This is a very effective practical programme.

Get up an early an hour earlier than usual and determine to keep this for six weeks in order to give your go a fair trial.

Wash the hands and feet on rising, stretch all over and then sit in the meditation posture or as near as you can get facing the east. Read some holy scripture for five minutes slowly, breathe deeply five times.

Pranayama – breathing practice:

Bunch the fingers and press them for a few seconds on the abdomen just below the navel. Take them away, and then use the aftersensation to focus the mind there.
Now breathe in deeply, without strain. Feel that the breath is coming in at the navel, and rising in a column of light up the centre line of the body; it reaches the spot between the eyebrows at the end of the breath. Of course the physical breath does not in fact come in at the navel. But an easy way to become aware of the central vital current, is to associate it with the movement of breath. The action is something like drawing up milk through a straw; here it is drawing up light.
On the out-breath, visualization is dropped. Mind rests. Then with the next in-breath, make the visualization again.
Do this twenty-one times. Count on the fingers, or finger joints, or make twenty-one knots in a piece of string and use like a rosary. The breath should be deep and slow, but not strained. With facility, it lengthens naturally; the exercise can last six or seven minutes

Line of light practice – Madhyam practice

Draw an imaginary line of light from the top of the forehead, down between the eyebrows, down the nose, lips, throat, heart-region to the navel. Imagine this line to be a line of light, and concentrate on it for ten minutes. In the beginning, you can draw your finger down the line, if it helps you to visualize it. Then sit and just think of this line of light. This is a very important practice, and is called the Madhyam practice. The results are not physiological, but relate to the vital energy, prana. If you do this practice every day, your mind will keep itself away from evils. To conquer passions, to overcome anger, pleasure-sense and pride, do this practice, and you will not be subject to the evil of anyone.

Meditation Practice

Now, take a text for meditation and read it in a soft voice three times, then repeat it mentally three times more.

In him, the heaven, the earth and the sky are all over, the mind also with all the senses, know him alone as the self and leave other thoughts.

With patience, support it in the mind, discarding without agitation interruptions from the senses or the mind itself.

Remain calm in the meditation for 10 minutes.

Mantram Practice

At the end, repeat OM very slowly and softly, 108 times. Make 54 knots in a string and use it as a rosary going around it twice. Do it with reverence, knowing that it is the highest name of truth and of God. It does not matter whether you fully understand this practice or not. It has been hallowed by the great yogis of many thousands of years and will produce its effect. Finally, sit in the calm, which these practices will bring and give your friendliness and forgiveness to all.

By this practice alone, most nervous and emotional illnesses will be healed. Return for another five minutes to the scripture with which you began. During the day, make a break about midday and again in the evening and in silence, return to the thought of the meditation for a minute or more.

Whenever you have nothing to do, practice the line of light:

In the evening, read one of the yogi texts for a quarter of an hour.

Note:

The three vital practices are the Madhyam practice, the Meditation practice and the OM practice. You may vary the order in which you do you them and you may find the order which mostly works best for yourself but this should not be rigidly fixed, experimentation and self-enquiry is vital. But whenever you have nothing to do, it is a very very good thing to practice the line of light. (Nothing to do: waiting for transport, travelling, sitting in a waiting room etc.)

Keep these practices going intensively for six weeks and you will notice a difference in your life- maybe an unexpected cooling breeze in your soul.

You can change the text of the meditation text occasionally. There are people who have done a particular text for 20 years and still find new things in it and new inspirations which arise from it.

Trevor Leggett