Address at the YMCA: Precisely at 5.45 p.m., Siva was at the Massey Hall to address the members of the YMCA. Deputy Food Minister of India presided over the function.
Siva gave the cream of the capital's intelligentsia a practical method of wiping the world out of their mind. He related to them his visit to Mahatmaji's Sabarmati Ashram and the austerities that the inmates practised there.
He said, "They go inside a room and seclude themselves for twenty days. They never come out. Food is sent inside. There they do anushthana for those twenty days. Just remain like that for twenty days with no contact with the outside world and at the same time devote all your time to sadhana for self-realization. You will see that the world loses its attraction for you and you begin to enjoy the atmic bliss. Then you will know that the world has no existence in reality.
Give up reading newspapers. The newspapers bring the whole world before you all the time. They disturb your mind. They destroy your tranquillity. No doubt, the newspapers give you knowledge of politics and so many other things; but there is nothing in them which gives you peace. Give up newspaper reading: the world will gradually recede from you, and in the course of time you will realize that the world has no essential existence."
7 November 1950, Delhi. From Sivananda's Lectures, during All-India and Ceylon Tour – 1950, Chronicler Swami Venkatesananda