Everyone sit straight. Try to make your posture as comfortable, as steady as possible, but keeping your spine straight. Sit in a posture from which you don’t have the need to shift and move too often. Sit with your head, neck and trunk straight, and bring your mind’s attention to where you are sitting. Withdraw your mind from all other places. Withdraw your mind from all other spaces, and become aware of the space that your body is occupying from head to toe. Become aware of yourself from head to toe. Withdraw your mind from all other times, from the memories of the past and from the anxieties of the future, and become aware of just this moment in time. Observe the passage of time, moment by moment. Observe your breathing. Observe where each breath begins, how it begins, how it flows. Observe how each breath ends. Observe how your next breath begins. Do nothing. Only observe the breath flowing. Observe the process of your breathing. Observe how your thoughts arise in your mind. Relax the thought of your thought, your brain center.
As I name your various limbs, bring your attention to the limb. Relax your forehead. Relax your eyebrows. Relax your eyes. Relax your nostrils, and exhale and inhale, slowly and smoothly. Bring your attention to your cheeks. Relax your cheeks. Relax your jaw and the corners of your mouth. Relax your chin. Relax your neck. Relax your shoulders. Let go of your shoulders more. Relax your upper arms. Relax your lower arms. Relax your hands. Relax your fingers. Relax your fingertips, and breathe as if your breath is flowing all the way down into your fingertips, and all your tensions are dripping off of the fingers. Breathe slowly and smoothly. Relax your fingertips. Relax your fingers. Relax your hands. Relax your lower arms. Relax your upper arms. Relax your shoulders. Relax your chest and your rib cage. Relax your cardiac center. Relax your cardiac center and breathe slowly and smoothly. Relax your stomach. Relax your navel. Relax your abdomen. Relax your thighs. Relax all the muscles of your thighs. Relax your calves. Relax your feet. Relax your toes, and breathe as if your breath is flowing in all the way down into your toes, and exhaling all the way through your body, as if your entire body is breathing. Relax your toes. Relax your feet. Relax your ankles. Relax your calf muscles. Relax your knees. Relax your thighs. Relax your thigh joints. Relax your pelvis. Relax your abdomen. Relax your navel. Relax your stomach. Relax your cardiac center. Relax your chest and your rib cage.
Relax your shoulders. Relax your shoulder joints. Relax your upper arms. Relax your lower arms. Relax your wrists. Relax your hands. Relax your fingers. Relax your fingertips. Relax your fingertips. Relax your fingers. Relax your hands. Relax your wrists. Relax your lower arms. Relax your elbows. Relax your upper arms. Relax your shoulder joints. Relax your shoulders. Relax your neck. Relax your chin. Relax your jaw and the corners of your mouth. Relax your cheeks. Relax your nostrils. Relax your eyes. Relax your eyebrows. Relax your forehead. Relax your brain center, and exhale and inhale, slowly and smoothly. Feel the touch of your breath in the nostrils. Feel where the breath is touching inside your nostrils, as you breathe out and as you breathe in. Let there be no break between your breaths. Breathe out and immediately breathe in, feeling the flow and the touch of your breath in the nostrils.
Keep your body relaxed. Relax your cardiac center again. Relax your shoulders. Relax your jaw. Relax your forehead. Continue to feel the flow of your breath in the nostrils, without a break.
Now, take the yoga word, “so ham”, which means “I am who I am”. Exhaling, think “ham.” Inhaling, think “so.” Keep feeling the breath in the nostril without a break and exhaling, think “ham.” Inhaling, think “so.” Let there be no pause between the breaths, no break in the mental repetition of “so” with the in breath, “ham” with the out breath. Without breaking the awareness of the breath in the nostrils, without ceasing the repetition of “so ham”, slowly open your eyes to your hands, remain relaxed in your entire body. God bless you.
Remain aware of the flow of the breath in the nostrils and maintain the touch and the thought of the word, “so ham,” and you may move your body as you wish.
Come a little closer, please. I would like to recommend for your practice two things between now and tomorrow, and also, from tomorrow until next week, Tuesday, when we meet again.
All of this, all kind of distortion of the body posture – “put your legs here, put your feet there” – I think is a little too much on the first day. On the other hand, the problem remains that, unless you can sit straight with your spine erect, you will have a great problem observing your breathing and coordinating your body, breath and mind, which is the first step in meditation. So, for now, I would recommend that you practice, or develop your practice at this stage with a smaller step. Don’t try too much about adjusting your legs in all sorts of distorted shapes, which will come later, perhaps, if you want to do it. Sit on a chair if you want to sit on a chair at home, or as was suggested, take a cushion and your hips on the cushion. Find a firm cushion, not a soft cushion – a soft cushion will not work – a very firm cushion, and then sit ordinary cross-legged, keeping the body straight. A body in meditation is always erect, and the spine is in that correct position. You can start sitting on a chair and slowly develop the posture on the ground.
The second thing that I would strongly recommend your trying to practice is this diaphragmatic or abdominal breathing. Observe my breath, I exhale from here. You can watch my stomach and I’ll inhale. First, the exhalation. Like this. Exhalation, inhalation from here. Do not think that nostrils are the chief apparatus of breathing. They’re not. They’re only tiny holes at the end of a long apparatus. So don’t breath, don’t pump. Don’t breathe from here. Breathe from here, the navel and diaphragm area. Push out the breath, pull in the breath there. And you can try this lying down, flat on the ground. You can try it standing up. You can try it sitting, in whatever way, observe your breathing. It’s the first requirement for good physical health, for a good constitution, and for an emotional balance. First requirement to establish an emotional balance in your life is proper, even and deep breath, and then first requirement, also, for the practice of meditation.
So posture erect back, breathing. That’s two.
Three: the relaxation. The relaxation that 1 led you through tonight was not exactly as I like to do it, because I like to do it in a very slow, very, very low voice. I didn’t have the things right with my system, microphone system, but I strongly recommend that you obtain one of the discs, records we have here available. You play it twice a day and practice the relaxation from that until you have mastered it and then you will not need the record anymore and you will do it on your own.
Also, you can begin the reading. The first two titles, the Lectures on Yoga by venerable Swami Rama of the Himalayas who is my guru, and the guru of this meditation center, and the second book, the Superconscious Meditation by a man named Usharbudh Arya. His last name is omitted here. I would strongly recommend your reading these two books to start with and then you can move on to the rest of the reading: Yoga Psychology by Swami Ajaya. At least, these three books and the record should be considered essential reading if you have the time to do so.
If you don’t have the time to do anything, do the relaxation and the breath awareness. Wherever you are. You are sitting here now. Bring your awareness of mind to the feel of your breath in your nostrils. Breathing out, breathing in. Without a break, without a pause. Now that is where we begin. This is only the very, very first step in the practice of meditation as it is taught here. And slowly, gradually, as you master one stage, then you are led on to the next stage. As you master the second stage, you are led on to the following stage. One thing I always say in the beginning of my courses is that this course never ends. It begins, but does not end. There are people here who have been studying for the last three years, four years, with me. They keep on. There’s no end to knowledge. And, as you will move on, you will find that more questions will arise. As your inquiry grows, more questions will arise. As more answers are received, the more questions will arise. But these questions are not questions of an intellectual type.
The questions that arise in your mind are questions relating to your own Self. Meditation we describe as a journey of the self, through the self, to the Self. A journey of the self, through the self, to the Self.
Most people lead a life in which their entire consciousness is outward flowing. You relate to that object, that object, that object over there. That person, that person, that person over there. I was just holding a class downstairs, my second course after the beginner’s course, and I said; “Most people are in this position.
They say, ‘Well, I am told there are seven people in this room. Well, one, two, three, four, five, six. Now where is the seventh? One, two, three, four, five, six.'” And they can’t [see] the seventh person. In all your life, in all your relationships, in all your activities, in your consciousness, in your awareness, in your actions and your reactions, there is this attitude. “There are seven people, I’m told. One, two three, four, five, six. Where is the seventh?” From the very childhood, in our system of training through the parents, through the schools, through our entire education, we are trained and we are taught about all the things around us, but nothing about ourselves. We have never been taught to observe ourselves. You are sitting here. How many people even are aware of the surfaces of their bodies? How often do you think you have a back? How often do you think you have toes in your feet? How often do you think you are breathing? How many times in your life have you really ever been aware of your process, the process of your breath. How many times in your life have you observed yourself thinking, “Here I am thinking. What am I thinking? How are these thoughts arising in your mind? From where are these thoughts arising in your mind. Why are they arising? Why am I thinking this instead of thinking that something else that might be more positive and more beneficial to my life?”
So, the process of meditation is a process of training yourself to turn a little inward. Looking at yourself and finding out: What am I? Am I a rock? Am I a mountain? Am I a river? Am I a stone? I am a human being. What does that exactly mean? What is the difference between a cat and being a human being? How do I observe myself and know myself? What are my potentials? What are the capacities in my mind? When I speak a word, when I say “I”? Now, you say this word in your mind. Say to yourself in your mind “I am”. Now, you don’t say it to anybody else. Say it to yourself. The question arises: Who is it that said “I am”? Did your mouth say “I am”? Did the mouth initiate that thought, that word, that action of speech? Most people think from this end. We hear somebody say “I am”, so we watch his mouth. But that’s not where the “I am” begins. Where does this “I am” begin? Even before the thought of the word “I” is initiated into your brain, who is it that is there, that says to the brain, “Create this electric storm that becomes the words, ‘I am!’” When you have this electric storm in your brain, “I am”, who is it that initiates that storm, who says “I am”? Who is it there even before the word “I” enters the brain? Whose consciousness, whose will, sends the idea into the mind, into the brain to say “I am”. Before you feel in the heart of your hearts, “I am”, you say to your husband, “Don’t you realize, I am something.” Before you say to your wife, “Don’t you understand something? I, too, am here.” Before that emotion comes surging into your heart and says “I am.” Where does that begin? Who says it? You say “I.” Show me the “I.” The dead man can’t show me that “I.” Where in you is that “I”? Meditation is a process of exploring and searching for this “I”, who I am, and that is why we begin with the first common mantra for many people, “so ham”, “I am that for which I’ve searched all my life,” When I look for light in a room, it is not the light outside that I look for. It is the projection of the light that is within me that I look for, and that is why I like light and not darkness. When I look for love, it is my own Self I am looking for. Find that Self and you depend on nobody else and on nothing else. Stand on your own two feet. All these dependences people have, constant need to depend, constant striving to find a leaning post, making your girlfriend your leaning post, making your boyfriend your leaning post, and when the leaning post is withdrawn, dropping down to the bottom of depression. That is not the way of a person of meditation.
What I’m trying to say is that you are, at the moment, as you know, tossed around in a storm. From morning to night, your life is a storm. You find no mooring. Constant uncertainty. Uncertainty about persons. Uncertainty about yourself. Uncertainty as to what you actually identify with. Constant searching, but not knowing for what you are searching, because the moment you are searching for something, you’re searching for something, the moment you find it, you abandon the search and you start searching for something else, don’t you?
Your search, your desire, is never fulfilled. The moment the object of desire comes in your hand, you have no more desire for it. You have desire for something else. You look, you see a beautiful dress in a shop window, and say, “Oh, I think, I’ve got to borrow some money or I’ve got to steal something. I’ve got to have that dress.” So you burn with that desire. You burn with that craving. All suffering in life is craving and expectation, both of which end in frustration. Craving and expectation. Both of them end in frustration. You go. You find that dress. First day you put it on. Second day it’s an old thing. You have no more desire for it. The intensity is gone. Because the human desire can never be satisfied. There’s no end to human desire. You have a good meal in the best restaurant in town, and you stuff yourself with pies and order one after another of the courses. The moment you are filled, immediately, the process of the emptying of the stomach begins. The desire begins to build up again. In another few hours, you are exactly as hungry as you were five hours ago, six hours ago. You take your life’s problems. Ten years ago, you had a problem. Whatever the problem was, you had one problem, you had another problem, you had another problem. Whatever that problem was doesn’t matter, you said to yourself, “This is my greatest problem, if I could solve this problem, everything is going to be alright.” Right? “If I could overcome this problem, everything would be alright.” And now you don’t have that problem, not quite that one. That problem is gone, is everything alright? As soon as you climb that peak, as soon as that problem was solved, second problem begins. You forgot about the previous one now. “Oh, this is the problem. This, this is the problem. If I can solve this one, then everything is alright.” From day to day, from hour to hour, from day to day, from week to week, month to month, year to year, and I believe in reincarnation, from life span to life span, it is the same cycle.
Somewhere, somewhere along the line, you’ve got to learn to step off this whirling wheel. Step off. How do you step off? Your entire life is this stimulus-response. Stimulus-response. Stimulus-response. Your senses are tied down to the material world, because they, too, are made of matter. The like attracts like. The light in the eye, the light in the room. They must attract each other. The capacity to hear in the ear. The sound in the surroundings. They must attract each other. The senses must go outwards. But there is something inwards. Some people call it “a divine Self.” Some people call it “a super mind.” Some people call it “God.” Some people call it “Factor K.” Some people call it “the unknown in me.” Whatever it is, there is something inside you that calls. Otherwise, you won’t hear. It’s not The Meditation Center that called you. It’s something inside you that has called you. When you go to the church, it is not the church bells that call you. It is that someone inside you that calls you. When you go to a university library and take out a book about man and his nature, to understand what you are as a man, it is not the library nor the book that calls you. It is that one inside you that calls you.
In the storm in which you are living, there’s an eye in the storm. There’s a central being which is not buffeted by these winds, which is changeless among all these changes. Think of yourself as a tiny seed. The ovum, the sperm join together. How large? That is what you were, that is what I was. Think of yourself as a seven-month fetus. Can you imagine yourself as a seven-month fetus? What was your consciousness then? Can you go back? What was your awareness then? What was your desire then? To kick inside mother’s belly. Think of yourself as a three-year-old child, and a 15-year-old, and a 17-year-old, and a 50-year-old, and a 70-year-old, and all the way through. Through all of those changes, there’s one thing you have in common. You say “I am. I’m the same one.”
People ask me questions on reincarnation. Now, you don’t have to believe in reincarnation to practice meditation, but I’m just bringing it in as an illustration, you know, the ring around the bathtub is a proof of reincarnation. A part of your dead skin is scrubbed off every day in the bathtub, and new skin comes up. Every cell in your body, from the moment of your conception to this day, have been changing, changing, changing. You don’t have the same body.
Then who is it that says, “I am the same I”? Who is that unchanging, permanent something that says “I”? Meditation is a search for that “I.”
You would say, “I don’t want to withdraw from the world.” You say, “This world is a place of action. I would rather serve others than to start instituting an inquiry into the nature of myself. What is this escapism? What is this running away? Why should I look into myself?”
And my answer is: The most unselfish thing you can ever do in your life is to know Self. If you do not know your own self, you cannot know anybody else. If your own emotions are not in balance, you cannot bring happiness to anybody else. If you have not found in yourself where is the source of love and joy, you cannot give love and joy to others. All you will give is a demonstration of your ego. You will go and help the whole world and say, “What a great man I am. How unselfish of me to go and serve so many people. And nobody pays me any attention. Nobody thanks me.” It seems as you are working for thanks.
Ego is not self. Ego is the enemy of Self. In the meditative philosophy, drop the ego. Discover the Self. Drop the ego. Discover the Self. That is the only way that you can find your nature, and then you can find what your mission is in life.
What is ego? Ego is the false identity that you and I assume. We hear so much of identity crisis. Why? Because your identities have become dependent on things around you and not on yourself. Your identities have become dependent on things around you and not on yourself. You put on a red tie. You assume a particular identity. You put on a turtleneck dress. You have a different identity. You clip your hair short. You have one identity. You let your hair grow long. You have another identity. Identity is gained with combs and barber shops, and tailors. That is not your identity. Very cheap, very easy identity. Cut hair here. One identity. Grow hair here. Another identity. Very quick. And you stand before a mirror and say, “How beautiful I am.”
When you pass through a process of meditation, you will find that those things are not your identity. Things that are influences of the environment on you, on the surroundings on you, is not your identity, that there is something in here, in the space between your heart center and your eyebrow center, the seat of your emotions and the seat of your thoughts, somewhere from where your identity comes out. It is not something that is imposed. It is not something that is fed into you. It is something which you lend to your surroundings.
But how do you discover that one, unaffected, permanent, real Self? Meditation is a process through which you go from the grosser to the finer, from the outer to the inner.
Do you think you could give peace to your neighbor or to your family if you were not at peace? If you are an unselfish person, could you give peace to others if you were not at peace? First, make yourself at peace. And then, you will be able to give peace to others. And when that will happen, what they will give to you will be four times as much peace as you previously expected and never found from them.
Have you ever observed how your own tone of voice over the phone brings exact response. You call up somebody, say “Hello.” “Hello.” Or you call up somebody and say, “Hello!” “Hello!” Whatever sound you give out on the phone comes back to you from the other end. Do you notice that? Next time you call somebody and watch yourself say hello, and see what comes back to you. It will be exactly the same tone of voice.
The world is your mirror. The entire world, and all your relationships, are your mirror, and if your face is shining and clean, the face of your reflections is also clean.
Now, the meditation is a process of cleaning the face of your mind which is you. The philosophy of meditation says that you are primarily your mind. Can you show me anything else in yourself without the mind? What else are you? Take away the mind from it and you are a dancer. What is it? It is your mind that sends that motion. It is your mind that learns that motion. And whatever position a dancer is in, take away the mind. He will freeze right there, drop dead. What is it that tastes good food? Not your mouth. Your mind. What is it that loves? Not your hormones. Your mind. What is it that decides? Your mind. What is it that accepts or rejects, expects, fulfills, or is frustrated? Your mind. The history of mankind is the history of human mind. The tools that man has made have come from the imagination of somebody’s mind, and this mind you have forgotten. In your home, you have a place to feed your body. You have a place to bathe your body. You have a place to rest your body. Do you have a place in your home to feed your mind, except before the tube? Do you have a place to bathe your mind every day? Do you have a place to rest your mind? No. No wonder that there’s so much distraction, there’s so much storm, there’s so much frustration.
Meditation is a feeding of the mind, resting of the mind, washing of the mind. For 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes a day, rest your mind. Step off the whirling wheel of your problems, expectations and frustrations of the day. Step off. Step off and stop this constant, continuous stimulus and response. Something touches you. You react. Somebody looks at you. You react. Somebody in a room full of people, in a party, somebody at the other end of the hall whispers your name to somebody else and in all that noise, your ears perk up. You react.
When will you start acting? Moving from a center from within you. So long as your consciousness is tied to this object, that object, that person, that relationship, so long as your identification is with this short hair or long hair, your identification is with that chair or that chair in my office, you will not act. You are reacting to those things, and each time you react, you lose your touch with your own, inner, pure identity.
The teaching of yoga meditation, in spite of all this philosophy, is primarily a practice. Today was just an introduction to start you off, and I’m sure it raises more questions than it answers. But maybe, slowly, slowly, you will move towards more answers, too.
We speak of a pure Self. The language in which the teaching of yoga was passed on has been passed on in a master-discipline tradition for over 35 centuries. And, in a family tradition, I sat with my father for one hour of meditation every morning at the age of 4½. And it is passed on through a language called Sanskrit, which is the oldest surviving language of what we call the Indo-European language family. The texts and so on, very few of them are available in English, and those that are are not very reliable translations. But much more so than the texts, it is the oral tradition, direct contact, teachers and disciples, teachers and disciples, long line. What I learned from my father, he learned from his father. What I learned from my spiritual master, he learned from his spiritual master all the way back because it is something in which we sit together.
We have a rhythmic word, phrase, describing the nature of Self: Ever pure, ever wise, ever free by nature is your Self. I would like you to go tonight with this thought. Ever pure, ever wise, ever free. That is my Self. So ham. I am that.
And all else that is there is an accretion. It is an accumulation of all kinds of things coming into my mind from outside, and when I sit to meditate, I empty my mind completely so that that mind may be filled by something, someone deeper within, not by these empty, hollow things that keep coming into me through these holes called senses. You go and look for that source of great energy and strength and love and joy in there. It is not a religion, although I, personally, regard it as test of religion in some ways. If there is a God everywhere, then that God is within me. I want to find that one there.
Some people come to these classes here because they just want to relax, so some of the physical relaxation exercises and so on will help you. But you cannot really lead a relaxed life without a philosophy. Now when I use the phrase, “relaxed life,” you think of a life somewhere in Florida. What I mean is relaxed while you are behind a counter selling something. I mean relaxed when you are standing in a queue buying something. I mean relaxed when you are driving your car through a traffic jam. I mean relaxed when you are writing your examination and your paper. I mean relaxed when you are working 18 hours a day. Because in this storm, you’ll find an eye, a calm eye from where you act, from where you draw energy, from where you draw the power to keep yourself balanced. So when you are driving your car from here tonight, or you are waiting at a bus stop, do remember this, because the first word in our practice is “mindfulness, awareness, remembering.” And keep your body relaxed. You can say, “How is that possible? How can I be driving my car and keep my body relaxed? How can I be standing at a bus stop and keep my body relaxed?” It’s very simple.
Observe yourself. Be aware of your breathing. Just to start with that is not the last practice in meditation; that is not even the alphabet of meditation. That is just the letters A-B-C and D, perhaps. You will start from here.
You are sitting here, right? I am speaking. I should be more tense than you are. But I see here wrinkles on your foreheads; you don’t see any on mine. Because through the process of meditation, among other things I have learned to use only those faculties. When I’m speaking, I use only that part of my mind and only those muscles which are for speaking. Now, I don’t speak with my forehead nor do I hear with my forehead. Now why is it that my forehead should get wrinkled? I neither speak nor hear with my shoulders. Now, how is it that all the tension rises in my shoulders? And the speech goes on. See?
So you observe what you have, what you are doing, how your mind is functioning. Relax certain parts of your body and act from a depth within you.
You see, for example, my hand. Would you say now it’s as tense as possible, right? Okay. Now I’ll ask you. Lift my right hand. Watch my left hand, and you lift my right hand. Lift it again. Lift it and drop it. Lift it and drop it. Is there tension in my right hand? You can test me on an electro-biograph. You’ll find the same thing. So, when I’m saying remain relaxed behind your counter, I mean it. When I say remain relaxed in your office, I mean it. When you’re talking to your client or your patient or your doctor, relax. And slowly, gradually, you will deepen the practice.
Just starting out tonight, you can acquire one of those records and practice the relaxation exercise. Try it twice a day to start with. Play it on tonight and go to sleep with that. Start your day tomorrow morning with that. And then, tomorrow night, we’ll meet again and we’ll go a step further, both in practice and philosophy. Any questions for now?
Question. (inaudible)
Answer: Okay. There are two levels to your question. One is when my guru walks in, which is entirely different from when my wife walks in. When my wife walks in, I have all sorts of mixed emotions. All sorts of excitement. And when my guru walks in, that’s an entirely different kind of a relationship. Someday, if you… [come] around after this course and continue to study, which I hope some of you will, then I will talk to you what my relationship with my guru is. He is one person I love the most in my life and more than my love for him, he loves me. When my love reaches the same level he has for me, I will become a guru myself. I mean it. When you have the same love for Christ that Christ has for you, or if you are a Buddhist, if you have the same love for the Buddha that Buddha has for you, or if you’re an atheist, if you have the same love for superconscious mind as superconscious mind has for you, whatever terms you want to use, makes no difference. Then you become, at that moment, the superconscious mind. You become the Buddha. You become Christ-conscious. See? And he is one person I seldom miss. There is such a presence of spirit with me that……. I’m speaking to an unbelieving society. What can I say? No, his presence for me is a very calm spirit presence. There have been times……I’ll give you one example. There have been times when I talk to him. I speak to him on the phone almost every day because this organization, everything, takes its guidance from him, wherever he is. I say, “I have this question, and this question, and this question.” I used to do that a lot before. And he said, “Alright, alright. Write down all your questions. Make a list. Next time I’m here, I’m there, I’ll answer every one. Sit down. Okay?” And I say, “Alright, fine.” So I sit down and write all my questions meticulously. Write down. He would come. “Swami, my questions.” “Alright, tonight 10:00, huh?” So I go to my room. Tonight 10:00. I go. He says, “No, not tonight. Tomorrow.” So I go tomorrow. He says, “What is it?” “Swami, questions.” “Questions! your questions! Come tomorrow.” So, finally, I manage to sit down there. “Okay, now what are the questions?” I look at the questions. There are no questions! The questions are silly. I have the answer. A person who has reached a superconscious state…. in his presence, conflicts cannot remain. Sometimes he brings out your conflicts to show them to you, and helps you to harmonize them. That is the effect he has on me and on those who are his close disciples. So, it’s an entirely different thing, it is that stillness of Self in which I and he are one, in which I and you are one. Sometime later we’ll sit and meditate together and you’ll find, during that period of meditation, there are no thoughts, no questions. It’s a field of stillness shared by everyone here alike. Because in that stillness that is I – ever pure, ever wise, ever free, I and you in appearance are like two different bulbs of the same lamp. The electricity flowing through us is the same one. I am life force, and in saying this, I include you, this I, am life force.
Let’s close our eyes for a few minutes. Let go of your body. Observe every muscle in your body from head to toe. Let go of every muscle. Relax completely. Let go of your forehead, eyebrows, eyes, nostrils. Relax your cheeks. Relax your jaw. Relax your neck muscles. Relax your shoulders. Relax your shoulder even more. All the way down to your fingertips, relax your fingertips. Relax your hands. Relax your lower arms. Relax your upper arms. Relax your shoulders. Relax your chest. Relax your cardiac center. Relax your stomach, navel and abdomen, and all the other muscles of your body. And breathe slowly and gently, as if your breath is flowing all the way down into your toes, and back to the top of head, as if your entire body is breathing. Feel the flow of your breath in the nostrils. Breathe out, breathe in without a break between your breaths. As you breathe out, think “ham”. As you breathe in, think “so.” And keep feeling the breath in your nostrils without a break. Keep your cardiac center relaxed. Relax your shoulders, jaw and your mouth and keep feeling the flow of the breath in the nostrils, maintaining the same thought of the word “so ham.” Relax your forehead completely, and without breaking the awareness of your breathing, without breaking the thought of the word “so ham”, open your eyes. But remain aware of the feel of the breath and that word in your mind, and do so as often in the day as possible. Bring your attention to yourself and let go all your muscles.
As you drive, as you stand, do not waste your time. Remain aware of the breath, and God bless you.
Editor’s Note
This is a transcript of Nature of Personality by Pandit Usharbudh Arya, who became Swami Veda Bharati upon taking sanyas. It starts with a guided relaxation and then moves into the lecture.
Basic Relaxations and Nature of Personality by Swami Veda Bharati are available for purchase as downloads at cdbaby/Swami Veda Bharati
Also inquiries for these recordings can be made to Himalayan Yoga Publications Trust at info@yogapublications.org.
