five that I have mentioned in the commentary on the Yoga Sutras. The conquest of sleep is to overcome the state of stupor, the state of tamas. The conquest of sleep cannot occur without purification of emotions. Swami Rama said that no one sleeps more than three and half hours. The rest of the time we dream. Dreaming is a disease because we dream to deal with suppressed emotions. If we purify our emotions we need less and less time to dream and are enabled to experience more of the sattvic sleep. In less time you achieve a deeper rest and you wake up in a joyful state of mind. But be moderate. Just as with the other pillars of sadhana, reduce your sleeping hours slowly, otherwise you can drive yourself crazy. In the process of trying to get rid of the disease of dreaming, you can end up with diseases that arise from deprivation of sleep. So, reduce your sleeping time by 15 minutes at a time. Spend those 15 minutes in shavasana practices or meditation before going to sleep at night. Then you have calmed your emotions and you will not feel as if you have slept 15 minutes less. Slowly go to half an hour. As your emotions purify and as the shavasana practices leading to yoga-nidra intensify, your need for actual sleep will become less and less.

Twenty years ago when my Master used to tell me that I should not need to sleep more than three and a half hours, I used to wonder how it would be possible!  Now I seldom sleep more than three-and-a-half hours. I do sometimes because of physical illness, but otherwise three-and-a-half hours is enough. If you have the right kind of mind when falling asleep you will wake up with the right kind of mind, because a certain level of mind remains active underneath the blanket of sleep. And just where your mind left off before falling asleep, that is where it picks up as you wake. Over the last fifteen years I have developed a habit that (even if I sleep for two hours) when I wake, I get into the shavasana position and wake up through yoga-nidra. Then I am alert and joyful.

This is not a practice of suffering a deprivation, but a practice of the subtle art of life. I learn languages in the time that I am falling asleep and when I am waking up. My inspirations, my poetry, my lectures come at that time. My answers to problems and my decisions come at that time. These benefits come about because the time while falling asleep and the time of trying to wake up is not wasted. Few techniques for conquering sleep have been devised anywhere, in any other path. However, there are the following instances. In India, it is common to do jagaran, in the Punjab known as jagrata, the all night vigil of worship to one’s favorite deity or the listening to sacred scriptures. In the Christian tradition there are matins, morning prayers at four or five in the morning. In the monasteries one can hear the recitation of prayers at that time. The morning mass is one of the most sacred and in strongly Catholic societies one sees people going to the church washed and clean at that early hour. For the injunction of the namaz five times a day in Islam the most sacred, the most important one, is at 4 a.m. Similarly in the Indian tradition, brahma muhurta, from 3 to 4:30 a.m. is the most sacred and is the time one should get up and do one’s prayers. In the Bhagavad Gita Krishna repeatedly calls Arjuna Gudakesha, lord of sleep, because it is known that when the lower three states of consciousness, wakefulness, dream, and sleep have been mastered only then samadhi ensues. Again and again Krishna seems to remind Arjuna, “Now that you have conquered the third state of consciousness, sleep, you are ready for the teaching I am about to impart.”  These are examples of partial conquest of sleep similar to those of partial fasting, partial silence, certain nights of celibacy, and partial stillness.

There are other pillars of sadhana besides these five, such as the progression of japa, relaxation, concentration, contemplation, meditation; but that is another direction of sadhana. Yet another channel of sadhana is the practice of purifying one’s emotions, so that you can practice principles like non-violence.

All of the five pillars of sadhana are supportive of each other. If you practice only one, your practice is incomplete. They all should be balanced with each other. On the other hand if you perfect one, the others will also be perfected.

2008 Guru Purnima Message

Posted on by Divya - Administrator

I pray to the divinity in you.

We offer our worship to the Guru of all Gurus, the teacher of all teachers, the perennial, the eternal Guru, the formless, the transcendent One.
We offer our worship to hiranyagarbha, the Guru, the teaching spirit of the universe whose body this universe is. To hiranyagarbha, the golden womb, the teaching spirit of the universe whose body this universe is.
We offer our worship to the manasi-srishti, the mind creation, the first Gurus whose bodies consist only of mind, who are the mantreshwaras, the lords of the mantras, embodying the entire cosmic mystical sound -the background Om in all sounds and in lights of which we are but particles of the mantric light and sound.
We pay homage to Brahma-rishis, deva-rishis, the rishis, the sages, the seers of the celestial realms and their decedents, the rishis of this Earth who brought their mind bodies into physical bodies, remained embodied for a time, and then went back to being the mind-beings and then
We pay homage to the entire lineage of all the Gurus begun and initiated by the rishis before the Orders of human history — the entire chain whose numbers are not countable in millenniums, centuries, years;
Yet, who, dwelling in their mind-bodies continue to touch our minds so that there arises in us from time to time an aspiration to ascend, and
By whose grace we are brought to the particles of light and sound which becomes our sacred linkage to these sources of our initiation —
—-who send forth the mantras,
—-who make the mantra rise and whirl in our minds by their secret, sacred mind presence.
Unto them we pay homage and to the last of our lineage, to our Gurudev.
We undertake a pilgrimage to visit them in their cave, the cave of our heart where we perform worship to them.
2008 Guru Purnima Message
Swami Veda Bharati
The Meditation Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA

THE ENERGY THAT HEALS

Posted on by ahymsin

OM! —
aprayante mamangani
vak prana shaksho shotra mato makam
indriyani te sarvami
sarvam Brahmo Upanishadam
ma ham Brahma nirakuriyam
ma ma Brahman nirakarot
anirakaramastu anirakaranamastu
yasman irate yo Upanishad su dharma
se mayu sanchute mayu Shantih OM!

The Energy That Heals: I am.
From within you also there arises a voice which is wordless but proclaims,
“I am. I who am the Energy.
I who am the Shakti of all universes, of all comoses, of all sentiences.
I am the Beloved Consort of the Lord.
I am That.”OM! —
aprayante mamangani
vak prana shaksho shotra mato makam
indriyani te sarvami
sarvam Brahmo Upanishadam
ma ham Brahma nirakuriyam
ma ma Brahman nirakarot
anirakaramastu anirakaranamastu
yasman irate yo Upanishad su dharma
se mayu sanchute mayu Shantih OM!

The Energy That Heals: I am.
From within you also there arises a voice which is wordless but proclaims,
“I am. I who am the Energy.
I who am the Shakti of all universes, of all comoses, of all sentiences.
I am the Beloved Consort of the Lord.
I am That.”

This Energy is not apart from any other being. This Energy is not divided into parts, particles or moments. This Energy is not divisible in time and spaces. This Energy is not a measurable. I am That. A voice within you wordlessly, nonverbally, non-vocally calls and says, “Listen to That which I am.” This Energy cannot be understood by sentient beings. This Energy can only be grasped by Pure Sentience alone. This Energy cannot be understood by sentient beings. This Energy can only be grasped by Pure Sentience alone. This Energy cannot be understood by the application of intelligence. This Energy can only descend into the very intelligence which is a form, function, operation of this very Energy, like lightning which has expanded, expanded, expanded to cover, to fill, to fulfill, to permeate all spaces, bending down to kiss the forehead of a mountain – the Energy that is Sentience, the Energy that is Intelligence, the Energy which is the Force of the Ocean in which all forms and worlds are as so many islands.

This Energy, traveling through space, traveling through a non-dimensional space, traveling through the inner space of consciousness – vibrant in chid-akash in the inner space of consciousness, this very Energy makes a sound. It is the Light that makes the Sound traveling through space, the Sound that is not heard by the ears of any sentient beings, the Sound which is the very Sentience itself. This is the very Sound, the Vibration that is the very Sentience itself that is Eternal Knowledge, the Knowledge of all Revelation.

As this Sound travels through space, as this Sound travels through the innermost recesses of our inner space, this very Sound creates a Light, like lightning, and this lightning touches your very being and you become a person, you become alive. That very One that descended into you now begins to ascent through you. Only that One which has come down can go upward, so there appears to be, to have been created a dichotomy of an upward and a downward movement of Energy. As this Energy called the Sentience, the Pure Intelligence, touches the very spine of your being, as Its Lightning strikes the Central Mountain of the universe, called the human spine, then there arise, there appear many colors, many plexuses, many Petals, Lotuses and Flowers of many hues, many fragrances and many forms. They are formed within you. You become a complex combination. You become a complex Bouquet of arrangements of Flowers – Flowers of Energy, Flowers whose each Petal is an outward flow of Energy. The Flowers whose fragrances within you fill you, heal you, give you thoughts that are worthy of being thought.

When this Energy descends, it comes right down the spine to the very base, and from there It returns and begins Its journey upward as though a Pure White Light rises from within your perineum. All the gates of the senses are then closed, all the places in your personality from which you discharge and dissipate your energy are then closed, withdrawn, for the inward gates open as though an Energy called Pure White Light begins to rise.

All desires subside. Even a single moment of the subsiding of all desires, even a single moment of the subsiding of all cravings like this forthcoming moment – now . . . . A single moment of the subsiding all cravings and all desires is greater than the emperorship of a million worlds a million times over for the duration of a million times eternity, for all those eternities and all of those worlds and their energies are gathered together into this one single moment, free of conflicts that create the splitting, the splits that are then healed by the Energy, desireless, rising within you, creating an all-encompassing field so that all the warps of your prana, all the weak spots of your mind, all the weak portions of your vitality may be strengthened.

Wherever a hollow has appeared, may that hollow be filled by the Waters of Energy flowing and evening everything out. This Energy, as it ascends within you, rises, creating whirls, creating pools, creating Lotuses, creating Flowers and Lilies of many colors, many fragrances and many hues. As though a Red Flame appears in your Navel Center of Consciousness so that all that is of matter maybe spiritualized – all that is of the non-Self, imbibed into yourself through the power of digestion imparted by this Energy, may be imbued by that Life which you are, and you may be filled and you may be fulfilled and need no more food thereafter but that which is given to you spiritually.

The Energy that Heals rises and becomes a Pure White Flame. The Energy that Heals ascends and becomes a Pure White Flame in your Heart Center; and there all the wounds of emotions are healed, all the hurt sentiments – no longer pain, no longer a cause of suffering, for there appears only a single, sublime serene sentiment. A settling down occurs in your Heart, as in this forthcoming moment, now. All matters of the Heart settles, and only a sense of serenity, only a sublime Sentience remains – a Pure Silence filled with a White Flame of Light . . . .

You who are the very Energy ascend through this complex system. You come to the organs of communication as though a patch of the Clear Blue Sky appears where your throat had been. A patch of the Clear Blue Sky appears where your vocal cords had been. Slowly at this point the yogi experiences as though the presence of a Full Moon without any blemishes. And all whirls become filled with the true peacefulness of that moonlike luminosity and quietness, and thereafter you convey no more wounds, only the healing words.

Your Sentience, your Intelligence, the Power that the Energy that you are continues its pilgrimage, climbing the mountain upon mountain, climbing plateau upon plateau till it comes to that spot where in the Third Eye there is a flame of crystal-like purity between your brows. And here in this flame of crystal-like purity all of your past karma is dissolved. That Energy, which had become the colors of the universe, that Energy that passed through the diamonds of the mind, that Energy which has shown brilliant in ornaments of gold, that Energy whose formations and whirls have taken the form of oh, so many petals of your chakras, the centers of consciousness here dwells in absolute purity. It becomes that crystal. It becomes that flame of crystalline purity in which no more colors reflect. And here once again – the union of that Shakti which has taken a journey through the entire universe as light and sound and kundalini and had entered you, descending, and now has started out on Its upward ascent, in Its pilgrimage here again, again, and beyond this point, meets that consort, the Lord who again says, “I Am That I Am,” beyond space, beyond forms. Cherish that you are this Energy. Know that you are this Power. Realize that you are this Self – Atman the Self without blemish, without impurities, without bondage, without suffering. You are That. But then you cease your awareness of being That. Then you bind yourself – Alas! – to the world of mere form, and then you say, erroneously, “I am a body.” “I am male.” “I am female.” “I am short.” “I am tall.” “I am fair.” “I am dark.” “I am ill.” “I am well.” None of these! You who are the honey drops in the lily, you who are the honey drop in the rose. You who are the honey drop in the jasmine and in the marigold. In the honey comb of the Great Gatherer, You are not of the rose, not of the lily, not of the jasmine, not of the marigold.

You who have said, “I am of this river. I am of another river in the Great Ocean of Expansive Universal Energy. You are no longer of this river of the body, nor of the river of another incarnation, for You are one with that entire Ocean.

You are That whose sap flows at the bottom of the tree, in the middle of the tree, and in the top of the tree. And when the Life-force leaves the twigs, the twig withers, dries up and falls off, but the Life-force continues to be in the branches. The Energy continues to provide the sap. When the Energy is withdrawn from the branch, the branch withers, dries up, dies, falls off. But the Energy provides the sap to the rest of the Tree. Even though the tree may whither because the Energy has been withdrawn, the Energy continues in the universe. So the Sentience withdrawn from this mere world of evanescent forms, continues.

You Are That. Tat Tvam Asi, That Thou Art. All life to which your eyes are attracted, the lights that are in the eyes, You are that Energy. All the beautiful Sounds that musical instruments create and the very sound that is heard in the ears, and that with which the ears hear, also is that Energy. Know That. That Thou Art. You are That. You are that Self. You are that Pure Being.

When that Pure Being is known, there is no more fear. When that Pure Being is known, there is no more otherness. When that Pure Being is known, there is no other. When you and I are permeated by this Vast Expanse, we become as pearls in a chain of pearls. The thread that passes through the universe, that thread in which all the planets and all the worlds are as so many beads in a necklace around the Lord’s neck, so in the One also all our heads and all our skulls are as pearls, as beads through which that one Sutra, that one Thread of Life-force, that one Thread of Sentience, that one thread of Intelligence passes. When this is known, there is no more separation, there are no more lesions, there are no more wounds. Then you know you are that Energy which heals.

I wish that healing, the healing of the Ascendant Energy, I wish you that healing, the healing of the realized Sentience. I wish you the Healing of that Intelligence which is filled in a moment, in an instant, filled by all the eternities, a million times over, that Healing in which all desires, all cravings cease, and you are made absolutely still — absolutely still. I wish you that stillness through all your movements. God Bless You.

There is time for questions.

Question: How much would that Energy Heal? Would that Energy heal disease?

Answer: When that Energy is realized as your own being, there is no more dis-ease. The dis-ease occurs because in that body with which you have identified yourself erroneously, falsely. But the Energy where of I speak is the One that is not wounded when the body is wounded, that is not burned when the body is burned, which is not wetted when the body is wetted, which is not young when the body is young, which is not an infant when the body is an infant, that is not a male when the body is a male, which is not a female when the body is a female. Of what disease do you speak? Of what death do you have fear? Whose death? The decomposition of the chemical components of the body – you fear that? Have you found any compound in the universe which shall never decompose back into its components? The Energy whereof I speak is not a composite. It is not made of many? Why would it then dissolve into many? When the Energy is realized, it is not that the Energy is within you, rather you are the Energy dwelling in that which had erroneously identified yourself. This is the message of Yoga: Self-realization, knowing Atman, the Self which dwells in this composite of elements which I am not. I have nothing to do with my face, nor with the clothes I wear. I have nothing to do with the shape of my shoulders, nor with the tenseness that occurs in that shoulder, nor with the pains that occurs in that wrist. Those are matters for the walls of the room in which I dwell. The door creaks. I do not creak.

Question: Is that Energy tapped only through meditation?

Answer: Tapped by whom? I am the Energy. Who is tapping whom? Why the otherness? Why do you not know Yourself? By whom is it tapped? By the $60 worth of chemicals in the body? I am the Energy. When I know this, some call that meditation. The irony is that you think that you have to enter a meditation and you have to come out of it. But the yogi neither enters meditation nor comes out of it, for he walks in the knowledge of his being: “I am this configuration of Energy. I am a configuration of Luminosity that has descended and permeated this composite body.” The body dissolves. The body suffers. I do not dissolve. I do not suffer. That being the case, with whose illness would you identify?

You are so concerned with healing the physical wounds of the body that you forget That which remains the unwounded. And when you know yourself to be That which remains the unwounded, the wounds of the body take their own course. You may infuse them with your Energy. You may send forth a little of that spark of your Self and say, “Go there; there seems to be a weak spot someplace.” And you send it in there, but that ceases to be your primary concern. It becomes coincidental.

I see people becoming ill and on account of that illness suffering a great deal of depression as though saying, “I am ill.” And this is the part that is very puzzling to the yogi because the yogi who knows him-Self to be the configuration of this Luminosity knows your-Self also to be the configuration of the same very Luminosity, and that all these Luminosities woven together into a single necklace, with a single Thread of Sentience and Life-force. And this Luminosity looks at the Luminosity and says, “What part of you did you say was ill? I see no signs of illness.” You say, “Oh, that, that component of the physical elements.” “Oh, I did not know that you were suffering from that illness which causes the illness of the body to be the illness of the soul — for that indeed is a contradiction in terms: illness of the Soul.”

Question: What is sentience?

Answer: What does the word “sentience” mean? What makes a sentient being? I suppose you might look up the word in the Oxford English Dictionary. There are only two ways to understand this word: either consult the OED or go into meditation.

Question: The yogi has acquired this [Higher Consciousness] by many, many years of practice. But I who sit to meditate am so far from this Reality. Would it be right to say, “I cease to be an actor and I simply withdraw and observe?”

Answer: This is a very beautiful question. First the yogi says, “I acquire nothing.” And if you understand this, you will be in that Luminous Stillness instantly, for the Spirit acquires nothing that is not of the Spirit already. It is not an addition. Energy adds nothing, and nothing is added to It. It is a constant Luminosity. Its Luminosity is constant, never-changing. The yogi says, “I acquire nothing.” And when you reach that point where you say, “I have acquired,” actually the word, the concept of acquisition ceases, for then you know you have never lost that which you thought you were acquiring. Meditation is that realization in which you simply come in touch with that Being which acquires nothing – for It lost nothing, and you simply remove that veil which you erroneously identified yourself.

Question: Why do we not know this to begin with? Who is it that does not know?

Answer: The Knower within us knows – and even that, as I said, is a contradiction in terms. But that which we erroneously call ourselves, within that person there is one Knower, and the other is the ignorant. The ignorant will never know. The Knower will never cease to know. The body will never know. The Spirit will never cease to know. When you know this, you no longer confuse the Knower with the ignorant. Within you, within that person which you consider to be your personality there is a Knower, which is the Energy I speak of which always knows Itself. Therefore It infuses the light in the eyes and you see, or It withdraws from the eyes and you do not see. It moves to the heart and so the heart beats. It withdraws from the heart and the heart ceases to beat. The heart may be ill or the heart may be well, but I, the Luminous Being is neither ill nor well. Never did I cease to know all this. And this I is also that One which is also not within you, but is That which is you. Only the red veil thinks that the Light passing through it is red; the Light behind the veil does not think it is red. Clear the curtain, and you are in that Light which is not red. This is the ultimate in meditation, and that why is why the topic of my presentation on Sunday morning is “Samadhi the Final Healing.”

Question: Is that then the basic duality of life?

Answer: You see the problem here is that you continue to talk as though you were riding in two boats simultaneously. What happens to the poor rider who has to keep one foot in one boat and the other foot in the other boat – one foot in the boat of the body and the other foot in the boat of the soul? He is torn. So what duality appears to be is simply this: This Light, this Life, this Luminosity, this sentient, aware, living Energy — the word “sentience” comprises both life and awareness together — this “I” who am the very Sentience, the Energy, the Luminosity and has the will to move others that are non-sentient, chooses to move this non-sentient body by Its presence. I am the magnet that magnetizes the needle. Nay, I am the magnetic force that magnetizes the needle. I being thus, I of this nature, ever so, eternally so, never changing, the unaltered state of consciousness that I am, alters the state of other things by my power. I alter the state of this body, so the body moves. I alter the state of this body, so the body closes its eyes. This power that I have given to this body, delegated to this body, delegated to the brain which is also part of the body. And before delegating it to the brain, I have delegated it to another field of energy called the mind – not to be confused with the brain-function. When I have given of Myself thus freely, generously, to this body, I have given it the capacity to say, “I am.”

And if you are sitting in the other room in which a loudspeaker says, “I am,” and you had never understood the function of a loudspeaker and had known nothing about the microphones and amplifiers, you would probably go to that loudspeaker and say, “My, this is a curious creature! From where does it speak?” So this body, deriving its voice from Me, says, “I am.” If the loudspeaker breaks and the voice does not need you, but have I ceased to speak? You open the door and come into this room and see me speaking. When the loudspeaker broke, my mouth did not break. But sooner or later one finds out that when the body fails, the speaker ceases to speak, but the true Speaker continues. I am That.

Question: What is it that pulls us away from ourselves?

Answer: I would rather ask the questions: What in us pulls us back into ourselves? What in us has brought us here? What in us says sometimes, “Come, be still and listen to Me?” Know That! When you know That, you will know the power of that One as superseding the power of this one that appears to pull us away from that One, and then you no longer have to ask this question. So, “Be still and know that I am God.”

(The session concludes with a brief point-to-point relaxation, then watching the breath in the nostrils and counting 1 to 5 and 5 to 1.)