Talks Excerpt 569. Swamiji emphasises the power of BALANCED breathing.
From Mother Radha’s recordings of Swamiji.
Beginners in meditation have to practise at given times. It is good to meditate when nature is the calmest. Do you think that you could meditate if there was a storm with lightning and thunder outside? You would be thinking, ‘Oh no, will the lightning strike me?’ But when everything is calm and quiet, look how beautiful it is. Then, when you close your eyes you have no fear without and no fear within.
Our Rishis found four times each day when nature goes into perfect balance. At these times the sadhaka can breathe equally through both nostrils and the mind is said to be at its calmest. Breathing through the left nostril is tamasic and breathing through the right nostril is rajasic. Rhythmically or calmly breathing through both nostrils is sattvic.
You can also regulate your breath by pranayama. Take the help of a qualified teacher to practise pranayama. Pranayama cools you, pranayama calms you and pranayama equalises the currents of the negative and the positive in your body. Thus your mind becomes calm. [Swamiji gave us cautionary examples of self-taught pranayama ‘adepts’, who went totally haywire as a result of their uninformed practices.]
The four times for worship given to us by the Rishis are called sandhyas: These are: sunrise, midday, sunset and midnight. Sri Ramakrishna used to take advantage of the midnight sandhya. He actually used to awaken his disciples at midnight and say, ‘Come on, meditate.’ The next morning if the disciples were sleeping late others would say, ‘Look at those lazy young boys, Master is spoiling them.’ They did not know that the whole night these boys had been meditating while they themselves had been fast asleep. And Master would say, ‘Let them sleep, let them have a rest.’ At the time when the whole world is asleep the yogi is awake.
Where else would you get such a wonderful guru like Master [Sri Ramakrishna]? He would send someone miles away to call one of his chelas. He would say, ‘Go and bring him here, go and bring him here.’ When the chela came, the Master would say, ‘Oh I was thinking about you.’
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These recordings or the excerpts from them, were made from the early 1970s onward, by Mother Radha, a close devotee of Swamiji’s and edited for uploading here by our gurubhai and her son, Brother Tim. Please be mindful that what Swamiji was saying may have been specific to an individual or a group of people with him, at the time.