Why do you do dhyan? What is the purpose of mantras? All of you had seen certain colours and forms when you were made to close your eyes for five minutes. How could you see these colours when your eyes were shut? Some might say, it is the subconscious mind at play, but even for that to happen it takes at least twenty minutes while you just sat for five minutes…

Understand this, it is not just the eyes that are seeing, or ears that are hearing…there is more to you. The mantras that you just chanted, every mantra is a dhwani (sound) and dhwani is what you are, what your body is. When you chant or listen to a dhwani that brings jagriti (awakening) inside you, then every cell of the body experiences this energy in the form of prana.

When you hear an unpleasant noise, you feel disturbed. You can try shutting your ears at that time but the sound will continue disturbing you because the sound is not just affecting your ears. Similarly if you are watching a beautiful sunrise, even if you shut your eyes, you will feel the pleasantness inside you, because the visual is not just affecting your eyes. The five senses are controlled by the brain and are only involved in the physical act and you have tied yourself to this physical act. For example, when you eat food, you tie yourself to the taste of masalas. Try eating the food without the spices for sometime, you will get to experience the actual taste of food… Once I had gone to a Chinese restaurant and while ordering food, I asked the waiter not to put ajinomoto, chilly sauce and other spices. He expressed his concern that without these the food would have no taste. I told him that had I wanted the taste of masalas, I would have ordered just the masalas, why bother to order food? Baffled, he got the food as ordered but as soon as he placed in on the table, he poured the sauces that were kept there on it. I asked him, what did he just do? He replied that if he had not added these, the food would have tasted like nothing. So that was the level of his consciousness/awareness…he could not comprehend that food has its own flavour. Had there been no flavour, the food would have been colourless. Though colourless too has a flavour, which can be experienced at a higher state of consciousness.

For example, the people who do tapa on the mountains observe fasts for long months and take in the prana from the atmosphere - that has its own flavour. Everything has a flavour…the deeper and darker is the colour, the grosser is the flavour. The same holds true of life—the more you try to enjoy, more disappointed you will be as desires and expectations can never be satiated The things, with which you have maximum expectation, will disappoint you the most. Those who excel in academics are the ones who are most disappointed with it. “I only got 99 per cent, I could have got 0.1 per cent more!”