Ayurveda Initiative For Global Health

Chapter 6 - Steadiness In Samadhi  Day 42  When the earth shakes for a few seconds, there is much disaster. You can exist on this planet because it is steady. Once in a while, it shakes and this throws the inhabitants off balance. A few seconds of this is enough to bring life to a standstill for many days. There are natural calamities - flood, torrential rain, scorching heat. This disturbs life. You can be at peace only when the nature is at peace and is steady. At one time a couple of years ago there was snow fall in the Sahara desert in the middle of summer. In the same year, England was extremely hot during the winter months.  This had never happened before. Nature trembles once in a while. But your senses are trembling every day. When the senses are shaky, it is unable to behold, or hold the Lord within. This disturbs the peace in you. Like nature, there is peace only when the senses are steady.  Meditation can happen when there is harmony in nature a...

Chapter 5 - Overcoming Obstacles  Day 41  There are many different methods of meditations. You can be awakened by one of methods. You can choose the one that suits you but you need to stick to it. You should not change it at all. If you take one path, you should go only on that path. You should not change Masters at all.  Otherwise, you will get very confused and messed up. All the ways are good. Take up one and just go deep into it, without criticizing the others. Then, you will be building it up in you. There are five different methods of meditation.  What's the sign of progress in this? Patanjali said - From the atom, smaller than the smallest, to the bigger than the biggest, comes within your purview of operation, or life. The nature loves you, will start supporting you. Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankarji  PATANJALI YOGA SUTRAS 

Chapter 5 - Overcoming Obstacles  Day 40  There are five types of dreams. The first are those that are fulfilment of your cravings and your unfulfilled desires. You may want to have an icecream or a pizza but you postpone it. Then, when you are asleep you have a dream in which you are eating a pizza or having a big scoop of ice-cream.  You may have wanted to go for a walk with somebody and you could not do it. And then you dream that you are in such a walk. Your latent desires come up in dreams. Desires and fears are seen in dreams. The second type of dream is when there is some stress released from the past. Past experiences are seen in such dreams. The third type is an intuitive dream. It might be about what might happen in the future, an intuition. The fourth type of dream is a combination of all three - fulfilment, stress release and intuitive. And the fifth type of dream has nothing to do with you. It is about the place where you are sleeping.  You m...

Chapter 5 - Overcoming Obstacles  Day 39 It means the knowledge of sleep and dreams. This is very interesting. You sleep all your life but have never met your sleep. This is the irony. It is like a person who has lived all his life having millions with him but who did not know how to spend them and lived in poverty. It is like a person who is sitting at a dining table with a very delicious meal but who does not know that it is a meal.  He does not know how to eat it and he is starving to death. The same is true with our life, too. There is sleep here but we do not know what it is. We dream every day and we have not known what dreams are. What happens when you sleep? You let go of everything. If you hold on to even one thing, you cannot sleep. In sleep all your identity disappears.  You are neither a male, nor a female. There is no male sleep or a female sleep. there is no rich man's sleep or a poor man's sleep. There is no intelligent person's sleep or a stupi...

Chapter 5 - Overcoming Obstacles  Day 38 Keep your mind engaged in the thoughts of the Enlightened. Your mind is like water. Your mind like water because, just as water assumes the shape of its container, your mind becomes like the thought you engage in. It develops all the qualities of whatever you put into it, namely, your thoughts.  If you think of a calm person, then your mind also begins to assume his qualities. It starts feeling that peace and that quietness. This is because mind is like air. It is energy and is all pervading. Air does not have a location. It is not just fixed anywhere. Veetraaga Chitta - Mind is all permeating.  So it enters your system because it is also like ether. Your consciousness is ether and is all pervading. But then you apply raaga and dwesha even here. That is why it is said that a Guru, or an enlightened person doesn't see one who is liberated from and is beyond cravings as a human being, as a person with likes and dislikes....