Beautiful sharing by a meditator on Devi Yantra's experience

Question: When someone reincarnates, does one usually come back as the same gender?

Sadhguru: Not necessarily at all. There are people around me who are of a different gender now than what they were in an earlier life. I have a very immediate experience of this in many different ways with quite a few people.

Gender, even species, need not necessarily be the same. All this could be determined by your tendencies. It happens to people, it happened around certain yogis, and it definitely happened around Gautama Buddha. It so happened that a lot of monks were reborn as women. When they had sat with the Buddha [in their past lives], the male monks greatly exceeded the women in numbers – mainly due to cultural reasons. In those days, a woman could not renounce when the children were below a certain age.
So the monks who sat there as men, noticed one thing – the female monks’ contact with the Buddha seemed to be better than that of the male monks. This was because it is very natural for a woman to make a very deep emotional contact. These men were sitting and meditating hard, but these women were just looking at the Buddha, and tears were flowing down. They loved him and the Buddha looked at them gently. The men envied that.

Somewhere within them, there was a longing to be connected with the Buddha like the women were. Because of that longing, a lot of those monks came back as women in their next birth. After a certain period of time, they realized who they had been, and that now they had become women. They were shocked, “We did so much sadhana – did Gautama abandon us? Why didn’t he make us monks once again? Now we are here with our children, our husbands, and this whole drama.” This happened because they had envied the women.


Depending upon your longings, depending upon your tendencies, nature gives you an appropriate body. Let’s say you long to eat continuously and you happen to die at that time. The next time, you may come back as someone’s pet pig, really well-fed. People think it is a punishment to come back as a pig. This is not a punishment for you. Nature is not thinking in terms of punishment or reward. Depending upon your tendencies, to fulfill those tendencies, what kind of body would assist you best, that is what you get. Now these monks came back as women. It was their tendency, their longing for what the women were having. When they were longing for the women’s ability to love the Buddha and connect with him emotionally, they unknowingly aspired to become women.

What gender or form you take is determined by the type of longing that you create. So, to maintain focus on your goal and create that longing which is beyond all these limitations is the best way to ensure that nature does not know what to do with you. When nature does not know what to do with you, it is good for you because you can work your things out very effortlessly. When nature knows what to do with you, you are put in this chamber or that chamber – male chamber or female chamber, pig chamber, cockroach chamber, or some other chamber – a body is a chamber.
So if you maintain that longing which is not for this or that, you simply stare at nothingness and are absorbed, now nature does not know what to do with you. It cannot push you this way or that way. It cannot make a decision on you.

Paramahansa Yogananda's meditation room picture

Go to your room and shut the door—make no fuss. Sit down and talk to God. Practise meditation. Let your mind become so intense that the next time you sit to meditate you won't have to make the effort; your mind will be fixed immediately on Him. If you don't make a great effort to conquer physical and mental restlessness in the beginning, you will have difficulty every time you meditate throughout the years. But if you make that supreme effort at the start, you will soon be happy and free.

Paramahansa Yogananda
Paramahansaji's meditation room in his family home

God is in Your Genes ​ - The Science of Kula Gotra​

Linga Bhairavi - A Window Into the Creation

Speaking Truth - The Acid Test

Swami Rama :

I remember an occasion when I was traveling with my master. The station master in a town we were passing through came to me and said, “Sir, give me something to practice, and I promise I will follow it faithfully.”

My master said to me, “Give him something definite to practice.”

I said, “Why should one fool misguide another? It will be better if you instruct him.”

So my master said, “From this day on, don’t lie. Practice this rule faithfully for the next three months.”

Most of the employees of the railroad in that area were dishonest and took bribes. But this man decided that he would not take bribes or lie any more.

That very same week a supervisor from the head office came to investigate him and his assistants. The stationmaster answered the probing questions of the supervisor honestly. This inquiry brought serious trouble to his staff. All the employees who had been taking bribes, including the stationmaster himself, were prosecuted. He thought, “It has been only thirteen days, and look at the difficulty I am in. What is going to happen to me in three months’ time?”

Soon his wife and children left him. Within a month his life had crumbled like a house of cards from a single touch.

That day the stationmaster was in great agony, and we were some three hundred miles away on a bank of the Narmada River. My master was lying under a tree when he suddenly began laughing. He said, “Do you know what is happening? That man whom I instructed not to lie is in jail today.” I asked, “Then why are you laughing?” He answered, “I am not laughing at him, I am laughing at the foolish world!”

Twelve people in that man’s office had gotten together and said he was a liar, although he had been speaking the truth. They accused him of being the only one guilty of taking bribes. He was put in jail and all the others were released.

When the stationmaster went to court the judge looked down at him from the bench and asked, “Where is your attorney?”

“I don’t need one.”

The judge said, “But I want someone to help you.”

“No,” said the stationmaster, “I don’t need an attorney; I want to speak the truth. No matter how many years you put me behind bars, I won’t lie. I used to share in bribes. Then I met a sage who told me never to lie, no matter what. My wife and children have left me, I have lost my job, I have no money or friends, and I am in jail. All these things have happened in one month. I have to examine truth for two more months no matter what happens. Sir, put me behind bars; I don’t care.”

The judge called a recess and quietly called the man to his chamber. He asked, “Who is the sage who told you this?” The man described him. Fortunately the judge was a disciple of my master. He acquitted the stationmaster and said, “You are on the right path. Stick to it. I wish I could do the same.”

After three months that man did not have anything. On the exact day that the three months were up he was sitting quietly under a tree when he received a telegram saying, “Your father had a huge plot of land that was taken long ago by the government. The government now wants to give you compensation.” They gave him one million rupees [about $100,000]. He had not known about the land, which was in a different province.

He thought, “Today, I have completed three months of not lying and I have been rewarded so much.” He gave the compensation to his wife and children, and they happily said, “We want to come back to you.”

“No,” he said. “Until now I have only seen what happens by not lying for three months. Now I want to find out what will happen if I do not lie for the rest of my life.”

Truth is the ultimate goal of human life, and if it is practiced with mind, speech and action, the goal can be reached. Truth can be attained by practicing non-lying and by not doing those actions which are against one’s own conscience. Conscience is the best of guides.

Swami Rama
Living with the Himalayan Masters

Breath - Your constant companion.

Questioner: Why should we focus on the breath during asanas?

Sadhguru: Your mind and emotions need a single object to focus on. If both of them stay with the same object, you are at maximum ease. If your body goes in one direction, your mind goes in another, and your emotions go in yet another direction, you will be struggling. Let’s say you have a job that you are very involved with, a family at home, and an affair on the side, you will be in a lot of mess – never at ease. Only if your body, mind, and emotions are focused in one direction, you will be at total ease.

Nothing and no one – neither your job nor your wealth nor your family nor your love affair – are as reliable as your breath. As long as you live, it will always be there. It is the most steady and reliable thing to focus your mind on. If while doing an asana, you do not focus your mind onto the breath, it will go all over the place. Therefore, focus on the breath. If I take away your breath now, you and your body will fall apart. It is your breath which holds you and your body together. This kurma nadi, as we call it in yoga, is like a thread that ties you and your body together.

If you constantly stay with your breath, if you really travel with it, one day, you will understand where you and your body are linked. Once you know this, you can hold your body at a distance, and all your trouble and suffering will be over. All the trouble and suffering in your life arise from your body and your mind. If you can hold your body and your mind at a distance to yourself, this is the end of suffering. And only when there is no fear of suffering, a human being will dare to explore his life at full stride.

So, being with the breath is very important. One thing is your mind has a steady companion to stay with. Anyone may leave you, but your breath will not leave you until you die. And another thing is it will transport you to a place where you and your body are linked. If you don’t want your life to be determined by multiple factors of compulsiveness, if you want to do or undo your life by choice, it is important to know this place.

Source Link : http://www.ishafoundation.org/blog/yoga-meditation/demystifying-yoga/focusing-breath-essential-asanas/

Do not react - Robert Adams

Now what do I mean by not react.
Do you ignore the summons to go to court?
No, you don't. (students laugh)
You do what has to be done.
When you go to court, but you realize, 
"Who's going to court?
My body is.
My body's going to court, but who is my body?
There is no body.
There is no court.
It's all an illusion.
It is, really" (students laugh)
And then, really, if you look at it that way,
something good is going to happen. (more laughter)
Strange as it may seem you will overcome and
transcend that predicament.
But if you don't, if you react like everybody else does with fear,
and say, "I'm not guilty. I didn't do it."
Then you've got a problem.
You're going to have to repeat that condition over and over again,
as I mentioned before until you're able to realize that
nothing has ever happened to I.
I is free.
I has always been free.

~Robert Adams - T. 26 - Dealing With Problems