Hello, my dear friends. How are you doing today? Welcome to another podcast. I’m happy that you are liking these podcasts, and I’m glad that you’re sharing these podcasts with your friends and also giving us some comments, suggestions, etc. I like this interaction, and I’m loving it actually.
Today, we talk about a subject which you have suggested. It’s about living consciously. Living consciously is a huge subject. It has many dimensions; multiple dimensions. It’s not easy, talking about living consciously in five minutes or ten minutes. But first and foremost, when we think about living consciously, where do we start? Simple, we start with ourselves.
What are we consisting of, what are we made of? We know there is a physical body. We know there is a mental body. We know there is an intellectual body, and we know there is an egoistic body. Then, we know there is a spirit, which is running this machinery. We also know there is a soul element, which is the source element or connected to the source; which is inspiring and energizing every other aspect. This is what we are, in a nutshell. Each has its function, the physical body, along with its senses and all the organs, which are all positioned and synchronized in a particular way, to give maximum effect for a thing called life on Earth. So, when we are living on this Earth, when we are walking this Earth, when we have life on Earth; what are we doing here, experiencing Earth in multiple dimensions, various levels. So, while we are experiencing this earth, right from childhood, if we take 80 years, which is 29,200 days, we are experiencing life at each time differently. It’s not the same. As a child, we looked at the world differently. As a young adult, we looked at the world differently, as an adult, we look at the world differently. Each stage, we are looking for experiencing this world differently. So many things are happening. But most of the time, in most of our cases, we never explored ourselves; we just mechanically, kind of unconsciously, we just experienced life, and we thought that’s it, you know, experiencing life, and that’s about it. Then we are proud to display our own character, our own particular emotions, our own constitution, all those things we are happy to display and say this is us. But we never think, what is this us. Have we ever thought like that? Hardly we do, and sometimes we read somewhere from somebody who has explored their life and spoken about some things in their life, that gives us a thought. That gives us food for thought. Then we start exploring, what are we consisting of.
I’ll give you a couple of examples. We have five different aspects of prana. We know prana, right? It is the life-breath energy, life energy. You must have heard about pranic healing etc. that’s about healing with life energy, routed or channelized in a particular way. We have prana, and this prana has five principal aspects. This is the prana which is functional prana; functional means it makes our system function properly. I am sure you must have heard about chakras; the chakras are the transmitters or the transformers or the centres where distribution happens.
We have five pranas, as stated by the scriptures in India. They are Prana, Apana, Udana, Samana and Vyana. Each has a functional role. What does prana do? Prana looks after what takes care of heart, breath and circulation; that’s the role of prana. Apana is situated in the lower part of our body and its functional role is connected to excretion, waste removal is its role, Apana. Then Udana. Udana is situated in the neck and its job is to ensure that senses, mind, memory, and all those things are functioning well. Then Samana. Samana is situated in the centre of the stomach, Manipura, and its main job is to stabilize digestion and the processing, basically the processing of the materials which we have consumed. Vyana is situated all over; so it’s more like functional energy, and it helps the circulation. It helps Nadis. So, this is our functional prana structure; Prana, Apana, Udana, Samana Vyana. And all this put together is working all the time. That is why when we consume food, it goes through the stomach, it digests and it’s excreted. All those things are energized by these pranas, but we are not aware of them, right?
Likewise, our nostrils, where the breath enters; it’s always functional, right from our birth, till our death, it’s functional. And each nostril has its time. One functions for some time, then it moves to the other. And when the right is more active, then the energy or the circulation is going to the left side of the brain. When the left side nostril is active, it goes to the right side of the brain. So, this is the way the whole system is very well synchronized. When one kidney is functioning, the other takes rest and the other kidney is functioning, this one takes rest. Like that, everything has its alternating effect and even heartbeat; it’s not like a complete continuous beating, its heartbeat. It’s one beat and then rest and then one beat, so it’s like pumping. Everything has a kind of synchronicity which is taking rest and working. So, in this mode, the system is totally balanced. And this balance is behind our health. If you have this balance, then you have health. That is why our ancient masters gave so much of importance to yoga and pranayama. Pranayama is extremely important in daily life, which is actually even depression buster. It removes depression, if you do proper pranayama every day, it will rejuvenate you; it will really make you a strong personality. Yoga gives you stability. So all these methods are given for proper stability and balance for humankind.
If you have looked in the world, the food that’s grown in certain areas are suitable for that region, like certain food does not grow in certain regions of the world. Why? Because that food which grows in that region is suitable for the people who are living there, not only people but the birds, animals, everybody; and in some places, it’s a totally different food. So, when did we start having imbalances? When we started mixing this up. Some food is not suitable in some countries, some region, some food is suitable in some region like there are cold regions, there are hot, tropical regions. There are so many different varieties on Earth. Temperature is different, the climate is different; so many things are different. And particular food grows there, it is suitable for that place. When we started mixing them, we started having problems. Likewise, we started inventing processed food. Processed foods definitely started affecting our system. Because even if there is a good flow of prana and a good function of the system, the food that we consume, sometimes is not suitable for our body especially if it is mixed with chemicals and processed. It is affecting the system. There are so many different things which have gone wrong. That is why we can say that so many diseases have increased. But in any case, if we avoid contradictory food and if we avoid the symptomatic treatment and go to the root cause of why it is happening, 80% you would know it is because of bad habits; lack of sleep, lack of food, proper food, untimely eating, all those things. In the next podcast, I will continue talking about health, so that time I will talk more about it.
Now, I would just like to say that living unconsciously is a large subject, but living consciously has to start with us. So, this was a small attempt for me to direct you to yourself. We can discuss this in more detail on how we can find ourselves, go back into ourselves, and then we can explore ourselves. So, this is the food for thought for today. I hope you liked it. If you did not like it, do let us know. If you liked it also, do let us know. Let us discuss, let us interact, and also please do spread, if you liked it to your people, and let everybody have some awareness about it if this is good enough.
Thank you very much and have a great day and a great week ahead.
Lots of love. This is Mohanji.
Transcribed by Ulla Bernholdt
Proofread by Rekha Murali
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