The topic for the Hindi Satsang on Sunday, 18th August, 2013 was ‘Ahar, Vihar, Achar, Vichar‘
Following is the transcript of the Q & A between the audience and Dr. Jayadeva Yogendra and Smt. Hansaji Yogendra.
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Listen to the audio:
Q. What is neutral thinking? Please elaborate.
Dr. J: Being unbalanced is dangerous. You are hungry, but being hungry you lose yourself and overeat and there mistakes occur and this goes on. We sometimes are living only for eating and drinking. This upsets our schedule, our diet. Yoga talks about balanced state. We must maintain a balanced state and do the right thing at the right time which we are unable to do. We easily get drawn, lost, forgetful. I don’t know whether this is thought by you, the subject of overeating? No? You are just smiling. These things do happen and it is then that mistakes happen. You see, Diabetes and all such diseases are a result of wrong eating. Later on we are in a very bad condition, in the last stages, we have to watch what we are doing. We can save ourselves but we just can’t control.
Smt. H: There is a Doha (poem) by Kabir which says that everyone is fine for you. No one is your friend, no one is your enemy. So this is neutral thinking when it comes to people. Apart from that, what Dr. Jayadeva said, excess eating, excess sleeping, excess working, excess emotions, all these bring imbalance. So it is important to remain neutral and maintain balance.
Q. Swami Vivekananda said that when there is confusion between mind and heart, listen to the heart. But duty is more important, which is done from the mind. What is your opinion? Heart is loving, caring, which is often blind.
Dr. J: It is not that the heart is blind. Heart also has eyes but we are not able to see things clearly are we get overpowered by the heart and that is where the troubles start.
Smt. H: So yoga says very clearly, use the mind and bring the heart into it. You can’t separate the two. Use your intellect, discriminative power. Decide on what work you have to do, and once decided, do it with your heart, with love and happiness. So first use intellect, then the heart.
Q. In one skit, Astrology was shown. How much to believe in Astrology? Is it possible to judge the nature of a person based on Astrology?
Dr. J: See, indications are given. If there is an indication that you will die. Now getting the indication, still doing things, sometimes in doing also it’s bad, that is the mistake. We are not able to maintain that kind of a clarity.
Smt. H: In earlier times, people used to just follow customs. They married because they had to, children were not planned, they had many children. But now, a person thinks before doing anything. Now since he started thinking, there is not much value left to Astrology. Even Astrologers share with me that all they can do is check if the qualities of the people are matching or not but it is not the same in reality because each person decides for themselves on how they want to live. So these days, we could just use Astrology as a signal. If it shows that the time is bad, drive slowly even if you feel like driving fast. If you want, you could take little suggestions from it. But yoga says, be aware and strengthen your mind then you do not need Astrology.
Satsang is an open meeting held every Sunday from 9:30 to 10:30 am at The Yoga Institute, Santacruz East, Mumbai. It involves an interesting presentation to the public, made by the students of the Teacher Training Course. Each week, a new presentation of a Yogic concept is made in a simple way through skits and decoration for the general public, followed by a short speech from our Gurus, Dr. Jayadeva and Smt. Hansaji Yogendra.