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Our subject is the science of Yoga. This is the science of the body, mind, consciousness, and our soul or being as a human. The beautiful and scientific yogic sādhanā, or practice, is to know the human more deeply than we currently do. This knowledge is found in the understanding of kuṇḍalinī and the cakras. This is the fifth lecture on the cakras. The definition of a cakra is a cycle, meaning turning. Everything that exists on our earth—in our body, in the ocean, in the stars, and the universe—exists as a cycle, a circle, revolving around a central point. That point is like a single drop. Consider a drop within a fog. That fog is like clouds in the space where our aeroplanes fly; they pass through it without disturbance, for it is as fine as a gas. Within it is that one drop, which is also like our soul. From a great distance, we are not visible, though we still exist. Similarly, our true self, our ātmā or soul, is that which is rotating at the core. Thus, a cakra is defined by what revolves around it. Water moves in cycles. The sun, what we call the sun, is also rotating. The sun's rays do not come straight to us; they travel in cycles. The center of that solar cycle is mirrored at our navel. That mighty circle at our navel is the Viśuddhi cakra. Our life begins as a very small, tiny drop where consciousness resides. That consciousness is life itself. It develops from the invisible to the visible. It is like a fine draft of fog, yet everything is contained within it—what we call the transferring of essence. Science now proves that the genes of our parents carry information from thousands of years; they can trace the lineage. This is the science of the cakras in the body. It is that which holds the positive energy, the positive light; everything divine in your body resides there, alongside many negatives and troubles. Therefore, the purpose of meditation and yoga is to awaken our awareness of our own being, to understand on which level we exist. The cakra is an imaginative representation, like what you see in a picture or painting. But the reality of these cakras is described in the book Hidden Powers in Humans. What I am speaking about is hidden within this book. If you wish to study and gain that divinity within yourself, to achieve awakening, you should read "Hidden Powers in Humans: Kuṇḍalinī and Cakras." You should not read it like a newspaper. Each sentence may require contemplation; it could take a month to understand this book. The language is nothing without the essence of the word. Therefore, it is said: "śabda, śabda is brahma, brahma śabda, śabda brahma." Śabda means the Word. There are two kinds of energies: the energy coming out from a cakra, and what exists within that cakra. If it is negative, it is called black—negative, painful, dark. If it is positive, it is called Śabda Brahman; that word is Brahman, the highest supreme. When the light from your cakras or my cakras awakens, then it is called the supreme light. Within that śabda, what we speak, what word is hidden, we call nāda-rūpa-para-brahma. That śabda, that nāda—nāda means sound, voice. It is the sound of the harmonium, the sound of the sitar. This guitar, if you are a master, you merely hold and touch the strings, and everyone says, "Oh!" But someone who cannot play, like me, touches it, and they say, "Oh, who made the noise?" This guitar here has its cakras, but only one who is a master of those cakras can awaken them. Similarly, my dear, you have everything within you. All is located along our spinal column. That one drop, one bindu, is called bindu. It is like a drop of fog, and from there everything begins. I know you know this, but I am repeating: first, there are the five elements—ether (space), fire, air, water, and earth. We are nothing other than the combination of these five elements. Who has done this combining? It is that drop which contains everything within you, now exploding from a tiny seed. A tiny seed contains a mighty banyan tree. Similarly, the power, energy, and divinity you have within you is immense. Our body, besides being made of five elements, consists of five bodies, or kośas. Kośas means one form to another, like one balloon inside another. The first is annamaya kośa, the body of nourishment. But we do not have only this one body. Nourishment is what the body survives on: food and water, liquid and solid. After that comes the energy body, prāṇamaya kośa. Prāṇa is energy. If you are very hungry and tired, and someone gives you good food, honey, or milk, it fills your stomach. But from where does the energy come? From the solid food comes the energy that makes our body move. The strength in our body is energy. Second is the mental body, the mind. We have energy and nourishment, but the quickest is our mind. The mental kośa is the mind. There are different definitions of the mind. It is in our body, but we do not know where. Can you catch your mind like a fly? It is not possible. The mind is like a reflection on water. You see yourself and want to grasp it, but there is nothing to hold. When you see a spot on your face in the bathroom mirror, you clean the mirror with a cloth, but the spot remains on your face. Similarly, the mind is the reflection of our senses. Senses mean our desires; desires mean our imagination. The mind is so strong and quick. If I tell you about a place, you are immediately there in your mind. If I tell you about the moon, you are already on the moon. That is the speed of our mind. Our mind receives information from the external world. There are ten different senses. The mind dwells within these ten senses yet remains apart from them. These ten senses are our eyesight (vision), hearing, smell, taste, and the touch of the skin. These are called the Jñānendriyas. Everything we have learned from birth until now at university, everything we are learning at this moment, comes only through these five senses. There is no sixth sense. We learn all knowledge through hearing, looking, smelling, tasting, and touching. These are our five keyboards, our five keys. The second set is our karma indriyas: our hands, legs, organs of excretion, and reproductive systems, etc. When you open your eyes and see something, it is instantaneous. But the impression is taken by the mind, which carries that picture to our consciousness or awareness, and it goes into your subconscious. It is like a camera running; anything you hear or see is registered on the film. A single sound, and immediately your ear identifies it. These five senses can lead us toward good or toward the negative. It depends on our decision: where we should go, what we should do, hear, taste, or smell. So, the subject of the cakra is within you. You are the highest. There cannot be anything higher than you; even the supreme of the supreme, you are that. But it is dormant. Why? Imagine ten people sleeping deeply in one room. One person awakens, opens his eyes, and sees a snake enter. The awakened person can wake up all the others. But if all are sleeping, no one can wake anyone. Similarly, you are here, great people; you can wake up others also, if your cakras are open, if that energy in your body, consciousness, and awareness is active. The mind brings a message, goes to the subconscious, and from the subconscious it jumps back to the conscious, bringing other hidden messages from our body to deliver to the five senses of knowledge and the five senses of desire. Then comes knowledge, consciousness. Thus, there is unconscious, subconscious, conscious, higher conscious, and supreme consciousness. That is hidden or dormant in our body, in our cakras. You have to do no very hard work. Just become aware of it. Aware. Do not fall down toward worldly desires. We have desires, but we must limit them. We are hungry, and we eat. When the stomach is full, you cannot eat more, even if offered. Similarly, we can do everything for our needs, but atisravatra varjante—too much is not good. Our knowledge—we all have it. We are all doing our best; there is no problem. But that fine energy, our consciousness, has still not reached fully into our jñāna, the knowledge in our brains. The fifth body is related to karma, which is again driven by our desires. This determines whether we go higher or go down. These are the five bodies: the body of nourishment, the body of energy, the body of the mind, the body of knowledge, and the body of our desires to perform action, to do karma or to perform the highest karma. Within this framework are the five elements: space, fire, air, water, and earth. Beyond the physical body of nourishment, energy, and mind, arises the highest kośa within our self. All the cakras we have discussed lead to the fifth cakra: the Viśuddhi cakra. Viṣ means poison. Everything negative, unpleasant, and harmful for us is a poison. Conversely, there is nectar, the good things. The Viśuddhi cakra is located at the throat, near the vocal cords, and is strongly connected to our thyroid gland. Every cakra is connected to certain sense organs or glands. All the things I have described pass through our viśuddhi cakra. Here, humans often create problems for themselves. Sometimes, to avoid harming others or causing suffering, we suppress negativity. For example, in a couple, a wife may be humble and kind. If the husband makes a mistake or acts unkindly, she may withdraw slightly, meaning she swallows all this negativity—the harsh words spoken. Or a husband may endure similar things, saying, "Okay, forget it." This happens in many situations: with work, with colleagues, with a boss. What we swallow here loads this cakra with a kind of heaviness. There is a true story from long ago in the Satya Yuga, millions of years past. It is about Śiva. Śiva represents balance between negative and positive, or you could say between devils and goddesses. He keeps the demons calm; otherwise, they would terrorize. On the other side, the devas desire the kingdom of heaven. No one could have dominance, so Śiva balanced both. The story is long, but I will shorten it. Both sides wanted to attain heaven. Śiva said, "Heaven is not what you are longing for. The prosperity and wisdom you seek lie under the ocean. The most valuable things are in the ocean." The Devas and the Rākṣasas asked, "But how can we get them from the ocean? It is so deep. How can we retrieve them?" Śiva said, "You need the nectar of immortality to become immortal." Both Devas and Rākṣasas wanted immortality. It was said they should churn the ocean, and all wealth would emerge. Fourteen things emerged from the churning. First came poison, then came alcohol (which at that time emerged as medicine, not for drinking), and so on. The last thing to emerge was the nectar. Then fighting began again. The Rākṣasas wanted to take all the nectar; the Devas said they wanted it. They fought and ran. The story continues; they are still fighting for the nectar. But first, what came? The poison. They thought, "Oh God, who wants poison?" Neither the Devas nor the Rākṣasas wanted it. If they threw the poison on the earth, the earth would be destroyed. What to do? That poison is like the petrol, the oil we extract today. Often when oil spills into the ocean, it creates a carpet on the water, and many creatures suffer. The wars over oil, over money, can be compared to this struggle between the rākṣasas and the devas. They went to Śiva. Śiva said, "What can we do? You were not careful." Then Śiva said, "Okay, give it to me. I will drink it." He drank the whole poison, but he did not let it go into his stomach. He held it all at the Viśuddhi cakra and purified the poison into nectar within his body. However, his entire throat and that area became very blue. Thus, he is called the blue-throated god, Śiva, and that is the power of the viśuddhi cakra. Śiva drank the poison but did not let it go down to the Maṇipūra cakra at the navel; otherwise, Śivajī would have entered samādhi forever. Through his techniques, he purified it. Similarly, when we have psychic problems—with friends, family, animals, or any situation—we should not simply swallow them down. Everything lies within like a stone. This is a particular problem for people with thyroid gland issues. Therefore, there is a program and practice to purify the viśuddhi cakra. Viṣ means poison; śuddha means purified. Viśuddhi means to purify. There is one technique among many. It is called Jalandhara bandha, where the chin connects to the chest. There are special prāṇāyāmas to understand and perform, but you should not begin Jalandhara bandha immediately. First, you must clean the three channels: Iḍā, Piṅgalā, and Suṣumnā, and attain the power of the Vajranāḍī, which is the Śivanāḍī. The Vajranāḍī is the Śivanāḍī; it is very strong and powerful. This is not a fairy tale; it is a reality. You can solve your problems, purify all poison from the body, and bring your thyroid gland back to a normal condition. This is a psychic problem, but there is also a physical aspect. Sometimes we cannot solve a problem, and thanks to God, there is medicine. Doctors spend billions of dollars researching medicines and treatments, and sometimes it does not help. The cause of all this is often our psychic problems. That cause sits in our body like a cancer. There are many kinds of cancer; psychic trouble is also a cancer. A minister giving a lecture a month ago said, "Corruption is also a cancer." Who takes corruption? The craving for more and more money is also a kind of disease, a cancer. To remove that cancer from our body, there are other medicines: homeopathic, allopathic, and Ayurvedic. There are many different ways to purify our psychic problems. Thus, the Viśuddhi Cakra. Tomorrow we will continue. I will be here for two or three days, and I will explain techniques to purify the Viśuddhi Cakra, which we will practice. Every day we practice from 10 to 12 before noon for techniques. Perhaps I will give you some techniques, but first we must understand. You have this book; you should read it. Where is the viśuddhi cakra? Which part is that? The bindu cakra is also powerful, as is the Ājñā Cakra, which we will cover another year. This is the Viśuddhi Cakra, and its color is blue, representing the poison. You should read about this. We will continue day after tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. I wish you all the best. If you have any questions, you are welcome to ask. Then we have a video about the Himalayas, our spiritual lineage, the seat of our masters from the Satyugas. The Himalayas are beautiful. I think some of you have been to the Himalayas. The highest is that mountain, Kailash Mountain. Have you been there? It is beautiful. I have also seen it, not from there, but from afar, and in pictures and films. It is a holy mountain. No one climbs it, and no one can climb it. Even when Chinese authorities asked climbers, they said, "I know I cannot, and I do not want to." It is so beautiful. When you practice your yoga here and look at this side of the altar, they say the seed of Śiva has a certain energy. It has beautiful energy. I saw this nicely for the first time. I wish you all the best. We shall now have some questions. If there are no questions, then we will see a 15 or 20-minute video. Deveśvar Mahādev, Śatguru Svāmī Madhavānandjī Bhagavān, Dīp Nārāyaṇ Bhagavān, Om Śāntiḥ Śāntiḥ Śāntiḥ, Hari Om.