Witnessing is always passive.
Observing is always judgemental.
Where is active participation?
Yoga says, ‘Be a witness.’ You are there, but not there.
It is like what Lord Krishna talks about : ‘Lotus in a dirty Pond’.
Universal Peace, harmony within community, flourishing of
nations, these are lofty goals.
Individually, can I influence it?
I do not think so.
I cannot influence anyone in making changes or changes in themselves.
This individual change has to be invited by the individual hearts.
Even in a small family, familial peace is not possible unless and until all
the members in a family are at peace.
So, when we talk about World Peace and world-level harmony and happiness and
the flourishing of humanity, it is so different, because everyone of us, despite
having good intentions, we somehow fail.
The very effort fails.
For example, the very idea of religion is similar to that of Yoga.
Yoga means Unity, that one unites us, at human level, as well as with Divinity.
‘Yejyuthe ithi Yoga - One that unites.’ Similarly when we break down this word,
‘Re Legion’ - ‘ Re’ plus ‘Legion’, Legion is a word that is derived from ‘Ligare’.
You all are familiar, Ligare is a root word for ligament, one that joins various issues.
So, Re ligare means to Re-join, Re-unite, reunite our hearts,
our understanding, our emotions.
But we have seen that even with our best friends, we differ so much.
And whenever there is immaturity and wrong thinking and wrong understanding, it becomes
a force that would repel the best friends.
It is like two poles coming together, which are similar in nature that
will throw them away from each other.
We too believe in Yoga and also everything in life, even in the business
world, that when we have differences of opinion, it is actually enriching us.
So, I need to observe all these differences from a different level altogether, from a
matured level of understanding, that when my spouse recommends something to me, I
may not agree, but my spouse will enrich my information, my knowledge, my understanding,
something that I missed looking at.
My spouse will complete the whole picture.
When an object is seen by multiple individuals, you are able to
see only from one perspective, based on your own limitations.
We create our own little cages of glasses, coloured with so many pigments.
Imagine for a moment that you are with certain levels of conditions, pre-conditions,
your upbringing was different from your spouse, your children’s upbringing is
also different from your own, your parents upbringing had also been different.
So the conditioning of every generation is different, every individual is different.
So, we somehow pigment our glass houses, our mental makeup is pigmented, coloured.
Even when I, along with my spouse, look at one object, she having pigmented her
own glass house and I having pigmented my own glass house, when we look from
this window of coloured glasses which are different, naturally, we will have
different opinions of the same object.
Viewpoints, ideas will differ.
In order to see the real picture, I need to remove those pigments , those
conditioning, pre-conditioning, nurtured by communities, societies.
Good or bad, everything has to be observed from a newer perspective.
Often we remain busy brooding over the past, worrying about the future.
We are all brooding over the past and worrying about the future and
spoil the very present itself.
Yoga teaches us to witness things.
Witnessing is always passive.
Observing is always judgemental.
There is active participation.
Yoga says, ‘Be a witness.’ You are there, but not there.
It is like what Lord Krishna talks about : ‘Lotus in a dirty Pond’.
It is there, but its existence is as if it is not there and no mud
is going to affect this lotus leaf.
So, that is the kind of promise which is made through Yoga practice that
‘As long as I practice my meditation, at least a few minutes every single
day, I can remain focused.’
So, this hope of paradise and fear of hell keeps our belief system going
on and this is the basis of religion.
Spirituality, per contra, believes in experience that, “Okay, my mom taught
me how to believe in God, it is good.
I now like to experience.” And they explore how to experience it.
.. There are many articles on Happiness.
Some people say that the absence of misery, or suffering is happiness.
But is that so?
That is temporary.
You are in India today.
You are so relaxed.
You meet your friends, your colleagues, your relatives, you are at ease.
Will this momentary, temporary state of peacefulness, which we
interpret as Happiness, will it last?
So Yogis, they say that there is a difference between temporary and permanent.
Yoga is a promise towards this permanency, towards this eternal, not just happiness
and health, but bliss and beyond.
I will walk you through this process of how we move away from this idea of knowledge.
For example, when our parents teach us, “My son or my daughter, please believe in God.
We all worship Gods and Goddesses.” Now this is a knowledge we inherit from our
parents, especially from our mother.
At a very early age, she starts inculcating certain samskaras [impressions] in us.
Then this training, I think, it is matured little by little, little by little, and as
we become teenagers, the belief that was inculcated in us, now we start thinking
about it from a matured mind, from a matured perspective that, “Is that so?
I trust my mother, I trust my father, I trust my grandparents and my family and
my friends and our shastras [scriptures].” But when you happen to ask a question,
a fundamental question, “Mommy, you taught me all these things, thank you.
But, why do you say that God is there?
Have you seen God?” Then mommy will have the same answer, which
every mother gives to every child.
And that is, “Because I learnt it from my mother, my parents; our shastras [scriptures]
say so, my religion says so.” But then, when you ask a question, “ Mommy, what do you say?
Forget papa, grandpapa, grandmama, what do you say?
Have you experienced?” And when she fails to convince our curiosity, we start doubting.
But that is a good step.
Doubting is a good step.
That is why, many people, when they say, “I do not believe in God,”
I think they are quite honest.
That honesty is appealing to our hearts because they have not experienced it and so
we say, “It is alright, it is forgivable”.
But people who say, “I believe in God,” but without any experience, on hearsay, blind
faith, it is very shallow, it has no value.
Just as you know, most of the doctors coming from the U.S.
are somehow, are not backed by experience.
And that is why, we remain quite unconvincing all through our life, though we believe.
But without this experience, we totter here and there, from faith to faithlessness
and from faithlessness to faith and we start developing faith only during the
moment of crisis, with a hope that if I believe in God, may be my problems
can be solved and, if I do not believe, perhaps my problems can get aggravated.
Or if I do not do my regular deepam [lighting a lamp] and puja [Worship],
maybe, I might be sent to Hell.
And if I do it regularly, my family can flourish and after my death, maybe
I might visit Vaikunta or Heaven.
So, this hope of paradise and fear of hell keeps our belief system going
on and this is the basis of religion.
Spirituality, per contra, believes in experience that, “Okay, my mom taught
me how to believe in God, it is good.
I now like to experience.” And they explore how to experience it.
So, the Yoga is offered.
Through meditation and especially the Heartfulness way, through Pranahuti
[Transmission], it nourishes our soul and we begin to see changes, we begin to
witness changes in ourselves, which are driven by our own personal experience.
Each time I meditate before I go to work, somehow my heart finds a very
deep level of serenity, poise and peace, just as before you go to the office.
If you are really, really, really interested in centering yourself,
focusing yourself, enriching your soul and making sure that every single
day, you evolve at a consciousness level, that is palpable, not just here
say, then this is the system for you.
They have heard about meditation, but I doubt if even 0.1% of those individuals
have ever meditated or know how to meditate.
There are teachers and teachers.
One teacher would say, “You close your eyes, focus your mind, concentrate on some object.”
But that is concentration, not meditation.
Concentration is a by-product of meditation.
Meditation is to repeatedly think of one object and here in Yoga,
we think of the Divine Presence.
Now when we talk of Divine Presence, we say it is Omnipresent.
But trying to feel the Presence, I have to use my heart.
Whenever we say, “How do you feel?” we have to always refer to our
heart, how relaxed our heart is.
When we describe a person, we say, “Oh, she is a very stone-hearted woman.” Some
other way to describe it is, “She is so loving, she has a loving heart, she has
a peaceful heart.” So, the quality of a person is often described by the quality
of the heart – soft-hearted, stone-hearted.
And we feel all these things in our heart.
Now in Yoga, through this Transmission, when a Guru of caliber transmits his capabilities
into us, we somehow begin to resonate with His state, which is so refined and so divine.
You could be anywhere, you could be in your bedroom, somewhere in the
United States, and he could be in the Himalayas and he transmits to you and
you can, you should be able to feel it.
You will feel it, because it is real.
And every time, one feels this Transmission, it transports us to a different level,
a different depths of meditation.
In order to begin this, there are initiatory sittings given by many trainers.
These trainers are present in almost every city across the globe.
And if you are in a far remote village perhaps, you can use
the app given by HeartInTune.
And someone, they can help us.
And the beauty of this Heartfulness Way of meditation is, it is free.
And as I say, it is free monetary-wise, but we pay a big price, big price with our life,
because nothing in the Universe is free.
There is always an exchange.
Though there is no monetary transaction with this system, what it demands
from us is commitment and time.
If you are really, really, really interested in centering yourself,
focusing yourself, enriching your soul and making sure that every single
day, you evolve at a consciousness level, that is palpable, not just here
say, then this is the system for you.
If you have no desire to transform yourself, because you think you
are okay, nothing wrong with it.
But when you look deep down within yourself and say, “Yes, I need to transform, I
need to become a better human being, angelic type of human being, Godly
human being, more compassionate, kind and altruistic,” then this is the path.
This path is such a beautiful system that I have been experiencing since 1976.