Sadhguru - Inner Engineering - Key Points

 

The Four-Letter Word

1.      Guru literally means dispeller of darkness.

2.      You need to take charge of your mind

3.      Self-transformation means nothing of the old remains. It is dimensional shift in the way you perceive and experience life. Knowing this is yoga, one who embodies this is a yogi. One who guides you in this direction is a guru.

4.      When you’re on an unfamiliar terrain it’s just sensible to take directions. On one level that is all a guru is – a live road map.

 

Note to the reader

1.      Patanjali’s yoga sutras, those significant yogic texts, that I realized that I had certain access to their inner core. This is because I approach them experimentally rather than theoretically.

2.      The book is divided into two sections the first maps the terrain the second offers you a way navigate it

3.      Exploring along the way some commonly used (and misused) terms such as destiny, responsibility, well-being and even more fundamentally yoga.

4.      The word Sadhna in Sanskrit means a device or a tool

5.      Gurus are always contemporary

6.      While I will be exploring an ancient technology in this book, it is also a technology that is flawlessly state of the art.

7.      I am not interested in anything new. I am only interested in what is true.

 

When I lost my sense

1.      “I do not know” is the doorway to seeking and knowing

2.      I became a student of Malladihalli Swami (as this old man was known) and got into yoga.

3.      Three months after starting yoga body started coming awake at three forty every morning without any external prompting.

4.      The simple yoga called anagamardana (a system of physical yoga that strengthens sinews and limbs) definitely set me apart in my group of people physically and mentally.

5.      If you really want to know spirituality don’t look for anything. People think spirituality is about looking for God or truth or the ultimate. It is not the object of your search that is important, it is the faculty of looking.

6.      Seeking is not about looking for something. It is about enhancing your perception, your very faculty of seeing.

7.      I realize that I never thought about what I wanted to become in life. I only thought about how I wanted to live my life. And I knew that the “how” could only be determined within me and by me.

8.      I began to realize that it is life that is the ultimate intelligence. Human intellect is mere smartness that ensures survival. But true intelligence is just life and that which is source of life.

9.      You pay attention to creation you realize that the divine, or whatever is the source of creation is above all the highest intelligence that you can imagine.

10.   It took a while for me to realize that what was happening to me was something “Spiritual” I began to understand what the sacred traditions and scriptures had extolled as the ultimate experience was happening to me that I was experiencing in fact the most beautiful thing that can happen to a human being.

11.   I had been practicing a basic set of physical postures or hat yoga since I was twelve years old.

12.   The simple set of yogic postures or asanas I’d been practicing daily was about physical fitness or so I thought. But after experience on chamunda hill, I realized that what I was doing actually a process that could deliver me to a dimension far beyond the physical.

13.   Freedom or Mukti or Moksha is seen as the natural longing in every human being and our ultimate destination.

14.   The moment I realized that human desire was not for any particular thing, but just to expand illimitably a certain clarity rose within me. When I saw that everyone is capable of this it felt natural to share it.

15.   The condition of ecstatic well-being that has been mine since that afternoon on chamunda hill is neither a distant possibility nor a pipe dream. It is living reality for those who are willing. It is the birth right of every human being.

 

The way out is in

1.      For a human being life doesn’t seem to end with survival life begins with survival.

2.      Let’s start with a single question: what do we consider to be a state of well-being? Very simply well-being is just a deep sense of pleasantness within. If our body feels pleasant we call this health, if it becomes very pleasant we call this pleasure. If your mind becomes pleasant we call this peace if it becomes very pleasant we call this joy. If your emotions become pleasant we call this love, if they become very pleasant we call this compassion, if your life energies become pleasant we call this bliss, if they become very pleasant we call this ecstasy. This is all that you are seeking: pleasantness within and out. So essentially all human experience is only a question of pleasantness and unpleasantness in varying degrees.

3.      The only thing that stands between you and your well-being is a simple fact: that you have allowed your thoughts and emotions to take instruction from outside rather that the inside.

4.      At least your thoughts and emotions should happen the way you want them to.

5.      We need to understand that unless we do the right things the right things will not happen to us. This is true not just of the outside world but also the inside.

6.      An Israeli organic chemist, Raphael Mechoulam and his research team initiated a project that eventually isolated a “bliss molecule” in the human system. In lay terms they discovered that the human brain has natural cannabis receptors. Why is this so? They found that this simply because the body is capable of producing its own narcotic. It can manufacture its own bliss with no external stimulus and that too with no hangover!

7.      This particular chemical has been named “anandamide” based on Sanskrit word Ananda which means bliss. We can infer from this that happiness is just a certain kind of chemistry. Peace is another kind of chemistry. In fact, every kind of pleasantness that we experience whether peace or joy or ecstasy is a kind of chemistry. The yogic system has always known this.

8.      There is a technology for inner well-being for creating a chemical basis for blissful existence. This is one dimension of what I call “Inner Engineering” If you are aware you can activate your system in such a way that simply breathing is an enormous pleasure. All it takes is a willingness to pay little attention the inner mechanism.

9.      There is only one way and that is in.

10.   Peace and joy are not things that you attain at the end of life. They are the basis of your life. If you consider peace to be the ultimate goal you will only rest in peace.

11.   Human life is longing for unlimited expansion and that is the only thing that will settle you for good.

12.   When being peaceful, blissful and joyous are not efforts anymore you naturally start seeking want to know the nature of life.

13.   The foundations of peace and bliss are not about attending to the external realities of your life but accessing and organising the inner nature of being.

14.   Enlightenment is not an attainment or an achievement it is a homecoming.

15.   When it comes to our inner nature there is only one governing principle: borderless unity.

16.   Live by the guideline that all human experience is generated from within either with the support of external stimuli or without.

17.   Thousands of years ago a yogi appeared in the upper reaches of the Himalayas. He came to be known as Adiyogi, the first yogi and it was he who bequeathed the science of yoga to seven disciples, who later carried it around the world. What he imparted to these disciples was an unimaginably profound system of self-exploration and transformation based on the radical premise that it is possible for the human being to evolve consciously. Spiritual evolution can happen consciously. All it takes Adiyogi told us is willingness.

 

Design your destiny

1.      Turning inward is the first step from passivity to agency from being a victim toward becoming a master of your own destiny

2.      What you accumulate can be yours, but it can never be you.

3.      Your destiny is written by you unconsciously. If you have mastery over your physical body, fifteen to twenty percent of your life and destiny will be in your hands. If you have mastery over your mind, fifty to sixty percent of your life and destiny will be in your hands, If you have mastery over your life energies a hundred percent of your life and destiny will be in your hands.

4.      Whatever the events and situations around you, you don’t get crushed by them you ride them.

5.      Unless you do the right things, the right things will not happen to you. Principles and philosophies are only of social consequence. It is time to wake up to yourself as an existential being, a living being, rather than a psychological case. Then your destiny will be your own. One hundred percent your own.

This is not an idle promise. It is a guarantee.

 

No Boundary, No Burden

1.   Responsibility does not mean taking on the burdens of the world. It does not mean accepting blame for things you have done or not done. It does not mean living in a state of perpetual guilt. Responsibility simply means your ability to respond. If you decide, “I am responsible,” you will have the ability to respond. If you decide, “I am not responsible,” you will not have the ability to respond.

2.   Taking responsibility simply means consciously responding to the situation. Once you take responsibility, you will invariably start exploring ways to address the situation. You will look for solutions.

3.   Only if you realize you are responsible do you have the freedom to create yourself the way you want to be, not as a reaction to the situations in which you exist. Reactivity is enslavement. Responsibility is freedom.

4.   “I am responsible for the way I am now.” It is possible to transform the greatest adversity into a stepping stone for personal growth. If you take one hundred percent responsibility for the way you are now, a brighter tomorrow is a possibility.

5.   Remember, anger, jealousy, pain, hurt, and depression are poison that you drink but expect someone else to die. Life does not work that way. Most people take lifetimes to understand this simple truth.

6.   Your logical mind tells you, “Give up all responsibility and you will be free.” But in your experience of life, the more you are able to respond to everything around you, the freer you are! The logical and experimental dimensions of life work in diametrically opposite ways. Logic in not without its uses, but these help only to handle the material aspects of life. If you handle your entire life logic alone, you will end up a mess.

7.   Responsibility is not reaction but it is not action either.

8.   Responsibility and action belong to different dimensions. The ability to respond gives you the freedom to act. It also gives you the freedom not to act. It puts you in the driver’s seat of your life. It empowers you to decide the nature and volume of action you want to undertake. Responsibility is not compulsive action it offers you the choice of action.

9.   And that brings us to the fourth misconception. Many think responsibility means capability. Wrong again. When it comes to action, capability could play a role. But when it comes to response, it is just a question of willingness.

10. Your ability to respond is the way you are. Only your ability to act is connected with the outside world.

11. The very word God signifies limitless responsibility

 

Sadhana

Conscious response brings you to a profound and enduring state of connectedness with life-not as an idea or an emotion, but life as life is. In this willing, active involvement with life you are embraced by it and that embrace takes you to the very source of creation.

That is all takes to touch the Creator-just willingness, nothing else

 

And now, Yoga

1.      The science of yoga is, quite simply, the science of being in perfect alignment, in absolute harmony, in complete sync with existence.

2.      Yoga is the science of creating inner situations exactly the way you want them. When you fine-tune yourself to such a point where everything functions beautifully within you, naturally the best of your abilities will flow out of you.

3.      Literally, yoga means “Union,” When you are in yoga, it means that in your experience, everything has become one.

4.      The whole point of yoga is to bring you to an experience wherein, if you sit here, there is no such thing as “you” and “me”. It is al me-or all you! Any process that helps you to reach this union is yoga.

5.      The first layer to which yoga draws our attention is the physical body- the annamayakosha or more literally the food body.

6.      The second layer is the manomayakosha or the mental body. This is what you call “mind” is not just the brain. It is not located in any single part of human anatomy. Instead, every cell has its own intelligence, so there is an entire mental body, an entire anatomy of the mind.

7.      The third layer of the self is the pranamayakosha or the energy body. If you keep your energy body in perfect balance, there will be no disease in your physical or mental bodies.

8.      These are the three dimensions of the self you are aware of right now: the physical, the mental, the energetic. They are essentially physical in nature.

9.      There is fourth layer called the vigyanamayakosha or the etheric body. Gyana means “knowledge.” Vishesh Gyana means “extraordinary knowledge”- that which is beyond the sense perceptions. This is transient state. It is neither physical nor non-physical.

10.   There is also a fifth sheath, the anandamayakosah, which is beyond the physical entirely, Ananda means “bliss.” It has nothing to do with the physical realms of life. A dimension that is beyond the physical cannot be described or even defined, so yoga talks about it only in term of experience.

11.   Yoga simply tells you that if the physical, mental and energy bodies are perfectly aligned you will find access to the bliss body.

12.   Yoga tells us there are few fundamental ways. Karma yoga or the yoga of action, Gyana yaga, the yoga of intelligence. Bhakti yoga, the yoga of devotion and if you use your energies to reach the supreme experience we call this Kriya yoga, the yoga of transforming energies.

13.   Karma, Gyana, Bhakti, Kriya have to function in an integrated way if one wants to get anywhere.

14.   Yoga is not about being superhuman, it is about realizing that being human is super.

 

Part-2

A note to the reader

1.      The next part of the book grows more specific, taking you deeper into an exploration of the three fundamental layers Body, Mind and Energy.

2.      The reason for offering you a range practices and tips is so that you can zero in on any that appeal you.

 

Body

1.      The yogic sciences do not speak of the mind or soul. Everything is just a body- whether it is food body, a mind body, an energy body, an etheric body or a bliss body.

2.      It takes a certain amount of awareness for a person to see the limitations of this fantastic machinery. As a machine, the body is actually faultless. The only problem is that it does not take you anywhere. It just springs out of the earth and falls back into the earth.

3.      Life is one thing, but the source of life is another. I every creature, in every plant, in every seed, this source of life is at work. In a human being, this source of life is even more magnificently obvious.

4.      There are two basic forces within you. One is the instinct of self-preservation, which compels you to build walls around yourself to protect yourself. The other is the constant desire to expand, to become boundless. These two longings-to preserve and to expand-are not opposing forces, though they may seem to be.

5.      Self-preservation needs to be limited to the physical body. If you have the necessary awareness to separate the two, there is no conflict. But if you identified with the physical, then instead of working in collaboration, these two fundamental forces become a source of tension.

6.      When you say “spirituality,” you are talking about a dimension beyond the physical.

7.      To journey from the boundary-based individual body to the boundless source of creation-this is the very basis of the spiritual process.

8.      Yoga talks only bout the barriers that you have set up, because this resistance is all that needs to be attended to.

9.      When you are available to grace, suddenly, you seem to function like magic.

 

Sadhna

Try this, sit for a few minutes in front of a plant or tree. Remind yourself that you are inhaling what tree is exhaling and exhaling what the three in inhaling. Even if you are not yet experimentally aware of it, establish a psychological connection with the plant. You could repeat this several times a day. After a few days, you will start connecting with everything around you differently. You won’t limit yourself to a tree.

 

10.   The sense organs are limited. They can perceive only that which is physical. If your perception is limited to the five senses, naturally the scope of your life will be restricted to the physical.

11.   The essential nature of life does not lie in the physical or psychological expression of body and mind, but in their source.

12.   Yoga is fundamentally aimed at enhancing your experience beyond the five senses. There is dimension beyond your five sense perceptions. You can call that dimension whatever you please. You can call it “self”, if you choose. You can call it “divine”, if you choose. You can term it “God,” if you choose. The terminology is entirely up to you.

13.   Fundamentally, it is your quality of perception that determines how effective and successful you are and how much you can do on this planet. The expansion of your perception beyond its present boundaries can achieve phenomenal results, bringing a completely new and seemingly magical dimension to your life.

14.   This possibility does not come from sitting somewhere on top of a mountain; it is within you.

15.   The simple process of paying a little bit of attention to your inner nature will transform the quality of your life in remarkable ways.

 

Sadhna

Start by paying attention to everything you think of as yourself just before you fall asleep; your thoughts, your emotions, your hair, your skin, your clothes, your makeup. Know that none of this is you. There is no need to make any conclusion about what “you” are or what “truth” is. Truth is not a conclusion. If you manage to enter sleep with this awareness, it will be significant. Since there is no external interference in sleep, this will grow in into a powerful experience. Over time, you will enter a dimension beyond all accumulations.

16.   Yoga employs all the aspects of who you are to take you to your ultimate destination. The science of using body to hasten your evolutionary process is hatha yoga. “Ha” denotes the sun and “tha” denotes the moon. Hatha yoga is the science of bringing about a balance between these two dimensions within the human system.

17.   To experience pain and still look beyond it takes an enormous amount of strength, which most people do not possess.

18.   Learning to listen is the essence of intelligent living.

19.   As you move into deeper dimensions of meditation, your energies will surge upward, opening up more profound dimensions of experience. It is very important, therefore, that the pipeline of the body is conducive. If it is blocked, it will not work. And so, preparing the body significantly before one goes into more intense forms or meditation is very important.

20.   It is becoming a norm in the world that growth happens only painfully. It can also happen blissfully, but that is when both the body and mind have been prepared. Asanas can prepare you for growth and transformation by equipping you with a solid and stable foundation.

21.   Beyond the five senses, the hatha yoga needs to be approached in its classical form.

 

Sadhana

If you sit for just a few hours a day with your spine erect, you will see that it will have an unmistakable effect on your life. You will now begin to understand what I mean by geometry of your existence. Just the way you hold your body determines almost everything about you.

Another way of listening to life is paying attention to it experimentally not intellectually or emotionally. Choose one thing about yourself: your breath: your heartbeat, your pulse, your little finger. Just pay attention to it for eleven minutes at a time. Do this at least three times a day. Keep your attention on any sensation, but feel free to continue doing whatever you are doing. If you lose attention, it doesn’t matter. Simply refocus your attention. This practice will allow you to move from mental alertness to awareness. You will find the quality of your life experience will begin to change.

 

22.   The fundamental yoga starts with the physical body.

23.   Your body is capable of perceiving the whole universe. If you prepare it properly, it can grasp everything in this existence, because all that happens to this existence is happening, in some way, to this body.

24.   Human body is capable of downloading the entire cosmos.

 

Sadhana

Sit in any comfortable posture, with your spine erect, and if necessary supported. Remain still allow your attention to slowly grow still as well. Do this for five to seven minutes a day. You will notice that your breath will slow down.

What is the significance of slowing down the human breath?

 Human being breathes twelve to fifteen times per minute, normally. If your breath settles down to twelve you will know the ways of the earth’s atmosphere (i.e. you will become meteorologically sensitive), If it reduces to nine, you will know the language of the other creatures on this planet. If it reduces to three, you will know the language of the source of creation.

25.   The very essence of Dhyana, or meditativeness, is that you push yourself to the highest possible intensity where, after some time, there is no effort. Now meditation will not be an act, but a natural consequence of the intensity that has been achieved.’

26.   If your humanity overflows, divinity will follow and serve you It has no other choice.

27.   If it is to rain today, some change will happen in your body, most urban-dwellers cannot feel it, but many rural people all over the world do sense this. Most insects, birds and animals can feel it. A tree for sure knows it.

28.   It is important to remember that the magnetic equator is distinct from the geographic equator.

29.   The kind of spiritual system described above makes use of natural phenomena to support human efforts at spiritual growth. Another system- of meditativeness, or inwardness- completely ignores the changes happening in creation and focuses only on the inner journey. These are the two fundamental ways in which the spiritual journey can be approached.

30.   Every human being is free to choose the path, more suitable to his or her temperament. In the times in which we live a balance between the two is usually best.

 

Sadhna

The body responds the moment it is in touch with earth. This contact with the earth is vital reconnection of the body with its physical source. This restores stability to the system an enhances the human capacity for rejuvenation greatly

31.   The Surya namaskar is a familiar sequence of postures. Firstly, it’s not a salutation at all. It literally means organising solar energies within you, based on the simple logic that all life on this earth is solar powered.

32.   Those who do Surya namaskars regularly find that their batteries last longer, with less need for recharge or replenishment.

33.   The Surya namaskar is essentially about building a dimension within you where our physical bodily cycles are in sync with the Sun’s cycles. It is not be accident but by intent that it has been structured with twelve postures.

34.   Practising Surya namaskar maintains physical balance and receptivity, and is a means for taking the body to the edge, so that it is not a hurdle.

35.   Life is a game of five ingredients- earth, water, fire and ether. Such a staggeringly complex phenomenon and just five variables!

36.   You want to realize the full potential of this human mechanism or merge with the larger comic mechanism, you need a certain measure of mastery over these five elements.

37.   Every spiritual practice in this world is related in some way with organising these five elements. The most fundamental practice in the yogic system is bhuta shuddhi- the cleansing of the elements in the physical system so that they work in harmony. The basis of individual exitance is actually memory, which penetrates deep into these five elements.

38.   Freedom and bondage- both are determined by these five elements.

 

Sadhna

The simplest thing that you can do to change the health and fundamental structure of your body is to treat the five elements with devotion and respect.

 

 

 

39.   Relief from something that you cannot hold within you is always the greatest pleasure.

 

Sadhna

It is important not to keep eating through the day. If you are below 30 yrs of age, three meals every day will fit well into your life. If you are over thirty years of age, it is best to reduce it two meals per day. Our body and brain work at their best only when the stomach is empty. So be conscious of eating in such a way that within two and a half hours, your food moves out of the stomach, and within twelve to eighteen hours completely out of the system. With this simple awareness you will experience much more energy, agility, and alertness. These are ingredients of a successful life, irrespective of what you choose to do with it.

 

40.   The way you eat not only decides your physical health, but the very way you think, feel and experience life. Trying to eat intelligently means understanding what kind of fuel this body is designed for and accordingly supplying it, so that it functions at its best.

41.   The compatibility of the fuel and the machine is of great importance if you are seeking a certain calibre of service.

42.   What kind of food is human system really designed for?

43.   Depending on the quality of the food you eat, you first feel lethargy and then slowly you start feeling energetic. Why is this so?

44.   One aspect is the fact that your system cannot digest cooked food as it is, it needs certain enzymes to do so.

45.   If we ate foods with the necessary enzymes, the system would be functioning at a completely different level of efficiency and conversion ratio of food to energy would be very different. Eating natural foods, in their uncooked condition, when the cells are still alive, will bring an enormous sense of health and vitality to the system.

46.   The kind of food your body feels most comfortable with is always the ideal food to eat. You must learn to listen to your body. As your body awareness evolves, you will know exactly what a certain food will do to you.

 

Sadhna

You can experiment arrange the best possible meal for yourself, get angry with something, curse the world, and then eat it. You will see that day how food behaves within you. At the next meal, approach your food with the reverence that the life making material deserves and eat it. You will see how it will behave within you. (of course, if you’re, sensible you’ll ignore the first and only do the second)

Most people can bring down the quantum of food they are eating to a third and be much more energetic and not lose weight.

47.   Consequently, consuming anything in seed form can greatly enhance human health on many levels.

48.   As far as possible, soak the nuts that you intend to consume in water for six to eight hours, especially if they are dry nuts.

49.   In yoga it is only question of whether the food is compatible with the kind of body that we own.

50.   What type of fuel is this body designed for? This is something to which all of us should first pay attention. Modifications, adjustments, and adaptions of diet should come later.

51.   Fruit is the most easily digestible food and all human beings know this instinctively.

52.   The human problem is not enough attention but too much information.

53.   The word “ayur” means life span and the word “veda” means science or knowledge. So, Ayurveda is the science of extending the human life span.

 

 

Sadhana

 

The consumption of a spoonful of clarified butter (ghee in India) on a daily basis a few minutes before a meal does wonders for the digestive system. If you eat clarified butter with sugar as in sweets, it is digested and turns into fat. But clarified butter without sugar can cleanse, heal and lubricate the alimentary canal. Additionally, the cleansing of the colon will immediately manifest as certain glow and aliveness in your skin. Because clarified butter passes through the system largely without getting digested.

 

54.   If you must eat non-vegetarian food, the best would be fish, firstly it is digestible with very high nutritional values. Secondly, it leaves the least amount of its imprint upon you.

55.   A mandala is a cycle of forty to forty-eight days that the human system goes through. In every cycle there will be three days on which your body does not need food.

56.   If you are conscious of how your body functions, you will become aware that on articular day the body does not require food. Without effort, you can go without food and on that day. Since most people are not aware of which day their body should go without food, the day of Ekadashi was fixed in the Indian calendar. Ekadashi is the eleventh day of lunar segment and recurs every fourteen days. It is traditionally regarded as the day of fast.

57.   If you force yourself to fast without preparing your body and mind sufficiently, you will only cause damage to your health. But if your body, mind and energy are properly prepared with necessary practices, then fasting can be of much benefit to you.

58.   It may not be a good thing for everybody to fast but it has many benefits if it is done with proper understanding.

59.   The entire aim and endeavour of yoga is to open up the cocoon of the physical body to the larger sensory body where you experience everything as a part of you.

60.   In the yogic tradition, the fasting was fixed according to the lunar cycle. This is because your ability to assimilate energy from water, air and sunlight is greater on certain days of the lunar cycle.

61.   What kind of food you eat, how much you eat, how you eat, turning it from a compulsive pattern into a conscious process: this is essence of fasting.

 

 

 

Sadhana

Fifty percent raw food, fifty percent cooked food. This is ideal for most people, who wish to be active for sixteen to eighteen hours a day.

 

62.   Stress is not because of work- this is important to remember. Everybody thinks their job is stressful. No job is stressful. It is our compulsive reaction to the situations in which we are placed that causes stress. Stress is a certain level of internal fiction.

63.   An average person’s pulse rate on an empty stomach would be in the seventies or even eighties. For a person doing the right type meditative practice, you will find that the pulse rate would range between thirties and forties. Even after a good lunch it would stay in the fifties. This is just one parameter that indicates the level of restfulness that your body is experiencing moment to moment. Restfulness essentially defines the replenishing and rejuvenating capability of body.

64.   If you start certain simple practices of yoga, in three to four months’ time, your pulse rate will drop at least eight to twenty counts very easily, that means the body is running so much more efficiently and at a relaxed pace.

65.   How much sleep does your body need? It depends on the level of physical activity you are engaged in. There is no need to fix the quota of either food or sleep. To program the calories, you must consume and the number of hours you must sleep is a foolish way to handle life. Let the body decide how much it should eat today, not you. Today your activity levels are low, so you eat less. Tomorrow your activity is high, so you eat more. Similarly, with sleep: when you feel sufficiently relaxed you come awake. The moment the body is rested it will wake-up whether it be at three or four or eight o clock. When it comes to food and sleep, your body is the best judge.

66.   If you look at the modern societies, I would say probably ninety percent of human energy is being spent either pursuing or avoiding sex. Sex is just nature’s trick to reproduce. If this attraction of opposites did not exist, the species would become extinct.

67.   With animals, the urge is present in their body at certain times; otherwise they are free from it. With humans it is on their minds all the time.

68.   Experiencing the orgasmic nature of the breathing process is called ana pana sati yoga, the yoga of incoming and outgoing breath. Ana pana literally means “in” and “out”. Sati means “female consort.” So, the difference here is clearly to orgasmic union. And so, ana pana sati yoga is a process that initiates you into a conscious and profound involvement with your breath, and shows you how the simple incoming and outgoing breath can become a source of nameless ecstasies.

Sadhana

Of all the loving acts that two human beings re capable of the simple act of holding hands can often become the most intimate. Why this so? Basically, because the nature of the hands and feet is such that the energy system finds expression in these two parts of the body in a very singular way. Two palms coming together have far more intimacy than the contact between any other parts of the body.

You can try this with yourself. You don’t even need a partner when you put your hands together, the two energy dimensions within you (right-left. Masculine-feminine, solar-lunar, yin-yang etc.) are linked in a certain way, and you begin to experience a sense of unity within yourself. This is the logic of the traditional Indian namaskar. It is means of harmonising the system.

So, the simplest way to experience a state of union is to try this simple namaskar yoga. Put your hands together, and pay loving attention to any object you use or consume, or any form of life that you encounter. When you bring this sense of awareness into every simple act, your experience of life will never be same again. There is even a possibility that if you put your hands together, you could unite the world!

69.   Sex is not the most powerful urge. Hunger is.

70.   Fear is a result of incompleteness of your existence. If you have not explored life in its magnitude and multidimensionality, but have limited yourself to the physical body, fear is a natural consequence.

71.   Death is not the issue, but the way you live is the issue.

72.   Death is not the end of life. Death is simply end of the body.

 

Mind

1.      Asatoma Sadgamya

From Ignorance, lead me to truth.

2.      The experience of borderless unity, can deliver you another dimension - a dimension of love and blissfulness.

3.      Yoga is simply chitta vritti nirodha. That means, if the activity of your mind ceases and you are still alert, you are in yoga.

 

Sadhana

Remind yourself at least once an hour that everything you’re carrying – your handbag, your money, your relationships, the heaviness in your heart and body – are things that you’ve accumulated over a period of time. If you become more and more conscious of this fundamental fact even as process of dis-identification grows within you- you will move from the misery and madness of the human mind toward meditativeness.

 

4.      You Have begun to believe that you exist because you think!

5.      It is time to restate a fundamental fact: you are, therefore you may think. It is simple existential reality.

6.      What are thoughts really? Just information that you have gathered and recycled.

7.      It Is time for humanity to shift the significance to the life process once again.

8.      If you want to know the experimental dimensions of life, you will never know them with the petty process of thought. Thought can only be logical, functioning between two polarities. If you want to know life in its immensity, you need something more than the intellect.

9.      Once you are no longer identified with your mind, you are free to experience life beyond limitations. Being a Buddha means that you have become witness to your own intellect.

10.   The essence of yoga, as we have said before, is just this – to arrive at that moment where there is a clear space between you and your mind. Once this happens, a life heightened clarity perception, and freedom has begun. This is the birth of freedom.

11.   Only if you know when logic should be used and when its necessary to go beyond it, will your life be beautiful.

 

Sadhana

You could try this simple practice. Set your tap in such a way that only five to ten drops fall per minute. See if you can observe each drop – how it splashes on the ground. Do this for fifteen to twenty minutes a day. You will gradually become conscious of many things around and within you that you completely unaware of right now.

 

12.   If a knife has to cut through anything effortlessly, it is important that the substance it encounters does not stick to it. If you cut mangoes or apples after cutting an onion, everything tastes like onion! such a knife becomes more of a hindrance than a help. In other words, once your intellect gets identified with something. It gets chained to the identifications, and leaves you with a completely distorted experience of the world.

13.   The identity around which the intellect functions is called ahankar.

14.   Most of the suffering human beings undergo is not because of external situations. What is inflicted in them from the outside is minimal; the rest is all self-help!

15.   If you dis-identify, as it were – you will see that the mind turns just blank and empty. When you want to use it, you can; at other times, it will simply be empty, devoid of all psychological clutter.

16.   If you do not encumber your intellect with any identifications – body, gender, family, qualifications, society, race caste, creed, community, nation, even species – you travel naturally toward your ultimate nature.

17.   There is an entire yogic process to make your intellect so razor-sharp that it does not stick to anything.

18.   Gyan yog as a part of your spiritual pursuit is a workable proposition; as an exclusive path, it is only for a very rare few.

 

Sadhana

Just sit alone for an hour. Just see of this hour what thoughts dominate your mind – whether it is food, sex, your car or anything else. If you find yourself thinking recurrently about people or things, your identification is essentially with your body. If your thoughts are about what you would like to do in the world, your identification is essentially with your mind. Everything else is just a complex set of offshoots of these two aspects. This is not a value judgement. It is just a way of knowing what stage of life you’re at. How quickly you want to evolve depends on your choices.

 

19.   In the yogic system of classification, the mind has sixteen dimensions. These sixteen falls into four categories. Intellect (budhi), Memory (manas), Awareness (chit), Ahankar. Intellect is discerning or discriminatory dimension of mind, memory is the accumulative dimension of mind which gathers information, Awareness is beyond both intellect and memory, Ahankara is the aspect of mind from which you derive your sense of identity.

20.   The first dimension – the intellect, buddhi- is critical for your survival. The problem is that the intellect has taken a disproportionately important role. Th essence of the intellect is to divide. So, humanity has embarked on journey of wholesale division, discrimination and dissection. We have split everything. Even the invisible atom has been split.

21.   Once you unleash the intellect, it splits everything it counters; it does not allow you to be with anything totally. Although it is a wonderful instrument for survival. It is also at the same time a terrible barrier that stands between you and your experience of the oneness of life.

22.   The intellect is becoming barrier because you keep it constantly dipped in accumulative part of the mind – your memory, manas. This basically means your intellect is perpetually immersed in the past. In such a state, nothing new is not possible. And so, the intellect loses its edge and becomes a trap.

23.   Your ability to recycle the garbage you have picked up is what the mighty intellect has been reduced to.

24.   Human perception through the sense organs is always piece meal. It can give you an illusion of completeness but can never comprehend the whole.

25.   The more people become engrossed in thought, the more joyless they become.

26.   But the same intellect can be sharpened if you allow it to soak in the other aspect your mind – your awareness.

27.   All it means is learning to discern the real from the illusionary, what is existentially true from what is psychologically true.

28.   Learn to keep your intellect in the stealth of your awareness rather than in the sack of memory and identification. Once you do, this tremendous instrument can cut its way effortlessly toward the ultimate.

 

Sadhana

If you see straight line on the floor, try walking in perfect alignment with that line, maintaining an easy gait. This is not about becoming self-conscious, but about becoming precise or exact. Try this with your body and see. Bring precision into every movement, every gesture. This is one way of dipping your intellect in awareness.

 

29.   What do we mean by the word “awareness”, anyway? What does it signify? And how can we access it?

30.   Awareness is not mental alertness. Awareness is what you are. Awareness is aliveness.

31.   The dimension of the mind that modern societies have completely ignored at their own peril is awareness, or chit. This is intelligence that is completely unsullied by memory. This is the deepest dimension of the mind and one that connects you with that which is the very basis or creation.

32.   When you learn to access chit, being blissful is entirely natural.

33.   Sleep, wakefulness, death – these are all just different levels of awareness.

34.   So, awareness is that which can either create or obliterate this existence. That is the magic of awareness.

35.   You can pitch your awareness up to different levels. As you notch it up further and further, whole new dimensions of existence open up in your experience. Worlds that nobody had imagined in their wildest possible dreams become a living reality for you.

36.   The difference between a sleeping person and a dead person is one of awareness. Similarly, between a wakeful person and an awakened or enlightened person, there is a difference. An awakened person sleeps too, but has manged so much awareness that some part of him or her does not sleep. The sense organs shut down, the body rests a bit, but everything else is on. This is because awareness has been notched up to another level.

37.   If you keep your body, thought, emotion and energies properly aligned, awareness will blossom. You will become far more alive than you are right now.

38.   When you gain conscious access to your awareness, you gain access to the akashic dimension around your body, as also to the akashic dimension around the planet, the solar system and entire universe. The ancients in India amassed a remarkable amount of knowledge about cosmos all this was gleaned through the dimension of chidakash or the akashic dimension of our intelligence.

 

Sadhana

Sleep is nothing but temporary death. Every night you are presented with a tremendous possibility – the possibility of becoming aware of the dimension beyond death.

At the moment that you move from wakefulness to sleep, try to be aware. This practice can be done in bed. If you can be aware of the last moment when you make the transition from wakefulness to sleep, you will be aware throughout your sleep.

If you are used to waking up to an alarm, substitute it with a sound, a tune, or chant that reminds you of your awareness. You can easily train yourself to make this association. It can become an alarm for your awareness. If you achieve waking with awareness and moving from wakefulness to sleep in awareness, you are deathless. This means that when it comes to shedding the body, you will do it in full awareness. Even getting close to that moment will change the way your body and mind function, and will alter the quality of your life quite phenomenally.

 

39.   Have you ever watched a beehive closely? What a fabulous feat of engineering it is! Although it is magnificent piece of work, do the bees have engineering plans in their heads? No. These plans are there in their bodies. They know exactly what to do because of a blueprint in their systems. Spiritual knowledge or “knowing” was always transmitted like this – not by thought, not by word, but in the same way that bees transmit the understanding of how to build beehives across generations. Once this knowing is transmitted or “downloaded” as it were, everything that you need to know is right within you.

40.   I make a distinction between knowledge and knowing. Knowledge is essentially accumulated information. All information is only related to thy physical nature of existence. Knowing, on the other hand, is a living intelligence. With or without you, is still is. You are either in it or you are not: that is the only choice you have.

41.   There is something within you that can create an entire human brain in all its magnificent complexity and capability. That “something” functions in an altogether different way. For example, I don’t think with my head but with every cell in my body. I don’t have much thought in my mind at all, unless I chose to think.

42.   What a tragic choice people so often end up making – choosing the fitness of the human brain over a universe of infinite knowing.

 

Sadhana

                  Just work at removing from the mind the idea that thought is intelligence. If you take this one step, life will start speaking to you like never before.

43.   The moment you get strongly identified, you lose your perspective on life! Ideas of good and bad, right and wrong are all your mental constructs. They have nothing to do with your life as such. What was considered to be moral a hundred years ago is intolerable today. What you think is very good, your children despise. Your ideas of good and bad are just a certain level of prejudice against life.

44.   If you want an element of spirituality to enter your life, the first thing you must do is drop these rigid ideas of virtue and vice, and learn to look at life just the way it is.

45.   Most people who believe they are virtuous are hard to live with. Besides, they spend most of their lives trying to avoid what they consider “wrong” or “sinful”. That usually means they are constantly thinking about it. Avoiding something is not freedom from it. Such morality is based on exclusion. Spirituality, on the other hand, is born on inclusion.

46.   To impose morality, you don’t need any involvement with people; you just have to dole out the diktats: “Be good: speak kindly; if you speak in anger, the consequences will be dire,” and so forth. But if you want to kindle the humanity in a person, it takes much more involvement. It means giving yourself.

47.   Morality is worthwhile because it helps ensure social order, Humanity will also bring social order, but it requires no external enforcement whatsoever.

48.   Spirituality does not mean moving away from life; it means becoming alive to the core, in the fullest possible way. With age, physical agility may diminish, but the level of joy and aliveness need not.

49.   There is a significant difference between believing and seeking. Believing means you have assumed something that you do not know; Seeking means you have realized that you do not know. This brings enormous amount of flexibility.

50.   Yoga is an entirely scientific method that originates not in faith or belief but in profound understanding of the human mechanism.

51.   The premise is simple: if you have a good seed and if you create the right atmosphere, it will sprout. Creating the right atmosphere of body and mind is the only work. You do not have to do anything else. No teachings of morality, no metaphysical discourses are needed. If your humanity is stirred, you are beautiful human being.

52.   Generally, people use faith as a means to banish negative thoughts. There is alternative to faith, which is commitment. If you simply commit yourself to creating what you really care for, your thoughts get organized in such a way that there are no hurdles. Your thoughts flow freely toward what you want, and once this happens, the manifestation of your desire is a natural consequence.

53.   First explore what is it that you really want. Once that is clear and you are committed to creating it, you generate a continuous process of thought in that direction. When you maintain a steady stream of thought without changing direction, it will manifest as a reality in your life.

54.   There are yogic processes by which you can touch another dimension of intelligence, unsullied by memory, called chit. Realizing the power of chit is called chit shakti, a simple and powerful process through which you can access the very source of creation within you.

55.   You usually assign your thoughts to the head and your emotions to the heart. But if you look at this carefully and with absolute sincerity, you will realize that the way you think is the way you feel. But it also true that the way you feel is the way you think. This why yoga includes both thought and emotion as part of the same manomayakosha, or mental body.

56.   The deeper dimension of the mind is conventionally known as the heart. But in Yoga this deeper emotional mind is known as manas.

57.   The way you think is the way you feel, but thought and feeling seem to be different in your experience. Why is this so? Because thought has a certain clarity, a certain agility about it. Emotion is slower. Today, you think this is very wonderful person and you have warm feelings about him. Suddenly, he does something that you don’t like, and you think he is horrible. Your thought tells you he is horrible, but your emotion cannot change immediately. It struggles. If it is sweet now, it cannot turn bitter at the very next moment. It takes time to turn around. Depending on the strength of your emotion, maybe it will take three days or three months or three years, but after some time, it will turn around.

58.   It is not useful to create this conflict between head and heart. Emotion is just the juicier part of thought. You can enjoy its sweetness, but it is largely the thought that leads the emotion, whether you recognize it or not. Emotion is not entirely steady. Your emotion also chatters, goes this way and that, but is less agile than thought. Since it takes longer to turn, and its intensity is usually substantially greater than thought, it often seems it as though thought and emotion are different. But they are no more separate than sugarcane and its juice.

59.   Thought is not as intense as emotion in most people’s experience. Only five ten percent pf the population may be capable of generating the kind of thought that is so intense that there is no need for emotion. Ninety percent of the population can generate only intense emptions because they have never done the necessary work in the other direction. But there are people whose thought is very deep. They don’t have much emotion, but they are deep thinkers.

60.   Thought and feeling are not different. One is dry and another is juicy, Enjoy both.

61.   Once yoga or ultimate union is has happened, there is no longer a distinction between the ultimate reality and the one who has experienced it. In accordance with this logic, the yogic culture offers two ways to reach the ultimate state: becoming everything or becoming nothing; the path of gyan, knowing or the path of bhakti, devotion.

62.   Through knowledge, you aspire to meet “that which is not” face to face. Through devotion, you strive to obliterate your limited and rigid persona and move toward a more flexible state from which you approach the dimension beyond the framework of your likes and dislikes.

63.   Since ancient times, devotion has been seen as the most important spiritual path, because it is the quickest. The path of knowing is harder, but it is an “eye-open” path. Devotion, on the other hand is an “eyes-closed” path.

64.   Generally, for most people, emotion is more intense than thought. This is why devotion has been glorified above all other paths.

65.   Without emotion, spiritual practices can become barren, dry and lifeless.

66.   As long as the fear of suffering persists, you will not dare to explore the deeper dimensions of life. Only this body needs to be protected; nothing else within you needs protection. If you are willing to drop the ideas, philosophies, and belief systems you are currently attached to, you can re-create your entire life with the very next moment.

67.   Love is a quality, not something to do with somebody else.

68.   It does not matter how many times true love has been proclaimed; if a few expectations and requirements are not fulfilled, things fall apart. This is essentially mutual benefit scheme.

69.   Love need not necessarily be convenient; most of the time it is not. It takes life. You have to invest yourself.

70.   The English expression “falling in Love” is very significant. Something of you should fall or melt away to accommodate the other. There is distinction between a transaction and a love affair.

71.   You realize love is not something that you do; love is the way you are.

Sadhana

Love is never between two people. It is what happens within you. Try this for fifteen minutes or so: go sit with something that means nothing to you right now – may be a tree, a pebble.. Do it a few days in a row. After a while, you will find you can look upon it with as much love as you do your wife or husband or mother or child.

 

72.   Most people live cautiously, measuring out their love and joy in sparing doses for fear that it will run out. The most generous way to live is to set an example to rest of the world by living life full throttle and beyond all limitations. I you are so stingy that you cannot love, laugh, or live totally. You are a kanjoos a miser – on all levels!

73.   Devotion is just that with devotion you have dissolved all the resistance in you so that divine can transpire as effortlessly as breath. The divine is not an entity sitting up there; it is living force every moment of your life. Devotion makes you are of this.

74.   That which knows how to bend will not break.

 

Sadhana

A devotee is someone who is willing to dissolve into the object of devotion. If you are a devotee of life, you will become one with it. Don’t be an outsider to the life process. Become a devotee. Dissolve.

 

Energy

1.      Fundamentally, what you call “myself” is just a certain amount of energy.

2.      When Einstein gives us the formula E=mc2. He is, to put it simply, saying that everything in the universe can be seen as just one energy.

3.      Consequently, the yogic tradition does not mention god, or deny it either.

4.      Due to nature of our outward-bound senses, we are deceived into believing that outward expression will somehow bring fulfilment. When you misinterpret the expression as the cause, it will only bring entanglement, not freedom.

5.      The sole aim of every individual’s life energies is to touch the infinite – the very core of our making. They know no other aim.

6.      The content of both physical and mental bodies is gathered from outside. They belong to you but they are not you. If you want to go the way your body is going currently, you should know that it is going straight to the grave. Similarly, whatever you know as the mind is complex mess of all the stuff that it has been accumulating. The objectives of the mind are entirely self-created. They may seem be fine right now, but they usually take you completely away from the process of life. So, if you go the way your mind goes, you should know you are heading toward an alternative psychological creation; it may be fascinating stimulating, or even comforting for a length of time, but it bears no relation at all to existential reality.

7.      It is definitely possible to create some distance between you and what you have gathered. You can use it when you want, but need not be identified with it. If you cannot maintain this distance, your whole version of life will be clouded. Your memory and your imagination – which includes all your ideas, beliefs and emotions – belong to the psychological realm. Life can be tasted and transcended only when there is a distinction between the psychological and the existential.

8.      The spiritual process means return to life, it means following the deep intelligence of your life energies. There are many ways of recognizing which way your life energies want to go. If you dis-identify with physiological and psychological processes, you will clearly see this. It is only when you consciously head in the direction of your life energies that you find equanimity and harmony. It is only in such a stable state that you would dare to explore the highest levels of exuberance and venture into the deepest mysteries of life.

9.      Pain is a natural phenomenon, and it is good. But suffering is another matter altogether. Pain is bad enough; why make it worse with suffering? Suffering is entirely self-created. And every human being has the choice: to suffer or not to suffer. It doesn’t take much intelligence to choose the latter.

10.   Most human beings are labelling their compulsions, their limitations, as their choices. If you can joyfully do whatever is needed in a given situation, this is freedom. But limiting yourself to doing only what you like is horribly compulsive way to live. This compulsiveness is the trick of karma.

11.   What exactly is karm? Karm literally means action. Action is of three kinds. It could be in terms of the body, mind or energy. Whatever you do with your body, mind or energy, leaves a certain residue. This residue forms a pattern of its own, and these resultant patterns stay with you. When you gather a huge volume of impressions, slowly these shapes themselves into tendencies, and you become like an automatic toy, a slave to your patterns, a puppet of your past.

12.   This is why the same patterns keep returning in your life, there are a few variations, but they remain essentially the same, repeating themselves across generations.

13.   Your inner autocrat rules you all the time. You may think it is a new day. Circumstances may change, but internally you are experiencing the same thing over and over again. And so, the more things change, the more they stay the same – not physically but experientially! You are helplessly stuck in the karimc rut.

14.   Even if you lose your body or your mind, you still do not lose your karm! The backup systems are so efficient.

15.   What you consider to be your personality – the bundle of traits and tendencies that you are – is because of information you have gathered unconsciously. These tendencies have been traditionally described as vasanas. The word “vasana” literally means “smell.” Depending upon what type of garbage is in the bin today, that is the kind of smell that will emanate from it. Depending upon what type of smell you emit, you attract certain kinds of life situations to yourself.

16.   Vasanas or tendencies, are generated by a vast accumulation of impressions caused by your physical, mental, and energy actions. What you call your personality is just an expression of these tendencies.

17.   A spiritual process, however means we have made up our minds to rewrite our software, consciously.

18.   Quality of your life is always decided by how you experience life, not by what life offers you.

19.   Whatever may the nature of your past karma, there is enough awareness in a human being to take complete charge of the karma of the present moment.

20.   If want any kind of transformation, any kind of forward movement in your life, it can only happen if you break the cyclical patterns of karma. Anything that is cyclical suggests constant motion, but doesn’t really go anywhere.

21.   When you are in a certain state of insufficiency, you keep thinking that everything will be okay once your dreams are realized. But if all the things you dreamt of happen very quickly, you suddenly realize that, although everything is happening as you thought it should, life still remains unfulfilled and your longings persist.

22.   Until you break this cycle, there is no real choice in your life.

23.   That is because there is no freedom of thought, emotion, action and above all no freedom of experience as long as you are in karmic grip

24.   Denying, supressing or avoiding life brings more bondage than freedom. The desire “I don’t want Karma,” is itself a big karma!

25.   With a certain amount of effort and practice we all can write a software of joy and well-being for ourselves.

26.   Fundamentally “Kriya” means internal action. An internal action is one that does not involve either the body or the mind or the physical dimensions of energy.

27.   When you have the ability to perform action with the non-physical aspect of your energy, then it is termed a “Kriya.”

28.   If your actions find outward expression, involving body, mind, and the physical dimensions of energy, that is karma. But if you turn inward and perform an action beyond all dimensions of physicality, that kriya. Karma is the process of binding you. Kriya is the process of liberating you.

29.   How do you access the non-physical aspect of life energy? The yogic practices, which involve postures, breath, attitudes of mind and energy activation, are all essentially oriented toward aligning the first three layers of the body: the physical, the mental, and the energetic body. It is only in aligning them that you find access to dimensions beyond the physical - to the fundamental life energy itself.

30.   If you take path of kriya, a certain fundamental discipline has to be brought into all physical, psychological and emotional processes. If you want to hit the peak of your consciousness, this discipline is essential.

31.   Kriya is a tool to transcend the framework of logic and experience in order to access those non-physical dimensions that are considered spiritual or mystical.

32.   I spent twenty-one years of my life transforming a powerful kriya, the shambhavi mahamudra, in order that it might be taught to large numbers of people in today’s world.

33.   Kriya yoga as full-fledged path is important only for those interested in exploring mystical dimensions. If your concern is only well-being or if you are just seeking realization, kriyas can be used in a small way. But Kriya yoga as an exclusive path is not necessary because it requires too much application.

34.   Kriya yogis, on the other hand, can do whatever they wish with their inner world, and achieve a great deal in the outer world as well.

 

Sadhana

The very way the karmic structure works in every human being is essentially cyclical. If you observe very closely, within a day the same cycles are happening many times over. If you are very observant, you will see that every forty minutes you are going through a physiological cycle.

Every forty to forty-eight minutes, there is also a shift of dominance in the way the breath is moving through the right and left nostrils. It is dominant in the right nostril for a length of time, and then in the left. Become aware of this so you know at least something about you is changing.

35.   The yogic system offers us a comprehensive and elaborate view of anatomy of the human energy body. It has mapped seventy-two thousand channels (or nadis, as they are called) in the energy system. The prana, or energy, moves through these channels. These seventy-two thousand channels spring, in turn, from three basic channels. The channel on the right is known as pingala, the left is known as ida, and central is known as sushumna.

36.   These three channels are the basis of energy system. Pingala is symbolized as the masculine and ida is symbolized as the feminine do not refer here to biological differences, but certain qualities in nature that have been identified as such. These qualities are represented by these two channels.

37.   If a person’s pingla is very pronounced, then outgoing, exploratory qualities will be dominant. If the ida is more pronounced, receptive and reflective qualities will be dominant. Whether one is man or a woman has nothing to with this.

38.   The pingala and ida are also symbolized as the sun and the moon – the sun representing the masculine, and moon representing the feminine. The sun is aggressive and outgoing; the moon receives and reflects. The cycles of the moon are deeply connected with the female body as well. On the level of your mind, pingala represents the logical dimension; ida represents the intuitive dimension.

39.   A human being is complete only when both the masculine and the feminine function are in full force and are in proper balance.

40.   Sushumna, the central nadi, is the most significant aspect of your physiology, yet it generally goes unexplored. It is independent of the seventy-two thousand nadis, but it is the fulcrum of the whole system. Once the energies enter your sushumna, irrespective of what is happening around you, you have a certain balance. Because it is independent of the seventy-two thousand nadis.

41.   The nadis do not have physical manifestation, if you cut the body and look inside, you will not find them. But as you become more aware, you will notice the energy is not moving at random but in established pathways.

42.   The chakras are powerful centres in the physiology where the nadis meet in a particular way to create an energy vortex. Like the nadis, the chakras are of subtle nature and do not have a physical existence. They always meet in the form of a triangle (not a circle, as the word “chakra” suggests).

43.   There are 114 chakras in the body. Two are outside the body and 112 within the body. Among these 112, there are 7 major chakras. For most people, 3 of these are active; the remaining are either dormant or mildly active. You do not have to activate all 114 chakras to live a physical life. You can live quite a complete life with just a few of them.

44.   What exactly is the role of the chakras within the system? There are seven fundamental chakras, the muladhara, which is located at the perineum, the space between the anal outlet genital organ; swadhishthana, which is just above the genital organ; maniputaka, which is three fourths of an inch below the navel; anahata, which is below the point  where rib cage meets the diaphragm; visuddhi, which is at the pit of the throat, agna, which is between the eyebrows; and sahasrara, also known as the brahmarandra, which is at the fontanel on top of the head (where new born infants have a soft spot).

45.   The chakras are seven different dimensions through which your energies find expression. Experiences that happen within you – anger, misery, peace, joy and ecstasy – are different levels of expression of your life energies. If your energies are dominant in muladhara, then food and sleep will be the most dominant factors in your life. If your energies are dominant in swadihishthana, pleasure will be most dominant in your life; this means you enjoy your physical reality in many ways. If your If your energies are dominant in manipuraka, you are a doer; you can accomplish many things in the world. If your energies are dominant in anahata, you are very creative person. If your energies dominant in vihuddhi, you will develop a powerful presence. If your energies are dominant in agana, then you are intellectually realized. Intellectual realization can bring you to a certain state of peace and stability within yourself, irrespective of what is happening outside of you.

46.   It is misleading to speak of lower and higher chakras. It is like comparing the foundation of the building to the roof. The roof is superior and foundation is not inferior.

47.   In the physical body, your energies need to be in the muldhara chakra to some extent. “Mula” means the root or source and “adhara” means foundation. In the engineering of the body, this is the base. If you wish to grow, you need to cultivate this.

48.   At the same time, chakras have a spiritual dimension, not just a physical one. If you bring the right amount of awareness to it, the same muladhar can be transformed to a point where you become absolutely free of the compulsive need for food and sleep.

49.   The chakras fall into one of two different dimensions: the muladhara, swadishthana, manipuraka and related chakras are more concerned with keeping the body stable and rooted. These are the qualities associated with earth, with self-preservation. When your energies are dominant in these chakras, your qualities are earthy and you are more in the grip of nature. The upper chakras – the vishuddhi, agana, sahasrara, and related chakras are centres that draw you away from the pull of the earth. They are concerned with longing for the infinite. They make you receptive to a force we customarily refer to as grace.

50.   The middle chakra, anahata, is a balance between the two. It lies as transition between your lower and upper chakras, between survival instincts and the instinct towards liberation. It is symbolized by two interlocking triangles, one pointing downward and another upward, forming a six-pointed star. Many religious traditions have used the star as a sacred symbol, because some enlightened beings in these cultures realized their original nature through anahata, and discovered the interlocking triangles of this chakra within themselves.

51.   The vishuddhi chakra, located in the pit of your throat, literally means “filter”. If your vishuddhi becomes powerful you have the ability to filter everything that enters you or in other you grow so powerful that external nature has no influence over you.

52.   If energies move into agna chakra, located between your eyebrows, you are intellectually enlightened, but still not experientially liberated.

53.   The seventh chakra, sahasrara, is actually located just outside the body. For most people, it is dormant. Through spiritual practice and a very intense way of living, you can activate this. If you hit your sahasrara, your experience is no longer intellectual; it is experimental. You now explode into unexplained ecstasies and deepest mystical realms start opening up. In the Indian tradition, these ecstatic mystics were termed avadhutas. They were in such altered states of consciousness that they often had to be fed and taken care of by those around them because they were incapable of handling the worldly aspects of life on their own.

54.   Fundamentally, any spiritual path can be described as the journey from muladhara to the sahasrara, an evolution from one dimension to another.

 

Sadhana

By focusing at a point six to nine inches away from the region between your eyebrows for twelve to forty-eight minutes, with your eyes open, you can realize the nature and structure of your individual chakras (depending upon the duration and your level of focus). This perception can help in stabilizing the random movement of chakras in the human physiology due to stressful external situations. This is just one aspect of a very sophisticated form of kriya yoga that allows you access to your inner akashic, or etheric, dimension.

 

55.   The sixth limb of yoga is referred to as Dhyana, or dhayan, which is essentially about transcending the boundaries of one’s physical and mental framework.

56.   What does it mean to sanctify or consecrate a space? If you transform mud into food, we call this agriculture. If you make food into flesh and bone, we call this digestion. If you make flesh into mud, we call this cremation. If you make this flesh, or even a stone or empty space, into a higher possibility this is consecration.

57.   Consecration is a live process. The Sanskrit word for it is Pratishtha.

58.   If you have the necessary technology, you can make the simple space around you into a divine exuberance. You can just take a piece of rock and make it into a god or a goddess. This is the phenomenon of consecration. It is because of this awareness that the Indian culture built numerous temples on every street.

59.   The basic purpose of building a temple is to benefit the majority of people who have no spiritual practice in their lives.

60.   What is a deity? A deity is a tool for specific purpose; to achieve fulfilment in different aspects of life. In fact, the traditional word for deity is yantra, which literally translates as machine or a working energy form.

61.   Prana pratishtha is different in that it uses your own life energies to consecrate something. When you consecrate a form in this way. It does not need any maintenance. It is quite literally forever.

62.   The Indian temples were never the places of prayer. The tradition was that you have a shower first thing in the morning and went directly to the temple, sat there for a while, and only then began your day. The temple was like a public battery charging space. Most people have forgotten this nowadays. They just go to temples, ask for something, bum-bounce on the temple floor, and then leave. This quite pointless. The idea is to sit and imbibe the energies of the place.

63.   The word linga means the form, the first form that is assumed was that of an ellipsoid, or a three-dimensional ellipse, which is what we call a linga.

64.   Modern cosmologists have identified that the core or every galaxy is always an ellipsoid.

65.   Generally, in yoga, the linga is considered to be the perfect and fundamental form in existence. It is first form and the final form. In the space between, creation takes place. What is beyond is “that which is not” or shi-va.

 

Sadhana

If you learn how to use these five elements in a certain simple geometric formation, you can create a highly beneficial energy space for yourself. Here’s simple exercise you can try.

Draw a figure like the one below with rice flour or some kind of grain. Place a small ghee, clarified butter, lamp in a plate full of water at the centre. Place flower in the water. You have now created a geometric form, using water, fire and air. The flower in the water represents the earth. Akash or ether is of course always present.

Try this simple process every evening, you will find the energy of your room altered in a subtle but powerful way. In this manner you can uniquely empower your home or office on a daily basis. 

66.   Kedarnath is just a small temple in the Himalayas. There is no deity there; it is just outcrop of rock. But it is one the most powerful places in the world! If you strive to improve your receptivity and then visit a place like that, it will just blow you away. There are many places like that in East, but Himalayas attract the most people

67.   Tantra is a certain capability; without it there is no spiritual process. If you have no tantra in you, you have no technology. Words can be inspirational and directional but not transformative. A scholar cannot be labelled a guru.

68.   The word Kundalini literally means “energy” It refers to certain type of energy within every human being which is largely latent and unmanifest. The kundalini has always been symbolized in the yogic tradition as a coiled cobra.

69.   The snake particularly drawn to a person who is meditative, In the tradition, it is always said that if a yogi is meditating in a place, there will be a snake somewhere nearby. If your energies become still. The snake is naturally drawn to you.

70.   Ultimately, the rising of the kundalini energy sets the basis for a much larger perception of life.

71.   You cannot transform the world without transforming the individual.

72.   Your joy, your misery, your love, your agony, your bliss, lie in your hands. There is a way out. And the way out is in.