Svadhyaya, as the name implies, has its origin in the hallowed Sanskrit language, literally interpreted as,” sva,” meaning “own, or one’s self or the human soul; and “adhyaya”, meaning a “lesson or a reading or to meditate or to contemplate..”  In other words, “svadhyaya” literally means “to read one’s self or to learn the lessons of your own soul or a close study of the self.”

Svadhyaya is the key to deepening your spiritual practice as well as to improving your relationship with others and yourself. In the Yogic Parlance it also means studying the body and understanding its needs and limitations. In famed “Yoga Sutras of Maharishi Patanjali. practicing svadhyaya is regarded as a niyama (positive or righteous duty). By engaging in ‘svadhyay” it is imminent to get connected to the Universal Infinite Reservoir of Consciousness that is omnipresent in the whole universe and thus realize how an individual self aligns with that Infinite Consciousness.

Perhaps driven by the Divine Grace of my past Karmas, I had an insatiable innate quest, to spend a fair amount of each day thinking about myself: my needs and desires, my hopes and fears, thoughts and feelings. Even without any much touted academic achievements, I was very inquisitive to know the human nature, to understand various personalities around me. An incisively questioning mind made me to go in for “svadhyaya”, not with any specific mundane motive but for the sheer joy of satisfying my own burning desire.

After having tasted and tested on the anvil of my 77 years of existence on this planet Earth and after having imbibed information, knowledge, wisdom, experiences in a wide spectrum of mundane subjects like languages of English, Hindi, Punjabi, Sanskrit, various subjects of Science, inter alia, subject of Chemistry in which I obtained my Post Graduation Degree with Distinction.  It’s pertinent to reiterate here that along with pursuing my study for obtaining Masters degree, my swadhyaya enamoured me to spend my evenings in the Punjab University Library looking for books on esoteric subjects.

I started my career as an approved degree teacher in a Christian College at Batala (Punjab) to earn my livelihood, though for short span of two years, yet keeping the spirit of a “svadhyayi” student alive in me. Call it the Divine Design or the force of my past karma, I was propelled by a strange quirk of circumstances that I resigned my job as a College Professor and took up to Agriculture for cultivating unconventional medicinal plants in Jalandhar (Punjab). While meddling with and understanding various aspects of medicinal plants and its processing, took me to various CSIR run institutes in Jammu, Srinagar,  PAU, Ludhiana, NBG, Lucknow, HBTI, Kanpur.

Being in the field of agriculture since 1965 till mid 1984, I learnt many aspects of poultry, pig farming and bee keeping. The experience which I gained and  the tips I learnt, enriched my mind and my way of looking at things in a totally different perspective. The vagaries of nature, the cyclical fluctuation in market rates of medicinal plant crops, the conventional potato, vegetable and paddy crops made me totally free from blues that affect most of the people when they suffer huge losses due to reasons beyond their control. Needless to describe the common symptoms of depression, melancholia etc. for which most of the people have to take psychotherapy sessions. For me financial loss due to any natural or manmade reason was due to my own past karma, hence did not splitting my hair and rants. “Svadhyaya” made me immune to all this roller coaster ride of life events.  The above narration of facts directly taken out of my personal tryst with the practical effects of “Svadhyaya” is only a tip of the iceberg and many more such revelations shall follow in next write ups.