Anything you do with intensity becomes Yoga

By on May 2, 2016   /   Health  

I was always fascinated by the power of intensity exuded by the enlightened masters. If you notice everything they do, intensity is the underlying common thread. This was one quality which I deeply aspired to develop in me in 2010 but I didn’t have the know-how at that time.

I remembered one experience from my master, Paramahamsa Nithyananda (fondly known as Swamiji), he shared that “In my young age, in the temple where my yoga teacher, Yogiraj Yogananda Puri would teach me yoga, there were twenty to thirty pillars. He would make me climb every stone pillar and come down. And I had to use only one hand to climb the pillars and come down! I had to do this from sunrise to sunset! One day I asked him why he was making me climb all these pillars because I couldn’t find any books or sutras saying climbing pillars was a part of yoga! He revealed a great truth – any movement you make with intensity and intention becomes part of your bio-memory. For whatever purpose you bend your body or move your body, that memory and idea will become completely recorded in your body-mind. That engram (samskara) will start expressing in your body.”

It was a strong click for Swamiji that moment – Yoga is any movement done with a strong intensity. When you bend your body with intensity for some purpose, that purpose becomes part of your prarabdha – the energy with which you create your body every day out of the Hiranyagarbha (the cosmic womb), it is the space where you rest every night, the same darkness which you experience in deep sleep, the space where all memories are available. Patanjali says any thought which you put inside intensely becomes your bio-memory. When you fall asleep with a certain thought and the next morning when you wake up, you will pick up that kind of engram and live it.

From the 12th Yoga Sutra, Patanjali says “Relax from these patterns (5 modifications of the mind) through constant and intensive practice of unclutching”. Swamiji revealed that intensity is the master key to experience Yoga! This is the ultimate sutra for the whole yoga regardless of the forms of spiritual practice you do. Intensity itself can lead you to the ultimate enlightenment without any technique or support. Whatever may be the obstacle you are facing in your spiritual journey, all you need is this one truth: Abhayasa and Vairagya – intense constant practice. You don’t have to bother about what technique you are following, who is your master, who is your teacher, whether he is enlightened – nothing is required. All you need is the ONE thing – intense constant practice. For enlightenment, all you need is the intensity of practice because intensity is an independent intelligence, you will be guided to the right master, right teaching, right technique and right enlightenment experience.

How to practise intensity?

You can pick up any idea and intensely internalise it through constant remembrance. When you fall asleep, be filled with that idea. When you wake up, be filled with that idea. You will see, in ten days your mind gets tuned to that idea, your thinking gets tuned to that idea. You will attract the right kind of people and situations around you.

Let me share my very experience after having practised the truth from Upanishad as instructed by Swamiji since March. I realised that I could smell the fragrance of intensity after I aligned my being with authenticity to ‘Who I am’. The idea I hold for myself is that of ‘I am consciousness’ not this body-mind. My breathing pattern is one with the Cosmic breathing pattern. Every night before sleep, I remember this one idea and burn everything to ashes – any association I carry about this body-mind on this physical plane and return to the state of pure consciousness. After two months of practicing this one idea, every yoga practice is becoming an intense experience of feeling connection with Oneness itself. The intensity led me to discover the Science of breath (pranayama) from Swamiji’s earlier discourse which taught me how to stop the mind and experience the cosmic breathing pattern. Everything seems to fall in place by itself!

In essence, anything you do with intensity becomes Yoga. Intensity is the unfailing way to the ultimate experience. Namaste. 😀

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Samadhi is sleeping with awareness

By on February 5, 2016   /   Life Solutions  

Do you know that one-third of our life is spent on sleeping?

Sleep is a subject close to my heart as I have been enriching people who suffer from sleep disorders such as insomnia, hypersomnia or over sleeping for the past 4 years through Sleep workshop and Yoga Nidra (Yogic Sleep) workshop. The truth is human being is the only species who is tired after resting! If a man doesn’t sleep in the night, he suffers from chronic fatigue in the body because he is denying himself from the natural renewal process which in turn, affects his creativity and productivity. The whole day he will be constantly disturbed and irritated, there is no possibility of creativity. If sleep problem is not addressed holistically, there is a high chance that he may spiral into depression over time.

From the 6th Yoga Sutra, Patanjali, the great sage states that “Right knowledge, wrong knowledge, imagination, sleep and memory – these are the 5 modifications of the mind which may lead to suffering or joy, anguish or non-anguish.” If we are able to understand that sleep is also another modification of the mind, we will simply know how to walk out of all sleep disorders.

Since sleep occupies such a big part of our life, it is important that we understand the utility value of sleep and how to use sleep for our spiritual growth. The yogis, sages and enlightened masters understand the science of sleep and the technique how to convert their sleep into Samadhi. Samadhi means falling in tune (Sama) with the origin (Aadhi) – the original source and vibrating in the same frequency of the origin, from which we all originated. A living enlightened master, Paramahamsa Nithyananda (fondly known as Swamiji) said that the only difference between your sleep state and Samadhi state, the ultimate enlightened state, is this: Samadhi minus awareness is your sleep, your sleep plus awareness is Samadhi. Enlightenment is nothing but being aware when you are asleep. That’s all. When you are in deep sleep, there is no samskaras (engrams) which are active, there are no memories which are active, they return to its seed-form, you are completely silent, relaxed, at ease. You are in the state of Samadhi, but with one difference – you are not aware. In the deep state, you are in the same space where all the enlightened beings are residing but the only difference is you are not aware whereas Buddha is aware, Krishna is aware, Chaitanya is aware, they are alive eternally. Imagine if you can also gain the knowledge and right technique for sleeping, you can spend one third of your life in Samadhi.

In the deep sleep state, if you know how to be alive and aware, you are done! Nothing more is required. But for the modern men, the problem is we are not even aware when we are awake, let alone being aware while in deep sleep. The truth is we don’t sleep for more than 20-25 minutes continuously, we come back to dream state, play the dream world then fall asleep again, after 20-25 minutes, we come back and move in the dream state, have dreams and then again fall asleep. That is why for normal man, when he wakes up in the morning, he does not feel as if he had a good rest since he never rested, he was playing the game unconsciously even though the body might have be resting but he was not in peace.

Being aware during your sleep is different from sleep disorder, it is a state whereby you will be sleeping, but your whole awareness will be alive – it means, there will be no thoughts, no memories, no engrams, only you will be radiating with the pure awareness that ‘I will be alive”. One powerful technique I learned from Swami Satyananda Saraswati who founded the Bihar School of Yoga is Yoga Nidra. This is a science of falling asleep consciously into the deep sleep state with awareness. If you can fall into Yoga Nidra state and get back, your whole system will be brand new and you feel totally rejuvenated which allows you will respond to the world in a positive way. You will only respond to the world through joy and bliss.

In essence, sleep can be used for suffering or joy which means the sleep state can be manipulated to reach Samadhi state or to be in the suffering. It is only the depth of knowledge in sleep from the Vedic tradition gifted by the enlightened masters that can help humanity to completely eradicate sleep disorders on planet earth. Namaste 😀

Note: The dates for the next Yoga Nidra workshop by Your Presence Heals are March 10,17,24 & 31. To register, contact in**@***************ls.com

  • Source – 108 truths of the Yoga of Enlightenment by Paramahamsa Nithyananda.
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Understanding of modifications of the mind

By on January 29, 2016   /   Health  

For those intellects out there, this is a sutra for you from Patanjali, the great sage of yoga.

In the 6th Sutra, he states that “Right knowledge, wrong knowledge, imagination, sleep and memory – these are the 5 modifications of the mind which may lead to suffering or joy, anguish or non-anguish.”

The revelation is right knowledge can lead to suffering or joy! Even though it is right knowledge, it is still a modification of your mind which is bondage. The mind leads you to bondage or freedom, you mind can make anything out of anything. Any situation can be experienced in any way. The mind can enjoy a certain happening or suffer due to it. It can experience joy or suffering in the same situation, it can comprehend pleasure or pain in the same situation, it can make you experience anything out of anything! That is the power of the mind.

Have you seen people creating guilt out of right knowledge? With the right knowledge, when you misunderstand it and apply it in the wrong way or when you misuse it, you can create agony, guilt and doubt inside you and other people. In the hands of wrong people, even the right knowledge can create suffering!

Next, all of us know that wrong knowledge can also lead us to suffering or joy. This is because wrong knowledge comes from our emotions, mood swings which are nothing but the function of liver and hormones. Do you notice how your mood changes during morning, at noon and at night? Your thought patterns and moods are all based on your liver function which is wrong knowledge. Another example, when you are hungry, your idea about food is very different, after you finish your meal, suddenly your idea about food is different. This also applies to lust: when you want the experience, your idea about the other person, your idea about beauty, your idea about the act, everything is different. When you are finished with the act, suddenly everything is different! Hence, Patanjali says any knowledge based on your senses, your hormones which changes from time to time, is wrong knowledge. That’s why Paramahamsa Nithyananda (fondly known as Swamiji) who is a living incarnation, emphasized that during the hormonal hijack, one should never make any important life decision.

You may ask – How can wrong knowledge create joy? According to Swamiji, wrong knowledge can lead one to joy for only a short period, but it is not permanent joy. It is joy that leads to bondage, to more suffering. So even if it gives you temporary joy, wrong knowledge is still wrong knowledge.

There are only 2 things your mind can do – it can either continuously condition you or it can continuously liberate you. Your imagination can either go this way or that way, it cannot stay still. You either progress or you go down, in the inner world there is no such thing as being stuck. If your imagination is used by you to liberate yourself, to remove all conditioning, it is called meditation. If your imagination is used by you to bind you more and more, to create more and more bondage for you, it is called mind. Imagination can either lead you to hell or heaven. People can either move completely away from the spiritual path or completely get enlightened.

Even with this great knowledge of Yoga, I’ve seen people create one more bondage – like feeling depressed due to misuse of this knowledge or misinterpretation of this great truth. That is why these great truths should be heard directly from an enlightened being. The enlightened being knows how to interpret Patanjali and from what context the truths are expressed.

Here Patanjali emphasized the importance of a cognitive shift by a master. The moment we experience a cognitive shift, our comprehension is illumined. We will be able to directly relate with the truth without difficulties or complications, without torturing ourselves. This cognitive shift happens with the initiation of an enlightened master. For instance, the science of unclutching is the direct initiation (energy transmission) by Patanjali where he spoke about in the 2nd sutra – “Mind is an action, you can stop it”. In the entire Yoga Sutra, Patanjali did not mention about initiation because he already knew that enlightened beings will continue to come down to planet earth to remind humanity of this science as a form of initiation and keep this tradition alive for future generations. It is only with a living master who can take you to the right imagination and lead you beyond the mind, the no-mind state of ecstasy!

In sum, the right knowledge, wrong knowledge and imagination are different modifications of the mind which only lead us to the extremes of joy or suffering, anguish and non-anguish. Beware of them! Namaste. 😀

  • Source – 108 truths of the Yoga of Enlightenment by Paramahamsa Nithyananda.
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