1. Nithya Dhyaan
Chaotic Breathing
LIFE BLISS MEDITATION - 03 CHAOTIC BREATHING (Duration : 7 mins) For the first seven minutes sit in vajrasana (as shown in the picture) with eyes closed and hands on your hips and breathe chaotically. Inhale and exhale deeply and chaotically. Just focus on the breathing. Your entire being should become the breathing. Normally in our body, the energy flows from the sahasrara chakra (crown center) to the muladhara chakra (root center). Vajrasana posture helps in the upward movement of energy. Breath is the best place from where one can start any spiritual practice. There are different kinds of meditation techniques. Some focus on witnessing, while some focus on repeating a word or a mantra. But I can tell you that breath is the best place to begin any spiritual practice. There are two types of systems in your body. One is voluntary and the other is involuntary. The movement of hands and legs is an example of voluntary action. When required you can move your hands and legs. But you cannot directly control the functioning of your brain, or the beating of your heart. Those are involuntary movements. But breathing is one system that is voluntary as well as involuntary. Even if you are not aware, the breathing mechanism continues to function. You don't stop breathing when you focus your attention on something else. That would be a calamity! Likewise, you can also control your breathing. The whole science of Pranayama emphasizes on control of breath. You can breathe deeply and slowly as and when required. You can hold your breath for long durations or even stop breathing for a few minutes. So breath is a link between your voluntary and involuntary systems. But you can never stop breathing and die because then it would be a fight between your survival instinct and your will. And your survival instinct is much stronger than your will. In fact all involuntary movements in your body happen due to the survival instinct. You are living due to your very desire to live. Your very breathing happens due to the desire to live. You might not have observed, but your quality of breathing changes depending on the state of mind. Your emotions have an impact on the breathing process. When you are in anxiety, your breathing changes. When you are angry, your breathing changes. When you are aroused sexually, your breathing changes. When you are in love, there is a qualitative change in your breathing. So your breathing is directly related to your emotions. It keeps changing as the state of the mind changes. When you are in tension, the normal advice given is to have a deep breath. And the moment you have a deep breath suddenly you feel light, more relaxed and the tension releases! Mind and breath are closely related. You can see that when you stop breathing, it becomes very difficult to think. Breath becomes the fuel for the mind. Actually in Sanskrit, we use the word prana. Prana does not directly mean breath. It means the energy that flows through breath. That energy itself is the life force. In the Taitreya Upanishad, five sheaths (pancha koshas) are mentioned. The annamaya kosha (physical body sheath), pranamaya kosha (breath sheath), manomaya kosha (mind sheath), vijñanamaya kosha (intelligence sheath) and anandamaya kosha (bliss sheath). These sheaths are like the peels of an onion which cover the center, the self, the atman. The pranamaya kosha or the breath sheath is where all your desire memories are stored. So depending on your desires, your prana or breath gets modulated. Your breathing and your desires are tightly coupled. You might have seen that when you have too many desires, your breathing is very fast and heavy. When you have a few desires you breathe in a more relaxed way. As the breath and the mind are inter-related, changing one automatically changes the other. We have already discussed how our emotions affect the breathing pattern. Likewise, if we were to control our breathing or bring about some change in our breathing pattern, it will have a direct impact on our emotions; our state of mind. All our memories are stored in the muscles. I also strongly believe that if some part of the body is amputated, you would eventually lose the memory related to that part of the body. You could try this small
Intense Humming 1
06 - NITHYA DHYAAN experiment: Try to remember some past incident in your life without remembering your form. It would be impossible! Your form is necessary for you to remember any incident in your life, because all your memories are stored in your form. You have suppressed many emotions in your being and as a result you are not able to breathe normally. Your breath is shallow. When you breathe shallow, you never release these suppressed emotions and memories that are stored in your muscles. The breathing never touches each and every part of the body. We always breathe in a fixed pattern. Our past samskaras, our past memories which are suppressed in our being, create a particular type of breathing pattern in our system. As a result we attract similar emotions and samskaras. Anything within our system has a survival instinct. So anything that is suppressed in our system creates favorable circumstances for it to stay and grow inside our system. If you have suppressed anger in your system, it will keep surfacing and create a breathing pattern for its survival. This is a vicious cycle. Your breathing is nothing but a cumulative effect of the past samskaras. So Nithya Dhyaan begins with chaotic breathing. You have to breathe as deeply as possible and as chaotically as possible. Your entire being should become the breathing. Understand that breathing has to be deep. The chaotic breathing should not be shallow. The deep chaotic breathing will start releasing the tension in your muscles and body parts and in turn all the engraved memories. Normally our muscles are always under stress. Chaotic breathing will loosen the muscles and start clearing the samskaras. Each emotion within us gives rise to a particular breathing pattern. You might have seen that children breathe deeply and blissfully. They don't breath shallow. But as they grow, they get conditioned by society, by their pains, pleasures, guilts, beliefs, stress and other emotions, and the quality of the breathing changes totally. Now, if you have to shake this pattern, something that has been created due to the emotions suppressed in your system since so many years, you have to insert chaos. You have to create a turmoil! Inserting another pattern is not the solution. You have to create utter chaos in your system to dig out all the past impressions. So I don't recommend any rhythmic breathing pattern like pranayama, in this meditation. Just chaotic breathing should be done. This chaotic breathing will destroy all your past samskaras. It is like shaking a tree with dead leaves. All the dead leaves will fall. Similarly chaotic breathing is like shaking your suppressed system. All the past engraved memories will be released. Deep chaotic breathing also infuses tremendous oxygen and releases carbon dioxide from the body. It creates hyperventilation and as a result you feel more vibrant and fresh. By increased intake of oxygen in the blood, automatically all the body parts become alive and that creates more bio-energy in the body cells. 08 - NITHYA DHYAAN Normally we always feel ourselves as heavy dead mass. That is because our body is never alive. It is always under stress and tension. Anything that is tense can never be alive. If the body is made alive with increased flow of oxygen, you will start feeling light. Then you will start experiencing yourself as energy rather than matter. You feel heavy because of the engraved memories. In fact in some Buddhist monasteries they use this concept of energy versus matter, as a technique to ordain people as monks in the monastery. After you are done with your spiritual disciplines, you are made to walk on grass. If you make a path (grass below your feet dies), then you are not initiated as a monk and more spiritual discipline is prescribed. A person with less samskaras will never make a path on the grass when he walks, because the burden of engraved memories is less and he always feels light within his system. With increased oxygen and reduced carbon dioxide in chaotic breathing, you will make your suppressed system alive. The breathing should be so deep, intense and chaotic that your whole being should become the breathing. The bio-energy that is generated will melt your muscles and start clearing the samskaras, making you feel light, energetic and blissful. Thus we move on to the second step. If you would like to know more techniques related to chaotic breathing, you can also practice the dukkaharana meditation technique which is taught in the Life Bliss Program (LBP) or Ananda Spurana Program (ASP). LIFE BLISS MEDITATION - 09 INTENSE HUMMING (Duration : 7 mins) In the second step, sit in vajrasana, form a chin mudra and place your hands on your knees. In this posture, with your mouth closed and lips together, produce a humming sound as intensely as possible, as loudly as possible and as lengthy as possible. Put your complete awareness on the humming. Become the 'humming'. Humming reduces your inner chatter. Continuously there is talking going on within your mind. You may not be talking to anybody outside, but internally there is always some activity that is going on. Humming is an excellent technique to reduce this inner chatter. Normally people find it very difficult to sit without thoughts. When you venture into meditation in your middle age, the first thing you would see is resistance from the mind. The mind will revolt; it does not want to sit silently. When it has been habituated to run for so many years and then
Intense Humming 2
Witnessing the Body and Mind 1
suddenly it is made to sit silent, obviously it will revolt. In fact people often complain that in an attempt to be thoughtless, they encounter more thoughts! The mind is not accustomed to be silent for so many years. And any initial attempt to make it silent is like swimming against the flow of current. And obviously the river is going to protest. This is the time when many people drop meditation. They get discouraged and they think that meditation is not possible at all for them. But let me tell you that this is the experience of all the seekers initially. You have to make the effort. And this very effort is what I call as tapas (austerity). If you feel discouraged by the initial resistance, then you can never succeed. There is a mythological story where all the gods and demons are together, trying to churn the ocean to extract divine nectar. But to their surprise the first thing that comes out after the churning, is deadly poison. Later many other things appeared as a result of the churning and finally the last thing to surface was the divine nectar. This is a metaphorical story which has a deep significance in the process of meditation. When the mind is churned in the process of meditation to extract the experience of enlightenment, the first thing to come out is always the negativity that was suppressed in the past. Do not feel discouraged; this is an indication of progress that the negativity is being thrown out. Keep up the effort at meditation till you experience the supreme state. In this initial stage when the inner chatter is continuously bothering you, intense humming can be an extremely useful tool. It helps you to silence the mind. Our inner chatter is created between the Manipuraka and the Swadhistana chakras. This area is also called 'Hara'. When we hum intensely such that we feel the vibration of the humming right below our navel, we stop this process of continuous inner chatter. It's like shaking the hara. So the humming should happen from below the navel. The inner chatter is the sole reason for the mind to survive. Mind is nothing but the inner chatter. Through humming when the inner chatter reduces, automatically you start progressing towards no-mind. You start experiencing a different dimension of your being. A good driver always knows intricate details about his car, like the noise the car makes at different speeds etc. If the engine noise changes, a good driver immediately senses that there is a malfunction in the engine and takes corrective action. The passengers won't realize anything, but a good driver certainly does. Similarly once you start doing this meditation regularly, based on the intensity and the quality of your humming, you would start understanding your body functions well. If you have over eaten or certain kinds of foods do not suit you that well, you will see a difference in the quality of the humming. Automatically you will adjust your body's needs to make sure that the humming is smooth. Humming gives you an insight into the subtle vibrations of the body and helps you to take corrective action if necessary. It's happens automatically and need not be enforced. Our body and mind are always out of sync. I always tell people that if your body is here then its almost certain that your mind is not here! Your 12 - NITHYA DHYAAN mind is always hovering elsewhere. Our body has its own innate intelligence which is functioning all the time. It's just that the mind refuses to corroborate with that intelligence. It forces the body into certain actions which later manifests as disease. Disease means absence of ease. If the body is made to run forcibly, then it is going to revolt some time or the other. So many times you overeat. The body is giving you signals that it is full. But the mind is not satisfied. It wants more. It goes on filling the body, creating more and more damage. You feel the repercussions later. So creating a harmony between the body and the mind is important for going beyond both, else we would be caught in this psycho-physical entity, and transcendence would be difficult. Humming is one of the best techniques to make a bridge between the body and the mind. Humming lets you feel your body as energy. The moment you start humming, you start feeling light, as if you are floating. You don't feel the heaviness in the body, because humming matches the vibrations of the mind with the vibrations of the body. Body and mind become harmonious. You start experiencing yourself as energy. So in this step, keep your lips together and produce the sound 'Mmmm...' from inside. If you were to put your face inside an empty aluminum vessel and make a humming sound, the sound generated will be similar to this. Note that this is not 'Humm...' or 'Omm...', it is simply keeping your lips together and producing 'Mmmm...' sound. The humming should be as lengthy as possible between breaths; it should be as deep as possible (from the navel center) and as loud as possible. There is no need to make an effort to take in deep breaths, the body itself will take breaths when needed. Don't become tense, just do it in a relaxed manner. Immerse your whole being and energy into creating this vibration. Try to minimize the gap between the humming sounds. After some time, you will feel that the humming continues without your effort and that you have become simply a listener. The body and the mind start resonating with the humming vibrations. Continue to do this in the vajrasana posture with chin mudra and hands on your knees. Chin mudra as shown here is a hand gesture where the index finger is kept at the tip of the thumb and the other three fingers are unfolded. The chin mudra helps to maintain a balance in the energy flow in the body and keeps the energy within the body by creating a circuit. It prevents the energy from being dissipated out of the body. After going through the first two steps of chaotic breathing and intense humming, we move on to the next step where we start entering the subtler zones of our being. If you would like to know more techniques related to humming, you could practice the Mahamantra Meditation technique that is taught in the Life Bliss Program (LBP) or the Ananda Spurana Program (ASP). LIFE BLISS MEDITATION - 13
Witnessing the Body and Mind 2
 CHAKRAS AND THEIR LOCATIONS Sahasrara (crown center) Ajna (brow center) Vishuddhi (throat center) Anahata (heart center) Manipuraka (navel center) Swadhishtana (spleen center) Muladhara (base of spine)
Nithya Dhyaan Process
LIFE BLISS MEDITATION - 15 CHAKRA AWARENESS (ENERGY CENTRES) (Duration : 7 mins) In this step you can continue to sit in vajrasana or sit cross-legged if you wish. Keep your fingers in chin mudra. Now take your awareness to each chakra (energy center) starting from the muladhara chakra (root center) to the sahasrara chakra (crown center). We have seven energy centers in our body. We need to understand the meta-physical location of these seven energy centers. Our personality is made up of three bodies or shariras: the physical body (sthula sharira), mental body (sukshma sharira) and the causal body (karana sharira). Similarly there are three states of consciousness: the waking state, the dream state and deep sleep. Beyond these three bodies and the three states of consciousness lies the true self or Atman, whatever you may choose to call it. In Sanskrit we call the supreme state as Sharira Traivalaxana, Panchakosha Teetha, Avastha Trya Sakshi (witness of the 16 - NITHYA DHYAAN three bodies, beyond the five sheaths and the witness of the three states of consciousness). The physical body is the body that we know, which eats, moves etc in the waking state. The mental body is what we use when we dream. You may be lying in your house in India but your mind may be in some other country. At that time, you are employing your mental body. You also use your mental body in the waking state, as your faculty of thinking functions continuously in the waking state. Also the causal body is what we use when we are in deep restful dreamless sleep. During the entire sleeping cycle there are phases when the mind becomes dormant and there are no thoughts. This is the time when you experience the causal body. These three bodies are not separate as we may think. They are tightly coupled. Consider two curved lines drawn on a piece of paper in such a way that they intersect at seven different points. If one of the lines represents the physical body, the other line represents the subtle body and the paper represents the causal body. The seven points at which the physical body and the subtle body meet the causal body are the locations of the seven energy centers. These seven energy centers are present at the intersection of the physical, subtle and the causal bodies. They exist in a metaphysical plane. Some recent research in aura photography has been able to even photograph these energy centers. These seven energy centers are associated with particular emotions in our being. These emotions are a result of the engraved memories or samskaras which we have accumulated in the past. These samskaras block the particular energy center causing physical and mental disturbances. The samskaras are present in our being because of the absence of awareness. So when we flood awareness into these energy centers, the energy centers start getting unblocked from negative emotions and we start radiating positive emotions like love and compassion. Most of our diseases are psychosomatic. They have their roots in the mind. What we see is just the effect and so we never really understand this mind-body connection. When a particular energy center gets blocked, that part of the body near the energy center gets affected. You might have seen that when you worry too much your stomach gets upset. So it is important to keep the energy centers cleansed for good physical and mental health. Below I have described what blocks each energy center and what unblocks the energy center. All emotions like fantasies, imagination, fear, worry, attention need, jealousy, ego and discontentment have negative existence. If there is some object in the room and if you were asked to take the object out of the room, then you can pick up the object and take it out, because in this case the object has positive existence. But let us say that there is a dark room and you are asked to take the darkness out of the room. You cannot really take out the darkness because darkness has negative existence. It cannot be taken out. You just have to light a bulb and the darkness will be removed automatically. All these emotions also have negative existence just like the darkness in the room. You cannot really take them out. All you have to do is to bring in the light of awareness into your being and the negative emotions will disappear automatically. Once, Buddha tied a knot and asked one of his disciples to untie the knot. The disciple tried to pull the knot hard and only made things worse. Then Buddha asked another disciple to untie the knot. This disciple first looked at the knot carefully, then he slowly untied the knot. Buddha then explained that if you have to untie the knot of ignorance in your being, you first have to learn to look carefully. You have to flood your being with awareness and see how it was formed, then the negativity will be instantaneously obliterated. So in this step we put our complete awareness on each energy center starting from the Muladhara Chakra to the Sahasrara Chakra. This way, step by step we move upwards, reaching the crown center. You should become the energy center when you are asked to put awareness on the energy center. Feel the energy center completely as if your whole being has become that energy center. At the end of this step you will feel energized and light. Thus we move on to the next step. If you are interested in knowing more about the science of chakras, you can do the Life Bliss Program or the Ananda Spurana Program that elaborately discusses each chakra and the emotion related to the chakras and prescribes a meditation technique for each chakra. Energy center | Blocked by | Unblocked by Muladhara Chakra | Fantasies & imagination | Accepting reality Swadhistana Chakra | Fear of death | Accepting death Manipuraka Chakra | Worries | Stopping worry about worries Anahata Chakra | Attention need | Selfless love Vishuddhi Chakra | Comparison & jealousy | Accepting the uniqueness of every individual Ajna Chakra | Seriousness & ego | Simplicity & Innocence Sahasrara Chakra | Discontentment | Gratitude
Be Unclutched
20 - NITHYA DHYAAN BE UNCLUTCHED (Duration : 7 mins) Just be un-clutched for the next seven minutes. Let me explain what being un-clutched is. Mind is nothing but a collection of thoughts; one thought after the other, coming in succession. By our very nature, our thoughts are unconnected. They are like bubbles in a fish tank. The bubbles in the fish tank are not connected. They are distinctly separate, but they appear to be connected. In a similar manner our thoughts are not connected though they appear to be connected. You can do a small exercise: Write down all your thoughts as and when they come. Sit for ten minutes silently and simply start recording your thoughts. Don't try to control or stop thinking. Just be silent and witness the thoughts. The moment a thought comes, quickly write it down on paper. Do this for ten minutes. At the end of ten minutes, read out whatever is written. You will see that it's a mad man's diary! There is utter chaos. There is no connection between one thought and the next thought. All the thoughts are un-clutched and unconnected. Only when you write down your thoughts you come to know that the thoughts have no real connection. You may be thinking about having a cup of coffee and the next moment you may think about some office work, which is pending. There is no real connection between having a cup of coffee and the office work. Both are independent events. Even if there are two consecutive thoughts about the same event, the thoughts are unconnected as there is no continuity. There is always a gap between thoughts. There is a time of silence between thoughts. The thoughts by their very nature are un-clutched. The problem happens when we connect these thoughts. We connect these unconnected thoughts and suffer. For example: you might have eaten ice cream ten years ago, you might have eaten ice cream seven years ago, you might have eaten ice cream two years ago and you might have eaten ice cream yesterday. All these experiences might have been very pleasurable for you. You might have enjoyed the ice cream each time you ate it. The trouble is that you connect these experiences and create an imaginary shaft or an understanding that eating ice cream makes you happy. So you try to repeat this experience in the future. You always connect similar thoughts and create a shaft. It might be your experience that sometimes you don't enjoy the ice cream, as much as you enjoyed it some days ago or a year ago. Even if you don't enjoy the ice cream you will make yourself believe that you like the ice cream. Because you have got into the habit of connecting the thoughts, you unconsciously start accepting that you enjoy ice cream. Similar is the case with painful experiences. The pain which you experienced ten years ago, the pain which you experienced seven years ago, the pain which you experienced three years ago and the pain which you experienced yesterday are independent events; there is no connection between these events. But you create this imaginary shaft and start thinking 'my life is a pain'. If you had many pleasurable experiences in your life, you say 'my life is a pleasure', but actually neither of it is true. Your life is neither pleasure nor pain because the very process of connecting these events is a mistake. The idea that the thoughts are connected is a misconception. And that too we don't connect all the thoughts. We connect only those thoughts that we remember. Just as from a bunch of flowers you pick up a few flowers and create a garland, from millions of thoughts we have, we connect few thoughts that we remember and create a shaft. Creation of the shaft is the original sin. When we create the shaft we suffer. If you have created a shaft of pleasure then you try to extend the shaft because you want to experience the same pleasure again. If you have created a shaft of pain then you try to break the shaft because you want to avoid the pain. You can neither extend the shaft nor break the shaft because the shaft does not exist! The shaft itself is a myth. The creation of the shaft has become one more shaft for you. LIFE BLISS MEDITATION - 23 All your experiences are independent experiences. The moment you have connected these experiences, you have created hell for you; you have created suffering. Now you will understand why suffering is also imaginary. It is based on something imaginary. It is based on something unreal. It's just an appearance. The shaft is unreal; it does not exist. So the suffering that is created due to the shaft is also unreal. Once you realize this, you are liberated. Because our thoughts are very powerful, they have the capacity to clutch other thoughts and create an imaginary shaft. This process of creating the imaginary shaft is the function of the ego. Ego is nothing separate from the thoughts. Instead it is characteristic of the thoughts. So really speaking, the ego does not exist because the shaft does not exist. The shaft is imaginary. Ego is just a name we give to this process of creating a shaft. A sense of continuity is created because of this shaft. This gives us the illusion of 'ego'. Since right now all our thoughts clutch, we think that we have an ego. But all our thoughts by their very nature are independent, so the idea of the ego is also imaginary as there cannot be anything connecting these thoughts. So by our very nature we are un-clutched; we are enlightened; we just need to realize it. Once, a disciple goes to a Zen master and asks him, 'How can I become Buddha'. The master gives him a tight slap on his face and says, 'You are already a Buddha!' If Buddha comes and asks you how he should become Buddha!