Time: 20-Jan-2004, 1815 hrs

Place: Sector 15A Club, NOIDA

Occasion: Weekly Meditation Session, Dhyan Foundation.

What am I doing there: Looking for that one minute that would disconnect me from the rest of the world and help me realise myself.

What actually happened?

Prashant called up Dr. Shobha Kaul, CEO, Personal Point and a very senior member of Dhyaan Foundation to let her know that he was there on the first floor of the club waiting for her. She told him that he should look around for Mr. Jain who will tell him the basic exercises. So Prashant looks around for Mr. Jain and finds him sitting along in a room which was beautifully arranged for a meditation session with white sheets on the floor on the Daris (thick mattresses) and he learnt 6 basic breathing exercises. The first one being the Ujjai Breathing, closing your eyes, concentrating on the lower throat and breathing easy…and 5 more excersises…about 20 minutes later, Dr. Kaul comes in…She had that Tej(Aura is the right word in English I guess, not sure though) on her face that comes only from the dedicated meditation and concentration. So this is where the meditation session begins…Sitting in an aasana, and chanting mantras… Starting with the prayer for the Teacher, the Guru: Guru Brahma, Guru Vishnu, Guru Devo Maheshwara…. And moving on to various other mantras including the chanting of the most powerful word in the universe, OM. The next 60 minutes were full of mantras, chants, peace, and a li’il bit of pain ( that was for Prashant coz he was sitting with his back straight on the floor after ages) and then pin drop silence for no idea how long…when Ashish helped us all move from the meditation state to the normal state…

This is when Prashant saw the Yogiji first time, and he was surprised to a see a very down to earth, simple looking man in front of him as the person who was leading this group of people. Prashant was asked why he was there, to which he replied that he was looking for that one minute of his day when he could stop thinking about the rest of the world and get some peace… to which the reply was “Do not come here with a target in mind”. So True…We have talked about expectations in my previous post and here he was again…expecting to get something out of that session…which ideally should not have been the case…anyway…so Sir (or Yogiji) starts asking everyone in that room about how they were feeling during the session…and then one gentleman asked a question which triggered the session for the day. His question was “why is concentration so tough?” And here is whatever I remember of the reply… they talked about what are we about…different answers…summed into one which was “we are a sum total of two things… the body and the soul… antaratma and the panchtatva…we humans are governed and ruled by our desires and that is why when we try to meditate the forces which have those desires make us think that the time we are spending in meditating is useless coz there is so much to do…and our mind cannot concentrate…to break free for this circle of desires and wants, we need someone to guide us and we have to surrender to him…and that person is the GURU…someone who decides what we do…how we do it…and why we do it…and we follow it with extreme devotion and dedication…the one who makes follow and practise discipline…the one who gives us his hand and we hold it to move with fear in this world…to break free we need to give up.. we need to surrender to the ONE.”

This is where that session ended…and here is what I felt and thought after this session ended…

True… a Guru is needed to whom you can surrender…but then how do you find that guru…What was surprising in the session yesterday was…that whenever they talked about Guru, I could recall only one person…My Father…and every word spoken about having a Guru was making him miss more…not because I wanted him to there listening to that conversation, but I wanted myself to be in front of my father, with my eyes closed and listening to him. I realised that something that I was looking for outside was there at my very home and I was not even close to realising it before yesterday. I realised that if I can follow anyone in this world without questioning why, it would be my father and not one else… so here I was back home with my faith reinstated in my Pa and my sincere thanks to Yogiji who made me realise this !!!

Can Prashant be associated with Dhyaan Foundation even if he has a different Guru…not really sure… but whatever said and done…

this 20th Day of January 2005 was special for him as he realised that what he was looking for in the outside world were very much present with him all the time…

God Bless!!!