Purify your prana
The nature of prāṇa is difficult to explain. Prāṇa is life, distinct from oxygen. When the soul leaves the body, the prāṇa departs as well; the body is declared dead. These two are very close, perhaps one within the other. Once prāṇa leaves, it cannot return—like water in a flowing river. That specific presence is gone. The departed soul travels at high speed; connection remains only through memory and feeling. Prāṇa is omnipresent like space, while the soul moves within it. Through practices like prāṇāyāma, resonance moves from the navel to the crown. This resonance is prāṇa. Our prayers and energy, sent through prāṇa, cannot change a soul's destiny but can grant freedom and affect its astral path. Prāṇa is the miracle. Some beings demonstrate total control over it, like a sādhu unharmed in fire. Ultimately, prāṇa is Ātmā—omnipresent. The goal is to purify personal prāṇa and connect it to the Cosmic Prāṇa. This is Yoga. Surrender is essential.
"Prāṇa is life. But oxygen is also life. No oxygen, no life. Yet, oxygen is different and prāṇa is different."
"Prāṇa is ātmā. Ātmā is everywhere, omnipresent."
Filming location: Vép, Hungary
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Karma, Dharma, and the Purification of the Inner Being
Karma and dharma govern the purification of the inner being.
Śubh karma, good deeds, purifies the antaḥkaraṇa—the inner instrument of manas (mind), buddhi (intellect), citta (consciousness), and ahaṁkāra (ego). Aśubh karma, negative deeds, pollutes it. Our actions through the senses and mind create karma, judged by their quality. Destiny unfolds from this behavior. Before facing great trouble, one's good intellect is taken away, leading to poor decisions. Therefore, purify the antaḥkaraṇa through śubh karma. This awakens divine tendencies like compassion and love. When afraid or lost, pray with a heart full of love; God hears such prayers. Dharma is righteousness and discipline. Losing it awakens negative tendencies like desire and anger. Attachment is powerful and sticky. Even great sages struggle with it. Your spiritual practice requires immense patience, like a careful climber. Do not hurry. Look only to your own karma and purify your inner mirror through good thoughts, speech, and action.
"Śubh karma, the good karmas, good deeds, purifies our antaḥkaraṇa."
"Whenever you feel scared, you should pray... Your mind should be full of love."
Filming location: Vienna, Austria
Practicing from Strilky
A guided practice for relaxation and movement through precise physical alignment and breath.
Lie down comfortably. Stabilize the lower back on the mat. Place arms beside the body with palms facing upward. Make the neck long. Keep legs together. Breathe with long, full yoga breaths. Movement must be synchronized and without personal initiative. Only move arms when instructed. Do not arch the lower back. Practice involves raising and lowering arms and legs with the breath. The core practice consists of mantra, bhajan, and sitting. Close the eyes and follow the count together. Do not use your own mind.
"Be guru-mukhī and not man-mukhī."
"Only mantra, bhajan, and sitting—only these three points we have to practice very nicely."
Filming location: Strilky, Czech Republic
Balancing Heart and Intellect
The human being is a balance of heart and intellect. Emotion and intelligence are both essential. Ego is necessary for survival, but it must be refined into self-respect, which means respecting others through our actions and cleanliness. Uncontrolled emotions like anger are destructive. The Upaniṣads teach that within the physical heart is a cave holding the blue light of the soul, the seat of the jīvātmā. The brain connects the chakras, but when this soul departs, bodily functions cease. Fire, Agni, is a divine element present in many forms: as digestive fire creating hunger, as the fire of desire and anger, and as the sacred fire of love and longing for God. Modern life severs our connection to ancestors and the natural elements, leading to suffering and a loss of roots. Our intellect can be polluted by selfish senses, but viveka, the discerning intelligence between truth and falsehood, remains pure. Practice develops viveka and vairāgya, renunciation. The five elements support the body, and through spiritual practice like Kuṇḍalinī Yoga, prāṇa nourishes the soul. True love is surrender and coordination between heart and intellect, creating better humans and a better world.
"Brahmārpaṇaṃ brahmahavir brahmāgnau brahmaṇā hutam."
"Brahma Satya, Jagat Mithyā."
Filming location: Alexandria, Virginia, USA
The Seed Has To Die To Become A Tree
Knowledge is an endless well, not a finite resource to be exhausted.
Great saints of the past have spoken, but they only consumed the butter, not the cow itself. The cow—Sarasvatī, the source of knowledge—remains with us. Feed it with love and devotion, and you can milk it day and night; the well of wisdom is infinite. We have just begun to explore the Manipūra Chakra, the jeweled city within, which is the foundation of life and holds immense spiritual energy. True wealth is not external money but the internal treasure of contentment; desire is what makes one poor. We originate from the endless, void-like Ākāśa and are waves of the primordial sound, Nāda. Like individual raindrops, we separate but ultimately return to the ocean. The navel is the center of this universal process. The vital energies, prāṇa and apāna, flow through channels like the Vajranāḍī, and their balance is essential for life. Our physical form began from the navel, a truth symbolized by the lotus emerging from Viṣṇu's navel. This spiritual knowledge is a feast to be consumed slowly, bite by bite.
"They ate the butter, not the cow. Feed the cow with love. Milk it day and night."
"Those who have the money are the poor. Those who have no money are the rich."
Filming location: Vép, Hungary
