TV Channel

Good evening. We are always in the process of attaining perfection. That is a great thing. Today, we were discussing Haṭha Yoga, specifically Śaṅkhaprakṣālana. "Śaṅkha" means the conch that is in the ocean. It is said that in the beginning, everything was water, and the first creature was this conch. The earth came much later. That was the first incarnation, Varāha, who emerged from the ocean on his chest and brought forth our land as a globe. Then our earth began. This is according to the Vedas; the Upaniṣads describe it very beautifully. Afterwards came the different creatures and vegetation, but first was Varāha. It is a beautiful account. So, Śaṅkhaprakṣālana. "Śaṅkha" means the conch, and "prakṣālana" means cleaning. How do we clean it? If you pour water into a conch from the top, it does not flow out quickly. But when you turn it up and down, all the water comes out nicely. This is the principle we use in the Haṭha Yoga technique of Śaṅkhaprakṣālana. Then there is the Kuñjalakriyā, which relates to the elephant. When an elephant does not feel well in its stomach, it puts its trunk into its mouth and sucks out the liquid. That is what we call this kriyā. That is why the elephant is well-known for this. The elephant goes to a lake, swims, puts its trunk in its mouth to suck out, and also drinks water through its trunk. In the lake, it takes water in and out, in and out. After that comes the Śaṅkhaprakṣālana, which mimics the movement of the conch. In our Haṭha Yoga techniques, every master, every yoga school, every yogī knows this technique. One might use one or two other techniques, but generally it is the same. Many people practice Śaṅkhaprakṣālana. Some years ago, we had Umāpurī, who worked very hard and studied this subject extensively. Many of you learned from her, and many practice it at home. Sometimes groups come together to do it, as she cannot go to every small group. If you have learned perfectly, then of course, in our Yoga in Daily Life school, you can teach and guide others in this practice. However, it is not easy. It is said: "Dekhā, Dekī, Sahaja, Yoga, Gathe, Kāyā, Bodhi, Roka." This is not easy to translate. Those who merely imitate yoga—watching someone on television, reading a book, or just observing—have good theory but not practice. If you practice according to such theory alone, you may develop some kind of illness. We must know who should and who should not do Śaṅkhaprakṣālana. If someone has an ulcer, we must be very careful; they should not do it. There are many considerations. If you have had a stomach operation, or if someone is pregnant, they should also not do it. There are many rules, and it is very important to practice under a good master of Śaṅkhaprakṣālana. It is very beneficial and should ideally be done four times a year. At the beginning of September, during the season of herbs, you can do Śaṅkhaprakṣālana. For example, you can come for a weekend. One group can do it in the morning, and then another group can do it afterwards. This means the Master teaches. One session might begin at six o'clock, from six to eight; another from six-thirty to ten-thirty or eleven. It is very good to do it together. When we practice alone, we can become lazy, thinking, "It's clean already, finished." But the teacher will say, "No, no... one more round." You go to the toilet and say, "The water is very clean, very good." Then he says, "Yes, very good. But go once more." You go once more, and things like stones come out. You come back, and so much waste material emerges. No problem. We do three more rounds, and that's it. One must also know if a person has certain problems or diseases. For instance, a person with epilepsy should not do it. The Haṭha Yoga teacher must know Śaṅkhaprakṣālana exactly. The teacher must also know what kind of food to give afterwards. First, after Śaṅkhaprakṣālana, we close with Kuñjalakriyā again. Sometimes, if you put your fingers inside the throat too forcefully, it can cause bleeding, so do not go inside too much. Your nails might be too sharp. You should press the tongue a little bit. This is very important for performing Kuñjalakriyā. When this is finished, and you do the Kuṇḍalī Kriyā, you drink water—two, three, or four glasses of warm water, but without salt. Then you relax for about 25 minutes and do not drink anything more. You will feel thirsty, but do not drink. You can stand up and move a little, but do not lie down under air conditioning. In winter, the room should not be very cold; it should have a good temperature. If you have any troubles or problems, you should not do it. You can tell the teacher, "I do not feel good." Some people have very low blood pressure, which is not good for Śaṅkhaprakṣālana. You can become weaker and may fall down. Also, if you have a problem with bleeding hemorrhoids, you should not do it. The teacher should give you a form to fill out, asking about your problems and diseases, including low blood pressure and hemorrhoid issues, or if you get headaches quickly. There are certain things the teacher must be told. You should inform the teacher and write down, "If anything happens, I am not responsible." I think this is a law. In the hospital, when a doctor operates, a nurse brings a paper for the patient to sign, stating that if the patient dies during the operation, the doctor is not responsible. It is the same everywhere, and we should do the same in yoga. We might think, "Oh, I can do it. I am okay, I am a yoga teacher, practicing only yoga and deadlifts." But practicing does not make you a teacher. You may be training to be a teacher, or teaching some people... To give a proper certificate, one must go to the school of Yoga in Daily Life. It is not something to be taken lightly. Even a bus will not give you a ticket properly like this. It is a joke, but a real one. Long ago, about 35 or 38 years ago, one of my disciples... You see, I have five generations of disciples here. When I came, the grandparents became disciples. The grandmother walked with a stick, and she had children who worked in companies. They had children, and those children had children. So, three generations received mantra, and the others in between also received mantras. That makes five generations of my disciples. Five generations of children. Now you can imagine, I must have white hair. I was always thinking, "When will I get white hair?" I had black, nice hair. When I first came to, let's say, Czechoslovakia, my beard was just beginning to grow. Someone in Vienna told me, "Swāmījī, you should shave every second day." Otherwise, in one picture from Vienna where I am giving mantra, there is no hair on my beard at all. Everyone said, "This is a young boy, what will he teach?" But one should not think of age. You should know what soul is inside and what light it carries. Kṛṣṇa was also very little. Jesus was also very little, so I was also little. But then I said, "Let my hair grow, so that I look a little older." I was always looking forward to when I would have grey hair. Yes. It is said that grey hair, white hair, is not easy to get. It comes with time. Of course, you can color it; that is different. Otherwise, from birth until you near pension age, grey hair begins. And how proud one should be! "I am now a grandfather. My grandchildren, great-grandchildren..." It is said that your white hair, your grey hair, has brought you to this very high step. Be proud. Yet nowadays, people are not happy when their hair turns grey. They dye it black, but you cannot hide it. After three or five days, a white horizon appears again. This is very important. From the beginning, from our mothers and fathers, we inherit certain qualities. Life has always been difficult for all. Be it Rāma, Kṛṣṇa, Jesus, or many other great saints and sādhus—when they died, people said, "Oh God, he was so great. He did so many good things for me. It was all good. Oh, that was a miracle. He touched me and my headache went away." But when they were living, if I touch here, they might say, "Why do you touch me like this?" Life is different. As yoga teachers, you have to learn really very, very well. Yoga in Daily Life began in 1965 when I first met my Gurujī. There, he began to give me some mudrās, some āsanas, and meditations. During my meditation, Gurujī would sit with me and guide me. He would not give instructions every minute, only saying, "Lie down, sit down, close your eyes, and meditate on the mantra." So I meditated. Perhaps only 10% of the time I was truly meditating, and 90% I was like this. In the morning at four o'clock, having gone to sleep a little late, I would sit near Gurujī. Gurujī was also chanting mantra and meditating. Sometimes he saw that I was falling over like this. Of course, he didn't say anything, but he had skillful hands. That is training. It is not easy. Many would get up and hurry home. That's all. It is the connection from soul to soul. You see, there is a tree; one seed begins to grow, and people walk by, stepping on it. But that seed will become a great tree. When birds are flying, there are little babies: some are ducks, some are crows, and some are swans. The swan is the swan, the duck is the duck, and the crow is the crow. One master came with a crow, saying, "My crow is very great, very learned. I have studied him very much. Look, my crow, how it will fly." And how far did it fly? It went, "Pat, pat... pat." Then he said, "Fly, my swan." And the swan took off, going far and far. Wow! That is called Haṁsa. Through the master's training, it becomes Paramahaṁsa. That crow does not get the same training; it remains in its cage. You can give it something, and it flies up and down. I think every day about all these disciples who were born here. I am there, but we have that link. We are in that connection of divine light. Suddenly, what happened? From among the swans, one swan lost its way because it thought, "This is boring me." All the swans were sitting on a big boat in the middle of the ocean. One said, "I don't want this. I don't want the Master's training. I will go to some other Master." Everybody said, "Brother, don't go. Sister, come on." But it said, "No, no... I have another training, Master." So it flew and flew and flew... Tired, with nowhere to land—only ocean, no island, no trees, nothing to sit on. Perhaps a shark, a white shark, and when the shark sees the swan, it turns up because it does not eat like that; it eats differently. Now this swan is tired and said, "Gurudeva, my guru brothers, where are you? I want to come back to my Gurujī." And the swan, with its seed power, found the big boat and came back. Two or three swans ran toward it. "Brother, brother, how are you? Please, don't worry, come back." Sooner or later, we all come to that place to sit. This is from a bhajan by Sūradāsa. The bhajan says: O God, sometimes I want to run away. I am the bird of the boat, but I want to go away. There is nowhere for shelter. After tiredness, I come again to my boat. Similarly, if someone runs away, they will come back. At least at the end of your life, when death is coming, you will say, "Oh, my Gurudeva." So we are in a different world, but we are always there. Now, it is the time when birds like storks sit on nests in big trees or on houses. They come from faraway countries we do not know—from Italy, Africa, sometimes even from India. When they come from western countries, they are big birds with pink beaks; some have red legs, some have brown. If you want to see them, I will show you. They fly in groups of a thousand at once, forming a shape like the letter V. One leads at the front, and all the others follow, one on this side and one on that side, in a long formation. They fly at sunrise and land where there is water. In Rajasthan, near Jaisalmer, there is a lake where these birds land every year. If they are tired, they stay one day more. You can see that the first bird will fall back, and others go to the front. I asked the bird experts, not the birds themselves, about this. They said the first bird has to break the air, the wind, so that all the others can fly more comfortably. After a few kilometers, that bird comes back to somewhere in the center. It is so beautiful. You can only see it at sunrise. Sometimes they search for water elsewhere. Sometimes 10 or 20 birds land on our Jadan Lake. You cannot imagine how beautiful it is, how many different birds land there. When it becomes very hot, they find it a little cooler here, so they will come again in March or April back to European countries. Mostly, they are together as a couple. Now, you see, I am telling you about Śaṅkhaprakṣālana. Do not worry. It is about the training of the master. One of my disciples in Slovenia had a very nice, beautiful... On an electric pole, some of these birds made nests. The authorities were laying underground electric cables and took away the tower. The birds were so sad when they came back. So the electricians, government workers, took a nice big tower and put it somewhere outside on a neighbor's land. They made a nice nest, and one bird came and sat there. But she said, "This bed is not proper." So she created some new ones there. Now they were both sitting peacefully. They were both very devoted, good feeders of each other. This nature is always coming and going. If the parents die somewhere when the babies are small, the babies still know where their house is, their country. So you are, no matter where you are from, you feel Czech, or Slovenian. Many people come and tell me, "I want to marry this girl, but she is from Czech and I am from Slovenia." I said, "OK, if you are happy together, then no problem." There is an example from Gandhiji. There was one donkey, and the master of the donkeys tied two donkeys with one rope, about two or three meters long, on the deck. The master put grass on two sides, one for each donkey, and went away. When one donkey went to eat here, the other went to eat there. Now there was a half-meter distance. This donkey pulled to this side, and that donkey pulled to that side. So the whole day, the donkeys stood like that, straining. The owner came back and said, "What happened?" They looked dead. He said, "Oh God, why can't you be friends? Eat first here, and then there." But each said, "No, it's mine, and this is yours." So, Swāmījī, what can I do? I like this girl, and I like that boy, and the boy likes me, and I like me, but the problem is one: there is a rope. That rope is that country, and I am from this country. Sometimes it works out well. Otherwise, sooner or later, one has to come here. Then people always say, "In my country, it's better than this. You people are not good." Even if they are good. That was the case in Yugoslavia. How Yugoslavia separated was a great problem. So it is like this: one has to be there where you are, because it is the water or the salt of this land. Nowadays, we are not very much attached to our country, but I have this example. At the time of the Soviet Union, many people from these countries—Poland, Hungary, Czech, Croatia, Slovakia, etc.—were happy to go to Australia, Germany, Vienna, or other faraway countries like America. Now, when it became free, many came back. Like the birds come back. It is there, where your mother was born, where you were born. Nowadays you are born in hospitals, but previously, that was my house where I was born. Like in that nest was my egg, but that crow took away the babies. The bird is still sitting there, and she found one baby that remained. After a few weeks—birds develop quicker than humans—she said, "Mother, that's our nest, really." These two birds come and sit there. Sometimes there is attachment, but good attachment, towards fathers, mothers, grandparents, our friends, our village people. Let us be there and enjoy life. Otherwise, we are nowhere. An American is not originally American; they were the American Indians. All who came from Europe or Britain were not originally American. The Aborigines of Australia are mostly native, but others there are not from that country. That bird will always try to fly back to its homeland. But Aborigines will always stay in Australia. So, my dear, let us keep our country, our village, and our friends happy and healthy, and let us enjoy life. Every country has its own song. You can't imagine how nice it is when the national song is played and people are moved to tears. That is not attachment, but it is friendliness, life, my home, my place. I went to the hospital to see a doctor. Mānasā Devī was with me. We paid some money for my eyes. There was a lady who spoke in German, this and that. Mānasā Devī was also talking in German. After two minutes, really two minutes, the girl at the counter said, "Are you from Slovakia?" She said, "Yes." And she spoke in Slovak, and this lady was also Slovak, immediately. These are feelings. We have our bull, very tall and beautiful. We call him Sūrya Nārāyaṇa. He is like an elephant, very heavy. Now he is old. He has a beautiful residence where he goes for a walk. We put nice sand for him. He sits there and then comes back to his residence. We got two baby calves; we already spoke about our cow babies. I brought them to Om Ashram. One baby was about four months old, and the other was two days old. We thought, what will we do? I said, "No problem." Śukadevpurī from Slovenia, his daughter and his wife were in one room—no mushroom. I said, "His daughter is Lakṣmī, and his daughter is Lakṣmī. This is the second Lakṣmī." He said, "OK, Gurudeva. But now, what to do in my bedroom?" She will sit peacefully, so they put a little cloth and a little grass. She was sitting there, sleeping. Then we said, "Okay, we'll bring them to the Sūrya Nārāyaṇa residence." It is about 60 or 70 square meters. We made a little iron net and brought the babies inside. Sūrya Nārāyaṇa looked. He is a grandfather—you can think of him as a great-grandfather. He was looking. He always has a place where he can graze and sit. Slowly, slowly, he turned back. He looked at the babies. And what did he do? He sat down there near the net. These two babies also came near the net and were sleeping like that. I thought, at 11 o'clock or 11:30 at night, I want to see what the babies are doing. Very peacefully, no sound. I was looking over the wall, and Sūrya Nārāyaṇa looked as if to say, "Who is here for my children?" They came together. So every creature, every human, every animal understands; they know who is who. We are human, and we should also understand that we are human. We should not make war. We should not fight. We are human. And we do not know if we will come again as a human. Enjoy human life. And if there is something not good, then go to Umāpurī and do Śaṅkhaprakṣālana. Or if something is different in the nostrils or throat, then we have Harṣā Devī, the doctor, here now. I am training her; she is a doctor, very good. You cannot imagine how fine her hands are. For my eyes, she took very good care, and the injection was so gentle that I did not feel the needle. Umāpurī, of course, she is for Śaṅkhaprakṣālana. She doesn't have anything [to do with injections]. And Mānasā Devī also, of course, they are not practicing that. That's it. Anyhow, what I want to say is that whatever we train in, we should still have the master's training. In India, you might do something, but here, not. One may have very good knowledge of electronic work in your building, but when the government comes, they will not accept who did it. You must have that company's certification. It is the same with yoga. Yoga in Daily Life in this land where I am sitting began in 1973. We have kept it very nicely as Yoga in Daily Life. We have developed very much, so we have proper trainings and proper instructions. Yoga in Daily Life is not only āsanas and prāṇāyāmas, not only yoga nidrā (many are snoring), or meditation—concentrating on the sunrise, relaxing and seeing nice flowers. These are only four things: āsana, prāṇāyāma, yoga nidrā, and meditation on flowers or the sun. This is not all of Yoga in Daily Life. We have to learn everything, from kindergarten until university. Then it is for your life, for your soul. Keep your soul happy. Keep your soul very, very happy. "I am happy. I am happy. I am happy..." You know the bhajan we have? "Ānandam, Brahmanandam... Sthiyamamra..." I am happy, happy... Ānanda, Ānanda, Ānandam, Ānandam, Brahmanandam... I know that many people try to get a certificate from only one teacher who doesn't have a certificate either. If you have a certificate that is not valid, very soon—and it is already law—only those who have certification from a university can teach yoga. We have that from the university in Jodhpur, and we have it in Maribor, and so on. It is good. Yoga in Daily Life is recognized at the university. In Slovenia, during the Olympic Games, what you call the organizations, we are a member there. That is why our Yoga in Daily Life is valid according to that standard. We have the certificate. We have our president of Yoga in Daily Life in Slovenia. I am sure he will say yes. Please come here. If he said no, tomorrow he would not be the president. That was in communist times. This is the president of Slovenia. In Slovenia, we managed to become part of the Olympic Committee. All our yoga instructors must attend the University for Sport. And we have 150 of that kind of instructor. Instructors who have managed to do all of this—thank you.