About two years ago ... two years ago? Yes. We were travelling by truck... myself, and some other swamis. We started singing kirtan, unfortunately, on the moving truck. What happened? While singing we just lost our egos, all of us. Some started crying, some started falling in the truck, and the driver knew nothing of what was going on. Fortunately, there was a person in the back of the truck who still managed to maintain his ego, so he saved us all. Otherwise we would have fallen off. I would not be here today, except for that one man who maintained his mind ... he was holding us. That was a very wonderful experience, and after we regained our egos we were crying like little children. You see, when you sing, no matter what name you sing, it is rhythm, and then more people join and everyone co-operates. The power created changes the whole being from the outside, deep down to the inside. Then there comes a moment when we can transcend our personality barriers. You all have personality barriers. Men and women have personality barriers, even a small child already a swami has personality barriers.
Lord Shiva was supposed to be the archetypal yogi. You know Lord Shiva, he is known as 'Nataraja'. But greater than Lord Shiva was Krishna. He lived life just dancing it. I think that in the oldest reference you can find, Krishna and flute are inseparable elements. Where there is Krishna there is flute, where there is flute there is Krishna. What is the difference? So where there is yoga there is nada, and where there is nada there is yoga. The flute is the symbol of nada yoga - the inner flute that you hear in meditation. So Lord Krishna spent his whole life in dancing, kirtan, singing. This is one of the easiest forms of yoga by which we can not only relax and spontaneously give expression to our higher or divine nature, but we can also be one with the cosmic self. This starts with kirtan. It is nada yoga actually, and it is mainly dependent on the process of sound. This yoga brings us nearer and nearer to softness, to the loveliness and the natural feelings of life.
I like to watch people practice a little dancing during kirtan, but it has to be creative. I remember Chaitanya, the great kirtanist of the middle ages in India, who was born in Bengal. When he used to sing:
Sri Krishna Chaitanya, Prabhu Nityananda
Hare Ram, Hare Krishna, Sri Radhe Govinda
Oh! people used to go after him from kirtan to kirtan, because this is how you evolve. This is the rhythm, the creativity. This is how you relax and increase your potentiality. Maybe if people doing kirtan were measured they would have high alpha pattern vibrations. And what else do we need than this? We are passing through alpha, beta, delta, theta, maybe even some other 'pha' or 'ta'.