Blessed Spiritual Friends. It is a great pleasure for me to be with you this evening. When I see your calm, serene and peaceful faces they remind me of my Indian people whom I have left three months ago and whom I love very much. As I look at you I see the same solitude and the same saris that I see when I go to Indian villages. Sometimes I feel that in this calm and quiet country, away from the rush of the city, I must have a hermitage. Of course I have many hermitages in India and I am not going to have one built here, but I tell you how much your country has impressed me. Belgium has places where spiritual centres can be developed.
In a country where there are spiritual centres, calm and quiet places for meditation, mental illness does not take place. Far from the hustle and bustle of modern life, far from the pleasures and luxuries, far from the comforts and enjoyments of life, there could be and there should be in this country a few wonderful spiritual centres, where spiritually-minded people could go from time to time and breathe the spiritual atmosphere.
When I was in America, I was very impressed with the spiritual mindedness of the people, but I was very sorry and dissatisfied by the country, noise and confused surroundings. I felt that even if Americans want to meditate, they have no place to meditate. If they want to meditate, they must have a sound, clear mind. Therefore, a businessman, contractor or scientist must come up with a soundproof room.
In this country, nature has been very good to you. If you leave your drawing room and go to your bedroom to meditate you can do so, sit down quietly and meditate without any difficulty or disturbance. In India, many people go to Haridwar or Rishikesh for about one month every year for calm and quiet meditation. Look how much time and money they have to spend, whereas you have calm and peace in your own homes. In spite of all these facilities you have been provided by God, if you do not follow the path of meditation, how do you expect peace and happiness in your daily life?
This country knows all about yoga and therefore I do not have to introduce yoga. Yoga has been flourishing in Europe for so many centuries, but in the last two decades it has come up because of the pressure of modern life. When the civilization becomes intellectual or when modern civilization comes with all its drawbacks, yoga can come to the rescue.
Yoga came to your country in the form of yoga exercises and breathing exercises. It came to your country in an automatic exchange program from India. The West gave technology to India and India gave yoga to the West. Yoga can give peace, which is very important for a country where technology is thriving. In the industrial civilizations where people not only have to work more, but also where there is keen competition to keep up, there are mental tensions, worries and nervous breakdowns. In a country where there is so much industrialization and where everyone is expected to take up the tremendous demands of the country, people have very little time to think philosophically and to ponder over philosophical topics. The result of this is when there is any tragedy in life; we cannot take it.
The international statistics of health have declared that there are more mental patients in the West than in the East. Just as the West has conquered problems such as TB epidemics, the East has conquered the problems of nervous breakdowns, coronary thrombosis and mental sickness. When there are epidemics in India, modern science is going to help with medicines. In the West there is so much of mental sickness, so many cases of suicides. In America, two out of three go to mental asylums. In Denmark, suicides, the cases of juvenile delinquency and nervous breakdowns are increasing, millions and millions of tranquillizers are being used. There must be some method that can help the people. This is the worldly, the empirical side which we have to think about.
In addition to this, people who are spiritual and want to know themselves, what is the way? As far as the houses, the personality, your emotional life and your modern life is concerned it is all right, but what about your spiritual life? If you want to know the truth about the world, about yourself, here is the way. Western people are not ignorant; they are not foolish; they are highly intellectual; they think too deep. If they want to know what is truth, the ultimate reality, the essence of spirit, then they have to be given a direct and a correct reply.
So my dear friends, there are two great questions before you. One question is, how to maintain mental health, be an integrated personality, have control over your mental impulses and cure the split personality, schizophrenia. The second question is, what is the truth. Is the truth inside me? Or is the truth outside me or is the truth inside me as well as outside? Have I come into this world for the first time or have I come into this world for the last time and then shall be no more?
Or is there a consciousness that is continuous? What is this continuous consciousness in relation to time and space?
To those persons who have been keen students of philosophy, these questions must have come into their minds. Each and every thinking person has to find out the answer to these questions. These are the few questions which are hanging before us, and which we have to reply; and yoga comes as a reply. By the practice of yoga, you bring about steadiness in your brain and you control your thoughts. Just as in the military, a soldier is given physical training, your physical body behaves in this same way. In yoga we also train the mind, the mental habits, the thinking and we improve and modify the mental discipline in such a way that it becomes helpful in our day-to-day lives.
I am reading a book, but fifteen minutes later I have forgotten what I have read in that book, because I have no concentration and my consciousness was functioning on two planes. One part of my consciousness was functioning on the book and another part of my consciousness was functioning elsewhere. If I can control my mind, I can bring all the forces of consciousness to the book, and I can understand the book and remember it. For all these purposes, yoga can offer the path of meditation. There are many aspects of yoga; I am not going to remind you of all these aspects, but I will only remind you of four things: asana, pranayama, relaxation and meditation. The meditation and relaxation aspect is a very important limb of yoga. Relaxation is not sitting on an easy chair, closing your eyes and going to sleep.
Relaxation is to be done on the physical, mental and emotional levels. When your physical body is tired, you sleep and it is called physical relaxation. When your body is overfed and constipated, you clean your stomach and your body undergoes physical relaxation. If there are toxins in your physical body and you eliminate those toxins by the practice of asana and pranayama, that is physical relaxation. When your mind thinks like a monkey or is completely disturbed and you control your mind, that is called mental relaxation. If you have undergone an emotional difficulty in your life and that emotional difficulty is solved, that is called emotional relaxation. This relaxation is not relaxation, it is peace, shanti. Then your mind, your emotions, your heart all remain unaffected. Prosperity and poverty, success or failure, criticism or praise, pleasure or pain, nothing can give a shock to that man who has attained emotional shanti, emotional peace. Therefore, in meditation what we try to do is to control the mental influxes by mantra or by any other method.
I will tell you the philosophy of meditation in short. The individual consciousness functions in the form of thought impulses. If you close your eyes for ten minutes now, there are so many thoughts in your mind: I must go to my house, tomorrow I must go to Brussels, I must write a letter to my friend, this man is being like this and that man is being like that. This is happening this way and that is happening that way. So many thoughts will be coming in your mind according to the age group. Old people will have certain thoughts, and maybe young people will have different thoughts; little kids will have different thoughts. Artists, painters, diplomats, engineers, musicians, shopkeepers, manufacturers or whore house ladies will be having different thoughts or impulses of the individual consciousness.
I will give you an illustration to make it more clear. You see a small lake and take a small piece of stone, and throw it in the lake and what will happen? Ripples will start and move towards the outside. You keep quiet and after some time the ripples will become weaker and weaker until there will be stillness again. If you keep throwing stone after stone after stone, there will be ripples and waves and there won’t be a system to the waves. There will be confused, depressed, contradicting waves, making a lot of noise. The quiet, calm and still pool of water becomes greatly disturbed.
In the same manner, your individual consciousness is always still. Your individuality, yourself, your atman, your personality is always calm, but you keep on throwing pebbles of thoughts, the pebbles of desires, wishes and ambitions in it; and, therefore, the surface of your personality looks as if it is disturbed. If you go into the depth of your personality, you will find that there is calm and quietness everywhere. In meditation, we stop throwing the pebbles. As long as you keep this particular action of throwing pebbles under control, your mind is calm and your mind is still. This is called relaxation. Relaxation should therefore mean complete peace in your heart, in your mind and in your body.
The point is how to meditate. It is a difficult problem for me to put before you in a very short time. There are many questions: how to meditate, how to control the thoughts; and, if the mind is disturbed, what to do? These are some questions. At what time should we meditate, for how long should we meditate, on what should we meditate, should we meditate independently or should we have a guide, should we meditate only if we believe in God, or should we meditate even if we do not, and if in meditation we have a psychic experience, what should we do? These are some of the important questions about meditation.
One reply is that meditation has nothing to do with any religion, although a religious man can practise meditation. Whether you believe in God or you do not believe in God, it is immaterial; you can meditate. Meditation is not a system of religion; it is a system of mental discipline and mental sanity. In order to practise meditation in the beginning, half an hour or twenty minutes is sufficient. There are various systems of meditations: some meditate on the breath, others on sound, others on a form, others on mantra and others on thought currents. The right method for the beginner is to meditate on the breath and mantra. Yoga meditation is known as dhyana, which has become Zen in Buddhism. Dhyana means total awareness, total concentration, one-pointedness and total attention.
18 July 1968, Aalst Town Hall, Belgium