Are you healthy?

Transcription of a satsang talk at the Yoga Farm dec.3, 2006 by Swami Sitaramananda

In Yoga we say that we are comprised of body, mind and spirit, therefore, if you want to be healthy, you have to be healthy in body, mind and spirit. Health is not only physical. Actually, if you are healthy in spirit you will be healthy in mind and body, not the reverse. Sometimes we think that the body is not healthy therefore I am depressed, but you have to think reverse: the mind is not healthy, that’s why my body is healthy that’s why I become depressed. If you ask your self, am I healthy in body mind and spirit? That’s the right way to think.
So what constitutes physical health? Swami Sivananda our SatGuru, was a medical doctor. His definition of physical health was: all organs of the body functioning in an optimum manner, under the intelligent governance of the mind. That means, we are equipped with all the organs of the body and they have to function perfectly, optimally, but under the intelligent control of you, of your mind. The organs have to function, but by your lifestyle, what you eat, what you do, you make sure that your organs function well. So if you ask yourself, “Am I healthy physically?” you have to consider the mind working with the body, and think: “what do I do to regulate it, what do I do to make it better?” Change your diet, change your lifestyle, change your exercise, take supplements, do whatever you need to make sure it is working. Yoga, is the best thing to make it work, because yoga asanas work on all the body systems together.

If you ask yourself “Am I healthy mentally? ” then you have to consider a few things. If you are healthy mentally, the mind has to be strong, the mind has to be calm, and the mind has to be without negative thoughts or emotions. If you are addicted and craving all the time then you are not healthy mentally. If you are angry, upset, grieving, depressed all the time, them you are not healthy mentally. If your mind is so distracted, that you cannot focus, then know that you are not healthy mentally. You are using energy. Because when we talk about the mind we also talk about your level of energy, in yoga energy is not physical, yoga energy is subtle, it is absolutely connected to the mind. So your level of energy is very important. That means you have to have energy, so all the time you have to check in and find out: do I have energy? My energy is up? my energy is down? And you have to know that negative thoughts and feelings bring your energy down while positive thoughts give you energy. When you are stressed out, you are not healthy, mentally your energy is squeezed. You don’t have enough energy to handle difficulties in life. The difficulty of the whole set up of the body and mind is incapable of responding to demands, what ever the demands may be. External or internal. The thought is too big, the emotion is too big. You don’t have a solution for it, so you get stressed. When you have stress, you lose more energy. So you try to deal with the stress by taking external things that give you support; drugs or alcohol, or anything to deal with the stress. That stresses you more because it weakens the system. It makes the system too weak to deal with it. If you do that a lot then you have a crutch. The system constantly has to be propped up. But if you stay healthy; that means health is your natural state, then you have all the resources to be healthy. You have all the inner resources to deal with your problems.

Sometimes you think, “But my problem is bigger than yours, so it’s nice for you to sit there and say - but you are not in my situation. My problem is bigger that’s why I am stressed, that’s normal.” Not true. The truth is everyone has their stress. The truth is every life is difficult, the truth is the amount of stress, of difficulty, is always tailor cut to who we are, and what we are capable of. The way we cope with our stress will determine who we are.

Energy is unlimited in the universe. That means you can channel that energy in. That means your potential is unlimited. That means you have the whole universe to back you up. . You just have to know how to use the support that you have. And not shut it off. Sometimes we need help, and at the same time we close the door. Educate yourself on how to deal with energy, educate yourself on how to control your mind, so your own thoughts aren’t blocking you, is the practice of yoga. Yoga is more than asanas, more than exercise. Exercise, relaxation is excellent for physical and mental health, but the deeper aspects of yoga teach you how to balance your energy, charge your energy, control your mind and how to tune into the infinite source of energy and power. I encourage you to study yoga, not just in the superficial aspects, but really study deeply.

So, are you healthy mentally? Then you have to have energy. You have to be positive. You have to be on top of your life, on top of yourself not dragging behind, not thinking life is passing you by, not thinking that you are not in the life you deserve, not thinking that you are a victim of circumstances, not thinking that someone is better than you, not thinking that the life you lead is not good. Anything negative that you think makes you unhealthy. So when you are healthy mentally you are centered, balanced, in harmony with everything, in harmony with your life. The life you have is the life you always wanted, the life you have is the life God has given you, that is a healthy state of mind. Focused. You have to be focused. Not distracted, not restless, not desirous, not running around, confused. This is mental health.

Spiritual health. That is more difficult to figure out. Spiritual health is when you feel in complete harmony and life and with God. God is the perfection you feel within you. When you are spiritually healthy, you have the idea that you and God are very close, you and God are one. That means that perfection, or that infinite power of God is with you. Most of us are not like that, right? We struggle and struggle against life, we question, we drag ourselves, we don’t know why we are living, we suffer, have misery, questioning all the time - with glimpses of happiness, followed by stretches of misery. Spiritual health means you are always happy. Can you imagine that state of mind, all the time joyful and all the time happy? All the time? You experience it from time to time. That’s when you are healthy.

So you see, health is a big topic. Yoga teaches you this. It is necessary to study Yoga philosophy to understand who you are in reality. If you think you are something you are not, you are not healthy. That’s why your concept of who you are is capital to your health. If your concept is unhealthy then your actions and thoughts constantly confirm you are not the person you think you are. If you understand who you are everything is fine. You start to act healthy, think healthy, behave healthy. You can take any amount of supplements or herbs, get a massage, or anything, but if you don’t have a healthy concept of yourself, you just miss the point. Health is in your hands. No doctor or anyone can help you, really. All the doctors can forgive me. Doctors can be helpful when something goes wrong, because they know the different systems of the body. More or less, they can help regulate it. We are body mind spirit all connected, but the body is subservient to the mind and the mind is subservient to the spirit. Spirit is supreme. This is basic, you have to turn it around. If you think of the body first, then you miss out, because the body is only what you see externally. What you don’t see is the energy and the mind. What makes the energy in the mind the way it is, is your spirit, called your sense of self, or your inner connection with your spiritual self, or your connection to the divine, your connection to God. It’s all connected.

So if you have that connection to God, then the mind will not be out of control, you will understand your challenges in life, and you will not create new confusion; you will be content, happy and in harmony. Not self-creating problems or self-sabotage. We do those things because we cannot connect with the intelligence of the spirit within us. The body will be healthy because the body is connected to the energy. It’s incredible. You have seen spiritual healers- they heal. Doctors check things out, and say they cannot help you, and then a you have a miracle healing, the healer will switch something and all of a sudden everything becomes aligned, and things that are not perfect disappear, because you have the trust and faith that spirit is powerful and it heals you.

In summary, when you talk about health, talk about physical, mental, and spiritual health. Spiritual health is most important, because it governs the body and mind. Know that your life is perfect, no matter how it is, know that challenge is normal, because it makes you stronger and that’s how you become healthy. So know that there are things that you can do in order to be stronger, and positive, know that infinite energy is there for you, but you have to learn how to access it, know that most of your problems are self-created. Not most - all of your problems. All. Not your husband, not your boss, not your neighbor. It is self-created. That means, if something negative happens, you have the tendency to blame others. If you can change something - do it, if you cannot change something, accept it, because everything is always perfect. It’s you who needs the training. The situations are there for you to be trained. But everything is perfect. So you want to find that perfection and that perfect health? You need to work on yourself. You need to have the right idea. You cannot think the world is at your feet and you can do whatever you like and you’ll be healthy. That’s the bottom line.

Satsanga

OM Namah Sivaya
Blessed Self
At the morning satsang at the Sivananda Ashram Yoga Farm, we talked about the meaning of satsanga. Satsanga means "company of the wise," or "company with truth." Satsanga means tuning into a higher wavelength of thought. Continuous Satsanga means keeping yourself in such a place that the thought becomes real and making this thought your own. I opened at that moment, the book Bliss Divine, by Master Sivananda, to the line, "Do not be afraid of death." We are afraid of death all the time. Swami Sivananda said, "Do not be afraid of death, do not identify with this perishable body and mind." Because when you do so, you would function out of your separated self, and therefore will be afraid of death. When we are in the company of . Swami Sivananda's thoughts, this idea of being something more than our own body and mind reality seems to be real. This is the power of satsanga. Some one else's thought becomes your own. You can not create that thought from your own experience and you do not believe in a reality other than the one that your thoughts have collapsed onto. But by keeping yourself open to be influenced by a person of wisdom, you might be able to raise your self to a higher thought level that seems far fetched and eventually this thought starts to become reinforced in your mind and you open yourself to the new reality.

A thought is real when it is repeated. A thought opens us up to a reality either limited or unlimited. Being in constant satsanga, makes this expanded thought becomes reality and saves us from the limitations of our own minds that keep closing in, repeating patterns.

Satsanga means also sitting together. In the Ashrams or Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centers, we sit together constantly tuning into each others and to the Guru's wavelengths through daily meditation together, chanting together, working together and studying together. Satsanga is the underlying idea behind the workings of the ashram, that everyone tunes in to the same wavelength, the highest wavelength, that of the wise person. When one is open to this tuning, one will benefit from this collective thought alignement process and one's consciousness will be uplifted - almost literally, to the wavelengths of the Guru's thoughts. This is termed "paradigm shift," when one's thoughts change a level and the thoughts and emotions of the people connected to us change as well.

Thoughts are connected, realities are connected and seem real when many people share the same reality. This makes the thought seems strong and real and at the same time prevents us from changing our thinking. If we can be free from this influence, i.e. if our thought is strong enough to change wavelengths and not be manipulated or influenced by the environmental thought and by our own limited memories and patterns, the thought has a chance to lift up to another level of consciousness. That is why along with satsanga , one has to practice nisanga as well (no company). It is better to practice Satsanga than Kusanga (evil company, bad influences). Nisanga can only be practiced when one is strong , otherwise satsanga is the way.

The methods of Yoga, by helping us to strenghten the mind and the emotions, to become very focused and very detached, allow the highest reality to come in - a place of all possibilities. The mind needs to be strong. All Yoga methods help to make the mind strong and not distracted.

Quantum physics have found that things can exist simultaneously or even that one's conscious intention can change the past. This is the experience of "sidhis" of Yogis of lore, the psychic powers. The yogis can do this by going deep into themselves and be completely detached from outcomes, the "collapsing" of this story line or this mode of functioning, thus remaining in the infinite space of all possibilities.

Knowing that all possibilites are there at our beck and call doesn't mean that we would use it to create realities corresponding to our desires. Knowing this gives us tremendous peace and saves us from the heartaches of trying to mend realities in infinite unending possible scenarios, which we call "the ocean of samsara." Because we do not have this experience of self awareness, we are still in the illusion that something is there, outside of ourselves, for us to do and to experience. This creates our restlessness and constant involvements in the dramas of our lives.
Knowing the Truth will lead us to Freedom.

Being in constant satsanga and practicing Yoga is the tool to liberation i.e. being at the place where this and that possibility can or cannot happen but you are not worrying about it.

Satsanga thus is not a process of brainwash or slavery but a process of recollection of our true nature, it implies two things: One, that you are willing to align your thoughts with higher thought wavelength, and two, you are practicing yogic self discipline and change your consciousness from darkness to light i.e. from tamas to rajas to sattwa. It is not a process imposed from outside but a conscious choice from the individual wanting to be aware of him/herself. The Guru or liberated person doesn't need us, it is us that need to be on the same wavelength as the Guru.

During this Thanksgiving Holiday Program on "Changing Consciousness," we talked a lot about the merging of Bhakti Yoga and Jnana Yoga, two processes apparently very different and yet are one.

One is to love God and love God alone, and one is to discard the unreal for the real, and going deeper and deeper in the depths of our consciousness to find the underlying truth. The result is the same, the disappearance of separateness and illusions. The week end was so beautiful with music, concerts, food, beautiful company, beautiful weather. We are looking forward to have satsanga with you again, and invite you to partake in this common thought wavelength, this feast of the spirits during the upcoming Holiday Retreat Dec.19-Jan.2, 2008!

vedanta

Nov.12, 2006

Om Namah sivaya
Blessed Immortal Atman
To all my contacts, students, friends, devotees,

This is the first time I am "blogging" (i.e. talking to the immortal self or God out there in the cyberspace!) . We just had 3 days of celebrations of Swami Vishnu-devanandaji Mahasamadhi at the ashram and that includes my mortal body birthday as well. Thoughts of him are very much within me as I just finished the lay out of the 2nd poem book named Smaranam, following Darshan.
It is a strange feeling to publish your poems, I have done it once, so now is the second one. .. the confirmation that your inside can be shared with all because the process you went through is a helpful process for everyone and basically is the same process. After all we are one!

Things are always bubbling within me and are welcomed as they are considered divine inspiration. Here a book not completely published yet, and now we are starting another one.
The typing up of Swami Vishnu-devanandaji instructions to staff from the old emails the time when Swamiji was alive and giving instructions to staff. These emails were in the attic of Swamiji house, unique testimony to a time when he was teaching while administrating the day to day running of the organization. I even found a hand written letter of him to staff telling them that he will go on seclusion for 6 months and noone to know his whereabout!

Of course there is the 3rd book lining up as well, a more serious and dry book about Yoga Psychology and Jyotish counselling. This was my Jyotish thesis to be elaborated. My Jyotish teachers and friends said that such topic is unique and my knowledge of both worlds are helpful for both Yogis and Jyotishis.

The actual Vedanta course has 8 students , some of them have known me for 7 years or more.
The schedule is different than the normal ashram routine, as they have a lots of more time by themselves, they kept silence most of the time, and just have to talk with me in the context of studying scripture. It is such an inspiring venture that I wish I can do it more often. I believe that it will help many. My heart is aching thinking of all those that could not join the course for a reason or another. I visualize them being there and mentally send the energy of the course to them.

In December, we will have other opportunity to study together scripture, this time not in such intense and structured manner but in the form of swadhyaya, sitting together and going through scriptural teaching for 2-3 hours daily.

So much is there to learn and understood.

May the Guru bless us always with the desire for knowledge and the mean and the opportunity to do so.

We talked today about the tap where the knowledge will come from - that is called the Guru's grace -
May that tap be open, and may us be able to recognize the tap and enjoy the nectar bliss of spiritual truth in our own mind and heart.

Om swami sita