CHAPTER - 3
~ Samadhi ~
DAY - 19
Prakriti laya is a big practice. People sit in solitude for years till all thoughts disappear. And all
that they are left with is emptiness. You can try doing this as experiment when you are very
worried or tensed. Just sit by a flowing river or stream and keep looking at the water. Within a
few moments, you feel as though there is a magnetic pull; that your mind is being pulled in the
direction of the current. Then, sit on the other bank and do the same thing. Then you'll see that
your eye is being pulled in the other direction.
That is why many people who want to jump into a
river and commit suicide, cannot do so once they look at the flowing water. Something happens
in them at the sight of flowing water. There is a shift, and they can no longer commit suicide.
This happens because, by looking at the water, there is a change in the vibrations of their minds,
the prana in the system. In a short while, all their anguish, delusions and whatever was
tormenting them flows away. They become fresh. People love the ocean because there is more
prana there; more ozone. And when you go on looking at the waves and waves and waves and
waves, it washes something off. This is Prakritilaya meditation, where you are dissolving
yourself with nature.
And videha means knowing that you are not the body; that you 'have' a body and the body is
yours. But that you are not the body. This is videha. This sutra has been so wrongly interpreted
over the centuries. People have wrongly understood it again and again.
Patanjali said that these things will suit certain people at certain times. It is not a practice which
is done everyday by everybody. For instance, all the people do not go into the mountains every
day. It is done by people at certain times. This leads to samadhi.
Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankarji
PATANJALI YOGA SUTRAS
