Discourse to the Indian Prisoners at Kajang Central Prison, Malaysia, 9th October, 2009
Parama Pujya Shri Shri Nimishananda Guruji was invited by the prison authorities of Kajang Central Prison to address more than 500 Indian prisoners there and help in their spiritual and mental rehabilitation. Very close to the festival of Deepavali, His Holiness was very warmly and reverently welcomed there. The prisoners were extremely receptive to Pujya Guruji’s discourse and eagerly followed His instructions when He initiated all of them into a simple yogic kriya. The ever flowing compassion of Pujya Guruji touched the hearts of the prisoners deeply and they gave His Holiness a standing ovation at the end of the inspiring and motivating session. Amazed at the receptivity and enthusiasm of the prisoners, the prison authorities immediately invited Pujya Guruji to sanctify their prison with His divine Presence and guide the prisoners whenever He visited Malaysia. Here is a gist of Pujya Guruji’s discourse and kriya initiation - “May the Grace of God bring out all your inner strength and give you the impetus that will take you into the outer world quickly to lead happy, contented and successful lives. I will pray to the Divine Mother Shri Adiparashakti on your behalf and all of you will be encompassed by the mantle of Her Divine Protection.”
“All of us pray to God at times, especially when we are faced by a problem or a crisis. We think that God is somewhere outside and we can get His Grace only by worshipping Him at the altar in our house or in a temple, church, mosque or any other place of worship. However, in actuality God is always inside us. When we seek God outside, we call Him ‘Paramatma’ or the Supreme Spirit Soul and when we seek Him inside we call Him ‘Atma’ or Soul. Though the Soul is inside us all the time, we cannot see it or feel its presence in us. Today I will teach all of you a technique to link yourselves to your Soul and to bring out its wonderful energy. This will fill you with joy, peace and contentment. What all of us need more than anything today is complete peace of mind because when our mental peace is shattered by problems, troubles and worries, we are unable even to eat and sleep properly. We get so obsessed with our problems that we do not know what to do or how to resolve them.”
“Today as we look at each other with these bars between us, each one of us can assume that the other is in prison. Are you in prison or am I in prison? God says – “All of you are on Earth are experiencing imprisonment because you have imprisoned the Soul within you. That is why you experience so many problems, troubles and worries. When you set your Soul free, you will experience Me inside you all the time as supreme joy and bliss.” What is it that we cannot get even if we spend all the money in the world? What is it that no amount of money can buy? Joy and bliss. The joy and happiness we experience today never stays with us for long. We enjoy it for a few minutes and then it is shattered by so many worries – “How is my family managing? How will all of them survive now? How will they greet me and accept me when I go back?...” So what should we do to protect our happiness and prevent it from being shattered? We should bring out the energy of our Soul.”
“All of us experience two worlds every moment – the world outside us and the world inside us. The outer world contains people, objects, circumstances and situations. The inner world contains all our thoughts and feelings. However, there is a very important link between these two worlds. Can any of you guess what it is? It is our breath. We sang bhajans a little while ago. How did we sing? We sang through the mouth using our breath. Our breath is a very important tool that God has given all of us. Using our breath we can remove all our inner fears and worries and gain great faith and belief in ourselves. To accomplish this we must learn to regulate our breath. When we regulate our breath we can bring out all the divine strength within us. The regulation of breath is called pranayama.”
“We understand the outer world easily because we can see, smell, hear, taste and touch the things outside. So, we are constantly using our senses to comprehend the external world. For example, when we eat something, we can immediately make out whether it has enough salt or sugar. In this way, we can easily find out whether a dish is tasty or not. However, we cannot understand our inner world through our senses. Though we cannot see our Soul today, it is our basic responsibility to empower ourselves and make our lives blissful by bringing out the energy of our Soul. When you do this, you will experience God’s Grace as blissful waves of pulsating energy. The physical body gets energy when we eat or rest, but what about our mind? How will the mind get energy? Today, most of us do not have enough mental energy. That is why we get depressed or feel sad. When we are depressed, we feel that our life is full of tests, but such circumstances are not sent to us by God as tests. God does not want to test us or give us grief. God is ever compassionate and always wants us to be happy. Outer situations are not responsible for our depression either. It is we who generate sorrow in the mind by thinking obsessively about these situations. When we allow ourselves to be obsessed about something, we think about it all the time. Then our thoughts are no longer generated slowly, one by one. They erupt in a big bunch and bombard us together. Under this continuous onslaught, all our mental energy drains away and we feel absolutely exhausted. This increases our feeling of helplessness and mental depression and is a vicious cycle.”
“However, when you do this simple breathing exercise or kriya, it boosts your mental energy and you feel very cheerful, lively and happy. This happiness bubbling inside you constantly will keep you joyous and smiling. It will fill you with a feeling of great belief and confidence in yourself. Your heart will pulsate with hope and your innate dignity will blossom. This will make you believe – “I can certainly lead a successful life when I go into the outer world. I am also fit and eligible to mix with everybody and live amongst them with self respect.” Then instead of negative thoughts, good thoughts will bombard our minds and make us feel very capable and confident. Today, all of us have many good thoughts, but we are unable to bring them out or use them in any way because our problems seem much too overwhelming.”
“All of us have this great fount of strength inside us which can resolve and remove all our problems. This fount of strength is nothing but our Soul. We should all practice this simple breathing exercise through which we will learn now to tap our inner strength. All of us have a lot of time on our hands which we can use for this. Sometimes, our mind may play tricks on us and say – “Where do you have the time to do all this?”, but in actuality all of us have plenty of time. Who does not have time to experience happiness and joy in life? All of us do.”
“I will teach you this simple exercise or kriya now. First observe Me carefully and then you can also do it with Me. Sit cross legged, with your hands on your waist. All of you breathe normally…Now take a deep breath. We will chant Om a few times till our minds feel calm. Om………Om……….Relax…..Breathe in and out normally. Remove your hands from your waist and place them on your knees. All of you are now physically and mentally prepared for the kriya. Open your eyes now and watch Me. Observe how briskly and forcefully I inhale and exhale through the nose…”
“Now close your eyes. Place your hands on your waist once again. Inhale and exhale forcefully and briskly through your nose…. Do not use your mouth to breathe… Use only your nose… Let each inhalation and exhalation be explosive…In the beginning, you may experience some pain or discomfort in the body when you do this. Don’t worry about it. It will soon disappear. Just continue to do your kriya. Now briskly and forcefully…Breathe in….Breathe out……Breathe in….Breathe out………Relax.”
“Sit still with your eyes closed. You can move your hands. If your legs hurt, you can stretch them, but keep your eyes closed. If you find any thoughts coming into your minds, just throw them out. It could be any kind of thought – a fearful thought, an anxious thought, a negative thought…Some of you may not get any thoughts at all, which is fine, but if any thought comes into your mind, don’t pay too much attention to it or get involved with it…simply allow it to come out with your breath…Breathe in and out slowly…Inhale slowly…Exhale slowly…”
“How will this kriya help you? Let us say you are faced with a problem or a very challenging situation which worries you. Immediately sit down and do this kriya. You will certainly see the results instantaneously. Initially they may not seem very dramatic, but as you practice it everyday, your way of looking at the world and your way of thinking will be totally transformed. Even all the Mahatmas and Enlightened Beings who meditate in the Himalayas practice this breathing exercise. Though it is simple, it is extremely powerful. It fills you with a great feeling of peace and joy, but most of you will experience this only after you practice it regularly for a while. It makes your mind very strong and stable.”
“Now let us begin another cycle of the kriya. Sit cross legged with your hands on your waist and begin again….Breathe in …Breathe out…Relax. Bring your hands to your knees and just allow your thoughts to exit…Don’t get involved with them…All the expectations and thoughts concealed in the innermost depths of your mind will come out. Even the thoughts that you never knew about will surface…Just allow them to come out and go away…Don’t examine them…Allow your mind to get emptied of all thoughts…Don’t open your eyes…We are doing this kriya so that you can be relaxed, peaceful and blissful…Now let us do one more cycle of the kriya…Breathe in…Breathe out…now slowly open your eyes…”
“Why are we feeling so peaceful and calm? What happened when we did the kriya? We just touched our inner core with our breath. It is true that we breathe all the time and our breath is always with us, but when we did this simple breathing exercise, we tapped the fount of bliss deep inside us called the Soul. When we breathe normally, we cannot touch our Soul with our breath. When we worship God externally, we can invoke His Grace chanting mantras or singing bhajans. We can trigger our devotion for God in all these ways. We can touch the deity with our hands and experience it, but if we want to touch our Soul which is the form of Divinity inside us, we can do it only with our breath. It cannot be done in any other way. When we go to a temple, we feel peaceful and blissful for some time, but we cannot take this bliss with us because it evaporates soon after we leave the temple.”
“So what should we do? After we have worshipped God through mantras, bhajans and rituals in the temple, we should sit down there and do this kriya. Then we will not just think about God, visualize God or remind ourselves that He is always with us – we will actually experience His Presence inside us. Just as we experience the taste of food instantaneously through the tongue, we can experience the presence of God through our breath. All of you can practice this small, simple breathing technique three times every day – once in the morning, once in the afternoon and once in the evening or night. Each time you can do three cycles as we did just now or you can even increase up to 10 cycles if your mind takes a longer time to stabilise and stop generating thoughts. You must always practice this kriya before you eat because you will not be able to breathe forcefully when your stomach is full. Moreover, when we eat, most of our energy goes to the stomach to digest the food. We should not interfere with the process of digestion in any way. ”
“What are the benefits of this breathing exercise? [1] Through this, we experience the presence of God inside us. [2] We get complete confidence in ourselves. [3] I will tell you a great spiritual secret now. Listen carefully. Whenever our breath touches the Soul, it immediately generates a tremendous amount of energy within us and this energy overflows and transforms our lives. All of us are enveloped by a sheath of energy called the aura. When our aura is charged by this tremendous energy generated inside us, it acquires the power to attract good people, good things, good circumstances and good times towards us. It makes all these things gravitate effortlessly towards us. This is what we call good fortune or good luck. However, in the lives of ordinary human beings, good luck is very fickle. It lasts only for a short time. But when we do this kriya regularly, good luck follows us wherever we go because our aura attracts the best people and things towards us. This is the secret.”
“So when we enter the outer world, there is no longer any need for us to tell lies. Also, we will not be troubled by negative thoughts or feelings because these will all be eliminated by the kriya. Within two to three days after you go out, you will experience how effortlessly everything will fall into place for you. Then you will say – “One day a Guru had come to teach us this simple breathing exercise which has transformed now my life. It has brought all these amazing circumstances and great good fortune to me.” When we live like ordinary human beings, we are not very receptive to the Grace of God. But when we practice this kriya regularly here and continue to practice it when we live in the outer world, we will receive God’s Grace and Blessings in great abundance. Then others will not regard us as ordinary human beings any longer. Instead, they will respect and revere us. This is My experience. I have taught this simple kriya to many people like you in India. Scores of them have come back to Me and said – “This kriya You taught me has made innumerable miracles happen in my life. I am no longer attacked by negative thoughts and feelings. I have the confidence that I can make my living in a respectable way and I will be successful in whatever profession I choose. In some bad moment in my life, I did something wrong as a result of my karma, but now all that is behind me. I am well employed and respected in society. I am very happy and content with my life.” The lives of more than a hundred people have been transformed in this way. Each one of you will also experience this kind of transformation.”
“All of you should understand today that the capacity to shape the circumstances of your life lies within you. We are the makers of our own destiny. When we touch our Soul with our breath, God, who is inside us as energy, also comes to touch us from outside through helpful people and conducive circumstances. Then everything will simply fall into place for you. This has been My experience since the past 14 years. Retain this strong faith and belief as you practice this kriya regularly. Even when your favourite dish is paced before you, only when your hand carries it to your mouth is your hunger appeased. Likewise, only when your breath touches your Soul inside do the good circumstances of life flow to you from outside. Have complete faith in your inner strength and do this kriya. You will have a very special experience within 48 hours which will strengthen your faith.”
“People like us do not come and talk to you casually. We always come with a divine purpose. We come to share our inner bliss with you and to unveil the divine strength within you. All of you are pure, blessed human beings. You have tremendous divine power within you. You have certainly gone through some bad circumstances in your life, but you should forget all that now. Forget yesterday, enjoy today and welcome tomorrow. Only then will you enjoy life. Inner joy is not a concept to be theorized or talked about. It exists within each one of us so that we can experience it and enjoy it constantly. So, let us always be joyful by remembering that each moment is a gift from God for us to enjoy. Otherwise, we will certainly grow older, but we will never grow wiser. Our minds will stagnate and stink. Do we want our lives to stink or do we want our lives to be fragrant? How can we make it fragrant? All of you must practice your kriya and demonstrate to the outer world that you are capable of great things. I have complete faith in you. You must also have complete faith in yourselves. Only then can you build a life that is worth while. From this Deepavali, the glorious festival of lights, your good days will begin. From today your life will only be full of good days. Don’t analyse this; just take it on faith. May the Grace of the Divine Mother flow to you constantly and fill it with peace, bliss and self confidence. The most important factor that brings God’s Grace to you is your own faith. Today I have taught you how to increase your faith through this simple kriya. Practice it regularly and experience great joy. May all of you be blessed with an abundance of bliss, peace, prosperity, good fortune and success in life. May all beings be happy.”
Jai Matha. Om Tat Sat.
