THE NECESSITY OF MEDITATION: Have you observed there’s a rhythm in nature? Fall, followed by spring... Have you observed there’s a rhythm in your body? A bio-rhythm—at a particular time you answer nature’s call, you feel hungry, you feel sleepy. Have you observed there’s a rhythm in your breath, in your thought pattern, in your emotional pattern? The same kinds of doubts come around the same kinds of periods, times of year. When the rhythm of your body is in tune with the rhythm of the environment you become harmonious with nature. Our rhythms are haywire, they are not in harmony. AIIMS has done a research which shows your resistance levels go up three times by doing Sudarshan Kriya. People stopped taking medicines for cold, cough, fever. Many people haven’t touched medicines for 8-10 years whereas they were taking them regularly before. There are many other such benefits but it is for scientists to talk about them. Twenty-five years ago I took a 10-day silence—maun—then I started talking to people, and that was when Sudarshan Kriya was born.

NEW AGE YOGA: Our body is the basis for all activities of dharma. The word for health—swasthya—swa means self, asthya means being established in self. Spirit and health were never two different things in our country. But in the past few decades yoga was ignored, people went straight to Vedanta, which is only the final step, Yoga comes before it: Sankhya, Yoga, Mimansa and Vedanta. No puja, no ritual, no ceremony begins without Pranayaam. But Prananyaam was never taught. Now people have realised we need to go back to the spiritual aspect rather than be stuck in the merely religious, the outer thing. Unless the mind is still and quiet, Parmaatma is just a concept in the head. The finest—Parmaatma—is beyond the aatma. When I haven’t understood myself, which is aatma, Parmaatma is just a concept in the head. The gurus of old ignored yoga.

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