TV Channel

Asatoma sadgamaya, tamasoma jyotirgamaya, mṛtyormā amṛtam gamaya, sarveṣāṁ svastirbhavatu, sarveṣāṁ śāntirbhavatu. Śraviṣāṁ maṅgalam bhavatu, śraviṣāṁ pūrṇam bhavatu. Lokaḥ samasthāḥ sukhino bhavantu. Oṁ śāntiḥ śāntiḥ... Salutations to the cosmic light, Lord of our hearts, omniscient and omnipresent. In his divine presence, a good evening, dear brothers and sisters. Welcome to you all here. I would also like to welcome the Vice President of the District Press, Engineer Milan Baran. Welcome also to Mr. and Mrs. Khaṇeś, the former Defense Minister of Slovakia. He was kind enough to come to India and open a very large chamber of Slovak culture in our ashram, so people from around the world can come to know about Slovakian culture. I would like to express my gratitude to the mayor of this city, Prešov, and Poprad, who welcomed me this morning with a warm heart. Unfortunately, he had to go to another city today, so he is not here. Many other dignitaries are here as well. Welcome to you all. Before I begin, if some doors can be opened for air or ventilation, please do so. Thank you. Because of the extra lighting, we are here, our dear brothers and sisters of Slovakia. I am very happy to be here in this part of Slovakia, sitting near the feet of the divine or holy mountain, Tatra. Mountains have very special energy and radiance for us. We do not know the past; it is beyond our memory. But this mountain is a witness, for millions of years, of the history in this part of the world. What is justice and what is not justice? This mountain has seen it all. I adore the mountains. I adore the ocean and, of course, Mother Nature. Poprad is a beautiful city where I have been several times, passing through, and a few times I have given lectures there. My visits to your beautiful country date back to 1973. The Yoga and Daily Life system is taught and practiced by thousands of people here. It is a scientific system that has been practiced and researched several times in your beautiful country, in spas like Píšťany and Trenčianske Teplice, and it is practiced around the world, dear brothers and sisters. Yoga is yoga, but it depends on how you explain and practice it. The word yoga means union, balance, or harmony. Where there is balance, there is harmony. Where there is harmony, there is unity. Where there is unity, there is divinity. So it is about balance, harmony, and unity within our self: our body, mind, emotion, intellect, memories, decisions, and actions. We as humans have the freedom to act in this world. If our actions are well-balanced and well-researched, they will bring better fruit for the world. Yoga is designed for the well-being of humans. We are responsible for the protection of the entire planet. Our life depends on this planet. The health of the planet, the balance in nature, depends on our health. Therefore, the first point in yoga is good health. We must realize that we cannot buy health somewhere. We have to gain good health, either through movement or through nourishment. There are different kinds of nourishment. There is solid nourishment, which in yoga we call a sāttvic, vegetarian, balanced diet. We should not eat for joy only; we should eat consciously, considering how it will influence our being, body, emotions, thoughts, and so on. Then there is liquid nourishment. Whatever we drink influences our body. The best drink is always said to be pure water. In your language, you say water is life, and that is true. I think some Slovakian who immigrated to other countries loved the world and water so much that he named his company Vodafone. Wherever I go in the world and see Vodafone, I ask people, "Do you know what 'Voda' means?" In Australia or Canada, many say, "No, we don't know; it's just a company name." So I explain. Its emblem also features a drop of water. A few years ago, you had an international conference on water in Levoča, discussing the quality of water in Slovakia and lakes polluted in the last century, and groundwater that is suffering. But anyway, we are not talking about this; I am talking about yoga. We respect. Respect can also mean trust. What trust can be that we believe? Whether we believe or not, it is like that. That is the five elements. You all know what the five elements are. Our body, as we all know, is a combination of the five elements. Only a heavenly engineer could create such a body in nine months. How many systems are created? The fine nerves, channels, muscles—only doctors know. The brain, the brain centers—until now, no engineer or scientist has been born who can prove that one can create a body like this and blow in the soul. This is the work of the divine. You may say God or nature, whatever you believe, but it is. So this unity of five elements is yoga. Now, how do we keep these elements in good condition, in pure quality? If we can, then we can enjoy a healthy, long life. For what? The aim of human life is to become one with God. So, yoga means union: the union of the individual consciousness with the cosmic consciousness. We are all part of that cosmic consciousness. As a soul, we are individual. As consciousness, we are universal. And all of this is playing within these five elements. The best drink we can have is pure water. If you have certain diseases—blood pressure, stomach problems, blood problems, skin problems, and many others—some we can cure, some we cannot. We have to go to the doctor. I personally respect allopathic medicine too. Anything which helps us is good. The best advice I can give you, if you like, is this: Have a copper pot with a capacity of 2-3 liters of water. Fill it with water and keep it in your room at room temperature, not in the freezer. In the morning when you get up, try to drink five to six glasses of that water. It is not easy because we are used to drinking coffee, but try. After you begin your activities, you can go walking or do some exercises. It is proven that many diseases are cured by drinking clean water. Please try. You will see that within three months you will feel completely different. That is the miracle of water. The environment is also nourishment. When you are with your friends, how happy you are. With your family, how happy you are. Or if you are in prison, how unhappy you are. This is environment. Our psyche changes according to the environment. Therefore, always go to good societies, good people, and nature; go for a nature walk. Thinking is nourishment. If you have positive and healthy thinking, you will be healthy. If you have negative thinking, you are polluting yourself. Positive thinking means you are enlightening yourself. I used to say, if you cannot dry the tears of others, do not be the cause of tears, which is also not easy. But if we would like to do it, it is very easy. So, solid nourishment, liquid, environment, company, and thinking—this is very, very important for a yogī or practitioner to live a healthy, happy life. Then come the movements. Movements are very, very important. If one has to lie down on a hospital bed the whole day without moving, it is very hard. The body needs movement, so yoga is a balanced movement. It is called psychosomatic movement. Yoga is very personal and independent. You do not need anything. Wherever you are, just have one or two square meters of space, and you can practice. There are so many different exercises. Even now they are doing them in airplanes, and I am surprised to see. In an airplane, what they are doing is the first part of Sarva-hitāsana of Yoga and Daily Life, which you have in your yoga book. Thirty-five years ago, I offered it to them, but they did not take it. Now, of course, they also do not mention yoga, but they mention some good exercise. In yoga, we have three different kinds of movements. First, dynamic movements, which should warm up our body—body-warming exercises, but not too hectic. At the same time, dynamic movements will warm up our muscles and make them more flexible. Then comes stretching. After that come the postures. If we do this systematically, it will influence your entire body positively: the gland systems, limbs, organs, ligaments, joints—the whole body. We will have a demonstration, and I think some demonstrators will come here—one, two, three, four, or five. After physical exercises, what we call āsanas, then comes the breath. When we were born, what did we do first? We inhaled. Then what did we do last? Maybe we were crying as a small baby. We don't. And what will we do at the last in this life? Exhale, and we will not be able to inhale anymore. Am I in the ocean? From one shore to the other shore—that is our life. Between one shore and the other, there are only waves. If the waves are calm, everything is beautiful. If the waves are very high and there are storms and hurricanes, it is very restless. So breath is life. Life is breath. Mother Nature has given the guarantee. How many years of guarantee do you have? It means how many times you have to breathe. Then you have no more breath credit; finished life. There is a battery charging. Now they say, "How many times can this battery be charged? Then the battery will be finished." If we use the battery too much, then we have to recharge it afterwards. If we use less, then the life of the battery will be long. Similarly, according to yoga, using your breath means you are losing or shortening your life. Therefore, always breathe slowly. Now, there is something like, for example, when you are running or jogging, naturally your breath goes quicker. That is counted as a training exercise. A sportsman has a very balanced, relaxed breath; that is a sign of health. So, in yoga, especially, the breath is beautiful and very important: what we inhale, how we inhale, and how we exhale. There are techniques to reduce toxins from the body, especially for people who are abusing drugs and would like to give up alcohol. Alcohol is also a drug; you know very well the problem your country is facing through alcohol, and we know the whole world is a victim of alcohol. Young people are destroying their beautiful lives. How many families are destroyed because of alcohol? How many millions of children are without or with half-parents? How many women or men are unhappy because of alcohol? The decision is yours, whether you use it or not. If you would like to give this up and purify all the toxins from the body, including from heavy drugs, then there are two techniques: drink a lot of pure, clean water every morning, without soda, and practice prāṇāyāma. Prāṇāyāma will purify our whole system. Prāṇāyāma means breath exercise. There are three levels of breathing: the abdominal breath, here by the lungs, or what we call the diaphragm or the chest brain. All creatures who breathe through here have a short life—dogs, rabbits, and so on, because they breathe like this. Those who breathe from here have a medium length of life. And especially, we are only breathing here because we have too tight a dress, and we would like just to expand our chest and look like this, constantly pressing the stomach in. This is not healthy. Breathe through the stomach, slowly, like a crocodile or a turtle living in the water. Slow breath. We will demonstrate this as well. So breath is life. Life is breath, the air principle. We inhale cosmic energy. The flame of our life is nourished by the cosmic mothers. After that comes relaxation. Stress is all over the world, and we people who live in this modern world are full of stress. Nearly every human is a victim of this stress, and due to humans, animals are also in this stress—dogs, house pets, cats. In America, they have yoga for dogs. Do you know this? Yes, you did not notice. Well, I will send you some articles advertising yoga for dogs. It means you have to go with your dog, and you learn to relax, and your dog also learns to relax. There are certain exercises; I do not know which they are doing. You know that often the husband or the wife is too violent to each other, or the husband is very angry, and the court gives the order to that man: if he was too violent to his wife, as a punishment, he has to attend three years of yoga class. He has to bring, every three months, a certificate from the yoga teacher that he or she attended the class. After three years, that man or that woman learns how to accept mistakes, how to get rid of aggressivities, to understand ethical principles, what life is, and what the life of others means. After three years, that person is completely different, and he or she becomes a good yoga teacher. In New York, where I was last year for ten days, twice or three times, and in many companies where I was invited to give yoga lectures, and in many media—those who have been there may probably know—any company which has more than 20 employees has a yoga room in their office. At lunchtime, all employees go there to practice 35 to 40 minutes of yoga, paid by the company. Because after practicing, the employees are more capable to work and concentrate. Also, in many schools there is yoga, and the students have the best results there. In our school in Jadan Ashram, Peter mentioned we began with 150 students, and in these four or five years, we have more than 1,500 students, and we do not have enough space. But what I want to tell you is that, according to the results at the end of the year, the Jadan Ashram school had the best result in the whole district; it came in the newspapers. The children also became calm. Unfortunately, many television programs are filled with weapons and aggressivity. Yoga makes a human a real human—not a terrorist, not a criminal, not a fanatic. It instills love for nature and for this. So relaxation, yoga for the dog or for humans, is relaxation. In Vienna, Austria, I had yoga classes for diplomatic people in 1972, and one lady from the American embassy was there. After one month, she asked me a question, "Swāmījī, is it possible that I practice yoga and it influences my husband?" I said, "What?" She said, "Because since I practice yoga, he is very calm, very relaxed." I said, "Yes, ma’am, because you were the cause of his restlessness." So, definitely, when you practice, then your husband will be more relaxed, or your wife. A good husband or good wife will advise the other to go and practice yoga, and she asks every day, "Darling, did you practice?" "What yoga? No, that I don’t want. It’s your way, not mine." "My way, is it okay? I’m going to practice. By the way, would you like to join me?" A man can never say no to his wife, you know. Of course, man is the head; all decisions man has. Woman is the neck. He is deciding, but he cannot say yes or no without permission of the neck. So the neck is taking care of the head. Relaxation. After comes meditation. It develops into meditations. So this relaxation and meditation are called anti-stress techniques. They are a balm for anti-stress, a mental balm. So yoga is designed for humans to be healthy, to be good, and to take care of nature. Yoga and Daily Life is designed mindfully, carefully, according to ancient authentic literature—ancient wisdom for modern times. There are many high aims in yoga: energy centers, chakras, awakening of the kuṇḍalinī. It is a science of body, mind, soul, and consciousness. The unconscious level, where our past life’s destiny is dormant. The subconscious level, where all our impressions and experiences from this life are dormant. The conscious, where we are just now awakened and ready to receive anything. Higher consciousness—that is meditation. And finally, at the end of life, it is called cosmic consciousness. These are the main levels of consciousness: Unconscious, Subconscious, Conscious, Higher Conscious, and Cosmic Consciousness. Within these levels of consciousness, there is the self. That self is aware of all this. Let’s say you are sleeping and you dream. You were on the peak of the Tatras. Beautiful day, beautiful flowers, beautiful good air, and nice oxygen—oh, it is beautiful. Then you went to some hut and had a very nice meal. Mostly we dream of eating when we are hungry at night. Then you wake up. How do you know that you were dreaming? How did you know that "I am dreaming"? When we go to the dream world, this reality disappears, and when we come to this world, the dream reality disappears. Similarly, there is one who is constantly observing or witnessing the dream level or this conscious level. So the dream, sleep, and awakening are three levels of consciousness. Every day we are pendulating between them, which is connected with past destiny. We are victims of destiny, which is connected with the subconscious, our emotion and psyche, and which is connected to our everyday life. We are struggling for it, and we are moving 24 hours in these three quarters. If we come, through meditation or relaxation, into the higher consciousness, then we are able to overcome or solve the stress we have in different situations of our life. Finally, this human spirit or human consciousness merges into the cosmic consciousness. Feelings, pain, love, pleasantness—animals also have feelings, but they do not have this opportunity. We humans have a powerful tool to realize this. So yoga is for our good health, the well-being of our entire life, and to create a happy, good family and world. And finally, to realize that God in which we believe. God is only one, but we have given different names, so it does not matter. Finally, we will come to that one, which is the real one. So this is what I mean by yoga in daily life: harmony for the body, mind, and soul.