Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced PersonalitySwami Satyananda SaraswatiSpeech at the Gita Ashram, Monrovia, Liberia, May 1977, first printed in YOGA,Vol. 15, No. 8, August 1977According to vedic dharma each person is a composite of four main qualities:dynamism, emotions, mysticism and rationalism. Some people are predominantlydynamic, others are more emotional, mystical or rational. Every personality is anintegration of these four essential temperaments. For the evolution of our personalitywe have to integrate the four corresponding categories of yoga sadhana into ourlives.Sadhana is spiritual discipline or practice. Just as you train an animal, the personalitymust also be trained in order to be useful in this life. For the balanced development ofour personality, we must practise an integral yoga sadhana. By emphasizing oneaspect of sadhana, our development will be lopsided. If we eat protein and nothingelse, what will happen? Just as we carefully provide a balanced diet for the physicalbody, so we must supply a balance of nutrition to the spiritual body also. In theBhagavad Gita, Yoga Vashishtha, Srimad Bhagavata, and other scriptures, anintegration of the four systems of karma yoga, bhakti yoga, raja yoga and jnana yogais recommended. Those who overemphasize any one aspect of yoga should rememberthat this results in onesideddevelopment.Through the practice of karma yoga, bhakti yoga, raja yoga and jnana yoga, we cantrain the whole personality. This is what I want to tell everyone, everywhere. It iseasy to attain temporary tranquillity through certain practices, but to train the mind isvery difficult. To transform the entire consciousness into a creative instrument is noteasy.Transforming the mind

Some years ago some research was conducted to find out the influence of kirtan onthe brain. When we do kirtan for half an hour, we feel relaxed. Why? What changetakes place in the structure of the personality and in the hormonal makeupof thebrain? Research has found that during repetitive singing of kirtan, the brain registersthe sound waves, which influences other wave patterns of the brain. These wavesawaken alpha rhythms which immediately induce tranquillity. Thus by singing kirtan weget peace of mind. This is well and good, but maintaining that state of mind during ourdaily life is not so easy. The peace we gain by practising this technique does notremain with us through the complicated and confusing patterns of our daily life.Therefore, side by side with yoga sadhana which gives us peace of mind, we mustalso remember the necessity of transforming the very structure of our mind. But how?When we drive our car into the petrol station to fill up the tank we find that petrol isof different categories. But when this petrol was extracted from the depths of theearth, what was it like then? Crude oil is so dirty but after being refined it becomes aremarkable agent of energy. It can even provide the power to fly an aeroplane.Similarly, the mind, or chitta, which we have inherited from our previous incarnationsstill remains in its crude or raw state. In the mental body we have so many thingswhich ought to be removed. When we become terribly angry or very tense, when weworry too much and pass sleepless nights due to family, business, social or politicalproblems, then we feel the necessity of purifying the mind. We must free it from allthese vrittis, those habits which we have formed in our personality from the presentand previous incarnations.We believe that the jiva or individual has undergone a process of selfincarnation

in8,400,000 yonis or wombs. According to science, evolution has passed through afantastic panorama of existence, but despite these millions of incarnations that ourjiva has undergone, we still carry a very crude mind with us. This mind is composed ofthree gunas: sattwa, rajas, and tamas, which are the essential manifestations of12/10/2015 Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced Personalityhttp://www.yogamag.net/archives/2007/fjune07/integ.shtml 2/5prakriti or nature. The three gunas are also used in a social or moral context becausethey indicate the personality of a person. Nature manifests as energy; in nature thereare static (tamasic), kinetic (rajasic) and balanced (sattwic) energies.If we want to make the mind infinite, we must cut and polish it just as we would adiamond. They say that tamas makes a person lethargic, rajas makes you violent andsattwa makes you balanced. Therefore, tamas and rajas have to be overcome bysattwa, and this is accomplished through the process of dhyana yoga. Dhyana hasbeen translated as meditation, but actually it means awareness. This can be attainedthrough raja yoga, bhakti yoga, jnana yoga, laya yoga, mantra yoga, and many otheryogic processes.The mind is not thought or emotion. Thought and emotion are patterns of mind.Happiness is a state of mind and so is depression. Mind is consciousness, awareness.Mind is a storehouse of energy, shakti. The pure mind is pure shakti. The mind can bepurified and corrected by following the methods most suited to our personality. Thosewho are very strong can take up the path of kundalini and kriya yoga. For others whoare not so strong and who haven’t yet developed much understanding of yoga, thereare other ways like mantra yoga or japa yoga.The mind is much more than thought or feeling. The mind is like an iceberg; only a

small portion is visible, the remainder lies submerged under the ocean. According tomodern psychology, the mind exists in three spheres: conscious, subconscious andunconscious. In Vedanta we call them: sthoola sharira, sukshma sharira and karanasharira.Exploding the unconscious mindThe unconscious mind is very powerful. The word ‘unconscious’ should not bemisunderstood. The unconscious mind is like a storehouse. All disease, success andtragedy in life originate in the unconscious mind. The experiences that you have hadin life, important as well as unimportant, are all registered there. It is something like ahidden camera in the street. Everything that passes within its range is immediatelyphotographed. In the same way, whatever experience you have is immediatelytransferred back to the unconscious through the indriyas or senses and the mind.There they are stored in bija or seed form. This process starts rights from the timewhen the child is in the womb of the mother. From the fourth month of pregnancy,children have certain experiences which are embedded deep in the unconscious mind.Through the practices of kundalini, kriya and laya yoga, the unconscious mind can beexploded. What happens when we explode the unconscious mind? Here is an exampleof how an ordinary, insignificant experience can cause great damage to one’s mind. Inour ashram there was an intelligent engineer who could not manage to complete hiseducation or hold his job. Every morning from six till nine, he would go into a fit ofdepression. He became so restless that sometimes he felt he was going to die. Inthese fits of depression, he could not sit quietly, walk or talk. He left his career as a

bright mechanical engineer in the UK and wandered around Africa. Finally, he came toIndia and found his way to our ashram.One morning he was on the roof terrace and on the street below he saw a pig eatinghuman filth. This is quite a common scene for those of us who have lived in Indianvillages, but for this young man it was something new. The moment he saw it, hesuddenly remembered an incident from his childhood. When he was eight years old, heused to go fishing. One morning when he was preparing his tackle, he opened thesmall tin in which he kept little maggots for bait. He had forgotten to empty it the lasttime he had gone fishing, and when he lifted the lid hundreds of flies swarmed in hisface. The moment he saw the pig eating human filth, his unconscious exploded andthis deep childhood memory came out. Since then the young man has never hadanother fit, and is perfectly all right.KarmaEvery action, every thought, every place is an experience. A satsang or a lecture onthe Bhagavad Gita is an experience. Even an ordinary experience can become very12/10/2015 Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced Personalityhttp://www.yogamag.net/archives/2007/fjune07/integ.shtml 3/5consequential in later life. There are so many types of karma. Charity is one karmaand plundering someone’s property is another. Even if you don’t do these things, stillyou are making karma. In the Gita, it is said that there is not one moment in life inwhich a person is free of karma. Only in samadhi can you completely do away withkarma, otherwise not. Modern psychology and yoga agree that even during deep sleepwhen you are not aware of time and space, name and form, your mind is still working.Remember that the unconscious mind is the storehouse of all past experiences orkarmas, not only in this life, but in our previous lives as well.The unconscious body is called hiranyagarbha, the golden egg. By the practice of

mantra sadhana we can penetrate it deeply and eliminate all kinds of karmas, one byone. That is why they say that by the practice of mantra one becomes free from theentanglements of karma.Every action is born of a deep karma. Every thought, movement, success, failure is areenactmentof one of our previous experiences. Here is another example, a clinicalcase concerning a husband and wife who loved each other very much. They werevery happy together at home, but whenever they went out to dinner, for a walk, on apicnic, etc. they always fought. Why? When the husband was a child of four, hewalked into the bathroom when his mother was taking a bath. She quickly covered herbody with a dirty housedress, pushed him out and locked the door. Now, wheneverthe husband is at home, his wife is engaged in housework. She wears an oldhousedress and he loves her. He is still working out the problem of the old dress withwhich his mother covered herself in the bathroom. Whenever his wife is not wearingher old housedress, he doesn’t like her! Such simple childhood experiences can causeso many problems. Many good people suffer unnecessarily because they are unawareof their karmas and how they fructify.Mantra yogaThere are two ways of practising mantra yoga: one is the repetition of a bija mantralike Aum, Hrim, Shrim, Klim; the other is using the name of one’s guru or favouritedeity. Nowadays we have lost touch with the original mantra yoga system. If we feeldevotion for Shiva, then we practise ‘Om Namah Shivaya’. If we feel more inclinedtowards Rama, we repeat ‘Sri Ram Jai Ram’. When we feel attracted towards Krishna,we say ‘Om Namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya’. But according to mantra shastra, the

mantra must be very carefully selected to suit each individual personality. The bijamantras are very powerful. They can allay the strong influence of karmas. Mantrashould always be practised with a mala. Even in meditation when mantra issynchronized with the breath, a mala is still used.Japa and antar mounaWhen practising mantra, a lot of things come up in the mind which would not come upotherwise. When past incidents arise, what do we do? The usual response is tosuppress these thoughts because we are more interested in our mantra. So when weare practising japa and a thought come, we push it out; another one comes and wepush it out. But this is incorrect. We do not want to avoid karma, but to eliminate it.Therefore, it is necessary to observe each thought and let it pass of its own accord.Thus japa yoga must be followed or accompanied by antar mouna, the process ofwitnessing our thoughts. When we are practising mantra and a thought comes intoour mind, we must stop for a moment and see the thought, whatever it is, thencontinue the mantra until another thought comes. During the practice of japa andantar mouna, over a period of months the significant and insignificant memories of thepast flash into our mind. These memories should be seen very clearly if we want topurify our mind. Every experience we have during mantra practice or meditation hasan important bearing on our life.I know of many people who have changed completely through the practice of japaand antar mouna and they were amazed to see how it happened. One Frenchgentleman had a hernia and hydrocele. He left his job and went to his sister in thecountry. He told her that he was completely broken and could no longer work. Therewas no point in prolonging his life, he said, as he felt only pain everywhere. His sister,12/10/2015 Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced Personalityhttp://www.yogamag.net/archives/2007/fjune07/integ.shtml 4/5

a staunch devotee of yoga, told him to put some cream on his eyebrow centre andconcentrate on that point. One day while the French gentleman was practising this, aterrific sound exploded somewhere in his brain. Surprisingly his hernia was cured andhis hydrocele problem was completely resolved – for him it was a miracle. When I methim, I asked what had happened when he was concentrating on bhrumadhya, theeyebrow centre. He said that when he was a schoolboy he went to the fish shop andwhile eating, a fish bone got stuck in his teeth which later had to be removed by thedentist. When he was practising concentration on his bhrumadhya, he saw fish comingout of his mouth. After that, he too became a great devotee of yoga.Therefore, when practising mantra, do not discard or repress the experiences whicharise. You may think that while practising mantra, worldly thoughts should not enteryour mind, and if they do, then it is your duty to remove them in respect for themantra, but this is incorrect. According to yoga and psychology, we must observe,analyze and respect whatever thoughts or experiences come into our mind whilepractising japa.You will find that if the mantra is correct, it will work immediately. If it is not the rightone for you, it will still work, but slowly. To be powerful the mantra has to correlatewith all of our qualities and tendencies. The tantra and mantra shastras say that allmantras, with the exception of Aum, are classified into twelve main groups with fivesubdivisions. Only Aum can be repeated by anyone at any time, without restriction.The mantras which are used to explode the unconscious mind are very important.People with devotion for the Devi, particularly Durga or Kali, have fantastic

experiences while practising her mantra. Many of my disciples had terrifying dreams allnight after receiving her mantra. This is because the mantra is so powerful that itimmediately starts exploding the karmas from the unconscious mind. Just as a strongpurgative makes you go to the toilet every five minutes, so repetition of a powerfulmantra purges karma very quickly.Science of yogaThe science of yoga aims at perfecting human life. Every ordinary person hasextraordinary potential, but to develop this a strong and welltrainedmind isnecessary. Through the practices of yoga we can gain complete mastery over thebody and mind. The West gave technology to the world and made life verycomfortable, easy and quick. India can give yoga and spirituality and the whole worldis crying for it. People in the West are fed up and frightened of technology. Theywant a science to allay their fears and give them peace.Only the system of yoga which is still alive today in India can adequately fulfil thisneed. Therefore, all Indians wherever they are, must represent this science correctly.Yoga is knowledge, not miracles, witchcraft or superstition. Yoga is a science whichcan be studied, practised, experienced, understood and explained by any educatedand wellreadperson. Yoga can improve relations and create international goodwill. Itis important to be able to give something to others which they can cherish deep intheir hearts.I give free discussions on yoga everywhere I go because I am fully convinced of itseffectiveness. My experience and experiments in life with thousands and thousands ofpeople, East and West are my proof. Now it is the duty of those who know that yogaproduces an integrated personality to acquaint themselves with all aspects of yoga. It

is no use saying that bhakti yoga alone is enough. If it were, why are religious peoplelying ill in hospitals and taking so many pills? Why are they unable to sleep in theircosy beds? Religion is bhakti yoga. We need an integrated approach to life. Justadding salt to the vegetables does not make a tasty dish. We must combine manyspices. Life is too complex for one aspect of yoga to suffice. With a comprehensiveapproach, life becomes rich.

Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced PersonalitySwami Satyananda SaraswatiSpeech at the Gita Ashram, Monrovia, Liberia, May 1977, first printed in YOGA,Vol. 15, No. 8, August 1977According to vedic dharma each person is a composite of four main qualities:dynamism, emotions, mysticism and rationalism. Some people are predominantlydynamic, others are more emotional, mystical or rational. Every personality is anintegration of these four essential temperaments. For the evolution of our personalitywe have to integrate the four corresponding categories of yoga sadhana into ourlives.Sadhana is spiritual discipline or practice. Just as you train an animal, the personalitymust also be trained in order to be useful in this life. For the balanced development ofour personality, we must practise an integral yoga sadhana. By emphasizing oneaspect of sadhana, our development will be lopsided. If we eat protein and nothingelse, what will happen? Just as we carefully provide a balanced diet for the physicalbody, so we must supply a balance of nutrition to the spiritual body also. In theBhagavad Gita, Yoga Vashishtha, Srimad Bhagavata, and other scriptures, an

integration of the four systems of karma yoga, bhakti yoga, raja yoga and jnana yogais recommended. Those who overemphasize any one aspect of yoga should rememberthat this results in onesideddevelopment.Through the practice of karma yoga, bhakti yoga, raja yoga and jnana yoga, we cantrain the whole personality. This is what I want to tell everyone, everywhere. It iseasy to attain temporary tranquillity through certain practices, but to train the mind isvery difficult. To transform the entire consciousness into a creative instrument is noteasy.Transforming the mindSome years ago some research was conducted to find out the influence of kirtan onthe brain. When we do kirtan for half an hour, we feel relaxed. Why? What changetakes place in the structure of the personality and in the hormonal makeupof thebrain? Research has found that during repetitive singing of kirtan, the brain registersthe sound waves, which influences other wave patterns of the brain. These wavesawaken alpha rhythms which immediately induce tranquillity. Thus by singing kirtan weget peace of mind. This is well and good, but maintaining that state of mind during ourdaily life is not so easy. The peace we gain by practising this technique does notremain with us through the complicated and confusing patterns of our daily life.Therefore, side by side with yoga sadhana which gives us peace of mind, we mustalso remember the necessity of transforming the very structure of our mind. But how?When we drive our car into the petrol station to fill up the tank we find that petrol isof different categories. But when this petrol was extracted from the depths of the

earth, what was it like then? Crude oil is so dirty but after being refined it becomes aremarkable agent of energy. It can even provide the power to fly an aeroplane.Similarly, the mind, or chitta, which we have inherited from our previous incarnationsstill remains in its crude or raw state. In the mental body we have so many thingswhich ought to be removed. When we become terribly angry or very tense, when weworry too much and pass sleepless nights due to family, business, social or politicalproblems, then we feel the necessity of purifying the mind. We must free it from allthese vrittis, those habits which we have formed in our personality from the presentand previous incarnations.We believe that the jiva or individual has undergone a process of selfincarnationin8,400,000 yonis or wombs. According to science, evolution has passed through afantastic panorama of existence, but despite these millions of incarnations that ourjiva has undergone, we still carry a very crude mind with us. This mind is composed ofthree gunas: sattwa, rajas, and tamas, which are the essential manifestations of12/10/2015 Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced Personalityhttp://www.yogamag.net/archives/2007/fjune07/integ.shtml 2/5prakriti or nature. The three gunas are also used in a social or moral context becausethey indicate the personality of a person. Nature manifests as energy; in nature thereare static (tamasic), kinetic (rajasic) and balanced (sattwic) energies.If we want to make the mind infinite, we must cut and polish it just as we would adiamond. They say that tamas makes a person lethargic, rajas makes you violent andsattwa makes you balanced. Therefore, tamas and rajas have to be overcome bysattwa, and this is accomplished through the process of dhyana yoga. Dhyana hasbeen translated as meditation, but actually it means awareness. This can be attained

through raja yoga, bhakti yoga, jnana yoga, laya yoga, mantra yoga, and many otheryogic processes.The mind is not thought or emotion. Thought and emotion are patterns of mind.Happiness is a state of mind and so is depression. Mind is consciousness, awareness.Mind is a storehouse of energy, shakti. The pure mind is pure shakti. The mind can bepurified and corrected by following the methods most suited to our personality. Thosewho are very strong can take up the path of kundalini and kriya yoga. For others whoare not so strong and who haven’t yet developed much understanding of yoga, thereare other ways like mantra yoga or japa yoga.The mind is much more than thought or feeling. The mind is like an iceberg; only asmall portion is visible, the remainder lies submerged under the ocean. According tomodern psychology, the mind exists in three spheres: conscious, subconscious andunconscious. In Vedanta we call them: sthoola sharira, sukshma sharira and karanasharira.Exploding the unconscious mindThe unconscious mind is very powerful. The word ‘unconscious’ should not bemisunderstood. The unconscious mind is like a storehouse. All disease, success andtragedy in life originate in the unconscious mind. The experiences that you have hadin life, important as well as unimportant, are all registered there. It is something like ahidden camera in the street. Everything that passes within its range is immediatelyphotographed. In the same way, whatever experience you have is immediatelytransferred back to the unconscious through the indriyas or senses and the mind.There they are stored in bija or seed form. This process starts rights from the time

when the child is in the womb of the mother. From the fourth month of pregnancy,children have certain experiences which are embedded deep in the unconscious mind.Through the practices of kundalini, kriya and laya yoga, the unconscious mind can beexploded. What happens when we explode the unconscious mind? Here is an exampleof how an ordinary, insignificant experience can cause great damage to one’s mind. Inour ashram there was an intelligent engineer who could not manage to complete hiseducation or hold his job. Every morning from six till nine, he would go into a fit ofdepression. He became so restless that sometimes he felt he was going to die. Inthese fits of depression, he could not sit quietly, walk or talk. He left his career as abright mechanical engineer in the UK and wandered around Africa. Finally, he came toIndia and found his way to our ashram.One morning he was on the roof terrace and on the street below he saw a pig eatinghuman filth. This is quite a common scene for those of us who have lived in Indianvillages, but for this young man it was something new. The moment he saw it, hesuddenly remembered an incident from his childhood. When he was eight years old, heused to go fishing. One morning when he was preparing his tackle, he opened thesmall tin in which he kept little maggots for bait. He had forgotten to empty it the lasttime he had gone fishing, and when he lifted the lid hundreds of flies swarmed in hisface. The moment he saw the pig eating human filth, his unconscious exploded andthis deep childhood memory came out. Since then the young man has never hadanother fit, and is perfectly all right.KarmaEvery action, every thought, every place is an experience. A satsang or a lecture on

the Bhagavad Gita is an experience. Even an ordinary experience can become very12/10/2015 Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced Personalityhttp://www.yogamag.net/archives/2007/fjune07/integ.shtml 3/5consequential in later life. There are so many types of karma. Charity is one karmaand plundering someone’s property is another. Even if you don’t do these things, stillyou are making karma. In the Gita, it is said that there is not one moment in life inwhich a person is free of karma. Only in samadhi can you completely do away withkarma, otherwise not. Modern psychology and yoga agree that even during deep sleepwhen you are not aware of time and space, name and form, your mind is still working.Remember that the unconscious mind is the storehouse of all past experiences orkarmas, not only in this life, but in our previous lives as well.The unconscious body is called hiranyagarbha, the golden egg. By the practice ofmantra sadhana we can penetrate it deeply and eliminate all kinds of karmas, one byone. That is why they say that by the practice of mantra one becomes free from theentanglements of karma.Every action is born of a deep karma. Every thought, movement, success, failure is areenactmentof one of our previous experiences. Here is another example, a clinicalcase concerning a husband and wife who loved each other very much. They werevery happy together at home, but whenever they went out to dinner, for a walk, on apicnic, etc. they always fought. Why? When the husband was a child of four, hewalked into the bathroom when his mother was taking a bath. She quickly covered herbody with a dirty housedress, pushed him out and locked the door. Now, wheneverthe husband is at home, his wife is engaged in housework. She wears an oldhousedress and he loves her. He is still working out the problem of the old dress with

which his mother covered herself in the bathroom. Whenever his wife is not wearingher old housedress, he doesn’t like her! Such simple childhood experiences can causeso many problems. Many good people suffer unnecessarily because they are unawareof their karmas and how they fructify.Mantra yogaThere are two ways of practising mantra yoga: one is the repetition of a bija mantralike Aum, Hrim, Shrim, Klim; the other is using the name of one’s guru or favouritedeity. Nowadays we have lost touch with the original mantra yoga system. If we feeldevotion for Shiva, then we practise ‘Om Namah Shivaya’. If we feel more inclinedtowards Rama, we repeat ‘Sri Ram Jai Ram’. When we feel attracted towards Krishna,we say ‘Om Namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya’. But according to mantra shastra, themantra must be very carefully selected to suit each individual personality. The bijamantras are very powerful. They can allay the strong influence of karmas. Mantrashould always be practised with a mala. Even in meditation when mantra issynchronized with the breath, a mala is still used.Japa and antar mounaWhen practising mantra, a lot of things come up in the mind which would not come upotherwise. When past incidents arise, what do we do? The usual response is tosuppress these thoughts because we are more interested in our mantra. So when weare practising japa and a thought come, we push it out; another one comes and wepush it out. But this is incorrect. We do not want to avoid karma, but to eliminate it.Therefore, it is necessary to observe each thought and let it pass of its own accord.Thus japa yoga must be followed or accompanied by antar mouna, the process ofwitnessing our thoughts. When we are practising mantra and a thought comes intoour mind, we must stop for a moment and see the thought, whatever it is, then

continue the mantra until another thought comes. During the practice of japa andantar mouna, over a period of months the significant and insignificant memories of thepast flash into our mind. These memories should be seen very clearly if we want topurify our mind. Every experience we have during mantra practice or meditation hasan important bearing on our life.I know of many people who have changed completely through the practice of japaand antar mouna and they were amazed to see how it happened. One Frenchgentleman had a hernia and hydrocele. He left his job and went to his sister in thecountry. He told her that he was completely broken and could no longer work. Therewas no point in prolonging his life, he said, as he felt only pain everywhere. His sister,12/10/2015 Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced Personalityhttp://www.yogamag.net/archives/2007/fjune07/integ.shtml 4/5a staunch devotee of yoga, told him to put some cream on his eyebrow centre andconcentrate on that point. One day while the French gentleman was practising this, aterrific sound exploded somewhere in his brain. Surprisingly his hernia was cured andhis hydrocele problem was completely resolved – for him it was a miracle. When I methim, I asked what had happened when he was concentrating on bhrumadhya, theeyebrow centre. He said that when he was a schoolboy he went to the fish shop andwhile eating, a fish bone got stuck in his teeth which later had to be removed by thedentist. When he was practising concentration on his bhrumadhya, he saw fish comingout of his mouth. After that, he too became a great devotee of yoga.Therefore, when practising mantra, do not discard or repress the experiences whicharise. You may think that while practising mantra, worldly thoughts should not enter

your mind, and if they do, then it is your duty to remove them in respect for themantra, but this is incorrect. According to yoga and psychology, we must observe,analyze and respect whatever thoughts or experiences come into our mind whilepractising japa.You will find that if the mantra is correct, it will work immediately. If it is not the rightone for you, it will still work, but slowly. To be powerful the mantra has to correlatewith all of our qualities and tendencies. The tantra and mantra shastras say that allmantras, with the exception of Aum, are classified into twelve main groups with fivesubdivisions. Only Aum can be repeated by anyone at any time, without restriction.The mantras which are used to explode the unconscious mind are very important.People with devotion for the Devi, particularly Durga or Kali, have fantasticexperiences while practising her mantra. Many of my disciples had terrifying dreams allnight after receiving her mantra. This is because the mantra is so powerful that itimmediately starts exploding the karmas from the unconscious mind. Just as a strongpurgative makes you go to the toilet every five minutes, so repetition of a powerfulmantra purges karma very quickly.Science of yogaThe science of yoga aims at perfecting human life. Every ordinary person hasextraordinary potential, but to develop this a strong and welltrainedmind isnecessary. Through the practices of yoga we can gain complete mastery over thebody and mind. The West gave technology to the world and made life verycomfortable, easy and quick. India can give yoga and spirituality and the whole worldis crying for it. People in the West are fed up and frightened of technology. Theywant a science to allay their fears and give them peace.Only the system of yoga which is still alive today in India can adequately fulfil thisneed. Therefore, all Indians wherever they are, must represent this science correctly.

Yoga is knowledge, not miracles, witchcraft or superstition. Yoga is a science whichcan be studied, practised, experienced, understood and explained by any educatedand wellreadperson. Yoga can improve relations and create international goodwill. Itis important to be able to give something to others which they can cherish deep intheir hearts.I give free discussions on yoga everywhere I go because I am fully convinced of itseffectiveness. My experience and experiments in life with thousands and thousands ofpeople, East and West are my proof. Now it is the duty of those who know that yogaproduces an integrated personality to acquaint themselves with all aspects of yoga. Itis no use saying that bhakti yoga alone is enough. If it were, why are religious peoplelying ill in hospitals and taking so many pills? Why are they unable to sleep in theircosy beds? Religion is bhakti yoga. We need an integrated approach to life. Justadding salt to the vegetables does not make a tasty dish. We must combine manyspices. Life is too complex for one aspect of yoga to suffice. With a comprehensiveapproach, life becomes rich.

Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced PersonalitySwami Satyananda SaraswatiSpeech at the Gita Ashram, Monrovia, Liberia, May 1977, first printed in YOGA,Vol. 15, No. 8, August 1977According to vedic dharma each person is a composite of four main qualities:dynamism, emotions, mysticism and rationalism. Some people are predominantly

dynamic, others are more emotional, mystical or rational. Every personality is anintegration of these four essential temperaments. For the evolution of our personalitywe have to integrate the four corresponding categories of yoga sadhana into ourlives.Sadhana is spiritual discipline or practice. Just as you train an animal, the personalitymust also be trained in order to be useful in this life. For the balanced development ofour personality, we must practise an integral yoga sadhana. By emphasizing oneaspect of sadhana, our development will be lopsided. If we eat protein and nothingelse, what will happen? Just as we carefully provide a balanced diet for the physicalbody, so we must supply a balance of nutrition to the spiritual body also. In theBhagavad Gita, Yoga Vashishtha, Srimad Bhagavata, and other scriptures, anintegration of the four systems of karma yoga, bhakti yoga, raja yoga and jnana yogais recommended. Those who overemphasize any one aspect of yoga should rememberthat this results in onesideddevelopment.Through the practice of karma yoga, bhakti yoga, raja yoga and jnana yoga, we cantrain the whole personality. This is what I want to tell everyone, everywhere. It iseasy to attain temporary tranquillity through certain practices, but to train the mind isvery difficult. To transform the entire consciousness into a creative instrument is noteasy.Transforming the mindSome years ago some research was conducted to find out the influence of kirtan onthe brain. When we do kirtan for half an hour, we feel relaxed. Why? What changetakes place in the structure of the personality and in the hormonal makeupof the

brain? Research has found that during repetitive singing of kirtan, the brain registersthe sound waves, which influences other wave patterns of the brain. These wavesawaken alpha rhythms which immediately induce tranquillity. Thus by singing kirtan weget peace of mind. This is well and good, but maintaining that state of mind during ourdaily life is not so easy. The peace we gain by practising this technique does notremain with us through the complicated and confusing patterns of our daily life.Therefore, side by side with yoga sadhana which gives us peace of mind, we mustalso remember the necessity of transforming the very structure of our mind. But how?When we drive our car into the petrol station to fill up the tank we find that petrol isof different categories. But when this petrol was extracted from the depths of theearth, what was it like then? Crude oil is so dirty but after being refined it becomes aremarkable agent of energy. It can even provide the power to fly an aeroplane.Similarly, the mind, or chitta, which we have inherited from our previous incarnationsstill remains in its crude or raw state. In the mental body we have so many thingswhich ought to be removed. When we become terribly angry or very tense, when weworry too much and pass sleepless nights due to family, business, social or politicalproblems, then we feel the necessity of purifying the mind. We must free it from allthese vrittis, those habits which we have formed in our personality from the presentand previous incarnations.We believe that the jiva or individual has undergone a process of selfincarnationin8,400,000 yonis or wombs. According to science, evolution has passed through afantastic panorama of existence, but despite these millions of incarnations that ourjiva has undergone, we still carry a very crude mind with us. This mind is composed of

three gunas: sattwa, rajas, and tamas, which are the essential manifestations of12/10/2015 Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced Personalityhttp://www.yogamag.net/archives/2007/fjune07/integ.shtml 2/5prakriti or nature. The three gunas are also used in a social or moral context becausethey indicate the personality of a person. Nature manifests as energy; in nature thereare static (tamasic), kinetic (rajasic) and balanced (sattwic) energies.If we want to make the mind infinite, we must cut and polish it just as we would adiamond. They say that tamas makes a person lethargic, rajas makes you violent andsattwa makes you balanced. Therefore, tamas and rajas have to be overcome bysattwa, and this is accomplished through the process of dhyana yoga. Dhyana hasbeen translated as meditation, but actually it means awareness. This can be attainedthrough raja yoga, bhakti yoga, jnana yoga, laya yoga, mantra yoga, and many otheryogic processes.The mind is not thought or emotion. Thought and emotion are patterns of mind.Happiness is a state of mind and so is depression. Mind is consciousness, awareness.Mind is a storehouse of energy, shakti. The pure mind is pure shakti. The mind can bepurified and corrected by following the methods most suited to our personality. Thosewho are very strong can take up the path of kundalini and kriya yoga. For others whoare not so strong and who haven’t yet developed much understanding of yoga, thereare other ways like mantra yoga or japa yoga.The mind is much more than thought or feeling. The mind is like an iceberg; only asmall portion is visible, the remainder lies submerged under the ocean. According tomodern psychology, the mind exists in three spheres: conscious, subconscious andunconscious. In Vedanta we call them: sthoola sharira, sukshma sharira and karana

sharira.Exploding the unconscious mindThe unconscious mind is very powerful. The word ‘unconscious’ should not bemisunderstood. The unconscious mind is like a storehouse. All disease, success andtragedy in life originate in the unconscious mind. The experiences that you have hadin life, important as well as unimportant, are all registered there. It is something like ahidden camera in the street. Everything that passes within its range is immediatelyphotographed. In the same way, whatever experience you have is immediatelytransferred back to the unconscious through the indriyas or senses and the mind.There they are stored in bija or seed form. This process starts rights from the timewhen the child is in the womb of the mother. From the fourth month of pregnancy,children have certain experiences which are embedded deep in the unconscious mind.Through the practices of kundalini, kriya and laya yoga, the unconscious mind can beexploded. What happens when we explode the unconscious mind? Here is an exampleof how an ordinary, insignificant experience can cause great damage to one’s mind. Inour ashram there was an intelligent engineer who could not manage to complete hiseducation or hold his job. Every morning from six till nine, he would go into a fit ofdepression. He became so restless that sometimes he felt he was going to die. Inthese fits of depression, he could not sit quietly, walk or talk. He left his career as abright mechanical engineer in the UK and wandered around Africa. Finally, he came toIndia and found his way to our ashram.One morning he was on the roof terrace and on the street below he saw a pig eatinghuman filth. This is quite a common scene for those of us who have lived in Indianvillages, but for this young man it was something new. The moment he saw it, he

suddenly remembered an incident from his childhood. When he was eight years old, heused to go fishing. One morning when he was preparing his tackle, he opened thesmall tin in which he kept little maggots for bait. He had forgotten to empty it the lasttime he had gone fishing, and when he lifted the lid hundreds of flies swarmed in hisface. The moment he saw the pig eating human filth, his unconscious exploded andthis deep childhood memory came out. Since then the young man has never hadanother fit, and is perfectly all right.KarmaEvery action, every thought, every place is an experience. A satsang or a lecture onthe Bhagavad Gita is an experience. Even an ordinary experience can become very12/10/2015 Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced Personalityhttp://www.yogamag.net/archives/2007/fjune07/integ.shtml 3/5consequential in later life. There are so many types of karma. Charity is one karmaand plundering someone’s property is another. Even if you don’t do these things, stillyou are making karma. In the Gita, it is said that there is not one moment in life inwhich a person is free of karma. Only in samadhi can you completely do away withkarma, otherwise not. Modern psychology and yoga agree that even during deep sleepwhen you are not aware of time and space, name and form, your mind is still working.Remember that the unconscious mind is the storehouse of all past experiences orkarmas, not only in this life, but in our previous lives as well.The unconscious body is called hiranyagarbha, the golden egg. By the practice ofmantra sadhana we can penetrate it deeply and eliminate all kinds of karmas, one byone. That is why they say that by the practice of mantra one becomes free from theentanglements of karma.Every action is born of a deep karma. Every thought, movement, success, failure is a

reenactmentof one of our previous experiences. Here is another example, a clinicalcase concerning a husband and wife who loved each other very much. They werevery happy together at home, but whenever they went out to dinner, for a walk, on apicnic, etc. they always fought. Why? When the husband was a child of four, hewalked into the bathroom when his mother was taking a bath. She quickly covered herbody with a dirty housedress, pushed him out and locked the door. Now, wheneverthe husband is at home, his wife is engaged in housework. She wears an oldhousedress and he loves her. He is still working out the problem of the old dress withwhich his mother covered herself in the bathroom. Whenever his wife is not wearingher old housedress, he doesn’t like her! Such simple childhood experiences can causeso many problems. Many good people suffer unnecessarily because they are unawareof their karmas and how they fructify.Mantra yogaThere are two ways of practising mantra yoga: one is the repetition of a bija mantralike Aum, Hrim, Shrim, Klim; the other is using the name of one’s guru or favouritedeity. Nowadays we have lost touch with the original mantra yoga system. If we feeldevotion for Shiva, then we practise ‘Om Namah Shivaya’. If we feel more inclinedtowards Rama, we repeat ‘Sri Ram Jai Ram’. When we feel attracted towards Krishna,we say ‘Om Namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya’. But according to mantra shastra, themantra must be very carefully selected to suit each individual personality. The bijamantras are very powerful. They can allay the strong influence of karmas. Mantrashould always be practised with a mala. Even in meditation when mantra issynchronized with the breath, a mala is still used.Japa and antar mounaWhen practising mantra, a lot of things come up in the mind which would not come up

otherwise. When past incidents arise, what do we do? The usual response is tosuppress these thoughts because we are more interested in our mantra. So when weare practising japa and a thought come, we push it out; another one comes and wepush it out. But this is incorrect. We do not want to avoid karma, but to eliminate it.Therefore, it is necessary to observe each thought and let it pass of its own accord.Thus japa yoga must be followed or accompanied by antar mouna, the process ofwitnessing our thoughts. When we are practising mantra and a thought comes intoour mind, we must stop for a moment and see the thought, whatever it is, thencontinue the mantra until another thought comes. During the practice of japa andantar mouna, over a period of months the significant and insignificant memories of thepast flash into our mind. These memories should be seen very clearly if we want topurify our mind. Every experience we have during mantra practice or meditation hasan important bearing on our life.I know of many people who have changed completely through the practice of japaand antar mouna and they were amazed to see how it happened. One Frenchgentleman had a hernia and hydrocele. He left his job and went to his sister in thecountry. He told her that he was completely broken and could no longer work. Therewas no point in prolonging his life, he said, as he felt only pain everywhere. His sister,12/10/2015 Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced Personalityhttp://www.yogamag.net/archives/2007/fjune07/integ.shtml 4/5a staunch devotee of yoga, told him to put some cream on his eyebrow centre andconcentrate on that point. One day while the French gentleman was practising this, aterrific sound exploded somewhere in his brain. Surprisingly his hernia was cured and

his hydrocele problem was completely resolved – for him it was a miracle. When I methim, I asked what had happened when he was concentrating on bhrumadhya, theeyebrow centre. He said that when he was a schoolboy he went to the fish shop andwhile eating, a fish bone got stuck in his teeth which later had to be removed by thedentist. When he was practising concentration on his bhrumadhya, he saw fish comingout of his mouth. After that, he too became a great devotee of yoga.Therefore, when practising mantra, do not discard or repress the experiences whicharise. You may think that while practising mantra, worldly thoughts should not enteryour mind, and if they do, then it is your duty to remove them in respect for themantra, but this is incorrect. According to yoga and psychology, we must observe,analyze and respect whatever thoughts or experiences come into our mind whilepractising japa.You will find that if the mantra is correct, it will work immediately. If it is not the rightone for you, it will still work, but slowly. To be powerful the mantra has to correlatewith all of our qualities and tendencies. The tantra and mantra shastras say that allmantras, with the exception of Aum, are classified into twelve main groups with fivesubdivisions. Only Aum can be repeated by anyone at any time, without restriction.The mantras which are used to explode the unconscious mind are very important.People with devotion for the Devi, particularly Durga or Kali, have fantasticexperiences while practising her mantra. Many of my disciples had terrifying dreams allnight after receiving her mantra. This is because the mantra is so powerful that itimmediately starts exploding the karmas from the unconscious mind. Just as a strongpurgative makes you go to the toilet every five minutes, so repetition of a powerful

mantra purges karma very quickly.Science of yogaThe science of yoga aims at perfecting human life. Every ordinary person hasextraordinary potential, but to develop this a strong and welltrainedmind isnecessary. Through the practices of yoga we can gain complete mastery over thebody and mind. The West gave technology to the world and made life verycomfortable, easy and quick. India can give yoga and spirituality and the whole worldis crying for it. People in the West are fed up and frightened of technology. Theywant a science to allay their fears and give them peace.Only the system of yoga which is still alive today in India can adequately fulfil thisneed. Therefore, all Indians wherever they are, must represent this science correctly.Yoga is knowledge, not miracles, witchcraft or superstition. Yoga is a science whichcan be studied, practised, experienced, understood and explained by any educatedand wellreadperson. Yoga can improve relations and create international goodwill. Itis important to be able to give something to others which they can cherish deep intheir hearts.I give free discussions on yoga everywhere I go because I am fully convinced of itseffectiveness. My experience and experiments in life with thousands and thousands ofpeople, East and West are my proof. Now it is the duty of those who know that yogaproduces an integrated personality to acquaint themselves with all aspects of yoga. Itis no use saying that bhakti yoga alone is enough. If it were, why are religious peoplelying ill in hospitals and taking so many pills? Why are they unable to sleep in theircosy beds? Religion is bhakti yoga. We need an integrated approach to life. Justadding salt to the vegetables does not make a tasty dish. We must combine manyspices. Life is too complex for one aspect of yoga to suffice. With a comprehensiveapproach, life becomes rich.

Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced PersonalitySwami Satyananda SaraswatiSpeech at the Gita Ashram, Monrovia, Liberia, May 1977, first printed in YOGA,Vol. 15, No. 8, August 1977According to vedic dharma each person is a composite of four main qualities:dynamism, emotions, mysticism and rationalism. Some people are predominantlydynamic, others are more emotional, mystical or rational. Every personality is anintegration of these four essential temperaments. For the evolution of our personalitywe have to integrate the four corresponding categories of yoga sadhana into ourlives.Sadhana is spiritual discipline or practice. Just as you train an animal, the personalitymust also be trained in order to be useful in this life. For the balanced development ofour personality, we must practise an integral yoga sadhana. By emphasizing oneaspect of sadhana, our development will be lopsided. If we eat protein and nothingelse, what will happen? Just as we carefully provide a balanced diet for the physicalbody, so we must supply a balance of nutrition to the spiritual body also. In theBhagavad Gita, Yoga Vashishtha, Srimad Bhagavata, and other scriptures, anintegration of the four systems of karma yoga, bhakti yoga, raja yoga and jnana yogais recommended. Those who overemphasize any one aspect of yoga should rememberthat this results in onesideddevelopment.Through the practice of karma yoga, bhakti yoga, raja yoga and jnana yoga, we cantrain the whole personality. This is what I want to tell everyone, everywhere. It iseasy to attain temporary tranquillity through certain practices, but to train the mind is

very difficult. To transform the entire consciousness into a creative instrument is noteasy.Transforming the mindSome years ago some research was conducted to find out the influence of kirtan onthe brain. When we do kirtan for half an hour, we feel relaxed. Why? What changetakes place in the structure of the personality and in the hormonal makeupof thebrain? Research has found that during repetitive singing of kirtan, the brain registersthe sound waves, which influences other wave patterns of the brain. These wavesawaken alpha rhythms which immediately induce tranquillity. Thus by singing kirtan weget peace of mind. This is well and good, but maintaining that state of mind during ourdaily life is not so easy. The peace we gain by practising this technique does notremain with us through the complicated and confusing patterns of our daily life.Therefore, side by side with yoga sadhana which gives us peace of mind, we mustalso remember the necessity of transforming the very structure of our mind. But how?When we drive our car into the petrol station to fill up the tank we find that petrol isof different categories. But when this petrol was extracted from the depths of theearth, what was it like then? Crude oil is so dirty but after being refined it becomes aremarkable agent of energy. It can even provide the power to fly an aeroplane.Similarly, the mind, or chitta, which we have inherited from our previous incarnationsstill remains in its crude or raw state. In the mental body we have so many thingswhich ought to be removed. When we become terribly angry or very tense, when weworry too much and pass sleepless nights due to family, business, social or politicalproblems, then we feel the necessity of purifying the mind. We must free it from all

these vrittis, those habits which we have formed in our personality from the presentand previous incarnations.We believe that the jiva or individual has undergone a process of selfincarnationin8,400,000 yonis or wombs. According to science, evolution has passed through afantastic panorama of existence, but despite these millions of incarnations that ourjiva has undergone, we still carry a very crude mind with us. This mind is composed ofthree gunas: sattwa, rajas, and tamas, which are the essential manifestations of12/10/2015 Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced Personalityhttp://www.yogamag.net/archives/2007/fjune07/integ.shtml 2/5prakriti or nature. The three gunas are also used in a social or moral context becausethey indicate the personality of a person. Nature manifests as energy; in nature thereare static (tamasic), kinetic (rajasic) and balanced (sattwic) energies.If we want to make the mind infinite, we must cut and polish it just as we would adiamond. They say that tamas makes a person lethargic, rajas makes you violent andsattwa makes you balanced. Therefore, tamas and rajas have to be overcome bysattwa, and this is accomplished through the process of dhyana yoga. Dhyana hasbeen translated as meditation, but actually it means awareness. This can be attainedthrough raja yoga, bhakti yoga, jnana yoga, laya yoga, mantra yoga, and many otheryogic processes.The mind is not thought or emotion. Thought and emotion are patterns of mind.Happiness is a state of mind and so is depression. Mind is consciousness, awareness.Mind is a storehouse of energy, shakti. The pure mind is pure shakti. The mind can bepurified and corrected by following the methods most suited to our personality. Thosewho are very strong can take up the path of kundalini and kriya yoga. For others who

are not so strong and who haven’t yet developed much understanding of yoga, thereare other ways like mantra yoga or japa yoga.The mind is much more than thought or feeling. The mind is like an iceberg; only asmall portion is visible, the remainder lies submerged under the ocean. According tomodern psychology, the mind exists in three spheres: conscious, subconscious andunconscious. In Vedanta we call them: sthoola sharira, sukshma sharira and karanasharira.Exploding the unconscious mindThe unconscious mind is very powerful. The word ‘unconscious’ should not bemisunderstood. The unconscious mind is like a storehouse. All disease, success andtragedy in life originate in the unconscious mind. The experiences that you have hadin life, important as well as unimportant, are all registered there. It is something like ahidden camera in the street. Everything that passes within its range is immediatelyphotographed. In the same way, whatever experience you have is immediatelytransferred back to the unconscious through the indriyas or senses and the mind.There they are stored in bija or seed form. This process starts rights from the timewhen the child is in the womb of the mother. From the fourth month of pregnancy,children have certain experiences which are embedded deep in the unconscious mind.Through the practices of kundalini, kriya and laya yoga, the unconscious mind can beexploded. What happens when we explode the unconscious mind? Here is an exampleof how an ordinary, insignificant experience can cause great damage to one’s mind. Inour ashram there was an intelligent engineer who could not manage to complete hiseducation or hold his job. Every morning from six till nine, he would go into a fit of

depression. He became so restless that sometimes he felt he was going to die. Inthese fits of depression, he could not sit quietly, walk or talk. He left his career as abright mechanical engineer in the UK and wandered around Africa. Finally, he came toIndia and found his way to our ashram.One morning he was on the roof terrace and on the street below he saw a pig eatinghuman filth. This is quite a common scene for those of us who have lived in Indianvillages, but for this young man it was something new. The moment he saw it, hesuddenly remembered an incident from his childhood. When he was eight years old, heused to go fishing. One morning when he was preparing his tackle, he opened thesmall tin in which he kept little maggots for bait. He had forgotten to empty it the lasttime he had gone fishing, and when he lifted the lid hundreds of flies swarmed in hisface. The moment he saw the pig eating human filth, his unconscious exploded andthis deep childhood memory came out. Since then the young man has never hadanother fit, and is perfectly all right.KarmaEvery action, every thought, every place is an experience. A satsang or a lecture onthe Bhagavad Gita is an experience. Even an ordinary experience can become very12/10/2015 Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced Personalityhttp://www.yogamag.net/archives/2007/fjune07/integ.shtml 3/5consequential in later life. There are so many types of karma. Charity is one karmaand plundering someone’s property is another. Even if you don’t do these things, stillyou are making karma. In the Gita, it is said that there is not one moment in life inwhich a person is free of karma. Only in samadhi can you completely do away withkarma, otherwise not. Modern psychology and yoga agree that even during deep sleepwhen you are not aware of time and space, name and form, your mind is still working.

Remember that the unconscious mind is the storehouse of all past experiences orkarmas, not only in this life, but in our previous lives as well.The unconscious body is called hiranyagarbha, the golden egg. By the practice ofmantra sadhana we can penetrate it deeply and eliminate all kinds of karmas, one byone. That is why they say that by the practice of mantra one becomes free from theentanglements of karma.Every action is born of a deep karma. Every thought, movement, success, failure is areenactmentof one of our previous experiences. Here is another example, a clinicalcase concerning a husband and wife who loved each other very much. They werevery happy together at home, but whenever they went out to dinner, for a walk, on apicnic, etc. they always fought. Why? When the husband was a child of four, hewalked into the bathroom when his mother was taking a bath. She quickly covered herbody with a dirty housedress, pushed him out and locked the door. Now, wheneverthe husband is at home, his wife is engaged in housework. She wears an oldhousedress and he loves her. He is still working out the problem of the old dress withwhich his mother covered herself in the bathroom. Whenever his wife is not wearingher old housedress, he doesn’t like her! Such simple childhood experiences can causeso many problems. Many good people suffer unnecessarily because they are unawareof their karmas and how they fructify.Mantra yogaThere are two ways of practising mantra yoga: one is the repetition of a bija mantralike Aum, Hrim, Shrim, Klim; the other is using the name of one’s guru or favouritedeity. Nowadays we have lost touch with the original mantra yoga system. If we feeldevotion for Shiva, then we practise ‘Om Namah Shivaya’. If we feel more inclined

towards Rama, we repeat ‘Sri Ram Jai Ram’. When we feel attracted towards Krishna,we say ‘Om Namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya’. But according to mantra shastra, themantra must be very carefully selected to suit each individual personality. The bijamantras are very powerful. They can allay the strong influence of karmas. Mantrashould always be practised with a mala. Even in meditation when mantra issynchronized with the breath, a mala is still used.Japa and antar mounaWhen practising mantra, a lot of things come up in the mind which would not come upotherwise. When past incidents arise, what do we do? The usual response is tosuppress these thoughts because we are more interested in our mantra. So when weare practising japa and a thought come, we push it out; another one comes and wepush it out. But this is incorrect. We do not want to avoid karma, but to eliminate it.Therefore, it is necessary to observe each thought and let it pass of its own accord.Thus japa yoga must be followed or accompanied by antar mouna, the process ofwitnessing our thoughts. When we are practising mantra and a thought comes intoour mind, we must stop for a moment and see the thought, whatever it is, thencontinue the mantra until another thought comes. During the practice of japa andantar mouna, over a period of months the significant and insignificant memories of thepast flash into our mind. These memories should be seen very clearly if we want topurify our mind. Every experience we have during mantra practice or meditation hasan important bearing on our life.I know of many people who have changed completely through the practice of japaand antar mouna and they were amazed to see how it happened. One Frenchgentleman had a hernia and hydrocele. He left his job and went to his sister in thecountry. He told her that he was completely broken and could no longer work. There

was no point in prolonging his life, he said, as he felt only pain everywhere. His sister,12/10/2015 Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced Personalityhttp://www.yogamag.net/archives/2007/fjune07/integ.shtml 4/5a staunch devotee of yoga, told him to put some cream on his eyebrow centre andconcentrate on that point. One day while the French gentleman was practising this, aterrific sound exploded somewhere in his brain. Surprisingly his hernia was cured andhis hydrocele problem was completely resolved – for him it was a miracle. When I methim, I asked what had happened when he was concentrating on bhrumadhya, theeyebrow centre. He said that when he was a schoolboy he went to the fish shop andwhile eating, a fish bone got stuck in his teeth which later had to be removed by thedentist. When he was practising concentration on his bhrumadhya, he saw fish comingout of his mouth. After that, he too became a great devotee of yoga.Therefore, when practising mantra, do not discard or repress the experiences whicharise. You may think that while practising mantra, worldly thoughts should not enteryour mind, and if they do, then it is your duty to remove them in respect for themantra, but this is incorrect. According to yoga and psychology, we must observe,analyze and respect whatever thoughts or experiences come into our mind whilepractising japa.You will find that if the mantra is correct, it will work immediately. If it is not the rightone for you, it will still work, but slowly. To be powerful the mantra has to correlatewith all of our qualities and tendencies. The tantra and mantra shastras say that allmantras, with the exception of Aum, are classified into twelve main groups with five

subdivisions. Only Aum can be repeated by anyone at any time, without restriction.The mantras which are used to explode the unconscious mind are very important.People with devotion for the Devi, particularly Durga or Kali, have fantasticexperiences while practising her mantra. Many of my disciples had terrifying dreams allnight after receiving her mantra. This is because the mantra is so powerful that itimmediately starts exploding the karmas from the unconscious mind. Just as a strongpurgative makes you go to the toilet every five minutes, so repetition of a powerfulmantra purges karma very quickly.Science of yogaThe science of yoga aims at perfecting human life. Every ordinary person hasextraordinary potential, but to develop this a strong and welltrainedmind isnecessary. Through the practices of yoga we can gain complete mastery over thebody and mind. The West gave technology to the world and made life verycomfortable, easy and quick. India can give yoga and spirituality and the whole worldis crying for it. People in the West are fed up and frightened of technology. Theywant a science to allay their fears and give them peace.Only the system of yoga which is still alive today in India can adequately fulfil thisneed. Therefore, all Indians wherever they are, must represent this science correctly.Yoga is knowledge, not miracles, witchcraft or superstition. Yoga is a science whichcan be studied, practised, experienced, understood and explained by any educatedand wellreadperson. Yoga can improve relations and create international goodwill. Itis important to be able to give something to others which they can cherish deep intheir hearts.I give free discussions on yoga everywhere I go because I am fully convinced of itseffectiveness. My experience and experiments in life with thousands and thousands of

people, East and West are my proof. Now it is the duty of those who know that yogaproduces an integrated personality to acquaint themselves with all aspects of yoga. Itis no use saying that bhakti yoga alone is enough. If it were, why are religious peoplelying ill in hospitals and taking so many pills? Why are they unable to sleep in theircosy beds? Religion is bhakti yoga. We need an integrated approach to life. Justadding salt to the vegetables does not make a tasty dish. We must combine manyspices. Life is too complex for one aspect of yoga to suffice. With a comprehensiveapproach, life becomes rich.

Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced PersonalitySwami Satyananda SaraswatiSpeech at the Gita Ashram, Monrovia, Liberia, May 1977, first printed in YOGA,Vol. 15, No. 8, August 1977According to vedic dharma each person is a composite of four main qualities:dynamism, emotions, mysticism and rationalism. Some people are predominantlydynamic, others are more emotional, mystical or rational. Every personality is anintegration of these four essential temperaments. For the evolution of our personalitywe have to integrate the four corresponding categories of yoga sadhana into ourlives.Sadhana is spiritual discipline or practice. Just as you train an animal, the personalitymust also be trained in order to be useful in this life. For the balanced development ofour personality, we must practise an integral yoga sadhana. By emphasizing oneaspect of sadhana, our development will be lopsided. If we eat protein and nothingelse, what will happen? Just as we carefully provide a balanced diet for the physicalbody, so we must supply a balance of nutrition to the spiritual body also. In the

Bhagavad Gita, Yoga Vashishtha, Srimad Bhagavata, and other scriptures, anintegration of the four systems of karma yoga, bhakti yoga, raja yoga and jnana yogais recommended. Those who overemphasize any one aspect of yoga should rememberthat this results in onesideddevelopment.Through the practice of karma yoga, bhakti yoga, raja yoga and jnana yoga, we cantrain the whole personality. This is what I want to tell everyone, everywhere. It iseasy to attain temporary tranquillity through certain practices, but to train the mind isvery difficult. To transform the entire consciousness into a creative instrument is noteasy.Transforming the mindSome years ago some research was conducted to find out the influence of kirtan onthe brain. When we do kirtan for half an hour, we feel relaxed. Why? What changetakes place in the structure of the personality and in the hormonal makeupof thebrain? Research has found that during repetitive singing of kirtan, the brain registersthe sound waves, which influences other wave patterns of the brain. These wavesawaken alpha rhythms which immediately induce tranquillity. Thus by singing kirtan weget peace of mind. This is well and good, but maintaining that state of mind during ourdaily life is not so easy. The peace we gain by practising this technique does notremain with us through the complicated and confusing patterns of our daily life.Therefore, side by side with yoga sadhana which gives us peace of mind, we mustalso remember the necessity of transforming the very structure of our mind. But how?When we drive our car into the petrol station to fill up the tank we find that petrol isof different categories. But when this petrol was extracted from the depths of the

earth, what was it like then? Crude oil is so dirty but after being refined it becomes aremarkable agent of energy. It can even provide the power to fly an aeroplane.Similarly, the mind, or chitta, which we have inherited from our previous incarnationsstill remains in its crude or raw state. In the mental body we have so many thingswhich ought to be removed. When we become terribly angry or very tense, when weworry too much and pass sleepless nights due to family, business, social or politicalproblems, then we feel the necessity of purifying the mind. We must free it from allthese vrittis, those habits which we have formed in our personality from the presentand previous incarnations.We believe that the jiva or individual has undergone a process of selfincarnationin8,400,000 yonis or wombs. According to science, evolution has passed through afantastic panorama of existence, but despite these millions of incarnations that ourjiva has undergone, we still carry a very crude mind with us. This mind is composed ofthree gunas: sattwa, rajas, and tamas, which are the essential manifestations of12/10/2015 Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced Personalityhttp://www.yogamag.net/archives/2007/fjune07/integ.shtml 2/5prakriti or nature. The three gunas are also used in a social or moral context becausethey indicate the personality of a person. Nature manifests as energy; in nature thereare static (tamasic), kinetic (rajasic) and balanced (sattwic) energies.If we want to make the mind infinite, we must cut and polish it just as we would adiamond. They say that tamas makes a person lethargic, rajas makes you violent andsattwa makes you balanced. Therefore, tamas and rajas have to be overcome bysattwa, and this is accomplished through the process of dhyana yoga. Dhyana hasbeen translated as meditation, but actually it means awareness. This can be attained

through raja yoga, bhakti yoga, jnana yoga, laya yoga, mantra yoga, and many otheryogic processes.The mind is not thought or emotion. Thought and emotion are patterns of mind.Happiness is a state of mind and so is depression. Mind is consciousness, awareness.Mind is a storehouse of energy, shakti. The pure mind is pure shakti. The mind can bepurified and corrected by following the methods most suited to our personality. Thosewho are very strong can take up the path of kundalini and kriya yoga. For others whoare not so strong and who haven’t yet developed much understanding of yoga, thereare other ways like mantra yoga or japa yoga.The mind is much more than thought or feeling. The mind is like an iceberg; only asmall portion is visible, the remainder lies submerged under the ocean. According tomodern psychology, the mind exists in three spheres: conscious, subconscious andunconscious. In Vedanta we call them: sthoola sharira, sukshma sharira and karanasharira.Exploding the unconscious mindThe unconscious mind is very powerful. The word ‘unconscious’ should not bemisunderstood. The unconscious mind is like a storehouse. All disease, success andtragedy in life originate in the unconscious mind. The experiences that you have hadin life, important as well as unimportant, are all registered there. It is something like ahidden camera in the street. Everything that passes within its range is immediatelyphotographed. In the same way, whatever experience you have is immediatelytransferred back to the unconscious through the indriyas or senses and the mind.There they are stored in bija or seed form. This process starts rights from the time

when the child is in the womb of the mother. From the fourth month of pregnancy,children have certain experiences which are embedded deep in the unconscious mind.Through the practices of kundalini, kriya and laya yoga, the unconscious mind can beexploded. What happens when we explode the unconscious mind? Here is an exampleof how an ordinary, insignificant experience can cause great damage to one’s mind. Inour ashram there was an intelligent engineer who could not manage to complete hiseducation or hold his job. Every morning from six till nine, he would go into a fit ofdepression. He became so restless that sometimes he felt he was going to die. Inthese fits of depression, he could not sit quietly, walk or talk. He left his career as abright mechanical engineer in the UK and wandered around Africa. Finally, he came toIndia and found his way to our ashram.One morning he was on the roof terrace and on the street below he saw a pig eatinghuman filth. This is quite a common scene for those of us who have lived in Indianvillages, but for this young man it was something new. The moment he saw it, hesuddenly remembered an incident from his childhood. When he was eight years old, heused to go fishing. One morning when he was preparing his tackle, he opened thesmall tin in which he kept little maggots for bait. He had forgotten to empty it the lasttime he had gone fishing, and when he lifted the lid hundreds of flies swarmed in hisface. The moment he saw the pig eating human filth, his unconscious exploded andthis deep childhood memory came out. Since then the young man has never hadanother fit, and is perfectly all right.KarmaEvery action, every thought, every place is an experience. A satsang or a lecture on

the Bhagavad Gita is an experience. Even an ordinary experience can become very12/10/2015 Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced Personalityhttp://www.yogamag.net/archives/2007/fjune07/integ.shtml 3/5consequential in later life. There are so many types of karma. Charity is one karmaand plundering someone’s property is another. Even if you don’t do these things, stillyou are making karma. In the Gita, it is said that there is not one moment in life inwhich a person is free of karma. Only in samadhi can you completely do away withkarma, otherwise not. Modern psychology and yoga agree that even during deep sleepwhen you are not aware of time and space, name and form, your mind is still working.Remember that the unconscious mind is the storehouse of all past experiences orkarmas, not only in this life, but in our previous lives as well.The unconscious body is called hiranyagarbha, the golden egg. By the practice ofmantra sadhana we can penetrate it deeply and eliminate all kinds of karmas, one byone. That is why they say that by the practice of mantra one becomes free from theentanglements of karma.Every action is born of a deep karma. Every thought, movement, success, failure is areenactmentof one of our previous experiences. Here is another example, a clinicalcase concerning a husband and wife who loved each other very much. They werevery happy together at home, but whenever they went out to dinner, for a walk, on apicnic, etc. they always fought. Why? When the husband was a child of four, hewalked into the bathroom when his mother was taking a bath. She quickly covered herbody with a dirty housedress, pushed him out and locked the door. Now, wheneverthe husband is at home, his wife is engaged in housework. She wears an oldhousedress and he loves her. He is still working out the problem of the old dress with

which his mother covered herself in the bathroom. Whenever his wife is not wearingher old housedress, he doesn’t like her! Such simple childhood experiences can causeso many problems. Many good people suffer unnecessarily because they are unawareof their karmas and how they fructify.Mantra yogaThere are two ways of practising mantra yoga: one is the repetition of a bija mantralike Aum, Hrim, Shrim, Klim; the other is using the name of one’s guru or favouritedeity. Nowadays we have lost touch with the original mantra yoga system. If we feeldevotion for Shiva, then we practise ‘Om Namah Shivaya’. If we feel more inclinedtowards Rama, we repeat ‘Sri Ram Jai Ram’. When we feel attracted towards Krishna,we say ‘Om Namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya’. But according to mantra shastra, themantra must be very carefully selected to suit each individual personality. The bijamantras are very powerful. They can allay the strong influence of karmas. Mantrashould always be practised with a mala. Even in meditation when mantra issynchronized with the breath, a mala is still used.Japa and antar mounaWhen practising mantra, a lot of things come up in the mind which would not come upotherwise. When past incidents arise, what do we do? The usual response is tosuppress these thoughts because we are more interested in our mantra. So when weare practising japa and a thought come, we push it out; another one comes and wepush it out. But this is incorrect. We do not want to avoid karma, but to eliminate it.Therefore, it is necessary to observe each thought and let it pass of its own accord.Thus japa yoga must be followed or accompanied by antar mouna, the process ofwitnessing our thoughts. When we are practising mantra and a thought comes intoour mind, we must stop for a moment and see the thought, whatever it is, then

continue the mantra until another thought comes. During the practice of japa andantar mouna, over a period of months the significant and insignificant memories of thepast flash into our mind. These memories should be seen very clearly if we want topurify our mind. Every experience we have during mantra practice or meditation hasan important bearing on our life.I know of many people who have changed completely through the practice of japaand antar mouna and they were amazed to see how it happened. One Frenchgentleman had a hernia and hydrocele. He left his job and went to his sister in thecountry. He told her that he was completely broken and could no longer work. Therewas no point in prolonging his life, he said, as he felt only pain everywhere. His sister,12/10/2015 Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced Personalityhttp://www.yogamag.net/archives/2007/fjune07/integ.shtml 4/5a staunch devotee of yoga, told him to put some cream on his eyebrow centre andconcentrate on that point. One day while the French gentleman was practising this, aterrific sound exploded somewhere in his brain. Surprisingly his hernia was cured andhis hydrocele problem was completely resolved – for him it was a miracle. When I methim, I asked what had happened when he was concentrating on bhrumadhya, theeyebrow centre. He said that when he was a schoolboy he went to the fish shop andwhile eating, a fish bone got stuck in his teeth which later had to be removed by thedentist. When he was practising concentration on his bhrumadhya, he saw fish comingout of his mouth. After that, he too became a great devotee of yoga.Therefore, when practising mantra, do not discard or repress the experiences whicharise. You may think that while practising mantra, worldly thoughts should not enter

your mind, and if they do, then it is your duty to remove them in respect for themantra, but this is incorrect. According to yoga and psychology, we must observe,analyze and respect whatever thoughts or experiences come into our mind whilepractising japa.You will find that if the mantra is correct, it will work immediately. If it is not the rightone for you, it will still work, but slowly. To be powerful the mantra has to correlatewith all of our qualities and tendencies. The tantra and mantra shastras say that allmantras, with the exception of Aum, are classified into twelve main groups with fivesubdivisions. Only Aum can be repeated by anyone at any time, without restriction.The mantras which are used to explode the unconscious mind are very important.People with devotion for the Devi, particularly Durga or Kali, have fantasticexperiences while practising her mantra. Many of my disciples had terrifying dreams allnight after receiving her mantra. This is because the mantra is so powerful that itimmediately starts exploding the karmas from the unconscious mind. Just as a strongpurgative makes you go to the toilet every five minutes, so repetition of a powerfulmantra purges karma very quickly.Science of yogaThe science of yoga aims at perfecting human life. Every ordinary person hasextraordinary potential, but to develop this a strong and welltrainedmind isnecessary. Through the practices of yoga we can gain complete mastery over thebody and mind. The West gave technology to the world and made life verycomfortable, easy and quick. India can give yoga and spirituality and the whole worldis crying for it. People in the West are fed up and frightened of technology. Theywant a science to allay their fears and give them peace.Only the system of yoga which is still alive today in India can adequately fulfil thisneed. Therefore, all Indians wherever they are, must represent this science correctly.

Yoga is knowledge, not miracles, witchcraft or superstition. Yoga is a science whichcan be studied, practised, experienced, understood and explained by any educatedand wellreadperson. Yoga can improve relations and create international goodwill. Itis important to be able to give something to others which they can cherish deep intheir hearts.I give free discussions on yoga everywhere I go because I am fully convinced of itseffectiveness. My experience and experiments in life with thousands and thousands ofpeople, East and West are my proof. Now it is the duty of those who know that yogaproduces an integrated personality to acquaint themselves with all aspects of yoga. Itis no use saying that bhakti yoga alone is enough. If it were, why are religious peoplelying ill in hospitals and taking so many pills? Why are they unable to sleep in theircosy beds? Religion is bhakti yoga. We need an integrated approach to life. Justadding salt to the vegetables does not make a tasty dish. We must combine manyspices. Life is too complex for one aspect of yoga to suffice. With a comprehensiveapproach, life becomes rich.

Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced PersonalitySwami Satyananda SaraswatiSpeech at the Gita Ashram, Monrovia, Liberia, May 1977, first printed in YOGA,Vol. 15, No. 8, August 1977According to vedic dharma each person is a composite of four main qualities:dynamism, emotions, mysticism and rationalism. Some people are predominantlydynamic, others are more emotional, mystical or rational. Every personality is anintegration of these four essential temperaments. For the evolution of our personality

we have to integrate the four corresponding categories of yoga sadhana into ourlives.Sadhana is spiritual discipline or practice. Just as you train an animal, the personalitymust also be trained in order to be useful in this life. For the balanced development ofour personality, we must practise an integral yoga sadhana. By emphasizing oneaspect of sadhana, our development will be lopsided. If we eat protein and nothingelse, what will happen? Just as we carefully provide a balanced diet for the physicalbody, so we must supply a balance of nutrition to the spiritual body also. In theBhagavad Gita, Yoga Vashishtha, Srimad Bhagavata, and other scriptures, anintegration of the four systems of karma yoga, bhakti yoga, raja yoga and jnana yogais recommended. Those who overemphasize any one aspect of yoga should rememberthat this results in onesideddevelopment.Through the practice of karma yoga, bhakti yoga, raja yoga and jnana yoga, we cantrain the whole personality. This is what I want to tell everyone, everywhere. It iseasy to attain temporary tranquillity through certain practices, but to train the mind isvery difficult. To transform the entire consciousness into a creative instrument is noteasy.Transforming the mindSome years ago some research was conducted to find out the influence of kirtan onthe brain. When we do kirtan for half an hour, we feel relaxed. Why? What changetakes place in the structure of the personality and in the hormonal makeupof thebrain? Research has found that during repetitive singing of kirtan, the brain registersthe sound waves, which influences other wave patterns of the brain. These waves

awaken alpha rhythms which immediately induce tranquillity. Thus by singing kirtan weget peace of mind. This is well and good, but maintaining that state of mind during ourdaily life is not so easy. The peace we gain by practising this technique does notremain with us through the complicated and confusing patterns of our daily life.Therefore, side by side with yoga sadhana which gives us peace of mind, we mustalso remember the necessity of transforming the very structure of our mind. But how?When we drive our car into the petrol station to fill up the tank we find that petrol isof different categories. But when this petrol was extracted from the depths of theearth, what was it like then? Crude oil is so dirty but after being refined it becomes aremarkable agent of energy. It can even provide the power to fly an aeroplane.Similarly, the mind, or chitta, which we have inherited from our previous incarnationsstill remains in its crude or raw state. In the mental body we have so many thingswhich ought to be removed. When we become terribly angry or very tense, when weworry too much and pass sleepless nights due to family, business, social or politicalproblems, then we feel the necessity of purifying the mind. We must free it from allthese vrittis, those habits which we have formed in our personality from the presentand previous incarnations.We believe that the jiva or individual has undergone a process of selfincarnationin8,400,000 yonis or wombs. According to science, evolution has passed through afantastic panorama of existence, but despite these millions of incarnations that ourjiva has undergone, we still carry a very crude mind with us. This mind is composed ofthree gunas: sattwa, rajas, and tamas, which are the essential manifestations of12/10/2015 Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced Personalityhttp://www.yogamag.net/archives/2007/fjune07/integ.shtml 2/5

prakriti or nature. The three gunas are also used in a social or moral context becausethey indicate the personality of a person. Nature manifests as energy; in nature thereare static (tamasic), kinetic (rajasic) and balanced (sattwic) energies.If we want to make the mind infinite, we must cut and polish it just as we would adiamond. They say that tamas makes a person lethargic, rajas makes you violent andsattwa makes you balanced. Therefore, tamas and rajas have to be overcome bysattwa, and this is accomplished through the process of dhyana yoga. Dhyana hasbeen translated as meditation, but actually it means awareness. This can be attainedthrough raja yoga, bhakti yoga, jnana yoga, laya yoga, mantra yoga, and many otheryogic processes.The mind is not thought or emotion. Thought and emotion are patterns of mind.Happiness is a state of mind and so is depression. Mind is consciousness, awareness.Mind is a storehouse of energy, shakti. The pure mind is pure shakti. The mind can bepurified and corrected by following the methods most suited to our personality. Thosewho are very strong can take up the path of kundalini and kriya yoga. For others whoare not so strong and who haven’t yet developed much understanding of yoga, thereare other ways like mantra yoga or japa yoga.The mind is much more than thought or feeling. The mind is like an iceberg; only asmall portion is visible, the remainder lies submerged under the ocean. According tomodern psychology, the mind exists in three spheres: conscious, subconscious andunconscious. In Vedanta we call them: sthoola sharira, sukshma sharira and karanasharira.Exploding the unconscious mindThe unconscious mind is very powerful. The word ‘unconscious’ should not be

misunderstood. The unconscious mind is like a storehouse. All disease, success andtragedy in life originate in the unconscious mind. The experiences that you have hadin life, important as well as unimportant, are all registered there. It is something like ahidden camera in the street. Everything that passes within its range is immediatelyphotographed. In the same way, whatever experience you have is immediatelytransferred back to the unconscious through the indriyas or senses and the mind.There they are stored in bija or seed form. This process starts rights from the timewhen the child is in the womb of the mother. From the fourth month of pregnancy,children have certain experiences which are embedded deep in the unconscious mind.Through the practices of kundalini, kriya and laya yoga, the unconscious mind can beexploded. What happens when we explode the unconscious mind? Here is an exampleof how an ordinary, insignificant experience can cause great damage to one’s mind. Inour ashram there was an intelligent engineer who could not manage to complete hiseducation or hold his job. Every morning from six till nine, he would go into a fit ofdepression. He became so restless that sometimes he felt he was going to die. Inthese fits of depression, he could not sit quietly, walk or talk. He left his career as abright mechanical engineer in the UK and wandered around Africa. Finally, he came toIndia and found his way to our ashram.One morning he was on the roof terrace and on the street below he saw a pig eatinghuman filth. This is quite a common scene for those of us who have lived in Indianvillages, but for this young man it was something new. The moment he saw it, hesuddenly remembered an incident from his childhood. When he was eight years old, heused to go fishing. One morning when he was preparing his tackle, he opened the

small tin in which he kept little maggots for bait. He had forgotten to empty it the lasttime he had gone fishing, and when he lifted the lid hundreds of flies swarmed in hisface. The moment he saw the pig eating human filth, his unconscious exploded andthis deep childhood memory came out. Since then the young man has never hadanother fit, and is perfectly all right.KarmaEvery action, every thought, every place is an experience. A satsang or a lecture onthe Bhagavad Gita is an experience. Even an ordinary experience can become very12/10/2015 Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced Personalityhttp://www.yogamag.net/archives/2007/fjune07/integ.shtml 3/5consequential in later life. There are so many types of karma. Charity is one karmaand plundering someone’s property is another. Even if you don’t do these things, stillyou are making karma. In the Gita, it is said that there is not one moment in life inwhich a person is free of karma. Only in samadhi can you completely do away withkarma, otherwise not. Modern psychology and yoga agree that even during deep sleepwhen you are not aware of time and space, name and form, your mind is still working.Remember that the unconscious mind is the storehouse of all past experiences orkarmas, not only in this life, but in our previous lives as well.The unconscious body is called hiranyagarbha, the golden egg. By the practice ofmantra sadhana we can penetrate it deeply and eliminate all kinds of karmas, one byone. That is why they say that by the practice of mantra one becomes free from theentanglements of karma.Every action is born of a deep karma. Every thought, movement, success, failure is areenactmentof one of our previous experiences. Here is another example, a clinicalcase concerning a husband and wife who loved each other very much. They were

very happy together at home, but whenever they went out to dinner, for a walk, on apicnic, etc. they always fought. Why? When the husband was a child of four, hewalked into the bathroom when his mother was taking a bath. She quickly covered herbody with a dirty housedress, pushed him out and locked the door. Now, wheneverthe husband is at home, his wife is engaged in housework. She wears an oldhousedress and he loves her. He is still working out the problem of the old dress withwhich his mother covered herself in the bathroom. Whenever his wife is not wearingher old housedress, he doesn’t like her! Such simple childhood experiences can causeso many problems. Many good people suffer unnecessarily because they are unawareof their karmas and how they fructify.Mantra yogaThere are two ways of practising mantra yoga: one is the repetition of a bija mantralike Aum, Hrim, Shrim, Klim; the other is using the name of one’s guru or favouritedeity. Nowadays we have lost touch with the original mantra yoga system. If we feeldevotion for Shiva, then we practise ‘Om Namah Shivaya’. If we feel more inclinedtowards Rama, we repeat ‘Sri Ram Jai Ram’. When we feel attracted towards Krishna,we say ‘Om Namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya’. But according to mantra shastra, themantra must be very carefully selected to suit each individual personality. The bijamantras are very powerful. They can allay the strong influence of karmas. Mantrashould always be practised with a mala. Even in meditation when mantra issynchronized with the breath, a mala is still used.Japa and antar mounaWhen practising mantra, a lot of things come up in the mind which would not come upotherwise. When past incidents arise, what do we do? The usual response is tosuppress these thoughts because we are more interested in our mantra. So when we

are practising japa and a thought come, we push it out; another one comes and wepush it out. But this is incorrect. We do not want to avoid karma, but to eliminate it.Therefore, it is necessary to observe each thought and let it pass of its own accord.Thus japa yoga must be followed or accompanied by antar mouna, the process ofwitnessing our thoughts. When we are practising mantra and a thought comes intoour mind, we must stop for a moment and see the thought, whatever it is, thencontinue the mantra until another thought comes. During the practice of japa andantar mouna, over a period of months the significant and insignificant memories of thepast flash into our mind. These memories should be seen very clearly if we want topurify our mind. Every experience we have during mantra practice or meditation hasan important bearing on our life.I know of many people who have changed completely through the practice of japaand antar mouna and they were amazed to see how it happened. One Frenchgentleman had a hernia and hydrocele. He left his job and went to his sister in thecountry. He told her that he was completely broken and could no longer work. Therewas no point in prolonging his life, he said, as he felt only pain everywhere. His sister,12/10/2015 Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced Personalityhttp://www.yogamag.net/archives/2007/fjune07/integ.shtml 4/5a staunch devotee of yoga, told him to put some cream on his eyebrow centre andconcentrate on that point. One day while the French gentleman was practising this, aterrific sound exploded somewhere in his brain. Surprisingly his hernia was cured andhis hydrocele problem was completely resolved – for him it was a miracle. When I methim, I asked what had happened when he was concentrating on bhrumadhya, the

eyebrow centre. He said that when he was a schoolboy he went to the fish shop andwhile eating, a fish bone got stuck in his teeth which later had to be removed by thedentist. When he was practising concentration on his bhrumadhya, he saw fish comingout of his mouth. After that, he too became a great devotee of yoga.Therefore, when practising mantra, do not discard or repress the experiences whicharise. You may think that while practising mantra, worldly thoughts should not enteryour mind, and if they do, then it is your duty to remove them in respect for themantra, but this is incorrect. According to yoga and psychology, we must observe,analyze and respect whatever thoughts or experiences come into our mind whilepractising japa.You will find that if the mantra is correct, it will work immediately. If it is not the rightone for you, it will still work, but slowly. To be powerful the mantra has to correlatewith all of our qualities and tendencies. The tantra and mantra shastras say that allmantras, with the exception of Aum, are classified into twelve main groups with fivesubdivisions. Only Aum can be repeated by anyone at any time, without restriction.The mantras which are used to explode the unconscious mind are very important.People with devotion for the Devi, particularly Durga or Kali, have fantasticexperiences while practising her mantra. Many of my disciples had terrifying dreams allnight after receiving her mantra. This is because the mantra is so powerful that itimmediately starts exploding the karmas from the unconscious mind. Just as a strongpurgative makes you go to the toilet every five minutes, so repetition of a powerfulmantra purges karma very quickly.Science of yogaThe science of yoga aims at perfecting human life. Every ordinary person has

extraordinary potential, but to develop this a strong and welltrainedmind isnecessary. Through the practices of yoga we can gain complete mastery over thebody and mind. The West gave technology to the world and made life verycomfortable, easy and quick. India can give yoga and spirituality and the whole worldis crying for it. People in the West are fed up and frightened of technology. Theywant a science to allay their fears and give them peace.Only the system of yoga which is still alive today in India can adequately fulfil thisneed. Therefore, all Indians wherever they are, must represent this science correctly.Yoga is knowledge, not miracles, witchcraft or superstition. Yoga is a science whichcan be studied, practised, experienced, understood and explained by any educatedand wellreadperson. Yoga can improve relations and create international goodwill. Itis important to be able to give something to others which they can cherish deep intheir hearts.I give free discussions on yoga everywhere I go because I am fully convinced of itseffectiveness. My experience and experiments in life with thousands and thousands ofpeople, East and West are my proof. Now it is the duty of those who know that yogaproduces an integrated personality to acquaint themselves with all aspects of yoga. Itis no use saying that bhakti yoga alone is enough. If it were, why are religious peoplelying ill in hospitals and taking so many pills? Why are they unable to sleep in theircosy beds? Religion is bhakti yoga. We need an integrated approach to life. Justadding salt to the vegetables does not make a tasty dish. We must combine manyspices. Life is too complex for one aspect of yoga to suffice. With a comprehensiveapproach, life becomes rich.

Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced PersonalitySwami Satyananda SaraswatiSpeech at the Gita Ashram, Monrovia, Liberia, May 1977, first printed in YOGA,Vol. 15, No. 8, August 1977According to vedic dharma each person is a composite of four main qualities:dynamism, emotions, mysticism and rationalism. Some people are predominantlydynamic, others are more emotional, mystical or rational. Every personality is anintegration of these four essential temperaments. For the evolution of our personalitywe have to integrate the four corresponding categories of yoga sadhana into ourlives.Sadhana is spiritual discipline or practice. Just as you train an animal, the personalitymust also be trained in order to be useful in this life. For the balanced development ofour personality, we must practise an integral yoga sadhana. By emphasizing oneaspect of sadhana, our development will be lopsided. If we eat protein and nothingelse, what will happen? Just as we carefully provide a balanced diet for the physicalbody, so we must supply a balance of nutrition to the spiritual body also. In theBhagavad Gita, Yoga Vashishtha, Srimad Bhagavata, and other scriptures, anintegration of the four systems of karma yoga, bhakti yoga, raja yoga and jnana yogais recommended. Those who overemphasize any one aspect of yoga should rememberthat this results in onesideddevelopment.Through the practice of karma yoga, bhakti yoga, raja yoga and jnana yoga, we cantrain the whole personality. This is what I want to tell everyone, everywhere. It iseasy to attain temporary tranquillity through certain practices, but to train the mind isvery difficult. To transform the entire consciousness into a creative instrument is noteasy.Transforming the mind

Some years ago some research was conducted to find out the influence of kirtan onthe brain. When we do kirtan for half an hour, we feel relaxed. Why? What changetakes place in the structure of the personality and in the hormonal makeupof thebrain? Research has found that during repetitive singing of kirtan, the brain registersthe sound waves, which influences other wave patterns of the brain. These wavesawaken alpha rhythms which immediately induce tranquillity. Thus by singing kirtan weget peace of mind. This is well and good, but maintaining that state of mind during ourdaily life is not so easy. The peace we gain by practising this technique does notremain with us through the complicated and confusing patterns of our daily life.Therefore, side by side with yoga sadhana which gives us peace of mind, we mustalso remember the necessity of transforming the very structure of our mind. But how?When we drive our car into the petrol station to fill up the tank we find that petrol isof different categories. But when this petrol was extracted from the depths of theearth, what was it like then? Crude oil is so dirty but after being refined it becomes aremarkable agent of energy. It can even provide the power to fly an aeroplane.Similarly, the mind, or chitta, which we have inherited from our previous incarnationsstill remains in its crude or raw state. In the mental body we have so many thingswhich ought to be removed. When we become terribly angry or very tense, when weworry too much and pass sleepless nights due to family, business, social or politicalproblems, then we feel the necessity of purifying the mind. We must free it from allthese vrittis, those habits which we have formed in our personality from the presentand previous incarnations.We believe that the jiva or individual has undergone a process of selfincarnation

in8,400,000 yonis or wombs. According to science, evolution has passed through afantastic panorama of existence, but despite these millions of incarnations that ourjiva has undergone, we still carry a very crude mind with us. This mind is composed ofthree gunas: sattwa, rajas, and tamas, which are the essential manifestations of12/10/2015 Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced Personalityhttp://www.yogamag.net/archives/2007/fjune07/integ.shtml 2/5prakriti or nature. The three gunas are also used in a social or moral context becausethey indicate the personality of a person. Nature manifests as energy; in nature thereare static (tamasic), kinetic (rajasic) and balanced (sattwic) energies.If we want to make the mind infinite, we must cut and polish it just as we would adiamond. They say that tamas makes a person lethargic, rajas makes you violent andsattwa makes you balanced. Therefore, tamas and rajas have to be overcome bysattwa, and this is accomplished through the process of dhyana yoga. Dhyana hasbeen translated as meditation, but actually it means awareness. This can be attainedthrough raja yoga, bhakti yoga, jnana yoga, laya yoga, mantra yoga, and many otheryogic processes.The mind is not thought or emotion. Thought and emotion are patterns of mind.Happiness is a state of mind and so is depression. Mind is consciousness, awareness.Mind is a storehouse of energy, shakti. The pure mind is pure shakti. The mind can bepurified and corrected by following the methods most suited to our personality. Thosewho are very strong can take up the path of kundalini and kriya yoga. For others whoare not so strong and who haven’t yet developed much understanding of yoga, thereare other ways like mantra yoga or japa yoga.The mind is much more than thought or feeling. The mind is like an iceberg; only a

small portion is visible, the remainder lies submerged under the ocean. According tomodern psychology, the mind exists in three spheres: conscious, subconscious andunconscious. In Vedanta we call them: sthoola sharira, sukshma sharira and karanasharira.Exploding the unconscious mindThe unconscious mind is very powerful. The word ‘unconscious’ should not bemisunderstood. The unconscious mind is like a storehouse. All disease, success andtragedy in life originate in the unconscious mind. The experiences that you have hadin life, important as well as unimportant, are all registered there. It is something like ahidden camera in the street. Everything that passes within its range is immediatelyphotographed. In the same way, whatever experience you have is immediatelytransferred back to the unconscious through the indriyas or senses and the mind.There they are stored in bija or seed form. This process starts rights from the timewhen the child is in the womb of the mother. From the fourth month of pregnancy,children have certain experiences which are embedded deep in the unconscious mind.Through the practices of kundalini, kriya and laya yoga, the unconscious mind can beexploded. What happens when we explode the unconscious mind? Here is an exampleof how an ordinary, insignificant experience can cause great damage to one’s mind. Inour ashram there was an intelligent engineer who could not manage to complete hiseducation or hold his job. Every morning from six till nine, he would go into a fit ofdepression. He became so restless that sometimes he felt he was going to die. Inthese fits of depression, he could not sit quietly, walk or talk. He left his career as a

bright mechanical engineer in the UK and wandered around Africa. Finally, he came toIndia and found his way to our ashram.One morning he was on the roof terrace and on the street below he saw a pig eatinghuman filth. This is quite a common scene for those of us who have lived in Indianvillages, but for this young man it was something new. The moment he saw it, hesuddenly remembered an incident from his childhood. When he was eight years old, heused to go fishing. One morning when he was preparing his tackle, he opened thesmall tin in which he kept little maggots for bait. He had forgotten to empty it the lasttime he had gone fishing, and when he lifted the lid hundreds of flies swarmed in hisface. The moment he saw the pig eating human filth, his unconscious exploded andthis deep childhood memory came out. Since then the young man has never hadanother fit, and is perfectly all right.KarmaEvery action, every thought, every place is an experience. A satsang or a lecture onthe Bhagavad Gita is an experience. Even an ordinary experience can become very12/10/2015 Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced Personalityhttp://www.yogamag.net/archives/2007/fjune07/integ.shtml 3/5consequential in later life. There are so many types of karma. Charity is one karmaand plundering someone’s property is another. Even if you don’t do these things, stillyou are making karma. In the Gita, it is said that there is not one moment in life inwhich a person is free of karma. Only in samadhi can you completely do away withkarma, otherwise not. Modern psychology and yoga agree that even during deep sleepwhen you are not aware of time and space, name and form, your mind is still working.Remember that the unconscious mind is the storehouse of all past experiences orkarmas, not only in this life, but in our previous lives as well.The unconscious body is called hiranyagarbha, the golden egg. By the practice of

mantra sadhana we can penetrate it deeply and eliminate all kinds of karmas, one byone. That is why they say that by the practice of mantra one becomes free from theentanglements of karma.Every action is born of a deep karma. Every thought, movement, success, failure is areenactmentof one of our previous experiences. Here is another example, a clinicalcase concerning a husband and wife who loved each other very much. They werevery happy together at home, but whenever they went out to dinner, for a walk, on apicnic, etc. they always fought. Why? When the husband was a child of four, hewalked into the bathroom when his mother was taking a bath. She quickly covered herbody with a dirty housedress, pushed him out and locked the door. Now, wheneverthe husband is at home, his wife is engaged in housework. She wears an oldhousedress and he loves her. He is still working out the problem of the old dress withwhich his mother covered herself in the bathroom. Whenever his wife is not wearingher old housedress, he doesn’t like her! Such simple childhood experiences can causeso many problems. Many good people suffer unnecessarily because they are unawareof their karmas and how they fructify.Mantra yogaThere are two ways of practising mantra yoga: one is the repetition of a bija mantralike Aum, Hrim, Shrim, Klim; the other is using the name of one’s guru or favouritedeity. Nowadays we have lost touch with the original mantra yoga system. If we feeldevotion for Shiva, then we practise ‘Om Namah Shivaya’. If we feel more inclinedtowards Rama, we repeat ‘Sri Ram Jai Ram’. When we feel attracted towards Krishna,we say ‘Om Namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya’. But according to mantra shastra, the

mantra must be very carefully selected to suit each individual personality. The bijamantras are very powerful. They can allay the strong influence of karmas. Mantrashould always be practised with a mala. Even in meditation when mantra issynchronized with the breath, a mala is still used.Japa and antar mounaWhen practising mantra, a lot of things come up in the mind which would not come upotherwise. When past incidents arise, what do we do? The usual response is tosuppress these thoughts because we are more interested in our mantra. So when weare practising japa and a thought come, we push it out; another one comes and wepush it out. But this is incorrect. We do not want to avoid karma, but to eliminate it.Therefore, it is necessary to observe each thought and let it pass of its own accord.Thus japa yoga must be followed or accompanied by antar mouna, the process ofwitnessing our thoughts. When we are practising mantra and a thought comes intoour mind, we must stop for a moment and see the thought, whatever it is, thencontinue the mantra until another thought comes. During the practice of japa andantar mouna, over a period of months the significant and insignificant memories of thepast flash into our mind. These memories should be seen very clearly if we want topurify our mind. Every experience we have during mantra practice or meditation hasan important bearing on our life.I know of many people who have changed completely through the practice of japaand antar mouna and they were amazed to see how it happened. One Frenchgentleman had a hernia and hydrocele. He left his job and went to his sister in thecountry. He told her that he was completely broken and could no longer work. Therewas no point in prolonging his life, he said, as he felt only pain everywhere. His sister,12/10/2015 Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced Personalityhttp://www.yogamag.net/archives/2007/fjune07/integ.shtml 4/5

a staunch devotee of yoga, told him to put some cream on his eyebrow centre andconcentrate on that point. One day while the French gentleman was practising this, aterrific sound exploded somewhere in his brain. Surprisingly his hernia was cured andhis hydrocele problem was completely resolved – for him it was a miracle. When I methim, I asked what had happened when he was concentrating on bhrumadhya, theeyebrow centre. He said that when he was a schoolboy he went to the fish shop andwhile eating, a fish bone got stuck in his teeth which later had to be removed by thedentist. When he was practising concentration on his bhrumadhya, he saw fish comingout of his mouth. After that, he too became a great devotee of yoga.Therefore, when practising mantra, do not discard or repress the experiences whicharise. You may think that while practising mantra, worldly thoughts should not enteryour mind, and if they do, then it is your duty to remove them in respect for themantra, but this is incorrect. According to yoga and psychology, we must observe,analyze and respect whatever thoughts or experiences come into our mind whilepractising japa.You will find that if the mantra is correct, it will work immediately. If it is not the rightone for you, it will still work, but slowly. To be powerful the mantra has to correlatewith all of our qualities and tendencies. The tantra and mantra shastras say that allmantras, with the exception of Aum, are classified into twelve main groups with fivesubdivisions. Only Aum can be repeated by anyone at any time, without restriction.The mantras which are used to explode the unconscious mind are very important.People with devotion for the Devi, particularly Durga or Kali, have fantastic

experiences while practising her mantra. Many of my disciples had terrifying dreams allnight after receiving her mantra. This is because the mantra is so powerful that itimmediately starts exploding the karmas from the unconscious mind. Just as a strongpurgative makes you go to the toilet every five minutes, so repetition of a powerfulmantra purges karma very quickly.Science of yogaThe science of yoga aims at perfecting human life. Every ordinary person hasextraordinary potential, but to develop this a strong and welltrainedmind isnecessary. Through the practices of yoga we can gain complete mastery over thebody and mind. The West gave technology to the world and made life verycomfortable, easy and quick. India can give yoga and spirituality and the whole worldis crying for it. People in the West are fed up and frightened of technology. Theywant a science to allay their fears and give them peace.Only the system of yoga which is still alive today in India can adequately fulfil thisneed. Therefore, all Indians wherever they are, must represent this science correctly.Yoga is knowledge, not miracles, witchcraft or superstition. Yoga is a science whichcan be studied, practised, experienced, understood and explained by any educatedand wellreadperson. Yoga can improve relations and create international goodwill. Itis important to be able to give something to others which they can cherish deep intheir hearts.I give free discussions on yoga everywhere I go because I am fully convinced of itseffectiveness. My experience and experiments in life with thousands and thousands ofpeople, East and West are my proof. Now it is the duty of those who know that yogaproduces an integrated personality to acquaint themselves with all aspects of yoga. It

is no use saying that bhakti yoga alone is enough. If it were, why are religious peoplelying ill in hospitals and taking so many pills? Why are they unable to sleep in theircosy beds? Religion is bhakti yoga. We need an integrated approach to life. Justadding salt to the vegetables does not make a tasty dish. We must combine manyspices. Life is too complex for one aspect of yoga to suffice. With a comprehensiveapproach, life becomes rich.

Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced PersonalitySwami Satyananda SaraswatiSpeech at the Gita Ashram, Monrovia, Liberia, May 1977, first printed in YOGA,Vol. 15, No. 8, August 1977According to vedic dharma each person is a composite of four main qualities:dynamism, emotions, mysticism and rationalism. Some people are predominantlydynamic, others are more emotional, mystical or rational. Every personality is anintegration of these four essential temperaments. For the evolution of our personalitywe have to integrate the four corresponding categories of yoga sadhana into ourlives.Sadhana is spiritual discipline or practice. Just as you train an animal, the personalitymust also be trained in order to be useful in this life. For the balanced development ofour personality, we must practise an integral yoga sadhana. By emphasizing oneaspect of sadhana, our development will be lopsided. If we eat protein and nothingelse, what will happen? Just as we carefully provide a balanced diet for the physicalbody, so we must supply a balance of nutrition to the spiritual body also. In theBhagavad Gita, Yoga Vashishtha, Srimad Bhagavata, and other scriptures, anintegration of the four systems of karma yoga, bhakti yoga, raja yoga and jnana yogais recommended. Those who overemphasize any one aspect of yoga should rememberthat this results in onesided

development.Through the practice of karma yoga, bhakti yoga, raja yoga and jnana yoga, we cantrain the whole personality. This is what I want to tell everyone, everywhere. It iseasy to attain temporary tranquillity through certain practices, but to train the mind isvery difficult. To transform the entire consciousness into a creative instrument is noteasy.Transforming the mindSome years ago some research was conducted to find out the influence of kirtan onthe brain. When we do kirtan for half an hour, we feel relaxed. Why? What changetakes place in the structure of the personality and in the hormonal makeupof thebrain? Research has found that during repetitive singing of kirtan, the brain registersthe sound waves, which influences other wave patterns of the brain. These wavesawaken alpha rhythms which immediately induce tranquillity. Thus by singing kirtan weget peace of mind. This is well and good, but maintaining that state of mind during ourdaily life is not so easy. The peace we gain by practising this technique does notremain with us through the complicated and confusing patterns of our daily life.Therefore, side by side with yoga sadhana which gives us peace of mind, we mustalso remember the necessity of transforming the very structure of our mind. But how?When we drive our car into the petrol station to fill up the tank we find that petrol isof different categories. But when this petrol was extracted from the depths of theearth, what was it like then? Crude oil is so dirty but after being refined it becomes aremarkable agent of energy. It can even provide the power to fly an aeroplane.Similarly, the mind, or chitta, which we have inherited from our previous incarnationsstill remains in its crude or raw state. In the mental body we have so many things

which ought to be removed. When we become terribly angry or very tense, when weworry too much and pass sleepless nights due to family, business, social or politicalproblems, then we feel the necessity of purifying the mind. We must free it from allthese vrittis, those habits which we have formed in our personality from the presentand previous incarnations.We believe that the jiva or individual has undergone a process of selfincarnationin8,400,000 yonis or wombs. According to science, evolution has passed through afantastic panorama of existence, but despite these millions of incarnations that ourjiva has undergone, we still carry a very crude mind with us. This mind is composed ofthree gunas: sattwa, rajas, and tamas, which are the essential manifestations of12/10/2015 Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced Personalityhttp://www.yogamag.net/archives/2007/fjune07/integ.shtml 2/5prakriti or nature. The three gunas are also used in a social or moral context becausethey indicate the personality of a person. Nature manifests as energy; in nature thereare static (tamasic), kinetic (rajasic) and balanced (sattwic) energies.If we want to make the mind infinite, we must cut and polish it just as we would adiamond. They say that tamas makes a person lethargic, rajas makes you violent andsattwa makes you balanced. Therefore, tamas and rajas have to be overcome bysattwa, and this is accomplished through the process of dhyana yoga. Dhyana hasbeen translated as meditation, but actually it means awareness. This can be attainedthrough raja yoga, bhakti yoga, jnana yoga, laya yoga, mantra yoga, and many otheryogic processes.The mind is not thought or emotion. Thought and emotion are patterns of mind.Happiness is a state of mind and so is depression. Mind is consciousness, awareness.

Mind is a storehouse of energy, shakti. The pure mind is pure shakti. The mind can bepurified and corrected by following the methods most suited to our personality. Thosewho are very strong can take up the path of kundalini and kriya yoga. For others whoare not so strong and who haven’t yet developed much understanding of yoga, thereare other ways like mantra yoga or japa yoga.The mind is much more than thought or feeling. The mind is like an iceberg; only asmall portion is visible, the remainder lies submerged under the ocean. According tomodern psychology, the mind exists in three spheres: conscious, subconscious andunconscious. In Vedanta we call them: sthoola sharira, sukshma sharira and karanasharira.Exploding the unconscious mindThe unconscious mind is very powerful. The word ‘unconscious’ should not bemisunderstood. The unconscious mind is like a storehouse. All disease, success andtragedy in life originate in the unconscious mind. The experiences that you have hadin life, important as well as unimportant, are all registered there. It is something like ahidden camera in the street. Everything that passes within its range is immediatelyphotographed. In the same way, whatever experience you have is immediatelytransferred back to the unconscious through the indriyas or senses and the mind.There they are stored in bija or seed form. This process starts rights from the timewhen the child is in the womb of the mother. From the fourth month of pregnancy,children have certain experiences which are embedded deep in the unconscious mind.Through the practices of kundalini, kriya and laya yoga, the unconscious mind can be

exploded. What happens when we explode the unconscious mind? Here is an exampleof how an ordinary, insignificant experience can cause great damage to one’s mind. Inour ashram there was an intelligent engineer who could not manage to complete hiseducation or hold his job. Every morning from six till nine, he would go into a fit ofdepression. He became so restless that sometimes he felt he was going to die. Inthese fits of depression, he could not sit quietly, walk or talk. He left his career as abright mechanical engineer in the UK and wandered around Africa. Finally, he came toIndia and found his way to our ashram.One morning he was on the roof terrace and on the street below he saw a pig eatinghuman filth. This is quite a common scene for those of us who have lived in Indianvillages, but for this young man it was something new. The moment he saw it, hesuddenly remembered an incident from his childhood. When he was eight years old, heused to go fishing. One morning when he was preparing his tackle, he opened thesmall tin in which he kept little maggots for bait. He had forgotten to empty it the lasttime he had gone fishing, and when he lifted the lid hundreds of flies swarmed in hisface. The moment he saw the pig eating human filth, his unconscious exploded andthis deep childhood memory came out. Since then the young man has never hadanother fit, and is perfectly all right.KarmaEvery action, every thought, every place is an experience. A satsang or a lecture onthe Bhagavad Gita is an experience. Even an ordinary experience can become very12/10/2015 Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced Personalityhttp://www.yogamag.net/archives/2007/fjune07/integ.shtml 3/5consequential in later life. There are so many types of karma. Charity is one karmaand plundering someone’s property is another. Even if you don’t do these things, still

you are making karma. In the Gita, it is said that there is not one moment in life inwhich a person is free of karma. Only in samadhi can you completely do away withkarma, otherwise not. Modern psychology and yoga agree that even during deep sleepwhen you are not aware of time and space, name and form, your mind is still working.Remember that the unconscious mind is the storehouse of all past experiences orkarmas, not only in this life, but in our previous lives as well.The unconscious body is called hiranyagarbha, the golden egg. By the practice ofmantra sadhana we can penetrate it deeply and eliminate all kinds of karmas, one byone. That is why they say that by the practice of mantra one becomes free from theentanglements of karma.Every action is born of a deep karma. Every thought, movement, success, failure is areenactmentof one of our previous experiences. Here is another example, a clinicalcase concerning a husband and wife who loved each other very much. They werevery happy together at home, but whenever they went out to dinner, for a walk, on apicnic, etc. they always fought. Why? When the husband was a child of four, hewalked into the bathroom when his mother was taking a bath. She quickly covered herbody with a dirty housedress, pushed him out and locked the door. Now, wheneverthe husband is at home, his wife is engaged in housework. She wears an oldhousedress and he loves her. He is still working out the problem of the old dress withwhich his mother covered herself in the bathroom. Whenever his wife is not wearingher old housedress, he doesn’t like her! Such simple childhood experiences can causeso many problems. Many good people suffer unnecessarily because they are unawareof their karmas and how they fructify.

Mantra yogaThere are two ways of practising mantra yoga: one is the repetition of a bija mantralike Aum, Hrim, Shrim, Klim; the other is using the name of one’s guru or favouritedeity. Nowadays we have lost touch with the original mantra yoga system. If we feeldevotion for Shiva, then we practise ‘Om Namah Shivaya’. If we feel more inclinedtowards Rama, we repeat ‘Sri Ram Jai Ram’. When we feel attracted towards Krishna,we say ‘Om Namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya’. But according to mantra shastra, themantra must be very carefully selected to suit each individual personality. The bijamantras are very powerful. They can allay the strong influence of karmas. Mantrashould always be practised with a mala. Even in meditation when mantra issynchronized with the breath, a mala is still used.Japa and antar mounaWhen practising mantra, a lot of things come up in the mind which would not come upotherwise. When past incidents arise, what do we do? The usual response is tosuppress these thoughts because we are more interested in our mantra. So when weare practising japa and a thought come, we push it out; another one comes and wepush it out. But this is incorrect. We do not want to avoid karma, but to eliminate it.Therefore, it is necessary to observe each thought and let it pass of its own accord.Thus japa yoga must be followed or accompanied by antar mouna, the process ofwitnessing our thoughts. When we are practising mantra and a thought comes intoour mind, we must stop for a moment and see the thought, whatever it is, thencontinue the mantra until another thought comes. During the practice of japa andantar mouna, over a period of months the significant and insignificant memories of thepast flash into our mind. These memories should be seen very clearly if we want topurify our mind. Every experience we have during mantra practice or meditation has

an important bearing on our life.I know of many people who have changed completely through the practice of japaand antar mouna and they were amazed to see how it happened. One Frenchgentleman had a hernia and hydrocele. He left his job and went to his sister in thecountry. He told her that he was completely broken and could no longer work. Therewas no point in prolonging his life, he said, as he felt only pain everywhere. His sister,12/10/2015 Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced Personalityhttp://www.yogamag.net/archives/2007/fjune07/integ.shtml 4/5a staunch devotee of yoga, told him to put some cream on his eyebrow centre andconcentrate on that point. One day while the French gentleman was practising this, aterrific sound exploded somewhere in his brain. Surprisingly his hernia was cured andhis hydrocele problem was completely resolved – for him it was a miracle. When I methim, I asked what had happened when he was concentrating on bhrumadhya, theeyebrow centre. He said that when he was a schoolboy he went to the fish shop andwhile eating, a fish bone got stuck in his teeth which later had to be removed by thedentist. When he was practising concentration on his bhrumadhya, he saw fish comingout of his mouth. After that, he too became a great devotee of yoga.Therefore, when practising mantra, do not discard or repress the experiences whicharise. You may think that while practising mantra, worldly thoughts should not enteryour mind, and if they do, then it is your duty to remove them in respect for themantra, but this is incorrect. According to yoga and psychology, we must observe,analyze and respect whatever thoughts or experiences come into our mind whilepractising japa.You will find that if the mantra is correct, it will work immediately. If it is not the right

one for you, it will still work, but slowly. To be powerful the mantra has to correlatewith all of our qualities and tendencies. The tantra and mantra shastras say that allmantras, with the exception of Aum, are classified into twelve main groups with fivesubdivisions. Only Aum can be repeated by anyone at any time, without restriction.The mantras which are used to explode the unconscious mind are very important.People with devotion for the Devi, particularly Durga or Kali, have fantasticexperiences while practising her mantra. Many of my disciples had terrifying dreams allnight after receiving her mantra. This is because the mantra is so powerful that itimmediately starts exploding the karmas from the unconscious mind. Just as a strongpurgative makes you go to the toilet every five minutes, so repetition of a powerfulmantra purges karma very quickly.Science of yogaThe science of yoga aims at perfecting human life. Every ordinary person hasextraordinary potential, but to develop this a strong and welltrainedmind isnecessary. Through the practices of yoga we can gain complete mastery over thebody and mind. The West gave technology to the world and made life verycomfortable, easy and quick. India can give yoga and spirituality and the whole worldis crying for it. People in the West are fed up and frightened of technology. Theywant a science to allay their fears and give them peace.Only the system of yoga which is still alive today in India can adequately fulfil thisneed. Therefore, all Indians wherever they are, must represent this science correctly.Yoga is knowledge, not miracles, witchcraft or superstition. Yoga is a science whichcan be studied, practised, experienced, understood and explained by any educatedand wellreadperson. Yoga can improve relations and create international goodwill. It

is important to be able to give something to others which they can cherish deep intheir hearts.I give free discussions on yoga everywhere I go because I am fully convinced of itseffectiveness. My experience and experiments in life with thousands and thousands ofpeople, East and West are my proof. Now it is the duty of those who know that yogaproduces an integrated personality to acquaint themselves with all aspects of yoga. Itis no use saying that bhakti yoga alone is enough. If it were, why are religious peoplelying ill in hospitals and taking so many pills? Why are they unable to sleep in theircosy beds? Religion is bhakti yoga. We need an integrated approach to life. Justadding salt to the vegetables does not make a tasty dish. We must combine manyspices. Life is too complex for one aspect of yoga to suffice. With a comprehensiveapproach, life becomes rich.

Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced PersonalitySwami Satyananda SaraswatiSpeech at the Gita Ashram, Monrovia, Liberia, May 1977, first printed in YOGA,Vol. 15, No. 8, August 1977According to vedic dharma each person is a composite of four main qualities:dynamism, emotions, mysticism and rationalism. Some people are predominantlydynamic, others are more emotional, mystical or rational. Every personality is anintegration of these four essential temperaments. For the evolution of our personalitywe have to integrate the four corresponding categories of yoga sadhana into ourlives.Sadhana is spiritual discipline or practice. Just as you train an animal, the personalitymust also be trained in order to be useful in this life. For the balanced development ofour personality, we must practise an integral yoga sadhana. By emphasizing one

aspect of sadhana, our development will be lopsided. If we eat protein and nothingelse, what will happen? Just as we carefully provide a balanced diet for the physicalbody, so we must supply a balance of nutrition to the spiritual body also. In theBhagavad Gita, Yoga Vashishtha, Srimad Bhagavata, and other scriptures, anintegration of the four systems of karma yoga, bhakti yoga, raja yoga and jnana yogais recommended. Those who overemphasize any one aspect of yoga should rememberthat this results in onesideddevelopment.Through the practice of karma yoga, bhakti yoga, raja yoga and jnana yoga, we cantrain the whole personality. This is what I want to tell everyone, everywhere. It iseasy to attain temporary tranquillity through certain practices, but to train the mind isvery difficult. To transform the entire consciousness into a creative instrument is noteasy.Transforming the mindSome years ago some research was conducted to find out the influence of kirtan onthe brain. When we do kirtan for half an hour, we feel relaxed. Why? What changetakes place in the structure of the personality and in the hormonal makeupof thebrain? Research has found that during repetitive singing of kirtan, the brain registersthe sound waves, which influences other wave patterns of the brain. These wavesawaken alpha rhythms which immediately induce tranquillity. Thus by singing kirtan weget peace of mind. This is well and good, but maintaining that state of mind during ourdaily life is not so easy. The peace we gain by practising this technique does notremain with us through the complicated and confusing patterns of our daily life.Therefore, side by side with yoga sadhana which gives us peace of mind, we must

also remember the necessity of transforming the very structure of our mind. But how?When we drive our car into the petrol station to fill up the tank we find that petrol isof different categories. But when this petrol was extracted from the depths of theearth, what was it like then? Crude oil is so dirty but after being refined it becomes aremarkable agent of energy. It can even provide the power to fly an aeroplane.Similarly, the mind, or chitta, which we have inherited from our previous incarnationsstill remains in its crude or raw state. In the mental body we have so many thingswhich ought to be removed. When we become terribly angry or very tense, when weworry too much and pass sleepless nights due to family, business, social or politicalproblems, then we feel the necessity of purifying the mind. We must free it from allthese vrittis, those habits which we have formed in our personality from the presentand previous incarnations.We believe that the jiva or individual has undergone a process of selfincarnationin8,400,000 yonis or wombs. According to science, evolution has passed through afantastic panorama of existence, but despite these millions of incarnations that ourjiva has undergone, we still carry a very crude mind with us. This mind is composed ofthree gunas: sattwa, rajas, and tamas, which are the essential manifestations of12/10/2015 Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced Personalityhttp://www.yogamag.net/archives/2007/fjune07/integ.shtml 2/5prakriti or nature. The three gunas are also used in a social or moral context becausethey indicate the personality of a person. Nature manifests as energy; in nature thereare static (tamasic), kinetic (rajasic) and balanced (sattwic) energies.If we want to make the mind infinite, we must cut and polish it just as we would a

diamond. They say that tamas makes a person lethargic, rajas makes you violent andsattwa makes you balanced. Therefore, tamas and rajas have to be overcome bysattwa, and this is accomplished through the process of dhyana yoga. Dhyana hasbeen translated as meditation, but actually it means awareness. This can be attainedthrough raja yoga, bhakti yoga, jnana yoga, laya yoga, mantra yoga, and many otheryogic processes.The mind is not thought or emotion. Thought and emotion are patterns of mind.Happiness is a state of mind and so is depression. Mind is consciousness, awareness.Mind is a storehouse of energy, shakti. The pure mind is pure shakti. The mind can bepurified and corrected by following the methods most suited to our personality. Thosewho are very strong can take up the path of kundalini and kriya yoga. For others whoare not so strong and who haven’t yet developed much understanding of yoga, thereare other ways like mantra yoga or japa yoga.The mind is much more than thought or feeling. The mind is like an iceberg; only asmall portion is visible, the remainder lies submerged under the ocean. According tomodern psychology, the mind exists in three spheres: conscious, subconscious andunconscious. In Vedanta we call them: sthoola sharira, sukshma sharira and karanasharira.Exploding the unconscious mindThe unconscious mind is very powerful. The word ‘unconscious’ should not bemisunderstood. The unconscious mind is like a storehouse. All disease, success andtragedy in life originate in the unconscious mind. The experiences that you have hadin life, important as well as unimportant, are all registered there. It is something like a

hidden camera in the street. Everything that passes within its range is immediatelyphotographed. In the same way, whatever experience you have is immediatelytransferred back to the unconscious through the indriyas or senses and the mind.There they are stored in bija or seed form. This process starts rights from the timewhen the child is in the womb of the mother. From the fourth month of pregnancy,children have certain experiences which are embedded deep in the unconscious mind.Through the practices of kundalini, kriya and laya yoga, the unconscious mind can beexploded. What happens when we explode the unconscious mind? Here is an exampleof how an ordinary, insignificant experience can cause great damage to one’s mind. Inour ashram there was an intelligent engineer who could not manage to complete hiseducation or hold his job. Every morning from six till nine, he would go into a fit ofdepression. He became so restless that sometimes he felt he was going to die. Inthese fits of depression, he could not sit quietly, walk or talk. He left his career as abright mechanical engineer in the UK and wandered around Africa. Finally, he came toIndia and found his way to our ashram.One morning he was on the roof terrace and on the street below he saw a pig eatinghuman filth. This is quite a common scene for those of us who have lived in Indianvillages, but for this young man it was something new. The moment he saw it, hesuddenly remembered an incident from his childhood. When he was eight years old, heused to go fishing. One morning when he was preparing his tackle, he opened thesmall tin in which he kept little maggots for bait. He had forgotten to empty it the lasttime he had gone fishing, and when he lifted the lid hundreds of flies swarmed in hisface. The moment he saw the pig eating human filth, his unconscious exploded and

this deep childhood memory came out. Since then the young man has never hadanother fit, and is perfectly all right.KarmaEvery action, every thought, every place is an experience. A satsang or a lecture onthe Bhagavad Gita is an experience. Even an ordinary experience can become very12/10/2015 Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced Personalityhttp://www.yogamag.net/archives/2007/fjune07/integ.shtml 3/5consequential in later life. There are so many types of karma. Charity is one karmaand plundering someone’s property is another. Even if you don’t do these things, stillyou are making karma. In the Gita, it is said that there is not one moment in life inwhich a person is free of karma. Only in samadhi can you completely do away withkarma, otherwise not. Modern psychology and yoga agree that even during deep sleepwhen you are not aware of time and space, name and form, your mind is still working.Remember that the unconscious mind is the storehouse of all past experiences orkarmas, not only in this life, but in our previous lives as well.The unconscious body is called hiranyagarbha, the golden egg. By the practice ofmantra sadhana we can penetrate it deeply and eliminate all kinds of karmas, one byone. That is why they say that by the practice of mantra one becomes free from theentanglements of karma.Every action is born of a deep karma. Every thought, movement, success, failure is areenactmentof one of our previous experiences. Here is another example, a clinicalcase concerning a husband and wife who loved each other very much. They werevery happy together at home, but whenever they went out to dinner, for a walk, on apicnic, etc. they always fought. Why? When the husband was a child of four, hewalked into the bathroom when his mother was taking a bath. She quickly covered her

body with a dirty housedress, pushed him out and locked the door. Now, wheneverthe husband is at home, his wife is engaged in housework. She wears an oldhousedress and he loves her. He is still working out the problem of the old dress withwhich his mother covered herself in the bathroom. Whenever his wife is not wearingher old housedress, he doesn’t like her! Such simple childhood experiences can causeso many problems. Many good people suffer unnecessarily because they are unawareof their karmas and how they fructify.Mantra yogaThere are two ways of practising mantra yoga: one is the repetition of a bija mantralike Aum, Hrim, Shrim, Klim; the other is using the name of one’s guru or favouritedeity. Nowadays we have lost touch with the original mantra yoga system. If we feeldevotion for Shiva, then we practise ‘Om Namah Shivaya’. If we feel more inclinedtowards Rama, we repeat ‘Sri Ram Jai Ram’. When we feel attracted towards Krishna,we say ‘Om Namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya’. But according to mantra shastra, themantra must be very carefully selected to suit each individual personality. The bijamantras are very powerful. They can allay the strong influence of karmas. Mantrashould always be practised with a mala. Even in meditation when mantra issynchronized with the breath, a mala is still used.Japa and antar mounaWhen practising mantra, a lot of things come up in the mind which would not come upotherwise. When past incidents arise, what do we do? The usual response is tosuppress these thoughts because we are more interested in our mantra. So when weare practising japa and a thought come, we push it out; another one comes and wepush it out. But this is incorrect. We do not want to avoid karma, but to eliminate it.

Therefore, it is necessary to observe each thought and let it pass of its own accord.Thus japa yoga must be followed or accompanied by antar mouna, the process ofwitnessing our thoughts. When we are practising mantra and a thought comes intoour mind, we must stop for a moment and see the thought, whatever it is, thencontinue the mantra until another thought comes. During the practice of japa andantar mouna, over a period of months the significant and insignificant memories of thepast flash into our mind. These memories should be seen very clearly if we want topurify our mind. Every experience we have during mantra practice or meditation hasan important bearing on our life.I know of many people who have changed completely through the practice of japaand antar mouna and they were amazed to see how it happened. One Frenchgentleman had a hernia and hydrocele. He left his job and went to his sister in thecountry. He told her that he was completely broken and could no longer work. Therewas no point in prolonging his life, he said, as he felt only pain everywhere. His sister,12/10/2015 Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced Personalityhttp://www.yogamag.net/archives/2007/fjune07/integ.shtml 4/5a staunch devotee of yoga, told him to put some cream on his eyebrow centre andconcentrate on that point. One day while the French gentleman was practising this, aterrific sound exploded somewhere in his brain. Surprisingly his hernia was cured andhis hydrocele problem was completely resolved – for him it was a miracle. When I methim, I asked what had happened when he was concentrating on bhrumadhya, theeyebrow centre. He said that when he was a schoolboy he went to the fish shop andwhile eating, a fish bone got stuck in his teeth which later had to be removed by the

dentist. When he was practising concentration on his bhrumadhya, he saw fish comingout of his mouth. After that, he too became a great devotee of yoga.Therefore, when practising mantra, do not discard or repress the experiences whicharise. You may think that while practising mantra, worldly thoughts should not enteryour mind, and if they do, then it is your duty to remove them in respect for themantra, but this is incorrect. According to yoga and psychology, we must observe,analyze and respect whatever thoughts or experiences come into our mind whilepractising japa.You will find that if the mantra is correct, it will work immediately. If it is not the rightone for you, it will still work, but slowly. To be powerful the mantra has to correlatewith all of our qualities and tendencies. The tantra and mantra shastras say that allmantras, with the exception of Aum, are classified into twelve main groups with fivesubdivisions. Only Aum can be repeated by anyone at any time, without restriction.The mantras which are used to explode the unconscious mind are very important.People with devotion for the Devi, particularly Durga or Kali, have fantasticexperiences while practising her mantra. Many of my disciples had terrifying dreams allnight after receiving her mantra. This is because the mantra is so powerful that itimmediately starts exploding the karmas from the unconscious mind. Just as a strongpurgative makes you go to the toilet every five minutes, so repetition of a powerfulmantra purges karma very quickly.Science of yogaThe science of yoga aims at perfecting human life. Every ordinary person hasextraordinary potential, but to develop this a strong and welltrainedmind isnecessary. Through the practices of yoga we can gain complete mastery over thebody and mind. The West gave technology to the world and made life very

comfortable, easy and quick. India can give yoga and spirituality and the whole worldis crying for it. People in the West are fed up and frightened of technology. Theywant a science to allay their fears and give them peace.Only the system of yoga which is still alive today in India can adequately fulfil thisneed. Therefore, all Indians wherever they are, must represent this science correctly.Yoga is knowledge, not miracles, witchcraft or superstition. Yoga is a science whichcan be studied, practised, experienced, understood and explained by any educatedand wellreadperson. Yoga can improve relations and create international goodwill. Itis important to be able to give something to others which they can cherish deep intheir hearts.I give free discussions on yoga everywhere I go because I am fully convinced of itseffectiveness. My experience and experiments in life with thousands and thousands ofpeople, East and West are my proof. Now it is the duty of those who know that yogaproduces an integrated personality to acquaint themselves with all aspects of yoga. Itis no use saying that bhakti yoga alone is enough. If it were, why are religious peoplelying ill in hospitals and taking so many pills? Why are they unable to sleep in theircosy beds? Religion is bhakti yoga. We need an integrated approach to life. Justadding salt to the vegetables does not make a tasty dish. We must combine manyspices. Life is too complex for one aspect of yoga to suffice. With a comprehensiveapproach, life becomes rich.

Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced PersonalitySwami Satyananda SaraswatiSpeech at the Gita Ashram, Monrovia, Liberia, May 1977, first printed in YOGA,Vol. 15, No. 8, August 1977

According to vedic dharma each person is a composite of four main qualities:dynamism, emotions, mysticism and rationalism. Some people are predominantlydynamic, others are more emotional, mystical or rational. Every personality is anintegration of these four essential temperaments. For the evolution of our personalitywe have to integrate the four corresponding categories of yoga sadhana into ourlives.Sadhana is spiritual discipline or practice. Just as you train an animal, the personalitymust also be trained in order to be useful in this life. For the balanced development ofour personality, we must practise an integral yoga sadhana. By emphasizing oneaspect of sadhana, our development will be lopsided. If we eat protein and nothingelse, what will happen? Just as we carefully provide a balanced diet for the physicalbody, so we must supply a balance of nutrition to the spiritual body also. In theBhagavad Gita, Yoga Vashishtha, Srimad Bhagavata, and other scriptures, anintegration of the four systems of karma yoga, bhakti yoga, raja yoga and jnana yogais recommended. Those who overemphasize any one aspect of yoga should rememberthat this results in onesideddevelopment.Through the practice of karma yoga, bhakti yoga, raja yoga and jnana yoga, we cantrain the whole personality. This is what I want to tell everyone, everywhere. It iseasy to attain temporary tranquillity through certain practices, but to train the mind isvery difficult. To transform the entire consciousness into a creative instrument is noteasy.Transforming the mindSome years ago some research was conducted to find out the influence of kirtan onthe brain. When we do kirtan for half an hour, we feel relaxed. Why? What change

takes place in the structure of the personality and in the hormonal makeupof thebrain? Research has found that during repetitive singing of kirtan, the brain registersthe sound waves, which influences other wave patterns of the brain. These wavesawaken alpha rhythms which immediately induce tranquillity. Thus by singing kirtan weget peace of mind. This is well and good, but maintaining that state of mind during ourdaily life is not so easy. The peace we gain by practising this technique does notremain with us through the complicated and confusing patterns of our daily life.Therefore, side by side with yoga sadhana which gives us peace of mind, we mustalso remember the necessity of transforming the very structure of our mind. But how?When we drive our car into the petrol station to fill up the tank we find that petrol isof different categories. But when this petrol was extracted from the depths of theearth, what was it like then? Crude oil is so dirty but after being refined it becomes aremarkable agent of energy. It can even provide the power to fly an aeroplane.Similarly, the mind, or chitta, which we have inherited from our previous incarnationsstill remains in its crude or raw state. In the mental body we have so many thingswhich ought to be removed. When we become terribly angry or very tense, when weworry too much and pass sleepless nights due to family, business, social or politicalproblems, then we feel the necessity of purifying the mind. We must free it from allthese vrittis, those habits which we have formed in our personality from the presentand previous incarnations.We believe that the jiva or individual has undergone a process of selfincarnationin8,400,000 yonis or wombs. According to science, evolution has passed through afantastic panorama of existence, but despite these millions of incarnations that our

jiva has undergone, we still carry a very crude mind with us. This mind is composed ofthree gunas: sattwa, rajas, and tamas, which are the essential manifestations of12/10/2015 Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced Personalityhttp://www.yogamag.net/archives/2007/fjune07/integ.shtml 2/5prakriti or nature. The three gunas are also used in a social or moral context becausethey indicate the personality of a person. Nature manifests as energy; in nature thereare static (tamasic), kinetic (rajasic) and balanced (sattwic) energies.If we want to make the mind infinite, we must cut and polish it just as we would adiamond. They say that tamas makes a person lethargic, rajas makes you violent andsattwa makes you balanced. Therefore, tamas and rajas have to be overcome bysattwa, and this is accomplished through the process of dhyana yoga. Dhyana hasbeen translated as meditation, but actually it means awareness. This can be attainedthrough raja yoga, bhakti yoga, jnana yoga, laya yoga, mantra yoga, and many otheryogic processes.The mind is not thought or emotion. Thought and emotion are patterns of mind.Happiness is a state of mind and so is depression. Mind is consciousness, awareness.Mind is a storehouse of energy, shakti. The pure mind is pure shakti. The mind can bepurified and corrected by following the methods most suited to our personality. Thosewho are very strong can take up the path of kundalini and kriya yoga. For others whoare not so strong and who haven’t yet developed much understanding of yoga, thereare other ways like mantra yoga or japa yoga.The mind is much more than thought or feeling. The mind is like an iceberg; only asmall portion is visible, the remainder lies submerged under the ocean. According tomodern psychology, the mind exists in three spheres: conscious, subconscious and

unconscious. In Vedanta we call them: sthoola sharira, sukshma sharira and karanasharira.Exploding the unconscious mindThe unconscious mind is very powerful. The word ‘unconscious’ should not bemisunderstood. The unconscious mind is like a storehouse. All disease, success andtragedy in life originate in the unconscious mind. The experiences that you have hadin life, important as well as unimportant, are all registered there. It is something like ahidden camera in the street. Everything that passes within its range is immediatelyphotographed. In the same way, whatever experience you have is immediatelytransferred back to the unconscious through the indriyas or senses and the mind.There they are stored in bija or seed form. This process starts rights from the timewhen the child is in the womb of the mother. From the fourth month of pregnancy,children have certain experiences which are embedded deep in the unconscious mind.Through the practices of kundalini, kriya and laya yoga, the unconscious mind can beexploded. What happens when we explode the unconscious mind? Here is an exampleof how an ordinary, insignificant experience can cause great damage to one’s mind. Inour ashram there was an intelligent engineer who could not manage to complete hiseducation or hold his job. Every morning from six till nine, he would go into a fit ofdepression. He became so restless that sometimes he felt he was going to die. Inthese fits of depression, he could not sit quietly, walk or talk. He left his career as abright mechanical engineer in the UK and wandered around Africa. Finally, he came toIndia and found his way to our ashram.One morning he was on the roof terrace and on the street below he saw a pig eating

human filth. This is quite a common scene for those of us who have lived in Indianvillages, but for this young man it was something new. The moment he saw it, hesuddenly remembered an incident from his childhood. When he was eight years old, heused to go fishing. One morning when he was preparing his tackle, he opened thesmall tin in which he kept little maggots for bait. He had forgotten to empty it the lasttime he had gone fishing, and when he lifted the lid hundreds of flies swarmed in hisface. The moment he saw the pig eating human filth, his unconscious exploded andthis deep childhood memory came out. Since then the young man has never hadanother fit, and is perfectly all right.KarmaEvery action, every thought, every place is an experience. A satsang or a lecture onthe Bhagavad Gita is an experience. Even an ordinary experience can become very12/10/2015 Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced Personalityhttp://www.yogamag.net/archives/2007/fjune07/integ.shtml 3/5consequential in later life. There are so many types of karma. Charity is one karmaand plundering someone’s property is another. Even if you don’t do these things, stillyou are making karma. In the Gita, it is said that there is not one moment in life inwhich a person is free of karma. Only in samadhi can you completely do away withkarma, otherwise not. Modern psychology and yoga agree that even during deep sleepwhen you are not aware of time and space, name and form, your mind is still working.Remember that the unconscious mind is the storehouse of all past experiences orkarmas, not only in this life, but in our previous lives as well.The unconscious body is called hiranyagarbha, the golden egg. By the practice ofmantra sadhana we can penetrate it deeply and eliminate all kinds of karmas, one byone. That is why they say that by the practice of mantra one becomes free from theentanglements of karma.

Every action is born of a deep karma. Every thought, movement, success, failure is areenactmentof one of our previous experiences. Here is another example, a clinicalcase concerning a husband and wife who loved each other very much. They werevery happy together at home, but whenever they went out to dinner, for a walk, on apicnic, etc. they always fought. Why? When the husband was a child of four, hewalked into the bathroom when his mother was taking a bath. She quickly covered herbody with a dirty housedress, pushed him out and locked the door. Now, wheneverthe husband is at home, his wife is engaged in housework. She wears an oldhousedress and he loves her. He is still working out the problem of the old dress withwhich his mother covered herself in the bathroom. Whenever his wife is not wearingher old housedress, he doesn’t like her! Such simple childhood experiences can causeso many problems. Many good people suffer unnecessarily because they are unawareof their karmas and how they fructify.Mantra yogaThere are two ways of practising mantra yoga: one is the repetition of a bija mantralike Aum, Hrim, Shrim, Klim; the other is using the name of one’s guru or favouritedeity. Nowadays we have lost touch with the original mantra yoga system. If we feeldevotion for Shiva, then we practise ‘Om Namah Shivaya’. If we feel more inclinedtowards Rama, we repeat ‘Sri Ram Jai Ram’. When we feel attracted towards Krishna,we say ‘Om Namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya’. But according to mantra shastra, themantra must be very carefully selected to suit each individual personality. The bijamantras are very powerful. They can allay the strong influence of karmas. Mantrashould always be practised with a mala. Even in meditation when mantra issynchronized with the breath, a mala is still used.Japa and antar mouna

When practising mantra, a lot of things come up in the mind which would not come upotherwise. When past incidents arise, what do we do? The usual response is tosuppress these thoughts because we are more interested in our mantra. So when weare practising japa and a thought come, we push it out; another one comes and wepush it out. But this is incorrect. We do not want to avoid karma, but to eliminate it.Therefore, it is necessary to observe each thought and let it pass of its own accord.Thus japa yoga must be followed or accompanied by antar mouna, the process ofwitnessing our thoughts. When we are practising mantra and a thought comes intoour mind, we must stop for a moment and see the thought, whatever it is, thencontinue the mantra until another thought comes. During the practice of japa andantar mouna, over a period of months the significant and insignificant memories of thepast flash into our mind. These memories should be seen very clearly if we want topurify our mind. Every experience we have during mantra practice or meditation hasan important bearing on our life.I know of many people who have changed completely through the practice of japaand antar mouna and they were amazed to see how it happened. One Frenchgentleman had a hernia and hydrocele. He left his job and went to his sister in thecountry. He told her that he was completely broken and could no longer work. Therewas no point in prolonging his life, he said, as he felt only pain everywhere. His sister,12/10/2015 Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced Personalityhttp://www.yogamag.net/archives/2007/fjune07/integ.shtml 4/5a staunch devotee of yoga, told him to put some cream on his eyebrow centre andconcentrate on that point. One day while the French gentleman was practising this, a

terrific sound exploded somewhere in his brain. Surprisingly his hernia was cured andhis hydrocele problem was completely resolved – for him it was a miracle. When I methim, I asked what had happened when he was concentrating on bhrumadhya, theeyebrow centre. He said that when he was a schoolboy he went to the fish shop andwhile eating, a fish bone got stuck in his teeth which later had to be removed by thedentist. When he was practising concentration on his bhrumadhya, he saw fish comingout of his mouth. After that, he too became a great devotee of yoga.Therefore, when practising mantra, do not discard or repress the experiences whicharise. You may think that while practising mantra, worldly thoughts should not enteryour mind, and if they do, then it is your duty to remove them in respect for themantra, but this is incorrect. According to yoga and psychology, we must observe,analyze and respect whatever thoughts or experiences come into our mind whilepractising japa.You will find that if the mantra is correct, it will work immediately. If it is not the rightone for you, it will still work, but slowly. To be powerful the mantra has to correlatewith all of our qualities and tendencies. The tantra and mantra shastras say that allmantras, with the exception of Aum, are classified into twelve main groups with fivesubdivisions. Only Aum can be repeated by anyone at any time, without restriction.The mantras which are used to explode the unconscious mind are very important.People with devotion for the Devi, particularly Durga or Kali, have fantasticexperiences while practising her mantra. Many of my disciples had terrifying dreams allnight after receiving her mantra. This is because the mantra is so powerful that itimmediately starts exploding the karmas from the unconscious mind. Just as a strong

purgative makes you go to the toilet every five minutes, so repetition of a powerfulmantra purges karma very quickly.Science of yogaThe science of yoga aims at perfecting human life. Every ordinary person hasextraordinary potential, but to develop this a strong and welltrainedmind isnecessary. Through the practices of yoga we can gain complete mastery over thebody and mind. The West gave technology to the world and made life verycomfortable, easy and quick. India can give yoga and spirituality and the whole worldis crying for it. People in the West are fed up and frightened of technology. Theywant a science to allay their fears and give them peace.Only the system of yoga which is still alive today in India can adequately fulfil thisneed. Therefore, all Indians wherever they are, must represent this science correctly.Yoga is knowledge, not miracles, witchcraft or superstition. Yoga is a science whichcan be studied, practised, experienced, understood and explained by any educatedand wellreadperson. Yoga can improve relations and create international goodwill. Itis important to be able to give something to others which they can cherish deep intheir hearts.I give free discussions on yoga everywhere I go because I am fully convinced of itseffectiveness. My experience and experiments in life with thousands and thousands ofpeople, East and West are my proof. Now it is the duty of those who know that yogaproduces an integrated personality to acquaint themselves with all aspects of yoga. Itis no use saying that bhakti yoga alone is enough. If it were, why are religious peoplelying ill in hospitals and taking so many pills? Why are they unable to sleep in theircosy beds? Religion is bhakti yoga. We need an integrated approach to life. Justadding salt to the vegetables does not make a tasty dish. We must combine many

spices. Life is too complex for one aspect of yoga to suffice. With a comprehensiveapproach, life becomes rich.

Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced PersonalitySwami Satyananda SaraswatiSpeech at the Gita Ashram, Monrovia, Liberia, May 1977, first printed in YOGA,Vol. 15, No. 8, August 1977According to vedic dharma each person is a composite of four main qualities:dynamism, emotions, mysticism and rationalism. Some people are predominantlydynamic, others are more emotional, mystical or rational. Every personality is anintegration of these four essential temperaments. For the evolution of our personalitywe have to integrate the four corresponding categories of yoga sadhana into ourlives.Sadhana is spiritual discipline or practice. Just as you train an animal, the personalitymust also be trained in order to be useful in this life. For the balanced development ofour personality, we must practise an integral yoga sadhana. By emphasizing oneaspect of sadhana, our development will be lopsided. If we eat protein and nothingelse, what will happen? Just as we carefully provide a balanced diet for the physicalbody, so we must supply a balance of nutrition to the spiritual body also. In theBhagavad Gita, Yoga Vashishtha, Srimad Bhagavata, and other scriptures, anintegration of the four systems of karma yoga, bhakti yoga, raja yoga and jnana yogais recommended. Those who overemphasize any one aspect of yoga should rememberthat this results in onesideddevelopment.Through the practice of karma yoga, bhakti yoga, raja yoga and jnana yoga, we cantrain the whole personality. This is what I want to tell everyone, everywhere. It is

easy to attain temporary tranquillity through certain practices, but to train the mind isvery difficult. To transform the entire consciousness into a creative instrument is noteasy.Transforming the mindSome years ago some research was conducted to find out the influence of kirtan onthe brain. When we do kirtan for half an hour, we feel relaxed. Why? What changetakes place in the structure of the personality and in the hormonal makeupof thebrain? Research has found that during repetitive singing of kirtan, the brain registersthe sound waves, which influences other wave patterns of the brain. These wavesawaken alpha rhythms which immediately induce tranquillity. Thus by singing kirtan weget peace of mind. This is well and good, but maintaining that state of mind during ourdaily life is not so easy. The peace we gain by practising this technique does notremain with us through the complicated and confusing patterns of our daily life.Therefore, side by side with yoga sadhana which gives us peace of mind, we mustalso remember the necessity of transforming the very structure of our mind. But how?When we drive our car into the petrol station to fill up the tank we find that petrol isof different categories. But when this petrol was extracted from the depths of theearth, what was it like then? Crude oil is so dirty but after being refined it becomes aremarkable agent of energy. It can even provide the power to fly an aeroplane.Similarly, the mind, or chitta, which we have inherited from our previous incarnationsstill remains in its crude or raw state. In the mental body we have so many thingswhich ought to be removed. When we become terribly angry or very tense, when weworry too much and pass sleepless nights due to family, business, social or political

problems, then we feel the necessity of purifying the mind. We must free it from allthese vrittis, those habits which we have formed in our personality from the presentand previous incarnations.We believe that the jiva or individual has undergone a process of selfincarnationin8,400,000 yonis or wombs. According to science, evolution has passed through afantastic panorama of existence, but despite these millions of incarnations that ourjiva has undergone, we still carry a very crude mind with us. This mind is composed ofthree gunas: sattwa, rajas, and tamas, which are the essential manifestations of12/10/2015 Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced Personalityhttp://www.yogamag.net/archives/2007/fjune07/integ.shtml 2/5prakriti or nature. The three gunas are also used in a social or moral context becausethey indicate the personality of a person. Nature manifests as energy; in nature thereare static (tamasic), kinetic (rajasic) and balanced (sattwic) energies.If we want to make the mind infinite, we must cut and polish it just as we would adiamond. They say that tamas makes a person lethargic, rajas makes you violent andsattwa makes you balanced. Therefore, tamas and rajas have to be overcome bysattwa, and this is accomplished through the process of dhyana yoga. Dhyana hasbeen translated as meditation, but actually it means awareness. This can be attainedthrough raja yoga, bhakti yoga, jnana yoga, laya yoga, mantra yoga, and many otheryogic processes.The mind is not thought or emotion. Thought and emotion are patterns of mind.Happiness is a state of mind and so is depression. Mind is consciousness, awareness.Mind is a storehouse of energy, shakti. The pure mind is pure shakti. The mind can bepurified and corrected by following the methods most suited to our personality. Those

who are very strong can take up the path of kundalini and kriya yoga. For others whoare not so strong and who haven’t yet developed much understanding of yoga, thereare other ways like mantra yoga or japa yoga.The mind is much more than thought or feeling. The mind is like an iceberg; only asmall portion is visible, the remainder lies submerged under the ocean. According tomodern psychology, the mind exists in three spheres: conscious, subconscious andunconscious. In Vedanta we call them: sthoola sharira, sukshma sharira and karanasharira.Exploding the unconscious mindThe unconscious mind is very powerful. The word ‘unconscious’ should not bemisunderstood. The unconscious mind is like a storehouse. All disease, success andtragedy in life originate in the unconscious mind. The experiences that you have hadin life, important as well as unimportant, are all registered there. It is something like ahidden camera in the street. Everything that passes within its range is immediatelyphotographed. In the same way, whatever experience you have is immediatelytransferred back to the unconscious through the indriyas or senses and the mind.There they are stored in bija or seed form. This process starts rights from the timewhen the child is in the womb of the mother. From the fourth month of pregnancy,children have certain experiences which are embedded deep in the unconscious mind.Through the practices of kundalini, kriya and laya yoga, the unconscious mind can beexploded. What happens when we explode the unconscious mind? Here is an exampleof how an ordinary, insignificant experience can cause great damage to one’s mind. In

our ashram there was an intelligent engineer who could not manage to complete hiseducation or hold his job. Every morning from six till nine, he would go into a fit ofdepression. He became so restless that sometimes he felt he was going to die. Inthese fits of depression, he could not sit quietly, walk or talk. He left his career as abright mechanical engineer in the UK and wandered around Africa. Finally, he came toIndia and found his way to our ashram.One morning he was on the roof terrace and on the street below he saw a pig eatinghuman filth. This is quite a common scene for those of us who have lived in Indianvillages, but for this young man it was something new. The moment he saw it, hesuddenly remembered an incident from his childhood. When he was eight years old, heused to go fishing. One morning when he was preparing his tackle, he opened thesmall tin in which he kept little maggots for bait. He had forgotten to empty it the lasttime he had gone fishing, and when he lifted the lid hundreds of flies swarmed in hisface. The moment he saw the pig eating human filth, his unconscious exploded andthis deep childhood memory came out. Since then the young man has never hadanother fit, and is perfectly all right.KarmaEvery action, every thought, every place is an experience. A satsang or a lecture onthe Bhagavad Gita is an experience. Even an ordinary experience can become very12/10/2015 Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced Personalityhttp://www.yogamag.net/archives/2007/fjune07/integ.shtml 3/5consequential in later life. There are so many types of karma. Charity is one karmaand plundering someone’s property is another. Even if you don’t do these things, stillyou are making karma. In the Gita, it is said that there is not one moment in life inwhich a person is free of karma. Only in samadhi can you completely do away with

karma, otherwise not. Modern psychology and yoga agree that even during deep sleepwhen you are not aware of time and space, name and form, your mind is still working.Remember that the unconscious mind is the storehouse of all past experiences orkarmas, not only in this life, but in our previous lives as well.The unconscious body is called hiranyagarbha, the golden egg. By the practice ofmantra sadhana we can penetrate it deeply and eliminate all kinds of karmas, one byone. That is why they say that by the practice of mantra one becomes free from theentanglements of karma.Every action is born of a deep karma. Every thought, movement, success, failure is areenactmentof one of our previous experiences. Here is another example, a clinicalcase concerning a husband and wife who loved each other very much. They werevery happy together at home, but whenever they went out to dinner, for a walk, on apicnic, etc. they always fought. Why? When the husband was a child of four, hewalked into the bathroom when his mother was taking a bath. She quickly covered herbody with a dirty housedress, pushed him out and locked the door. Now, wheneverthe husband is at home, his wife is engaged in housework. She wears an oldhousedress and he loves her. He is still working out the problem of the old dress withwhich his mother covered herself in the bathroom. Whenever his wife is not wearingher old housedress, he doesn’t like her! Such simple childhood experiences can causeso many problems. Many good people suffer unnecessarily because they are unawareof their karmas and how they fructify.Mantra yogaThere are two ways of practising mantra yoga: one is the repetition of a bija mantra

like Aum, Hrim, Shrim, Klim; the other is using the name of one’s guru or favouritedeity. Nowadays we have lost touch with the original mantra yoga system. If we feeldevotion for Shiva, then we practise ‘Om Namah Shivaya’. If we feel more inclinedtowards Rama, we repeat ‘Sri Ram Jai Ram’. When we feel attracted towards Krishna,we say ‘Om Namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya’. But according to mantra shastra, themantra must be very carefully selected to suit each individual personality. The bijamantras are very powerful. They can allay the strong influence of karmas. Mantrashould always be practised with a mala. Even in meditation when mantra issynchronized with the breath, a mala is still used.Japa and antar mounaWhen practising mantra, a lot of things come up in the mind which would not come upotherwise. When past incidents arise, what do we do? The usual response is tosuppress these thoughts because we are more interested in our mantra. So when weare practising japa and a thought come, we push it out; another one comes and wepush it out. But this is incorrect. We do not want to avoid karma, but to eliminate it.Therefore, it is necessary to observe each thought and let it pass of its own accord.Thus japa yoga must be followed or accompanied by antar mouna, the process ofwitnessing our thoughts. When we are practising mantra and a thought comes intoour mind, we must stop for a moment and see the thought, whatever it is, thencontinue the mantra until another thought comes. During the practice of japa andantar mouna, over a period of months the significant and insignificant memories of thepast flash into our mind. These memories should be seen very clearly if we want topurify our mind. Every experience we have during mantra practice or meditation hasan important bearing on our life.I know of many people who have changed completely through the practice of japaand antar mouna and they were amazed to see how it happened. One French

gentleman had a hernia and hydrocele. He left his job and went to his sister in thecountry. He told her that he was completely broken and could no longer work. Therewas no point in prolonging his life, he said, as he felt only pain everywhere. His sister,12/10/2015 Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced Personalityhttp://www.yogamag.net/archives/2007/fjune07/integ.shtml 4/5a staunch devotee of yoga, told him to put some cream on his eyebrow centre andconcentrate on that point. One day while the French gentleman was practising this, aterrific sound exploded somewhere in his brain. Surprisingly his hernia was cured andhis hydrocele problem was completely resolved – for him it was a miracle. When I methim, I asked what had happened when he was concentrating on bhrumadhya, theeyebrow centre. He said that when he was a schoolboy he went to the fish shop andwhile eating, a fish bone got stuck in his teeth which later had to be removed by thedentist. When he was practising concentration on his bhrumadhya, he saw fish comingout of his mouth. After that, he too became a great devotee of yoga.Therefore, when practising mantra, do not discard or repress the experiences whicharise. You may think that while practising mantra, worldly thoughts should not enteryour mind, and if they do, then it is your duty to remove them in respect for themantra, but this is incorrect. According to yoga and psychology, we must observe,analyze and respect whatever thoughts or experiences come into our mind whilepractising japa.You will find that if the mantra is correct, it will work immediately. If it is not the rightone for you, it will still work, but slowly. To be powerful the mantra has to correlatewith all of our qualities and tendencies. The tantra and mantra shastras say that all

mantras, with the exception of Aum, are classified into twelve main groups with fivesubdivisions. Only Aum can be repeated by anyone at any time, without restriction.The mantras which are used to explode the unconscious mind are very important.People with devotion for the Devi, particularly Durga or Kali, have fantasticexperiences while practising her mantra. Many of my disciples had terrifying dreams allnight after receiving her mantra. This is because the mantra is so powerful that itimmediately starts exploding the karmas from the unconscious mind. Just as a strongpurgative makes you go to the toilet every five minutes, so repetition of a powerfulmantra purges karma very quickly.Science of yogaThe science of yoga aims at perfecting human life. Every ordinary person hasextraordinary potential, but to develop this a strong and welltrainedmind isnecessary. Through the practices of yoga we can gain complete mastery over thebody and mind. The West gave technology to the world and made life verycomfortable, easy and quick. India can give yoga and spirituality and the whole worldis crying for it. People in the West are fed up and frightened of technology. Theywant a science to allay their fears and give them peace.Only the system of yoga which is still alive today in India can adequately fulfil thisneed. Therefore, all Indians wherever they are, must represent this science correctly.Yoga is knowledge, not miracles, witchcraft or superstition. Yoga is a science whichcan be studied, practised, experienced, understood and explained by any educatedand wellreadperson. Yoga can improve relations and create international goodwill. Itis important to be able to give something to others which they can cherish deep intheir hearts.I give free discussions on yoga everywhere I go because I am fully convinced of its

effectiveness. My experience and experiments in life with thousands and thousands ofpeople, East and West are my proof. Now it is the duty of those who know that yogaproduces an integrated personality to acquaint themselves with all aspects of yoga. Itis no use saying that bhakti yoga alone is enough. If it were, why are religious peoplelying ill in hospitals and taking so many pills? Why are they unable to sleep in theircosy beds? Religion is bhakti yoga. We need an integrated approach to life. Justadding salt to the vegetables does not make a tasty dish. We must combine manyspices. Life is too complex for one aspect of yoga to suffice. With a comprehensiveapproach, life becomes rich.

Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced PersonalitySwami Satyananda SaraswatiSpeech at the Gita Ashram, Monrovia, Liberia, May 1977, first printed in YOGA,Vol. 15, No. 8, August 1977According to vedic dharma each person is a composite of four main qualities:dynamism, emotions, mysticism and rationalism. Some people are predominantlydynamic, others are more emotional, mystical or rational. Every personality is anintegration of these four essential temperaments. For the evolution of our personalitywe have to integrate the four corresponding categories of yoga sadhana into ourlives.Sadhana is spiritual discipline or practice. Just as you train an animal, the personalitymust also be trained in order to be useful in this life. For the balanced development ofour personality, we must practise an integral yoga sadhana. By emphasizing oneaspect of sadhana, our development will be lopsided. If we eat protein and nothingelse, what will happen? Just as we carefully provide a balanced diet for the physicalbody, so we must supply a balance of nutrition to the spiritual body also. In the

Bhagavad Gita, Yoga Vashishtha, Srimad Bhagavata, and other scriptures, anintegration of the four systems of karma yoga, bhakti yoga, raja yoga and jnana yogais recommended. Those who overemphasize any one aspect of yoga should rememberthat this results in onesideddevelopment.Through the practice of karma yoga, bhakti yoga, raja yoga and jnana yoga, we cantrain the whole personality. This is what I want to tell everyone, everywhere. It iseasy to attain temporary tranquillity through certain practices, but to train the mind isvery difficult. To transform the entire consciousness into a creative instrument is noteasy.Transforming the mindSome years ago some research was conducted to find out the influence of kirtan onthe brain. When we do kirtan for half an hour, we feel relaxed. Why? What changetakes place in the structure of the personality and in the hormonal makeupof thebrain? Research has found that during repetitive singing of kirtan, the brain registersthe sound waves, which influences other wave patterns of the brain. These wavesawaken alpha rhythms which immediately induce tranquillity. Thus by singing kirtan weget peace of mind. This is well and good, but maintaining that state of mind during ourdaily life is not so easy. The peace we gain by practising this technique does notremain with us through the complicated and confusing patterns of our daily life.Therefore, side by side with yoga sadhana which gives us peace of mind, we mustalso remember the necessity of transforming the very structure of our mind. But how?When we drive our car into the petrol station to fill up the tank we find that petrol isof different categories. But when this petrol was extracted from the depths of the

earth, what was it like then? Crude oil is so dirty but after being refined it becomes aremarkable agent of energy. It can even provide the power to fly an aeroplane.Similarly, the mind, or chitta, which we have inherited from our previous incarnationsstill remains in its crude or raw state. In the mental body we have so many thingswhich ought to be removed. When we become terribly angry or very tense, when weworry too much and pass sleepless nights due to family, business, social or politicalproblems, then we feel the necessity of purifying the mind. We must free it from allthese vrittis, those habits which we have formed in our personality from the presentand previous incarnations.We believe that the jiva or individual has undergone a process of selfincarnationin8,400,000 yonis or wombs. According to science, evolution has passed through afantastic panorama of existence, but despite these millions of incarnations that ourjiva has undergone, we still carry a very crude mind with us. This mind is composed ofthree gunas: sattwa, rajas, and tamas, which are the essential manifestations of12/10/2015 Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced Personalityhttp://www.yogamag.net/archives/2007/fjune07/integ.shtml 2/5prakriti or nature. The three gunas are also used in a social or moral context becausethey indicate the personality of a person. Nature manifests as energy; in nature thereare static (tamasic), kinetic (rajasic) and balanced (sattwic) energies.If we want to make the mind infinite, we must cut and polish it just as we would adiamond. They say that tamas makes a person lethargic, rajas makes you violent andsattwa makes you balanced. Therefore, tamas and rajas have to be overcome bysattwa, and this is accomplished through the process of dhyana yoga. Dhyana hasbeen translated as meditation, but actually it means awareness. This can be attained

through raja yoga, bhakti yoga, jnana yoga, laya yoga, mantra yoga, and many otheryogic processes.The mind is not thought or emotion. Thought and emotion are patterns of mind.Happiness is a state of mind and so is depression. Mind is consciousness, awareness.Mind is a storehouse of energy, shakti. The pure mind is pure shakti. The mind can bepurified and corrected by following the methods most suited to our personality. Thosewho are very strong can take up the path of kundalini and kriya yoga. For others whoare not so strong and who haven’t yet developed much understanding of yoga, thereare other ways like mantra yoga or japa yoga.The mind is much more than thought or feeling. The mind is like an iceberg; only asmall portion is visible, the remainder lies submerged under the ocean. According tomodern psychology, the mind exists in three spheres: conscious, subconscious andunconscious. In Vedanta we call them: sthoola sharira, sukshma sharira and karanasharira.Exploding the unconscious mindThe unconscious mind is very powerful. The word ‘unconscious’ should not bemisunderstood. The unconscious mind is like a storehouse. All disease, success andtragedy in life originate in the unconscious mind. The experiences that you have hadin life, important as well as unimportant, are all registered there. It is something like ahidden camera in the street. Everything that passes within its range is immediatelyphotographed. In the same way, whatever experience you have is immediatelytransferred back to the unconscious through the indriyas or senses and the mind.There they are stored in bija or seed form. This process starts rights from the time

when the child is in the womb of the mother. From the fourth month of pregnancy,children have certain experiences which are embedded deep in the unconscious mind.Through the practices of kundalini, kriya and laya yoga, the unconscious mind can beexploded. What happens when we explode the unconscious mind? Here is an exampleof how an ordinary, insignificant experience can cause great damage to one’s mind. Inour ashram there was an intelligent engineer who could not manage to complete hiseducation or hold his job. Every morning from six till nine, he would go into a fit ofdepression. He became so restless that sometimes he felt he was going to die. Inthese fits of depression, he could not sit quietly, walk or talk. He left his career as abright mechanical engineer in the UK and wandered around Africa. Finally, he came toIndia and found his way to our ashram.One morning he was on the roof terrace and on the street below he saw a pig eatinghuman filth. This is quite a common scene for those of us who have lived in Indianvillages, but for this young man it was something new. The moment he saw it, hesuddenly remembered an incident from his childhood. When he was eight years old, heused to go fishing. One morning when he was preparing his tackle, he opened thesmall tin in which he kept little maggots for bait. He had forgotten to empty it the lasttime he had gone fishing, and when he lifted the lid hundreds of flies swarmed in hisface. The moment he saw the pig eating human filth, his unconscious exploded andthis deep childhood memory came out. Since then the young man has never hadanother fit, and is perfectly all right.KarmaEvery action, every thought, every place is an experience. A satsang or a lecture on

the Bhagavad Gita is an experience. Even an ordinary experience can become very12/10/2015 Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced Personalityhttp://www.yogamag.net/archives/2007/fjune07/integ.shtml 3/5consequential in later life. There are so many types of karma. Charity is one karmaand plundering someone’s property is another. Even if you don’t do these things, stillyou are making karma. In the Gita, it is said that there is not one moment in life inwhich a person is free of karma. Only in samadhi can you completely do away withkarma, otherwise not. Modern psychology and yoga agree that even during deep sleepwhen you are not aware of time and space, name and form, your mind is still working.Remember that the unconscious mind is the storehouse of all past experiences orkarmas, not only in this life, but in our previous lives as well.The unconscious body is called hiranyagarbha, the golden egg. By the practice ofmantra sadhana we can penetrate it deeply and eliminate all kinds of karmas, one byone. That is why they say that by the practice of mantra one becomes free from theentanglements of karma.Every action is born of a deep karma. Every thought, movement, success, failure is areenactmentof one of our previous experiences. Here is another example, a clinicalcase concerning a husband and wife who loved each other very much. They werevery happy together at home, but whenever they went out to dinner, for a walk, on apicnic, etc. they always fought. Why? When the husband was a child of four, hewalked into the bathroom when his mother was taking a bath. She quickly covered herbody with a dirty housedress, pushed him out and locked the door. Now, wheneverthe husband is at home, his wife is engaged in housework. She wears an oldhousedress and he loves her. He is still working out the problem of the old dress with

which his mother covered herself in the bathroom. Whenever his wife is not wearingher old housedress, he doesn’t like her! Such simple childhood experiences can causeso many problems. Many good people suffer unnecessarily because they are unawareof their karmas and how they fructify.Mantra yogaThere are two ways of practising mantra yoga: one is the repetition of a bija mantralike Aum, Hrim, Shrim, Klim; the other is using the name of one’s guru or favouritedeity. Nowadays we have lost touch with the original mantra yoga system. If we feeldevotion for Shiva, then we practise ‘Om Namah Shivaya’. If we feel more inclinedtowards Rama, we repeat ‘Sri Ram Jai Ram’. When we feel attracted towards Krishna,we say ‘Om Namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya’. But according to mantra shastra, themantra must be very carefully selected to suit each individual personality. The bijamantras are very powerful. They can allay the strong influence of karmas. Mantrashould always be practised with a mala. Even in meditation when mantra issynchronized with the breath, a mala is still used.Japa and antar mounaWhen practising mantra, a lot of things come up in the mind which would not come upotherwise. When past incidents arise, what do we do? The usual response is tosuppress these thoughts because we are more interested in our mantra. So when weare practising japa and a thought come, we push it out; another one comes and wepush it out. But this is incorrect. We do not want to avoid karma, but to eliminate it.Therefore, it is necessary to observe each thought and let it pass of its own accord.Thus japa yoga must be followed or accompanied by antar mouna, the process ofwitnessing our thoughts. When we are practising mantra and a thought comes intoour mind, we must stop for a moment and see the thought, whatever it is, then

continue the mantra until another thought comes. During the practice of japa andantar mouna, over a period of months the significant and insignificant memories of thepast flash into our mind. These memories should be seen very clearly if we want topurify our mind. Every experience we have during mantra practice or meditation hasan important bearing on our life.I know of many people who have changed completely through the practice of japaand antar mouna and they were amazed to see how it happened. One Frenchgentleman had a hernia and hydrocele. He left his job and went to his sister in thecountry. He told her that he was completely broken and could no longer work. Therewas no point in prolonging his life, he said, as he felt only pain everywhere. His sister,12/10/2015 Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced Personalityhttp://www.yogamag.net/archives/2007/fjune07/integ.shtml 4/5a staunch devotee of yoga, told him to put some cream on his eyebrow centre andconcentrate on that point. One day while the French gentleman was practising this, aterrific sound exploded somewhere in his brain. Surprisingly his hernia was cured andhis hydrocele problem was completely resolved – for him it was a miracle. When I methim, I asked what had happened when he was concentrating on bhrumadhya, theeyebrow centre. He said that when he was a schoolboy he went to the fish shop andwhile eating, a fish bone got stuck in his teeth which later had to be removed by thedentist. When he was practising concentration on his bhrumadhya, he saw fish comingout of his mouth. After that, he too became a great devotee of yoga.Therefore, when practising mantra, do not discard or repress the experiences whicharise. You may think that while practising mantra, worldly thoughts should not enter

your mind, and if they do, then it is your duty to remove them in respect for themantra, but this is incorrect. According to yoga and psychology, we must observe,analyze and respect whatever thoughts or experiences come into our mind whilepractising japa.You will find that if the mantra is correct, it will work immediately. If it is not the rightone for you, it will still work, but slowly. To be powerful the mantra has to correlatewith all of our qualities and tendencies. The tantra and mantra shastras say that allmantras, with the exception of Aum, are classified into twelve main groups with fivesubdivisions. Only Aum can be repeated by anyone at any time, without restriction.The mantras which are used to explode the unconscious mind are very important.People with devotion for the Devi, particularly Durga or Kali, have fantasticexperiences while practising her mantra. Many of my disciples had terrifying dreams allnight after receiving her mantra. This is because the mantra is so powerful that itimmediately starts exploding the karmas from the unconscious mind. Just as a strongpurgative makes you go to the toilet every five minutes, so repetition of a powerfulmantra purges karma very quickly.Science of yogaThe science of yoga aims at perfecting human life. Every ordinary person hasextraordinary potential, but to develop this a strong and welltrainedmind isnecessary. Through the practices of yoga we can gain complete mastery over thebody and mind. The West gave technology to the world and made life verycomfortable, easy and quick. India can give yoga and spirituality and the whole worldis crying for it. People in the West are fed up and frightened of technology. Theywant a science to allay their fears and give them peace.Only the system of yoga which is still alive today in India can adequately fulfil thisneed. Therefore, all Indians wherever they are, must represent this science correctly.

Yoga is knowledge, not miracles, witchcraft or superstition. Yoga is a science whichcan be studied, practised, experienced, understood and explained by any educatedand wellreadperson. Yoga can improve relations and create international goodwill. Itis important to be able to give something to others which they can cherish deep intheir hearts.I give free discussions on yoga everywhere I go because I am fully convinced of itseffectiveness. My experience and experiments in life with thousands and thousands ofpeople, East and West are my proof. Now it is the duty of those who know that yogaproduces an integrated personality to acquaint themselves with all aspects of yoga. Itis no use saying that bhakti yoga alone is enough. If it were, why are religious peoplelying ill in hospitals and taking so many pills? Why are they unable to sleep in theircosy beds? Religion is bhakti yoga. We need an integrated approach to life. Justadding salt to the vegetables does not make a tasty dish. We must combine manyspices. Life is too complex for one aspect of yoga to suffice. With a comprehensiveapproach, life becomes rich.

Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced PersonalitySwami Satyananda SaraswatiSpeech at the Gita Ashram, Monrovia, Liberia, May 1977, first printed in YOGA,Vol. 15, No. 8, August 1977According to vedic dharma each person is a composite of four main qualities:dynamism, emotions, mysticism and rationalism. Some people are predominantlydynamic, others are more emotional, mystical or rational. Every personality is anintegration of these four essential temperaments. For the evolution of our personalitywe have to integrate the four corresponding categories of yoga sadhana into ourlives.

Sadhana is spiritual discipline or practice. Just as you train an animal, the personalitymust also be trained in order to be useful in this life. For the balanced development ofour personality, we must practise an integral yoga sadhana. By emphasizing oneaspect of sadhana, our development will be lopsided. If we eat protein and nothingelse, what will happen? Just as we carefully provide a balanced diet for the physicalbody, so we must supply a balance of nutrition to the spiritual body also. In theBhagavad Gita, Yoga Vashishtha, Srimad Bhagavata, and other scriptures, anintegration of the four systems of karma yoga, bhakti yoga, raja yoga and jnana yogais recommended. Those who overemphasize any one aspect of yoga should rememberthat this results in onesideddevelopment.Through the practice of karma yoga, bhakti yoga, raja yoga and jnana yoga, we cantrain the whole personality. This is what I want to tell everyone, everywhere. It iseasy to attain temporary tranquillity through certain practices, but to train the mind isvery difficult. To transform the entire consciousness into a creative instrument is noteasy.Transforming the mindSome years ago some research was conducted to find out the influence of kirtan onthe brain. When we do kirtan for half an hour, we feel relaxed. Why? What changetakes place in the structure of the personality and in the hormonal makeupof thebrain? Research has found that during repetitive singing of kirtan, the brain registersthe sound waves, which influences other wave patterns of the brain. These wavesawaken alpha rhythms which immediately induce tranquillity. Thus by singing kirtan we

get peace of mind. This is well and good, but maintaining that state of mind during ourdaily life is not so easy. The peace we gain by practising this technique does notremain with us through the complicated and confusing patterns of our daily life.Therefore, side by side with yoga sadhana which gives us peace of mind, we mustalso remember the necessity of transforming the very structure of our mind. But how?When we drive our car into the petrol station to fill up the tank we find that petrol isof different categories. But when this petrol was extracted from the depths of theearth, what was it like then? Crude oil is so dirty but after being refined it becomes aremarkable agent of energy. It can even provide the power to fly an aeroplane.Similarly, the mind, or chitta, which we have inherited from our previous incarnationsstill remains in its crude or raw state. In the mental body we have so many thingswhich ought to be removed. When we become terribly angry or very tense, when weworry too much and pass sleepless nights due to family, business, social or politicalproblems, then we feel the necessity of purifying the mind. We must free it from allthese vrittis, those habits which we have formed in our personality from the presentand previous incarnations.We believe that the jiva or individual has undergone a process of selfincarnationin8,400,000 yonis or wombs. According to science, evolution has passed through afantastic panorama of existence, but despite these millions of incarnations that ourjiva has undergone, we still carry a very crude mind with us. This mind is composed ofthree gunas: sattwa, rajas, and tamas, which are the essential manifestations of12/10/2015 Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced Personalityhttp://www.yogamag.net/archives/2007/fjune07/integ.shtml 2/5prakriti or nature. The three gunas are also used in a social or moral context because

they indicate the personality of a person. Nature manifests as energy; in nature thereare static (tamasic), kinetic (rajasic) and balanced (sattwic) energies.If we want to make the mind infinite, we must cut and polish it just as we would adiamond. They say that tamas makes a person lethargic, rajas makes you violent andsattwa makes you balanced. Therefore, tamas and rajas have to be overcome bysattwa, and this is accomplished through the process of dhyana yoga. Dhyana hasbeen translated as meditation, but actually it means awareness. This can be attainedthrough raja yoga, bhakti yoga, jnana yoga, laya yoga, mantra yoga, and many otheryogic processes.The mind is not thought or emotion. Thought and emotion are patterns of mind.Happiness is a state of mind and so is depression. Mind is consciousness, awareness.Mind is a storehouse of energy, shakti. The pure mind is pure shakti. The mind can bepurified and corrected by following the methods most suited to our personality. Thosewho are very strong can take up the path of kundalini and kriya yoga. For others whoare not so strong and who haven’t yet developed much understanding of yoga, thereare other ways like mantra yoga or japa yoga.The mind is much more than thought or feeling. The mind is like an iceberg; only asmall portion is visible, the remainder lies submerged under the ocean. According tomodern psychology, the mind exists in three spheres: conscious, subconscious andunconscious. In Vedanta we call them: sthoola sharira, sukshma sharira and karanasharira.Exploding the unconscious mindThe unconscious mind is very powerful. The word ‘unconscious’ should not bemisunderstood. The unconscious mind is like a storehouse. All disease, success and

tragedy in life originate in the unconscious mind. The experiences that you have hadin life, important as well as unimportant, are all registered there. It is something like ahidden camera in the street. Everything that passes within its range is immediatelyphotographed. In the same way, whatever experience you have is immediatelytransferred back to the unconscious through the indriyas or senses and the mind.There they are stored in bija or seed form. This process starts rights from the timewhen the child is in the womb of the mother. From the fourth month of pregnancy,children have certain experiences which are embedded deep in the unconscious mind.Through the practices of kundalini, kriya and laya yoga, the unconscious mind can beexploded. What happens when we explode the unconscious mind? Here is an exampleof how an ordinary, insignificant experience can cause great damage to one’s mind. Inour ashram there was an intelligent engineer who could not manage to complete hiseducation or hold his job. Every morning from six till nine, he would go into a fit ofdepression. He became so restless that sometimes he felt he was going to die. Inthese fits of depression, he could not sit quietly, walk or talk. He left his career as abright mechanical engineer in the UK and wandered around Africa. Finally, he came toIndia and found his way to our ashram.One morning he was on the roof terrace and on the street below he saw a pig eatinghuman filth. This is quite a common scene for those of us who have lived in Indianvillages, but for this young man it was something new. The moment he saw it, hesuddenly remembered an incident from his childhood. When he was eight years old, heused to go fishing. One morning when he was preparing his tackle, he opened thesmall tin in which he kept little maggots for bait. He had forgotten to empty it the last

time he had gone fishing, and when he lifted the lid hundreds of flies swarmed in hisface. The moment he saw the pig eating human filth, his unconscious exploded andthis deep childhood memory came out. Since then the young man has never hadanother fit, and is perfectly all right.KarmaEvery action, every thought, every place is an experience. A satsang or a lecture onthe Bhagavad Gita is an experience. Even an ordinary experience can become very12/10/2015 Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced Personalityhttp://www.yogamag.net/archives/2007/fjune07/integ.shtml 3/5consequential in later life. There are so many types of karma. Charity is one karmaand plundering someone’s property is another. Even if you don’t do these things, stillyou are making karma. In the Gita, it is said that there is not one moment in life inwhich a person is free of karma. Only in samadhi can you completely do away withkarma, otherwise not. Modern psychology and yoga agree that even during deep sleepwhen you are not aware of time and space, name and form, your mind is still working.Remember that the unconscious mind is the storehouse of all past experiences orkarmas, not only in this life, but in our previous lives as well.The unconscious body is called hiranyagarbha, the golden egg. By the practice ofmantra sadhana we can penetrate it deeply and eliminate all kinds of karmas, one byone. That is why they say that by the practice of mantra one becomes free from theentanglements of karma.Every action is born of a deep karma. Every thought, movement, success, failure is areenactmentof one of our previous experiences. Here is another example, a clinicalcase concerning a husband and wife who loved each other very much. They werevery happy together at home, but whenever they went out to dinner, for a walk, on a

picnic, etc. they always fought. Why? When the husband was a child of four, hewalked into the bathroom when his mother was taking a bath. She quickly covered herbody with a dirty housedress, pushed him out and locked the door. Now, wheneverthe husband is at home, his wife is engaged in housework. She wears an oldhousedress and he loves her. He is still working out the problem of the old dress withwhich his mother covered herself in the bathroom. Whenever his wife is not wearingher old housedress, he doesn’t like her! Such simple childhood experiences can causeso many problems. Many good people suffer unnecessarily because they are unawareof their karmas and how they fructify.Mantra yogaThere are two ways of practising mantra yoga: one is the repetition of a bija mantralike Aum, Hrim, Shrim, Klim; the other is using the name of one’s guru or favouritedeity. Nowadays we have lost touch with the original mantra yoga system. If we feeldevotion for Shiva, then we practise ‘Om Namah Shivaya’. If we feel more inclinedtowards Rama, we repeat ‘Sri Ram Jai Ram’. When we feel attracted towards Krishna,we say ‘Om Namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya’. But according to mantra shastra, themantra must be very carefully selected to suit each individual personality. The bijamantras are very powerful. They can allay the strong influence of karmas. Mantrashould always be practised with a mala. Even in meditation when mantra issynchronized with the breath, a mala is still used.Japa and antar mounaWhen practising mantra, a lot of things come up in the mind which would not come upotherwise. When past incidents arise, what do we do? The usual response is tosuppress these thoughts because we are more interested in our mantra. So when weare practising japa and a thought come, we push it out; another one comes and we

push it out. But this is incorrect. We do not want to avoid karma, but to eliminate it.Therefore, it is necessary to observe each thought and let it pass of its own accord.Thus japa yoga must be followed or accompanied by antar mouna, the process ofwitnessing our thoughts. When we are practising mantra and a thought comes intoour mind, we must stop for a moment and see the thought, whatever it is, thencontinue the mantra until another thought comes. During the practice of japa andantar mouna, over a period of months the significant and insignificant memories of thepast flash into our mind. These memories should be seen very clearly if we want topurify our mind. Every experience we have during mantra practice or meditation hasan important bearing on our life.I know of many people who have changed completely through the practice of japaand antar mouna and they were amazed to see how it happened. One Frenchgentleman had a hernia and hydrocele. He left his job and went to his sister in thecountry. He told her that he was completely broken and could no longer work. Therewas no point in prolonging his life, he said, as he felt only pain everywhere. His sister,12/10/2015 Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced Personalityhttp://www.yogamag.net/archives/2007/fjune07/integ.shtml 4/5a staunch devotee of yoga, told him to put some cream on his eyebrow centre andconcentrate on that point. One day while the French gentleman was practising this, aterrific sound exploded somewhere in his brain. Surprisingly his hernia was cured andhis hydrocele problem was completely resolved – for him it was a miracle. When I methim, I asked what had happened when he was concentrating on bhrumadhya, theeyebrow centre. He said that when he was a schoolboy he went to the fish shop and

while eating, a fish bone got stuck in his teeth which later had to be removed by thedentist. When he was practising concentration on his bhrumadhya, he saw fish comingout of his mouth. After that, he too became a great devotee of yoga.Therefore, when practising mantra, do not discard or repress the experiences whicharise. You may think that while practising mantra, worldly thoughts should not enteryour mind, and if they do, then it is your duty to remove them in respect for themantra, but this is incorrect. According to yoga and psychology, we must observe,analyze and respect whatever thoughts or experiences come into our mind whilepractising japa.You will find that if the mantra is correct, it will work immediately. If it is not the rightone for you, it will still work, but slowly. To be powerful the mantra has to correlatewith all of our qualities and tendencies. The tantra and mantra shastras say that allmantras, with the exception of Aum, are classified into twelve main groups with fivesubdivisions. Only Aum can be repeated by anyone at any time, without restriction.The mantras which are used to explode the unconscious mind are very important.People with devotion for the Devi, particularly Durga or Kali, have fantasticexperiences while practising her mantra. Many of my disciples had terrifying dreams allnight after receiving her mantra. This is because the mantra is so powerful that itimmediately starts exploding the karmas from the unconscious mind. Just as a strongpurgative makes you go to the toilet every five minutes, so repetition of a powerfulmantra purges karma very quickly.Science of yogaThe science of yoga aims at perfecting human life. Every ordinary person hasextraordinary potential, but to develop this a strong and welltrainedmind is

necessary. Through the practices of yoga we can gain complete mastery over thebody and mind. The West gave technology to the world and made life verycomfortable, easy and quick. India can give yoga and spirituality and the whole worldis crying for it. People in the West are fed up and frightened of technology. Theywant a science to allay their fears and give them peace.Only the system of yoga which is still alive today in India can adequately fulfil thisneed. Therefore, all Indians wherever they are, must represent this science correctly.Yoga is knowledge, not miracles, witchcraft or superstition. Yoga is a science whichcan be studied, practised, experienced, understood and explained by any educatedand wellreadperson. Yoga can improve relations and create international goodwill. Itis important to be able to give something to others which they can cherish deep intheir hearts.I give free discussions on yoga everywhere I go because I am fully convinced of itseffectiveness. My experience and experiments in life with thousands and thousands ofpeople, East and West are my proof. Now it is the duty of those who know that yogaproduces an integrated personality to acquaint themselves with all aspects of yoga. Itis no use saying that bhakti yoga alone is enough. If it were, why are religious peoplelying ill in hospitals and taking so many pills? Why are they unable to sleep in theircosy beds? Religion is bhakti yoga. We need an integrated approach to life. Justadding salt to the vegetables does not make a tasty dish. We must combine manyspices. Life is too complex for one aspect of yoga to suffice. With a comprehensiveapproach, life becomes rich.

Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced PersonalitySwami Satyananda Saraswati

Speech at the Gita Ashram, Monrovia, Liberia, May 1977, first printed in YOGA,Vol. 15, No. 8, August 1977According to vedic dharma each person is a composite of four main qualities:dynamism, emotions, mysticism and rationalism. Some people are predominantlydynamic, others are more emotional, mystical or rational. Every personality is anintegration of these four essential temperaments. For the evolution of our personalitywe have to integrate the four corresponding categories of yoga sadhana into ourlives.Sadhana is spiritual discipline or practice. Just as you train an animal, the personalitymust also be trained in order to be useful in this life. For the balanced development ofour personality, we must practise an integral yoga sadhana. By emphasizing oneaspect of sadhana, our development will be lopsided. If we eat protein and nothingelse, what will happen? Just as we carefully provide a balanced diet for the physicalbody, so we must supply a balance of nutrition to the spiritual body also. In theBhagavad Gita, Yoga Vashishtha, Srimad Bhagavata, and other scriptures, anintegration of the four systems of karma yoga, bhakti yoga, raja yoga and jnana yogais recommended. Those who overemphasize any one aspect of yoga should rememberthat this results in onesideddevelopment.Through the practice of karma yoga, bhakti yoga, raja yoga and jnana yoga, we cantrain the whole personality. This is what I want to tell everyone, everywhere. It iseasy to attain temporary tranquillity through certain practices, but to train the mind isvery difficult. To transform the entire consciousness into a creative instrument is noteasy.Transforming the mindSome years ago some research was conducted to find out the influence of kirtan on

the brain. When we do kirtan for half an hour, we feel relaxed. Why? What changetakes place in the structure of the personality and in the hormonal makeupof thebrain? Research has found that during repetitive singing of kirtan, the brain registersthe sound waves, which influences other wave patterns of the brain. These wavesawaken alpha rhythms which immediately induce tranquillity. Thus by singing kirtan weget peace of mind. This is well and good, but maintaining that state of mind during ourdaily life is not so easy. The peace we gain by practising this technique does notremain with us through the complicated and confusing patterns of our daily life.Therefore, side by side with yoga sadhana which gives us peace of mind, we mustalso remember the necessity of transforming the very structure of our mind. But how?When we drive our car into the petrol station to fill up the tank we find that petrol isof different categories. But when this petrol was extracted from the depths of theearth, what was it like then? Crude oil is so dirty but after being refined it becomes aremarkable agent of energy. It can even provide the power to fly an aeroplane.Similarly, the mind, or chitta, which we have inherited from our previous incarnationsstill remains in its crude or raw state. In the mental body we have so many thingswhich ought to be removed. When we become terribly angry or very tense, when weworry too much and pass sleepless nights due to family, business, social or politicalproblems, then we feel the necessity of purifying the mind. We must free it from allthese vrittis, those habits which we have formed in our personality from the presentand previous incarnations.We believe that the jiva or individual has undergone a process of selfincarnationin8,400,000 yonis or wombs. According to science, evolution has passed through a

fantastic panorama of existence, but despite these millions of incarnations that ourjiva has undergone, we still carry a very crude mind with us. This mind is composed ofthree gunas: sattwa, rajas, and tamas, which are the essential manifestations of12/10/2015 Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced Personalityhttp://www.yogamag.net/archives/2007/fjune07/integ.shtml 2/5prakriti or nature. The three gunas are also used in a social or moral context becausethey indicate the personality of a person. Nature manifests as energy; in nature thereare static (tamasic), kinetic (rajasic) and balanced (sattwic) energies.If we want to make the mind infinite, we must cut and polish it just as we would adiamond. They say that tamas makes a person lethargic, rajas makes you violent andsattwa makes you balanced. Therefore, tamas and rajas have to be overcome bysattwa, and this is accomplished through the process of dhyana yoga. Dhyana hasbeen translated as meditation, but actually it means awareness. This can be attainedthrough raja yoga, bhakti yoga, jnana yoga, laya yoga, mantra yoga, and many otheryogic processes.The mind is not thought or emotion. Thought and emotion are patterns of mind.Happiness is a state of mind and so is depression. Mind is consciousness, awareness.Mind is a storehouse of energy, shakti. The pure mind is pure shakti. The mind can bepurified and corrected by following the methods most suited to our personality. Thosewho are very strong can take up the path of kundalini and kriya yoga. For others whoare not so strong and who haven’t yet developed much understanding of yoga, thereare other ways like mantra yoga or japa yoga.The mind is much more than thought or feeling. The mind is like an iceberg; only asmall portion is visible, the remainder lies submerged under the ocean. According to

modern psychology, the mind exists in three spheres: conscious, subconscious andunconscious. In Vedanta we call them: sthoola sharira, sukshma sharira and karanasharira.Exploding the unconscious mindThe unconscious mind is very powerful. The word ‘unconscious’ should not bemisunderstood. The unconscious mind is like a storehouse. All disease, success andtragedy in life originate in the unconscious mind. The experiences that you have hadin life, important as well as unimportant, are all registered there. It is something like ahidden camera in the street. Everything that passes within its range is immediatelyphotographed. In the same way, whatever experience you have is immediatelytransferred back to the unconscious through the indriyas or senses and the mind.There they are stored in bija or seed form. This process starts rights from the timewhen the child is in the womb of the mother. From the fourth month of pregnancy,children have certain experiences which are embedded deep in the unconscious mind.Through the practices of kundalini, kriya and laya yoga, the unconscious mind can beexploded. What happens when we explode the unconscious mind? Here is an exampleof how an ordinary, insignificant experience can cause great damage to one’s mind. Inour ashram there was an intelligent engineer who could not manage to complete hiseducation or hold his job. Every morning from six till nine, he would go into a fit ofdepression. He became so restless that sometimes he felt he was going to die. Inthese fits of depression, he could not sit quietly, walk or talk. He left his career as abright mechanical engineer in the UK and wandered around Africa. Finally, he came toIndia and found his way to our ashram.

One morning he was on the roof terrace and on the street below he saw a pig eatinghuman filth. This is quite a common scene for those of us who have lived in Indianvillages, but for this young man it was something new. The moment he saw it, hesuddenly remembered an incident from his childhood. When he was eight years old, heused to go fishing. One morning when he was preparing his tackle, he opened thesmall tin in which he kept little maggots for bait. He had forgotten to empty it the lasttime he had gone fishing, and when he lifted the lid hundreds of flies swarmed in hisface. The moment he saw the pig eating human filth, his unconscious exploded andthis deep childhood memory came out. Since then the young man has never hadanother fit, and is perfectly all right.KarmaEvery action, every thought, every place is an experience. A satsang or a lecture onthe Bhagavad Gita is an experience. Even an ordinary experience can become very12/10/2015 Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced Personalityhttp://www.yogamag.net/archives/2007/fjune07/integ.shtml 3/5consequential in later life. There are so many types of karma. Charity is one karmaand plundering someone’s property is another. Even if you don’t do these things, stillyou are making karma. In the Gita, it is said that there is not one moment in life inwhich a person is free of karma. Only in samadhi can you completely do away withkarma, otherwise not. Modern psychology and yoga agree that even during deep sleepwhen you are not aware of time and space, name and form, your mind is still working.Remember that the unconscious mind is the storehouse of all past experiences orkarmas, not only in this life, but in our previous lives as well.The unconscious body is called hiranyagarbha, the golden egg. By the practice ofmantra sadhana we can penetrate it deeply and eliminate all kinds of karmas, one by

one. That is why they say that by the practice of mantra one becomes free from theentanglements of karma.Every action is born of a deep karma. Every thought, movement, success, failure is areenactmentof one of our previous experiences. Here is another example, a clinicalcase concerning a husband and wife who loved each other very much. They werevery happy together at home, but whenever they went out to dinner, for a walk, on apicnic, etc. they always fought. Why? When the husband was a child of four, hewalked into the bathroom when his mother was taking a bath. She quickly covered herbody with a dirty housedress, pushed him out and locked the door. Now, wheneverthe husband is at home, his wife is engaged in housework. She wears an oldhousedress and he loves her. He is still working out the problem of the old dress withwhich his mother covered herself in the bathroom. Whenever his wife is not wearingher old housedress, he doesn’t like her! Such simple childhood experiences can causeso many problems. Many good people suffer unnecessarily because they are unawareof their karmas and how they fructify.Mantra yogaThere are two ways of practising mantra yoga: one is the repetition of a bija mantralike Aum, Hrim, Shrim, Klim; the other is using the name of one’s guru or favouritedeity. Nowadays we have lost touch with the original mantra yoga system. If we feeldevotion for Shiva, then we practise ‘Om Namah Shivaya’. If we feel more inclinedtowards Rama, we repeat ‘Sri Ram Jai Ram’. When we feel attracted towards Krishna,we say ‘Om Namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya’. But according to mantra shastra, themantra must be very carefully selected to suit each individual personality. The bijamantras are very powerful. They can allay the strong influence of karmas. Mantra

should always be practised with a mala. Even in meditation when mantra issynchronized with the breath, a mala is still used.Japa and antar mounaWhen practising mantra, a lot of things come up in the mind which would not come upotherwise. When past incidents arise, what do we do? The usual response is tosuppress these thoughts because we are more interested in our mantra. So when weare practising japa and a thought come, we push it out; another one comes and wepush it out. But this is incorrect. We do not want to avoid karma, but to eliminate it.Therefore, it is necessary to observe each thought and let it pass of its own accord.Thus japa yoga must be followed or accompanied by antar mouna, the process ofwitnessing our thoughts. When we are practising mantra and a thought comes intoour mind, we must stop for a moment and see the thought, whatever it is, thencontinue the mantra until another thought comes. During the practice of japa andantar mouna, over a period of months the significant and insignificant memories of thepast flash into our mind. These memories should be seen very clearly if we want topurify our mind. Every experience we have during mantra practice or meditation hasan important bearing on our life.I know of many people who have changed completely through the practice of japaand antar mouna and they were amazed to see how it happened. One Frenchgentleman had a hernia and hydrocele. He left his job and went to his sister in thecountry. He told her that he was completely broken and could no longer work. Therewas no point in prolonging his life, he said, as he felt only pain everywhere. His sister,12/10/2015 Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced Personalityhttp://www.yogamag.net/archives/2007/fjune07/integ.shtml 4/5a staunch devotee of yoga, told him to put some cream on his eyebrow centre and

concentrate on that point. One day while the French gentleman was practising this, aterrific sound exploded somewhere in his brain. Surprisingly his hernia was cured andhis hydrocele problem was completely resolved – for him it was a miracle. When I methim, I asked what had happened when he was concentrating on bhrumadhya, theeyebrow centre. He said that when he was a schoolboy he went to the fish shop andwhile eating, a fish bone got stuck in his teeth which later had to be removed by thedentist. When he was practising concentration on his bhrumadhya, he saw fish comingout of his mouth. After that, he too became a great devotee of yoga.Therefore, when practising mantra, do not discard or repress the experiences whicharise. You may think that while practising mantra, worldly thoughts should not enteryour mind, and if they do, then it is your duty to remove them in respect for themantra, but this is incorrect. According to yoga and psychology, we must observe,analyze and respect whatever thoughts or experiences come into our mind whilepractising japa.You will find that if the mantra is correct, it will work immediately. If it is not the rightone for you, it will still work, but slowly. To be powerful the mantra has to correlatewith all of our qualities and tendencies. The tantra and mantra shastras say that allmantras, with the exception of Aum, are classified into twelve main groups with fivesubdivisions. Only Aum can be repeated by anyone at any time, without restriction.The mantras which are used to explode the unconscious mind are very important.People with devotion for the Devi, particularly Durga or Kali, have fantasticexperiences while practising her mantra. Many of my disciples had terrifying dreams allnight after receiving her mantra. This is because the mantra is so powerful that it

immediately starts exploding the karmas from the unconscious mind. Just as a strongpurgative makes you go to the toilet every five minutes, so repetition of a powerfulmantra purges karma very quickly.Science of yogaThe science of yoga aims at perfecting human life. Every ordinary person hasextraordinary potential, but to develop this a strong and welltrainedmind isnecessary. Through the practices of yoga we can gain complete mastery over thebody and mind. The West gave technology to the world and made life verycomfortable, easy and quick. India can give yoga and spirituality and the whole worldis crying for it. People in the West are fed up and frightened of technology. Theywant a science to allay their fears and give them peace.Only the system of yoga which is still alive today in India can adequately fulfil thisneed. Therefore, all Indians wherever they are, must represent this science correctly.Yoga is knowledge, not miracles, witchcraft or superstition. Yoga is a science whichcan be studied, practised, experienced, understood and explained by any educatedand wellreadperson. Yoga can improve relations and create international goodwill. Itis important to be able to give something to others which they can cherish deep intheir hearts.I give free discussions on yoga everywhere I go because I am fully convinced of itseffectiveness. My experience and experiments in life with thousands and thousands ofpeople, East and West are my proof. Now it is the duty of those who know that yogaproduces an integrated personality to acquaint themselves with all aspects of yoga. Itis no use saying that bhakti yoga alone is enough. If it were, why are religious peoplelying ill in hospitals and taking so many pills? Why are they unable to sleep in their

cosy beds? Religion is bhakti yoga. We need an integrated approach to life. Justadding salt to the vegetables does not make a tasty dish. We must combine manyspices. Life is too complex for one aspect of yoga to suffice. With a comprehensiveapproach, life becomes rich.

Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced PersonalitySwami Satyananda SaraswatiSpeech at the Gita Ashram, Monrovia, Liberia, May 1977, first printed in YOGA,Vol. 15, No. 8, August 1977According to vedic dharma each person is a composite of four main qualities:dynamism, emotions, mysticism and rationalism. Some people are predominantlydynamic, others are more emotional, mystical or rational. Every personality is anintegration of these four essential temperaments. For the evolution of our personalitywe have to integrate the four corresponding categories of yoga sadhana into ourlives.Sadhana is spiritual discipline or practice. Just as you train an animal, the personalitymust also be trained in order to be useful in this life. For the balanced development ofour personality, we must practise an integral yoga sadhana. By emphasizing oneaspect of sadhana, our development will be lopsided. If we eat protein and nothingelse, what will happen? Just as we carefully provide a balanced diet for the physicalbody, so we must supply a balance of nutrition to the spiritual body also. In theBhagavad Gita, Yoga Vashishtha, Srimad Bhagavata, and other scriptures, anintegration of the four systems of karma yoga, bhakti yoga, raja yoga and jnana yogais recommended. Those who overemphasize any one aspect of yoga should rememberthat this results in onesideddevelopment.Through the practice of karma yoga, bhakti yoga, raja yoga and jnana yoga, we cantrain the whole personality. This is what I want to tell everyone, everywhere. It is

easy to attain temporary tranquillity through certain practices, but to train the mind isvery difficult. To transform the entire consciousness into a creative instrument is noteasy.Transforming the mindSome years ago some research was conducted to find out the influence of kirtan onthe brain. When we do kirtan for half an hour, we feel relaxed. Why? What changetakes place in the structure of the personality and in the hormonal makeupof thebrain? Research has found that during repetitive singing of kirtan, the brain registersthe sound waves, which influences other wave patterns of the brain. These wavesawaken alpha rhythms which immediately induce tranquillity. Thus by singing kirtan weget peace of mind. This is well and good, but maintaining that state of mind during ourdaily life is not so easy. The peace we gain by practising this technique does notremain with us through the complicated and confusing patterns of our daily life.Therefore, side by side with yoga sadhana which gives us peace of mind, we mustalso remember the necessity of transforming the very structure of our mind. But how?When we drive our car into the petrol station to fill up the tank we find that petrol isof different categories. But when this petrol was extracted from the depths of theearth, what was it like then? Crude oil is so dirty but after being refined it becomes aremarkable agent of energy. It can even provide the power to fly an aeroplane.Similarly, the mind, or chitta, which we have inherited from our previous incarnationsstill remains in its crude or raw state. In the mental body we have so many thingswhich ought to be removed. When we become terribly angry or very tense, when weworry too much and pass sleepless nights due to family, business, social or political

problems, then we feel the necessity of purifying the mind. We must free it from allthese vrittis, those habits which we have formed in our personality from the presentand previous incarnations.We believe that the jiva or individual has undergone a process of selfincarnationin8,400,000 yonis or wombs. According to science, evolution has passed through afantastic panorama of existence, but despite these millions of incarnations that ourjiva has undergone, we still carry a very crude mind with us. This mind is composed ofthree gunas: sattwa, rajas, and tamas, which are the essential manifestations of12/10/2015 Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced Personalityhttp://www.yogamag.net/archives/2007/fjune07/integ.shtml 2/5prakriti or nature. The three gunas are also used in a social or moral context becausethey indicate the personality of a person. Nature manifests as energy; in nature thereare static (tamasic), kinetic (rajasic) and balanced (sattwic) energies.If we want to make the mind infinite, we must cut and polish it just as we would adiamond. They say that tamas makes a person lethargic, rajas makes you violent andsattwa makes you balanced. Therefore, tamas and rajas have to be overcome bysattwa, and this is accomplished through the process of dhyana yoga. Dhyana hasbeen translated as meditation, but actually it means awareness. This can be attainedthrough raja yoga, bhakti yoga, jnana yoga, laya yoga, mantra yoga, and many otheryogic processes.The mind is not thought or emotion. Thought and emotion are patterns of mind.Happiness is a state of mind and so is depression. Mind is consciousness, awareness.Mind is a storehouse of energy, shakti. The pure mind is pure shakti. The mind can bepurified and corrected by following the methods most suited to our personality. Those

who are very strong can take up the path of kundalini and kriya yoga. For others whoare not so strong and who haven’t yet developed much understanding of yoga, thereare other ways like mantra yoga or japa yoga.The mind is much more than thought or feeling. The mind is like an iceberg; only asmall portion is visible, the remainder lies submerged under the ocean. According tomodern psychology, the mind exists in three spheres: conscious, subconscious andunconscious. In Vedanta we call them: sthoola sharira, sukshma sharira and karanasharira.Exploding the unconscious mindThe unconscious mind is very powerful. The word ‘unconscious’ should not bemisunderstood. The unconscious mind is like a storehouse. All disease, success andtragedy in life originate in the unconscious mind. The experiences that you have hadin life, important as well as unimportant, are all registered there. It is something like ahidden camera in the street. Everything that passes within its range is immediatelyphotographed. In the same way, whatever experience you have is immediatelytransferred back to the unconscious through the indriyas or senses and the mind.There they are stored in bija or seed form. This process starts rights from the timewhen the child is in the womb of the mother. From the fourth month of pregnancy,children have certain experiences which are embedded deep in the unconscious mind.Through the practices of kundalini, kriya and laya yoga, the unconscious mind can beexploded. What happens when we explode the unconscious mind? Here is an exampleof how an ordinary, insignificant experience can cause great damage to one’s mind. In

our ashram there was an intelligent engineer who could not manage to complete hiseducation or hold his job. Every morning from six till nine, he would go into a fit ofdepression. He became so restless that sometimes he felt he was going to die. Inthese fits of depression, he could not sit quietly, walk or talk. He left his career as abright mechanical engineer in the UK and wandered around Africa. Finally, he came toIndia and found his way to our ashram.One morning he was on the roof terrace and on the street below he saw a pig eatinghuman filth. This is quite a common scene for those of us who have lived in Indianvillages, but for this young man it was something new. The moment he saw it, hesuddenly remembered an incident from his childhood. When he was eight years old, heused to go fishing. One morning when he was preparing his tackle, he opened thesmall tin in which he kept little maggots for bait. He had forgotten to empty it the lasttime he had gone fishing, and when he lifted the lid hundreds of flies swarmed in hisface. The moment he saw the pig eating human filth, his unconscious exploded andthis deep childhood memory came out. Since then the young man has never hadanother fit, and is perfectly all right.KarmaEvery action, every thought, every place is an experience. A satsang or a lecture onthe Bhagavad Gita is an experience. Even an ordinary experience can become very12/10/2015 Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced Personalityhttp://www.yogamag.net/archives/2007/fjune07/integ.shtml 3/5consequential in later life. There are so many types of karma. Charity is one karmaand plundering someone’s property is another. Even if you don’t do these things, stillyou are making karma. In the Gita, it is said that there is not one moment in life inwhich a person is free of karma. Only in samadhi can you completely do away with

karma, otherwise not. Modern psychology and yoga agree that even during deep sleepwhen you are not aware of time and space, name and form, your mind is still working.Remember that the unconscious mind is the storehouse of all past experiences orkarmas, not only in this life, but in our previous lives as well.The unconscious body is called hiranyagarbha, the golden egg. By the practice ofmantra sadhana we can penetrate it deeply and eliminate all kinds of karmas, one byone. That is why they say that by the practice of mantra one becomes free from theentanglements of karma.Every action is born of a deep karma. Every thought, movement, success, failure is areenactmentof one of our previous experiences. Here is another example, a clinicalcase concerning a husband and wife who loved each other very much. They werevery happy together at home, but whenever they went out to dinner, for a walk, on apicnic, etc. they always fought. Why? When the husband was a child of four, hewalked into the bathroom when his mother was taking a bath. She quickly covered herbody with a dirty housedress, pushed him out and locked the door. Now, wheneverthe husband is at home, his wife is engaged in housework. She wears an oldhousedress and he loves her. He is still working out the problem of the old dress withwhich his mother covered herself in the bathroom. Whenever his wife is not wearingher old housedress, he doesn’t like her! Such simple childhood experiences can causeso many problems. Many good people suffer unnecessarily because they are unawareof their karmas and how they fructify.Mantra yogaThere are two ways of practising mantra yoga: one is the repetition of a bija mantra

like Aum, Hrim, Shrim, Klim; the other is using the name of one’s guru or favouritedeity. Nowadays we have lost touch with the original mantra yoga system. If we feeldevotion for Shiva, then we practise ‘Om Namah Shivaya’. If we feel more inclinedtowards Rama, we repeat ‘Sri Ram Jai Ram’. When we feel attracted towards Krishna,we say ‘Om Namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya’. But according to mantra shastra, themantra must be very carefully selected to suit each individual personality. The bijamantras are very powerful. They can allay the strong influence of karmas. Mantrashould always be practised with a mala. Even in meditation when mantra issynchronized with the breath, a mala is still used.Japa and antar mounaWhen practising mantra, a lot of things come up in the mind which would not come upotherwise. When past incidents arise, what do we do? The usual response is tosuppress these thoughts because we are more interested in our mantra. So when weare practising japa and a thought come, we push it out; another one comes and wepush it out. But this is incorrect. We do not want to avoid karma, but to eliminate it.Therefore, it is necessary to observe each thought and let it pass of its own accord.Thus japa yoga must be followed or accompanied by antar mouna, the process ofwitnessing our thoughts. When we are practising mantra and a thought comes intoour mind, we must stop for a moment and see the thought, whatever it is, thencontinue the mantra until another thought comes. During the practice of japa andantar mouna, over a period of months the significant and insignificant memories of thepast flash into our mind. These memories should be seen very clearly if we want topurify our mind. Every experience we have during mantra practice or meditation hasan important bearing on our life.I know of many people who have changed completely through the practice of japaand antar mouna and they were amazed to see how it happened. One French

gentleman had a hernia and hydrocele. He left his job and went to his sister in thecountry. He told her that he was completely broken and could no longer work. Therewas no point in prolonging his life, he said, as he felt only pain everywhere. His sister,12/10/2015 Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced Personalityhttp://www.yogamag.net/archives/2007/fjune07/integ.shtml 4/5a staunch devotee of yoga, told him to put some cream on his eyebrow centre andconcentrate on that point. One day while the French gentleman was practising this, aterrific sound exploded somewhere in his brain. Surprisingly his hernia was cured andhis hydrocele problem was completely resolved – for him it was a miracle. When I methim, I asked what had happened when he was concentrating on bhrumadhya, theeyebrow centre. He said that when he was a schoolboy he went to the fish shop andwhile eating, a fish bone got stuck in his teeth which later had to be removed by thedentist. When he was practising concentration on his bhrumadhya, he saw fish comingout of his mouth. After that, he too became a great devotee of yoga.Therefore, when practising mantra, do not discard or repress the experiences whicharise. You may think that while practising mantra, worldly thoughts should not enteryour mind, and if they do, then it is your duty to remove them in respect for themantra, but this is incorrect. According to yoga and psychology, we must observe,analyze and respect whatever thoughts or experiences come into our mind whilepractising japa.You will find that if the mantra is correct, it will work immediately. If it is not the rightone for you, it will still work, but slowly. To be powerful the mantra has to correlatewith all of our qualities and tendencies. The tantra and mantra shastras say that all

mantras, with the exception of Aum, are classified into twelve main groups with fivesubdivisions. Only Aum can be repeated by anyone at any time, without restriction.The mantras which are used to explode the unconscious mind are very important.People with devotion for the Devi, particularly Durga or Kali, have fantasticexperiences while practising her mantra. Many of my disciples had terrifying dreams allnight after receiving her mantra. This is because the mantra is so powerful that itimmediately starts exploding the karmas from the unconscious mind. Just as a strongpurgative makes you go to the toilet every five minutes, so repetition of a powerfulmantra purges karma very quickly.Science of yogaThe science of yoga aims at perfecting human life. Every ordinary person hasextraordinary potential, but to develop this a strong and welltrainedmind isnecessary. Through the practices of yoga we can gain complete mastery over thebody and mind. The West gave technology to the world and made life verycomfortable, easy and quick. India can give yoga and spirituality and the whole worldis crying for it. People in the West are fed up and frightened of technology. Theywant a science to allay their fears and give them peace.Only the system of yoga which is still alive today in India can adequately fulfil thisneed. Therefore, all Indians wherever they are, must represent this science correctly.Yoga is knowledge, not miracles, witchcraft or superstition. Yoga is a science whichcan be studied, practised, experienced, understood and explained by any educatedand wellreadperson. Yoga can improve relations and create international goodwill. Itis important to be able to give something to others which they can cherish deep intheir hearts.I give free discussions on yoga everywhere I go because I am fully convinced of its

effectiveness. My experience and experiments in life with thousands and thousands ofpeople, East and West are my proof. Now it is the duty of those who know that yogaproduces an integrated personality to acquaint themselves with all aspects of yoga. Itis no use saying that bhakti yoga alone is enough. If it were, why are religious peoplelying ill in hospitals and taking so many pills? Why are they unable to sleep in theircosy beds? Religion is bhakti yoga. We need an integrated approach to life. Justadding salt to the vegetables does not make a tasty dish. We must combine manyspices. Life is too complex for one aspect of yoga to suffice. With a comprehensiveapproach, life becomes rich.

Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced PersonalitySwami Satyananda SaraswatiSpeech at the Gita Ashram, Monrovia, Liberia, May 1977, first printed in YOGA,Vol. 15, No. 8, August 1977According to vedic dharma each person is a composite of four main qualities:dynamism, emotions, mysticism and rationalism. Some people are predominantlydynamic, others are more emotional, mystical or rational. Every personality is anintegration of these four essential temperaments. For the evolution of our personalitywe have to integrate the four corresponding categories of yoga sadhana into ourlives.Sadhana is spiritual discipline or practice. Just as you train an animal, the personalitymust also be trained in order to be useful in this life. For the balanced development ofour personality, we must practise an integral yoga sadhana. By emphasizing oneaspect of sadhana, our development will be lopsided. If we eat protein and nothingelse, what will happen? Just as we carefully provide a balanced diet for the physicalbody, so we must supply a balance of nutrition to the spiritual body also. In the

Bhagavad Gita, Yoga Vashishtha, Srimad Bhagavata, and other scriptures, anintegration of the four systems of karma yoga, bhakti yoga, raja yoga and jnana yogais recommended. Those who overemphasize any one aspect of yoga should rememberthat this results in onesideddevelopment.Through the practice of karma yoga, bhakti yoga, raja yoga and jnana yoga, we cantrain the whole personality. This is what I want to tell everyone, everywhere. It iseasy to attain temporary tranquillity through certain practices, but to train the mind isvery difficult. To transform the entire consciousness into a creative instrument is noteasy.Transforming the mindSome years ago some research was conducted to find out the influence of kirtan onthe brain. When we do kirtan for half an hour, we feel relaxed. Why? What changetakes place in the structure of the personality and in the hormonal makeupof thebrain? Research has found that during repetitive singing of kirtan, the brain registersthe sound waves, which influences other wave patterns of the brain. These wavesawaken alpha rhythms which immediately induce tranquillity. Thus by singing kirtan weget peace of mind. This is well and good, but maintaining that state of mind during ourdaily life is not so easy. The peace we gain by practising this technique does notremain with us through the complicated and confusing patterns of our daily life.Therefore, side by side with yoga sadhana which gives us peace of mind, we mustalso remember the necessity of transforming the very structure of our mind. But how?When we drive our car into the petrol station to fill up the tank we find that petrol isof different categories. But when this petrol was extracted from the depths of the

earth, what was it like then? Crude oil is so dirty but after being refined it becomes aremarkable agent of energy. It can even provide the power to fly an aeroplane.Similarly, the mind, or chitta, which we have inherited from our previous incarnationsstill remains in its crude or raw state. In the mental body we have so many thingswhich ought to be removed. When we become terribly angry or very tense, when weworry too much and pass sleepless nights due to family, business, social or politicalproblems, then we feel the necessity of purifying the mind. We must free it from allthese vrittis, those habits which we have formed in our personality from the presentand previous incarnations.We believe that the jiva or individual has undergone a process of selfincarnationin8,400,000 yonis or wombs. According to science, evolution has passed through afantastic panorama of existence, but despite these millions of incarnations that ourjiva has undergone, we still carry a very crude mind with us. This mind is composed ofthree gunas: sattwa, rajas, and tamas, which are the essential manifestations of12/10/2015 Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced Personalityhttp://www.yogamag.net/archives/2007/fjune07/integ.shtml 2/5prakriti or nature. The three gunas are also used in a social or moral context becausethey indicate the personality of a person. Nature manifests as energy; in nature thereare static (tamasic), kinetic (rajasic) and balanced (sattwic) energies.If we want to make the mind infinite, we must cut and polish it just as we would adiamond. They say that tamas makes a person lethargic, rajas makes you violent andsattwa makes you balanced. Therefore, tamas and rajas have to be overcome bysattwa, and this is accomplished through the process of dhyana yoga. Dhyana hasbeen translated as meditation, but actually it means awareness. This can be attained

through raja yoga, bhakti yoga, jnana yoga, laya yoga, mantra yoga, and many otheryogic processes.The mind is not thought or emotion. Thought and emotion are patterns of mind.Happiness is a state of mind and so is depression. Mind is consciousness, awareness.Mind is a storehouse of energy, shakti. The pure mind is pure shakti. The mind can bepurified and corrected by following the methods most suited to our personality. Thosewho are very strong can take up the path of kundalini and kriya yoga. For others whoare not so strong and who haven’t yet developed much understanding of yoga, thereare other ways like mantra yoga or japa yoga.The mind is much more than thought or feeling. The mind is like an iceberg; only asmall portion is visible, the remainder lies submerged under the ocean. According tomodern psychology, the mind exists in three spheres: conscious, subconscious andunconscious. In Vedanta we call them: sthoola sharira, sukshma sharira and karanasharira.Exploding the unconscious mindThe unconscious mind is very powerful. The word ‘unconscious’ should not bemisunderstood. The unconscious mind is like a storehouse. All disease, success andtragedy in life originate in the unconscious mind. The experiences that you have hadin life, important as well as unimportant, are all registered there. It is something like ahidden camera in the street. Everything that passes within its range is immediatelyphotographed. In the same way, whatever experience you have is immediatelytransferred back to the unconscious through the indriyas or senses and the mind.There they are stored in bija or seed form. This process starts rights from the time

when the child is in the womb of the mother. From the fourth month of pregnancy,children have certain experiences which are embedded deep in the unconscious mind.Through the practices of kundalini, kriya and laya yoga, the unconscious mind can beexploded. What happens when we explode the unconscious mind? Here is an exampleof how an ordinary, insignificant experience can cause great damage to one’s mind. Inour ashram there was an intelligent engineer who could not manage to complete hiseducation or hold his job. Every morning from six till nine, he would go into a fit ofdepression. He became so restless that sometimes he felt he was going to die. Inthese fits of depression, he could not sit quietly, walk or talk. He left his career as abright mechanical engineer in the UK and wandered around Africa. Finally, he came toIndia and found his way to our ashram.One morning he was on the roof terrace and on the street below he saw a pig eatinghuman filth. This is quite a common scene for those of us who have lived in Indianvillages, but for this young man it was something new. The moment he saw it, hesuddenly remembered an incident from his childhood. When he was eight years old, heused to go fishing. One morning when he was preparing his tackle, he opened thesmall tin in which he kept little maggots for bait. He had forgotten to empty it the lasttime he had gone fishing, and when he lifted the lid hundreds of flies swarmed in hisface. The moment he saw the pig eating human filth, his unconscious exploded andthis deep childhood memory came out. Since then the young man has never hadanother fit, and is perfectly all right.KarmaEvery action, every thought, every place is an experience. A satsang or a lecture on

the Bhagavad Gita is an experience. Even an ordinary experience can become very12/10/2015 Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced Personalityhttp://www.yogamag.net/archives/2007/fjune07/integ.shtml 3/5consequential in later life. There are so many types of karma. Charity is one karmaand plundering someone’s property is another. Even if you don’t do these things, stillyou are making karma. In the Gita, it is said that there is not one moment in life inwhich a person is free of karma. Only in samadhi can you completely do away withkarma, otherwise not. Modern psychology and yoga agree that even during deep sleepwhen you are not aware of time and space, name and form, your mind is still working.Remember that the unconscious mind is the storehouse of all past experiences orkarmas, not only in this life, but in our previous lives as well.The unconscious body is called hiranyagarbha, the golden egg. By the practice ofmantra sadhana we can penetrate it deeply and eliminate all kinds of karmas, one byone. That is why they say that by the practice of mantra one becomes free from theentanglements of karma.Every action is born of a deep karma. Every thought, movement, success, failure is areenactmentof one of our previous experiences. Here is another example, a clinicalcase concerning a husband and wife who loved each other very much. They werevery happy together at home, but whenever they went out to dinner, for a walk, on apicnic, etc. they always fought. Why? When the husband was a child of four, hewalked into the bathroom when his mother was taking a bath. She quickly covered herbody with a dirty housedress, pushed him out and locked the door. Now, wheneverthe husband is at home, his wife is engaged in housework. She wears an oldhousedress and he loves her. He is still working out the problem of the old dress with

which his mother covered herself in the bathroom. Whenever his wife is not wearingher old housedress, he doesn’t like her! Such simple childhood experiences can causeso many problems. Many good people suffer unnecessarily because they are unawareof their karmas and how they fructify.Mantra yogaThere are two ways of practising mantra yoga: one is the repetition of a bija mantralike Aum, Hrim, Shrim, Klim; the other is using the name of one’s guru or favouritedeity. Nowadays we have lost touch with the original mantra yoga system. If we feeldevotion for Shiva, then we practise ‘Om Namah Shivaya’. If we feel more inclinedtowards Rama, we repeat ‘Sri Ram Jai Ram’. When we feel attracted towards Krishna,we say ‘Om Namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya’. But according to mantra shastra, themantra must be very carefully selected to suit each individual personality. The bijamantras are very powerful. They can allay the strong influence of karmas. Mantrashould always be practised with a mala. Even in meditation when mantra issynchronized with the breath, a mala is still used.Japa and antar mounaWhen practising mantra, a lot of things come up in the mind which would not come upotherwise. When past incidents arise, what do we do? The usual response is tosuppress these thoughts because we are more interested in our mantra. So when weare practising japa and a thought come, we push it out; another one comes and wepush it out. But this is incorrect. We do not want to avoid karma, but to eliminate it.Therefore, it is necessary to observe each thought and let it pass of its own accord.Thus japa yoga must be followed or accompanied by antar mouna, the process ofwitnessing our thoughts. When we are practising mantra and a thought comes intoour mind, we must stop for a moment and see the thought, whatever it is, then

continue the mantra until another thought comes. During the practice of japa andantar mouna, over a period of months the significant and insignificant memories of thepast flash into our mind. These memories should be seen very clearly if we want topurify our mind. Every experience we have during mantra practice or meditation hasan important bearing on our life.I know of many people who have changed completely through the practice of japaand antar mouna and they were amazed to see how it happened. One Frenchgentleman had a hernia and hydrocele. He left his job and went to his sister in thecountry. He told her that he was completely broken and could no longer work. Therewas no point in prolonging his life, he said, as he felt only pain everywhere. His sister,12/10/2015 Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced Personalityhttp://www.yogamag.net/archives/2007/fjune07/integ.shtml 4/5a staunch devotee of yoga, told him to put some cream on his eyebrow centre andconcentrate on that point. One day while the French gentleman was practising this, aterrific sound exploded somewhere in his brain. Surprisingly his hernia was cured andhis hydrocele problem was completely resolved – for him it was a miracle. When I methim, I asked what had happened when he was concentrating on bhrumadhya, theeyebrow centre. He said that when he was a schoolboy he went to the fish shop andwhile eating, a fish bone got stuck in his teeth which later had to be removed by thedentist. When he was practising concentration on his bhrumadhya, he saw fish comingout of his mouth. After that, he too became a great devotee of yoga.Therefore, when practising mantra, do not discard or repress the experiences whicharise. You may think that while practising mantra, worldly thoughts should not enter

your mind, and if they do, then it is your duty to remove them in respect for themantra, but this is incorrect. According to yoga and psychology, we must observe,analyze and respect whatever thoughts or experiences come into our mind whilepractising japa.You will find that if the mantra is correct, it will work immediately. If it is not the rightone for you, it will still work, but slowly. To be powerful the mantra has to correlatewith all of our qualities and tendencies. The tantra and mantra shastras say that allmantras, with the exception of Aum, are classified into twelve main groups with fivesubdivisions. Only Aum can be repeated by anyone at any time, without restriction.The mantras which are used to explode the unconscious mind are very important.People with devotion for the Devi, particularly Durga or Kali, have fantasticexperiences while practising her mantra. Many of my disciples had terrifying dreams allnight after receiving her mantra. This is because the mantra is so powerful that itimmediately starts exploding the karmas from the unconscious mind. Just as a strongpurgative makes you go to the toilet every five minutes, so repetition of a powerfulmantra purges karma very quickly.Science of yogaThe science of yoga aims at perfecting human life. Every ordinary person hasextraordinary potential, but to develop this a strong and welltrainedmind isnecessary. Through the practices of yoga we can gain complete mastery over thebody and mind. The West gave technology to the world and made life verycomfortable, easy and quick. India can give yoga and spirituality and the whole worldis crying for it. People in the West are fed up and frightened of technology. Theywant a science to allay their fears and give them peace.Only the system of yoga which is still alive today in India can adequately fulfil thisneed. Therefore, all Indians wherever they are, must represent this science correctly.

Yoga is knowledge, not miracles, witchcraft or superstition. Yoga is a science whichcan be studied, practised, experienced, understood and explained by any educatedand wellreadperson. Yoga can improve relations and create international goodwill. Itis important to be able to give something to others which they can cherish deep intheir hearts.I give free discussions on yoga everywhere I go because I am fully convinced of itseffectiveness. My experience and experiments in life with thousands and thousands ofpeople, East and West are my proof. Now it is the duty of those who know that yogaproduces an integrated personality to acquaint themselves with all aspects of yoga. Itis no use saying that bhakti yoga alone is enough. If it were, why are religious peoplelying ill in hospitals and taking so many pills? Why are they unable to sleep in theircosy beds? Religion is bhakti yoga. We need an integrated approach to life. Justadding salt to the vegetables does not make a tasty dish. We must combine manyspices. Life is too complex for one aspect of yoga to suffice. With a comprehensiveapproach, life becomes rich.

Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced PersonalitySwami Satyananda SaraswatiSpeech at the Gita Ashram, Monrovia, Liberia, May 1977, first printed in YOGA,Vol. 15, No. 8, August 1977According to vedic dharma each person is a composite of four main qualities:dynamism, emotions, mysticism and rationalism. Some people are predominantlydynamic, others are more emotional, mystical or rational. Every personality is anintegration of these four essential temperaments. For the evolution of our personalitywe have to integrate the four corresponding categories of yoga sadhana into ourlives.

Sadhana is spiritual discipline or practice. Just as you train an animal, the personalitymust also be trained in order to be useful in this life. For the balanced development ofour personality, we must practise an integral yoga sadhana. By emphasizing oneaspect of sadhana, our development will be lopsided. If we eat protein and nothingelse, what will happen? Just as we carefully provide a balanced diet for the physicalbody, so we must supply a balance of nutrition to the spiritual body also. In theBhagavad Gita, Yoga Vashishtha, Srimad Bhagavata, and other scriptures, anintegration of the four systems of karma yoga, bhakti yoga, raja yoga and jnana yogais recommended. Those who overemphasize any one aspect of yoga should rememberthat this results in onesideddevelopment.Through the practice of karma yoga, bhakti yoga, raja yoga and jnana yoga, we cantrain the whole personality. This is what I want to tell everyone, everywhere. It iseasy to attain temporary tranquillity through certain practices, but to train the mind isvery difficult. To transform the entire consciousness into a creative instrument is noteasy.Transforming the mindSome years ago some research was conducted to find out the influence of kirtan onthe brain. When we do kirtan for half an hour, we feel relaxed. Why? What changetakes place in the structure of the personality and in the hormonal makeupof thebrain? Research has found that during repetitive singing of kirtan, the brain registersthe sound waves, which influences other wave patterns of the brain. These wavesawaken alpha rhythms which immediately induce tranquillity. Thus by singing kirtan we

get peace of mind. This is well and good, but maintaining that state of mind during ourdaily life is not so easy. The peace we gain by practising this technique does notremain with us through the complicated and confusing patterns of our daily life.Therefore, side by side with yoga sadhana which gives us peace of mind, we mustalso remember the necessity of transforming the very structure of our mind. But how?When we drive our car into the petrol station to fill up the tank we find that petrol isof different categories. But when this petrol was extracted from the depths of theearth, what was it like then? Crude oil is so dirty but after being refined it becomes aremarkable agent of energy. It can even provide the power to fly an aeroplane.Similarly, the mind, or chitta, which we have inherited from our previous incarnationsstill remains in its crude or raw state. In the mental body we have so many thingswhich ought to be removed. When we become terribly angry or very tense, when weworry too much and pass sleepless nights due to family, business, social or politicalproblems, then we feel the necessity of purifying the mind. We must free it from allthese vrittis, those habits which we have formed in our personality from the presentand previous incarnations.We believe that the jiva or individual has undergone a process of selfincarnationin8,400,000 yonis or wombs. According to science, evolution has passed through afantastic panorama of existence, but despite these millions of incarnations that ourjiva has undergone, we still carry a very crude mind with us. This mind is composed ofthree gunas: sattwa, rajas, and tamas, which are the essential manifestations of12/10/2015 Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced Personalityhttp://www.yogamag.net/archives/2007/fjune07/integ.shtml 2/5prakriti or nature. The three gunas are also used in a social or moral context because

they indicate the personality of a person. Nature manifests as energy; in nature thereare static (tamasic), kinetic (rajasic) and balanced (sattwic) energies.If we want to make the mind infinite, we must cut and polish it just as we would adiamond. They say that tamas makes a person lethargic, rajas makes you violent andsattwa makes you balanced. Therefore, tamas and rajas have to be overcome bysattwa, and this is accomplished through the process of dhyana yoga. Dhyana hasbeen translated as meditation, but actually it means awareness. This can be attainedthrough raja yoga, bhakti yoga, jnana yoga, laya yoga, mantra yoga, and many otheryogic processes.The mind is not thought or emotion. Thought and emotion are patterns of mind.Happiness is a state of mind and so is depression. Mind is consciousness, awareness.Mind is a storehouse of energy, shakti. The pure mind is pure shakti. The mind can bepurified and corrected by following the methods most suited to our personality. Thosewho are very strong can take up the path of kundalini and kriya yoga. For others whoare not so strong and who haven’t yet developed much understanding of yoga, thereare other ways like mantra yoga or japa yoga.The mind is much more than thought or feeling. The mind is like an iceberg; only asmall portion is visible, the remainder lies submerged under the ocean. According tomodern psychology, the mind exists in three spheres: conscious, subconscious andunconscious. In Vedanta we call them: sthoola sharira, sukshma sharira and karanasharira.Exploding the unconscious mindThe unconscious mind is very powerful. The word ‘unconscious’ should not bemisunderstood. The unconscious mind is like a storehouse. All disease, success and

tragedy in life originate in the unconscious mind. The experiences that you have hadin life, important as well as unimportant, are all registered there. It is something like ahidden camera in the street. Everything that passes within its range is immediatelyphotographed. In the same way, whatever experience you have is immediatelytransferred back to the unconscious through the indriyas or senses and the mind.There they are stored in bija or seed form. This process starts rights from the timewhen the child is in the womb of the mother. From the fourth month of pregnancy,children have certain experiences which are embedded deep in the unconscious mind.Through the practices of kundalini, kriya and laya yoga, the unconscious mind can beexploded. What happens when we explode the unconscious mind? Here is an exampleof how an ordinary, insignificant experience can cause great damage to one’s mind. Inour ashram there was an intelligent engineer who could not manage to complete hiseducation or hold his job. Every morning from six till nine, he would go into a fit ofdepression. He became so restless that sometimes he felt he was going to die. Inthese fits of depression, he could not sit quietly, walk or talk. He left his career as abright mechanical engineer in the UK and wandered around Africa. Finally, he came toIndia and found his way to our ashram.One morning he was on the roof terrace and on the street below he saw a pig eatinghuman filth. This is quite a common scene for those of us who have lived in Indianvillages, but for this young man it was something new. The moment he saw it, hesuddenly remembered an incident from his childhood. When he was eight years old, heused to go fishing. One morning when he was preparing his tackle, he opened thesmall tin in which he kept little maggots for bait. He had forgotten to empty it the last

time he had gone fishing, and when he lifted the lid hundreds of flies swarmed in hisface. The moment he saw the pig eating human filth, his unconscious exploded andthis deep childhood memory came out. Since then the young man has never hadanother fit, and is perfectly all right.KarmaEvery action, every thought, every place is an experience. A satsang or a lecture onthe Bhagavad Gita is an experience. Even an ordinary experience can become very12/10/2015 Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced Personalityhttp://www.yogamag.net/archives/2007/fjune07/integ.shtml 3/5consequential in later life. There are so many types of karma. Charity is one karmaand plundering someone’s property is another. Even if you don’t do these things, stillyou are making karma. In the Gita, it is said that there is not one moment in life inwhich a person is free of karma. Only in samadhi can you completely do away withkarma, otherwise not. Modern psychology and yoga agree that even during deep sleepwhen you are not aware of time and space, name and form, your mind is still working.Remember that the unconscious mind is the storehouse of all past experiences orkarmas, not only in this life, but in our previous lives as well.The unconscious body is called hiranyagarbha, the golden egg. By the practice ofmantra sadhana we can penetrate it deeply and eliminate all kinds of karmas, one byone. That is why they say that by the practice of mantra one becomes free from theentanglements of karma.Every action is born of a deep karma. Every thought, movement, success, failure is areenactmentof one of our previous experiences. Here is another example, a clinicalcase concerning a husband and wife who loved each other very much. They werevery happy together at home, but whenever they went out to dinner, for a walk, on a

picnic, etc. they always fought. Why? When the husband was a child of four, hewalked into the bathroom when his mother was taking a bath. She quickly covered herbody with a dirty housedress, pushed him out and locked the door. Now, wheneverthe husband is at home, his wife is engaged in housework. She wears an oldhousedress and he loves her. He is still working out the problem of the old dress withwhich his mother covered herself in the bathroom. Whenever his wife is not wearingher old housedress, he doesn’t like her! Such simple childhood experiences can causeso many problems. Many good people suffer unnecessarily because they are unawareof their karmas and how they fructify.Mantra yogaThere are two ways of practising mantra yoga: one is the repetition of a bija mantralike Aum, Hrim, Shrim, Klim; the other is using the name of one’s guru or favouritedeity. Nowadays we have lost touch with the original mantra yoga system. If we feeldevotion for Shiva, then we practise ‘Om Namah Shivaya’. If we feel more inclinedtowards Rama, we repeat ‘Sri Ram Jai Ram’. When we feel attracted towards Krishna,we say ‘Om Namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya’. But according to mantra shastra, themantra must be very carefully selected to suit each individual personality. The bijamantras are very powerful. They can allay the strong influence of karmas. Mantrashould always be practised with a mala. Even in meditation when mantra issynchronized with the breath, a mala is still used.Japa and antar mounaWhen practising mantra, a lot of things come up in the mind which would not come upotherwise. When past incidents arise, what do we do? The usual response is tosuppress these thoughts because we are more interested in our mantra. So when weare practising japa and a thought come, we push it out; another one comes and we

push it out. But this is incorrect. We do not want to avoid karma, but to eliminate it.Therefore, it is necessary to observe each thought and let it pass of its own accord.Thus japa yoga must be followed or accompanied by antar mouna, the process ofwitnessing our thoughts. When we are practising mantra and a thought comes intoour mind, we must stop for a moment and see the thought, whatever it is, thencontinue the mantra until another thought comes. During the practice of japa andantar mouna, over a period of months the significant and insignificant memories of thepast flash into our mind. These memories should be seen very clearly if we want topurify our mind. Every experience we have during mantra practice or meditation hasan important bearing on our life.I know of many people who have changed completely through the practice of japaand antar mouna and they were amazed to see how it happened. One Frenchgentleman had a hernia and hydrocele. He left his job and went to his sister in thecountry. He told her that he was completely broken and could no longer work. Therewas no point in prolonging his life, he said, as he felt only pain everywhere. His sister,12/10/2015 Integral Yoga Sadhana for a Balanced Personalityhttp://www.yogamag.net/archives/2007/fjune07/integ.shtml 4/5a staunch devotee of yoga, told him to put some cream on his eyebrow centre andconcentrate on that point. One day while the French gentleman was practising this, aterrific sound exploded somewhere in his brain. Surprisingly his hernia was cured andhis hydrocele problem was completely resolved – for him it was a miracle. When I methim, I asked what had happened when he was concentrating on bhrumadhya, theeyebrow centre. He said that when he was a schoolboy he went to the fish shop and

while eating, a fish bone got stuck in his teeth which later had to be removed by thedentist. When he was practising concentration on his bhrumadhya, he saw fish comingout of his mouth. After that, he too became a great devotee of yoga.Therefore, when practising mantra, do not discard or repress the experiences whicharise. You may think that while practising mantra, worldly thoughts should not enteryour mind, and if they do, then it is your duty to remove them in respect for themantra, but this is incorrect. According to yoga and psychology, we must observe,analyze and respect whatever thoughts or experiences come into our mind whilepractising japa.You will find that if the mantra is correct, it will work immediately. If it is not the rightone for you, it will still work, but slowly. To be powerful the mantra has to correlatewith all of our qualities and tendencies. The tantra and mantra shastras say that allmantras, with the exception of Aum, are classified into twelve main groups with fivesubdivisions. Only Aum can be repeated by anyone at any time, without restriction.The mantras which are used to explode the unconscious mind are very important.People with devotion for the Devi, particularly Durga or Kali, have fantasticexperiences while practising her mantra. Many of my disciples had terrifying dreams allnight after receiving her mantra. This is because the mantra is so powerful that itimmediately starts exploding the karmas from the unconscious mind. Just as a strongpurgative makes you go to the toilet every five minutes, so repetition of a powerfulmantra purges karma very quickly.Science of yogaThe science of yoga aims at perfecting human life. Every ordinary person hasextraordinary potential, but to develop this a strong and welltrainedmind is

necessary. Through the practices of yoga we can gain complete mastery over thebody and mind. The West gave technology to the world and made life verycomfortable, easy and quick. India can give yoga and spirituality and the whole worldis crying for it. People in the West are fed up and frightened of technology. Theywant a science to allay their fears and give them peace.Only the system of yoga which is still alive today in India can adequately fulfil thisneed. Therefore, all Indians wherever they are, must represent this science correctly.Yoga is knowledge, not miracles, witchcraft or superstition. Yoga is a science whichcan be studied, practised, experienced, understood and explained by any educatedand wellreadperson. Yoga can improve relations and create international goodwill. Itis important to be able to give something to others which they can cherish deep intheir hearts.I give free discussions on yoga everywhere I go because I am fully convinced of itseffectiveness. My experience and experiments in life with thousands and thousands ofpeople, East and West are my proof. Now it is the duty of those who know that yogaproduces an integrated personality to acquaint themselves with all aspects of yoga. Itis no use saying that bhakti yoga alone is enough. If it were, why are religious peoplelying ill in hospitals and taking so many pills? Why are they unable to sleep in theircosy beds? Religion is bhakti yoga. We need an integrated approach to life. Justadding salt to the vegetables does not make a tasty dish. We must combine manyspices. Life is too complex for one aspect of yoga to suffice. With a comprehensiveapproach, life becomes rich.