38. Answering to the Attitude

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Seeker 1: Shouldn't we keep the body fit for proper spiritual progress? Aren't Hatha Yoga practices essential in spiritual quest?

Master: If you start taking care of the body, there is no end to it. Holding on to the body and trying to cross the ocean of Maya is like sitting on a crocodile and trying to cross the river.

Another situation:

Seeker 2: Are things like Hatha Yoga really necessary? I think Yoga is to be practiced only in the mind, and has nothing to do with the body.

Master: Yes, but keeping the body fit helps in reaching a calm state of mind. That is why Hatha Yoga practices are required for a practitioner in the beginning.

Now is this master just playing with the seekers? If the seeker says Yes, master says No, if seeker says No, master says Yes. This is just a small example with 'Hatha Yoga'. You may see many such Q&A in several books. Let us analyze what this is about.

Very few seekers really want to 'know' something from a master. Most of the seekers only want an answer as per their liking. They already think they know the right thing and only wish to get an acknowledgement to their opinion from a genuine spiritual master. Their question displays their attitude. So, the answers of the spiritual masters are not to the questions, they are to the attitude of the questioner.

Seeker 1 in the above example probably has too much attachment to 'health' and enjoying the pleasures of a healthy body. Many quote "Shareeramaadyam khalu Dharma saadhanam" of Kalidasa like a great ideal they stand for, but their ideal stops with "Shareeramaadyam" and the "Dharma Saadhanam" never happens. Same is the case with many spiritual seekers; their quest somehow takes a long halt in bodily health management and never moves forward. When asked about it they say "Maintaining one's health is necessary for spiritual practice". But the fact is that worshipping the body has itself become their spiritual practice! The path has itself become the goal. Spirituality has become a royal excuse for adoring the body. We can notice the same notion in statements like "Renouncing everything and going is escapism, we have to stay in the world and practice spirituality". This mostly has only become an excuse for staying in the world. The first part "we have to stay in the world" is fully followed but the latter part "and practice spirituality" goes to dogs. Stay in the world, fine, but why give a justification for it with spirituality?! These justifications come unasked only because the Self will be pricking from within that nothing is being done. By making such statements, the mind wants to believe that it is genuinely progressing in spirituality amidst all the indulgence it is into. Also, this person who is saying "Renunciation is escapism" will be usually a person who cannot even give up his beloved chappals.

So, for people like Seeker 1, who ask questions with the hope of getting a "Yes, keeping the body fit is necessary", so that they can happily continue pleasing their precious body, masters usually give a prick with an opposite answer. Because such people ask questions in such a way that they already know that what they are doing is right, and they just want a "Yes/No" vote from different masters, hoping for a "Yes" from most of them.

Seeker 2 is in the other extreme. He is perhaps a beginner like most of us and after reading or listening to many spiritual preaches has become over-enthusiastic. He is talking as if he has already lost his body-consciousness. This is nothing more than an empty show-off out of over-excitement. He is also, perhaps lazy to follow techniques of Yoga which lead to mind control and wants to believe that everything can be done sitting idle. He is not much different from seeker 1, in that, he already thinks he knows the answer and is just expecting an agreeable nod from the master. And he rightly gets a prick too.

If the seekers' attitude behind the above two questions were not biased, then the master's answers would have been interchanged - the second answer would have been given for the first question and the first answer would have been given for the second question. Only a true Guru can see this attitude behind the questions and will know what is to be answered, and therefore the need of a Guru. The seekers, including us, are always after finding an answer that suits our opinion. Our mind works so intelligently to ask questions in such a way that we would get a "Yes" to what we are already doing. We will have attachments to some paths and techniques of spirituality and want to hear that it is the ultimate practice. The paths or techniques are usually not bad on their own, but our obsession towards them makes us stagnate. Just like how a Hatha Yogi's entire attention may get diverted to the well being of the body. A real spiritual master pulls us away from such obsessions and tries to guide us into a middle path - neither belittle the techniques nor get obsessed with them, but practice them as a stepping stone; neither punish or ignore the body like a great spiritual hero straightaway nor stop with the health of the body alone, but keep the body fit with minimum needs and proceed further to tackle the mind; living in a city or in a forest is not the factor, but only the mental efforts to get detached no matter where you are.

I am still getting amazed as to how crucial Buddha's message of middle path was. It has come several times in different ways within this blog itself. It keeps going deeper the more we explore it. Mind seems to somehow stick to extremes in most of the cases, some of them being very subtle, like the one being covered in this post.

Another conclusion of this short post is that the conversations with spiritual masters has to be read keeping the full context in mind. Focusing on their answers alone may give a wrong message to our mind. Because their answers are not just to the questions, but mainly to the attitude of the questioners. If the answers are viewed independently they will lose their original meaning and may even be detrimental. For e.g. "Yes, see, this master said that Hatha Yoga is not necessary. That is why I stopped Pranayama practice"!! This is a misguided practitioner noting only those sentences that suits his opinion without seeing the full context of that sentence, and also ignoring other conversations with the same master that empasize the importance of Pranayama.

13. Convolutions Compiled

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By now, we have talked about several blunders that a spiritual aspirant may commit due to his eagerness, urgency and over-enthusiasm. In this post I thought a few more of such roadblocks can be presented.

I once attended a meditation session being conducted by an instructor. He made all the people sit in a meditative posture and then the session began. He gave several instructions such as “Relax your whole body. Slow down your breathing. Watch your heart beat etc.”. The session went on for about 10-15 minutes. After that he asked all the attendees to share their experience. People started telling things like “I felt as if time stopped”, “I felt as if I was out of the body” etc. Now I was in a fix. Because I hadn’t felt anything. Throughout the 15 minutes, I was half asleep with some weird thoughts running amidst the slumber. When my turn came I said “I felt nothing.”. The instructor was taken aback. He expected at least “It was good”. Now, being the instructor of the session, his ego was at stake in front of the group. He asked again with a little exclamation “You didn’t feel ANY thing?”. Well, now I felt a little compelled to say something positive. So, I said “Hmm, I think I heard some sound. It could have been OM kara, but I’m not sure.”. And the instructor said in a victorious tone “Yes, when mind goes into deep silence, you will hear OM”. I didn’t observe at that time, but when I look back now I notice that he was least concerned about my spiritual progress. His only focuses were his success as the instructor, his popularity as a Yoga teacher, more student enrollments into his classes, and the resulting increase in his revenue. So, finally it is $$$. What a great spiritual teacher!

But in the process of lying to others, I slowly started lying to myself. I really started believing that I am seeing light, hearing sounds, having the experience of spiritual bliss etc during my meditation sessions. And all this in a matter of 2-3 weeks. How foolish! Time passed by and after an year or so, finally I couldn’t cheat myself. I started thinking “I have been meditating for a year now, and nothing has happened! Same anger, jealousy and lust. Everything is as it was a year ago!”. Then what was the use of the light I saw? What was the use of the sound I heard?

And all this stagnation just because I wanted results in a hurry and pretended to myself by showing dummy progress reports. If I had honestly pursued, without cheating myself, in one year I would probably have had some real experiences. But now I had wasted all my effort and time in pretending and reporting fake progress to myself!

In the realms of spirituality, urge for respect and recognition from others is quite irresistible. Sometimes we lose ourselves in this maze of impressing others around us by following certain practices – such as wearing white and white, saying “All is Brahman” every now and then etc. Sometimes, I have even seen each and every action of a person throughout the day being a drama performance, just with the intention of gaining some recognition from others. The style of walking, way of talking, the gestures – everything being a pretence! And all this just for getting to hear “Oh what a great spiritual person he is”. What a waste of effort! And what a load on ourselves to pretend the whole day, instead of just being ourselves freely! This can be called as spiritual constipation ;-)

But why so much of complexity? What do we gain? What do we get from the respect and recognition? Do we progress spiritually because of their respect? In fact, such respect from others is going to put us in a dream world, that we are great spiritual practitioners. But don’t we know about our real colors? This is only going to stagnate us. Our entire focus falls on something trivial and our precious time and effort are completely wasted on actions intended towards gaining respect. Is the goal of spirituality just to make others fall at our feet? What an insignificant and childish ambition!

Of course, no harm in wearing white and white etc. If it is being followed without any intention of gaining respect then it is perfectly fine. But only we will know what our intention in doing such activities is. We cannot afford to lie to ourselves. As emphasized in the earlier posts, honesty to ourselves is a must in spiritual progress. Let alone the transparency towards others, let us first be fully transparent and truthful to ourselves. This perhaps constitutes the major portion of ‘Satya’ prescribed by Patanjali in his Yoga sutras. This is both crucial and essential.

All get very much drawn towards the mystic Hatha Yoga and Tantra techniques. ‘Kundalini’ has become a household name all around the world. Although this science has its own efficacy and helps seekers in its own way, in the modern times we can see several distractions and disruptions being caused because of the over-technicality involved in it. This is perhaps because genuine Hatha masters are scarcely available and the bogus Hatha teachers only look at raising their income, not raising the Kundalini.

The genuine seeker is already in a disturbed state. He already has worries bugging him or her. And over that he gets bombarded with ‘Kundalini’, ‘Chakra’, ‘Nadi’, ‘Nada’, ‘Bindu’, ‘Laya’… All this is going to depress him further and make him feel miserable “Oh God, so many things, and I don’t know even a bit! When will I do all this!”. This has been explained in detail in the ‘Miraculous Mistake’. So, instead of calming down the mind, he has shifted the disturbance of the mind from one area to another. From the distractions of the world to the distractions of technical terms of Yoga. Why do we need something that depresses us? Perhaps if it is taught by a genuine Hatha teacher, its usefulness would become evident. And the Hatha texts clearly indicate this fact – ‘This text only gives a general guideline, but should not be practiced without the guidance of a real Hatha Guru.’. So otherwise, it will just become a blind practice as it has become today. Some people follow this path even to improve their sex life. What a degradation!

Moreover, it is well known and told clearly in the texts that Hatha practices can be dangerous if practiced without proper guidance. So, it is nothing but a risk, especially if practiced under the guidance of a money-oriented bogus master who himself does not know about the results of the practices.

Ramana Maharshi, when asked about the technicality of such things, simply said “You are already deluded enough by the world. Why do you want to delude yourself more with all this technical terms? Self-Realization is just being as your true self. Why do you need all this just to be yourself?”

So, for innocent practitioners like us let the mystic science remain mysterious! The attraction of Hatha techniques is sometimes irresistible. But let us not get dragged into this just because it looks amusing. Not a good idea! We can take simple and more prevalent practices like Pranayama and certain simple Kriyas, but not everything that is prescribed. After all, Hatha Yoga is just one of the paths and it is not necessary that it must be practiced. We can safely and generously exempt ourselves from it.

“Yesterday night I had a wonderful experience. I was meditating and I saw divine light”

“When you were meditating I quietly came to the room and switched on the tube light for a minute. It was the flickering of the tube light, not celestial light.”

After a few days…

“Yesterday night I really saw divine light. Because I know nobody was in the room, I had locked from inside”

“We were taking photos just outside your room. It was the powerful flash of the digital camera.”

After a few days…

“This time I meditated in the afternoon. I had a strange blissful feeling, I felt as if I was floating. I also heard some trumpet sound. It has been told in Hatha texts that different chakras have different sounds.”

“You idiot. You were sleeping and snoring in your sitting posture itself. The trumpet was your own snoring. And obviously it will be a strange feeling to sleep in sitting posture.”

After a few days…

 “I felt a tingling sensation in my Ajna chakra. And I think I saw the Ajna chakra. I verified the shape in the book”

“You were squinting your eyes so forcefully for so long that just by looking at you even I felt the pain between my eye brows. First see Mooladhara, Swadhishtana, Manipura, Anahata and Vishuddhi chakras. Than speak of Ajna chakra.”

After a few days…

“I think I saw Kundalini. It was coiled like a snake as described in the book”

“With your squint and half open eyes, I think you saw your own curly hair drooping over your forehead”

After a few days…

“I felt the rising of the Kundalini within my spinal column”

“Ok, I have had enough of your comedy show. You better visit a psychiatrist”