Inaugural address by Swami Lalitanandaji at Life Positive Fest

The annual Life Positive Fest took place in the sublime ambience of Zorba The Buddha in the outskirts of Delhi. Swami Lalitanandaji inaugurated the Fest. Here is a report from the May 2017 issue of the magazine on spirituality. (You can read the report by clicking here.)

“My Guru asked me to create a balance between my heart and my head, 30 years back. I asked him, 'Do I have to reduce my head?'. He answered, 'No, just increase this.' (pointing to the heart),” recalled Yogoda Satsang Society's Swami Lalitananda Giri during his inaugural discourse on 'Balancing the left and the right brain'. Swami Ishwarananda, the original speaker, was unfor tunately unable to attend the event, and therefore gave us the opportunity to listen to the Swami expound eloquently on what turned out to be his signature discourse. Most of us by now are aware that the left brain governs our logical and analytical side while the right one presides over the emotional and creative part. “A harmonious balance between the two hemispheres, or the head and the heart, enables a person to lead a harmonious life,” he reiterated, adding that emotional intelligence is crucial to attain a holistically successful life. To achieve that balance, left-brained people need to develop intuition and perception of emotions in themselves and others, while right-brain people need to build their analytical muscles by performing logicenhancing activities. He enlivened his discourse with apt stories. One man, he said, was offered a job that paid him a higher salary which logically seemed a better option, but the nature of the job and the politics of the work place helped him recognise the folly of only following the head. On the other hand, a young woman ruined her life by choosing to marry a dissipated young man despite the many admonitions of her family because she was in love with him. Her mistake? Only following the heart! “When there is a connection between the two hemispheres, we are in a 'flow'. That is the state in which unconditional love flows through us,” he explained. Swamiji then dwelt on the significance of Kriya Yog in energising the respective chakras (anahata for the heart and ajna for the head) to create the needed balance.