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We talk about practicing prāṇāyāma, and why we always start with the left nostril first. To understand this, we must go deeper into the understanding of nāḍīs. Why do we have to understand nāḍīs? We are talking about the Prāṇamaya Kośa. You know, we have five layers, five bodies. The first is Annamaya Kośa; this is our physical body. When we talk about Annamaya Kośa, we are also talking about the kind of anatomy we know: bones, organs, muscles, ligaments, glands, all of this. When we talk about the Prāṇamaya Kośa, we also have a similar, I will say, anatomy. That anatomy is comprised of 72,000 nāḍīs, the cakras, and the flow of energy in our prāṇamaya kośa. We know that there are three main nāḍīs: Iḍā, Piṅgalā, and Suṣumnā. You know all this. When we practice, especially when we try to practice Kuṇḍalinī Yoga and Kriyās, we need to know a little more about these nāḍīs. When we talk about the Iḍā Nāḍī, that nāḍī is connected with the left side, the left nostril. It is connected with emotion, with the mind, and its symbol is the moon. Why the moon? Because the moon is constantly changing. The moon is never the same, coming to the full moon, Pūrṇimā, and to the empty Amāvasyā. Our mind is also sometimes up and sometimes down; it is constantly changing. Because of this, it is said that all this world that we see is the creation of our mind. What this means is that how we see the world depends on our thoughts. If we are inside, in our thoughts, sad and in depression, everything around us will be bad; our world will be suffering. If we are high, everything will be nice, with unicorns and everything in colors, and we will be high. But then, in the next moment, we are down. That is why the symbol is the moon. Piṅgalā, connected with the right nostril, is symbolized as the sun. The sun represents conscience, the light of conscience, knowledge, and we need this for our development. When Iḍā, connected to the left nostril and the right part of the brain, is active, you will see, especially during meditation, that you don't have a problem with your body, but you have a problem with a lot of thinking, so many thoughts. When Piṅgalā is active, we don't have so much of a problem with thoughts. You have such a nice peace in the head, but constantly, the body is the problem. Because of this, it is said that the best time for meditation is when the Suṣumnā is active. This is the nāḍī passing, we will say, through the spinal column, the central nāḍī. We said that this occurs during the Brahma Muhūrta, the time before sunrise, and at sandhyā, the time when the sun goes down. In that period, it is the best time for meditation. Why? Because Suṣumnā is active at that time. We realize our Suṣumnā is active when we observe the nostrils and notice that both nostrils are equally open. That is the best period for our meditation because we will have nice, calm thoughts and also we will not have problems with our body. This is best because then we have pleasant, peaceful thoughts, our body has fewer problems, plus our Suṣumnā will be open, and the rising of the Kuṇḍalinī, which also means the rising of our conscience and our inner evolution, will take part. Now, why do we start with the left nostril? First, when we practice Nāḍī Śodhana, we start to breathe with the left nostril. In that moment, we are activating the Iḍā Nāḍī. Sometimes we start and this nostril is completely blocked. What is important in that moment is not to force. If a nostril is not open and you force, making a sound, you will irritate the area and your nostrils will become even more closed. You might feel a little discomfort in the lungs. When you feel your nostril is not open, just continue with the breathing, very slow and easy, without forcing. You will feel, after a few minutes, that the nostrils become open. For this reason, if you have a headache, one of the techniques is to find which nostril is closed and breathe through that nostril. Slowly, in five to ten minutes, you will feel your headache slowly disappear—but without forcing, just an easy, slow inhale and slow exhale. When you breathe through the left nostril, you are activating Iḍā Nāḍī and purifying it. This means we are slowly activating and purifying the mind. Breathing with the left nostril brings more of the quality of coolness and also a kind of daydreamy state, because the mind is activated and you are thinking more. But we are practicing prāṇāyāma, and we are aware that prāṇa enters through our nostrils, slowly goes to the Mūlādhāra, and goes out. When you practice through the Annamaya Kośa, the physical body, you are inhaling oxygen and exhaling toxins; 70% of the body's detoxification is through breathing. But when you go a step further to the Prāṇamaya Kośa, we are inhaling light and exhaling light. When you have a dark room and you switch on the light, you don't need a broom to sweep out the darkness. The darkness immediately disappears. So the light goes in and the light goes out. Through that, you activate and purify, removing the darkness—everything that is not good—from your mind. This may mean thoughts are a little more active, and so on. After that, you switch to the right nostril, associated with pure conscience. The light of conscience will make your mind still, enabling you to continue with your meditation. We don't want to practice by making the mind very active and then finish with such an active mind. Our mind is already playing with us, and we want to finish our practice by being a conscience, to be real, here and now. Because of that, we start with the left, activating the mind, and we finish with the right, activating our conscience. Only in very, very rare situations, and only when your guru says so, do you do the opposite. That is because your guru has knowledge of why you, specifically, not all, should practice in that way. For 99.999% of us, it is correct to start with the left and finish with the right. Also, try during the prāṇāyāma—this is my feeling inside—when we practice breathing through the Annamaya Kośa, that is inhaling oxygen, inhaling good air, and exhaling toxins. That is the normal physiology of our body. But when we talk about energy, try not to be a factory polluting the atmosphere around us. Try not to be Chernobyl. Try to inhale this cosmic energy, prāṇa, divine energy, and through our positive thoughts and positive feelings—Sarveṣāṁ Svastir Bhavatu, Sarveṣāṁ Śāntir Bhavatu—let all be happy and healthy. All of nature, everything: animals, humans, plants, the whole universe. Through those feelings, you exhale. And when you say, "Let all be happy, healthy," "all" also includes me. Do not be in fear thinking, "But I need to be healthy." Let all be happy and healthy, which means I am also included in all. Through such practice, when you inhale the light, cosmic prāṇa, divine energy, divine śakti, and you also give out your positive thoughts and positive feelings, you will feel more opening in your heart. You will be happier and healthier because of that. When you read some commentaries on the Haṭha Yoga Pradīpikā, in a good one you will find how to know if you have benefited from your practice, if you have developed. Simply ask the question: Am I happy? If the answer is yes, I feel happy, I feel full of energy, I feel that my heart is opening, that means we have developed and are progressing. If we are always talking about suffering—"Oh, it's hard," "Oh, life is suffering," "You must pass through suffering"—it means we are not developed. We are stuck below the Maṇipūra Cakra. The Maṇipūra Cakra is the level of conscience, and that is the level where we are in heaven. And what is one of the best things for feeling good? It is bhajans. Śrī Dīp Nārāyaṇa Bhagavān, Kī Jai. Let us start with just three Oms chanting together. As an inspiration from Swami Vivek Purījī’s talk just now, he mentioned that all should be happy. Although the Anuṣṭhāna just started today, I feel if you lie down, you will be very happy. There will be a lot of sitting. We sat a lot. Do we have enough space for everybody to lie down? Okay. Just a short kind of relaxation, please. Make yourselves very comfortable. No need for big preparations, just a few minutes. Of course, if you don’t have enough space or would rather sit, no problem. Close your eyes. Take some deep breaths and relax with the exhalations. Feel the earth beneath the contact of your body with the floor. Relax your whole body, from your toes to the top of your head. Feel and relax your face muscles; particularly relax your eyebrows and jaws so that the natural expression of your face can reappear. Relax and feel both your arms and shoulders. Then extend the relaxation to your back muscles and spinal column, and the other side of the trunk of your body: the collarbones, chest, and abdominal muscles. Finally, give your attention to the legs; from your hips to your toes, feel and relax both legs. Feel the whole body, and with one more deep inhalation, exhale and relax. For the time being, withdraw from the world of your duties and commitments, the different kinds of daily life activities. Come with your awareness to the center of your chest, the space of your heart. Simply be one with yourself. Without making any effort, without needing to study anything, we all intuitively know that we exist here in our inner world. As you observe the gentle movement of the breath in this inner space, feel the calming and relaxing of your mind, sinking deeper and deeper into your inner peace. Let it relax, just relax. Once again, we will slowly expand the awareness to the whole body. Keeping your eyes closed, become aware of your being here, physically and mentally. A few times, deeper inhalation and exhalation. Slowly, let us start to move our fingers and our toes. Continue moving your body intuitively, and if you feel like stretching, you can stretch. After the stretch, you can rub your palms to warm them up. Place your hands on your face and just share this prāṇa with your face. Then open your eyes, remove your hands, and slowly, with the help of your hands, you can sit up. So, a part of our yoga practices, as most of you know, is something called Nāda Yoga. That is the path of sound. Somehow in this life, this practice became one of those to which I have an inclination. Often the first part, before making sound, is to become a little more quiet. It is like emptying our inner vessel, quieting the mind. This first step alone is actually very, very useful. Sometimes we may see meditation or techniques for quieting the mind as something passive. In the world, you may often come across people who don't necessarily meditate every day. So there might be a question: why don't we do something rather than sit and be quiet? But when we take time to quiet our minds, then it is more likely that our actions will become those that concern the well-being of the whole world—what we call the "Nāhaṁ Kartā." As opposed to that little "I," the egoic eye that is often very self-centered. Also, I don't know about you, but I'm noticing how many people in the world are truly lonely. We all seem to have some sort of preoccupation with this; we are heading towards something almost all the time. When we encounter another human being, if our mind is preoccupied by our ambitions and desires, then we don't have much space for the other person. It is something like a computer. Every computer has an operational memory, no? I suddenly had these verities about three weeks ago. The more applications are running on a computer at the same time, the less operational memory is available. Our awareness seems to be something like that operational memory; it has a certain capacity. If it is preoccupied with trying to fulfill our own desires, there is only so much left for another person when you meet them. And actually, it makes both lonely. We remember from Viśvagurujī’s words that the best medicine for a human is another human. Many times he emphasized doing a mantra in the mornings when we wake up, to remind ourselves that we are human. But what does it really mean to be human? In some ways, perhaps to be human also means to be more available, to care, to love, and to give. These are our natural qualities. It is not natural for us to be greedy, to hate, to fight, and so on. When these qualities—kāma, krodha, mada, lobha, moha, and ahaṅkāra—have consumed our operational memory, there is very little left for compassion and human qualities. I don’t know if this works for your imagination, but for me it did. So perhaps that is the reason why I feel that blowing into this piece of bamboo makes a meaning. That music, some kind of music, has the ability to help us quiet down and to uncover these human qualities from within us, waking them up a little more. Today is also Śrī Devpurījī’s Mahāsamādhi day. So, about this remembering of our inner nature and the quieting of the mind, I thought of this bhajan: "Cidānanda Rūpa Śivo’haṁ Śivo’haṁ." That which I am, I am the pure; my nature, my inner self, is of the Saccidānanda. Then Śaṅkarācārya Jī speaks about what I am not. So that is another technique. One is to remind ourselves, who am I and what are the human qualities? The divine qualities. Another technique is to remind ourselves, who am I not? The end product should be the same. So if you would like to join the chanting, you can. Or you can just sit and listen peacefully. Or come in when the main part, the "Cidānanda Rūpa, Śivo’ham, Śivo’ham," this we know also. So you don’t have to strain your intellect today. There is also a purpose when we focus on the words, but for now it is to be with the vibration, the resonance of the sound. Śrī Dīp Nārāyaṇa Bhagavān Kī Jaya, Śrī Devapurīṣa Mahādeva Kī Jaya, Satguru Svāmī Madhavānandajī Bhagavān Kī Jaya, Viśvaguru Paramahaṁsī Svāmī Śvarānandajī Gurudeva Kī Jaya, Mano Buddhi Ahaṁkāra Cittāni Nāham.