Rohit Arya on Yoga Sutras Ch1V1 Atha Yoga Anushasanam

What is the very first verse? Chapter 1, verse 1, 196 verses in the yoga sutras. What is the very first word? It is the most famous. All these teachings like I said start like the explosion of a hydrogen bomb- a knock out punch!

 

The first verse: Atha Yoga, Anushasanam. That is the complete line.

 

Let me unpack the meaning of each word. This gets interesting. What is the implication? How do we engage, learn when we are given a sutra? This is how I came to this.

 

ATHA- NOW. AND NOW. . THIS MOMENT.

 

Atha means this sacred moment. This current moment is the only moment we have. I cannot catch what happened even two seconds ago. Life always happens in this moment. Why would he (Patanjali) start his text on Yoga not with the word ‘Yoga’ but with ‘Atha’

 

What does Atha Yoga mean? Yoga is the current moment! And what is Yoga? Yoga means to unite. Unite to what? Unite to the higher consciousness, unite to the self. Not to the fragmented, not to the conditioned, not to the limited. To unite to what is free, what is unconditional, to what is authentic, to what is limitless. And where do you find all that? Only in the current moment. Kalidasa says in his famous poem -The Salutation to the Dawn – ‘Look to this day, Because this is the only time we have.’ It was a salutation to the muhurta.

 

So, ATHA YOGA. Atha also means AND NOW. And now Yoga. Atha Yoga Anushasanam. Anu also means ‘after’. That which follows. It also implies that which is condensed. Something that was expansive has been brought to the core, the essence. The mandatory, non-negotiable, compressed level of truth and value. So much meaning in two words!

 

SHASANA: In Hindi it means to rule. Whom do you rule? Your family, society? No. you rule yourself. Then you achieve self mastery. Shasanam is discipline, teaching. To learn something is to be under Shasanam.

 

So Atha Yoga Anushasanam means, Yoga is possible in this moment after you achieve self -discipline. This is one interpretation.

 

Atha Yoga Anushasanam When was this written? It was put in writing about 2,300 years ago, but historically it is at least four or five thousand years old.  In those days we had the ‘Varnashrama Dharma’. Life was divided in 25 year segments. First 25- Brahmacharya where you learned, next 25- Grihastashram when you got married and had a family, then Vanaprastha where you went into the forest and then you would go into sanyasa.

 

So many authorities say, Atha Yoga means, after you have completed with your Bharmacharya and your Grihastashrama, after you have experienced life, achieved some success, then…And Now…Yoga. And that is probably true. Not that people were not doing sadhana and kriya, but they would come to hard core yoga around the age of 50 years. Osho Rajneesh used to say that “I want people who have succeeded in life and then realized that this success has not made me happy. I want people who have material success, I want people who have fame, I want people who have social positions. I don’t want a whole crowd of poverty stricken people looking for mental peace. That is not what Yoga will provide.’ People keep asking me, ‘If I do Yoga will I get mental peace? ‘ No, your peace will go to pieces!! It will shatter you first. This is also what Osho said, he was coming from the Yoga Sutras. You have to have achieved a certain level of success and social recognition, comfort and then realize that your body is not cooperating as much as it used to. So you have to have had that myriad of experiences, seen life. Then you are ready- Atha Yoga- And  Now…Yoga.

 

But this is not the only meaning. It means “Wherever you are..That Moment Yoga!’ start from where you are. Which is why Bhagwat Gita starts with the blind man. “Dhritirashtra Owachha.” Atha Yoga- no matter what your condition, your success, fame, money, health; whatever you are in this moment, please begin! How can you ever attain if do not begin? So Atha Yoga can also mean, Yoga is NOW. Don’t go looking for the most auspicious time by the horoscope. In Kautilya Arthashastra one of the sutras says “Only fools wait for an auspicious moment, for the evolved person all moments are auspicious”.

 

ATHA YOGA- the moment you decide, that is the moment your yoga begins. You can begin at any moment. It is like the “Avasara” . a moment in life which is a destiny moment, when your life can change, transform. Atha Yoga- the moment of transformation. What the Greeks called ‘Kairos’. Then normal time is no longer running. It is an aspect of time that can transform you. Atha Yoga- Right Now, This Moment. It is actually the only moment you have. When are you going to start Yoga? One day when you retire? When your responsibilities are over? No. these are all excuses. Yoga does not ask you to give up anything. That is all a two thousand year old practise. There were karmic cycles that required that. I explain this in the talk about Yugas. There was a reason for why things changed, went into survival mode. When yogis and spiritually evolved people stopped speaking about sexuality, money and power. They became ‘dirty’. The spiritual person was not expected to talk about society, and all this. So now those speaking about these very important aspects were those with lower level consciousness! Their values then define what the values are around sexuality, money, power and what society becomes. So Sri Aurobindo did something very profound when he said ‘All life is Yoga’. This is what Atha Yoga already encompasses, and he said it very openly. Atha Yoga- This moment. This is when we are living our life right here on this planet. It is not about bein reborn on another planet!

 

‘Naveenam Naveenam Kshane Khsane’- ‘New , ever new, every moment. That was another sutra that used to be given. Every moment is new, every moment is fresh, every moment is original, every moment is creative, because…Atha Yoga!

 

 

Atha Yoga Anushasana. Anushashanam means after Shasana. You can come to yoga only after self-discipline. This is also a possible interpretation. A person who is not mentally, physically and emotionally disciplined will never succeed in yoga.

 

Anushasanam: we do our Kriya, our system, our sadhana, the Eight Spiritual Breaths. Do you realize that every movement we have in that is for physical discipline? Don’t let your hands bend, don’t let your hands fly, they should be perpendicular etc. everything is training you in ‘Shasana’ and ‘Anushasana.

 

This is what makes sutras so enjoyable. You can read them in all directions. You can read them forward, backward or even in three dimensions. That is the way the sutra was supposed to play out. That is why in the Ashtanga of yoga we have the ‘Yama –Niyama’. The rules and disciplines. Don’t lie, don’t steal, be clean etc. I will speak on that separately. So this is vital. While yoga is self- mastery, but to achieve that you require a shasana or discipline. Self- mastery is an evolutionary stage of discipline. To be selfish is very easy, it does not require any discipline. To care only for oneself is very easy. To care for a larger social context requires discipline. To come to your authentic self requires the most discipline. So self-mastery is an evolution that is possible only from discipline. So “Anushasana followed by Yoga’. Anushasana Yoga. When you have Anushasana then time stops, you are always in ‘This Moment’ – ‘Atha’, the present moment awareness.

 

Yoga means to connect, to join, to link. It actually means to tie, to yoke you. So you are connected to the higher consciousness which happens only when you are in this one moment, the NOW. Because when you are in this one moment, then time does not function anymore for you. Enlightened people have no sense of time. They keep their consciousness about time with great difficulty. To them everything is the same. The past is the same as the present or future. Time is actually a big illusion and even physicists know that. When you travel at the speed of light, you do not start moving faster, you actually start growing bigger. You hit infinite mass. That is the paradox.

 

So, Atha Yoga Anushasanam- Anushasanam. Leave the ‘anu’ out of that. What do I require to do for shashana? What is the discipline I require? So we have the sadhana, the kriya, the meditation, the satsang, the sangha. These are all aspects. Shasana has these multiple meanings. Sanskrit is a polysemous language, which means one word has more than one meaning. So in ‘Shasanam” we have first discipline which evolves to mastery.

 

So when you are given this little torpedo, this hook- Atha Yoga Anushasanam, the teacher must have been very happy as the student will be dealing with this for anither two months at least! The student would come back and say, it means discipline. The teacher would ask, okay, so what is your discipline? What are your values? What are your habits? What is your evidence for discipline? When do you go to sleep? What do you eat? Remember our affirmation? ‘From this moment onward nothing that I shall do or think, eat or drink shall abuse this temple to the living God, my body!’ All that comes from here, this yogic vibration- anushasana.

 

Atha Yoga Anushasanam.  And Now Yoga. So discipline leads to self-mastery which keeps me in Yoga, which keeps me in the Now. But if you are in Now you are enlightened! So in that one sentence, Patanjali has covered all the schools of Yoga, Hatha Yoga which is about the body, Bhakti Yoga which is about emotion, Jnyana Yoga which is about the mind and Raja Yoga which is about the prana. All the possible dimensions of yoga have been covered in this first opening sentence, the first blast. It is such a simple definition of Yoga- Atha Yoga, Anushasanam.

 

 The most popular is ‘Yoga Chitta Vritti Nirodaha  othe scholars and foreigners like it. But this is actually the most famous definition of yoga. Atha yoga anushasanam. Remember what I said about the Bija Mantras? Each syllable strikes at a particular point. It is not the meaning of the word or sentence, which is important, it is the sound. Each syllable, each sound has a particular vibration in your body, in your mind, in your emotion and in your prana. So in a few years, with enough kriya and meditation, you will realize what kind of a sentence this is- Atha Yoga Anushasanam. It has so much Shakti. They would not write these sutras unless they were in Samadhi. They would be written only in a waking Samadhi. In fact you may not understand these books unless you are in some kind of Samadhi, you will just  about grasp the meaning on the surface. Especially the Vedas and Upanishads. They seem to be saying something, but what is happening on the surface is far from the truth. It functions at that extraordinary level. When you really understand Atha Yoga Anushasana, then start reading the Vedas and Upanishad, as they are all mystical, at a different vibration, including the Bhagwat Gita. As you come more and more into yogic consciousness, the connected consciousness when you are connected to the force, the kundalini, the Shakti, the words start vibrating differently. So you were not allowed to read these books. Today they are widely available, that is also okay, at least the knowledge is not lost forever. But there is no real way to understand this, unless you have done some meditation, some form of yoga. Atha Yoga Anushasanam.

 

It is right there in the front. This is what it is going to be accomplishws, this is what is expected of you, and this is what is required to be done. Everything that you will accomplish is covered in this one sentence. The opening line of the book is therefore dramatic and important. the yoga sutra is so grand, they say that he (Patanjali) is the avatar of Shesha Naga. He was from a different dimension, he was a naga. The energy was playing out from a different dimension. This level of vibration and impact, this level of power! Just the opening sentence blows the mind.

 

Then you realize, “If I cross this, what I used to be cannot survive.” It is a conscious choice in evolution. Yoga is about conscious choice, to evolve oneself not only to the level of a deva but a rishi. So he put this first level barrier, to filter out those who were not serious.

 

Atha Yoga Anushasanam. And Now Yoga. And Now when? At what stage of life? It depends. Someone can look at it and decide they are not ready, they cannot make the commitment. That is also wisdom.  Not that their life will be destroyed (which is the usual fear). Their life will actually become much better. Yes, how you spend your time will change. Surely you may stop wasting time with people and thinking that is enjoyment!  Unfortunately for most people that is where all the psychological investment is. But if we are talking about Shasanam, when we are doing a course like the ‘Eight Spiritual Breaths’, you will not waste your life. Because the affirmations keep repeating the message, hammering it in- ‘Nothing that will lead to disease, decay, death..’ Shasanam- self-mastery, what is required for self discipline? It is implicit that you have to be in control of certain things. What will you control? Not your family! It is your body, your breath, your mind, your prana. And when do we get there? ’Anu- Shasanam’. After certain things are done. That is  Sadhana, practice, sincerity. You can have mastery over everything, if you become a BhrahmaRishi you can have Shasanam over the entire universe! They run the universe, not the Gods. Gods are just paid employees!

 

So when you engage, when you open yourself to the sutra and allow the power, the Shakti to flow into you, a lot happens that is otherwise not possible. A genuine sutra carries that vibration and power, if you allow yourself to be open to it, in this moment. Atha Yoga Anushasanam. In this moment I am open, I am connected, I am in yoga, I am in connection with the sutra- Atha Yoga. So what happens ? Anushasanam.

 

 

There are so many ways to play with this. Do you understand now what we were as a culture? How your mind and body and emotion used to be engaged with a teaching style like this, and how we are taught today. The catastrophic fall.

 

So finally, what is the Patanjali yoga sutra chapter 1, verse 1? ATHA YOGA ANUSHASANAM. It is a complete philosophy of life, a complete system of living. It has everything. Often people just say Atha yoga. That is a mistake. It is Atha Yoga, Anushasanam.

 

Sarvam Shivamayam.

 

Rohit Arya is an Author, Yogi and Polymath, being a writer, a corporate trainer, a mythologist and a vibrant speaker.  He has written the first book on Vaastu to be published in the West, {translated into five European languages} the first book on Tarot to be published in India, co-authored a book on fire sacrifice, and is the creator of The Sacred India Tarot {82 card deck and book}. He was the Editor of The Leadership Review, and on the advisory panel of Indiayogi.com, the first spiritual portal in the country. Currently he is the Director of Pro-Factor, a leadership and change facilitation corporate training outfit. He has been an arts critic and socio-cultural commentator for over two decades. Rohit is also a Lineage Master in the Eight Spiritual Breaths system of Yoga. He founded the Arya Yoga Sangha and leads multiple meditation circles each week.

 

The videos of his talks on various subjects can be found here http://www.youtube.com/user/TheAryayogi

 

His blogs can be accessed here

 

https://aryayogi.wordpress.com/

 

http://actpersistintensify.wordpress.com/

 

http://creativeaye.wordpress.com/

 

http://zestandgrit.wordpress.com/

 

When the ‘student’ is ready the Master perspires…

The crazy demands made on Teachers by delusional people who seek to use spiritual methods as yet another tool to emotionally jerk off.

So somebody who looks like the little sister of Jabba the Hutt slithered into one of my meditation groups. Such an intense mass of Tamasic blubber caused me to cringe with the dark vibration in the aura. The skin was smelling of alcohol – the sign of the hard core just functioning drinker; when the body cannot break down the previous night’s input and starts excreting it thru the sweat glands we are in the presence of ‘ I am a social drinker’ otherwise known as complete and utter denial. This person came ostensibly to sit in the meditation circle and learn the course in spiritual breathing that I am a Lineage Master in. Actually she came to check me out; one of my students had been developing faith in me and the process and she was suspicious her friend had fallen into the clutches of a fraud. I have seen that slinking look many, many times before ‘oh I am so cool and here causally but actually to monitor you.’ One of this constant tribe  had come,  years before, to save her friend. She ended up marrying me – which did not end well for me, but that is another tale!

 This person did not disappoint; she had myriad questions supposed to prove her knowledge and intelligence but only displaying that she did not have the slightest tinge of actual spiritual experience. That is okay but the sad truth is that the most viciously ignorant always have the greatest delusions about their spiritual stature. This person had zero compunctions in using up her friend’s good will with me and with her hatha yoga teacher checking us both out in the “Prove yourself to me while I sit and wheeze in the corner” manner that the delusional have. She was so corpulent that it is doubtful if she has seen her own toes in 15 years but she had no scruple in sitting in judgment over somebody who had been teaching Hatha Yoga for 13 years and maybe the best damn teacher in Mumbai for asanas. But no our Lady of Pathetic Delusion thinks she can check her out and decide if she will graciously confer her patronage. She knows the meditation and the breaths classes have to be paid for but naturally she had ‘forgot’ to carry money that day, correctly assuming that concern for her friend will prevent me from embarrassing her.

That evening I have an email exchange with my student where I outlined my concerns that this was Trouble and anyways this sort of interaction should not have been forced upon me. Her friend loyally defended her but I knew in my bones this would not end well. I am sometimes wrong about the goodness of people, but about their dark side, their selfish greedy exploitative aspect I am always right. So one day before the next class this person calls me up and says she had a previous appointment that she could not get out of so could I teach her the second Breath, while postponing the meditation so that she could make her appointment. I pointed out that I could not inconvenience 8 other people for her, she knew very well the times the sessions were held and if she could not make it she should not have begun the course.  This seemed to deeply offend her. When I suggested that she come early the next week she announces she is going to be out of town. At which point I said that in case she should resume after she returns whereupon she comes out with an amazing suggestion that I hand over the supporting study materiel and she would learn them on her own. Then I completely lost it and told her this is not the right attitude and she is not interested in learning – whereupon she resorted to vituperation and sundry conjectures about my ultimate fate to a hot place. Since it is almost certain she is preparing a special place for herself there I guess she has expert inside information – I wouldn’t know.

So let us sum up the situation. She has stolen one meditation class, one Breaths class, not one rupee has been paid as yet, but she feels perfectly entitled to instruct me to inconvenience everybody else, to break the established teaching method of the lineage, so that she and her corpulence can continue to float in a sea of delusion. She is instructing a lineage master in a parampara how to teach the system!!! This is not delusion. This is not even entitlement. This is lunacy pure and simple.

A certain type of urban India woman has descended into this pattern. Another sample made and broke three appointments for a reading. When I said that is enough I am no longer going to read for you she was bewildered at my ‘harshness’. Again no money had exchanged hands but the mere thought that in the future they were going to pay for something seemed to place them, in their diseased minds, as the lady of the manor and me as the leprous mendicant who should be honored – first that they condescended to notice me and then that some scraps would be thrown my way withal. These women seem to meet only the sort of men that the Men’s Rights Activists call a ‘Mangina’ and yes it means exactly what it sounds like. That is what they want men to be; it is a symptom of decaying brains I think, though I could be wrong. I doubt it …but all things are possible with God.

This delusional attitude to spirituality is what causes Teachers – in pure self defense  – to set up hierarchies and difficulties of access. Certainly that is the lesson I have learnt and I will apply ruthlessly in future. Also this is not in any way confined to women. Men are just as bad, but they don’t press it so much. They know they get shorter rope perhaps!

Sarvam Shivamayam!

Rohit Arya is an Author, Yogi and Polymath, being a writer, a corporate trainer, a mythologist and a vibrant speaker.  He has written the first book on Vaastu to be published in the West, {translated into five European languages} the first book on Tarot to be published in India, co-authored a book on fire sacrifice, and is the creator of The Sacred India Tarot {82 card deck and book}. He was the Editor of The Leadership Review, and on the advisory panel of Indiayogi.com, the first spiritual portal in the country. Currently he is the Director of Pro-Factor, a leadership and change facilitation corporate training outfit. He has been an arts critic and socio-cultural commentator for over two decades. Rohit is also a Lineage Master in the Eight Spiritual Breaths system of Yoga. He founded the Arya Yoga Sangha and leads multiple meditation circles each week. The videos of his talks on various subjects can be found here http://www.youtube.com/user/TheAryayogi

His blogs can be accessed here

https://aryayogi.wordpress.com/

http://actpersistintensify.wordpress.com/

http://creativeaye.wordpress.com/

http://zestandgrit.wordpress.com/

Of hustle and mendicancy in teaching spirituality

Teaching spiritual processes in urban India has become such a sad business. I have begun teaching my Yoga only in April this year and some interactions are surreal. There are too many people peddling wares purporting to be spiritual. Which is an issue but not as important as the fact that they are dependent upon those things to survive. This makes them desperate. The purchasers of such wares – they are rarely students – thus get an inordinate position of power. This is destroying the credibility of serious teachers as well as serious processes as the marketplace logic that prevails ensures a wheedling fawning mendicancy when it is not outright hustle. Those who think they are Seekers tend to act from that assumption. It is pretty obvious most of them have never met or engaged with a real Yogi, they would have got a sharp wake up call. It is even more obvious that this cringing marketing of supposedly valuable and life transforming processes is a disaster.

So pervasive has the hustle become that people engage from a place of profound suspicion and disdain. I do not market except by accident – all new students are word of mouth – but the significant majority of them come with this weird attitude – “I have money, now sell me, you sad case.” They have been educated to be so by the prevailing ethos. When I refuse to shrink or seek alms, or apologize for my prices, all of which seem to be the prevailing norm, they are astounded. Some of them are offended. The prevailing power dynamic is so askew that cancelling appointments more than once and expecting you to accommodate them seems to be the norm. When I refuse to tolerate such misbehavior there is incomprehension. What, no gratitude for the crumbs I deign to dole out at my convenience? The second cancellation is when I drop the person. This actually bewilders them. Such are the realities.

The other commonplace is the personal meeting. Everybody seems to want one. Quite other than the fact that it indicates you place no credibility in the friend who recommended me there are other issues. They expect to be wooed. They want to be called up and persuaded, pleaded with. When told ‘this is the date, place and time, turn up,” there is shock. After four books, as many ongoing blogs and over 100 teaching videos, what further credibility will a personal meeting confer? But the norm is to bow and scrape, to submit oneself to judgment and scrutiny.  So now I quote a stiff fee for the personal meeting and that is the end of that. This entitlement to the time and knowledge of others even before a single shekel has changed hands is very educative. Teachers have to insist on their dignity. It is not only for the famous.

People are not used to be being told “You are doing so many processes, why add one more?” Strange people abound; they have taken diksha from as many as five gurus. While they are disturbed, and need therapy not sadhana, what sort of vetting or questioning is being done on the part of these organizations that give away initiations en masse?  How are the basic rules of the Yogic traditions contravened with such insouciance? Since such a situation can be explained only by the prevalence of money grubbing, the caveat emptor mindset is not entirely wrong. What about the karma involved? Does anybody care? Is anybody aware?

Sarvam Shivamayam!!

Rohit Arya is an Author, Yogi and Polymath, being a writer, a corporate trainer, a mythologist and a vibrant speaker.  He has written the first book on Vaastu to be published in the West, {translated into five European languages} the first book on Tarot to be published in India, co-authored a book on fire sacrifice, and is the creator of The Sacred India Tarot {82 card deck and book}. He was the Editor of The Leadership Review, and on the advisory panel of Indiayogi.com, the first spiritual portal in the country. Currently he is the Director of Pro-Factor, a leadership and change facilitation corporate training outfit. He has been an arts critic and socio-cultural commentator for over two decades. Rohit is also a Lineage Master in the Eight Spiritual Breaths system of Yoga. He founded the Arya Yoga Sangha and leads multiple meditation circles each week. The videos of his talks on various subjects can be found here http://www.youtube.com/user/TheAryayogi

His blogs can be accessed here

https://aryayogi.wordpress.com/

http://actpersistintensify.wordpress.com/

http://creativeaye.wordpress.com/

http://zestandgrit.wordpress.com/

The Vamana Avataar

The first human form that Vishnu takes in his cycle of avatars is a deceptively simple and, at first glance, rather disappointing one. He comes as a little dwarf! Many fanciful interpretations of the avatar cycle being an embryonic theory of evolution have been bandied about. In this view, the Vamana or dwarf is evolutionarily correct, the first humans were indeed dwarfs as compared to our present stature.

The core story as narrated in various Puranas is simple. It is a highly expanded version of a single sentence in the Rig-Veda that,”Vishnu strode over this universe: in three places he planted his step”. By the time the Puranas got hold of that, it had become a great narrative. This avatar takes place in the Treta-yuga or second age of the Universe. The king of the Daityas or Asuras, one Mahabali (literally, greatly strong) had become powerful with the force of his austerities and he was showing up the gods in a very poor light indeed. They even had to vacate heaven for him, as they could not stand up against his might or his force of personality. It was very humiliating, but in terms of virtuousness they had to admit the Daitya had a better right to rule over heaven than themselves, who had habits and behaviors that were slippery and more than a bit reprehensible.

In this, Mahabali was very different from his notorious ancestors. He belonged to a family that was capable of causing trouble only on a cosmic scale and twice before Vishnu had to incarnate as an avatar to stop his ancestors from overrunning the universe. He was the grandson of the great Devotee of Vishnu, Prahalada. To rescue Prahalada and the gods from his persecuting father, Hiranyakashipu, the Narasimha avatar came in to being. And Hiranakashipu’s brother was the even more terrible Hiranyaksha, who had to be taken out by the Varaha avatar. So all in all, Mahabali had a very respectable pedigree when it came to universe conquering. However he was different in that even the gods had to accept his overwhelming virtues.

Nevertheless, they complained to their nominal mother, Aditi, the wife of the great rishi Kashyapa. Aditi’s fervent pleas convinced Vishnu to do something and remedy this situation, especially as Mahabali was beginning to show signs of being corrupted by power. He agreed to be born to Aditi and Kashyapa as a dwarfish son, so as to disguise the potential threat he was. By now Mahabali was having delusions of grandeur and he also thought that he was greater than the creator. For he was holding a great festival-sacrifice, and he announced that he would satisfy the desires of all who turned up. Vishnu appeared as this extremely charming little Brahmin boy. His speech and intellect captivated the poor unsuspecting Daitya, who wished to reward the little man for his formidable display of learning. He rashly and proudly promised to grant any wish of the visitor.

By now his guru, the wily and suspicious Shukracharya, had worked out that this Brahmin was none other than Vishnu and he was here to play mischief with the glory of the Daityas. He urged Mahabali not to go on with this fatal generosity, as Vishnu was sure to ask for something that would destroy them. Mahabali however, would not budge from his pledged word. Such exemplary fidelity to truth was going to destroy his race, and his guru was angry that he was putting his personal reputation above his duty to his people. This refusal to listen to good advice is indicative in the Hindu Worldview of a wilful desire for self-destruction. In any case, the dwarf was only asking for as much land as could be covered by three paces of his feet. It was almost insulting that he was asking for so little when the riches of the great Mahabali were at his disposal. However the dwarf answered that he who could not be satisfied with three paces of land would never have satisfaction in anything, with no end to his desires.

Mahabali promised him his three paces, whereupon the dwarf suddenly assumed a cosmic galaxy spanning size and covered the universe in two paces. The third pace was thus a debt upon Mahabali and he asked Vishnu to place it upon his head, as that is the most valuable possession he owned, Vishnu having already achieved dominion of all else. In some versions of the myth, Vishnu uses his three paces and covers the triple worlds. Mahabali is thus deposed from his position as ruler of the universe and Vishnu, like all good leaders of such revolutions, exiles the former ruler to the nether regions, called Patala. There is a sneaking sense of regret at such scurvy treatment towards a ruler who had done no wrong and kept his word to boot. Vishnu is supposed to have given him the eternal dominion of Patala as some sort of compensation for being cheated in such a fashion.

In fact Kerala’s Onam festival is based upon just this aspect of the myth. Once a year, Mahabali comes back to see how his former subjects are faring, and they put on a gorgeous spectacle to reassure him and not cause him any unhappiness that his people are suffering! In this rather naïve outlook is clearly represented the fact that public opinion felt Mahabali had been done a dirty trick. That however, is the nature of Vishnu who is the Trickster God of mythology par excellence. One very unusual version of the myth says that Vishnu felt remorse at this treatment of a pretty decent king and asked him to choose between a place in heaven and hell. The only catch was that his companions in heaven would be five fools, while in hell he could have five intelligent and wise sinners. Mahabali chooses the latter feeling that hell is the company of stupid people. Vishnu was enchanted by this perception and granted him the dominion of Patala. So strongly is the injustice done to Mahabali felt that it is also written that he will ascend to the position of the leader of the gods, Indra, in due course after the present incumbent’s term is over.

In this myth there is also a curious aspect of the Avatar cycle which is passed over, and that is the fact that some avatars are double avatars. The Vamana form is what the avatar is known as, but when he transcends it and grows, he becomes Trivikrama, the Triple Victor of the three worlds. In a sense therefore, it’s the most complete avatar, there is nothing greater than this. This is Vishnu’s greatest form, in no other avatar, not even as Krishna, did he ever manifest such glory. It also is an allegory on the latent potentiality in every living thing as well as a warning never to underestimate anything because of its appearance. The insignificant looking dwarf, a butt of ridicule and fun, turns out to be the World Overthrower. It Illustrates an old Sanskrit saying, Yatha Pinde, Tatha Brahmande. Which means, “As with a man, so with the Universe”. It is the same thing as the old mystical definition of man as a Microcosmos, which mirrors and is in essence the same as the external Macrocosmos. Or – As within, so with out; As above, so below and so on and so forth. We are all, in potential, the Universal Man.

However, this lesson seems to be slightly more than the average mind could easily take within and the Trivikrama form has only been used to illustrate the walls of temples, almost never worshipped. A sympathy with such a transcendental form would have caused a social revolution, and it was quietly put aside in favor of the more manageable Rama and Krishna or the placid Sleeping Vishnu

 

Rohit Arya is an Author, Yogi and Polymath, being a writer, a corporate trainer, a mythologist and a vibrant speaker.  He has written the first book on Vaastu to be published in the West, {translated into five European languages} the first book on Tarot to be published in India, co-authored a book on fire sacrifice, and is the creator of The Sacred India Tarot {82 card deck and book}. He was the Editor of The Leadership Review, and on the advisory panel of Indiayogi.com, the first spiritual portal in the country. Currently he is the Director of Pro-Factor, a leadership and change facilitation corporate training outfit. He has been an arts critic and socio-cultural commentator for over two decades. Rohit is also a Lineage Master in the Eight Spiritual Breaths system of Yoga. He founded the Arya Yoga Sangha and leads multiple meditation circles each week. The videos of his talks on various subjects can be found here http://www.youtube.com/user/TheAryayogi

 

His blogs can be accessed here

 

https://aryayogi.wordpress.com/

 

http://actpersistintensify.wordpress.com/

 

http://creativeaye.wordpress.com/

 

http://zestandgrit.wordpress.com/

 

 

 

 

 

 

No, I do not have trikala jnana

The yogic tradition has been swamped by supernatural expectations, and teachers are not firm enough about this foolishness. The sorry state of spiritual teaching in India today was illumined yet one more time in an interaction I had with a young friend. It was very revealing, and disconcerting too.

This young man from Kerala found my videos on Youtube and got in touch with me. He was bursting with enthusiasm and unrealistic ideas about the spiritual path. And a million questions. I would answer what I could and had advised him to begin a serious course of pranayama and meditation. A few days ago I discovered from his Facebook page that he had taken an Art of Living Course from the main man himself. When I mentioned that I was glad he had done so the young boy had a most incredible reaction. He thought I had found out by using the fabled Yogic power of Trikala Jnana – the insight of the 3 aspects of time, past present and future! I was stunned at the sheer magnitude of misconception. Of course I set him right instantly and called him an idiot and a silly boy to boot, which I could have avoided perhaps.

This preference for the supernatural explanation in all things over the simple and obvious is one of the major plagues in Indian spirituality. Trikala Jnana is rather like a unicorn farting rainbows, an eccentric mix of credulity and childishness that unfortunately has too much purchase in the popular mind. If at all any Yogis possess it, they are sure to be surly old men in the Himalayas avoiding human company. Let me add I am a hard core Yogi and I know siddhis are real. I myself possess Samyama to a certain degree, the ability to focus attention upon a subject or issue or person and know what needs knowing. It is a huge drain on Shakti, and physically wipes you out, so I don’t play that game at all. If it activates spontaneously, as opposed to willfully and by desire, the impact is lessened but I don’t go there if I have any say in the matter. And sometimes, when I sit in meditation, fragrance comes off the body – my students report this-which is just about the most pathetic and useless siddhi one can imagine. They get excited, I get irritated, for it does not help to move one step on the path of evolutionary spirituality and Integral Yoga. Sri Aurobindo had recommended learning whatever you could about siddhis to their fullest extent and then recognizing their irrelevance in ultimate terms. That is the right attitude, but way too many teachers encourage credulity in seekers.

If you are a spiritual teacher then people don’t want you to teach, they want miracles. This is the sad and obnoxious truth in too many contexts. I look the part, expectations as to how a teacher ought to be, shaven head, rudrakshas, articulate and knowledgeable; ergo, miraculous powers also reside within. Nothing clarified the sheer danger and temptation I am likely to run into as much as this incident. Here was an opportunity to achieve PD, psychological dominance, over an uncritical young man functioning from the foibles of his culture. He is from Kerala, fully literate state, English educated, not at all lacking in brains, but the social consensus about yogis and miracles was too much for him to shake off. Were I unscrupulous, trawling for gullible disciples and donations, this was child’s play made easy.

Teachers do not come down hard enough on this. They do not stress that evolving oneself is the greatest miracle possible. We have all experienced the other game, grooming the unwary and impressing them with supposedly miraculous abilities of the Guru. The disciples chat you up, discover interesting nuggets, searching for insecurities and weaknesses, convey it to the chief who then puts on a worried and compassionate expression, asking some variant of this. “ Is there somebody from Jhumritalaiya who has recently experienced losses or deaths? All will be well.” This is beyond contempt, but it is a shell game that endures because it is so simple and works so well. My point is that serious teachers do not push for the use of Buddhi, intellect and wisdom, as much as they could or even should. Hyper-enthusiastic students will always perceive miracles and marvels, but at least the teacher should not encourage this in any form whatsoever.

Spiritual evolution is a serious and vital business and should not be cluttered up by medieval rubbish about supernatural abilities.

Sarvam Shivamayam!

Rohit Arya is an Author, Yogi and Polymath, being a writer, a corporate trainer, a mythologist and a vibrant speaker.  He has written the first book on Vaastu to be published in the West, {translated into five European languages} the first book on Tarot to be published in India, co-authored a book on fire sacrifice, and is the creator of The Sacred India Tarot {82 card deck and book}. He was the Editor of The Leadership Review, and on the advisory panel of Indiayogi.com, the first spiritual portal in the country. Currently he is the Director of Pro-Factor, a leadership and change facilitation corporate training outfit. He has been an arts critic and socio-cultural commentator for over two decades. Rohit is also a Lineage Master in the Eight Spiritual Breaths system of Yoga. He leads the Ka Sangha meditation group, as well as The Integral Space meditation circle each week. The videos of his talks on various subjects can be found here http://www.youtube.com/user/TheAryayogi

His blogs can be accessed here

https://aryayogi.wordpress.com/

http://actpersistintensify.wordpress.com/

http://creativeaye.wordpress.com/

http://zestandgrit.wordpress.com/

Shiva Shakti in the head

The two hemispheres of the brain are in Yogic terms, controlled by the energy constructs we call Shiva and Shakti. This image demonstrates in visual expression what had been hitherto part of the oral tradition. It is a stunning image, and replete with Kundalini yoga symbolism. Since it has come into the public domain I will explain some of this ancient vidya or process. Not all of it. Some rahasayas, spiritual secrets have to be discovered through Shrama – toil! Those are the rules so I make no apologies for reticence. What is safe to reveal I will.

The left hemisphere controls the rational logical thinking aspect of the personality as well as more or less the right side of the body. It is mental and deductive, planning and hypothesizing. These are supposed to be masculine vibrations, in the sense of Yang, not gender roles. The right side of the brain is intuition and creativity, instinct, feeling, the sense of joy and wonder and the right side of the human frame. These are the feminine vibrations in the sense of Yin. So the traditional Yogic take on which impulse is dominant on a particular side of the brain was well grounded.

In symbolic terms this image is a dense and rich harvest of yogic communication. I do not know the artist to give credit where it is due but I suspect it is Harish Johari. The style and depth of knowledge seems to favor that conclusion. In astrological terms, the Sun controls the right eye, the Moon the left. Shiva is the Sun who is Shiva, “Akshayam param shivam” which can be read in both ways simultaneously. The sun like Shiva is the guru, the source of life which is literally as well as metaphorically true. The Moon has famously been the lord of emotion and hence Devi controls it and the left eye. Shiva wears the moon on his head – Chandrashekara – to symbolize his complete integration of emotions as well as to stress that his responses come from awareness, not instinct. Devi’s head naturally pulses with the Sun. Her power of impulse and instinct is not unaware; it is suffused with the shakti of evolving consciousness, it flows from the Source.

The left nostril connects to the Ida nadi or lunar channel for the Kundalini Shakti to flow. It is cooling, calming, intuitive and creative, traditionally known as feminine. Hence it is depicted as cool waves or water, which is pretty accurate as a sensation of breathing in thru that nostril once you are deep into kundalini or pranayama.  The right nostril connects to the Pingala nadi or solar channel and is fiery, energetic action oriented and masculine. The breaths flow like fire, generating heat and energy for action. As is clear from the imagery and all the teaching of the tradition, neither aspect can subsist independently or without active support from the other vibration. They are not separate, they cannot be separated either. Life is troubled when such futile attempts are made to privilege one side or the other.

The erect serpent at the center of the brows is the fully active Ajneya chakra. It is also one of the points where the Ida and Pingala cross each other forming a grand marma or spiritual junction of power. It is the highest point at which you can keep the kundalini energy in waking consciousness and also carry out your work physically. It also confers a lot of power and occult ability as well as wisdom. If the Kundalini rises higher then you go into deeper Samadhi, At this juncture waking and physical action consciousness, including talking and writing, cannot be maintained together. The inverted triangle at the forehead is the spiritual Yoni, the Matrix of creation of generation, distinct from the lower yoni that is controlled by the svadhishtan chakra and is the Eros impulse. When your kundalini rises to this point you can send a surge of energy into the world and what you wish is manifested. It is a process requiring great responsibility and it is fortunate it is beyond most people! Even to keep the energy at ajenya is fearsomely difficult. Even higher than that the kundalini rises to experience the blue pearl, Sun and Moon conjunct, about which I will hold my peace. It is important  – that is all I will say.

Shiva is indeed the Purusha, Man Primal also known as aware consciousness while Devi is Prakriti, Woman as the Activating Force, the dynamic principle of the Universe, the unfolding action of life that takes place across the backdrop of Witness Consciousness that is Shiva. To be Integral which is the point of Yoga is to have both aspects function optimally, in harmony and as required rather than in simpleminded alternation or even lopsided dominance of any one side at a time. To live life privileging one side is to make an immense blunder.  The Ardhanarishwara, the Masculine- Feminine, Shiva and Shakti merged, united, Integral has always been the ultimate goal and aspiration of the Human Endeavor in the culture.     

Sarvam Shivamayam!

 Rohit Arya is an Author, Yogi and Polymath, being a writer, a corporate trainer, a mythologist and a vibrant speaker.  He has written the first book on Vaastu to be published in the West, {translated into five European languages} the first book on Tarot to be published in India, co-authored a book on fire sacrifice, and is the creator of The Sacred India Tarot {82 card deck and book}. He was the Editor of The Leadership Review, and on the advisory panel of Indiayogi.com, the first spiritual portal in the country. Currently he is the Director of Pro-Factor, a leadership and change facilitation outfit. He has been an arts critic and socio-cultural commentator for over two decades. Rohit is also a Lineage Master in the Eight Spiritual Breaths system of Yoga. He leads the Ka Sangha meditation group, as well as The Integral Space meditation circle each week.

Sri Aurobindo – the Brahmarishi of Evolutionary Spirituality

Sri Aurobindo was the most prolific writer-guru (68 published volumes of densely brilliant erudition) that India ever produced – until Rajneesh. And yet, curiously he said and wrote what he had to communicate in just six and a half years  – between August 1914 and January 1921 – and then never wrote a word and almost never spoke for the rest of his very long life. This sort of contradiction was characteristic of the bizarre spiritual drama that was Aurobindo’s life.

To begin with, nobody was less likely to end up as a guru, far less the first Indian guru with a great western following. When he was born in 1872, his England educated physician father had totally swallowed the Raj notion that India was a degenerate nation while Britain was the pinnacle of human glory.

The good doctor then attempted a project that curdles the blood even today to think about. He decided he was going to deracinate his son – he would make his son English to the point of caricature. He began with the name, and it was seven year old Ackroyd Ghose who was sent off England for schooling. The lad had been kept in a weird bubble of induced Englishness, his only language being English and with no notion that he was living in India amongst Indians. He sailed with specific instructions from the doting parent that he was not to make the acquaintance of any Indian or undergo any Indian influence”. He further added, in what would become on of life’s celebrated ironies, that ‘his son learns nothing about any religion whatsoever.’

Dr. Ghose was obviously ignorant of history, for the last time this experiment was tried in India, Prince Siddhartha ended up by becoming the Buddha! In the minds of his followers that is what became of Ackroyd too, the heat and pressure exerted merely becoming a cosmic process to provide the glittering diamond that is Aurobindo.

For a while it seemed that the doctor’s project was succeeding. Ackroyd ended up one of the 20th century’s most overeducated young men. He was the supernova of Forsters’ King’s College at Cambridge pocketing any academic prize he condescended to contest for. He relaxed by composing poetry – in English, Latin and Ancient Greek. Dante and Goethe and Cervantes were read in their original languages as well as any French writer worth the name. This formidable erudition once saved him from arrest as a dangerous revolutionary later in life in India. The old-school tie investigating officer was flabbergasted that this man was reading Homer and Virgil in the original – and to his mind such people could not be conspiring against British rule.

Young Ackroyd went in for the Indian Civil Service exam, then the height of Indian aspiration. However he refused to show up for the mandatory horse-riding test, the customary perch from where the sahibs administered India. It caused unprecedented consternation, and in later years, was seen for what it was – the first rejection of the West by an Indian who was still alien to his people.

The experimental parent died of shock on hearing the mistaken news that his son’s returning ship had sunk. Ackroyd landed in India and, free of parental shackles, set about acquiring Indian ness with the same superb efficiency he displayed in England. Bengali – his mother’s tongue, though never his mother tongue – was first and then Marathi, Hindi, Gujarathi (the languages of courts he served in as royal secretaries) followed. Sanskrit gave him the key to all of India’s religious, cultural and spiritual treasures – and it forever changed his ideas too. He got a job at the court of Baroda which was not onerous; it gave him ample time for spiritual practices. Through in all ways he began to practice up to five hours of pranayama a day! This had significant effects in activating many artistic aspects of his personality, which till then was limited to literature. He began to develop the first of many siddhis also but he was clear that the breaths alone would not suffice in his spiritual goals.

At this stage he met a Maharashtrian Brahmin  named Lele who he recognized had access to a deeper level of consciousness though he was certainly less intelligent and knowledgeable than the student. The instruction was breathtakingly simple. “ As you sit in meditation you will see thoughts trying to enter your mind. Prevent them from doing so and cast them out.” Aurobindo had a deep capacity to obey, which was what made him such a gigantic leader, and he followed what he thought were quixotic instructions without wavering. Within three days he was in deep Samadhi and his attainments were becoming magnificent. He experienced deep Vedantic non-dual states which aroused anxiety in the devotional Lele who felt they were diabolical states of consciousness. Aurobindo refused to degrade his Truth in such a manner and they had a falling out. He was never satisfied with the classical realizations of Yoga and pushed the bounds of Yoga in a manner that had not been done for two millennia. He ended up rejuvenating and raising Yoga, consciously evolving it to meet the new circumstances of the Yuga. This will be unpleasant music to most schools and teachers , but Aurobindo went so far ahead on the yogic path that most of the universe is still playing catch up. But this was still in the future. He had a long row to hoe as yet.

Far from being on the bottom of the heap, India was the only hope for a world gone mad, precisely because India was not like the rest of the world. The British philosopher, Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson would later write in his book On the Civilizations of the East that “The real antithesis is not between East and West, but between India and the rest of the world”. Ackroyd would accept that conclusion, but to him that was a mark of distinction, of honour. Meanwhile, the young Ackroyd had rechristened himself Aurobindo and began a political career that was characteristically brilliant and short-lived like all his other efforts.

Bande Mataram, Jugantar, his newspapers became colossal headaches for the Raj as his editorials were subversive to the point of genius, but sedition could never be proved. Incidentally these editorials served as a sort of blueprint for India’s freedom struggle. Social unity, the cause of the motherland, eradication of untouchability and discrimination against women, non-cooperation, the boycott of foreign goods, national schools to instill national values in education, democratic principles of government – they are all to be found there. His book ‘On Nationalism’, a collection of editorials also foreshadows the belief that social action without spiritual underpinnings is futile – an idea Gandhi used to great effect. Gandhi even offered Aurobindo the leadership of the Congress party and country if he forsook seclusion, but Aurobindo refused to meet Gandhi in a sensational snub that still embarrasses those who know and try to hush it up. Aurobindo’s mass popularity was such any time he so chose, he could have all India follow him in a freedom struggle. However he was on to bigger game.

India’s freedom was assured, or so his spiritual intuition told him. That thus became a side issue, albeit important. What of the freedom of all human souls? And was he, Aurobindo, going to turn away from this challenge for the easier task of freeing India?

The road to this staggering conclusion was paved by the British. Exasperated by this hornet, they shut him up in Alipur jail for a year to await trial. Aurobindo, always the demon of action, plunged wholesale into his Yoga practices and honing up on Indian scripture. In jail he ascended spiritual planes at a rapid clip – and was soon stuck. He had no data, no guides as to how to go forward. He stated that the spirit of  Swami Vivekananda came forward to help him, as there was nobody living who could guide him at his level of attainment. Aurobindo was refreshingly free of the display-humility so prized in India. He knew he was India’s genius, and that was that. (He did however highly esteem Ramakrishna and Vivekananda and never spoke disparagingly of anybody unless provoked) The Alipur jail experience confirmed him in his new vocation, as well as in his new opinion that he had made a grave error in fighting the West with its own tools, its own concepts and its own rules of engagement. In this new philosophy of evolutionary consciousness, even evolutionary Enlightenment that he named Integral Yoga, he discerned that India had a catalytic role to perform. From now on he would fight at a plane India was naturally preeminent – the spiritual.

He moved to the French territory of Pondicherry, like Plato unwilling to let the British sin a second time against philosophy. This was where the torrent of books was let loose, commentaries on every scripture possible, as well as the longest epic poem (and spiritual evolutionary handbook) in English, Savitri. He would begin comparing Valmiki and Vyasa – authors of the two great Indian epics, demonstrate some of the finest literary criticism possible and abruptly break off the project because it was all clear in his mind now and he did not need to put it in words. Incidentally Aurobindo broke the record of P.G. Wodehouse who had the largest writer’s vocabulary in the English language. The previous champion was Shakespeare. He also articulated what i consider to be the greatest sentence in the English language. “All life is Yoga.”
’nuff said.

Aurobindo was what was called an automatic writer in his day and what is called a channel today. He was in the grip of a higher force that relentlessly drove him on for up to 10 hours each day, and requiring no revisions at the end. He was demonstrating what it meant to be a seer once again, he saw rather than thought these things. Of his writings the only real way to comprehend their range and original brilliance is to go the texts themselves. They are masterful expositions of the life spiritual and the quality of English is dazzling in a euphemism loving, Net-contracted Esperanto world we live in. While in Pondicherry, he picked up the 4 major languages of South India – and the consequent access to the respective cultures, but this was all par for the course by then. In his writings he was seeking to synthesize all the spiritual ways before him; to be exact to find a ‘third position” synthesis between the thesis -antithesis of India-West.

The philosophy was primarily a Vedantic one, with generous dollops of Yogic practices and the byways of the Tantra, and hanging from a fundamental evolutionary theory which held that man as he now exists is but an ongoing process towards the attainment of the Superman with Super consciousness. He named this ‘Integral Yoga’.

This was dynamite even from an Indian perspective. For one, he openly proclaimed that India had erred in divorcing matter from spirit, and the body got good press for the first time in almost a thousand years. Then he formulated the concept of a supreme Personal-Impersonal God, above and beyond the non-sensory realization of the Absolute or Brahman. This Super God, if you will, was the Purushottamma and he brought in his erudition and the Bhagavad-Gita to validate this Purushottamma. His Essays on the Gita provide further light on this topic as well as his commentaries on the Upanishads.

Then he sprang a further surprise by providing the most brilliant and consistent explanation as to why the Vedas are the supreme scriptures of Hinduism, even if nobody reads them! Rejecting all notions of the Vedas being nature-worshipping hymns by migrating hordes, he laid out The Secret of the Veda in the book of the same name. For the first time in 2000 years an accomplished and practicing mystic was revealing the inner working of a complex spiritual path. Naturally nobody believed him. The shift of ideas required would be too disconcerting and anyway, Western scholars said they were nature hymns, and that, as we all know, should be conclusive. It seems a bit thick that a practicing Spiritual Master is told he is wrong about his own verifiable experiences with his own scripture while academics and scholars know better, but the world is not a very sane place to begin with. Taken all together, Aurobindo’s writings are nothing short of a revolution in India’s philosophy.

But Aurobindo tired of this because he had a new idea to follow. In part he was now free to follow this, because he had a partner to shoulder the burden of spiritual needs for the inevitable community that had sprung round them. This person was Mirra Richard, better known as the Mother, and it is inconceivable today to realize what havoc Aurobindo caused in India when he declared this Frenchwoman a Master and his equal partner in spiritual work. For Indians have always assumed, and most them still do assume, that a Western human can only be a disciple. Mastership is India’s monopoly, the key as to why the land is ‘superior’ to the West, even if miserable in almost everything else. And now a white person was being set up above all the innately spiritual Indians. A few of them never recovered from this depressing comedown and mutterings against the Mother and her Western ways was a constant.

Aurobindo felt free now to take on an ‘experiment’ that was either galactic effrontery or unthinkable bravery. He proposed, as a realized being, to consciously bring about the next transition, or the next stage in human evolution. To direct evolution consciously, even Aurobindo was aware that nobody had ever dared such a thing before. Nevertheless that was his goal now and he pursued it with no distractions and almost no other thought from November 24, 1926 to his death in 1950. He lived in his rooms, rarely visible to the public, speaking almost as little. Fasts for almost a month, sleep deprivation, endless pacing and reportedly endless writings – though these seem to have merged back into the cosmos once they cleared up whatever points he was exploring.

His disciples say that he made possible the descent of the Super consciousness. What is beyond doubt is that he created a new template, a new pathway in the morph genetic fields of spirituality because even today there are spiritual masters in both the West as well as India who say their only work is bringing light-energy to the world. Aurobindo’s ashram also began new trends in conservative India. This little talk I gave in April 2013, on the anniversary of his reaching Pondicherry touches a few interesting points about his myriad contributions.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nr0ZJ1VjZ4

Women could join, then families and finally schools which imparted the best education. This template too is copied faithfully. The Mother would go on to create Auroville – an attempt to create Utopia based on practical considerations.

 Meanwhile Aurobindo, was being visited by Aldous Huxley and the South American poet Gabriela Mistral nominated him for a Nobel Prize. That last would have been a curious triumph for Ackroyd but it never came to pass.

Aurobindo himself died in 1950. He is revered as a Big Brain, and enough pedestals have been put up to honor him and ensure that reverence circumvents the need to examine his revolutionary thought. Aurobindo, for all that he even wrote the ‘The Foundations of Indian Culture’, is too universal for Indian tastes, too intellectual and active for a bhakti-passive nation. As always he seemed to be ahead of his time. Perhaps another couple of hundred years and some more descent of Consciousness will do the trick.

 

   

I wrote this in 1999! A few additions have been made. The sketch of Aurobindo is by my friend Jane Adams, artist on The Sacred India Tarot. It has been used all over the Net without attribution! This is the joint samadhi of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo.

 Sarvam Shivamayam!

Rohit Arya is an Author, Yogi and Polymath, being a writer, a corporate trainer, a mythologist and a vibrant speaker.  He has written the first book on Vaastu to be published in the West, {translated into five European languages} the first book on Tarot to be published in India, co-authored a book on fire sacrifice, and is the creator of The Sacred India Tarot {82 card deck and book}. He was the Editor of The Leadership Review, and on the advisory panel of Indiayogi.com, the first spiritual portal in the country. Currently he is the Director of Pro-Factor, a leadership and change facilitation outfit. He has been an arts critic and socio-cultural commentator for over two decades. Rohit is also a Lineage Master in the Eight Spiritual Breaths system of Yoga. He leads the Ka Sangha meditation group, as well as The Integral Space meditation circle each week.

 

The Sacred India Tarot{and its creator} gets some praise

After the 2 day foundational course in The Sacred India Tarot which I conducted at The Integral Space on August 10 and 11, 2013 this gratifying feedback….

 “Taking the Sacred India Tarot with Sifu Rohit Arya is like taking a plunge into the vast culture that came before its conception.  Charismatic, sharp and funny, Sifu Rohit has a magical way of telling the stories behind the artwork and the symbolism of the cards themselves. A most concise introduction to a labor of love, Sifu Rohit painstakingly researched, analyzed and created the unfathomable Sacred India Tarot. Who better to teach it’s course? An unparalleled teacher, Sifu Rohit bridges the traditions and practice of the western tarot and integrates the mystical Indian traditions. A sense of history and spirituality is perfectly balanced in his teachings. This beautiful deck and enlightening course is like no other. The discussions on vast Karmic lessons, correct usage and the respect for wisdom which Sifu Rohit imbues to his students, is what one expects from a master practioner. The cards come to life under his guidance. The misconceptions and secrets of the tarot practice combined with the understanding of the Sacred India Tarot inspire a student to use the tarot as a tool for personal growth. A sense of empowerment is a big gift from learning under Sifu Rohit. Being a person who has attended several tarot workshops, The Sacred India Tarot course is a treat to experience with Sifu Rohit’s tutelage of tarot as a discipline. Here lie the secrets that most conventional tarot courses will not divulge. So, one leaves the master with a sense of power in the cards as well as faith in the future.” –  Divianshu Kohli Bij, 25 years  from USA, studying to become a therapist.  

Rohit Arya is an Author, Yogi and Polymath, being a writer, a corporate trainer, a mythologist and a vibrant speaker.  He has written the first book on Vaastu to be published in the West, {translated into five European languages} the first book on Tarot to be published in India, co-authored a book on fire sacrifice, and is the creator of The Sacred India Tarot {82 card deck and book}. He was the Editor of The Leadership Review, and on the advisory panel of Indiayogi.com, the first spiritual portal in the country. Currently he is the Director of Pro-Factor, a leadership and change facilitation outfit. He has been an arts critic and socio-cultural commentator for over two decades. Rohit is also a Lineage Master in the Eight Spiritual Breaths system of Yoga. He leads the Ka Sangha meditation group, as well as The Integral Space meditation circle each week.