It was understood that yoga had something to do with spiritual life, but most of you were thinking that yoga was only asanas and breathing exercises. It is, but side by side with physical control we also take care of mental control. In our age of culture, science, civilization, it is necessary that our mind and all the thought impulses should be under control, only then can we know peace and tranquillity in life. Sometimes it is said that yoga is part of renunciation or renunciation is involved in yoga; it is not so. Yoga is an art through which you clear your subconscious mind and exhaust the karmas and by exhausting the impressions you breed tranquillity from within.
May I make a difference between peace and temporary tranquillity? Tranquillity arrived at an upper level is something different than the tranquillity we experience at a deeper level. When the noise within the subconscious mind, when the disturbances are completely absent, and when you have made your mind clear through the process of meditation and it has undergone a process of purging and exhaustion, then strength comes from within.
Mind and the brain produces energy and that energy goes out in the form of dissipated thinking. If you conserve that energy for some time, it becomes powerful and therefore you find in our society there are many who have a very weak brain, a weak mind and there are those who are very strong. It is because they know how to control the constructive and destructive brain waves. The brain produces a certain amount of waves. It has frequencies; it has velocity; thoughts have colours. The stronger the thought, the lesser the frequency and the stronger the velocity.
If you keep thinking hundreds of thoughts, you will find your mind becoming weaker and weaker. By the process of yoga you reduce the dimensions of thinking, the thought process and then comes onepointedness which can be utilized for a spiritual purpose, the development of intuition, in the business of your day-to-day profession and for achieving success in your life.
In yoga the mind is not killed, that is a wrong notion. We do not suppress the mind; we do not kill the mind; there is no repression. The mind is cultured and refined and, after it is cultured and refined, we utilize it for a higher purpose. The same mind, which was rowdy, dealing with the bad things of life can help us for higher attainments – maybe peace, maybe plenty, maybe prosperity. That is nothing difficult for the mind. Mind can do anything, it has infinite power and infinite potentiality. It is only up to us to dive deep. One of the great philosophers has said, ‘In comparison to what we ought to be we are half awake, our mind which we have developed is only a fraction of that homogeneous mind which is yet to develop.’ I am talking about the mind and the brain at the same time. In medical sciences we have studied that only a part of the brain is active; there are other parts of the brain which are silent, dormant. If the dormant portions of this physical brain, the dormant circuits of your cerebellum become active, who knows what you can do? You may develop ultrasonic, supra-sonic knowledge, you may develop the sixth sense that we call intuition. All that is in the process of awakening different cells, different nerves, different parts of this physical brain. There are branches of yoga such as nada yoga, kriya yoga, kundalini yoga, and of course pranayama through which the physical portions of the brain can be revitalized and new activities can be created.
This is the fundamental belief on which the theory of yoga is based. When we talk about the mind, we also talk about the brain. When we control the mind, we control the brain activities; the contraction and expansion, the vibration and modulation that is taking place in the brain can be controlled through concentration. When there is disturbance the brain moves, vibrates and shakes, but through pranayama and concentration it becomes steady. The moment it becomes steady, your thoughts and behaviour, your impulses and emotions become steady.
Sometimes there is influx of blood in the brain, through meditation we draw it back. There is a process of recession. Sometimes there is less supply of blood into the brain and as a result of that the brain undergoes a moment of depression, an experience of depression. That depression can be removed by supplying extra blood, extra prana, either through pranayama or the method of raja yoga through meditation.
Therefore, friends, this is my request to all of you this evening, that you study the subject of meditation from a scientific background. Let it not be considered a spiritual thing for the time being though it can lead you to spiritual enlightenment. We should study and discuss the subject of meditation or dhyana from the thought and brain point of view. We want to know if there is a method by which we can control our brain waves and give relaxation to our brain. Is there a method by which the blood pressure can be reduced or cerebral thrombosis can be avoided? Is there a method by which we may be able to develop the sleeping circuits of the brain, not one or two but millions of circuits in the brain are responsible for ultrasonic and supersonic knowledge? The reply is yes, but the path has to be learned.
12 May 1968, Anzac House Lecture, Sydney, Australia