DHYAN FOUNDATION

To take you deeper into the subject of yog, let me begin with an example. A small boy likes to play with guns and he says that he wants to become a dacoit when he grows up. No matter how much you convince him, he will tell people this. Or he will say he wants to be a truck driver, who drives at top speed. If you tell him sternly that he should say he wants to become a doctor, he will repeat it to people. Intellectually he understands that his father thinks that a doctor is better than a truck driver, but deep inside he thinks being a dacoit or a truck driver is more fun. When this child grows up, he doesn’t want to be a dacoit anymore. He finds an ideal in the environment around him, and wishes to be like that. It is the first gyan. When he grows more and decides more, he wants to be an IAS officer or a hot-shot executive; more gyan. There is no synonym for the word gyan in English or any other language. It is not the intellectual knowledge you gain from books, which have sev...

A guru has the phenomenal potential of taking you beyond, not just from the pains and miseries of life but beyond yourself. In Vedic philosophy the highest place and regard is given to the energy called guru. The guru is not a physical being; guru is the energy, considered even higher than para brahma, the Divine Consciousness. For a sadhak (practitioner), guru is the Divine incarnated. Guru’s shakti (force) is not limited, as the energy is anant (endless) and akhand (expansive). A shishya should always consider the word spoken by his guru as a mantra. Only those who are blessed can see beyond the egoistic perception of the limited senses and not use the mind to make the mistake of assessing this energy, for what is unlimited cannot be assessed by a limited mind. Guru Purnima holds the highest place in the yogic philosophy, for it is the day when the guru’s force is at full bloom and is very easily accessible. Just like full moon when the moon’s magnetism is at its height, similarly...

Life is born out of ‘desire’ and we remain prisoners of this desire over countless lifetimes. During these births, the soul remains oblivious of the purpose of life and gets more and more entangled in  various attractions of the physical world — in relationships, career, properties and places, occupations and hobbies. He is totally immersed in the web and glue of maya, bound to the senses and their objects. What, then, is the purpose of life? It appears to be in experiencing desires which brought you here. And desires are unending. They start with the cycle of karma — one leads to the next and it becomes a successive movement, one that continues forever, until the soul decides this quest is over and finally decides to get back home. But until you return all you took from Creation, you will keep coming back. You have to pay back every karma you play out in your life.  It might be okay to experience and enjoy pleasures, but it is also important to remember the purpose of...

Yog is being in union with yourself. It can’t be explained merely verbally. You need to go through certain experiences, which will bring you face to face with what is called atma sakshatkar—your true self.  Once it happens, you are in yog; and once you are in yog with yourself, you are a yogi. Yog can be of several kinds; you might choose to be in yog with fashion, with beauty, with sport. A practitioner of yog is in yog with himself or herself…  that’s a yogi. Yog is for evolution, the rest are all bhogis. A rakshas undergoes enormous tap (penance) to impress God. When God finally appears to grant him the desired boon, what does the rakshas ask for? Immortality.  Riches. Pleasures… Why? He is limited by his karma, so he cannot ask for anything beyond that. He cannot understand a world beyond. He is bound by his desires, he needs that experience, so he asks only for that. It’s wrong to think that the spiritual is divorced from the mat...

We all are divine beings going through our individual journeys in the manifested Creation, some of us choose the path of sadhana and make an effort to rise or evolve from one dimension to the other. The process requires continuous and dedicated practice, which culminates into yoga. And yoga begins and ends with the Guru. No shastra, no tapasaya, no mantra, no form or appearance, no God or japa is superior to the Guru. By performance of sadhana of Guru alone can one become a siddha in all the other modes of sadhana. As the path of yoga is one of experience and not of the intellect, it requires a force,  to take you through those experiences. No book, no lecture, or discourse, or any other means can give you those experiences, only a Guru can because a Guru is not a physical being. It is the result of the good karmas of all the previous lifetimes that the gate of a being's good fortune opens and he meets his Guru, who is the Guru of all, none other than Lord Shiva, the ulti...

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The mind and the physical brain control the human body. The brain and mind are controlled by the desire of the soul. Just close your eyes and see what is going on inside the brain Give it two minutes. You will find so many thoughts running inside you related to children, family, spouse, business, emotions... All these thoughts indicate desire of the soul. And it is because of these thoughts or desires that you are unable to go beyond human existence. All that is physical is temporary and what is temporary is painful hence the pain that you experience day-in-and-day-out, is in the pursuit of these desires. When the mind is engaged in worldly thoughts you cannot think of anything beyond because the mind can only do one and think of one thing at a time. Ayurveda says that you have five senses and of those only one sense is active at one time. They alternate so fast that you cannot make out, so when you are thinking, your thought process has to be one. Our bodies are programmed to achieve ...