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Miraculous lives of yogis

A yoga lecture and practice session on the universal principle of yoga.

"Yoga is that principle which balances the entire universe. All visible and invisible elements are balanced by that principle—yoga."

"Yoga is a universal principle... It is a balancing principle of the entire universe."

The teacher guides attendees through postures like Vīrāsana while explaining yoga's ancient origins as a unifying, balancing force for all existence. He shares stories of legendary yogis, discusses the integration of yoga's various branches, and emphasizes its core as a spiritual, sattvic way of life defined by love, ahimsa, and non-commercialization, contrasting it with modern misinterpretations.

Filming location: Prague, Cz.

DVD 300

We must begin something. We are going to have a lecture and practice together, because I see from your faces that you did not practice enough this morning. Therefore, there is one very beautiful posture called Vīrāsana. Please, everyone, sit in Vīrāsana. Those who do not know how should look at their neighbors and then do it. Yesterday, we spoke, or I spoke, generally about yoga. You all know there are many different branches of yoga, but yoga is one. Yoga is that principle which balances the entire universe. All visible and invisible elements are balanced by that principle—yoga. Where there is balance, there is harmony, and therefore here yoga means harmony. Where there is harmony, there is unity, and therefore yoga means union. Yoga is a universal principle. According to Indian philosophy, Indian mythology, and the ancient spiritual heritage of India, there are many legends which say how some yogīs meditated for hundreds of thousands of years, sitting for thousands of years in the same posture. And you cannot sit now for five minutes. How will we realize this? So, change your posture. There is one very famous hobby photographer who likes to take photos of nature—mountains, hills, valleys, rocks, and in the Himalayas. He went to the Himalayas and took some photographs only of nature: snow, and even ice rocks. Then he was developing his photos with film, not like we have here. In one of his photos, there appeared a picture: someone sitting in lotus posture, hands like this, eyes closed, and he hardly had any muscles on his body, but still there was skin, and a semblance of life. Now you can change your posture. It means both toes, both legs, and knees on the ground. They made research on this photo. How did the photo come? There was nothing visible; he was only photographing rocks. After the research, history tells it was a place where there was one great yogī who was meditating, or is meditating still. He is called Mārtaṇḍa Ṛṣi. This Mārtaṇḍa Ṛṣi was in Dvāpara Yuga or Tretā Yuga, which is nearly one million years ago. Our modern science will not believe it, but it is. That picture is very famous, and of course, many yoga schools declare him as their Grand Master. So, of course, all Ṛṣis are our grand masters. About 10 or 15 years ago, there was an article in Time magazine, in National Geographic, and in many magazines. They found the body of a girl, about 8 to 10 years old, in South America, somewhere in what they call the Maya culture or the Incas, which was about several thousand years old. This girl was preserved; they found her skin and whole body as it is, and they found blood in her heart. Do you know this story? One can ask; you can find this magazine. It was in all the newspapers and magazines. Unfortunately, the commentary was given like this: that this girl was sacrificed by her parents. The cause of her death was that they sacrificed her. How far this is the truth, God knows; I cannot tell you. Now, knees up, hands on the knees, legs a little apart, and keep the balance. If you read the ancient literatures, there are the names of the ṛṣis, and it is said how many thousand years they were meditating. Now, I ask you a question: can you tell how old yoga is? Yoga is not ten thousand, five thousand, or two thousand years old. It is very, very old. There were highly developed humans, highly civilized, and they found these old sciences like astronomy, astrology, palmistry, the past lives, the future lives, the destiny, the karma, the cause. Whether we believe or we don't believe, it was and it is. So, yoga is as old as this planet, I would say, or more than this. It is a balancing principle of the entire universe. Now, raise your hands up and balance yourself. Beautiful. But generally, we divide yoga into 18 parts, and these 18 are the 18th chapter of the Bhagavad Gītā. Now you stand up as it is, and hands down. Slowly, hands up and down. So, go ahead. Now, generally people call four parts of yoga: Bhakti, Karma, Rāja, and Jñāna Yoga. And among these, also included, are Mantra Yoga, Kriyā Yoga, Svara Yoga, and all these different things. For example, there are bricks or stones, lime or cement, iron, wood, clay, earth, and water. Now, sit on the toes again, hands up. Very good. Now, the example: the material is the same. But which architect, how he designs and builds a building—this is the difference. For modern architecture, it is nearly impossible to make a building like a thousand-year-old, nice, beautiful Prague building. Hands on the knees. We do not have time. We want to finish our house in four months, or before winter we want to move into our house. And now it's only the ground there, nothing else. To build such a building sometimes takes generations. So, knees on the ground. Therefore, yoga is yoga. Now, which teacher, how is teaching? That's like different architects. The elements are the same: earth, water, air, fire, and ether. Therefore, there are many, many teachers in the world. They are all very good, because they do according to their capacity. They are teaching in a different way and giving their name. And according to their name, but yoga is yoga. The principles of yoga are a healthy way of life: vegetarian life, sāttvic nourishment, prayers, positive way of living, positive thinking and helping others, be kind, understand them, and finally the aim is God-realization. That is the aim and principle of yoga. So it doesn't matter through which teacher you are learning; you should know there is a love inside all creatures. No one wants to die. A self-realized yogī will not kill and eat animals. And if one is doing so, then there will be obstacles; one cannot get self-realization. And if one is saying otherwise, it's only saying, it's not reality. So where there is yoga, there is love, love for all creatures. Feed them. Love them. Don't eat them. That's it. Then, equal vision, thinking for all, happiness: Sarve Bhavantu Sukhinaḥ. And now, sit in Vajrāsana. Sarve Bhavantu Sukhinaḥ, thinking for everyone. And be ready to help everyone with everything. Whatever you have, you are capable of giving to help others. And pray, meditate. Without spirituality, there is no yoga. If there is no spirituality, and no thinking of ahiṃsā, love, and sāttvic food, then it is only a physical thing. And physical is unreality. Yes, this body is a destructive body. This body will be destroyed sooner or later. Therefore, a yogī never concentrates or thinks only of the body. Of course, without a body, you can't do anything. So, it is important that you keep your body healthy, but we should have a healthy opinion about our body, a healthy relation to our body, and then perform those exercises which will create in you ātambal, the willpower. Mental power. Mānabala. That's called manobal, the mental power. Ātambal is the willpower. Ātmā is the self. The strength of your self, the inner self, that comes from ātmacintan, that constantly you are thinking, "Who am I? I'm not this body, I'm not these thoughts, I'm not these emotions." And therefore it's very important to understand what is yoga. Do not commercialize yoga. Do not make a show with yoga. Do not make competitions and challenges. But take it as a way of life, and that is why we call it Yoga in Daily Life. Yoga in Daily Life is definitely not my creation. All these techniques and postures are not my creation. It is the creation of those ṛṣis who lived millions of years before. It is their property. We are just using it. The house is someone's house; we are just living inside. We are renters, so it depends. One architect puts a stone like this, but another one puts a little like that. Like that. And another one puts like that. And another one puts like this. Or like that. Or like this. Or like that. Stone is a stone. Now, how you put that is your knowledge. Therefore, no one has a copyright of yoga; only Lord Śiva has a copyright. But certain techniques, certain programs which are designed out of all these yoga exercises, that we shall keep quality. And therefore, Yoga in Daily Life, which has a copyright, is to keep purity inside, the quality. That's it. There are some yoga classes teaching some people. They call themselves yogīs; I wouldn't call them yogīs. After yoga class, they have a kind of little sitting, chatting, where there is a sausage, whiskey, or red wine, or a beer, or what they call the grilled meat, a little bite, and they call themselves yogīs. And now, when you are a new one, you don't know what yoga is. And you come there, and you think this is yoga. Therefore, I can only tell you that we are the luckiest and most fortunate ones, that we have such a spiritual lineage where there is love, ahiṃsā, harmony, understanding. And if, as a Yoga in Daily Life teacher, after your class you will sit and drink the wine and eat the meat and say, "How are you?" Mahāprabhujī will not be happy. Mahāprabhujī will call me, "Come here. Look what your disciple is doing." And you want to give them mokṣa? No. They belong somewhere else, where the pigs are, in another life. What you eat, like that you will be. You eat what you are. Therefore, you have to eat divine food, because you are divine, sāttvic. So yoga means love, care, understanding, and realization. So there are many different kinds of yoga now in the world, but yoga is yoga, and you cannot say, "I practice only Haṭha Yoga." Very few of you do Haṭha Yoga. Haṭha Yoga is the other six kriyas: neti, dhoti, basti, nauli, tratak, and alabanti. Also, Rāja Yoga cannot be completed without Karma Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, and Jñāna Yoga. And Jñāna Yoga cannot be completed without Bhakti Yoga, Rāja Yoga, and Karma Yoga. And Karma Yoga cannot be completed without Jñāna Yoga, Rāja Yoga, and Bhakti Yoga. Example: This body cannot be completed without the five elements. If one element is missing, the body cannot be completed. Similarly, you cannot say, "I am a Jñāna Yogī only." There are some people who say, "I am a Jñāna Yogī. I am only Ātmā." This is a stupidity. Because you are still in the body. They say, "No, I have nothing to do with the material, I am only Ātmā." Then why do you eat bread? Bread is also material. If you are saying that I am not the body and I don't care about the body, then why do you eat and drink? Therefore, saying is different and reality is different. So in the human body, there are many, many energy centers, and 950 centers are dormant, or maybe 990 centers are dormant, and only five centers are active. And these five centers, they are mostly active, we are negative ones. So, it is a human who has this tendency to think negatively always. If you are sitting with someone in some other room or somewhere, if you sit with someone somewhere in a room, then others who are looking will think negatively first: why are they sitting alone there, what are they talking about? Then someone else who is looking at it from the side will first think negatively, "Why are they sitting there alone?" In the night, if you walk along a street with someone a few times, then the people will think there is some thief walking; they will call the police. There are strangers; what are they doing here? If you walk the same street a few times at night, the neighbors will call the police, thinking that some strangers are walking this street. They are probably criminals, and then the police come and ask you. And then you say, "Yes, I live on that street, but we arrived late. I'm at a friend's place, so I'm waiting for him to wake up so we don't disturb them anymore, so he opens the door for us." And that's a guest at a person who called the police. How positively the guests were thinking about him. And how negatively he was thinking about others. People first think negatively. When you wear a one-color dress, and there is some spot, a dirty spot, only one small spot, always your eyes will go to that spot. I have a beard, you know. Some call it nice, some call it ugly. But it doesn't matter, I like it, my beard, and people like it also. And here is hanging a little spaghetti. Now you will not see my beard. Always, your eyes will go to the small piece of spaghetti. And this spaghetti will disturb you so much. Finally, you will tell me, so I will say, "What? Sorry, you have something in the beard." "What do you mean, something? I have many things in the beard." So that is how humans think. We don't take it naturally. There was a man sitting in his living room on the ground floor and looking at the television. And it was summer, and the doors were open. And a cat was sitting beside him, and he's looking at the television. Some people were playing tennis outside, children, and they threw the ball into that house and ran away. Now the ball was rolling through the living room, to the other side. The cat was running behind the ball. But the man was looking for who threw the ball. He was not running after the cow either. So this is the difference between human and animal. Humans would like to know the cause. Animals take naturally, and in order to find the cause of it, we think first negatively. We don't think of the positive. And therefore, in due time in life, a human creates so many negative experiences and negative thoughts. A person creates so many negative thoughts and negative experiences, and negative education, that he cannot trust himself and others anymore. And that's why people suffer. We always think, "Why is he or she sitting with him or her?" Now, change to Vajrāsana. Stretch your legs in the front, and now we will make boat rolling fifty times with a speed of seven kilometers per hour.

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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