'We've all reached nirvana'

Do you endorse the brand of yoga being promoted by American Tara Stiles - described as "Rebel Yoga" - who says she does not follow any rules, but teaches yoga that's free of any spiritual undertones or overtones? I thought yoga promoted holistic living that included cultivating a spiritual and inclusive perspective?

Sarah Jacob, Mumbai
I took on Tara Stiles as my personal yoga teacher as I wanted to focus on my physical training. I did not want the broader metaphysical and philosophical teachings as I have already immersed myself in them for the last 30 years. Yoga is a very wide field; it is more so in the US where people come to it for different reasons. Tara Stiles combined many teachings and is very appropriate for those who are still tentative about the spiritual overtones that they may not be willing to embrace seeing them as foreign.

I found Tara to be unpretentious. She does not have the patronising and "holier than thou" attitude that some yoga teachers have adopted in America. In fact, I have now partnered with her to expand the teaching of yoga where she can focus on the physical aspects and I can focus on the other aspects of the eight limbs of yoga.

What happens when one achieves nirvana, the state of enlightenment? Have you attained nirvana? Also, are there different kinds of nirvana or is it just one of a kind?

Meenakshi, Dehradun
I'm happy to report that we have all reached nirvana, the Buddhist term for pure consciousness. Pure consciousness is our source; it is present with us every second of our lives. But we have not established ourselves in this silent state. It appears fleetingly in the gap between thoughts. By diving into the gap, the mind can transcend thought to experience pure consciousness itself. When this is done regularly, a new state emerges, in which you can think and feel while still maintaining pure consciousness. This is the aim of meditation and it leads to real transcendence.

The transformation of the everyday self into the true self depends on becoming aware of transcendent reality in the midst of everyday activity. In that sense, yes, there is only one nirvana, but the path that unfolds it has different aspects for each seeker.

Do you feel guilty that you are not practising medicine, for which you have received training and which is meant to heal the sick?

Sulekha Sekhri, Delhi
I don't practise medicine full time, but my training gets applied quite often. For me, the turning point came 25 years ago, when I realised that consciousness is the primary agent of healing. This was a liberating realisation, and it led me to focus on change through higher awareness. Nothing is more powerful in healing than this. So my current approach is to expand people's awareness first and foremost. Yet if there's a need for medical attention, I make sure that it is attended to - all healing approaches are valid and useful.

Having said that, I am a standing fellow of the American College of Physicians, Internal Medicine, and a member of the American Medical Association. I continue to maintain my licenses to practice in Massachusetts and California, so I can continue to see patients when I am in California if necessary along with my colleagues.

I am 21 years old and live with my parents. I am a post-graduate student of Economics, completing the first year of a two-year course. I now feel the urge to switch to studying Fine Arts as I feel it is an opportunity for creative expression. But my parents want me to complete my MA degree before doing any such thing. I am confused. What should I do?

Pradeep Sharma, Ghaziabad
Apply self-awareness. You are at a new stage of maturity. It is fairly standard among psychologists to call this "the phase of identity crisis". Adulthood is opening up rapidly; new understanding about who you are, and possibilities of what you want to do flood the mind. As part of this stage, it is quite natural for you to feel uncertain as well as somewhat overwhelmed. Old familiar habits, such as listening to parents, no longer seem so certain.

If you reflect upon this transition phase, I believe you can balance your life in such a way that inner change occurs without turning your existence upside down. You can complete your MA while pursuing Fine Arts part time, to see if your inclination is solid and realistic. Make sure you are not being overwhelmed by the responsibility of coming to the end of your education, and having to enter the real world. Feelings of insecurity and panic often lead people of your age to become a perpetual student - it's so much safer to remain in the womb of the university. I hope these considerations help. Once you are more aware, you will be able to decide what is right for you.

I love my wife and I do care for her, but sometimes I feel like just going away to the mountains, and be by myself. We don't have children. At 50, would you put down this feeling to midlife crisis? I don't feel interested in meeting friends; I mostly wish to be quiet and just do my own thing. But then my wife says she feels shut out. Please help.

V Tripathi, Agra
Yes, this sounds like midlife crisis, but knowing the term doesn't bring the solution. What is such a crisis really about? In the natural arc of a lifetime, we set goals that get fulfilled, and when they are done, it is time to move on. Most people set major goals for family and career in their 20s, and by age 50, they have arrived at some sort of fulfilment. They know how to handle their work, they have raised a family, the terms of their marriage are well-known to both partners - all of this leads to a transition phase, which is the midlife crisis. The mind is no longer satisfied even with the good things that have been achieved. Moreover, it is fed up with the bad things, whatever feels stale and old.

So you reach a fork in the road. Either your achievements will serve as the platform for a new phase of life that is equally challenging and vital as the one coming to an end, or you will surrender to habit and inertia. One fork is very positive; it allows you to continue to evolve and grow. The other fork leads to a slow decline and ultimately self-defeat.

Your letter doesn't really tell me which fork you are tending to take, but I fear it is the one of inertia because there is a tone of "leave me alone. I'm not interested anymore". That's not a good sign. It can also be a symptom of crisis, a kind of avoidance because change is too threatening. Let's accept the best interpretation, that you are stuck for the moment because you have not seen a new way forward. To get past your listlessness, certain things are necessary:

1. Reject the repetition of your old life.
2. Look for a new way forward.
3. Try to find goals and opportunities that lie unfulfilled - these are the seeds of the future.
4. Cast your eyes around and look for allies in your quest for change.
5. Make your uncertainty known to your wife so that she can help you explore a new future - this is a shared journey.

If you can follow these guidelines, you can successfully navigate through the midlife crisis. It's an emotional time, and I know that you don't find it a welcome prospect to have to revisit old feelings that you hoped were long buried and forgotten. They haven't been. The way forward is to look at yourself as a fluid personality with new potentials to unfold. Your challenge is to find that potential and make the best use of it. Start right now. 

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Discover the joker inside you

Argentinian clown theatre practitioner, Carla Guida Johnson, tells you how

Ever thought of a joke and cracked up? Or made absurd expressions at yourself in front of the mirror? Or broken into a jig while ambling along? That's the clown inside you wanting to break free.

While others may frown at your odd ways, clowning around in your day-to-day life is a great way to ease up. It helps bring down the façade of being busy and important that we all hide under. "Just let it go. Be like a clown and you'll see things in a positive light. Live in the moment and stop being selfconscious," recommends Argentinian clown theatre practitioner, Carla Guida Johnson.

The trick lies in tapping into the inner humour of our mundane lives. It makes stressful and sticky situations easier to deal with. Having a joker's attitude can do wonders for your personal, professional and social life.

Clowning around doesn't always mean doing acrobatic exercises, with multicoloured hair and a red blob on your nose. Take it for what it is; child's play. The methods may seem facile, but it's surprising how effective they can be. The actor, who will be conducting a workshop on clown theatre organised by Theatre Professionals next week, shares some of her techniques.

Being self-aware
One of the first things you can work on is being aware of yourself and conscious of what's happening around you. Start by trying to communicate exactly how you feel, when you feel it, by being true to your innermost emotions. This is what gives clowns their innocence. The clown is always attentive of the audiences' response. There's no distinction between public and private. They are a part of their audience and feed off the audiences' reactions and the situations they find themselves in.

Lose inhibitions
Clowns are always trying to be loved by the audience and do all they can to amuse them. Use your imagination and creativity freely. Don't beat yourself down with social norms and constraints of how things should be done. Do what you believe in and what comes naturally to you. The confidence that comes from believing in yourself is most empowering. A clown is the most confident performer only because they believe in what they do. More importantly, they enjoy doing it.

Switch off
Clowns are always perceived to be happy people but they aren't necessarily. They have their good and bad days too. There are times when things are not going great with them personally, or when they're unwell or in a bad mood, but as entertainers, they are expected to always deliver a good act. So they switch off from their current state and mentally move into a happier space. They develop the ability to identify humour in tragic situations. Try doing the same. No matter how badly things are progressing, switch off and try finding the funnier side of things. For instance, if you're the kind who takes thing too seriously, poke fun at yourself for doing that. Visualise yourself as a difficult, officious person. It'll positively crack you up.

Accept and adapt
Accept situations, adapt to them and then go with the flow. For instance, if the clown is stuck in a spot of bother, he/she just plays along. In the real world, if your boss is constantly at your case and you can't do much about it, use some humour to deal with the boss's idiosyncrasies. You'll notice an improvement in your interaction with them.

Use your body as a tool
Hop, skip and jump like a clown. Use your whole body to express your emotions. It expands the facility to express who we are. Do some yoga exercises such as surya namaskar, as these help the body to move in a more organic way. It also energises the body and makes it flexible. Dancing is also a great way to break free.

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Troubles as teachers

If what you are undergoing is hard to endure, it is also an opportunity that will not recur in the same

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Breaking News: Identities, a fine balance

How does identification work in the inner world?

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Family: Frame of reference

Our life is full of connections. Through them we understand the negative and positive aspects of life. So we have to be circumspect about availing of the opportunities afforded by the natural connections or relationships which are formed in the course of our existence.
For example, you family is your first frame of reference. You spend your days and nights with them. You share experiences with them, sweet and bitter. In this sense, your family is the most important part of your social environment.

You should avail of every kind of lesson that you receive from your family. If you find that certain happenings in your family are undesirable, you have to show understanding. You have to appreciate that if even your family isnot the ideal one, it is still family. For you are going to find life very difficult outside the family when you enter the outside world and encounter all kinds of unpleasant situations.

Accept that unpleasant experiences are a part of life and that there is no escaping from them. Your family is not just your family: it is also a source of training for you. In this sense, your family is springboard for your future. Your school is a source of formal education for you and your family is a source of informal education. And both are equally important.

For example, if you receive a negative experience from a member of your family, take it as a first training lesson which is very necessary, because you are destined one day to go out of your home and live in society. And every day in society you will receive the same kind of negative experience.

Try to accept and tolerate negative experiences in family life, so that you will be able to live and adjust in society. In this sense, your family is a blessing for you. The family sends you out into society as a prepared person or a mature person.

Everyone knows that formal education is very important for the future. Without a good formal education, it is not possible to get a good job. But in terms of one's all-round existence, education is not the be-all and end-all of everything. For a better quality of life you need something more and that is informal education. For everyone, the family is the centre of informal education. To gain admission into this institution, you don't need to pay any kind of admission fee. It is destined by nature and by birth -- a fact of which everyone is well aware. You should therefore make certain to avail of whatever your family offers you in terms of informal education.
As a unit, the family is like a miniature society. It is training ground to enable you to face the big world outside. One who fails to live a good life in his family will fail to live a good life in society.

For example, adjustment, a principle of life is what makes all social life run smoothly. If you enter social life without first having learned to make adjustments within the framework of the family, you will have only two options: either learn to make immediate adjustments -- not an easy matter -- or be hypocritical and then live in a state of severe tension at all times.

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Beauty as an ideal

The traditional ends or ideals of life are dharma, artha, kama and moksha, understood as moral order, material fulfilment, emotional gratification and spiritual freedom.

The Indian psyche has been shaped by these time-honoured principles of organising one's life and they have given us a certain direction and guidance, underpinning our life, both sacred and secular. While dharma is what sustains all our activities and moksha is the ultimate state of being, artha and kama are driven by our innate nature and largely define our material life. Our material and emotional pursuits are products of our intrinsic psyche and mental attributes. However, there is one pursuit that is worthy of being included as a purushartha or ideal in its own right, or at the very least woven as a subtext to artha and kama, and that is seeking the beautiful and making it a part of one's life, or realising saundarya inwardly and subjectively.

To beautify, adorn, decorate and embellish, not only animates and delights our senses; it becomes an important value to strive for. Celebration of the beautiful pleases our senses on first encounter and arouses a state of adbhuta or wonder. However, the state of wonder ultimately enriches our spirit in a second more contemplative moment, for the transformation from what is objectively and sensuously beautiful to the subjective and inward state of beauty creates a serene and tranquil state akin to ananda or bliss. This cannot replace our realisation of the ultimate but comes very close to it.

In recognising the importance of the beautiful we are not only valuing what is created by human hands but equally the human artistic creativity that is responsible for the beautiful object. The beautiful in its many and varied different forms and expressions goes beyond the unnecessary and distracting distinction of art and craft, or the needless separation of sacred and secular, or the differentiation of classical from folk, for neither of these modern and mainly western dichotomies are relevant in the traditional Indian context of beautiful objects that are a part of daily lived lives.

The beautiful defies categorisation or even definition, and stands self-assuredly alone. It needs no reason for its existence and lives in holistic harmony with both the animate and inanimate world around it and thus becomes a part of our life. Creating objects of beauty and making them central in our lives brings to us grace and dignity. There's more. We beautify our surroundings, bringing a certain elegance and brightness into our homes. We adorn our own selves with the traditional 16 adornments and this gives us pleasure and enhances our looks but there is a higher purpose to creating personal beauty than mere adornment, decoration or vanity.

Sangit, chitra, shilpa and sahitya are sources of beauty for us; in them are enshrined our many values. They express our world view, creating fullness, bringing us closest to the divine in whatever way we construe that divinity. The beautiful for us can also be a part of everyday objects that are lovingly made such as a kalasha, diya or textile draped over our body. The various akritis or forms – whether they are made with thread or brush, drawn on the ground or on mud walls – are visual metaphors passed down through generations. Many derive their form from primal archetypes and reveal the inner logic of their form to the inquiring mind.

Celebrate beauty. Make saundarya a purushartha.

(The writer holds doctorates in medicine and ancient Indian culture; he is professor at Carleton University, Ottawa.)

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Our energy centres

Meditation is perhaps one very important aspect of sadhana in the attainment of yoga. But it is a much misunderstood term. Thoughts are always either in the past or future. The present is thoughtless. The gap between two thoughts is called vilamba and when vilamba becomes long enough, one gets into thoughtless awareness. The purpose of awakening the kundalini is to get into thoughtless awareness; that's called nirvichara.
A subtle system
Sahaja yoga focuses on the subtle system within the human body consisting of kundalini, a living energy, nadis that are a series of channels for the flow of pranic forces and chakras, interdependent energy centres resembling flower petals. That the body is not the whole self, and the vehicle of influence is the subtle body parallel to the physical body is the implicit hypothesis. In the process, when kundalini is awakened, the effect can be felt in the central nervous system. It manifests as a cool breeze that is consistent and verifiable. Enlightenment dawns in the form of thoughtless awareness when the kundalini reaches your sahasrara.

The last step in yoga is also to achieve the union of the self with the all-pervading power; the term yoga refers to this process. The esoteric explanation is that the extremities of the gross body, hands and feet, if they are gathered to one point as in various exercises of yoga, then the currents of nervous energy intermingle, leaving the subtle body free to communicate with the brain through the vertebral column. The Upanishads maintain that the pursuit of highest knowledge, that is, illumination associated with the Self, results when the integration of the inner Self, the spirit-atma with the cosmic spirit,the cosmos-paramatma, occurs. The process is often referred to as Self-realisation.

Nirmala Mataji describes Sahaja Yoga as the spontaneous union of individual consciousness with the all-pervading divine power through the awakening of the residual power of the kundalini which lies dormant within all human beings in the triangular bone at the base of the spine, called the sacrum or the sacred bone. Although the description of nadis, chakras and the process of Self-realisation are the same in Sahaja yoga as in the ancient systems, there are some interesting differences and the methodologies differ significantly.

The most important difference is the recognition of Bhavasagara around the nabhi as the abode of primordial masters, which is a discovery of Shri Mataji. There is a gap in Sushumna in this area. Once initiated, Sahaj yoga practitioners can do this on their own.

Each Sahaja yogi becomes an instrument of the divine to awaken the kundalini in others. It is like one lighted candle lighting up others. Sahaja yogis use the principle that a photograph emits the same set of vibrations as the person. Sahaja yogis use vibrations flowing from Mataji's photograph, gathered through the palms, to awaken the kundalini within.

The concept of the left and right components of each chakra with qualities and deities peculiar to them is unique to Sahaja yoga. Their knowledge is helpful in cleaning the chakras and balancing the system.

Major energy channels
The major energy channels are referred to as sympathetic nervous system (left and right) and the parasympathetic (central) nervous system. Energy centres (chakras) are referred to as plexuses. Sympathetic and parasympathetic systems act on the plexus but in opposition to each other; the parasympathetic system increases vitality and relaxes the plexuses, but an over-active sympathetic and imbalances between the left and right sympathetic can be identified with the cause of diseases. The activation of the residual force (kundalini) maximises the impact of the parasympathetic system and balance is restored. A change in awareness takes place such that the plexuses can be felt both in the body and in the hands and Sahaja yogis refer to this as vibratory awareness.
Similarly, the location of Jesus Christ at the Ajna chakra is unique to Sahaja yoga. His resurrection symbolises the ascent of kundalini from the material to the spiritual world. In ancient systems, mooladhara, the abode of kundalini, and mooladhara chakra have been combined; according to Sahaja yoga, mooladhara is inside the sacrum bone and mooladhara chakra just below it.

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