 In poetry, things are said in a certain way that you should not just read the line. You must read both the gaps before and after the line, because most of the meaning is in the gaps always in a poetry. It's not just in the words. It's not prose to tell you this is it. The idea of writing poetry is to fixize your mind and your heart to feel the meaning, not just to understand the meaning from the words that are said. Namaskaram to everyone. Wherever you are, the unstructured nature of my mind naturally found sugar in the ways of poetry because the nature of what was happening in my mind as a child, as a youth could never find a logical proper prose kind of expression because my mind was so unstructured and completely untrained or refused to be trained whichever way you want to see it. Because of this poetry became so much a part of my life, probably most of the poems that I ever wrote have never been seen by anyone or read by anyone because I wrote it in a whole bunch of small sheets of paper all over the place. And I think once in a small fire accident that happened where my car got burnt, I think over four hundred poems got burnt with that. So probably only… not probably only what I have written in the last maybe… since we moved to the Yoga Center in the last twenty years, probably that's all the poems that we have. Maybe a few of them, the past ones I could recollect if I could but generally it's all that's written. Here we are at eleven degrees north in southern India. This is an ideal weather for coffee and there are areas of South India which are mountains of coffee. I mean they grow coffee here. During my youth I spent a lot of time in Kurg and these mountains are covered with coffee. This is coffee country. In other couple of months, sometime in February, January and February, the coffee goes into blossom. When the coffee plants go into full blossom, the whole mountain will turn partially white because the white flowers just mean like flowers. And though the beans are invigorating, the fragrance of the coffee blossom is absolutely intoxicating and enthralling. It's very difficult to explain or articulate this experience. Many times I felt it in a few years ago, I took a few people who I wanted to know this and experience this. And being there in a coffee mountain or a coffee estate as they are known, it was inevitable I had to pen something about coffee. Tamil Nadu now, though not much coffee is grown here in Tamil Nadu, except in Air Card which is close to Salem. But Tamil people are coffee drinkers. They wake up to the day not because of the sun, mostly because of the coffee. And they kind of mastered the concoction. Probably the Tamil Nadu's filtered coffee stands out compared to anything in the world. They evolved the system of getting the best out of the coffee beans. Even if you give them very low grade coffee, they will produce great coffee. Here is an ode to coffee. As the seed does not reveal the shape of the tree, the innocence of the infant face does not reveal the sage or the sorcerer to come. The white beauty of a blossom with the fragrance to rival the majestic jasmine does not reveal the enslaving insane concoction of your beans. Half the world has surrendered to you. The other half are either ignorant of your magic or have turned ascetic and refuse to succumb to you. Of all of man's ingenuity, in extracting pleasure and nourishment from the mother earth's breast, you stand out to be the one to inspire a fierce faith of unquenchable sort. You have overshadowed the Lord of Light. You have overshadowed the Lord of Light. As for the faithful, daybreak means you, not the sun. If the fragrance of coffee has opened you up, then here we are to read a few of the poems that I've penned in the last few years. And the idea and the reason behind this is, in our effort to make the presentation of spiritual process into an absolutely scientific and a logical process, that spiritual process should not defy logic but should be rooted in logic, which is a difficult feat because the very nature of the experience does not fit into the framework of logic. But I think very successfully we have managed to find a logical expression to a completely magical experience of life. Poetry is an in-between land between logic and magic. A terrain which allows you to explore, make meaning of the magical but still being able to have some kind of footing in the logic. Here's another one. This is called a firefly. I remember I was around nine years of age when I… with my family I traveled to a place called Subramanya in Karnataka, a fabulous place which I visited many more times later with finding much more meaning in this place. This is a place where Lord Subramanya or Kartikeya or Armuga as he's known here in Tamil Nadu or Muruga. For the last time he washed his bloody sword and walked up the mountain. This is a place where he meditated and bathed in the river and walked up the mountain to shed his body. When I was there, we were staying in a small place and it was not as it is today, it was a very remote place, a little difficult to get there in those days. In the night around eight o'clock the power went off and I looked out of the window a huge tree full of fireflies. The whole tree was lit up with fireflies. I had never seen anything like that. The scene of this big tree with fireflies is so deeply etched in my mind. It keeps coming back to me many, many times. And when we first moved into the ashram here around twenty years ago and those times evenings usually we didn't have light because the power would go off. Then when we were here we started noticing fireflies and suddenly these magical beings flying all over. So writing something about fireflies became very natural. Earlier probably my poetry found a big spurt when I decided to move into a remote place. My farm was very remote from the city and I lived there alone for days and sometimes weeks on end without any contact with outside human beings. At this time I started writing poetry about pebbles, grasshoppers, blades of grass, just about anything and I found each one of them was substantial subject to write about. Unfortunately none of those things are with us today. So here's a little poem on fireflies. In the moonless night the firefly emboldens itself to flight. In the moonless night the firefly emboldens itself to flight. The brooding darkness mocks the spirited flight of the fly delight. The brooding darkness mocks the spirited flight of fly delight. The limitless darkness could swallow this miniscule attempt of light. The skeptics, Ketankar's laughter swept the inner spaces within me to ask. The skeptics, Ketankar's laughter swept the inner spaces within me to ask, Can a firefly light the world? Yes, firefly am I? If life summers have warmed you, if your inner spaces have charmed you, I could set you afire on the world too. If life summers have warmed you, if your inner spaces have charmed you, I could set you afire on the world too. During the Anadhi program in United States at Tripoli, Tennessee, ninety days, a gusty lot of people gathered. A whole lot of people did a wonderful effort to raise their sadhana to a different pitch and we explode dimensions which are not just unusual, much more than that and we happened to be at a time when there was a Guru Purnima. The most dominant factor of my life has been my Guru and nothing else. Even today in my mind, more than in my mind, literally in every crevice in my body, every pulsation in my system and my very energy has… it's just his presence which is the most dominant within me. To keep it this way has been easy for me because I don't have a mind of my own because… probably because of this, just about everything reverberates which is not me but way beyond me, way bigger than me. I did not see my Guru as a man who touched me, though his touch brought me to the highest level of experience and a revelation of life and beyond. The… the old structure within me somewhere would not accept it in the sense unless it came from Adiyogi, unless it came from Shiva himself, it's not real. So the compassion of my master made himself, turned himself into that form. I don't know if this was his act that he turned himself this way or that's how he really was at that time. But today and ever since, this has left me in a place where I don't have to make any attempt to know anything. Whatever I need to know, he and he are there, so it's just there all the time. So on this Guru Purnima, about these five little poems, tumbled out of me within a matter of five to ten minutes. I'm not a great crafter of words. It is just that without any kind of mastery or any particular language, through the grace, I managed to find some expression to what's happening or near to that. Here are five small poems which were part of the Guru Purnima day. All of them are titled as my master, brooding, squinting, staring, I could not hit the mark. Brooding, squinting, staring, I could not hit the mark. He walks in like a wenton monarch, he walks in like a wenton monarch with a crooked stick and makes his mark, with a crooked stick and makes his mark. The second one again titled as my master, lost, lost to life and death, both I did but moved me not. Lost, lost to life and death, both I did but moved me not. A man who walks with a stick comes to me, the able-bodied one. A man who walks with a stick comes to me, the able-bodied one. Having seen birth and death and all that life can be quits, still sitting dumb stuck. Having seen birth and death and all that life can be quits, still sitting dumb stuck. Here comes the man with a stick to have me struck with his lightning stick. Here comes a man with a stick to have me struck with his lightning stick. Here's the third one, I let the whole world go by of spiritual and material, of land and sky. I let the whole world go by of spiritual and material, of land and sky. I searched in the mother's womb and in the lover's bosom. I searched in the mother's womb and in the lover's bosom. But such a one I did not find till I crawled to him like a worm. But such a one I did not find. But such a one I did not find till I crawled to him like a worm. There's the next one for, what can the poor guru do? All I have done is do and do. What can a poor guru do? As all, all I have done, what can a poor guru do? All I have done is do and do. After seeing all that is there to see, after seeing all that is there to see, he comes to teach me how to be. After seeing all that is there to see, he comes to teach me how to be. This is the last of those five. The breath, the breath that passes out will not come back. The breath that passes out will not come back. The guru who touched and left me, left me not and need not come back. The guru who touched and left me, left me not and need not come back. As one's awareness gains the needed sharpness or keenness, when this begins to happen, one of the first things that naturally comes into play is the breath. It's amazing how most human beings live without being aware of the breath, which is a certain level of mechanical action in the body, which is constant and continuous. It's truly amazing how so many people can live without being conscious of it. But once awareness begins to gain a certain sharpness or keenness, this is the first thing that becomes an amazing process and no wonder, breath watching as it's known today is probably the most practiced form of meditation. It is so basic and simple, but it comes so easy and naturally to people that it does not need any preparation. If one becomes a little conscious, naturally breath will be in the awareness. Probably this happened to me when I was six, seven years of age, when I started just enjoying the breath, the moment of my little chest and belly in those days, how the stomach and this chest moved in rhythm constantly. I must have spent hours and hours just noticing that. It kept me interested and engaged. It's much later that I even… even the idea of meditation entered my life, but just the simple rhythm that's going on endlessly and you cannot ignore if you're a bit conscious. So he is a poem for the breath, the beauty of the breath and the possibility of the breath. This is titled as Divine Hand. As I see the seemingly perpetual play of breath, as I see the seemingly perpetual play of breath, the breath, the maker of my body and the taker of my being when the timely moment comes, the breath, the maker of my body and the taker of my being when the timely moment comes. This ceaseless play of the unseen hand of the divine, this ceaseless play of the unseen hand of the divine, me firmly held the hand and the maker could not escape. Me firmly held the hand and the maker could not escape. There is, I'm sure most of you've heard this chant which the bhajagovindam chant where we're talking about how nishchala tattvam jivan muktihi. What this means is if there is an unwavering attention towards something, it doesn't matter what the thing is. If there is an unwavering attention towards something, then the liberation, the possibility of freedom cannot be denied to that one. Or in other words, the essential problem of human situation is a certain lack of attention. If the necessary attention is there, if the keenness of the attention and the intensity of the attention is substantial, you can open just about any door in this universe. How keen is your attention? Or how intense, how much energy behind your attention? This is all that determines this. In this context, breath is a beautiful device because it is constantly on as long as we're alive, as long as we're embodied. Breath is on and it's inevitable that you have to notice it. Probably most people notice it only when their body goes into a spasm of excessive breath. Normal breath, most people are missing it. This is not because they are not breathing. This is because they have a serious attention issue. These days people are even carrying their attention deficiencies like some kind of a qualification. Just bringing this attention back into your lives and particularly into the life of our children is most important because ultimately whether it's spiritual or material, the world yields to you only to the extent you're willing to pay attention to it. So that was about the breath. One poem from America titled as America. This was in the year 2000. This particular day is so vivid to me like it's happening right now. About three of us, we were kind of camped out in a small place on the Central Hill Lake in Tennessee. Central Hill Lake is a reservoir. The lake has a shoreline of over 700 miles. If you take a boat out you can just get lost for days and not find your way back. So there was a beautiful place which one of our meditators owned at that time and very graciously they offered it to us and we were working on something so we went and stayed there for a few days. Around this fabulous home there was some real tall trees wild untouched forest area and alone I ventured off into these steep slopes and I was just struck by what I saw there and this poem is a consequence of that. It's titled as America. The brooding darkness of this woods fit upon the native blood in the twisted tangle of the fallen wood. The spirit of the fallen Indian stood. The brooding darkness of this woods fed upon the native blood in the twisted tangle of the fallen wood. The spirit of the fallen Indian stood. Oh brothers, your identity a mistake. Those who oceans crossed did make. The greed for gold and land laid waste the spirit of wisdom and grace. Oh brothers, your identity a mistake. Those who oceans crossed did make. The greed for gold and land laid waste the spirit of wisdom and grace. The children of those who by murder did take are taintless of their forefathers mistake. But those who lived fed upon the milk of courage and pride stand as spirits of defeat and shame. The children of those who by murder did take are taintless of their forefathers mistake. But those who lived fed upon the milk of courage and pride stand as spirits of defeat and shame. Oh the murdered and the murderous. Embrace me. Let me set your spirits to rest. Oh the murdered and the murderous. Embrace me. Let me set your spirits to rest. This poem is a consequence of a man who stood still probably for over three hundred or four hundred years. Someone who was trusted by one who has a certain position of being a chief or whatever. Someone whose duty and bond to keep another who was of some significance safe and well. And when that which was interested to you, you could not fulfill and failed in keeping what was most precious to you alive. He just stood there in shame and remorse which cannot be expressed in words. He just stood there forever. The man died, the body fell and became a part of the earth around him. But a frozen spirit just stood there for centuries. When I walked down these mountains, when I walked down this steep slope and here he was still standing and probably, probably it's one of the most painful moments I've experienced in my life. I have learned to always transform pain into a possibility. Since then I did many things in the region and of course one of the things is to set up the triple eye of the Isha Institute of Inner Sciences on the Trail of Tears. Historically, this is a region which has seen tremendous amount of pain. It is known as the Trail of Tears. A whole tribe was made to walk from east of Mississippi River to what is presently Oklahoma. The adults along with their children and elderly had to walk and when they walked the old people died. The Native Americans are so particular about preserving their dead and the spaces for the dead so they could not leave them. They carried their bodies and walked. The bodies rotted but they carried rotting bodies and walked and walked. So this is known as the Trail of Tears which is where we set up our Isha Center and those who have been there for the last seven, eight years since we stepped on that land, they can clearly, clearly feel what we have done to that space in terms of its energy. How brooding and painful it used to be just to enter that space and today how it is. Well, still many more things to be done. I'm in a little bit of a hurry to set up the Adiyogi temple because once we have a powerful consecrated space, it will take on a charge of its own. So that's about a Mac. Here's a poem which is titled as The Untouchable. Probably this is one of the few poems which is a kind of a hybrid of a poem that I wrote when I was probably eighteen or nineteen years of age. None of the others have remained. As I said earlier, they all got burnt in an accident. This is not exactly what I had written at that time but I think yes, I think at least sixty percent or seventy percent of this is the original poem, rest I've added. So I think this was one of the first poems written here after we moved in here in 1994. There is a land that is beyond right and wrong. When you get to that land and lie there, humans who live for bread and toil to be what they are not will strive to hide their jealousy with mocking talk and the gods will descend to be in the company they wish to be. Once you have reached that land beyond right and wrong, you never have to worry about making a mistake or going wrong. Once you have reached that land beyond right and wrong, you never have to worry about making a mistake or going wrong. The ethos of eastern cultures, the fundamental ethos of eastern cultures is a watered down version of individual enlightenment. This culture which we refer to as the Bharat Varsh essentially is a complex chaotic concoction of multiple influences of enlightened beings. When these beings came, they did not teach morality. They did not teach values or ethics but they thought them away a possibility because one's way was never the same as the others. Someone asked me, Satguru Jay Krishnamurthy was a master of his intellect. Rajneesh was a master of controversy. What are you? I said I'm a master of chaos. I know how to harness chaos. I can make a chaotic situation culminate into something fantastic. So every master had his own way and all of this melted pretty well into the culture. You will see, except today's English educated India, if you go to the rural masses, you will see if you go to a place, a Kumbh Mela is a fantastic display of this. If you go to let's say Kumbh Mela, a classic event on the planet, one like no other. Every kind of path, the weird and the wise all perfectly fitting into each other, nothing contradicts anything. Everything is absolutely different from the other but nothing contradicts anything. Everything fits in perfectly well. This is not something that a thinking mind, a logically correct mind, particularly a western mind could understand. How do all these people fit together? This is because there is no right and wrong. The question is only about has it worked for you or not? If it has worked to evolve you into a higher state of being, it doesn't matter whether it's right for me or not, whether it agrees with me or not. If it doesn't agree with me, there is always another way for me. So this is a fantastic outcome of generations and generations of enlightened beings. Each one of them, unhindered by what the previous one had said, explored his own way, expounded his own path, never in conflict with the one before him or the ones before him. So this is the nature of exploration, that it's not about right and wrong, it's about just making it happen. Is the white flower the most beautiful one or the red flower the most beautiful one? Such questions don't arise out here. Such questions have come from cultures which are steeped in morality as to something has to be good and something has to be bad. In this state of making something right and making something wrong, there is no way a spiritual process can happen because essentially spiritual process means all inclusiveness. If you cannot embrace everything the way it is, if you have to accept some and reject some, then there will be no spiritual process. You will only have morality, no spirituality. This reminds me of a fantastic story, a situation rather, which happened in Bahubali's life. Myself and Bahubali for a few years had a great affair. There is a place called Gomata Giri which is a little over twenty-five kilometers from Mysore city. There is a eighteen-foot tall statue of Gomata standing naked on top of a rock, I think it's eleven-hundred-year-old statue, which was lost with overgrowth of forest and only about probably somewhere in late sixties it was rediscovered. The man who rediscovered it a simple stone cutter, an illiterate person went there to take a stone which was appropriate for making whatever forms that he was making it off, usually some deity and he discovered this statue which is on top of a small hill or a bunch of rocks which are around hundred and twenty feet tall and on top of it an eighteen-foot statue of Bahubali. I met this old man. He was in his seventies still cutting stone and doing physical work and when I spoke to him a completely unschooled illiterate person, he was such an amazing guy. Just having found this Gomateshwara, his whole life was transformed. He became a great devotee, a simple stone cutter, turn into a fantastic devotee and I met him probably eighty-three or eighty-four when I was there and I conducted a few programs and spent a certain amount of time in Gomategiri. There are any number of things I can say about this place because so many things happened there. This was a time after 1982, my own experiences had blossomed and but I was trying to find articulation to what was happening within me. It was a very crucial time where Gomateshwara came into my life and as I said we had a great affair. So there is a wonderful situation in Gomata's life. He and his brother fought many battles together initially, later on they fought against each other. After having a bloodbath, after having slaughtered thousands of people, one day Bahubali or Gomata realized what is the point of all this bloodshed and he went and stood in penance naked just there. You'll always see the statues of Gomata standing naked with wines going up his legs or his body to show that he stood there for a very long time and he stood there for over fourteen years. Everything that he could do with himself in terms of purifying himself, he had done but still he could not attain. When a yogi came by, a sage of great attainment came by, Gomata looked at him and just one teardrop slipped out of his eyes. This one teardrop was a question mark. What is it? I've done everything that I can do. What is holding me back? That's a question, an unuttered question. Just a teardrop to ask this question to the yogi, what is holding me back? I've done everything that I know. Then the yogi said, you have brought a false sense of humility into you. You are a king but now you're willing to bow down to a beggar on the street. You're willing to bow down to any creature on the planet. You're willing to bow down to an inanimate rock. You have made yourself like this. It's wonderful but I see you're incapable of bowing down to your brother with whom you have a fight. It is this falseness of humility which is holding you back. This was the moment of attainment for Bahubali. Within himself he did bow down to his brother and he attained. This is a very beautiful story because this is how human beings are held back. It's not some great things. One little thing that you can't clear from your karmic space just holds you back. Is this not unfair? How many things I did, one thing holds me back. Right now if your little finger gets stuck to this pillar, I've freed my whole body but my little finger is stuck. Can I go somewhere? I cannot go somewhere. That's how it is. So some of the poems that I penned in Goma degree are not with us anymore. They're gone. So this untouchable poem which we just read, I think I have three versions of this. The first one and the second one are not with us anymore. This is the third one, the third version. Right now the whole country is abuzz with women's issues. I think longer would you? But a land, a culture that celebrates the feminine as the divine unfortunately has not fixed quite a bit of itself as to how they should be or how they should conduct the feminine in the human form. This poem is titled as the woman. These... Okay, I must tell you the background. Probably this was the last ladies BSP I handled. This was in the Spandha hall and there were over three hundred and seventy or three and eighty ladies and it was a moment when I saw them all melting and merging into each other. The fabulous energy that they created there, Bhavas Pandana was in full swing. When the process was on, I just scribbled this poem on a small pad which was next to me. Woman, these creatures of the moon in such delicious swoon, the sun and me not the only boon to these creatures of the moon. These creatures of the moon in such delicious swoon, the sun and me not the only boon to these creatures of the moon. Daily death a must for the sun to be kept unnourished in the pregnancy of the moon. It is her gracious reflection that sees him through the night. Daily death a must for the sun to be kept unnourished in the pregnancy of the moon. It is her gracious reflection that sees him through the night. Sun, the source of all known creation is but born in the coolness of the moon. The creator placed such trust in this unreasonable madness of the moon, bestowed the womb to bear and the feeding breast. Sun, the source of all known creation is but born in the coolness of the moon. The creator placed such trust in this unreasonable madness of the moon, bestowed the womb to bear and the feeding breast. Mashi flower and bloom too soon. Only then there can be worthwhile harvest when the world knows the nourishment of this womb. In celebration will exist these creatures of the moon. Mashi flower and bloom too soon. Only then can there be worthwhile harvest when the world knows the nourishment of this womb. In celebration will exist these creatures of the moon. I think we'll leave the poems there. If you have questions, this is the time to look at it. You talked about moments when we as humans have moments of clarity and moments of confusion. Since I started my sadhana and as I go through my spiritual path, I've had moments of very intense experience. Sometimes I feel that everything is very clear but at the same time I have moments of utter confusion where I'm not able to understand what's going on around me. In a way the things I see, I'm not able to articulate it very in a very logical way. What is happening to me and what do I do about it? You're having a very human experience on this planet. The problem with a human being is human beings are given an intellect to foray and explore so many things which are not in their domain. Our fish just remains in its water, space, a tiger in its forest, everybody remains within their terrain. It's only the human being who wants to explore and foray into everything that that we can see or we cannot see actually. We're not only foray into things that we can see, we also foray and try to foray into things that we cannot see. We want to go into the space, we want to look at the microscopic stuff. We want to not just enjoy the outward, we want to know the inner dimension of who we are. So these are adventures of the human mind. When you make these adventures, when you try any adventure, that means you do not know the result or the consequence of your action. That's what an adventure is. If you successfully finish an adventure, you will be known as an adventurer or you will be known as a hero in the world. If you are not successful in your adventure, you would be dismissed off as a fool who did not have the sense to stay away from what you should stay away from. So the essence of our adventure or how adventure will be perceived simply depends on the success rate that you have. So naturally when you foray into dimensions, either physically, psychologically, emotionally, whichever way, a certain amount of confoundedness is there. But this confoundedness is coming because you are constantly falling back on your intellect to give you a logical interpretation of everything. Confusion essentially comes because you already have conclusions about something. If you have no conclusion about anything, there will be no confusion either. The fundamental process of any spiritual path, particularly what I have been transmitting to all of you or all spiritual paths, why is that you don't make conclusions. Because if you make conclusions in one space, when you move to another space, the same conclusion which gave you comfort and confidence will cause enormous amount of confusion. So the idea is to just perceive, to live, to experience, not to conclude. Because conclusions or accumulations, they are of no relevance to experience that which is alive and now. So one needs to understand confusion is a product of conclusions. This is something that you have to train yourself with, that you do not make any conclusions about anything. How do I live without making conclusions? There is a difference between making a momentary judgment as to how to act in a particular moment and making a conclusion about it. This moment, when you are in a certain mode of activity, you may deal with somebody or something in a particular way according to your judgment of that moment. That moment's judgment need not carry with you as a conclusion or as an accumulated knowledge that you carry to the next moment or to the next day or wherever. Or in other words, you do not carry your past into the future. The moment you do this, confusion is a natural product of these type of conclusions that you're continuously drawing. So particularly on the spiritual path, if you're beginning to experience things, there should be no conclusions. No conclusions at all. If there are no conclusions, there will be no confusion.