Many hundred years ago, the great Kabir Das divulged the secret of implementing a resolution: ‘kal karey so aaj kar, aaj karey so ab-‘, meaning ‘What you are supposed to do tomorrow, do it today; and what you need to do today, do it now!’ Postponing things always ends in failure. 8 Jan 2022 ‘Ja dadh prem na sanchari, jo dadh praan smashaan, jaise khaal lohaar ki, saans let bin praan’. The iron-monger’s bellows also breathe, but if there’s no love in one’s heart, there’s no point.

The secret of visualization : creative thought, is to actually believe and picture it as one wants, as if already there. When the mind is open and when there is the great desire to achieve something then the channels for achieving it are opened.

Sometimes it happens spontaneously. You wonder, ‘what have I been doing all these years?’ Sometimes it happens because of kindness and compassion. Sometimes because you see somebody’s heart is so large – You are giving nothing but the person keeps on giving you something. Then you realise my whole idea of life is all wrong. I need to expand.

Don’t think that all human beings can sit down in ‘padmasana’ for days together and attain the supreme. It doesn’t work. You have to purify your body and mind through asanas, exercise, and through various other ways. You have an entire science of yoga although nowadays only asanas are taken up.

For identifying the different layers, no one can give you a ready-made formula. I cannot say ‘you are like this, you are like that’. You know how you are and only you have to find out. A teacher only helps with showing a way of looking at it.

The Upanishads are here to help us find our true self. Find out for yourself. It’s the process of going deeper and deeper into one’s inner layers of consciousness.

Let us usher in, a new year with a new mind, which is less self-centred and thinks more of others. Like nature renews itself and replaces the old with the new. Let us also give place to new aspirations of love, affection, help and goodness and give the old self-centred mind a decent burial. Wish you a happy New Year!