DHYAN FOUNDATION

                                    There is a lady who has been doing dhyana for quite some time. Everyday without fail she would write to me seeking my blessings, so that she can move ahead in dhyana. Recently, I got a mail from her asking if I could help her find a camera that got lost recently. Such emails, especially from those who have been long practicing, set me thinking. Why do people do dhyana ? Most of the people who come to me either want to pass an exam, some of them desire a better job or relationship and the rest have a heart trouble or a factory that is about to shut. I know this because I keep getting your emails and as I read them, I wonder if I am really a Yoga Guru or a consultant to whom people come for solutions to their various problems. It is foolish to think that dhyana would make you immortal or help you recover a business loss or make your ailing heart hale and ...

Vedic rishis were masters of the physical and the spiritual, super beings who controlled prakriti and all its manifestations. The physical body comprising of five mahabhutas (elements) had been completely mastered by them. From the masters of the Vedic era to the present-day doctors of modern and alternative medicine, all are engaged in finding a solution to stop, or at least, slow down the body clock. Many, on realising that they are ageing, lose their mental balance. A lot accept it as the inevitable. Some get stressed and fearful, and it is these vulnerable people who fall prey to business-minded companies selling anti-ageing creams, tonics, rejuvenating serums, which at best camouflage symptoms, addressing just the periphery while the core goes unnoticed. With time, the core emerges revealing facts, but by then precious years have been lost and the damage is by then irreversible. It is normal to age...but for normal people. Ageing is a phenomenon of dulling of the senses...

All of you must have played the game of Mario at some point in life. In Mario, the player  collects the coins, kills the dragon and rescues his girlfriend; every time he collects a hundred coins, he gets a new life and the game goes on. As you play this game, you get thrilled when you collect a coin, or reach a higher level—you stay glued to the screen, oblivious to what is happening around you. Pause for a moment to think—have the coins that you collect helped any of you buy a real car or a good meal? As soon as you switch off the power, the coins disappear, so does the girlfriend. You think you passed the time, but in reality, time passed you. After two hours of play, you are still at the same level, maybe a little lower than what you were, because virtual stimulation dulls your reflexes, your eyes sting and even you don’t know what all junk you had stuffed into your stomach when you were engrossed in the play. The game of Mario was unreal, and the state it left you in, is y...

You look at the cosmos, you look at the farthest of stars that the human eye can see, only to find out that someone somewhere has discovered another star, another galaxy, further away from what you thought was the extent of the universe. You will be surprised to know that the galaxy he ‘discovered’ did not exist before. It is just the consciousness of the person who is looking at it, who was searching for it, who focused his entire life on it that actually created that star. Such is the power of the brain. Consciousness is the sum total of the manifested and the unmanifested. Manifested consciousness is what you can perceive with your five senses — the things you can see, hear, smell, touch and taste. Unmanifested consciousness is what is beyond these five basic senses. The concept of consciousness has a very close bearing to your brain. In an ordinary being, only 7-8% of the brain is functional, and this caters to the experiences of the five senses. As you grow in yoga, with pract...