MEDITATION IN DAILY LIFE Talk by Swami Kailasananda Florence, 3 April 2014

Transcription

1 MEDITATION IN DAILY LIFE Talk by Swami Kailasananda Florence, 3 April 2014 Yoga today... 1 Yoga for a healthy mind... 2 The need for a change... 3 Universality of yoga... 5 Yoga practices to connect to the energy body... 7 The need for meditation mental relaxation focus and clarity meaning The power of meditation Finding time Daily practice Yoga today I am sure you are aware of how very popular yoga has become in the world. Swami Vishnudevananda, our teacher who left his body already years ago, some years before he left his body told us that yoga will develop so much that we would not know how to handle the work at our centres, and we are reaching that point now! We have centres everywhere and it is amazing to see how people all over the world are looking for these teachings. When many people want something, it means that they have acknowledged that there is something which can help them, something they have a deep need for. If you really need something, you look for it, and there is such a need now. The beauty is that slowly, slowly people start understanding that yoga is more than just exercise. Some people still think that yoga is like fitness, which is also ok, - maybe a little less stress, a little more energy, less aches and pains, less back problems, sleeping a little better, improved digestion - but a lot of people also acknowledge that yoga does not only help us to feel good on the physical level.

2 They start to realise that it can do a lot more, it can help with another type of maintenance; there is body maintenance and there is mind maintenance and mind maintenance is a big programme! Yoga for a healthy mind Taking care of one s mind: is this something that we have any clue how to do? Is this something that we have any education for, to take care of the mind? Even if you go and study philosophy and psychology at the university, still you do not know how to take care of your own mind. Anybody has done this? I did it and it did not help. When you read an interesting book you say That was interesting, but that is it, not life- changing. You know the difference between the two? When something is life- changing it means that it gives you the energy to make changes in your life. How much energy does it take to make changes in one s life? A lot, a lot! Many things we know for a long time we should change; I know that for myself and after 30 years of yoga, there still are certain things I have not changed and I am still working on. We know how much energy and time it takes to break a pattern in our life, to break an addiction. Look with food. We are still working at it all of us, and it is only one thing! This is the way it is: it takes a lot of energy to change. As we practice yoga we realise that it does not just make our bodies feel a little better, but, actually, it helps us with mental hygiene. It helps us to feel better in our mind, which, according to the yogis, is the source of all problems, of all diseases. The issue is not just the imbalances in the physical body, but much more so the unhealthy patterns we have in our minds. Of many of them we are not even aware, maybe other people are. Are you not aware of the shortcomings of people around you? Very aware! But of your own? We cannot see them and if people tell us, we doubt it, we think others have a problem, not us! But as we practice more yoga we start to realise, that, really, certain things need to change. Of course we are going to avoid changing as long as we can, since this is what we want in life, not too much rocking of the boat, letting things as they are for as long as it goes. At some point it does not work anymore; you get sick or depressed, you just get so stuck in your life, in your relationships, in your work, stuck in everything and at this point you feel you really need some change.

3 In a way it is good to get stuck, unpleasant, but good! When you get stuck with your body, literally stuck, not able to get out of bed, when your back is stuck, it must mean something. Any disease affecting your body means that there is some corresponding block in the mind and in the emotions. Your body is talking to you all the time, it is telling you, Please adjust, please adjust! It is like when there is a red light flashing in your car; Swami Vishnu used to say that there is a very quick way to solve the problem: you open the glove compartment, you have a little hammer, and then Bummm! The problem is fixed! This is called taking the route of alcohol, sugar and then putting plaster on top of it so the problem is gone. But of course the problem is not gone. Then another light starts flashing, you do the same again, until you have broken everything and everything is under control, but of course nothing is under control! Yoga lets us use it the way we want to use it. You can keep it as a fitness practice, which is fine, but if you are ready to use it for what it is, it will also open its door to you and say: Take this treasure! There is a lot there that you can use. It is up to us how ready we are to make some changes, if we are not ready at all, let s just use it for a little flexibility, so we feel better in our spine, which is also fine. The need for a change Then you come to a point in your life when you realise that you are stuck and at the same time not only do you realise you are stuck, but you wish you were not stuck, you would like to go forward, you do not want your life to continue in the same way and you wonder whether you will die like this. Do I want my life to be like this all the time, or do I want, at the end of my life, to feel I did something right? I did not only survive, which is already very good, but from inside, I want to feel that I have grown, and learned something. Isn t it the best feeling? Nothing that you realise outside can give you as much joy as the feeling I have grown. Because even when you are 50 or 60 or 70 you can grow. Not so much in size, that is a little bit limited and usually it goes the other way. Even if you shrink physically you can expand mentally. And this is how it should go in life. As you get older you should not shrink mentally, you should expand mentally! Unfortunately this is not always the case. When people get old, if they do not work on themselves they do shrink. They shrink mentally, they do not become more loving or more compassionate, but often they become more bitter and

4 angry and at the end of their life they leave this body in no more wisdom and expansion and non- violence, but the reverse. So one has to ask oneself: How do I want to evolve in my life? Be aware, time is limited! If you are 20 you still have a lot of time! If you are 40, you still have time! If you are 50 it is still ok, but then when you reach 60 you realise, not so much time any more, I ll better do something now! According to yoga life is divided in different stages. The first 25 years of our lives are about learning, not just learning a job. Unfortunately now the whole focus is about learning a job that makes us a lot of money. In the classical system, education was not about learning how to make money and survive in the world, but it was a way to refine oneself. Yoga is about this, true education. For the next years, when you are between 25 and you are very active in the world, you have a job, a career, you have a family or no family, but in different ways you take responsibilities and give your contribution in the world. Then you come to that third phase, when you reach Now you realise that there should be a shift in your life. In the classical system of yoga this is the phase where you continue your education. You started during the first 25 years of your life, then you became too busy, you did not have enough time, you did a little bit, but when you have 3 kids at home and a job, how much time do you have? In yoga this third phase is called Vana Prastha, which literally means going to live in the forest. You do not have to live in the forest, you can stay in Florence, or wherever! Of course it would be nice, but it is not the most important thing. In your mind you go in the forest, in your mind you decide: Now this is a very important phase, it should be dedicated to learning, really learning what life is all about. It is not too late, one has to continue one s education and the refinement of the ego. It should not be allowed that the ego remains unaware, greedy and angry, as it can be if we do not work on ourselves. We realise that now is the time to work on ourselves so that this phase can become very rewarding, instead of being depressed as we watch our bodies wasting away. Unfortunately in most cases old age is no fun. Yesterday in Paris during satsang we read a letter from Swami Sivananda saying: How miserable is old age! The eyes do not see, the ears do not hear, we can hardly walk, no fun! You do not want to hear this, but then he says: It does not have to be like this! Even if the physical body is going into decline, there can still be some

5 contentment and peace within, and this can still be a very beautiful and fruitful period of your life. This is the idea. The fact is that everything we have done in our lives will come out at this time. Before then you can hide it, like all the food you have eaten; for a long time you can hide it, even if it has created a lot of problems. The body can manage it, it has a very good management plan for toxins, and maybe for 30 years it can handle it; but eventually it comes out, everything you ate, comes out, and you start to see it. What you ate, how you lead your life, what you thought in your life, when you are in this phase of life everything comes out and you cannot hide it anymore. It is the age of truth and it is good. At this point you have to make choices: either you do not want to see all this and you chose, say, to have plastic surgery, pretending old age is not there, and then you continue living in the same way until you die, that is one way. Alternatively, you decide that you have to make some healthy decisions, giving a new meaning to your life. It is not too late, it is never too late. Until you die you can make this decision, at least 5 minutes before you die! Let me make some changes now, I surrender now, nothing to loose, now I surrender, but if you can, it is better to make changes before. If not earlier at least in this third phase of your life you make the firm commitment that now you really want to work on yourself. Universality of Yoga Now yoga comes as a wonderful tool, it is not the only tool in the world, but it is an extraordinary tool. We say that the rishis, the sages of India, passed on this knowledge to us, but we do not know who gave it, and in a way it does not really matter, what matters is that now we have it. Those thousands- year- old techniques are still available now in the 21 st century. Many of them, the most subtle ones, we do not understand any more, because we are in an age called Kali Yuga where consciousness is not very high. I am sure you have noticed, it does not take much to notice what is happening in the world. All the violence we see is a sign that consciousness is low, that there is a lot of ignorance: when a human being hurts another human being that person is not realising he is doing this to himself. The effects of violence come straight back to him and the whole world is also hurt. We now are in an age where there is indeed a lot of ignorance and consciousness is not high at all. This is where we are, and you cannot say you wish you were

6 born in another time. It can actually be a good time too, because with a little bit of effort you have great rewards. Now the consciousness is not so high results come more quickly than in other times where the mind was higher. The tools of yoga have been given to us so we can use them for our own evolution, even if we are not able to understand some of the most subtle techniques. When you start reading books on yoga, you begin to think that you would like to go to the source. You would like to go to India, because the source of everything must be there. Although you may be disappointed because also India has its problems and life is not rosy at all there. However, what you immediately realise is that something is left there. Even though very few people are on their heads or do asana, you feel that something is left of that energy from the past when yoga was received and given to humanity. You feel it in the thought world. When you go to India, what is most striking are not the landscape and the culture, but the thought world, what people think. There is till a lot of faith and a lot of respect for God, a different sense of God, not something frozen in a picture somewhere, but something that is alive and you feel it. When you come back to the western world you realise how dead it is on that level; everything is much cleaner, showers are better, less environmental pollution, but much more mental pollution. This is what feel when you come back. We now have this gift of yoga and it is for the world, it is not and Indian cultural thing. This is the beauty of yoga: it is universal. Of course you can think that some aspects of its look cultural, like the divinities that remind you of Hinduism, but this not really the way it is. Divinities like Siva, Vishnu, are nothing but the energies of the chakras. Even if you put them in a temple as a statue, what that statue represents is the energy in the chakra; it is beyond culture because the Indian people are not the only ones to have chakras, we all have chakras. So it is not a cultural thing. The energy of Ganesha, the God with the elephant head, represents the energy of the Muladhara chakra, the last chakra in your body, which is where Ganesha resides. When you repeat the Ganesha s mantra Om Gam Ganapataye Namaha, you do not become a Hindu but you stimulate the Muladhara chakra. So yoga is completely beyond culture. Of course the Indians have externalised this practice and created a whole thing around it with many temples and rituals. If you do not connect to this you can leave it to them, but for your own knowledge you know that, really, this is an inner practice that has been externalised.

7 When you see priests doing pujas with all those offerings, you may think: What are they doing? Playing dolls? Dressing those statues? It does indeed all look so strange, but really prostrating to that Ganesha statue is just paying respect to the Ganesha inside of you and by doing this you balance the energy in your Muladhara chakra. Since the Muladhara chakra is the sense for security, this will help you to feel more secure within yourself. There is a lot of wisdom in all this, but it requires some knowledge of yoga, of the deep aspects of yoga to connect to it, otherwise you just see what you see and you have no clue of what it all means. It is good to know that it is beyond culture. Yoga practices to connect to the energy body In yoga, you might start with asanas, which can help with flexibility and strength. If you practice asanas for long enough, especially if you hold them, if you allow this practice to go a little deeper, beyond the physical exercise, and to inhabit the body from inside, you will discover that it is about something else. It is about experiencing the energy body. At the beginning, however, you do not experience that energy body at all and even if the teacher is full of inspiration and says: Feel the Prana flowing! you ask yourself what is he talking about because all you feel is your back being stuck and nothing is flowing at all! It takes a while before you start sensing that something like life energy exists. Making some adjustments to your diet and having food which is more calming and peaceful for the mind, will help you feel more this energy. If you adjust certain things in your lifestyle you will feel it more. This is when you will start to be more centred, self- centred in a good sense: not self- centred in a selfish sense, but centred within your heart. The need for meditation This is when you start to become attracted by a practice like meditation. Before this you may look at people who meditate wondering what are they doing sitting on a pillow, when so many more useful things could be done for the world. If there are people starving why should someone sit on a pillow? It does not make any sense. If you do not understand what meditation is about, looking at it from the outside it just looks very selfish. But if you have practiced asanas in the right way, at some point you may sense that there is something which can take you to the next level in your practice.

8 Many people do not know that asanas and meditation are part of the same system of yoga. They think that they are two separate worlds: there is the physical practice and then something like meditation, without knowing what is the connection between the two. They are both part of the classical system called royal path, Raja Yoga, consisting of 8 steps. Asanas are at the beginning and towards the end there is meditation. When properly understood, asanas are seen as a form of meditation with the body and prepare you for formal meditation, which by the way, is also an asana. Meditation is not something you do with your brain; actually you do not do it with your brain at all because if you do it with your brain it is not mediation, you just continue to think. First of all meditation is an asana. You have to start bringing yourself into your body, and most people are not in their bodies at all. They do not feel their bodies and are like a head without a body, so left- brain! Education in western society develops the left side of the brain and everything becomes very intellectual, almost as if we were like half a body. One develops a completely unilateral way of looking at life, without realising that this is just one way. The worst is that people think they know and understand because they wrote a PhD on this I wrote a PhD on meditation, I should know what it is!. But you can write 400 pages on meditation and still have no understanding of it, because it is not left- brain. It is something that you must feel within. So meditation first is an asana: you have to start being in your body, and you have to start feeling. Thinking less, feeling more. It is not our specialty. Thinking is our specialty, and not even thinking logically, most of the thinking is wild, it is like a jumping thing. Yogis say that our mind is like a crazy monkey. A monkey already is very restless, but if it is crazy, and if it is drunk, and if it has been bitten by a scorpion that is the mind. I do not think this is an exaggeration. Just try to sit for meditation, you will immediately see how the dance starts and you have to run after your mind all the time. Two minutes, no two seconds and it is gone! Quite amazing. This is when you realise that you have a problem: you cannot focus. Maybe you can focus enough on a job you know, but on everything else you completely lack focus and if you are not focussed you live on the surface of life and there is no deeper understanding of life.

9 There is such a need now for meditation and people realise why it is becoming popular. We have had a wave for asanas and now in the world there is a wave for meditation, many people want to learn how to meditate. We see it in our centres; we have had centres now for 50 years and at the beginning people where interested only in asanas. We were practicing meditation, but not many were interested. In the last 10 years, or maybe even more so in the last 5 years, more and more people come to our centres saying they want to practice meditation. The media increasingly talk about meditation and many doctors and people in the medical field are recommending meditation for depression and all kinds of mental disorders. Even if it is not seen from a spiritual prospective but just for health, in a way it does not matter, as long as people practice it. After practicing for a while they will discover what it really is. Whichever way you enter is fine, but the point is that now there is a real need for meditation and people realise that those techniques are available and can help them. The need is a need of what? It is a need of mental relaxation, a need of focus and clarity, and is a need of meaning, meaning of life, seeing the big picture, not being caught in very small understanding of life. What am I really doing here? Isn t it a daily question? Why are we here on this earth? Are we just supposed to survive and then to die? I survive and I make it somehow, maybe I leave some children behind, but then I die, it does not make much sense! There must be some greater purpose behind this: So the need for 1. Mental relaxation 2. Focus and clarity 3. Meaning 1. Mental relaxation Mental relaxation is very needed now, probably more than before because the modern world, as we know, is now into a whirlpool of acceleration and things are not becoming simpler and calmer. Things are getting faster and faster, almost spinning, mainly because of modern technology. Everything is so fast, we spend so much time with machines, computers, TV and the whole young generation is constantly on the Internet, playing games. All of this is accelerating the mind and creating a lot of tension.

10 We live in a culture where most of the time the nervous system is stimulated and bombarded with impressions and lot of tension is created. Sense impressions are not just something neutral which comes and goes. When you eat something you may think the work is over when the food reaches the stomach, but this is when the work starts for the body. The food is in your mouth only maybe for 10 seconds and then for 24 hours it is in the body. So we have to think twice before we eat, because for the body it is the beginning of the work. When you look at something, you look at images on a screen, TV, computer, those images are like food, for most of them more like junk food because the message is not exactly peaceful. Most of the images received are not of peaceful nature, except if you watch only documentaries on nature and flowers, but this is not what most TV programmes are about. Most of them are violent. There has been a lot of research done on the brain, which shows that whether you are watching something or if that thing is happening to you, the brain reacts in the same way. The same chemicals are produced and the same impressions are created in the brain. So for the brain there is no difference if you watch something on TV or if it happens on the street in front of you. When you watch violent movies try to ask yourself if you wanted any of those characters to be in your living room. O course you wouldn t! But the problem is, they are, and even worse than in your living room, they are in you! You know it because you dream about them at night, the next day you wake up and those things are still in the mind. This can have a considerable influence on your personality and in the case of children even more so because children have no discrimination. Now you see children killing one another and you wonder why this happens. But look at films, what they play is only about killing, so it looks normal. I would say that at least 7 out of 10 posters announcing films show somebody with a gun, as if a gun were the symbol of a hero. This is what kids see and it has a deep influence on their mind. In yoga we call this type of stimulation rajas, which means restlessness. When we become restless then we also become fearful and greedy. All of this has become the normal state of the mind: to be greedy, to be restless and this of course creates anger because the situation is very unpleasant. Then you become very impatient with other people and human relationships are going to suffer. There is no more time for compassion, no more time for mutual understanding, no more time to talk except to argue, no more time to speak

11 quietly. All this restlessness as well as the heavy culture we live in is exhausting for the nervous system. The nervous system is incredibly resilient and strong, but after too many years of abuse you pay the bill. You become mentally not well e this can lead you to a depression. Depression is not just sadness about life, depression is really exhaustion of the nervous system. Unfortunately nowadays it is cured with stimulants; this is really unbelievable. If you ask depressed people what do they need, most of them will say that they need rest. Something is completely finished in the nervous system and you are sad because you have no energy. When you have low life force how can you be optimistic about life? You cannot do anything. So you need rest, a lot of rest. You are building your prana very slowly so you do not need any stimulants. There should be a fast of stimulation when you are depressed, only peaceful stimulation, like nature, very peaceful music but not much more than this. The need for relaxation is indeed a major problem. Often the only relaxation we have, unless we practice yoga and meditation, is sleep. But in most cases people who are in a state of exhaustion cannot sleep any more. When you are too stimulated, when you are too active, you are exhausted, you lie down to sleep and you cannot sleep. Your mind is thinking, thinking, and you cannot let go. It becomes like an addiction. 2. Focus and clarity Restlessness is the consequence of the need for relaxation. When you are restless you cannot focus any more. And when you have important decisions to make in life, like we have often times, you need focus, you need to come to a clarity on what to do. But if you have no clarity you make haphazard decisions, based on whatever, somebody giving you an advice, or you going to see a clairvoyant to tell you what to do, or you just make emotional decisions and then you regret them because you complicate your life even more. So lack of clarity is the second problem. Life becomes more complicated because there is no clarity. 3. Meaning The third problem is meaning, one issue we d rather avoid all together. I have no space to think of meaning, at least if I feel a little better that is enough. Forget about meaning. But the question remains.

12 What is the deeper purpose of my life? Everybody wants to make a difference in life, What should my contribution be? I want to leave something positive behind. I do not want to leave the impression to the world that I just created a lot of unrest around me. I want to bring a contribution of peace and harmony so when I depart from this life I feel happy. Nobody is perfect, I made many mistakes but at least I learned and I leave a little bit of contribution of peace and harmony. This is how everybody wants to depart from this life. All of this together creates a state where indeed you do not feel well at all. In such cases, if one does not know a system like yoga and meditation the solution is usually found in food, or stimulants like coffee, alcohol, drugs or medications, which of course we know do not solve the problem. This is our culture, quite something, especially if you think how deep into this the young generation already is. For example, many kids are affected by attention deficit disorders and start taking medications at the age of 6 or 7, or even earlier. This phenomenon does not seem to be so bad in Europe, but in America it is like a fashion. With so many chemicals in your body at such a young age, you really wonder how the future of the world is going to be. Something has to happen so we come back to more healthy patterns. We have to do what we can and of course how do you start the change? You must start from yourself. We cannot change everybody around us; it has to be an inner decision. The power of meditation This is when you decide to start a practice like yoga and meditation. If you are already doing the asanas the next step is to establish the practice of meditation. Even if you are not searching for the ultimate truth, what the yogis call self- realisation, which may be too far away from your state, at least you do it for mental hygiene. You will feel a bit saner inside, a little bit more centred, clearer and more human. You will be able to express human qualities of compassion, understanding, tolerance and non- violence. Everyone wants to express this, everybody is talking about love, but who really has it? Not so easy. It requires so much work on yourself for anger to be slowly dissolved and for you to feel well in your body. If the body is unwell, if it is full of bad food and your mind is full of negative stimulations, how can we talk about love? It is just not possible. Love comes from a state where you feel harmony and balance on the physical and emotional level. Love is a way of living, not the romantic feeling of American

13 movies. Only if it is part of your way of life can you can express that love, otherwise it will only belong in books and movies. In reality we kill one another, or we hate one another, which is not very different, we argue all the time with one another and are not able to express human values. What I said might sound negative, but there must be some motivation, we must realise that meditation is needed, not just for ourselves, but really for the world. We cannot have a village mentality and think that our lives are ok and do not want to know what is happening around us. We are all on the same boat, we are a small space ship, our planet earth, and it is very small. So forget about your little village, or your little city; this is a little city, called planet earth and right now it is in bad shape because of us, because of one species only, because of us. We made the mess and we have to repair it and everyone has to give their contribution. You can say But what can I do? We are 9 billion people, if I start meditating, what difference will it make? It will! One human being focussing very positively has an incredible impact. We have to believe it. The power of a positive change is tremendous. That is why people like Buddha, Jesus and all the great saints of all traditions had such an impact. One person! One person changing millions because the light emanating from a pure mind and heart is tremendous, really tremendous, and we have to believe in this. You may say Well I am not Jesus, nor Buddha, but this is not the question. You must give your contribution and work on yourself. We all have a lot to work on but this is good. If before you were bored, from the moment you start working on yourself you cannot be bored anymore; you are going to be very busy, especially when you realise you do not have too many years left. Working on yourself is a big programme and you might fear you will not be able to complete it. This of course should not become a new form of stress. You realise you should not fall asleep and even if your life seems to be kind of ok and under control, you have to look beyond and realise we are all together in that space ship. We are spinning around the earth at something like 40 thousand miles an hour. If you look at the universe it is really like being on a very small space ship. We are all together on it and something can happen to humanity now where everybody can be wiped out, so we all have to do our share. If you want to give a good contribution to the world, start to meditate, it is probably the best thing you can do for the planet.

14 Going in the world with some red, blue or yellow flag and saying Let s do this, let s change that it is very limited. You can actually create so many waves, which are not peaceful at all. I am not saying that it is not good to try to do some things out there; it is good! But the most important thing is the mental state with which you do it. Many talks of peace come from people who are actually creating more mess than good. This is because they come out of greed and not out of peaceful intentions. One person meditating anywhere in the world with peaceful intention will do more than all these big talks of peace. You have to have faith in this; if I do my little bit, I wake up in the morning, I sit on my pillow and I try to calm my mind, I am really contributing to world peace. This is very true. Of course you can do other things, but meditation is a very, very important practice. Finding time for daily practice One has to decide to start something else. Asanas were already giving us a lot of benefits, but now we want to move on to the next step. We could be starting a meditation practice as well as adjusting our food habits. It is important to look at the food we eat and try to make it even more peaceful and healthy, very slowly, nothing drastic, improving one thing at a time. Nothing that should hurt you and make you feel it is too hard. Any change should be introduced very slowly. Regarding meditation, the first decision should be to find time for it in our busy daily schedules. You may think you have no time but, really, if you have not time for this you have no time to live. If you have time for 2 hours of TV in the evening, then you have time for meditation. You just have to shift your schedule a little bit so you make the time. It is out of self- respect that everyone should give themselves, I would say, one hour a day for this practice. Not necessarily sitting for one hour; you can also include other practices like asana for example. You should decide that out of the hours you are awake, one hour should be used for generating peace, calmness, contentment and recharging my system. You are doing this for yourself and for the world. If you cannot find one hour, half an hour is fine; although you may be in a difficult situation if you can only dedicate half an hour a day to yourself. If you cannot have one hour at a stretch, you can have half an hour in the morning and half an hour in the evening, but at

15 least one hour should be dedicated to this purpose. And again, if you say you have no time, you really should look, because a lot of time is wasted in 16 hours. So you make the decision Ok, I am going to have that one hour a day for myself. A good way to do this is to bring a little bit more rhythm in your life. If you want to be more peaceful there has to be a bit of rhythm in life. Very often in modern life there is very little rhythm; no rhythm with food, no rhythm with what time we get up and go to bed. Sometimes circumstances are such that it is difficult, but you should try to improve the situation not going to bed so late that you cannot get up in the morning. If you get up just 15 minutes before you go to work you will run on adrenaline the whole day. A big cup of coffee, the first pranayama is a cigarette and then off you go! If your day starts like this how can you talk about peace? There is no way it can work, it cannot work and we cannot start the day with this type of pranayama and coffee. Of course this is a habit and habits are hard to break. If you decide to start your day differently you can look at this like something new, like an adventure. The first thing is not going to bed too late so you can sleep well; sleeping is a whole other issue but it is not the topic for today. Let s say you sleep ok, hopefully without any medication; then you wake up fresh enough so you can get out of bed earlier. If you have to leave at 8 o clock the latest you should get up is 7, ideally 6:30, this will allow you to start your day in a gentle way, not in a hurry, on adrenaline. You should not feel you have to rush. If you feel like this already in the morning, at the end of the day you are completely exhausted, consumed by adrenaline. If you live your life like this, when you arrive at a certain age your kidneys will not function any more because so much adrenaline has been pumped into the system. Adrenaline is an addiction for you, you only function when there is adrenaline in the system otherwise you go from hyper excitement to complete exhaustion. This becomes a way of functioning, you only function with deadlines and if there is no deadline you cannot function. This is a very unhealthy pattern. So you decide to do this differently. When you get up the first thing to do is taking care of your body. For this purpose it is good to know a little bit about Ayurveda, which suggests following a daily regimen. There are a few things you chose do from it all of the practices would take more than one hour. When you get out of bed you usually don t feel like an opera ballerina but more like an 80 year old even if you are only 40. The body is stiff since you did not

16 move for 6 or 7 hours, you cannot stand on your head right away and meditation is not the ideal. If you sit on your bed, in your pyjamas and decide to meditate it is not going to work since gravity will pull you back into the bed. So, first thing, you take a shower because water has a way to remove the tamas. You feel better after a shower, not just your body, your head also feels much clearer. Water is purifying and very powerful because it removes inertia, both from the physical body and from the energy body. Then there are a few other things you can do to help your body being more focussed. A good idea is to clean your nose, since the nose is the organ that absorbs prana. If the nose is blocked you do not absorb prana well. People who breathe with their mouth all the time are always tired because they do not absorb enough prana. Your nose you should never be blocked. To clean it you use a little neti pot with warm salty water; it takes only half a minute. After you have cleaned your nose you look at life in a more optimistic! Then you brush your teeth and you take care of your skin; then a very good idea is that you drink some water, some hot water, not cold. According to Ayurveda hot water is nectar to the body while cold water is poison. The water should not be boiling hot, but a big glass of warm water will stimulate elimination in the body. The ideal is if you could go to the bathroom before your meditation. If you are able to do so it means that your system functions very well and that you are very healthy. Elimination stimulates apana, which is one of the energies in the body, and will make you feel very grounded, benefiting your meditation. Of course you cannot wait for an hour in the bathroom, so if it does not happen you still go for your meditation. According to Ayurveda it is possible to re- educate your body, so, if you have say 5-10 minutes to spare, you can wait a little bit for it to happen. I remember a very famous ayurvedic doctor, who used to look after the kings in India. When he was 85, just a few years before he died, we asked him what was the most important advice of Ayurveda on health. After a whole career he said: do not be constipated! We could not believe it, but this is what he said! Elimination is very important otherwise apana is blocked and all the toxins back up into the body, affecting your mind, making concentration difficult and creating a host of problems in the body. So sit in the morning on those toilets or even squat, it s a better position, and then let it happen! It is ideal, after that you will have a better meditation.

17 Once you are ready and you are all clean, nose is clean, intestine is clean, you sit for meditation. Not in your pyjama, nor in the clothes that you are going to wear to go outside. If you have a uniform for work, do not wear it for meditation otherwise you will only have thoughts of work, because energy also goes into the clothes. You should have some special clothes for yoga and meditation, which you only use for this purpose. It is not about hygiene, but about energy. Sometime when you come back home and you had a rough day, you take a shower and you change your clothes. You already feel better, because the clothes are full of what you have thought, even if they are not dirty, they do not look dirty but they are dirty. So you change, take a shower, wear something fresh and become a new person. If you live in a very polluted area you clean your nose again. Daily practice In the morning you do all these preparations and then you are ready to sit. At the beginning, if your practice is not yet established, you want to start with minutes, not more, so you do not get discouraged by not being able to focus. Then you have to sit in a proper place, do not sit in the bathroom or in the kitchen; it has to be in a place where the energy is supportive of your practice. Therefore it is necessary to create a supportive space. For instance, if you meditate in your bedroom it is very important that your bed is made so that the energy of the night is not there and you should also air out the room because sleep has its own heavy energy. Burning incense also helps to clear the energy on the psychic level. Then you can light a candle or put a light and the whole atmosphere will immediately feel different. The absolute ideal would be to have a little room just for meditation, but this is a luxury. Swami Sivananda says that classically you should have a little space just for meditation. What you can also do is to separate a corner of your room with a screen or a curtain to create your little temple, just for your own practice. This will also be good. You keep it very pure, you must not let the dog sit there, you clean it every day, put a little flower so that you come in that corner and you feel uplifted. You can also put a light, like a candle, because light is very attractive for the mind, it is very peaceful and as soon as you look at it you immediately feel softer and gentler. If you like you can also put a spiritual symbol: it can be a neutral one, or if you have a religious faith you can put something that corresponds to your religion, whatever feels uplifting to you. You can put an OM

18 or a cross, whatever is uplifting to you, it has to speak to you, it has to be something that you look at and it inspires respect in you: this is sacred, this is divine for me. It is different for different people, and whatever is divine and sacred for you, you put there. You can have a little incense and also a little ritual to offer flowers to that symbol. Flowers are very powerful because they are the symbol of beauty in this earthly plane. Swami Vishnu would tell us that the flowers are the physical manifestation of the mantras, of the divine sounds; they all have their own personality and their own qualities. They are very powerful. When you take a flower and offer it back to the divine, in whichever way you want to see the divine, that very simple act is very meaningful and very powerful. This is why in temples they do that a lot; they offer lotuses which are the most beautiful flowers. If you go to Kerala, the state where we have one of our ashrams, there are lots of lakes where lotuses grow. Lotuses are not like the lilies we have in the west, which are also beautiful, but smaller. True lotuses are huge and very beautiful when they open. It is the most spiritual flower because it grows in the mud, in the dirt, and when it comes out it is completely pure. It is very close to the mud but not affected by it, that is why it is the symbol of spirituality. We also have a lot of mud but if you can come out of it and let that inner light shine from within you will become pure. You can offer a flower, mentally if you do not have a real one; you offer your gratitude, a little prayer or prostration, whatever for you is a sign of respect. For meditation to work, you should not see it just as a technique, like the sun salutation: you learn it and then you know how to do it. Meditation is not a technique, it does not come from memory, it is not something repetitive that our subconscious mind does automatically, like walking or riding a bike. Ultimately the only technique to follow in meditation is to detach from our thoughts, to let go of the mind. Dwelling on any specific technique will instead always involve the mind. Meditation has to be ever fresh, new every day, never the same. Of course you follow a method but the mental approach has to be ever fresh. For those of you who practice meditation you may have noticed that sometimes you have a better meditation, maybe not a good meditation, the mind is a little bit less crazy monkey, it is a little bit more tame and calm. Then you try to replicate

19 the same circumstances for the following day thinking that it is going to work again so well, but usually it does not work! It does not work because it is not from memory; yesterday I did that, let me do the same, because then it is not fresh. You have to recreate that freshness in your mind and this will come from new inspiration. Even if you do the same actions every day, the important thing is that you do them from a fresh inner state, that is pure: I offer this flower, I offer this prayer, and it is new, never boring, always new. The next thing is that you have to face the right direction. The best would be to face the rising sun, even if you are in your flat. The energy of the rising sun is very energising for the body. There is a practice in yoga where you actually feel that the east is like a being and you prostrate to the east, you prostrate to the sun; the sun is not just a star, it is a being. Everything in the universe actually is not just physical matter, it is full of consciousness, and so is the sun, it is a being. You show your respect and your gratitude and you have a thought towards this and you honour it and respect it, and you sit facing that direction. If it is really not possible, maybe because there is a piece of furniture, the next best is north. If north is not possible then of course you can also face west and south, but concentration will be slightly more difficult. Ideally then you should face north or east. Then you have to sit for meditation. First of all meditation is an asana and this might be the first problem you have to resolve. In a yoga class you are learning how to sit because you have to sit for at least 20 minutes and many people do not like pranayama because they are not comfortable in the sitting position. You have to find the right pillow, not too high not too low and how to sit comfortably so that ideally you do not move for 15 minutes. Sometimes after 5 minutes you already feel like moving; but you should try to sit the best you can. If in the morning you feel very sleepy it is a good idea to start with a round of kapalabhati; you do 50 or 60 exhalations, you hold your breath and you will immediately feel more awake. Once you are sitting properly you need to focus on an energy centre, which is a very important part of meditation. You can focus either on the point between the eyebrow or on the heart centre.

20 The point between the eyebrows is called Ajna Chakra, but it is also called the third eye. You may wonder why we call it the third eye. You should not think of a dot on your forehead, or anything in your brain. It is something deep within, on a different vibratory level, on an energy vibratory level. If it were to correspond to something in the brain, it would be the pineal gland. It is a very small but very important gland, whose diameter is approximately 1cm. Even if it is deep in the brain, it reacts to light. When there is darkness it produces that famous hormone melatonin, which makes you sleep, and when there is light the production of melatonin stops so you wake up. This is why when you sleep it is important that it is completely dark, otherwise there would be no production of melatonin and you wouldn t sleep so well. We call it third eye because it is sensitive to light and in a way it is almost like an eye, the eye of intuition. I was just reading about some research on people who have paranormal abilities, like the ability to be clairvoyant. The writer was talking about a whole study on Chinese children who have the ability to see with their eyes closed they touch a photo with their fingers and are able to describe what is on the photo, as if they could see it with their eyes. And it is not just one or two cases; apparently there are thousands and thousands of them. Yogis have always said that the brain has this ability because of the eye of intuition, which in the brain corresponds to the pineal gland and on the energy level to the Ajna chakra. The idea is that you really try to feel where this is: not trying to think where the pineal gland is in your brain, but just feel where it is. If I want to look at something with my inner eye, where is it? Try to sense this. If you do not manage at all to focus there, then try at the centre of the chest. This is called the Anahata chakra and we say it is the heart centre, but it is not just the heart, the organ. In ancient texts of yoga as well as in other traditions it is said that there is a very very small place, like a little cave, deep in the heart. This is the centre of the Anahata chakra, or the deepest part of your self, and actually the seat of the soul is in this centre. How to find it? When you have compassion and love, where does it come from? It is not coming from the brain. You do not feel compassion in your brain. You really feel it in the heart. So when you feel love, try to feel the exact source where this is coming from and there is the Anahata chakra. It requires practice, you just try to go there and you steady your mind with this intention: I am here, I am in this centre (Ajna) or I am in this other centre (Anahata), and you really stay there. Try not to go somewhere else after 2

21 seconds. You really stay there, you ground yourself in that centre so that you pull yourself on a deeper level and this brings concentration, you become more focussed, it only requires practice. It might not happen the first day, the first week or the first month, you have to really practice it but then you develop a sense of those energy centres and you become more grounded. This is at the beginning of meditation. Then you make your breath very gentle and rhythmic, rhythm also helps the concentration. At the last stage, once you have established the breath and the energy centre, there are different things you can do to go deeper in the concentration. In your energy centre you can focus on a higher feeling like love or gratitude. Or you can focus on the sense of presence. If you have faith in God or divinity, whatever you call it, if that ideal speaks to you, then you can think, that God is not just somewhere busy in the universe, it is an inner presence. Try to feel that inner presence in your concentration point, whether with a form or just like a presence. By focussing on it slowly, slowly you can feel something. The third method is to focus on the sound, like a mantra, which is a sacred sound and also a symbol for that divine presence. Whichever method you choose you stick to it during the time of that meditation. Of course you can change from one meditation to the next until you really feel what is working better for you, but throughout the 20 minutes of your practice you stick with one method. You can focus on the mantra OM, OM when you inhale and OM when you exhale. Or you decide to focus on gratitude, until you feel that gratitude, you invoke that feeling of gratitude in you. There are different ways to do it, you can remember something which gave you a lot of gratitude, or remember somebody who for you is a symbol of gratitude. Whatever works to invoke that feeling, then you stay with that. You will see an expansion, something slowing down, the brain waves will slow down, from Beta to Alfa and then to Theta, then you will feel much better, much more centred. The prove that meditation works is that when you come out you feel calmer, you feel more positive towards others, less angry, more tolerant, more compassionate, more understanding. When you feel like this during the day it is