Today I am completing twenty six years of my practice. I wish to feel the time of practice. Now I can say that I became dimly aware of the sense of yoga after twenty-six years of practice. Some understanding is developing. Everything is different: the situation and my mind. Look, what I am to realize is not disturbed. I am a different person. Every day there is something new. Yesterday I was different, today I am different, and I am sure tomorrow I may be even more different.

I feel life more deeply and more experienced. I learn something new every day, some new ideas keep on coming into my mind. And even today my practice has more to find in it. Sometimes I feel sad. I can say that I am able to identify every single emotion of my mind. And they are highly-refined now. You can say I am a very highly-emotional person. I am not free from emotions. They are under control. It depends on the maturity level for them – mental maturity.

The child is not so mature so his emotions are all indiscreet. When he grows up he becomes more mature so he’s able to control emotions. I feel my emotions become more refined after yogi. I’m not very hard now. Because the more you practice yoga, the more sensitive you are. You will be sensitive when you have senses. And also some sort of empathy develops. When I see somebody and somebody is happy, my mind connects with that mind somehow. That’s why I like to remain isolated.

It is difficult for me to go outside. I don’t think a person who is free from emotions is a good person. If you cannot be a human being then what is the use of creation? Yes, they are under control, but you should be able to experience them. I think we have been taught in a wrong way that we should be without emotions. They should be more refined. And thanks to practice – yoga practice and everything – your mind becomes more refined as well as your emotions.

And you actually have the experience of the highest level of emotions, which an undeveloped person can rarely experience. Somebody once asked me a question. There was a story in books that when the son of Vyas Shukdi left him for entering Samadhi, the father followed him trying to stop him. He told his son not to go and he wept. Somebody asked me: he was such a great person, he was perfect – and why was he crying because his son went away? And I told them what was the reason – because he was perfect. So that emotion of losing his son was also there, in perfection. So it is perfect. If a perfect man is there then every emotion will be there, in his perfect understanding. It is not that a perfect man should be without emotions, it is just an assumption which may not be corrected. I think that is not right.

When you reach a higher mental level you keep a distance from the general public. Otherwise you will die because of sentiments. All the time you cannot feel the suffering. The moment you begin to feel suffering you will start suffering. And just to avoid it I keep on making jokes, talking about movies, bodybuilding and all these things. Otherwise life is so sad. I mean if you look all over the world – it is miserable, it will make you very sad. That’s why I don’t go anywhere. I don’t like to go outside.

The force of emotions is too much over me. And rarely do I see news on TV also – it is the best way to make you sad. You just switch on the news channel and you are full of misery. But I think sometimes it is good.
It is difficult to live with such emotions, but it gives you enough strength and power to understand emotions and to avoid them also. They will always remain a part of your own person.

And I also discovered that whatever everybody keeps on saying that the whole world is an illusion – I find it very real. The world is not an illusion for me, it is very real. When you became more nervous, more emotional, more sensitive – it is progress. And also the practice will give you enough strength to analyze your own emotions, your own mentality and that will give you more maturity, and you will be able to cope with everything whatever comes your way. You will face it with a very different attitude… I think it is the most misleading statement – if you cannot understand the world you will consider it to be an illusion. It is better to understand that God has created it for a special purpose, and what God has created cannot be illusion. And look at it from a different point of view: even if it is illusion – it is a real illusion; it is as real as an illusion.

The worst thing is that human beings think their mind is dismissing. We keep on dismissing everything. If we don’t like something – we dismiss it. We keep on dismissing even our own experience. But yoga will make you accept whatever you face –accept it as it is. It is a doctor and it was very sad to see me in such pathetic condition – now it is happy. I am also happy. When a doctor is giving full opinion for your ask – you should be happy.

A person conveying the impression of being very strong also has emotions. He is feeling every emotion inside. But he is afraid to display it. The fact that you never cried in your childhood means you are becoming better and better. Yes, strong men do cry, but they are afraid to show it to others. Because people may think that tears may be the sign of weakness, but they are not. Sometimes when I was watching news for many times I noticed tears coming to my eyes. Even yesterday I had tears in my eyes. I will describe that scene which I saw and maybe it can make you cry as well. Yesterday there was one accident and many people died in a stampede – more than hundred and fifty. So one bagman was lying there and his young daughter was begging him to get up. That scene simply broke my heart. I am a sensitive person. Even a strong and supposedly very hard person will feel that inside but he will be afraid to display it. But I was alone so there was no problem.