Types of Prana

Dear Gurudev, you said there are different types of prana, could you please talk a little bit more about that?
Sri Sri : There are ten types of Prana (the subtle life force energy). Of these, there are five major and five minor kinds of Prana. Today let me just talk about the five major types of Prana.

The first major type of Prana is called Prana which arises from your navel upwards to the top of the head.

Then there is another type of Prana that goes downwards from the navel, and it is called Apana.
When the Prana level is too high, you cannot sleep; you can get insomnia and you feel very jittery. However, if the Apana level is too high, you feel so dull that you do not even want to get off the bed.
Have you had this experience? Sometimes you feel so heavy, gross, and dull. This is due to the imbalance of Apana.

The third type of Prana is Samana which is present as the digestive fire in the digestive system, i.e., in the stomach. It is the agni or the fire that helps digest the food.
Samana is that which helps indigestion, and it also helps other bodily systems. It helps in balancing the system.

Then there is Udana Vayu or Udana Prana which is somewhere near the heart region and is responsible for emotions.
In Sudarshan Kriya, people cry or they laugh, and you find that all these emotions well up. This is due to the Udana Vayu. So this Udana Vayu is responsible for all the emotions.

Then the fifth type of Prana called Vyana which is responsible for all the movement in the body. It is spread all over the body.
In Sudarshan Kriya, you feel some tingling, some energy all over the body. Have you all experienced this?
What happens in Sudarshan Kriya is, all the five Pranas get balanced, and that is why you cry, or you laugh, and you feel a tingling all over the body. That is the specialty of Sudarshan Kriya.
You also tend to feel very hungry after the Kriya, is it not so?

So, these five Prana in the body run our lives.
If Samana is imbalanced, then it gives rise to digestive problems, and you cannot digest the food properly, or you may experience nausea. All this happens because of an imbalance of the Samana Prana.

When Udana Prana is stuck, you feel an emotional block that also affects your thinking and your mind.

When the Vyana which is all over the body is imbalanced, then you have joint pain, or movement trouble, and either you become too jittery and restless, or you may feel like you do not want to do anything.
Moving around anywhere in such a state gives discomfort and creates restlessness in the body. All this is caused by the Vyana imbalance.

Be passionate about knowledge, be passionate about doing service, be passionate about thinking; or about anything. Some passion definitely needs to be there in life. You can have a passion for wisdom as well.

After Sudarshan Kriya, you would have noticed that all these imbalances go away. Has this not happened to all of you?
All earlier discomfort in the movements of the body, or its circulation, or some pains due to Vyana imbalance, all disappeared after Sudarshan Kriya.

So these are the five different Pranas.
There are five other sub-ordinate Pranas as well, but that we will discuss that another time.

Miracles and Devotion

As told by His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

You have heard of many Guru stories, isn't it? So now I am going to tell you a Devotee story.
In the last week of November, I was touring in some of the remote places in the state of Maharashtra. Some villages and districts that I have never been to. There were a lot of people who came to meet me.
In one village, I told my secretary, ‘Three people have lost their mobiles and they are very poor people. So put three new cell phones in my bag.'
When I went there, there were 2,000 to 2,500 volunteers and a crowd of around 200,000 people.
In the volunteers meet after the program, I said, ‘Three of you lost your mobile phones. I know about it. Those of you who have lost your mobile phones, please stand up’, and only three people stood up.
There was a lady who had stood up, and I told her, ‘Look, you were crying in front of my picture last Thursday. You did not know what to do, how to face your family because an expensive mobile phone was lost, which must have been worth two to three months of earnings. Here, take a new one.'


When I was doing this, one boy from the group came up to me and he shared his story. He was in an advanced course and his wife was at home, and he had to talk to her. There was no battery on his phone and he had forgotten the charger at home. So he put the phone in front of my picture and asked, ‘Gurudev, let the phone be charged.'
The next morning, when he woke up, the phone was fully charged.
This boy showed me his phone and said, ‘Look, for one and a half years I have thrown away my charger, and now I only keep my phone in front of your picture and it gets charged.’
He threw his charger away!
I said, 'This is really something. Even I need a charger for my phone, and my devotee charges his phone by keeping it in front of my picture.'
See how powerful devotees can be.

I thought this is a very exciting story. So I came back to Bangalore and there were about 150 people from Russia, Poland and all over Europe, and I shared this story with them, ‘Look I can’t charge my phone without a charger and see this devotee threw away his charger and he is charging his phone every day keeping it in front of my picture.'
So the 150 people there said, 'Yes, it happens for us also.'
My saying this did not surprise them at all.
One Russian said, ‘It happened to me also. One day, I too put my phone and prayed that it should get charged, and it indeed did get charged!’
Devotees from Poland and Scandinavia also shared the same experiences.
Another person shared their experience and said, ‘My car ran out of petrol and the fuel marker had come to zero showing me that the tank was empty. But I kept driving, and drove117 kilometers on an empty tank.'

How is it possible? This seems to break all apparent laws of nature.
I tell you, we should give miracles a chance to happen in life. Nobody’s life is devoid of miracles. Only we don’t believe in them.

All the cultures and philosophy in this world are based on miracles. In fact they thrive on miracles.
Just remove all the miracles from the Bible and you will feel as if the Bible does not exist.
Similarly, if you take any scripture in the world, it is full of miracles. But we think miracles are a thing of the past and not of the present. I tell you, it can happen even today, in the present.

Once, I was at Boston airport and a devotee bought food for me, and for the four others who were travelling with me. Do you know how many people were with me? A large number of around 60 to 70 people, and the food which was meant for four people was shared between 60 people. Everybody ate food.
It makes you wonder - how is this possible?!


There is a scientific explanation for this also.
The whole world is nothing but vibrations; everything is vibrations. Matter is nothing but vibrations. Matter and energy are the same, they are just vibrations.
See, when you go near an automatic glass door, immediately the glass door opens.
Just imagine if this was a phenomenon that would have happened 100 to 200 years ago. People at that time would have gone crazy. They would wonder as to how this is happening. You simply go and the door opens.
Today, we know that this is because of bio energy. There is energy emitting from our body.
Do you know, there are locks that can be opened only by one person.
You must have heard of biometric locks. If it is your energy that is embedded in that lock, then nobody else can open it. Only when you touch it, will it open.
That means that everyone is emitting energy.

When you are in a state of love and devotion, your energy is so strong, so big, that when you want a cell phone to get charged, it simply gets charged.
It is just like an intense energy of the biometric lock. When you move near the door, the door opens because of your energy is caught by that little box above the door.

Similarly, the entire universe is just made up of energy. It is all energy. So give a chance for miracles to happen.
When is all this possible? It can happen when you are hollow and empty.
When both, your heart and mind are pure and clear, then positive energy rises in you. But if your mind is full of negativity, and if you are stressed out; or if you are complaining about this and that, and grumbling and griping, then no miracle is possible. Even regular work which has to happen does not happen. Simple things do not happen because energy is low and negative.
When energy is high, what you think is impossible starts happening.