What was on your walls a few minutes ago was the experience of consciousness. It was the experience of higher consciousness. I do not know if any one of you is aware of this fact, but this is only possible through the practice of meditation and not without it. You come here in order to see these colourful things on the wall, but very few people are aware of what these things really mean. They are spiritual experiences; they are psychic experiences.
When you sit down for meditation and concentration, and draw your mind from outside and forget everything from the outside and enter into trance, into samadhi, at that time the inner doors open and you enter into a space where these experiences are taking place. I don’t know if you are ready for a meditation class, because in order to conduct a meditation class it needs an absolute atmosphere. The way we are sitting at present is all right for a speech, but for mediation the most important thing is that you must have a nice place to sit, so that you can sit with your spinal cord erect for fifteen or thirty minutes.
How is meditation done? How can you develop these psychic, spiritual, inner experiences within you? There are people who feel that these inner experiences can be developed through the use of drugs. I do not disagree, but at the same time may I tell you that there is a superior method for the development of these experiences within and that is through the practice of meditation what we call dhyana yoga.
This system of meditation is a method in which a particular mantra is taken. Supposing it is the mantra Om. You take the mantra Om; chant it and when you chant the mantra Om, you make the sound vibrations of Om to permeate through your body. Now will you chant Om with me? When you are chanting Om, please forget everything around you; close your eyes, and feel that the sound of Om is completely reverberating, vibrating through every part of your body. Om, Om, Om. Again with full force and complete concentration.
This is the way of chanting Om before you practise meditation. Second, when you sit down for meditation you must keep your spinal cord straight, with a bent spine meditation does not become successful and meditation does not become useful. With your spinal cord erect, you must follow one rhythm and the centre of meditation between the two eyebrows. When you close your eyes, after the chanting of Om, keep your mind at the centre of the two eyebrows and for as long as it is possible until you see these lights which you saw just now on the screen. It may be possible for you to experience these psychic experiences quite early, but in certain cases it might take time.
The impact of meditation is slow and gradual, but the effect of meditation is steady and permanent. If you have these experiences once, you have these experiences forever. Therefore, when you practise meditation at the centre of the two eyebrows, if you see different lights, different psychic beings, different psychedelic experiences, your outer mind slowly goes in and the inner mind comes out. When the inner mind goes out, it is the point where the conscious begins to expand. What happens when consciousness begins to expand? You experience your own consciousness, your inner being, the divine being within you, and after you have experienced that divine being bliss and permanent happiness continues.
Therefore, the most important thing for all those people here who want to develop their meditation, they have to decide upon two times in the day. Once in the early morning and second time at night. The right time to practise meditation at night is between 10 and 12. I am talking in Holland time and the right time to practise meditation in the morning is between 6 and 8 Holland time. In India it is 3 to 5 in the morning and 8 to 10 at night.
When you practise meditation, please remember that you do not have to practise it for two hours, because your brain, your nervous system is not prepared for that. There are yogis, great rishis in the Himalayas and different places who can sit for meditation and in samadhi, who can sit in trance for days and days together, but they have practised for years and years together. Their body is completely purified; there are no toxins, no poisons in their body. Our bodies have a lot of impurities and toxins, and, therefore, we should practise a little meditation, say half an hour.
How to meditate? The mind is disturbed; it is like a drunken monkey who has taken a lot of alcohol and it keeps jumping from this end to that end. That is exactly the condition of our mind. You try to make your mind one-pointed. Can you think of one point? Can you think of one object for one minute continuously? No, it is impossible; the mind does not stay. If I say rose, you keep the rose flower there and I constantly think rose, rose, rose, for about one minute and in between so many thoughts come and intervene. That intervention of thoughts between the flow of consciousness must be stopped and that is possible by certain practices.
In yoga, there are many practices. One practice is internationally well known, the practice of Maharishi Mahesh, Transcendental Meditation. The other practice is called meditation on the breath and there is a higher meditation that is the meditation of kriya yoga. There is another meditation, and that is the meditation on the centre of the two eyebrows.
I think for you the best is to meditate on the centre of the two eyebrows and nothing else. Sit down quietly, with your spinal cord erect with your eyes closed and then chant the mantra, the sound Om for about eleven or twelve times. After that take your mind to the centre of the two eyebrows and keep it there until you receive the light. Your mind will gradually go in; you experience light; you will see many phases of consciousness and have many different experiences. What you just saw on the screen behind is just a part of the experience. A yogi has hundreds and thousands of experiences.
He can see heaven; he can see eternal universes; he can see everything within himself, but the method is yoga and therefore I came here in order to tell you something about it.
I could have also given you meditation, because I do give it to thousands of people. Holland is one of the halts in my world tour. I have completed a world tour; I have completed a tour of thirty countries, where I have been giving meditation to different groups, universities, spiritual aspirants, teenagers, hippies, but I am sorry that I am not able to give you meditation. I am sure that it is not possible for you to practise it here because meditation needs a calm and quiet place. Meditation needs a bit of cloth to sit on, and meditation needs a pure atmosphere. When you practise meditation, half an hour before that stop smoking, because the prana, the cosmic breath, the cosmic energy, the breath, the lungs, the heart must be pure; otherwise, you will have mixed experiences; you will have adulterated experiences. Then you burn the incense and sit down for meditation and maintain the purity of the atmosphere for some time. After a few years, it is possible that you may be able to meditate anywhere and everywhere you like.
I thank you for your patience and I will be very happy if I know that some of you have been inspired to lead the life of meditation. I have been asked by the organizers to introduce myself. I come from India; I live in India and I am the head of many yoga institutions in India; they are known here as schools. I am also the leader of many educational institutions in India. I am on a world tour and my tour will be complete in Moscow, by then I will have completed fifty countries. The purpose of my tour is to make people yoga-minded and also to inspire and encourage them to turn to this path. Yoga does not mean standing on the head; please remember, but yoga is standing on one’s two feet. Yoga has nothing to do with these acrobatic feats, although you can do it, I have no objection to it, but yoga is nothing but union, union with your own consciousness.
The literal meaning of yoga is ‘two things becoming one’. Yoga means unity, communion, union. When your individual self, when your little self, when your little mind, which at present goes up, goes in, goes down, deeper and deeper and becomes one with the cosmic mind, that is called yoga. Please remember this definition again and again, and please do not be cheated by the so-called definition of yoga, that standing on the head is yoga.
Yoga means when your outer mind, when your small mind, when your tiny mind, when your worldly mind, when your intelligent consciousness becomes one with the higher mind, with the inner mind, with the cosmic mind, that is called yoga. Yoga means unity between two. Who are these two? One is the little I and the other one is the cosmic I. This little I is now speaking to you; this little I is now listening to this little I. Now when this little I will merge with the cosmic I, that state is called yoga. And friends, please understand that it is to preach this yoga I have come out of my country for this five-month trip. Thank you and Hari Om.
27 July 1968, in Paradiso and Fantasio, Amsterdam, Holland