Om Swami Quotes

any thought that gives you peace is a positive thought. The more you fill your mind with positive thoughts, the better your state of mind will be. And that naturally results in better physical health.

If your own thoughts cannot provoke you, nothing external can provoke you either. Every external occurrence triggers an internal thought that may alter your state of mind. If you can just be the spectator and not the reactor or an adopter of the thought, the thought becomes powerless.

The consistent and persistent man of average intelligence is more likely to succeed than an erratic and lazy genius.

Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them – that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.

Concentration is the act of building focus and meditation is the art of retaining it without losing awareness.

When we cling to a thought or follow its track, we are performing a mental karma, and that, in turn, is the seed of all physical actions.

For if I’m doing anything in my life out of choice, there’s no reason to complain and if I don’t have a choice then there’s no sense in complaining.

At the root of all emotions patients of depression experience, there are three primary feelings: first, a sense of insecurity; second, a sense of vulnerability; and finally, a sense of isolation. They

Our identification with the body is so strong that most people spend their lives simply taking care of the body. The body feels cold, let’s clothe it; it feels hot, let’s remove the layers; it’s hungry, feed it; it’s tired, give it rest. We become so preoccupied with fulfilling the body’s many desires—cleaning, feeding, clothing, decorating and protecting it, that we become its slaves.

If you are able to terminate the thought in your head though, the desire or emotion will disappear like it never existed. This

Whatever we feel we lack in life, whenever anyone gives us that, we equate it with love. It could be attention or intimacy for some or appreciation and spending quality time for others. Love is different things to different people.

Forgiveness sympathizes and compassion empathizes. And love? Love synthesizes the two. Appreciation

Success by design is infinitely better than a win by chance.’ Success

The tree laden with fruits is always a bit bent. Not because of any burden but because it has something to offer. Humility

Practice of gratitude lends incredible emotional strength. If you are emotionally strong, you can succeed at anything, anything at all. Gratitude makes you emotionally pure and such purity in turn allows you to love unconditionally.

Peace doesn't mean a life devoid of adversities, troubles and challenges. Instead, it means to be surrounded by all of that and yet have faith and be calm. That is the real meaning of peace.

It is something quite difficult to rise above the desire to be complimented and accepted. You can move beyond anger and lust, you can remain unaffected in gain or loss, but to let go the need for another’s approval, what is said or thought about you, isn’t easy at all. It takes great insight and a strong sense of self-worth to move beyond this need.

Awakening of the kundalini is putting an end to attracting the wrong things in our lives. It begins by feeling and experiencing the completeness and fulfillment within us.

Do not get so busy living that you give yourself no time to breathe.

This constant play of nature – one season comes, then goes, another one comes, then goes – is what life is all about. It’s not about some grand goal. Zen does not believe in that. Zen says, nirvana or moksha is simply a matter of perspective. If you can eat when you are eating, if you can sleep when you are sleeping, you are jivan-mukta, a liberated soul. You are enlightened.

The universe is trillions of years old, our galaxy and planet are billions of years old. The human race is a few million years old, while the average human life is seventy years. It’s a very short life. It must be celebrated, it must be lived. Life is not a challenge that needs to be faced. Nor is it an enemy that needs to be fought. For that matter, it’s not a problem that needs solving either. It’s a flowing river, and all we need to do is to flow with it,’ I said. ‘Live. Love. Laugh. Give.

Expectations are those desires you believe you have the right to see fulfilled. Due to our own conditioning by numerous factors, we develop expectations. They are the primary cause of all grief and stress. When we expect, we place a burden on ourselves as well as the one we expect from.

And the greatest support you can extend to a patient of depression is acceptance. Accept and understand that she is not intentionally behaving in a dysfunctional manner. Something deep within is broken which is making her behave like this.

Thoughts that you do not let go leave an imprint on your mind. That imprint is the residue. Meditation is the process of washing away that residue. It is the cleaning of your slate and keeping it that way. When we fail to abandon our thoughts, they assume different forms. They can become desires, expectations or emotions.

When you take up a cause bigger than yourself, the whole universe summons itself to be at your feet, at your disposal. This is the irrefutable law of nature.

if I’m doing anything in my life out of choice, there’s no reason to complain and if I don’t have a choice then there’s no sense in complaining.

When we start to tame the body and its needs, taming the mind becomes easier.

The biggest problem with poverty is the shame that comes with it. When you give the best you have to someone in need, it translates into something much deeper to the receiver. It means they are worthy. If it’s not good enough for you, it’s not good enough for those in need either. Giving the best you have does more than feed an empty belly – it feeds the soul.

Awakening of the kundalini is realization of your pure abstract intelligence, the type that is not conditioned by your fears, emotions and worries. It is your pristine nature. When you are able to tap into this latent source of energy, you truly become the master of your universe. You can manifest whatever you wish in your life because your scale of consciousness is no longer limited to your body alone; it envelops the whole universe. If

For years I thought, real life was about to begin. For years I thought something big, something grand was going to happen in my life and I would suddenly start feeling happier. I thought what I was living was not my real life, that I was meant to do something else. And one day I would be free of all shackles, I would be free of all my engagements. Then I would embark upon this journey of discovering myself, of being happy, of always being fulfilled. But there was always some unfinished business. There was a bill to be paid, there was a call to be made, and there was an email to be replied to … so, no matter how much I ticked off, there was always some stuff still left. There was always some obstacle on the path of my happiness. One day, it dawned that these obstacles were my life.

The thing about depression is it blurs your perception of the future and makes it nearly impossible to see that end. You start to think that there’s no such thing as ‘winning’, and why bother fighting if you already know the outcome. It gradually strips you of any hope you previously had. And without hope, it’s difficult to see a future or a reason to fight.

In everything that we do, we are relentlessly, even if subconsciously, working towards feeling complete. We drink water when we are thirsty; we eat food when we are hungry. In whatever we feel we lack, nature propels us to take action so we may feel fulfilled. Some

There’s no suffering, only ignorance. What people call suffering is merely their perspective born out of ignorance.

A good sadhaka, after having gained mastery over manipura, can examine their fears without feeling anxious.

what is the ingredient to double the strength of a positive thought? Faith. For tripling it? Persistence. How to quadruple it? Purity of the intention.

Retain only what you really care about because the stuff we keep inside is what shapes us. What are you made of? Problem or Inconvenience?

The process of kundalini awakening or its understanding is incomplete without an intimate knowledge of the three knots that bind each one of us.

If you can either change your perspective or your response towards what you find disturbing, ninety per cent of the job is done. The

resolve to be tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant with the weak and wrong.

Depression is not absence of happiness. It is absence of life and of will.

Aba rahima mushkil pari, garhe dou kama, Sanche se to jag nahin, jhuthe mile na ram. “Oh,

Depression is a fracture of not just your mind, it’s a fracture of your very being – everything you thought you were or stood for feels broken.

Facing the right amount of resistance at the right time is essential to growth.

It’s not that I’m smarter, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.

the ability to drop a thought or focus your attention elsewhere is dependent on your state of mind. A restless mind can’t drop a thought; only a stable and calm mind can.

Thoughts have no definitive point of origin, no set course of travel, and no specific site of disappearance.

As they say, a true measure of progress is not how well we perform in comparison to others, but how we are doing compared to our own past.

Gratitude and mindfulness are like chopsticks. You need both to hold the food of temptation.

Anything secondhand cannot be knowledge; it is merely information. When we use that information and arrive at a conclusion based on our own experience, it is knowledge.

ऐसे पल, जब आप जागरूक तो होते हैं, पर सोचते नहीं, बड़े शांतिपूर्ण होते हैं।

सबसे बड़ी चुनौती क्या है?’ ‘प्रेरित बने रहना,

हमारे सभी आनंद मस्तिष्क में निवास करते हैं।

When you continue to practice a certain emotion as a conscious choice, it soon becomes your second nature. It

The force of a visualization (which is a chain of intended and purposeful thoughts) can help you tap into the right energy cycles or alter the course of existing energy patterns in your body. The

We are a rather strange species, if you ask me. Strange because, almost always, we want something different from what we already have. Our capacity to be selfless is as immense as our potential to be selfish.

My life is like a flower. I was sowed at some point in time; I became a bud, was born, and bloomed like a flower. It doesn’t matter how much I protect myself, how fragrant I am, how alive I may be – one day, I am going to wither away.

When you feel negative, down, pensive, angry, sad, jealous and so forth, being mindful helps you emerge stronger than your negative emotions. It takes away the resistance and force from the negative emotions and you immediately feel better.

One of the most outstanding aspects of Ayurveda is its teaching that nothing is absolute. The utility, value and effect of anything is relative. Hence, the efficacy of its healing is dependent on the receiver, the time and the environment. It

It took me a few minutes to realize I was free of the load. That’s the thing with baggage—you get used to carrying it around. You know it’s heavy but the weight has a way of becoming a part of your life. Only when you take it off your back and feel the lightness does the awareness of the load hit you.

The wheel of time churns relentlessly. Moments gone will never come back. So, act wisely and mindfully in the living present. The past is dead, it has nothing new for you. And the future is just the present of tomorrow. Now is the only living moment, the only true moment in which life actually exists in its entirety.

Where roads are made, I lose my way. In the wide water, in the blue sky there is no line of a track. The pathway is hidden by the birds’ wings, by the starfires, by the flowers of the wayfaring seasons. And I ask my heart if its blood carries the wisdom of the unseen way. – Rabindranath Tagore, "VI," Fruit-Gathering When you pursue what matters to you, the end result may or may not be what you desire, but it will leave you a better, stronger, wiser, happier person. You will not feel lost, you will not feel tired, and there will be no anxiety. In the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

We can change our habits. We needn’t be at the mercy of thoughts like ‘that’s just my personality’ or ‘it’s in my genes so there’s nothing I can do about it’. Negative habits can be replaced with positive ones, selfish ones with kind ones, suspicion with trust, hostility with empathy and complaints with gratitude. – David R. Hamilton, Why Kindness is Good for You

The first lesson is just to breathe in a measured way, in and out. That will harmonise the system. When you have practiced this for some time, you will do well to join to it the repetition of some word as "Om," or any other sacred word. In India we use certain symbolical words instead of counting one, two, three, four. That is why I advise you to join the mental repetition of the "Om," or some other sacred word to the Pranayama. Let the word flow in and out with the breath, rhythmically, harmoniously, and you will find the whole body is becoming rhythmical. Then you will learn what rest is. Compared with it, sleep is not rest. Once this rest comes the most tired nerves will be calmed down, and you will find that you have never before really rested.

I thought that my voyage had come to its end at the last limit of my power, that the path before me was closed, that provisions were exhausted and the time come to take shelter in a silent obscurity. But I find that thy will knows no end in me. And when old words die out on the tongue, new melodies break forth from the heart; and where the old tracks are lost, new country is revealed with its wonders. -

beauty does not lie in the eyes of the beholder but in the mind of the perceiver. The cleaner the mind, the greater the beauty; the quieter the mind, the more enduring the experience. An empty mind is not a devil’s workshop; on the contrary, a passionate mind is, because a mind full of passions is often restless. An empty mind is but a divine blessing, for it is free of thoughts—a rare but coveted state for any yogi.

The fundamental difference between Vedic and tantric thought is your take on God. In tantra you say, “You are my object of worship. You are superior than I am and that is why I’m praying to you. But, I’m not merely interested in eulogizing or seeking pardon for my sins. I want to purify myself to the extent where I merge in you and you merge in me, so that one day I become you. I’m not interested in this union after I die; I want to experience it while I live.

People with low pH levels age quicker for, your skin, your hair, most muscles are made from protein. pH is measured in molecular weight also known as moles per liter. An increase of one point on the pH scale represents a tenfold or one thousand percent decrease in the concentration of hydrogen ions. And a decrease of one point on the pH scale means a thousand percent increase in hydrogen ions. Therefore, a pH of six and eight is not merely two points but twentyfold change.

यह सन 2000 की बात थी। मैं 1998 में ऑस्ट्रेलिया आया और मुझे एक ऐसे काम के लिए संघर्ष करना पड़ा, जो मुझे कुछ भी दे सके। दो साल बाद जब मैं बीस वर्षों का था, तो मैं एक एक्जीक्यूटिव टेक्नोलॉजी मैनेजमेंट भूमिका में आ चुका था, जिसमें एक अच्छा से भी बेहतर वेतन पैकेज था। क्या यह केवल मेरे कठिन परिश्रम का फल था? ऐसा सोचना बेवकूफी ही होगा। एक अलौकिक कृपा का तत्व हमेशा ही वहां मौजूद था। वरना, ऐसे लोगों की कमी नहीं थी, जो मुझसे ज्यादा मेहनती तथा बुद्धिमान थे, पर उन्हें ऐसी सफलता नहीं मिली।

You always draw your energy and inspiration from whoever is the centre of your life. In love, you become the one you love. If it’s a materialistic person, you’ll find yourself becoming increasingly materialistic too. If he or she is a spiritual person, you’ll evolve into a calmer person. If he or she is the restless or narcissistic type, you’ll feel restless and anxious yourself. If the centre of your life is beauty, divinity, compassion, God and such like, you’ll become an embodiment of that. Choose carefully.

And that’s the thing, you see – when I talk about kindness, I’m not simply saying you should be kind to others. That comes a step later. First, you must be grateful to those who are kind to you. No matter how small an act of kindness may be on the other’s part, if you don’t hold back in expressing your gratitude, if you deeply appreciate what they have done or are trying to do, you will be bringing a lifelong positive change in the other person’s life. This will not only help them and yourself, but also the whole world.

If someone doesn’t want to be in your life, let that person go. There’s no wisdom in holding on to a partner, person, employer or a thing. Everything and everyone must ultimately perish. Separation from all that we love is not a question of ‘if’ but ‘when’. It’s inevitable, only a matter of time. Our childhood, adolescence, youth, old age, all phases pass. Those who loved you deeply yesterday may loathe you tomorrow. The memories of the one who you loved deeply once, may only give you grief now. This is samsara – cyclical and transient.

All meats, intoxicants, condiments, processed and canned foods are highly acidic. Modern science considers dairy mostly acidic but Ayurveda states all dairy products generated from cow's milk to be alkaline. All herbs, spices and most vegetables are alkaline. Avocados and coconuts are highly alkaline as are rock salt, sprouted beans and vegetables like spinach, cucumber, broccoli. Kemp (sea vegetable), horseradish and miso are highly alkaline. All citrus fruits are acidic before ingestion but they act alkaline on the body during and post ingestion.

All meats, intoxicants, condiments, processed and canned foods are very acidic. Modern science considers dairy mostly acidic, but Ayurveda considers all dairy products generated from cow’s milk to be alkaline. All herbs, spices and most vegetables are alkaline. Avocados and coconuts are very alkaline, as are rock salt, sprouted beans and vegetables like spinach, cucumber and broccoli. Kemp (sea vegetable), horseradish and miso are very alkaline. All citrus fruits are acidic before ingestion but they act alkaline on the body during and after ingestion. In

In the Purana, we find this description of time, which is hardly the invention of brutish man scrabbling to create the spoke and the ploughshare: The basic unit of life is the nimesha, the instant. Fifteen nimeshas make one kastha, thirty kasthas one kaala, thirty kaalas one muhurta and thirty muhurtas one day. Thirty days is a maasa, a month, which is one day of the gods and ancestors; six maasas make an ayana, two ayanas a year. One human year is a day and a night for the celestials, uttarayana being the day and dakshinayana the night. Three hundred and sixty-five human years make a divine one.

I feel so sentenced by your words, I feel so judged and sent away, Before I go I’ve got to know Is that what you mean to say? Before I rise to my defense, Before I speak in hurt or fear, Before I build that wall of words, Tell me, did I really hear? Words are windows, or they’re walls, They sentence us, or set us free. When I speak and when I hear, Let the love light shine through me. There are things I need to say, Things that mean so much to me, If my words don’t make me clear, Will you help me to be free? If I seemed to put you down, If you felt I didn’t care, Try to listen through my words To the feelings that we share. When

Here’s the simple practice: sit down at the table. Take a few deep breaths. Remind yourself that you work hard and do most things so you may enjoy a square meal. And, now that you have the meal in front of you, it’s time to savour every bite. Thank God or nature or the universe for providing you with food. There are hundreds of millions of people on our planet who go to bed hungry every night. Remind yourself how lucky you are. Take a couple of sips of water. Pacify your body and your breathing. Just imagine you are doing fire offerings to the divine digestive fire in your stomach. Imagine that every morsel is a part of nature and that you are about to absorb this in you. Eat slowly, chewing every bite – enjoy the rasa in every morsel. This doesn’t take more time; it simply takes awareness. Time

based on my personal experiences. Theoretical exposition is mostly my own but the majority of the base concepts are traditional and time-honored views of remarkable sages who existed before me. Therefore, if you wish to read more on the mantra sadhana, you can check out the following texts that I grew up reading. With a bit of research, you should be able to get your hands on good translations. I know that Hindi translations must be available for most of these books and English translation only for some. This is not your standard bibliography with publishers and translators, for I don’t have much of that information. Nevertheless, I’m sharing with you the names of various books you can read to know more about mantra yoga. In particular, I would like to acknowledge the translation of Mantra Maharnava by Ram Kumar Rai, Mantra Rahasya by Narayandutt

These two chakras are sex centres and the greatest guilt most people have in their lives is around their sexual thoughts and acts.

Awakening of the kundalini is reaching your innermost state of bliss and joy. This state is covered with ten layers – desire, anger, greed, attachment, ego, passion, jealousy, hatred, fear and self-concern.

a disciple of the noble ones is mindful, endowed with excellent proficiency in mindfulness, remembering and recollecting what was done and said a long time ago. With mindfulness as his gatekeeper, the disciple of the noble ones abandons what is unskilful, develops what is skilful, abandons what is blameworthy, develops what is blameless, and looks after himself with purity.

The Ancient Science of Mantras.)

Pay attention, my spiritual sons,’ the Buddha said and called them closer. ‘Tathagata made the same statement to the entire congregation, but it meant different things to different people. Each one interpreted it according to their understanding, convenience and circumstances. Hence, I say, your liberation depends on you alone.

And so it is with life. For no direct fault of our own, it seems, sometimes our present turns out to be different than what we envisaged it to be all along, and we think life will give us some indication of how to go about fixing it. But there’s none. One way to get past your past and your regrets is to give your life meaning. Once you discover the meaning, the purpose of your life, you no longer remain the old you. The new you is born in the same body. It becomes a whole lot easier to shed your old tendencies as your newfound meaning becomes your guiding and driving force.

There’s only so much the other person can give you. Ultimately, your happiness depends on your selfless karma as well as on how you treat yourself. Doing something for the one you love is not always selfless. If rather than buying a watch for yourself, you buy a bracelet for your wife, it’s certainly thoughtful and caring, but not necessarily selfless, if you see what I mean. You have great emotional investment in such a relationship. Quintessential selflessness is when you do a karma with little or no expectation in return, maybe when you do it with no emotional or any other vested interest of your own. At any rate, my fulfilment in life is my personal responsibility. Who has ever discovered an ocean of happiness by looking up to another person? We must have the courage and wisdom to walk the path of dharma with contentment and gratitude instead of constantly counting on others to fill our cup.

O King, just as a human being bereft of spiritual knowledge never desires to give up his false sense of proprietorship over many material things, similarly, a person who has not developed detachment never desires to give up the bondage of the material body. Pingala, however, rose above her false sense of existence that day. She experienced great vairagya, detachment, and ananda, bliss. She realized that she was already complete and didn’t need another man to fulfil her. That the one she should have loved, the one for whom she wouldn’t have to wait day and night, the one who would never abandon her, was already inside her – God.

Everyone makes mistakes, son,’ she said. ‘Really, we all do. And it’s okay. We are free to make mistakes. But we are also responsible for owning up to our actions and accepting our mistakes with grace.

In the words of Nelson Mandela, ‘To be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.

To err is human; we all make mistakes. That, however, can’t be the justification to repeat them. There are only two ways to show that we have realized our mistake: first, by not repeating it, and second, by offering a sincere apology. Let’s focus on the second point, that is, how to apologize. Apologizing correctly is neither an art nor a craft. It’s simply being natural and truthful. When we genuinely regret our action, the right words come out automatically and seeking forgiveness becomes easier.

expound

Before me lay the material wealth I had earned painstakingly over the last decade. But cars, properties and a bank balance were lifeless things at the end of the day. They had always had been. I wasn’t born with these possessions and they certainly wouldn’t go with me after I died. What was the struggle of life about then? And, whatever it was about, was it worth it?

Normal life? There’s nothing called a normal life. What is normal from one’s viewpoint may be most abnormal from another’s. A yogi thinks that the world is abnormal and people live like animals, mostly focused on feeding and fornicating. The world thinks the yogi is a fool who wastes his life sitting around doing nothing, enjoying none of the many pleasures life has to offer.

In the larger scheme of things, it’s nothing: to lose one month’s worth of pension when you’ve been earning for more than four decades. But, as is the way of loss, it is rarely about the absolute nature of the loss itself or its magnitude, and more about how victimized we feel.

Just like our desires and emotions are cyclical, so are the good and bad times in our lives. It is absolutely impossible that each day will turn out the way you expect it to, or that every time only pleasing news will knock on your door. At times, situations are undesirable and unpleasant, but we can’t avoid them. We have to deal with them. As they say, someone’s got to make the trains run on time. Granted, it’s not always feasible to deal with unpleasant situations with a pleasant mood, but it is possible to handle them with patience.

I can’t help you,’ the Buddha said. ‘No one can. For countless lives you have wept for loved ones. Your tears could fill the four oceans. But no one can be in a secure, hiding place from suffering. Knowing this, a wise person walks the path of awakening.

This is one of the greatest secrets of the universe: When you are fulfilled, you can manifest fairly much anything in your life. It’s when we are not fulfilled that we become impatient; we become self-centered. We become tired and narrow-minded. In chasing what we could have had, we lose sight of what we already have.

The

Albert Einstein once said, "Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving." The

If you can remain indifferent to other’s opinions by thinking they are merely joining letters from the alphabet and offering you a garland, majority of your reactions will disappear. This can only be done with a certain sense of mindfulness as well as stillness of the energies in the body. When your energies are still, others can’t provoke you and if they can’t provoke you, you get the time to think through and choose your verbal and mental responses – both internal and external. The

You gain enough inner strength and courage to not wear different faces but simply be absolutely comfortable with who you are, what you are and where you are. Only

The need to cling to someone or crave for their time starts to disappear.