I'm going to begin with a talk about what meditation is and what meditation is not.
Some people think that meditation is an actual religion.
Officially,
It's not a religion.
However,
Meditation is a way of following the object of meditation deep inside.
When you go deep enough inside,
You start to feel your own nature.
And when you feel your own nature,
You realize that that's actually the way for you to understand your own God.
So again,
This is my view.
You know,
If you're a Catholic and you go to church and you're far away from yourself,
And you want the spirit to show you who you are,
That if you've fallen away from yourself,
It's very difficult for you to love because you need to connect with yourself to be in one piece.
And then you go to church and you pray while you're in touch with yourself.
Yoga means union.
Yoga means the ego merges with the deepest essence of you.
So when you merge with your essence,
It's a lot easier to understand your religion.
I studied the old,
Old texts of yoga,
Like the Bhagavad Gita,
The Tantraloka.
I go into the purest part of yoga.
For example,
The Bhagavad Gita says,
Established in being,
Perform action.
In U.
S.
And American terms,
You could say,
Leadership from inside out.
If you're not in touch with your inside,
You can't lead other people.
Most remarkable people have an inside,
And then they come out and influence other people.
So yoga means the ego merges with the breath,
Goes deep inside,
And then some interesting things happen.
For example,
You start to discover some of your real-life priorities.
You start to discover what's important to you.
If you set things up in a priority list,
With meditation,
Your list of top priorities start to become very clear.
In meditation,
You have an object of meditation.
It could be a mantra.
Even if you were in love with your grandmother,
You could close your eyes and visualize your grandmother.
Love is very important.
The object of meditation has to be something that you love,
Because the energy of love is relaxing.
The energy of fear is the opposite of the energy of love.
Right now,
You have a world which is very fear-driven,
And that energy of fear then causes more and more problems.
The opposite of that is love,
But I'm not talking about just romantic love.
Here's what yoga says.
Yoga says if you go inside and you connect with your essence,
As a result of you connecting with your own essence,
Relaxation and love,
Anytime you have depression or nervousness,
The root cause is that you've fallen away from your own form.
In other words,
The biggest loneliness in the world is to fall away from your own form.
If you have a technique to develop an inner life,
Then you become more of a relaxed person.
Again,
There's an American expression that says sweet solitude.
I don't know what the French would say.
Sweet solitude means there's you,
Maybe a good book or your dog,
And there's no other entertainment.
The fire,
You,
And sweet solitude.
Problem is,
Most people start climbing up walls.
If you take them to the mountains and give them a book and nothing else,
They start to go crazy.
They start looking for the iPhone and the iPad and the television.
How many of you would be really happy if we gave you a cottage up in the mountains and there was just a fireplace and intense rain outside and you have a good book?
How many of you would be happy?
Because most people get very nervous facing themselves.
You know what's happening to the world?
Your inner life is being taken from you.
People walk into the toilet with an iPhone,
Which means your private inner life is being taken.
Living creatures get very nervous when you take their inner space away from them.
Be very careful.
You need to somehow develop 20 minutes a day for your inner life.
It could be creative writing,
Singing,
Dance,
Painting,
Pottery,
Something.
You need to find your dharma.
Dharma is a Sanskrit word,
Which means the one activity that makes the happiest.
You have to go back to your childhood.
Was it farming?
Was it painting?
For me it was always writing.
It immediately gets me to my core.
Meditation is just one way of following the object of meditation into the center of yourself.
The center of your mind is called Manu Bindu.
It's like a fortress and nothing penetrates that fortress,
Meaning no fear,
No worry,
No television.
And the object of yoga is for you to go to your job,
But the Manu Bindu is there.
Let's talk more about meditation.
The object of meditation is your breath.
Kriya Yoga is the art of taking breath to various parts of your body.
According to Kriya Yoga,
Each of your bodies has 72,
000 channels.
They're like pipes,
You know,
72,
000.
They're throughout your body and these pipes conduct a life force in your body.
The life force that comes in with your breath is called Prana.
But that's just in Sanskrit.
You might call it Holy Spirit.
The Chinese call it Chi.
The Japanese call it Ki,
Which means the life of the universe.
Because I'm interested in metaphysics and spirituality,
I've traveled a lot.
I find in every country there is some notion of an invisible,
Mysterious electricity in your body,
Beyond oxygen,
Beyond DNA.
And this spiritual electricity gives you life.
The Persian poet Rumi,
Before he met his guru Shams,
He said,
I was dead,
Now I'm alive.
And one of the meanings of that is that when you clear and cleanse these 72,
000 channels,
The life force starts to circulate inside freely.
And when that spiritual electricity is flowing inside you freely,
Depression goes away,
More money comes,
You attract romance,
You notice your children more because you're in the moment,
You're hugging your child,
The two heartbeats become one.
It's a feeling of being intensely present.
