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Yogic principles

Satsaṅg and an integrated yoga practice are essential. Never miss satsaṅg; it must hold the first place in life. Yoga is the universal balancing principle for the body, mind, and all relationships. Ancient scriptures describe yogic disciplines like trust, meditation, and compassion, which are present in all religions. Yoga was later divided into branches like Karma, Bhakti, Jñāna, and Rāja Yoga, all described in texts like the Bhagavad Gītā. Karma means all action; even inaction is a form of action. Selfless service, or Karma Yoga, requires love, making it incomplete without Bhakti Yoga. It also requires discipline and knowledge, linking it to Rāja and Jñāna Yoga. All four branches are interconnected and essential; claiming only one leads to a mistake. True knowledge manifests as great practice in all branches. Even Haṭha Yoga requires these four parts. One lives for the benefit of all. Failure in practice stems from doubts, anger, and selfishness.

"Your sādhanā and your satsaṅg must hold the first place in your life."

"All these four branches of yoga are connected to each other."

Filming location: Strilky, Czech Republic

The solution is satsaṅg. One should never miss satsaṅg. Your sādhanā and your satsaṅg must hold the first place in your life. Otherwise, you are neither on this side nor on that side. Our path is through yoga. Yoga is as old as the universe itself, as you have heard many times, because it is that balancing principle. The entire universe is balanced. All visible and invisible elements—stars, moons, and suns—are balanced. All vegetation and life on this planet are balanced. All five elements within this body are balanced. Our body, mind, intellect, and emotions are balanced. When something falls out of balance, we become ill. Therefore, to practice yoga means to keep everything in balance so that all functions accordingly. Here, emotional balance also encompasses our devotion, our beliefs, and our relationships. Our sādhanā, everything, must be balanced, and it is for this that we practice. The most ancient scriptures, like the Vedas, speak about yoga. Yogic principles are these disciplines: to believe, to trust, to meditate, to pray, to help, to have compassion in your heart, ahiṃsā. These are all yogic principles, and they are present in every religion of the world. Thus, when you practice yoga, you are aligned with the universal religion. And every religion is universal because it is the preaching of a particular holy incarnation; it depends on how you understand it. Every religion has prayer. The Rāmāyaṇa and the Bhagavad Gītā are also full of yoga. If you read the very old Upaniṣads and the Purāṇas, there is yoga: mantra practice, meditation, prayers. Later on, we divided yoga into different kinds. It is not only that Patañjali modified it into four main branches, for when you look into the old scriptures that predate Patañjali, they also speak of Karma Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, Jñāna Yoga, and Rāja Yoga. Furthermore, the Bhagavad Gītā speaks of eighteen different kinds of yoga. There are eighteen chapters in the Gītā, and every chapter, from beginning to end, contains yoga. We normally speak mostly of four different yogas: Karma Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, Rāja Yoga, and Jñāna Yoga. Let us come to Karma Yoga. Karma means to do something. If you are not doing, you are lazy. Not doing anything means you are already doing something—you are doing laziness, living on behalf of others who must work for you, so you are already doing bad karma. If you are active, you are doing karma. Eating is karma. Drinking is karma. Breathing is karma. Sleeping is karma. Anything that happens through this body is an action, a function, a work—it is karma. Even our earth is working; the seasons are working; nature is working. Humans are also working; animals are also working. That is karma: something happening or being done. There are different kinds of karmas. Some are natural. Without inhalation and exhalation, we cannot live. Without drinking and eating, we cannot live. If you eat bad quality food, there is no proper nutrition and you damage your health. If you drink water, milk, or juice, you support your health. If you drink other liquids like alcohol, you damage your health. What you do reflects on your mind, body, consciousness, emotions, and temptations. For humans, there is niṣkāma karma, selfless service: help others. Helping others means loving your neighbor. Yoga says, "Help others." Some religions say, "Love your neighbor." You cannot help if there is no love. This means Karma Yoga is incomplete without Bhakti Yoga. Furthermore, helping requires discipline; you should have a discipline to help. This implies Rāja Yoga. And helping also requires knowledge to do it properly, which implies Jñāna Yoga. Therefore, Karma Yoga is incomplete without Bhakti, Jñāna, and Rāja Yoga. Similarly, Bhakti Yoga is also incomplete without Karma Yoga. All these four branches of yoga are connected to each other. If you have one leg amputated, your body is incomplete. The same is true for one hand, one eye, one ear, or one kidney—everything has its meaning for the body. Similarly, all four branches of yoga are important. You cannot say, "I am a Bhakti Yogī," or "I am a Karma Yogī," or "I am a Rāja Yogī," or "I am a Jñāna Yogī." If you define yourself as only a particular part, you are discriminating against yourself and you lack knowledge. This is a major mistake many people make. They read some books; for instance, Ramaṇa Maharṣi speaks about Jñāna Yoga. After reading, they say, "Now we are Jñāna Yogīs." But look at the life of Maharṣi Ramana: it was complete Bhakti Yoga—complete surrender to God—and it was surrendered to Karma Yoga and immense renunciation (tyāga). He wore very little, not because he couldn't afford more, but because he had renounced. In Europe, I have seen many people, after reading Ramana Maharṣi's scriptures, climb to the top, saying, "We are Jñāna Yogīs, and we know Brahman." They become like a crow sitting on the peak of a church, very proud. Why? Because the crow thinks, "All these people praying in the church are praying to me," but they are not praying to the crow; they are praying to Jesus. The crow does not know this. Similarly, these people in Europe often become like a kind of atheist, thinking they know everything now. That is the biggest mistake they are making. For when you truly know what Brahman is, you will be the greatest Karma Yogī and Bhakti Yogī, the greatest Rāja Yogī. But you do not know; you have only read. This intellectual reading has made you blind—not believing in anything, not believing in photos or statues, offering no prayers. If you do not believe in photos, then why do you make a photo of yourself? You say everything is Brahman, everything is nirākāra (formless); then why do you eat bread? That is physical. You cannot just think, "I am eating mental food." How many days can you survive on that thought? We must use our logic. It is faith, confidence. That confidence can melt rocks, and you should possess that knowledge. Haṭha Yoga, practiced for our good health, is also part of yoga from these four branches. You cannot practice Haṭha Yoga without Bhakti Yoga, without Jñāna Yoga, without Rāja Yoga, and without Karma Yoga. Any kriyā of Haṭha Yoga you perform is karma; you must have the knowledge of how to do it (so you are a Jñāna Yogī), you must be correctly disciplined (so you are a Rāja Yogī), and you must have love and value for the practice (so you are a Bhakti Yogī). Therefore, even Haṭha Yoga kriyās, āsanas, and prāṇāyāmas cannot be done without these four parts of yoga. Patañjali said that practitioners should have devotion to their practice; then they can be successful. Otherwise, merely talking will not solve your problems. A very good mechanic, if he has no tools, cannot do anything. The best mechanic understands what the tools mean, loves them, and keeps them very carefully. A musician who plays the sitar or guitar or any instrument keeps that instrument as carefully as his own body; then you understand what it is. That person comes through. Similarly, we should understand what our body means and what it means to keep it healthy. We are not living only for ourselves. We are living for the entire planet, and our being on this planet should be beneficial to all—to the environment, to all creatures, and to humans. This is what yoga in daily life means for us. Therefore, what you have not achieved till now, the answer is clear. It is because you have doubts, changing moods, anger, jealousy, selfishness, pride, and whatnot more. That is the answer to our own situation. We have many, many things to change in our life. Then we will be successful.

This text is transcribed and grammar corrected by AI. If in doubt what was actually said in the recording, use the transcript to double click the desired cue. This will position the recording in most cases just before the sentence is uttered.

The text contains hyperlinks in bold to three authoritative books on yoga, written by humans, to clarify the context of the lecture:

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