DIGITAL & PRINT-ON-DEMAND ISSUE 20 SPRING 2015

NĀMARŪPACategories of Indian Thought NĀMARŪPA ISSUE 20 SPRING 2015 Categories of Indian Thought JASON BIRCH 4 THE YOGATĀRĀVALĪ Publishers & Founding Editors And the Hidden History of Robert Moses & Eddie Stern DR. ROBERT E. SVOBODA 14 EXCERPT FROM AGHORA II: KUNDALINI Advisors Dr. Robert E. Svoboda 20 KUNDALINI: Meenakshi Moses INTERVIEW WITH DR. SVOBODA Jocelyne Stern Conducted by Rick Archer of Editors Buddha at The Gas Pump Meenakshi Moses & Eddie Stern ROXANNE GUPTA PH.D. 42 BEHIND THE OCHRE ROBE Design & Production The extraordinary life and death of Robert Moses Agehananda Bharati Assistance from ROBERT SCHNEIDER 50 ENCOUNTER WITH THE INFINITE Bobbie Jo Allen, Steve Cahn, & BENJAMIN PHELAN The story of the mathematical genius Melanie Parker Srinivasan Ramanujan Website www.namarupa.org by Roberto Maiocchi & Robert Moses NAOMI WORTH 60 DREAMING IN EARLY ADVAITA VEDĀNTA A main component of Śańkaracarya’s NĀMARŪPA is funded by sales view of Reality & donations. Contributors have JAIDEV DASGUPTA 70 IN SEARCH OF IMMORTALITY kindly offered their work free An Introduction into Indic Worldviews of remuneration. Editorial and About the book by the author production assistance is voluntary. ROBERT & MOSES 74 DEVOTION AT LORD JAGANNATH RATH YATRA Back page photograph Photo essay of the annual Chariot Festival Hanumanji near Lord Jagannath Temple, of Lord Jagannath in Puri, Odisha, July 2104 Puri, Odisha by Robert Moses. SATYA MOSES COVER Bhagavan NĀMARŪPA Categories of Indian Thought, established in 2003, honors the many systems of knowledge, prac- अ आ इ ई उ ऊ tical and theoretical, that have origi- a ā i ī u ū nated in India. Passed down through ए ऐ ओ औ the ages, these systems have left tracks, e ai o au paths already traveled that can guide ऋ ॠ ऌ ॡ अं अः us back to the Self – the source of all ŗ ř ļ ĺ ał aģ names NĀMA and forms RŪPA. The publishers have created this journal क ख ग घ ङ out of a love for the knowledge that it ka kha ga gha ńa reflects, and desire that its content be clear and inspirational, without any NĀMARŪPA uses च छ ज झ ञ particular agenda or sectarian bias. diacritical marks, ca cha ja jha ña NĀMARŪPA is published in both as per the chart, for ट ठ ड ढ ण print-on-demand and digital versions. the transliteration of ţa ţha ďa ďha ņa NĀMARŪPA YATRA guides annual all Sałskŗta words. त थ द ध न pilgrimages to sacred places in India. Many of the articles ta tha da dha na NĀMARŪPA BANDHĀVA has re- do contain these cently been established to adopt a vil- marks, but it is not a प फ ब भ म lage in the Uttarkashi region of the universal occurrence pa pha ba bha ma Himalayas devastated by recent floods. in the magazine. In य र ल व www.namarupa.org those cases where ya ra la va NĀMARŪPA Inc, is the publishing authors have elected wing of The Broome Street Temple, not to use diacritics, श ष स ह a 501c3 non-profit organization. Sałskŗta words śa ša sa ha Lord Jagannath prasad being delivered. www.broomestreettemple.org remain in their � � � Puri July 2014 ©Robert Moses romanized form. kša tra ña

2 Issue 20 Spring 2015 3 THE YOGATĀRĀVALĪ AND THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF YOGA1

JASON BIRCH

Kŗšņamācārya performing the three locks in Padmāsana.

hose who have attended an The name Yogatārāvalī can be no mental activity, no breathing and TAšţāńgayoga class in the tradition of understood as: ‘A String of Stars on Yoga.’ no positional consciousness. That is to Pattabhi Jois are probably familiar with Each verse of this short text is likened to a say, Rājayoga is something beyond the at least one verse of the Yogatārāvalī, shining star, which illuminates the topic common experience of “I” and “mine”. whether they know the name of the of yoga. Its first verse acknowledges the The Yogatārāvalī puts it this way: text or not. Pattabhi Jois would chant importance of the teacher, who transmits the first verse of theYogatārāvalī at to the student the liberating knowledge ahaµmamatvādi vihāya sarvaµ the beginning of a morning class, and that extinguishes the suffering of worldly śrīrājayoge sthiramānasānām | Sri. K. Pattabhi Jois and Sri R. Sharath Jois chanting the first verse of the Yogatārāvalī many of his students continue to do this life. na drašţŗtā nāsti ca dŗśyabhāvaģ before class at the Puck Building, New York ©Jesse Gordon before their yoga practice: In the Yogatārāvalī, the means to sā jŗmbhate kevalasaµvid eva ||16|| liberation is the practice of Haţha yoga practices such as concentration a system of yoga called Rājayoga, which vande gurūņāµ caraņāravinde and Rājayoga. Its Haţhayoga consists "Having left behind everything and meditation become redundant. it says is ‘the king (rāja) of all .’ sandarśitasvātmasukhāvabodhe | of physical techniques; in particular, beginning with the states of ‘I’ It omits the first seven auxiliaries niģśreyase jāńgalikāyamāne the three locks (mūla, uďďīyana3 and and ‘mine’, those whose minds na dŗšţilakšyāņi na cittabandho of ašţāńgayoga. In fact, the author saµsārahālāhalamohaśāntyai ||1|| jālandhara). These locks are applied are steady in the sacred [state of] na deśakālau na ca vāyurodhaģ | considers these auxiliaries and the during breath retentions (kumbhaka) Rājayoga are neither observers nor na dhāraņādhyānapariśramo vā techniques of Haţhayoga to be not just "I pay homage to the gurus’ lotus and, as a result of this practice, objects of observation. Only an samedhamāne rājayoge ||14|| ineffectual practices, but hindrances on feet, which have revealed the the Haţhayogin is able to immerse isolated awareness prevails." the path to attaining samādhi. knowledge of the bliss of one’s own the mind in an internal resonance "There are no gazing points, no fixing In effect, theAmanaska says that self. Unsurpassed, [these lotus-feet] (nādānusandhāna). The main difference between Haţha of the mind [on a meditation object], there is little point in trying to master act like toxicologists2 for curing the In contrast to this, Rājayoga is simply and Rājayoga is that the latter is beyond no time or place, no [deliberate] difficult postures, breathing exercises delusion that is the poison [known the practice of samādhi, a profound all techniques. In other words, once the stopping of the breath, nor the effort and meditation techniques when the as] transmigration." state of meditation in which there is Rājayogin has achieved samādhi, other of concentration (dhāraņā) and goal of these techniques, samādhi, meditation (dhyāna), when Rājayoga otherwise known as the no-mind state 1 I would like to thank Eddie Stern for encouraging me to write this article and for his valuable comments on it. Thanks also is flourishing." (amanaska), can be achieved easily by to Jacqueline Hargreaves, James Mallinson, Mark Singleton and Elizabeth De Michelis for their many helpful comments on Śāmbhavī Mudrā. early drafts of this article. The illustration of Śāmbhavī Mudrā and figures 1 and 2 are by Jacqueline Hargreaves. Figures 1 and It is likely that Haţha and Rājayoga The yogin who is practising this 2 contain images by Febrian Anugrah. began as separate traditions. Much of Mudrā is described as gazing outwards name and other technical vocabulary 2 The term jāńgalika is usually spelt jāńgulika in texts and it is often translated as ‘snake doctor.’ For example, in Sures the Yogatārāvalī’s teachings on Rājayoga (bahirdŗšţi) with eyes half open, half common to both texts suggest that the Banerji’s “A Companion to Sanskrit Literature” (1989, p. 427), jāńgulika is defined as a “snake doctor; dealer in anti- appear to derive from those of the closed, while directing the mind inwards Amanaska influenced the author of dotes of poison.” Also, Monier-Williams dictionary defines jāńgulika as a “snake charmer.” However, in the Yogatārāvalī’s first earliest extant Rājayoga text called the to an internal focal point (antarlakšya). the Yogatārāvalī.4 For this reason, the verse, jāńgalika is being used metaphorically to describe gurus who can cure a poison called Hālāhala. Rather than a snake Amanaska, which can be dated to the TheYogatārāvalī teaches this technique Yogatārāvalī was probably composed poison, Hālāhala probably refers to either the mythological poison produced at the churning of the ocean and swallowed by twelfth century. TheAmanaska teaches and calls it Amanaskamudrā. This sometime after the twelfth century. Śiva (thereby causing the blueness of his neck) or some plant-based poison. Therefore, it appears that the guru is being likened to a doctor who specializes in the general treatment of poisons (i.e., a toxicologist) rather than a snake doctor or charmer. This 4 Other similarities between the Yogatārāvalī's and the Amanaska’s Rājayoga include descriptions of samādhi as devoid of wak- is somewhat supported by a Sanskrit commentary on the Yogatārāvalī called the Yogabhāvaprakāśikā, which glosses jāńgalika ing, sleep, life and death; the mention of the eyes becoming still, the breath stopping and the mind being free from both inten- as a višavaidya (i.e., ‘a poison specialist’ or ‘toxicologist’), and so does the Amarakośa (1.8.510). tional (sańkalpa) and discursive (vikalpa) thought in the no-mind state; the use of the simile of a 'lamp in a windless place' in 3 There are two different spellings of this bandha in the Yogatārāvalī: uďďīyana and uďyāņa. The difference is due to the metre of regard to the yogin in the no-mind state; the reference to detachment (udāsīnatā); and the use of the compounds sahajāmanaska the verses. In manuscripts of the Haţhapradīpikā and Dattātreyayogaśāstra, this bandha is usually spelt uďďīyāna or uďďiyāna. and yoganidrā as synonyms for samādhi. 4 Issue 20 Spring 2015 5 practising or Layayoga. the samādhi that is brought about by Furthermore, it appears that neither immersing [the mind] in the internal Mantra, Laya nor Haţhayoga were of resonance (nāda) is the principal and any use to those gifted students who most venerable of [all the techniques could readily achieve samādhi. This of] meditative absorption.” fourfold system is depicted in figure 1. TheYogatārāvalī changed this fourfold Seeing that the author of the Haţha- hierarchical relationship in a subtle pradīpikā compiled his work from earlier yet very significant way. It omitted yoga texts, it is likely that he borrowed Mantrayoga and integrated Layayoga and slightly modified the above verse with Haţha, thereby creating a system in from the Yogatārāvalī. If this is the which Haţhayoga was the sole means to case, the Yogatārāvalī must have been Rājayoga for all practitioners, regardless written before the fifteenth century. of their capabilities. In doing so, the The Haţhapradīpikā’s borrowing from physical practices of Haţhayoga became the Yogatārāvalī is further suggested indispensable for achieving samādhi in by the similar teachings of these two this system. This new relationship is texts on Kevala Kumbhaka, immersing seen in figure 2. the mind in the internal resonance (nādānusandhāna) and Śāmbhavī Mudrā. The fifteenth-century Haţhapradīpikā Reading the Yogatārāvalī in adopted a scheme similar to the twofold conjunction with yoga texts of the system.5 The author of this text stated same era sheds much light on its explicitly the mutual dependence of terminology and content. Apart Haţha and Rājayoga as follows: from what I have mentioned above, another striking example is the usage haţhaµ vinā rājayogo of various words for samādhi in the rājayogaµ vinā haţhaģ | Yogatārāvalī. The terms manonmanī, na sidhyati tato yugmam unmanī, sahajāmanaska, turīya and ā nišpatteģ samabhyaset ||2.76|| yoganidrā appear to have the same meaning as rājayoga and samādhi. "Without Haţhayoga, Rāja This is also the case in the Amanaska is not accomplished, and and the Haţhapradīpikā, the latter of without Rājayoga, nor is Haţha. which explicitly states that these terms Therefore, the yogin should practice are to be understood as synonyms both until the final stage [of yoga is (ekavācaka): attained]." rājayogaģ samādhiś ca The Yogatārāvalī describes a process unmanī ca manonmanī | Figure 1: The fourfold system of yoga in the Dattātreyayogaśāstra whereby the three locks (bandha) are Figure 2: The twofold system of yoga in the Yogatārāvalī amaratvaµ layas tattvaµ and the Amaraughaprabodha. practised during deliberate breath śūnyāśūnyaµ paraµ padam || retentions (kumbhaka) to bring about Haţha and Rājayoga. This explains sadāśivoktāni sapādalakša- amanaskaµ tathādvaitaµ Haţha and Rājayoga were combined this fourfold scheme was that the dullest a special type of breath retention called why nearly one fifth of its verses are layāvadhānāni vasanti loke | nirālambaµ nirañjanam | in other medieval yoga texts that students were taught Mantrayoga, the Kevala Kumbhaka. Unlike deliberate devoted to describing this special type nādānusandhānasamādhim ekaµ jīvanmuktiś ca sahajā were probably written only one or most gifted, Rājayoga, and those in breath retentions that are performed of breath retention. manyāmahe mānyatamaµ layānām turyā cety ekavācakāģ ||4.3-4|| two centuries after the Amanaska. between, Laya and Haţhayoga. In this by holding the breath according to The similarities between the ||2||6 Examples of such texts include the system, Mantra, Laya and Haţhayoga one’s capacity (yathāśakti), Kevala Yogatārāvalī and the Haţhapradīpikā “Rājayoga, samādhi, unmanī, Dattātreyayogaśāstra (12-13th c.) and were auxiliary practices aimed solely Kumbhaka is a spontaneous cessation seem extensive enough to suggest “One hundred and twenty- manonmanī, amaratva, laya, , the Amaraughaprabodha (14th c.). These at the achievement of samādhi (i.e., of the flow of the breath, along with that one influenced the other. In fact, five thousand concentration śūnyāśunya, para-pada, amanaska, texts combined Haţha and Rājayoga in Rājayoga). However, presumably, all sensory and mental activity. In both texts share a verse on immersing [techniques7] of meditative absorp- advaita, nirālamba, nirañjana, a hierarchical relationship, along with one could dispense with Haţhayoga the Yogatārāvalī, Kevala Kumbhaka is the mind in the internal resonance tion (laya), which were taught by Śiva jīvanmukti, sahajā and turyā [all] Mantra and Layayoga. The idea behind altogether and achieve samādhi by the central mechanism that connects (nādānusandhāna): [still] remain in the world. We think say the same thing.”

5 The difference between the twofold system of the Yogatārāvalī and the Haţhapradīpikā is that the latter integrated Layayoga 6 Cf. Haţhapradīpikā 4.66 (śrīādināthena sapādakoţilayaprakārāģ kathitā jayanti | nādānusandhānakam ekam eva manyāmahe with both Haţha and Rājayoga. For example, the Layayoga technique of lying on the ground like a corpse until the mind mukhyatamaµ layānām). dissolves (cittalaya) becomes a Haţhayogic posture called Śavāsana in the Haţhapradīpikā’s first chapter, whereas the Layayoga 7 The meaning ofavadhānāni as literally ‘concentrations’ can be found in Abhinavagupta’s Tantrāloka (2.12). Jayaratha’s com- practice of Nādānusandhāna is described in the Haţhapradīpikā’s fourth chapter, which is on Rājayoga. mentary glosses avadhāna as, “one-pointedness on a particular object of attention” (pratiniyatāvadheyavišayanišţham ekāgryam).

6 Issue 20 Spring 2015 7 Medieval discourse on Rājayoga could have prompted someone to they also fashioned new systems of yoga does not mention different levels of compose colophons that attributed out of simpler methods of meditation samādhi as seen in and the text to Śańkarācārya. Terminology and more physical techniques than are Patañjali’s Yogaśāstra. Rājayoga texts such as ātma, turīya, etc., which is found in older traditions of . consistently described samādhi as the reasonably common in and Generally speaking, tantric yoga is stone-like state of complete inactivity; medieval yoga texts of this time but usually characterised by complex mental, respiratory and physical. Like also prominent in Advaitavedāntin meditative practices that integrate meditating ascetics in the Mahābhārata, texts, could have been used to justify elaborate metaphysics and doctrine the Rājayogin in samādhi is sometimes the attribution. It is also possible with visualisation.9 The complexity of said to be lifeless like a piece of wood or, that the author was a yogin by the tantric yoga contrasts sharply with the according to the Yogatārāvalī, as still as a name of Śańkara and, at some more simple meditation techniques of early lamp’s flame in a windless place: recent time, a scribe embellished Haţha and Rājayoga texts, such as his name in the colophon with the Śāmbhavī Mudrā and nādānusandhāna. cittendriyāņāµ ciranigraheņa honorific titles reserved for the The shift towards physical practice, śvāsapracāre śamite yamīndrāģ | famous Śańkarācārya. In my opinion, doctrinal simplicity and stone- nivātadīpā iva niścalāńgā the Yogatārāvalī was not composed like samādhi (as opposed to gnostic manonmanīmagnadhiyo bhavanti before the twelfth century because its meditation techniques10) suggest that ||18|| technical terminology, such as Rāja Haţha and Rājayoga were influenced and Haţhayoga, is absent in Sanskrit by older ascetic traditions. Indeed, "When the movement of the breath works written before this time, the emphasis on retaining semen has stopped because of the prolonged including the famous commentaries (bindudhāraņa) and the physical restraint of the mind and senses, the and works widely attributed to the techniques peculiar to Haţhayoga, bodies of the best yogins become great Advaitavedāntin philosopher. such as the three locks (bandha) and unmoving, like the flames [of lamps] inversions (viparītakaraņī), is absent in in a windless place, and their minds he twelfth to the fifteenth earlier Tantras. immersed in the no-mind [state] of Tcentury was a remarkable time Nonetheless, the label ‘ascetic’ does mind." in the history of yoga. It saw the not capture the ingenuity of early Haţha emergence and advance of physical and Rājayoga systems, which omitted As I have mentioned above, the yoga techniques and the supremacy of extreme ascetic practices such as sitting connections between the Yogatārāvalī, the practice of samādhi as the means amid five fires, standing on one leg for the Amanaska and the Haţhapradīpikā to liberation in yoga traditions. Early twelve years, lying on a bed of nails or indicate that the Yogatārāvalī was Haţha and Rājayoga traditions created holding the arms up until they wither probably written between the twelfth simple soteriological systems, which away. Some of their texts denounce and fifteen centuries. However, the were based solely on the practice of yoga afflicting the body (kāyakleśa), and those colophon8 of at least one manuscript (rather than ritual, gnosis or devotion). who would practise headstand are advised and several printed editions attribute In doing so, they omitted the doctrinal against fasting, which is a moderate form the Yogatārāvalī’s authorship to the and ritualistic complexity of earlier of asceticism that has been acceptable to great Advaitavedāntin philosopher, tantric and philosophical traditions. most orthodox . Śańkarācārya, who is generally These yoga traditions incorporated Haţhayoga, the yoga of force (haţha), believed to have lived in the eighth some of the techniques and terminology was a yoga that could force certain century. Colophons are not a certain found in earlier Tantras. However, it is changes to occur. For example, it could indication of authorship, for they misleading to refer to medieval Haţha force downward moving vitality (i.e., may be composed and modified after and Rājayoga as types of tantric yoga apānavāyu) to rise.11 Nonetheless, An Ascetic in Bound Lotus Sitting in a Circle of Smouldering Fires. the text was written. In this case, a because, not only did their early texts the difficulty of its techniques was sectarian claim to the Yogatārāvalī omit tantric ritual and doctrine, but probably a matter of one’s perspective.

8 A colophon is a brief statement about the text’s author, name and, sometimes, its date. Colophons are usually placed at the end Some physically demanding postures probably derive from ancient ascetic traditions. of each chapter and the end of the text itself. For example, Bound Lotus pose (baddhapadmāsana) is described in some of the ear- 9 I am aware of two earlier tantric works which are exceptions to this. They are known as the Vijñānabhairavatantra and the liest Haţha texts (e.g., Vivekamārtaņďa 8, Gorakšaśataka 59-60, Haţhapradīpikā Svabodhodayamañjarī. They teach simple contemplative practices without much doctrine and metaphysics. Their emphasis on 1.46) as well as more recent ones. However, extreme acts of asceticism such as sitting dissolving the mind (cittalaya) suggests they may have inspired later Layayoga traditions. amid smouldering cow dung fires are not included among the practices of medieval 10 On the differences between ascetic and gnostic meditative practices, see Johannes Bronkhorst, Two Traditions of Meditation in Haţha texts. Photo: James Mallinson, Haridvar, 2010 Ancient India. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1993. 11 See Dattātreyayogaśāstra 144, Śārńgadharapaddhati 4416 and Yogabījā 116: “Having pressed the anus with the heel, the [yo- gin] should forcibly contract apānavāyu, so that [this] vāyu goes upwards repeatedly.” (gudaµ pāršņyā tu sampīďya vāyum ākuñcayed balāt | vāraµ vāraµ yathā cordhvaµ samāyāti samīraņaģ).

8 Issue 20 Spring 2015 9 On the one hand, Jain ascetics and teachings are for women, as well as have excluded people of different many wandering renunciants must those people who are completely creeds. They offered a minimalist system have seen Haţhayoga as child’s play or, attached to sense objects, those fallen of yoga for attaining liberation. The perhaps, they thought it was asceticism from caste and those who do extremely only essential requirement was that one watered down for the masses. On the reckless actions.13 The explicit inclusion practised the methods of these yogas, other hand, the physical practices of women here has much to do with having learnt them from a guru. The of Haţhayoga would have seemed the fact that they were excluded from Yogatārāvalī’s emphasis on practice and strenuous and difficult for gnostics certain religious activities in orthodox its omission of complex metaphysics, who believed that liberation could . For example, women were doctrine, ritual and extreme asceticism be attained through listening to the generally prohibited from learning the is in keeping with this. Upanišads, contemplative techniques , using vedic , renouncing The emphasis on practice (abhyāsa) and the like. society to become ascetics and so on. is at the heart of Haţha and Rājayoga In order to appeal to a wide audience, Some other yoga texts such as the texts, which frequently reiterate the early Haţha and Rājayoga traditions Śivasaµhitā and Yogayājñavalkya importance of practice for attaining the combined tantric and ascetic techniques reveal that householders, women and goals of yoga. For example, within a radically simplified doctrinal members of the lowest orthodox caste framework. As an early Haţha text made (śūdra) were among their audience. avismŗtya guror vākyam clear: Though most texts do not identify the abhyaset tad aharniśam || people for which their teachings were evaµ bhaved ghaţāvasthā brāhmaņaģ śramaņo vāpi intended, explicit prohibitions against satatābhyāsayogataģ | bauddho vāpy ārhato ’thavā | teaching a particular group of people anabhyāsena yogasya vŗthā kāpāliko vā cārvākaģ are absent. gošţhyā na sidhyati || śraddhayā sahitaģ sudhīģ || The inclusivity of these yoga tasmāt sarvaprayatnena yogābhyāsarato nityaµ traditions is further indicated by the yogam eva samabhyaset |14 sarvasiddhim avāpnuyāt |12 marginal role of theism in their texts. Though the teachings are presented “Having remembered the teachings “"Whether a , ascetic, within either a Śaiva or Vaišņava of the guru, one should practise Buddhist, Jain, skull-bearer (kāpālika) framework, the theistic elements are [yoga] night and day. In this way, the First Folio of a Manuscript of the Yogatārāvalī at the Prājña Pāţhaśālā Maņďal, Wai. or materialist; one who is wise, has very much in the background, so [second] stage [of yoga called] ‘the confidence [in the teachings of Haţha much so that a text’s orientation may pot’ arises through constant practice. and unintentional thought have been Gheraņďasaµhitā are failing to advance describe hundreds of āsana. When this and Rājayoga] and is devoted to the not always be clear to the reader. The Without the practice of yoga, all is cut away and whose network of karma our knowledge in any significant way. textual evidence is edited, translated practice of yoga, will always obtain Yogatārāvalī is a good example of such in vain. It is not accomplished by has been completely uprooted.” The omission of texts such as the and published, only then will more success in all things.” minimal theism. In one verse, Śiva is socialising. Therefore, with every Yogatārāvalī in secondary sources is proof complete histories of yoga be written. mentioned as the first teacher of the effort, one should practise only yoga.” Scholarship on HaŢha and of the premature attempts at writing the The other part of the answer consists The strategy of attracting a wide many methods of absorption (laya) and, Rājayoga is in its Infancy history of Haţhayoga. Various other of the influence of European physical audience was stated explicitly by a in two other verses, samādhi is referred And in the Yogatārāvalī: yoga texts remain in Indian libraries, culture and Indian traditions such more recent Haţha text called the to as the state of Višņu (višņupada). uch of the history of yoga unedited, unstudied and unknown to wrestling (mallavidyā) and martial Haţhābhyāsapaddhati, which was Nothing further is said of these deities, vicchinnasaµkalpavikalpamūle Mremains undiscovered. In scholars and practitioners. arts, as well as the innovative genius of probably composed in the eighteenth nor their pantheons, myths, mantras niģśešanirmūlitakarmajāle | particular, a detailed and comprehensive A good example of the rudimentary twentieth-century yoga gurus such as century. The opening line of this and the devotional practices associated nirantarābhyāsanitāntabhadrā history of Rāja and Haţhayoga has not state of scholarship on yoga is the Kŗšņamācārya and Pattabhi Jois. Though text claims that its teachings are for with them. sā jŗmbhate yogini yoganidrā ||25|| been written. Indeed, such a history fact that scholars are still wondering some late medieval Haţhayoga traditions anyone who is afflicted by the pain of On the whole, the texts of early cannot be written until more evidence why there are so few postures (āsana) practised numerous āsana, their texts transmigration (saµsāra), much like the Haţha and Rājayoga traditions reveal “The yogic sleep [of Samādhi,15] in has been made available. If one looks in medieval yoga sources compared do not mention special sequences of Yogatārāvalī's first verse. varying degrees of universalism. In which extraordinary happiness arises at the textual sources in most historical with the large number known at the āsana, the movements called vinyāsa, However, the Haţhābhyāsapaddhati other words, they reduced the religious from ceaseless practice, blossoms in accounts of yoga that have been beginning of the twentieth century. nor the sun salutations known as also mentions specifically that its and philosophical elements that may the yogin whose roots of intentional published in the last thirty years, very The Haţhapradīpikā has fifteen āsana sūryanamaskāra. In fact, the two types few new sources have been brought to and the Gheraņďasaµhitā, thirty-two, of sūryanamaskāra taught by Pattabhi 12 Dattātreyayogaśāstra 41–42ab. This text can be dated to the 12-13th c. and is one of the earliest extant texts to teach Haţha- light.16 Certainly, new observations but Kŗšņamācārya taught more than Jois are based on Kŗšņamācārya’s vinyāsa yoga (see the article on ‘Haţhayoga’ by James Mallinson at https://soas.academia.edu/JamesMallinson). and theories have been advanced in two hundred. Part of the answer to format.17 Nonetheless, it is likely that 13 The opening lines of the Haţhābhyāsapaddhati state: “For those afflicted by the pain of Saµsāra; those completely attached to regard to yoga’s history, but attempts to this quandary can be found in some sūryanamaskāra in one form or another sense objects; women; those fallen from their caste and those who do extremely reckless actions; for their sake, this construct the history of Haţhayoga with Haţhayoga texts written between the is an ancient practice. Brahmānanda, Haţhābhyāsapaddhati, composed by Kapālakuraņţaka, was written [...].” (saµsāratāpataptānāµ || atyantavišayasaktānāµ || only a few widely known texts such as sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. the nineteenth-century commentator straiņānāµ jātibhrašţānām || atisāhasakarmakartřņām || tatkŗte || iyaµ kapālakuraņţakakŗtahaţhābhyāsapaddhatir [...] likhyate). the Haţhapradīpikā, Śivasaµhitā and In the aggregate, these texts list and on the Haţhapradīpikā, knew of a rather 14 Dattātreyayogaśāstra 105cd–107ab. Also see Dattātreyayogaśāstra 41–42ab. (footnote 12). 15 For more information on the use of the term yoganidrā as a synonym for samādhi, see: 16 The main exceptions to this are the publications of the Kaivalyadhama Yoga Institute and the Lonavla Yoga Institute. http://theluminescent.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/yoganidra.html 17 I wish to thank Eddie Stern for pointing this out to me (p.c. 28.10.2014).

10 Issue 20 Spring 2015 11 strenuous practice of sun salutations, “I pay homage to the gurus’ lotus feet The Importance of the of research is the medieval which he believed to be inappropriate [...] which act like toxicologists for History of Yoga yoga traditions of India. for Haţhayoga.18 His comments were people in order to cure their delusion, He has been practising prompted by the Haţhapradīpikā’s caveat which is the poison [known as] ith over two thousand years yoga for nearly twenty against afflicting the body (kāyakleśa).19 worldly life.” Wof tradition behind the word years and teaches workshops ‘yoga’, there is much to learn from its and trainings in Sydney, The Need for Critical Editions The first line is the same, but history. When modern yoga is criticized Singapore, Japan, Los Angeles the second begins with janasya ye for teaching a physical practice without and London. His work is he lack of critical editions is instead of niģśreyase, which is found a sophisticated intellectual philosophy, available on: Timpeding progress in scholarship in a manuscript of the Yogatārāvalī one might cite the early Haţha and theluminescent.blogspot.com on yoga. Of the dozens of medieval at a library in Wai. Which reading Rājayoga traditions as a precedent and he can be contacted at: Haţha and Rājayoga texts that are still did the author intend? Though an for the effectiveness of this approach. [email protected] extant, only a few have been critically editor might speculate that the word Indeed, I suspect the author of the edited according to modern academic niģśreyase (“unsurpassed”) has greater Yogatārāvalī would have agreed with standards. It is very difficult to study poetic value than janasya ye (“which Pattabhi Jois’ statement that yoga carefully a yoga text if the text itself for people”) and is more comparable is ninety-nine percent practice and has scribal errors and omissions. with the Yogatārāvalī’s register of one percent theory. Medieval yoga Unfortunately, medieval yoga texts Sanskrit, such an editor could not traditions were a great inspiration to have not been well preserved. Their make an informed decision on this Kŗšņamācārya and his students, and manuscripts tend to be roughly copied. without examining the available there’s no reason why it will not be so Therefore, rarely can one rely on a single manuscripts and their relationship to for future yoga practitioners. manuscript to read and understand one another. Indeed, someone may The history of yoga might also a text. It is more a matter of using have changed janasya ye to niģśreyase inform us of the fate of minimalist yoga several manuscripts of the same text in at a relatively recent time because traditions. After the sixteenth century, order to piece together a complete and that person believed the text could Haţha and Rājayoga were absorbed reasonably coherent version. be improved this way. Moreover, by more orthodox Brahmanical I would like to have included a regardless of whether an editor decides traditions, which integrated the translation of the Yogatārāvalī in this to read janasya ye or niģśreyase, a good teachings of earlier Haţha and edition of Nāmarūpa, but I am unable to critical edition will provide readers Rājayoga texts with more sophisticated do so because there are many unresolved with the available textual evidence so philosophical and metaphysical differences between its printed editions. that they can judge for themselves. doctrines. This gave rise to many of As far as I am aware, no one has Owing to problems such as janasya the so-called Yoga Upanišads and Bibliography looked at all the available manuscripts ye in the first verse, all my above other large yoga compilations such as of the Yogatārāvalī in order to resolve translations of the Yogatārāvalī’s the Yogacintāmaņi. As yoga becomes Printed Editions of the these differences. Some editions and verses in this article are provisional. a contemporary mainstream practice, Yogatārāvalī manuscripts have twenty-eight verses, Academic funding for five years has history is repeating itself. Those who Yogatārāvalī: with others twenty-nine or thirty. And been offered to James Mallinson believe they are advancing Haţha Hindi Translation and Notes there are many textual variations. (the principal investigator), Mark yoga by combining it with some and a Preface. Bhattacharya, The Yogatārāvalī’s first verse is a good Singleton and myself to critically edit other therapy, science, philosophy or Ram Shankar. example of this, for a manuscript at and translate ten Haţhayoga texts, religion are travelling down a well- Varanasi: Bharatiya Vidya a library in Pune and three printed including the Yogatārāvalī. We intend worn path. Praksan, 1987. editions have the following reading: to consult all of the Yogatārāvalī's available manuscripts, of which there Jason Birch received his doctorate in Śrīmacchańkarābhagavatpādaviracitā vande gurūņāµ caraņāravinde are at least twenty. If all goes according Oriental Studies (Sanskrit) from the Yogatārāvalī, ed. Śāstrī, Swāmī sandarśitasvātmasukhāvabodhe | to plan, the new edition should be University of Oxford and is currently Śrīdayānanda. Varanasi: Vārāņaseya janasya ye jāńgalikāyamāne completed by 2018. a visiting research fellow at the Oxford Saµskŗta Saµsthāna, 1982. saµsārahālāhalamohaśāntyai || Centre for Hindu Studies. His area The Works of Sankaracharya, vol. 16, 18 A translation of Brahmānanda’s comment on sūryanamaskāra can be found in my published article on the ‘Meaning of haţha pp. 114-23. Srirangam: Sri Vani in Early Haţhayoga’, Journal of the American Oriental Society, issue 131.4 (2011), page 536, footnote 35. This article can be Vilas Press, 1910. downloaded at: https://www.academia.edu/1539699/Meaning_of_ha%E1%B9%ADha_in_Early_Ha%E1%B9%ADhayoga 19 Caveats against afflicting the body (kāyakleśa), occur in various Haţha texts. See Amaraughaprabodha 15, Haţhapradīpikā Manuscripts 1.64, Haţharatnāvalī 1.73 and Gheraņďasaµhitā 5.31. In an auto-commentary on his Yogaśāstra, the twelfth-century Jain schol- Yogatārāvalī. Ms. No. 6-4 399. Siva, Lord ar Hemacandra gave the following examples of ways of afflicting the body: “There are many methods for afflicting the body. For Prājña Pāţhaśālā Maņďal, Wai. of Yoga. example, standing [for a long time], Vīrāsana, Utkaţukāsana, lying down outstretched like a stick on one side, ascetic heating Yogatārāvalī. Ms. No. 240-3748. Illustration by [practices], remaining uncovered and so on. Thus it is taught in the commentary on theTattvārthasūtra ” (kāyakleśo ’nekavidhaģ Ānandāśrama, Pune. Satya Moses© | tadyathā - sthānavīrāsanotkaţukāsanaikapārśvadaņďāyataśayanātāpanāprāvŗtādīni || iti tattvārthabhāšye).

12 Issue 20 Spring 2015 13 prepare individuals for and guide them of the human body, except that the in- long as his or her consciousness remains KUNDALINI through the process of individuation dividual believes itself to be different. A firmly entrenched in the mundane. EXCERPT FROM THE PREFACE OF without terrorizing them. Each of these human being is a living microcosm of This energy is our personal fragment AGHORI II: KUNDALINI methods arouses the evolutionary pow- the universe, and the universe is a liv- of the cosmic power of self-identifica- BY DR. ROBERT E. SVOBODA er inherent in every individual, but this ing macrocosm of a human being. Each tion; thanks solely to this sense of I-ness power appears as Kundalini in one sys- cosmos affects the other; the universe called ahamkara (literally ‘the I-causer’), tem alone: the Tantric tradition. Any- affects us, moment to moment, and we exist as individuals. When Vimala- one who wants to understand Kundali- each one of us by our actions influences nanda spoke of the ego it was ahamkara ni as Kundalini must first come to grips the entire cosmos, for good or ill. The that he meant, not the Freudian ego. n earlier times, when esoteric The experiences of Kundalini Yoga to be going crazy, all because they can with Tantra. cosmos is the body of the Absolute, Just as discrimination is the chief Iknowledge was under jealous guard, are peculiar because Kundalini is the no longer unquestioningly accept our Though it has for centuries been ma- the vessel through which the Absolute characteristic of the intellect, ahamka- a spiritual aspirant usually had to en- source of all your experiences. Kund- ‘standard’ reality. Most of those who lose ligned by the orthodox and puritanical expresses Itself. Every created thing in ra’s chief characteristic is possessiveness, dure years of patient waiting before alini is that indwelling energy which by touch with everyday reality are actually among Indians, Tantra is not a religion the universe contains at least a spark of that proprietary overlordship of the or- being taught. Now that information self-identifying with your opinions and insane, of course, but in a sizable num- of sensory indulgence which teaches the the universal consciousness which is the ganism which remembers your self-defi- has become an article of commerce, all character traits accretes and preserves ber of cases the cause is a spiritual crisis. instant gratification of one’s cravings. A Absolute, but most things cannot ade- nition and allows you to hold your own manner of secrets would seem to have your identity. Such an awakening alters forever the good Tantric believes in truth and reali- quately express this consciousness. in the world. Ahamkara self-identifies become available to anyone who has So long as the urge toward individ- way in which an individual experienc- ty, and in the facing of facts, the first of My mentor, the Aghori Vimalananda, with every cell of your body from con- the price of a book or tape; however, uation is mainly directed toward ben- es the world, for after the initial crisis which is the fact that all of us are part explains: ception until death; you instantly die simply because secret doctrines can efitting your own limited temporary abates one discovers that there is no way of the manifested universe, subject to its Chit Shakti (the power of conscious- as soon as She ceases to self-identify now be purchased and thus easily pos- individual self, it is called, in Sanskrit, to return to one’s previously comfort- laws until we develop the power to rede- ness or subjectivity) identifies with the with you. The more you identify with sessed does not mean they can be easily ahamkara, or egoism, the force which able mindset. Once aroused and un- fine ourselves in other terms. A Tantric Unmanifested Absolute, and Maya your individuality, your microcosm, comprehended. Though words can be makes it possible for you to unquestion- boxed, Kundalini is not ‘derousable’; the aims to become sva-tantra (‘self-func- Shakti (the power of unconsciousness the more She functions as your own bought and sold, that living wisdom ingly accept the world as it is on the sur- genie will not fit back into the bottle. tioning’), to be free of all limitations, or objectivity) identifies with the world, personal Maya and the less She reflects which cannot be confined within words face. This same force is called Kundalini “After the awakening, the devotee lives including especially the limitations of the manifestation of the Absolute. These the macrocosm; as you identify less with must still be earned. when it turns away from the mundane always at the mercy of Kundalini,” says his or her own personality. two Shaktis cannot exist without one your individuality, She is freed to reflect Among the long-hidden arcana now and toward the spiritual, the permanent Pandit Gopi Krishna, who experienced Tantra is not a subject one can learn another. Even in the grossest matter more of the macrocosm, to increase her being packaged for sale is the lore of and eternal. After Kundalini awakes it several crises during which the speed, in school, nor are Tantric texts ‘how-to’ there is a spark of consciousness—this awareness of the One. Ahamkara and Kundalini, the root from which all spir- becomes impossible to continue believ- insouciance, and authority of the pow- books, because Tantra is not bookish is why I say that even rocks are alive— Kundalini are two names for the same itual experiences sprout, and most of ing that external reality is the sole real- er he had unleashed terrified him. That knowledge; it is living wisdom which and even in the highest states of con- power manifested in two different direc- the writers who have tried to present to ity. Ahamkara makes you who you are power which caused his terror, which must be obtained directly from an ex- sciousness there is a particle of Maya, as tions; ahamkara connotes Maya Shakti the world this living knowledge which now; Kundalini makes you into what he had to face without the help of any perienced practitioner. A good guide, a long as there is even the least sense of and Kundalini, Chit Shakti. is the source of all knowledge produce you will become. guide, can terrify or incapacitate anyone guru who has already followed the path individuality. Once you learn the truth Maya Shakti keeps you awake to the only dead words. Carl Jung, who many Kundalini has remained secret for so who awakens Kundalini without proper and knows all its pitfalls, is absolutely of the universe, you forget your own world, and asleep to the Absolute, while decades ago delivered a series of lectures long because, as Jung notes, it cannot be guidance. essential if one hopes follow the Tantric individuality, and remember your true Chit Shakti awakens you to Reality and on Kundalini, explains why: understood; it can only be experienced. So long as Kundalini remains with- path and arouse Kundalini without ca- nature; only then, when you no longer puts you to sleep with regard to world- The process of spiritual evolution can- in the realm of psychology, our rela- lamity; a powerless or ignorant guru is exist, does Maya no longer exist for you. ly matters. Since the consciousness of a “Therefore the Yoga way or the Yoga not be objectified and separated from tive objectivity can shield us from the far worse than none at all. The One exists in the All, and the living being is conditioned by the mat- philosophy has always been a secret, but the subject who evolves, for Kundalini influence of symbolic existence. Once Since human consciousness requires All defines the One; unity and duality ter in which it resides, the greatest Maya not because people have kept it secret. functions simultaneously as descriptive we enter subjective reality, however, that objects, this book speaks of Kundalini both exist simultaneously. Wherever that we experience is the Maya of the For as soon as you keep a secret it is al- consciousness, as the thing described, realm in which symbols ‘cling,’ we are at as if She can be considered in isolation Chit Shakti is displayed there is intelli- matter which makes up our bodies. So ready an open secret: you know about and as its description. Since, however, their mercy unless we have been taught from the individual in whom She exists. gence and sensation; otherwise there is long as we live the embodied life each it and other people know about it, and human language is made up of subjects how to deal with them. Those who ride Kundalini cannot be objectified but, ignorance and insensibility. The human one of us participates in the play of Na- then it is no longer a secret. The real and objects, descriptions of Kundalini Kundalini without knowing their des- until She is awakened in an individu- body is a vessel into which consciousness ture, binding ourselves to the world by secrets are secrets because no one un- tend to be skewed, either toward objec- tination may lose their way. The result al, She exists for him or her only as a pours, according to individual capacity, the ‘things’ we accrete in our personal- derstands them. One cannot even talk tive comment on the experience, which may be ‘ego inflation,’ which occurs concept, and so She can be relatively filling the body via the nervous system. ities. No incarnate being can be either about them, and of such a kind are the devitalizes it, or toward description when one’s limited personality survives objectified. As She awakens, this relative The spine and spinal cord extend con- wholly worldly or wholly spiritual; no experiences of Kundalini Yoga. That of the raw subjective experience itself, the crisis intact and the individual then objectification is progressively convert- sciousness from the brain, the pole of matter how filled with light you may tendency to keep things secret is merely which is usually distorted by the experi- “claims the lustre of the archetypal ed into relative subjectification, until, greatest awareness which is called , become, you never quite transcend your a natural consequence when the expe- encer’s mental imbalances, stresses, and world for his or her own person,” or ‘ego when Kundalini has been completely to the coccyx, the pole of greatest den- dark side fully so long as you remain rience is of such a peculiar kind that fantasies. deflation,’ if the awakening thoroughly aroused, one moves wholly into subjec- sity. Each bodily cell expresses its own embodied. you had better not talk about it, for you An awakening into the reality of the disrupts one’s self-integration and gar- tive consciousness, and descriptions lose sort of consciousness according to its The expression of shakti in the physi- would expose yourself to the greatest non-physical in a person who lacks ad- bles one’s self-image. their utility. own capacity. cal body is prana, the life force, the pow- misunderstanding and misinterpreta- equate prior preparation usually pre- The savants of India have for thou- The ancient Law of Microcosm and At the base of the subtle spinal cord er which keeps body, mind, and spirit tion.” (The Psychology of Kundalini Yoga: cipitates a personal crisis; such people sands of years worked to perfect us- Macrocosm tells us there is no real dif- in the subtle body lies the residual shak- functioning together as a living unit. All Notes of the Seminar Given in 1932 by may seem crazy, are often thought to be er-friendly methods of spiritual advance- ference between the vast external uni- ti of individuation, an energy which re- parts of one’s being require prana. Phys- C.G. Jung Ed. Sonu Shamdasani) crazy, and sometimes believe themselves ment that, when properly implemented, verse and the limited internal universe mains unavailable to the individual so ical life, health, and longevity require

14 Issue 20 Spring 2015 15 that ahamkara self-identify strongly and to take the first few toddling steps ferent for everyone. Right now is the If your awakening Kundalini unites in the victim’s aura. Since the aura’s job if Kundalini awakens in a slow, con- with the individual organism so that toward the light of Chit. ‘now’ of the for all those totally with Her Shiva, you will cease is to insulate us psychically from one trolled way. When She does awaken in sufficient prana will enliven the body, Kundalini will eventually awaken in of us who are trying to grope our way to exist, since nothing will remain to another and from disembodied influ- a controlled way, She awakens slowly while spiritual health requires ahamkara every being in the universe. If you prefer back to God in spite of the terrific Maya identify with your body. If She awak- ences, holes in the aura permit all sorts and reveals Herself gradually; only very to relinquish most of this attachment. to enjoy the viccissitudes of karma you which assails us. ens slowly enough that you can ‘digest’ of chaotic, negative mental vibrations, rarely, as with Vimalananda, does She Just as every plant requires just the prop- can wait for that awakening to dawn; The Maya which assails us is our own, the tremendous energies which are re- including even ethereal parasites, to en- shine forth in nearly fully developed er amount of both sunshine and rain to otherwise you can actively try to find of course, and that of our friends, neigh- leased as She lets go of everything that ter the individual’s field as they like and form almost from the start. What many flourish, so does a human being require your way to that state. Vimalananda bors, and other co-conspirators who has been holding Her down, you will spread ruin. people believe to be the culmination just the right amounts of the sunlight outlined the choices: share a consensus reality. Most people become a man or woman of God. If, If the individual remains functional, of their spiritual practices is thus really of spiritual awareness and of the cloud Whatever you desire will eventually do not want to rock the boat, much less however, She awakens too quickly to be Kundalini may inflate and empower only the beginning, only a brief, tanta- cover of ego-attachment in order to come to you; this is the magnanimity go overboard, and many do not take controlled, and too slowly to kill you his or her limitations. That person into lizing disengagement of Kundalini from thrive. Too much spirit burns the world of Nature. She will always eventually kindly to the defection of their fellows. outright, you will be catapulted into the whose genitals Kundalini is diverted full Her normal self-identification with the out of you and makes it impossible for give you what you ask for; it is only a Vimalananda used to say, “Human be- maelstrom of a ‘spiritual emergency,’ a force, for example, will begin to live, mundane, which must be followed up you to retain your body; too much at- question of time. If your desire is the ings are nothing but sheep. I used to Kundalini crisis. eat, and breathe sex, and may misiden- methodically, as Kundalini progressively tachment drowns your consciousness in product of a controlled, coherent mind, be in the flock of sheep, but I ran away, Some modern writers inaccurately tify as spiritual experiences the colossal unties every knot that binds the person- worldliness. you will achieve it quickly. This is how so it’s no surprise that everyone else, all blame all human illness on such spiritu- lusts which arise. Or, should Kundalini ality together, with measures to guide In the ordinary human, the ego is the Rishi Vishwamitra created an entire the so-called normal people, thinks I’m al crises. While it is true that all disease become lodged in the digestive organs, and channel Her. fully identified with the body and the parallel universe: the force of his austeri- insane or, at the least, abnormal. And I is due, directly or indirectly, to aham- insatiable hunger may supervene. Because Vimalananda was concerned limited personality, and all actions are ties was so powerful that when he set his think the same about them. Only one of kara, to one’s sense of ego and identity, Even if overt calamity is avoided, to remove the idea of quick achievement centered around this temporary ‘self.’ mind to it, it took shape immediately. us can be right.” all neuroses are not signs of incipient worse dangers await, for the ensuing from my mind, he never sat me down Each microcosmic reality is influenced If you desire God you will eventually Only those brave enough to disturb Kundalini arousal; and while a Kundali- catharsis can actually reinforce the lim- and said, “This is what Kundalini is all by every other; all of us are caught in get to God; about this there is not one the somnolence of the world around ni crisis may produce a nervous break- itations of the personality instead of re- about.” Instead he provided me little each other’s projections and are defined iota of doubt. How long it takes you to them and shout that the Emperor is down, every nervous breakdown is not leasing them. Those half-baked spiritual bites of information from time to time, in large part by them. Our conscious get to God, how much of a gap there nude possess the strength to withstand a spiritual emergency. Most of those aspirants (called ardha dagdha, literally encouraging me to digest each morsel personalities that we like to think of as is between your desire and its achieve- the censure of the remaining sheep. who maintain that the awakening of ‘half-burned’ in Sanskrit) who permit thoroughly and assimilate it efficiently. stable and constant are in fact merely ment, depends on how much you want Those who shout, “Beware of Maya!” Kundalini is the root cause of all their the power to swell their heads, like gas As he liked to say, “Never be in a hurry; aggregates of ideas with which we tem- God. Once you become really anxious malign Maya, for Ma always and only imbalances are merely experiencing the inflating a balloon, may believe them- start with a sip and end with the bottle.” porarily self-identify. The conscious per- to locate God and your mind becomes gives us that which we ask for. When consequences of Her first stirrings from selves to have achieved exalted states. sonality is a sort of museum whose cura- focused on this desire, you can achieve we call on the Goddess to ask Her for sleep; this is more a crisis of ahamkara Because the power of Kundalini that ere are a few such bites: tor, ahamkara, selects objects for display without much delay. mundane boons, which bind us to lim- than of Kundalini. buoys them confers an aura of seeming H to others from the museum’s warehouse, Lord Krishna says, “Bahunam janma- ited forms, She appears to us as Maya; The ‘physio-Kundalini process,’ tout- truth to their words, they may shoot “Indiscriminate awakening of the the subconscious. These objects are as- nam ante”: only after millions of births when we pray to Her power and energy, ed by some as a form of ‘natural stress up to the heights of self-confidence as Kundalini is very dangerous. Everyone sembled into exhibits, the personality does an individual soul get the desire to She manifests as Shakti; and, to those release,’ is merely the preliminary puri- pseudo-gurus, commanding others with is doomed to die, of course, but dying fragments which each act as if it were return to God. Only after many, many few who relate to Her maternally, she fication of the ethereal nerves in which confident persuasiveness to follow them disoriented in pain and fear will ruin ‘the’ personality while it operates. Pop- rounds of physical existence does the reveals Herself as Ma, God the Moth- Kundalini will eventually move. The until one day the pressure of temptation your chances for a good . If your ular exhibits enjoy a longer run, while soul finally say, “Now I’m tired, Lord, er. Those who remain stuck in Maya do awakening of Kundalini is a ‘stress re- becomes too great and there is a cata- nervous system is strong, it can endure less-patronized exhibits are changed tired of all this birth and death. Please so because they do not try to redirect lease’ only in the sense that, as the clysmic fall. a great deal of shakti before disintegrat- more quickly. Eventually the museum take me away from all this.” As the soul their urge to individuation from Maya bonds of body and personality that hold Such self-inflation may proceed in- ing, which is why penance is required. goes out of business, at the moment of becomes more and more desperate, in- to Chit; they allow themselves to be car- Kundalini down are undone, the energy sidiously; as Gopi Krishna observes, “... I’m sorry, but if you think you can dare death when the ego completely forsakes teriority develops, and if he keeps to it, ried along by the current of their lives, that had been used to self-identify with the desire for power, the yearning for to awaken Kundalini and survive while the limited, limiting personality which eventually he achieves. and of their neighbors’ lives. these ‘stresses’ is released for the organ- mental conquest...often accompanies living in a body that has been weakened it has supported for so many years. The first of the Brahma Sutras Ahamkara uses the body as ballast ism to otherwise allocate. The awaken- the activity of Kundalini in the intellec- by dissipation you are living in a fool’s Most people never notice the fluctu- is “Atha ato brahma jijnasa,” which for the mind, that it may not drift away ing of Kundalini releases all stresses, not tual centre, causing a slight intoxicated paradise. How do you think Moses was ations of the ceaseless creation and de- means, “Now there is a sincere desire and be lost like a runaway balloon on merely those which produce neuroses; condition of the brain too subtle to be able to withstand his experience with struction of their personalities any more for knowledge of the Ultimate.” The a breezy day. When Kundalini awakens relief of neurosis is not regeneration of noticed by the subject himself or by his God? Only because of his long pen- than they notice the individual frames Brahma Sutras have already existed for before death, She will try to return to identity. uninformed companions, however eru- ances. Moses described a burning bush of film in a motion picture, because this thousands of years, and will probably and unite with Her opposite pole, the If Kundalini is triggered up suddenly dite and intelligent they may be.” (Gopi which burned but was not consumed. perpetual shifting of self-identification continue to exist for thousands more. pole of greatest awareness which is Shi- in an unprepared nervous system, the Krishna, Kundalini—The Evolutionary That bush was his own brain and ner- among all these personality pieces con- The use of the word atha (‘now’) here va, by reversing the outward projection shock produced resembles that deliv- Energy in Man). A spiritual aspirant vous system, ignited by God. sumes tremendous amounts of energy indicates that there is no limitation of energy which led to incarnation. ered to an unsuspecting toddler who may not intend to go wrong, but the “Kundalini has been described as and keeps ahamkara quite preoccupied. of time when it comes to spiritual ad- While She slumbers, She supports the grasps a live wire. When an unrecon- power of even a half-awakened Kund- vidyut lata, the ‘lightning creeper.’ Only when some life-changing event vancement. Whether it is today or ten body; once She is aroused and throws structed personality tries to resist Kund- alini often proves too hot to handle. Think of how a creeping vine clings to forces the issue do you begin to wake thousand years into the past or one mil- back the covers which bind Her down, alini, consciously or unconsciously, She Which illustrates the great danger in a tree; and then think of that vine as from the sleep of contentment with lion years into the future, “atha” means the body-mind-spirit complex starts to may fry nerves and blow out endocrine the notion that all one’s problems will a lightning stroke, a bolt of billions of Maya, like the Prodigal Son woke to “whenever there is a sincere desire for unravel as the life force is released from fuses, shorting out the nervous system be solved if one can just awaken Kun- volts of energy which would splinter or find himself dining from the pig trough, spiritual knowledge.” ‘Now’ is thus dif- its bondage to the organism. at its weakest point and blowing a hole dalini; problems are solved if and only incinerate any ordinary tree, or bush.

16 Issue 20 Spring 2015 17 But Moses was destined for greatness, Elements shape our bodies and the manifestations of the Self. All is His your right nostril the opposite effect is have not been told what to expect when lecting all your karmas from tens of and his nerves, though severely strained, world around us, and the Tastes control play, capital ‘H.’ When you see yourself produced: your body cools and relaxes, you get there, most probably you will millions of births without any lapse or were able to take the sudden flash of our internal chemistry, which links our everywhere, where is there any possibil- and your appetites decrease. Observe never locate the chakra; you will merely distortion. So the unconscious memory pure consciousness that God graced minds and bodies together. Together ity of pity? This is jnana, ordinary spiri- your own body and you’ll find that each inflame the nerves in the perineum and is actually conscious, since it perfect- him with. How few are able to do this! with the ten senses, the five we all know tual knowledge. nostril works for about an hour and a intensify the force of Apana (the down- ly records everything that happens to “If you could just for a moment ex- plus the tongue, hands, feet, anus, and “To go beyond this to vijnana, you half at a time. ward-moving form of prana). This will you, and the conscious memory is ac- perience the power of a fully awakened genitals, there are twenty-four limita- must go beyond the body, and to do “Continuously throughout the day probably turn you into a sex maniac, or tually unconscious. People say, ‘I did it Kundalini Shakti, you would know tions which distort the human con- that you must first understand the rela- and night your body fluctuates from some other sort of maniac. because of the force of circumstance,’ what bull is being put out by these pho- sciousness. tionship between the body and the ego. excitation to relaxation and back. Yogis “This is why a good guru is so import- when what they mean is that they were ny Yogis who say that the Kundalini can “Externally the Universal Self is cov- The nerves of the body are the probes, control this fluctuation by performing ant. When Kundalini begins to awaken, not conscious enough to remember not be felt as a creepy feeling in the spine, ered by Maha Maya (the Great Maya); the feelers of the ego. This is what Krish- pranayama. They make the left nostril a tremendous rush of energy is released. to yield to the pressure of all the karmas or as a cool breeze in the palm. Creepy internally Maya appears as these twen- na meant when he talks in the Bhaga- work when they want to be submissive, Unless the guru is strong enough to con- encouraging them to do it. feeling, my foot! And to control Kun- ty-four limitations. The first step in vad Gita about the tree whose roots are when they worship God for example, trol it, the disciple will be overwhelmed “The result of the above is Maya. dalini, do you think it is some sort of Tantric spirituality is to work on the above and whose branches are below: and they make the right nostril work with desires and will become strongly Through sadhana you can make the joke? Never! For an ordinary human individual scale to uncover the ego and the roots of the nerves are in the brain, when they want to command. They attached to worldly things, precisely be- conscious memory truly conscious, and to control Kundalini is impossible, or make Her reunite with Shiva, the true and the nerves themselves branch out to also strive to create a balance between cause his chakras are still blocked.” you can return the unconscious memo- nearly so. Only immortals can properly Self. cover the whole body. the left and right nostrils, because only ry to unconsciousness. When these two control Her. “In Kundalini Yoga, we usually begin “The ego or ahamkara does not actu- when the Surya and Chandra Nad- “A little knowledge is a dangerous merge, the result is the superconscious “No, raising Kundalini in an uncon- with Bhuta Shuddhi, the purification of ally reside in the physical body, because is work with equal force can prana be thing. The chakras exist in the subtle memory—the consciousness of real- trolled way is not the answer. You don’t the Five Elements, to allow Kundalini the ego is not at all physical. It resides in forced into the Sushumna Nadi to move body, and their connection to the phys- ity—and in that state you exist in the become enlightened or become a yogi to travel upwards through the chakras. the subtle body, and moves in the nadis, Kundalini upward.” ical body is very subtle. It is true that causal body. Then you must go even just because your Kundalini is aroused. Bhuta Shuddhi is really the of the ethereal nerves. The body’s 72,000 both the physical and subtle plexuses further, from vijnana to ananda, the There is a great potential for abuse of Tantra. The force of Her motion, if it nadis act as conduits for prana, which is “Pandit Gopi Krishna suffered for may become blocked, but in most peo- unlimited bliss of pure existence. When this power. As long as it goes up it’s fine, is unimpeded, lifts the other coverings closely related to the ego. Numerologi- weeks from an intensely overheated ple the Kundalini is fast asleep in the the last shred of ego is dissolved, only but when it falls, it falls like a thunder- and eventually produces simple or ordi- cally, 72,000 means 7 + 2 = 9: the Nine system when the tornado of prana un- Muladhara Chakra, and their chakras awareness is left: Nirvikalpa .” bolt.” nary spiritual wisdom: jnana.” Doors through which prana can enter leashed by his awakening Kundalini are absolutely closed and play no part in or leave the body. Most of the nadis be- moved exclusively in his Surya Nadi; their day-to-day life. It is because every- “But you cannot exist in Nirvikalpa “While Kundalini sleeps in the Mu- “After the three coverings are re- gin or terminate at these Doors, which only when his Chandra Nadi finally one’s chakras are blocked that Kundalini Samadhi for very long and still expect ladhara Chakra at the base of the spine moved from Kundalini your perception are the sense organs: the two eyes, the opened and calmed him down again did Yoga is so necessary. As long as you are to be able to remain in this world. The you are awake to the world and asleep becomes quite different. It is the differ- two nostrils, the two ears, the mouth, he get relief. full of attachments to life, your con- function of Tantra and Aghora is to put to reality. When She awakes to unite ence between capital ‘I’ and e-y-e ‘eye.’ the anus, and the genital organ. Prana, “The nadis meet and connect with sciousness will never be able to get close the government of mind, senses, and with Her Shiva in your brain, then you The eye is symbolic of the world of sense moving with the breaths, enkindles the one another at ethereal plexuses called enough to any chakra even to smell its body into the proper order to avoid mis- wake up to reality; you ‘fall asleep’ to objects. As long as the ego is covered, it body’s fire, just as a bellows is used to ig- chakras. The chakras exist only in the fragrance, much less experience it. ery. Life minus misery for a prolonged the world. An ignorant person believes knows nothing but the senses and their nite and inflame the fire in a forge, and subtle body and are perceptible only to “But in a way what these people say period produces satisfaction, which that he is in the world; his Kundalini objects, and is contented with them. the mind is carried out through these the enlightened mind, but nowadays is true: if you try to take on too much yields happiness; and when happiness self-identifies with the poison of Maya. But they are external, and therefore im- Doors by prana so that it can experience everyone who reads a few books writes shakti before removing these knots, the is increased beyond all conceivable lim- A jnani, one who knows, says rather, permanent. The ego must be made to the world. Control of the nadis enables about the chakras, parroting the Tantric shakti will get blocked along the way, its and is sustained it becomes bliss, ‘The world is in me,’ because his Kund- realize the capital ‘I,’ the Self, which lies you to control the ego, the mind, and descriptions without understanding the and then either your nervous system what the Vedas call ananda. Sadhana is alini self-identifies with Shiva. within, and therefore, the first thing to the senses. inner significance. Very few people have will overload and collapse, or all the a means to this end. When Kundalini “We say that Kundalini is ‘sleeping’ be cultivated is interiority, withdrawal “Of these thousands of nadis, three any idea at all of what they are writing. energy will be ‘vomited out’ into your awakens, if body, mind, and spirit are because She, the ego, is self-identifying of the mind from external objects. Love, are most important: the Surya Nadi They talk about the chakras’ shapes and system and you will go berserk. Shak- in good working order, bliss is certain. with the individual’s limited personali- including orgasm, is internal. If you (‘sun channel’), the Chandra Nadi colors and speak knowingly about the ti magnifies and expands everything, “Bliss is not something you have to ty. Because of this self-identification She look for love externally, as most West- (‘moon channel’), and Sushumna (the Sanskrit letters which are present at each including especially attachments. You create, or accumulate; it arises sponta- accepts its limits as Her limits. In Her erners do, you will either become bored ‘fire channel’). The right nostril is related chakra, when in fact the only letters need good guidance at every step of the neously. Just let God decide what is best pure form, the ego is the purest of shak- and perverted, or frustrated and desper- to the Surya Nadi, and the left nostril to which exist at any chakra are the ones way or down you will go, divebombing for you, and God will provide it accord- tis, but as long as She self-identifies with ate. Only interiority can give you bliss. the Chandra Nadi. Sushumna is close- you create yourself. back into the samsara.” ingly. So even at those times when your the body, She lies under three coverings “Once you develop interiority, your ly associated with the spine and spinal “I can tell you this, though; if you will power is weak, and your mental which prevent Her from remember- mind will gradually become quiet and cord. The sun heats things up, while the start meditating on your chakras di- “I have always said that life is a mem- control is poor, there is still nothing to ing who She is and where She belongs. perception will develop. Eventually you moon causes them to cool down. When rectly you run a great risk of exciting ory. There are actually two types of worry about. Always, always remem- These three coverings are the Three -Gu will realize that effect, instrument, and your right nostril, also known as Ganga the nerves and nadis in the area where memory: conscious and unconscious. ber that the supreme method of mind nas (Sattva, Rajas, and Tamas), the Six action are all one. You will see yourself (the River), works more effi- you have been told the chakra is. For The conscious memory is very fickle and control, the supreme intoxication, is the Tastes (sweet, sour, salty, bitter, pungent in the goat being slaughtered, in the act ciently than does your left nostril your example, suppose some guru tells you, inconstant; it is directed outwards to- perpetual repetition of the sweet name or spicy, and astringent), and the Five of slaughtering, and in he who slaugh- appetites for food and other enjoyments ‘My boy, meditate on the Muladhara wards mundane objects, which are tem- of God. Never forget God, and God will Great Elements (Earth, Water, Fire, Air, ters. When you can see yourself in the will increase. When your left nostril, Chakra, which is at the perineum.’ If porary and transitory but seem eternal never forget you. And one day you will and Ether). butchered, the butchering, and the also called Yamuna (the Ganga’s main you have not been thoroughly taught to the ignorant mind. The unconscious succeed.” “The Gunas control our minds, the butcher, you will see that all are mere tributary), works more efficiently than about the Muladhara Chakra, if you memory is permanent; it has been col-

18 Issue 20 Spring 2015 19 KUNDALINI: INTERVIEW WITH DR. SVOBODA CONDUCTED BY RICK ARCHER OF BUDDHA AT THE GAS PUMP CONDENSED AND EDITED

elcome to Buddha at the Gas out those possibilities. He was not a for me to understand why someone WPump. My name is Rick Archer trainer himself, he had to work with who is quote-unquote "enlightened" and my guest today is Robert Svoboda. other trainers but he exerted a strong or in a higher state would find that Robert is the first white member of influence on how they worked with whiskey could in any way enhance his Kenya’s Pokot tribe, and the first non- a horse. We would use Ayurvedic or experience. I should think it would Indian ever to graduate from a college homeopathic medicines to assist getting almost invariably dull the mind. It’s of Ayurveda and be licensed to practice the horses into shape so they could considered tamasic and so on, so maybe Ayurveda in India, where he lived for do what they’re supposed to do at the you could riff on that just a little bit more than a decade. During and after racetrack, which is run and win. before we get into kundalini. his formal Ayurvedic training, he was I value that time tremendously—not tutored in Ayurveda, Yoga, Jyotish, because I made a lot of money. I never RS Well—I’m speaking here about his Tantra, and other forms of classical bet. I have never bet on a horse race. opinion—his opinion was that many of Indian lore by his mentor, the Aghori Even when I am in Las Vegas, I will put the things that are written in the Vedas Vimalananda. For a decade he was a single dollar into a slot machine, just are true but they are not necessarily true involved with thoroughbred horses symbolically. in exactly the way that they are written as Vimalananda’s Authorized Racing But in learning about horses, I learned there. Because, of course, trying to use Agent. The author of more than a dozen a tremendous amount about life. I love ordinary human language to describe books, since 1985 he divides his time horses, and have fortunately been around something that is not directly part of the between India and other lands. I’ll be them a lot, and still periodically get physical world is not an easy thing to do. listing his books on my website. chances to ride; I was out on a horse in When, for example, the Vedas would Costa Rica just last month. But beyond talk about soma, and the uplifting effect RA Welcome, Robert. Thanks. that, the race course was—for me at of soma and how it could take you into least and for him as well, I think—a the astral world and how it could put RS Good morning. microcosm of the entire gamut of human you into a place where you would be able culture: you have the virtuous people to commune with reality much more RA Good morning. Robert is out in LA and the non-virtuous people; the people directly, Vimalananda was very much and just experienced an earthquake last who are not only interested in horses for of the opinion that the soma that the night, so his world got rocked a bit. We winning but are also interested in horses Vedic rishis were taking was something are going to be talking mostly about as horses and so want to treat them that we will never be able to replicate kundalini today, but there are a couple properly, and the ones who didn’t care ourselves, at least not that specific soma of points in my introduction here that about that at all and treated their animals substance. But he maintained that people might have questions about. with great cruelty. You have the ones soma’s effects can be replicated, provided Firstly, the point about racehorses. who made money and could hold onto that you, as an individual, understand What was that all about? it—almost nobody—and the ones who how your organism works, how your make money and then lose it—a sizable own physiology works, and you identify RS Well, Vimalananda, my mentor, was number—and the ones who lose only. that substance that works for you like a native of Bombay—Mumbai—and Losers are most numerous, of course. It soma—the thing that uplifts you, that his family had been there for fifteen was a valuable part of my education. sends you into the astral world, that generations. They were quite prominent permits you to communicate more until the generation immediately RA My wife’s father was a gambler and easily not only with gods and goddesses previous to him. He was a very versatile she spent a lot of time at the racetrack but with the supreme reality as well. man; he had studied many things, when she was young and also loves horses. Eastern and Western alike, and he was You mentioned in one of your RA And whiskey did that for him? very familiar with animals as well as YouTube videos I listened to that your plants and minerals and so on. He was mentor was a connoisseur of whiskey, RS Whiskey did that for him. It doesn’t very fond of horses. He enjoyed betting he enjoyed drinking whiskey. As the do that for me; other things work better on his horses but even more than that son of an alcoholic and someone who’s for me. But for him it worked very well. he enjoyed looking at the possibilities been on the spiritual path for 45 years, On dozens of occasions, I would be in a colt or a filly and seeing how he it’s a little hard for me to wrap my head sitting there pouring him whiskey—not could, with appropriate training, bring around that. I don’t reject it, but it’s hard a lot at a time, just a little bit—and he

Kali Ma aflame!© Robert Moses 20 Issue 20 Spring 2015 21 would be sipping it. As he sipped, his him to return promptly back to the Persians language, Avestan, used S for the deity via a human into whom the RS Absolutely. Many people in India themselves of that fact as well. But awareness would become more open, place where he normally existed and many of the words that are similar in deity enters. In Kerala a practice termed claim to be wonderful sadhus and somehow they lost the plot; they his communication would become where he preferred to exist and that Sanskrit but use H; for example, the theyyam exists, in which low-caste sadhakas, and many of these smoke meditated a little and convinced more refined and more sophisticated allowed him to obtain the perspective Sanskrit word soma appears in Avestan people get possessed, often at the behest chillums all day long. As Vimalananda themselves that they were powerful and the breadth and depth of his vision that he required in order to be able to as haoma. The word Hindu is thus the of high-caste people. For the time that pointed out, give somebody a chillum tantrikas, then reinforced that pattern would become perceptibly augmented. continue living in a place where he felt Avestan version of the word Sindhu, and they’re possessed, though, the low-caste or a bottle of whiskey and within a few repeatedly with alcohol. It is very easy Of course, one of the reasons why he like he needed to live in order to deal Sindhu is the Sanskrit name for the river people are worshiped as embodied gods minutes you will find out exactly what to fall into such a rut. There’s a good and many people might choose to with those karmic obligations. the British called the Indus. The word and goddesses by the high-caste people. is really going on with him or her, what reason why alcohol used to be called employ a substance for facilitating this ‘India’ is derived from the word ‘Indus." In any state of India you can find this is underneath the facade. spirits. When you drink alcohol and let is—suppose you were living, as he did, RA In a piece that you sent me about The Persians called that river the sort of possession ritual and worship. Twenty years ago, or more, I visited the alcohol take you over, you attract in Bombay? kundalini, which we’ll be talking about ‘Hindu,’ and the area bounded by that It is something that is very much part Tarapith in West Bengal, which is the to yourself disembodied beings that I know that nowadays people call it in some detail, you talked about the river on the west they called ‘Hindustan’, of, I can’t say the majority, but a large chief center of worship in India. feed on alcohol, and unless you are very Mumbai but I was there when, in Hindi tendency to individuate—for ahamkara and all the inhabitants of that area they plurality of the population, a part of Though there is a temple there, the careful it won’t be long before those and English, it was always Bombay, and to become more calcified egoism—and called Hindus, whether they follow the what a large plurality of the population main place of worship at Tarapith is things take you over. Pretty soon your in Marathi and Gujarati, it was always you referred to that as maya shakti. Then Sanatana or not. Sanatana normally does, well within their its smashan, its cremation ground. own personality will begin to dissolve, Mumbai. My Marathi and Gujarati are you said that the flip side of that ischit Dharma, which means something like standard belief systems. But we don’t More than a century ago a famous and eventually so much of it will no good, but if I tried to speak them, sakti, where the force turns towards “The Eternal Ordinance,” is the original hear much about it nowadays because saint named Bamakhepa lived in disappear that it will no longer be able I would always say Mumbai because the spiritual. I wonder if possibly the name of what is now popularly called possession is not very ‘vedantic.’ that smashan. Born a year later than to function independently; at that point that’s how it fit in those languages; in appeal of alcohol is that is relaxes the Hinduism. Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, he lived your personality has become dependent Hindi I would always say Bombay. My rigidity of the ego and in some cases A large part of Indian religion has RA What you’ve just said in the last few many years longer. While at Tarapith on alcohol, and on the beings you have Hindi is much better than my Marathi allows people to taste a more ego-free, always involved being possessed, which minutes raises a number of interesting he built a hut into whose walls dozens conjured up, in order to function at all. or Gujarati. unrestricted space. Obviously, in the means permitting personalities other points and it’s fun to kind of explore a of skulls were implanted. That hut, the Bombay is a very difficult place to live long run, it is counterproductive for than your own to enter you and take few of these things that are just coming khopadi ki jhopadi, still exists; when I RA It’s interesting. In the thing I read in. Now it’s a city of about 20 million most people because it damages the you over, usually temporarily. As Dr. up spontaneously. This probably all visited it still had quite a nice vibe to that you sent me, you were talking people. But even before, Vimalananda brain and results in greater and greater Smith discovered during the extensive relates to kundalini anyway. it, as did the cremation ground itself. about spiritual crisis being mistaken for used to call it moha mayi nagari—the city bondage, but maybe that explains why research he did for his book, you can What disturbed the vibe for me were insanity. You were saying that sudden that is completely filled with delusions, people find it alluring and maybe in find mentions of possession everywhere RS It all does indeed relate to kundalini. the four or five so-called tantrics who kundalini awakening can shut out the which is something that you can really more homeopathic doses it has that in ancient Indian texts, including even busied themselves with drinking cheap nervous system and blow a hole in the feel if you spend any time there. effect without deleterious influence. the Vedas. Possession is not the sort of RA Great. Well, a couple of questions alcohol and doing what people normally person’s aura. And that the aura’s job is to A big part of his philosophy thing that the Victorian Establishment arose in my mind as you were speaking. do when they drink alcohol: talking insulate us psychically from one another is explained by the concept of RS Yes, I certainly think that’s part of approved of; there is something very One was, I have heard of instances—and loudly, arguing, thinking about getting and from disembodied influences. I rnanubandhana, a big Sanskrit word it. In his case, another reason why he non-Victorian about being taken over by you are probably much more familiar into a fight, becoming really effusive, think that might be something that which means ‘the bondage of karmic employed alcohol is because he was a disembodied intelligence amidst loud with this than I am—of people using then finally lying down and trying to would be useful for people to understand debt,’ the things that you owe to yourself a long-time worshiper of Tara, who music and wild dancing. The possession this argument of consuming various sleep it all off. That was disappointing, more clearly. You know, you hear about and to other humans and to animals is one of the ten mahavidyas, one of aspect of the Sanatana Dharma was substances and doing various things but I got used to being disappointed auras all the time; people want to see and to places and families and teachers the ten great embodiments of wisdom therefore deliberately downplayed back in the name of Tantra which kind of in India a long time ago, because there them and some people say that they do and what-have-you. Bandha means shaktis from which the universe is when the British had a very strong bastardizes the whole thing, cheapens it. are so many charlatans there, many see them. But what their actual function a thing that binds you down. You’re generated and by which the universe influence on Indian thought. For the It becomes a form of hedonism without of whom I’ve met, or at least seen. At is—this whole notion of disembodied bound down by karmic obligations, remains and into which the universe is most part, the Brits of the nineteenth any real spiritual significance. least the cremation ground was not entities might seem esoteric to some karmic accounts that have to be settled. resolved. Smashan Tara—the Tara of the century thought of Hinduism in general And to bring up the other point—about disappointing, and I thanked my lucky people and fanciful or mythological Of course, things can only be settled at cremation ground—is very similar to as being debased, debauched, corrupted, possession. Obviously this is something stars that I had for that night a fine place or whatever, but in my opinion these certain moments, and sometimes one Kali, both iconographically and in the and polluted, and possession states as which existed in most ancient cultures in which to sit and spend some time entities very much do exist. I had a few must bide quite a bit of time waiting sense that she is fond of blood and of being exceptionally degraded. and even modern—we have all kinds of ruminating over the fact that at any little experiences of them myself but for the opportunity to settle a particular alcohol. So by drinking, Vimalananda, Vimalananda would often permit channelers these days and there was Edgar moment the possibility exists that an there needs to be some sort of protective debt. While you’re biding your time, if in addition to drinking in the context himself to be taken over by a deity or Cayce and there are the ayahuasca people. earthquake (one just happened here last shield. Perhaps many people who are you are stuck in any kind of big modern of his own personality, was making an a dead saint or a force of nature, and There are all sorts of instances where night), a tornado, a lightning bolt, an mentally disturbed or even criminally city that’s full of human beings— directly to that goddess. while he was thus possessed he would people are connecting with and perhaps eagle carrying a turtle, something might insane have lost that shield and are just well, Vimalananda had to interact My friend Dr. Fred Smith is the be able to make direct offerings via his allowing some entity of some sort to come easily be the end of you. I like to remind tools of some darker forces. with people in Bombay and he had to author of a 700-page book called The own body to that personality that had through them and provide wisdom. Of myself often each day that in our world interact with them in a meaningful way. Self-Possessed, which is all about the fact taken him over. course, there’s the dark side of that, too, mortality is everywhere, and death can RS That happens quite often and Bombay is such a complicated place. that, even though in India and nowadays You can find similar rituals all over where many times you don’t know who take you away at any moment. of course sometimes it’s even more It was very useful for him to be able in other countries, people believe India. In the Himalaya, for example, you’re inviting. Just because you’re dead complicated than that. Sometimes to interact with the city, which would Indian religion—I’m deliberately not you will find oracles. When you need doesn’t mean you’re smart and there’s been RA Yeah. people become tools of forces that are not inevitably involve taking the substance using the word “Hinduism” because, advice about something you go to your all kinds of devil worship and all kinds of so dark while at the same time serving as of the city into his tissues, and then to as Vimalananda pointed out, the word local temple and request that deity’s strange stuff that muddies the reputation RS And these drunken sadhus at tools of forces that are indeed dark. Some employ a substance that could permit Hindu is a Persian word. The ancient oracle for advice; it will be delivered by of this sort of thing. Tarapith probably started off reminding people who can at times channel positive

22 Issue 20 Spring 2015 23 and beneficial entities may sometimes NCAA tournament games. St. Louis you and I would agree that the genetics first I arrived in India I hated the place, speaking either, because of having no are polarizing humanity in a variety of also channel something very negative University played a game. St. Louis are just a physical representation of an it didn’t take too long until it was all so education in language. ways. Do you have any comments on that is pretending to be positive. University is a Jesuit university; their even subtler realm. familiar to me that I started wondering It is difficult for me to envision that line of thinking? mascot is the billiken. When I Googled why I hadn’t been born there. culture without language. Human RA Like the good angel, bad angel "billiken," I discovered that the billiken RS Absolutely. language is to me an absolutely required RS Well, if we do nothing but recognize thing, on the shoulders. was an image that came in a dream to RA Maybe the climate in the places foundational element for culture of all that nothing would exist without duality a woman in 1908 in the , RA For instance, in terms of where you grew up got you prepared for kinds. Each language has its own flavor, and if we look at duality—we use the RS Exactly. There’s no reason why, one that must not be confused with the reincarnation, if you reincarnate and living in India. its own history, its own attitudes. As terms "positive" and "negative" and simply because you’re open to the one, kewpi doll which appeared the next you bring in certain qualities from a Vimalananda used to say, English is they have certain associations; the word that you’re not going to be open to the year, which the billiken resembles. You previous life, obviously there’s no way RS Oh, absolutely. very good for commercial things, for "negative" has a pejorative association other. You are going to be open to both will find the billiken on Google—a that, physically, your DNA could be minutely describing very specific things to it. The main message is that they are of them, at least initially. little big-bellied baby-like presence with carried from one life to the next, but RA Wouldn’t you say that if we zoom back in the external world; it’s not very good polarizing. When people think about possession, carefully composed ears and feet. As fate there’s some subtler vehicle which enough and realize that we’re swimming for bringing all of those things together. A positive charge is attracted to a usually they’re imagining disembodied would have it, later that year a temple carries along and then manifests a in an ocean of intelligence—it’s kind of a Sanskrit is much better for bringing negative charge, but under certain human beings or demons or Lucifer in Yokahama installed an image of this physical structure and physical DNA cliche to say that everything happens for all of those things together. Charles V conditions they will repel one another, sitting somewhere, laughing maniacally billiken in its sanctum. The billiken appropriate to its tendencies and the a reason, everything’s perfect as it is, but was reported to have stated, “I speak and the more they repel one another and sending out all sorts of bizarrely went from being an American woman’s tendencies you have to live out. I ascribe to that. If you look at it deeply Spanish to God, Italian to women, the greater the polarization of charge caparisoned Hieronymus Bosch ghouls. dream to a Japanese deity within enough, how could there be accidents in French to men, and German to my until the point where a spark crosses But there are many other ways to become just a few months, and it remains the RS Or, as appropriate to its tendencies an ocean of infinite intelligence? horse.” So many beautiful songs to God the gap, or a lightning bolt strikes, or possessed. You can get possessed by mascot—or totemic animal—of a Jesuit as can be the case in the context of the have been written in Spanish because it the polarization is resolved in some anger, lust, greed, or any other powerful university in the United States. genetic material of the father and mother, RS I agree entirely. And I do not believe has that kind of flavor to it; French is other way. I agree with you in thinking emotion. Certain disease ‘beings’ can take which is one place where complications that this was an accident at all. It’s just an excellent court language. Italian is a that currently there is quite a bit of you over, as can influences conjured up RA Funny. It’s interesting what can start for human beings. You have that human beings get to where they are wonderful language—I love Italian. It’s polarization in human society and that by black magicians. Many get possessed you are saying about forces taking these tendencies that are part of you, that sometimes as a result of influences that especially good for wine, women, and it is quite possible that this polarization by ancestors. You don’t have to think of over collective mentality, collective want to continue to express themselves promote their efforts, and at other times song. will keep intensifying until some your ancestors as still existing to know consciousness: consumerism, fascism, through you in your next lifetime. The in spite of influences that tried very hard dramatic event causes it to resolve again. that, because you’ve received your genes Nazism—all those different things. tendencies have developed momentum, to dissuade them from achievement. RA Inuit is a good one for talking about We’ve seen this happen throughout from your ancestors, they can affect you. There’s something in the bible about the for music or whatever, and those I think of there being three main snow probably. history. Intense polarization took place And not just the genes; epigenetics tells sins of the father visited upon the son or tendencies will have to align with a channels of inheritance that everybody during World War II, with democracies us that the patterns of which genes are some such thing— womb that can provide an appropriate grows up with: the inheritance that RS Inuit, I’m sure, is excellent for snow. confronting totalitarian societies, and going to turn on and turn off can also milieu through which that pattern can you bring with you from your previous two different types of totalitarian be passed down, sometimes three or four RS —up to the seventh generation, continue to express itself. incarnations, what you bring with you RA We were talking about tendencies society, fascist and communist, hating generations. So, if you have someone like at the racecourse. While I was in genetically from your mother and father and collective consciousness. We can one another even more than the freer who, let’s say, is an alcoholic—we know India studying Ayurveda, I spend a lot RA They say you can’t choose your and their parents and those gone before, think of political parties or cultural societies hated the totalitarians because that there is a type of alcoholism that is of time reading the Thoroughbred Stud parents—but you do choose your parents. as well as the effect of the culture in phenomena or the battle over global hate was so much a part of the way that often passed down from father to son. Book. All thoroughbred racehorses are which you develop. My father’s parents warming—I always think in terms of the totalitarians defined themselves. People in the past, maybe they were derived from three foundation sires: the RS You do choose your parents. The were from Moravia, Czech Republic, a sort of vertical strata of creation and It does seem to me that polarization thinking we can find a gene or even a few Darley Arabian, the Byerly Turk, and usual case, however, is that just because and my mother was not. Had his parents how the surface expression of things is increasing, and that something in the genes that would be responsible. But it’s the Godolphin Arabian, and 90% of all you choose your parents in the context remained there and had my mother’s we see on the news is representative of environment is facilitating that increase. not so much the genes themselves as it is racehorses today are descended from the of one thing that is essential for your parents somehow ended up in Moravia, much deeper layers of reality. The Bush-Gore election brought into the pattern of which genes are turned on horse Eclipse, who was foaled during an current incarnation doesn’t mean that and had I been born there, even from You kind of alluded to this when we clear focus the fact that the USA is and which genes are turned off, and the eclipse and never lost a race. the fit will be perfect. Sometimes the fit the same parents, I would have grown were talking about blowing a hole in currently divided into two camps more circumstances under which a gene might When you mate a thoroughbred is perfect: the parents and the children up very differently than I did growing the aura and being overtaken by subtle or less equal in size with very different be turned on or off in the context of this stallion with a non-thoroughbred create a unit that’s completely and up in Texas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma. influences. It seems to me that there visions of reality, which is why it is now bigger pattern. And this is but one way mare, you have to continue crossing utterly harmonious with no seeming For one thing, I would have grown is a sort of an epic battle taking place so difficult for our government to get in which your ancestors can affect you. the progeny with thoroughbreds for effort. They move ahead as if they had up with different languages, and on subtle levels between various forces, anything done. People get very invested And then come mind viruses— seven generations before you can call been born to do that, which they were. language is extremely important. My positive and negative. Of course, you in their concepts of how things ought to fascism, communism, capitalism—all the progeny of the eighth generation And sometimes—in my case, I never father was born in Texas in 1920; until know that kind of thing is depicted be, and are often willing to defend these infections of the psyche that took over thoroughbred. Why? Because by the felt that I fit in, in Texas, Oklahoma, or he was six, he only knew two words of mythologically and in the Vedic concepts to the death. the minds of hundreds of millions of eighth generation less than 1% of the Louisiana, and I was drawn elsewhere as English—aunt and uncle. Otherwise he literature, in the , the gods and I am reminded of something that humans, with catastrophic results. Some blood of the original non-thoroughbred soon as I could travel. My family never spoke Czech, because his parents and the demons are always battling it out. Ouspensky wrote in his book In Search of the mind viruses are most curious. mare remains. It takes seven generations understood why I was there and I never siblings spoke Czech. My grandfather’s Maybe it’s always been intense, but of the Miraculous about his studies with My sister and I both enjoy watching to completely dilute a genetic influence. understood why I was there. We found a hired hands were Mexican and spoke there seems to be a greater contrast these Gurdjieff back in Russia in and around sports; the two boys at this house where way to relate to one another in a healthy, Mexican. Though my father retained days, as if positive and negative forces the time of the Russian Revolution and I am now both play basketball. All of RA And we think of genetic material, loving way, but living rather different his fluency in Czech and Spanish are both increasing in their strength World War I. At one point Gurdjieff us have been watching some of the of course, as being physical, but perhaps lives. On the other hand, although when throughout his life, he felt embarrassed and distinctness. Those puppeteers observed that it was exceedingly fortunate

24 Issue 20 Spring 2015 25 that his group was able to meet during regular inputs from the external RS And those connections are heard anything about kundalini, it’s attracted to each other. The nucleus is us to get here, going through various that time of great social turbulence environment. Continual interaction continuously running the so-called not presented as merely some sort of relatively stationary, but is also moving. stages to get to a point where we can, because that great crisis was causing the with the outside world is what keeps default mode network which takes up abstract energy, but as being intelligent In the universe, so far as we know, in fact, have awareness of things that we consensus reality of the inhabitants of us able to function. Whether or not something like 80% of the brain’s energy and having a marvelously intricate way nothing is stationary: the sun orbits the can be aware of, like the fact that there Russia to fray. ‘Consensus reality’ is that we’re aware of it, we’re always hearing and is running all the time and you’re of transforming us in various ways. If center of the Milky Way at more than is something other than our organism. I field of ordinary accepted parameters of subliminal sounds, always receiving never aware of it. It’s running in the it’s intelligent, then we could certainly one hundred fifty miles a second, and think it’s very useful to remember that reality shared by the members of a group. micro-movements of air via our touch background and it’s just continuously imagine it being a her or a him, having our galaxy is being dragged towards the the human organism—we like to think It can be quite difficult to spread radical receptors, always seeing one thing or creating the foundation of this thing some kind of personification in some Great Attractor at nearly four hundred of ourselves as human—the human knowledge at a time when a society and another. All of these sensory inputs that we call the personality, so no— way, could we not? miles per second, and God only knows organism is made up of, more or less, its consensus reality are relatively intact, reassure us, remind us that we are part what the Great Attractor is being roughly 100 trillion cells, only 10% because the pressure of thought of all the of our surroundings, that a ‘to and fro’ RA Yeah, it’s a nice sci-fi notion but— RS We can, definitely. And, of course, attracted by; but every thing is moving. percent of which are actually human. people who buy into a particular vision of exists between us. wherever there’s a him there will always be Relatively speaking, the nucleus is not reality is usually strong enough to make I have a young friend who works RA Well, this might be a good segue a her; where there’s a her there will always moving and the electrons are moving RA Just so people understand what it very difficult for any alternative vision developing software for complicated into talking more explicitly about be a him. We’re living in a world of duality. around it. Relatively speaking, energy— you’re saying: 90% of those cells are to compete. But a century ago in Russia imaging applications, some involving kundalini. Why don’t you start by just Fundamentally, from our perspective in let’s call it Shakti—is moving and Shakti’s various bacteria and other microscopic the shared awareness of the populace radar. He was invited one day into a defining it. Most people understand the dual world, there is great benefit in opposite—let’s call it Siva—is, relatively organisms that are completely non- had been so damaged by the war and the room where they test radars and similar kundalini as some kind of energy that looking at things with two eyes, at least speaking, unmoving. This dynamic has human, but on whom our lives depend. revolution that the suppressing pressure devices, a room in which, because of resides in the base of the spine and can to begin with, and trying to understand been around since the days of the Big of the consensus reality was reduced and the way it’s constructed, there is no be awakened; it rises up the spine and who we are and where we’ve come from Bang, which was billions of years ago, RS On whom our lives depend. And became more tenuous, which allowed reflection of sound and no reflection when it rises up you get enlightenment. and where we’re going. There is a lot of and you and I exist within this very they also have awareness, though theirs those like Gurdjieff—who tried to see of light. If you shine a beam of light I mean that’s probably, in a nutshell, use in looking at it from the perspective dynamic. This dynamic is the kundalini is not the same sort of awareness that we things more clearly, more genuinely, more directly at someone they can see the what most people understand, but I of Shakti and of Shakti’s partner, call him dynamic, the kundalini shakti. enjoy. In a way that’s good, because we uniquely—to do so with greater ease. beam of light but as soon as you turn think there’s probably a lot more to it, Shaktiman or Siva or whatever—from the Earlier you referred to the ahamkara don’t have to be talking to them all day Nowadays the US is divided into Red the beam so that it is not directed at so let’s go for that. perspective of one principle of intelligence shakti. Ahamkara is a nice Sanskrit long, negotiating: “Ok, do you agree and Blue visions of reality, each with its them, no light will be visible to them. that maintains relative stability of intent, word. Aham means I. ‘A’ is the first letter that we should go to the movies?" But own increasingly polarized consensus If I talk directly at you, your ears will RS I’m going to start out by saying that, position, and awareness, and another in the Sanskrit alphabet ‘HA’ is the last we do have to negotiate with them in reality that promotes further polarization. detect the vibrations from my mouth first of all, language is a very powerful principle that is more dynamic. It’s just one—so aham is the alpha and the the context of what we eat and how and And to complicate the situation further, and you will hear me, but if I turn even thing. The more that people use the like what we see in the atomic world: you omega, the origin and termination, of when we eat it, and if they’re working we have, in the form of the internet, a slightly no sound will reach you. This word kundalini, the more they apply have the nucleus (protons and neutrons) all manifestation. Everything that you well, we think more clearly, and if method of interacting that is generating friend said that after twenty minutes he their own concepts as to what the word and you have electrons. The electrons are personally can identify with as being they’re not working well, we definitely its own consensus reality. Don’t get me felt so weird that he had to leave, and means. Their concepts will adhere to the always moving; that’s their job. Relative to part of you is aham. Ahamkara is the do not think clearly. They’re an integral wrong—I use the internet every day— he discovered that even the guys who surface of whatever it is that kundalini the electrons, the protons and neutrons force that creates aham. If we visualize part of us, even though we like to claim but the fact is that the internet is an work in there everyday have to limit really is. As time goes on, those who are sitting in a state of relative inaction, kundalini as coming from the bottom that they are separate from us. externalized consensus reality whose themselves to one hour at a time. look at kundalini will see less of her in letting the electrons move around them; and going up to the top, we should This whole situation is extremely momentum is now sufficiently strong her real form, and more of the various that’s their job. think of ahamkara proceeding from complicated. What are now human that is dragging almost everybody into RA Wow. Because they need the normal concepts adhering to her, concepts that the top to the bottom. Ahamkara starts cells were originally single-cell bacteria it, creating what I think has the potential stimulation. people have projected in her direction. RA And the protons have a positive charge out as shakti that is utterly unidentified as well, until they began to take in to be an extremely pathological and and electrons have a negative charge and it with anything, limited by nothing other bacteria. Our mitochondria were bizarre set of results. You’ve heard of RS They need that normal stimulation. So RA And you’ll please explain why you’re keeps the whole show going. other than itself, but that progressively independent at one point, until they the technological singularity, I’m sure. an hour and a half after John Doe ends up using the word her as you go along here? becomes increasingly limited as it thought, “These animal cells are the We have people who sincerely believe in the giant server in the sky, then what? RS And everything goes around. It descends into individuation—in our going thing. This is where our future that at some point it will be possible to RS Yes, I use the word her not because just so happens that we applied the case, into the human being. The reason lies!” and decided to move in. As part upload our personalities onto servers RA Also, you know that the whole notion she has any permanent affinity with words ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ to why the texts talk about kundalini being of the bargain they have retained their somewhere. They don’t explain—or I that our personality can be uploaded some embodied female, human or these particles; we could instead have asleep is that in the average person, the own genetic material, separate from our haven’t heard anybody explain yet— to a computer—I mean a single cell, a otherwise, but because in our universe described them as ‘have’ and ‘have-not’ vast majority of the shakti in the body genetic material; they are part of us, and what’s going to happen when the power single neuron, is far more complex than we employ the concept of her-ness and or something similar, some other pair of is being employed to keep the organism also separate from us. to the server gets cut or when a virus gets the most sophisticated computer we’ve femininity to represent that energy and dualities. Or, protons might have been functioning in the context in which that into the program. I don’t spend much ever designed. You wouldn’t have much that protoplasm and those hormones assigned a negative charge and electrons organism has evolved. We’ve evolved RA We’d die without them. time thinking about that because by the of a personality if you only had a single and that organization of a living being a positive charge; in fact, in the anti- over many, many millions of years for very fact of proposing something that is neuron; you need trillions of them and that can reproduce, that can actually— matter world, a positron is an electron the purpose, in my opinion, of being RS We would die very quickly without utterly impossible, it is obvious that their they need to all be interconnected in especially in the context of vertebrates that carries a positive charge. The facts able to act as an environment in which them, and without our other allies. thinking is quite muddled. ways that are—you know, there are more and mammals—give rise to an individual remain that the nucleus of an atom consciousness can manifest itself. When we try to negotiate who we are, Those people who have invested connections between our neurons than that belongs to the same species as the carries one electrical charge and that we must remember them. How do we heavily in this concept are overlooking there are stars in the galaxy, so I think it’s individual that is reproducing. atom’s electrons carry another charge, RA Beautiful. define ourselves? the fact that human beings are utterly going to be a long time before we design and that these charges are opposite, We humans like to think of ourselves dependent for their sanity on getting a computer that could store a personality. RA But not only that. Whenever I have and repel one another even while being RS And it has taken billions of years for as individuals, but really we are more

26 Issue 20 Spring 2015 27 “dividual,” because parts of us are the plethora of connections that link which can be translated either as ”The RA It seems to me that what you end up integrating physical and spiritual life, RA Don’t you have moksha and words separate and other parts are shared. So different cells. As its attention becomes Ambrosia of Experience” or “The with is something more than the original and that health and longevity require like that? many components make up a person, monopolized by all this multiplicity Experience of Ambrosia.” In this unity, because you have a situation in that ahamkara identifies strongly with but the most ‘personal’ part of a person in manifestation, this shakti becomes remarkable book, Jnaneshvar states that, which unity can be a living reality. It’s the organism so that sufficient prana RS Indeed, but does moksha really is the personality. And here also we are progressively less kundalini and more though the supreme reality desired to not like the universe is striving just to go will enliven the body while spiritual life mean enlightenment? Moksha literally ‘dividual.’ To paraphrase E.J. Gold, the ahamkara. The greater its familiarity with perceive itself, it could not do so because back to the un-manifest with nothing requires that ahamkara relinquish most means emancipation or liberation; it most noteworthy characteristic of our the five elements—earth, water, fire, air, nothing external to that reality existed, going on; it’s that the universe seems to be of that identification. No incarnate means that you’ve been freed. As my species is that each one of us possesses and space—the less it can recall what it including space, time, and causation, via forming a more and more sophisticated being can be either wholly worldly mentor liked to say, "moham kshayati iti a set of often unrelated personalities, was like to be aware of consciousness which it could experience itself. The will instrument through which it can know or wholly spiritual; too much spirit mokshah": the destruction of delusion with no particular ability to determine without limitations. That’s why people of the supreme reality therefore caused itself, human beings being one. The burns the world out of you and makes is moksha. Vimalananda liked to say which personality will operate at any suggest that the kundalini is sleeping— the universe to emerge, to act as a mirror human instrument can be fine-tuned to it impossible to retain your body, that what enlightenment really means one moment. not because she’s forgotten that reality, in which reality could perceive itself. the extent that the fundamental unity too much attachment drowns your is thanks to the grace of your gurus but because she’s retained only slight According to this theory, which I too can be known and perceived while yet consciousness in worldliness. There’s and benefactors, and your own hard RA But if reincarnation is true, then awareness of that reality thanks to having espouse, in order to perceive itself, the living within the boundaries of human a term you’re probably familiar with, work, the weight of your karmas has it again goes beyond the physical become aware of the many other realities universe had to create within itself a part life. Those boundaries become universal leshavidya, which is the faint remains of diminished, which lightens you. Once level. There’s something which carries that require attention if we are to exist. of itself that believed it was different from in their nature with the proper sort of ignorance. You need to have that little you are lighter you can see more clearly, a package of information from one itself. The moment of that creation of a fine-tuning. greasy surface on the palm after casting your energy moves more clearly, and vehicle to the next when the first vehicle RA As I understand it, the word sense of difference was the moment of off the butter ball, you need to have the you can connect more readily to clarity no longer functions and we need a new ahamkara means I-maker right? Could the Big Bang. A trillionth of a trillionth RS When I was in college in Oklahoma, faint remains of ignorance in order for itself. Moksha doesn’t mean that you’ve one. Perhaps the jiva is the core of what we sort of zoom out and say that of a trillionth of a second later the energy I became very fond of the works of unity to be a living reality. become supreme in the universe; it we are as an individual. Yes? No? there are, simplistically speaking, two thus generated so repelled itself that the Alfred Jarry, a French surrealist and means that you have gained the ability fundamental forces in the universe: one cosmos went from an infinitesimal size dadaist writer. Jarry once defined god RS Absolutely. This is one of the things to function within the universe as you RS Yes, except for the fact that we can’t is the I-maker force which is responsible to being trillions of times larger—an as the tangential point between zero that is not generally comprehended about are meant to function. even think of a jiva necessarily as being for individuation since the time of the indescribable speed and violence that and infinity, and this formula of his spirituality in general and kundalini individual, because sometimes you will Big Bang and individuates with greater we can’t even begin to conceptualize. As has stuck with me ever since I read it. in particular: if you want to stay in the RA So you would probably agree end up having one jiva manifesting itself and greater and greater sophistication to a result of that sudden expansion, there I do believe that the cosmos is trying world, there will always be some grease that there is no ultimate state beyond in more than one human being and the point where a second fundamental was immediately afterward, since karma to employ us to facilitate an awareness on the palm, always some blind spot, which there is no possibility of further sometimes you’ll have more than one force can begin to function in a is equal and opposite, an immediate and of the fact that the creativity that is however tiny. As my Jyotisha guru, a very refinement or clarification, but there’s jiva manifesting—occasionally at the conscious way, which begins to reverse opposite return of awareness directed inherent in the universe can best display eccentric Punjabi gentleman, likes to say, always a next horizon no matter how same time—in the same human being. the whole process? In other words, it toward attempting to achieve that unity itself when unity and diversity meet a real guru makes only one mistake every many horizons you’ve reached. Few believers in reincarnation want to takes a sophisticated nervous system to again. at that boundary where both display ten thousand years; that is, however, still hear this, because almost everyone likes begin to wake up to the notion that, Now that portion of awareness themselves but neither is in fact present. one mistake. All of the deities and rishis RS As far as I have been taught, and as far to think “I am an individual.” The job ultimately, I am unbounded, I am that believes itself to be separate is That’s where the real creativity is, and made mistakes; the story of the great as I have myself seen, every experience of ahamkara is to identify things that universal consciousness, and to begin attempting to find the unity in the that is very much what the kundalini, rishi Viswamitra documents his several that can be had can also be transcended I believe are mine: this is mine; here’s to seek the experience of that until it’s context of the existence of this giant in my opinion, is attempting to do. mistakes, one every ten thousand years somehow. I see no more end to horizons my shirt; here are my glasses; here is my established. There’s a sort of feedback field of what appears to be separation. For some people, the proper path is or so. A mistake is still a mistake, still than I can see an end to universes, knowledge; here is my spouse; here is my loop or cycle from I to I, from source, Ever since this beginning, the entire to sit down, do their sadhana, awaken a limitation. Jesus Christ on the cross and the way it looks now, to modern house. It’s just the nature of ahamkara. through course, back to source. universe has been trying to return to kundalini, send it out the top of their asked why he had been forsaken. He was physics, big bangs are happening all the The nature of any shakti is that it is that state of unity but cannot do so head, and return to wherever it is they otherwise utterly aware that he had not time, even as we speak. attracted to something. The nature of RS In one sense there are these two because of the various forces that were came from. But for other people, the been forsaken, but for that tiny moment the electron is that it is attracted to the fundamental forces that you mention, generated at that moment of separation right direction to follow is to direct he lost that awareness. And that was Jesus RA Some physicists say it’s like bubbles in nucleus; it can never quite reach the but ultimately they are but aspects of so that the mirror could be created. The kundalini to identify progressively Christ—that’s not you and me. ginger ale; there are just infinite universes nucleus, but it moves about the nucleus a single force. Of the approximately human being serves as a microcosm of less with their individuality and Everybody has some limitation, and all bubbling around. A few minutes ago ceaselessly, trying to reach it. The nucleus eighteen years in total that I’ve spent the big cosmos, the macrocosm, and progressively more with the unity. there’s no use in pretending otherwise. you rattled off a description of what is attracted to the electron but it remains in India, I spent six studying Ayurveda within the context of this tiny replica In such circumstance, a dynamic There is in my opinion no use to some people might like to do, which is relatively immobile, serving as a center in Pune. Not far from Pune is the of the giant cosmos—that replica being interplay between those two forms of announce that we’ve come to the end sit down, awaken their kundalini, have it around which the electron can move. small town of Alandi, which boasts the human being—one can, under identification will develop, which will of history, or the end of the Vedas, or rise up, go out the top of the head, and The kundalini shakti craves to reunite the samadhi of Maharashtra’s most certain conditions and for a certain foster creativity in the context of the the end of anything else; and there is they’re out of here. Anyone who could with the unity from which it arose, and famous saint, Jnaneshvar Maharaj, period of time, act as mirror for that world in which that individual lives, certainly no use to declare that you’ve do it so easily and smoothly and quickly so it searches for the supreme reality. But, who wrote my favorite commentary on consciousness, and have one’s awareness with the people and places and things, become enlightened. As soon as you is one in a billion. For most people, once the kundalini shakti has entered the the ; officially titled the be completely freed, at least temporarily, and the dogs and trees, and all of those say that you’re enlightened—well, I it’s a delicate, long drawn out, perhaps human body, it searches within that body, Bhavarthadipika, everyone knows it as from all of those limitations that have things that we can bring more awareness don’t even think there’s a word for arduous, perhaps extremely intense, and does not find. While the jiva is in the the Jnaneshvari (literally, Jnaneshvar’s been added in the ensuing billions of and more love and more reality to. enlightenment in Sanskrit, in the sense process, full of all sorts of potential womb, kundalini is busy acting in its role Book). years. The supreme in the external and that the word has taken on in the pitfalls and sidetracks and difficulties. as ahamkara, creating and identifying Aside from Jnaneshvari, Jnaneshvar’s the supreme in the internal can thus RA You said an interesting thing in our modern world. Let’s have a discussion about the realistic the body’s various limbs, generating most famous work is the Amritanubhava, recognize their ultimate identity. correspondence. You were talking about experience as most people are going to

28 Issue 20 Spring 2015 29 experience it, if they do, of what happens centers of energy exists at the throat body, or pranamaya kosha, is made When conception occurs, awareness for somebody else’s kids, so that you can because a boy’s physical transformation when kundalini begins to awaken and and the heart and so on. Many of the out of prana; it is made sick by prana has first to build a body, growing it pay off the RNA, the debt that you owe is less dramatic than a girl’s. Boys the various stages of progress that one texts in which the chakras appear do and made well by prana. The subtle during pregnancy and then infancy to the yoni, to the species in which you would be taken out by the elders of has to undergo in order for its awakening not identify six; some texts talk about body is the manomaya kosha. Mano and childhood; this is a full-time job. were born. That debt has to be paid, one the tribe and beaten up a little bit and to reach its full blossoming or maturity. nine, some mention only one. But the means mind—literally, “the thing It is only after puberty begins that way or another. subjected to privations and forced to do chakras are energy centers that do not that measures”. The mind is made individuation really starts, because of the I personally have no children, but something really difficult, to force them RS I think the best thing that can be said exist in ordinary human organisms, that out of thoughts, emotions, concepts, agenda of our species. Everything in the I spend and have spent a lot of time to understand that there was something about kundalini awakening is that it is have to be created within us by shakti memories, and all sorts of similar matter; universe has its own agenda; the agenda in and around families that do have more to life than just indulgence. In truly individual, absolutely different for that penetrates to the subtlest levels of it is made sick by those things and made of nature is that all existing species children, including this very family some societies, the really sensible ones, everyone who experiences it. I think it those locations in order to enliven the well by them. The mind is the field in should evolve, which require all species in whose home I am now sitting. I’ve the boys would also be shown how the is unfortunate, though understandable, potential chakra that exists in the subtle which we represent the five elements in to reproduce. Individuals are born, grow, known the lady of the house for forty transformation happening within them that people try to talk about a standard body at that location. non-physical form; the body is the field age, and die, and new individuals must years thus far; I met her husband a provides an opportunity for them to kundalini experience, as if there were in which we represent the five elements emerge, so that the species-pattern that quarter-century back, and the two boys learn what their goals in life really are, such a thing. In fact, merely knowing RA So you’re saying that for the average in physical form. Prana communicates has been established in living protoplasm when they were born—they are now 24 in particular their ultimate goal, which the word ‘kundalini’ and having some person who hasn’t enlivened any of the between the two. Now prana, of can continue and eventually create new and 19. I’ve met them regularly every is to reconnect to the supreme reality. idea about the chakras offers your chakras, they’re there in the subtle body course, is an expression of the supreme species. Tremendous energy has been year since their births, and now I often awareness—offers your ahamkara and but they’re in a sort of latent or dormant reality, which makes prana extremely working tirelessly via the various species do things with them as adults, including RA You’re saying that ideally, in a kundalini—something to identify with, form— intelligent, in a limited way— of humans for millions of years for the traveling together. culture, when the hormones start to kick and can in some cases distort your purpose of moving us in the direction in and sexual desires begin to become experience. Maybe, possibly, you have RS —a seed form that is not yet RA —individuated. of increasing openness to the supreme RA Some people probably don’t do strong in adolescence, one is at the same awakened kundalini without bothering sprouted. reality, and the energy of nature has either. time introduced to the idea that there to awaken any of the chakras or maybe RS From the perspective of the body— been simultaneously moving us equally is a higher purpose to this energy aside you’ve only awakened one chakra but RA So they don’t really serve any kind especially our commensal bacteria but ceaselessly in the direction of continuing RS Many people do not do either. from just procreation, that you have to you read that there are six chakras that of function whatsoever? There’s no sort also our human cells—prana is god, to evolve the various species of human. Perhaps they’re helping out in some counterbalance the procreative drive all have to be awakened and then you of digestive area chakra, heart chakra, because it provides all of our cells with life Both these agendas require reproduction, other way; I hope so. In any event, with the desire for spirituality. start to pay attention to all of those six intellect chakra—they’re just sort of and vitality. The amount of manifested which can only happen when one sperm nature obliges all individuals of all chakras when you may not need to, non-functional potentials that don’t awareness in a bacterium is, to be sure, and one egg meet, which can only happen species to reproduce, and reproduction RS Exactly. We humans are microcosms, since ultimately you don’t need to pay actually do anything until they get not large, but the amount of awareness when the producers and bearers of sperm in humans happens solely as the result so even if all you did was to introduce any attention to anything other than the enlivened? manifested in prana itself is indeed and ova come together. In plants pollen of the union of one female human and children to the concept that they are supreme reality. What is important, for vast. Prana possesses consciousness; not must get to flowers, via the wind and bees one male human. Now we’re talking small units of the big universe, but kundalini awakening, is that your prana RS Well just suppose for a moment precisely the sort of consciousness that and what-have-you; in animals you have real individuality. Nature furthers its reflecting everything that goes on in that needs to enter the innermost sheath of that here is a seed at the heart chakra we humans think of when we think mating seasons and displays and the like. agenda by promoting individuality, universe, that would be really useful. the central channel—the sushumna. and this seed is in the subtle part of the about consciousness, but rather the Modern humans have rock concerts— and this is why adolescence provides subtle body. Being a seed, it has a strong consciousness of life itself. Prana was us an opportunity to introduce RA I think what you’re implying here RA OK, so you’re saying that kundalini energy and that energy, even though born at the moment that protoplasmic RA bars— adolescents to the kundalini shakti. is that—and, of course, most people can awaken without you really knowing the seed itself is not yet displaying life appeared on Earth, and has evolved Only an opportunity, for often such who’ve read about this stuff have come anything about kundalini, all the various everything that it can do, still radiates its own awareness, the awareness of the RS and bars— an introduction is not feasible; today across this idea—that the sexual energy chakras can become enlivened and in all directions. That radiation is picked life force itself, via the life experience of especially, kids get so easily taken over is the very same energy that one uses to awakened without you really knowing up by the rest of the subtle body, which all protoplasm ever since. RA Match.com, Christian Mingle— by Facebook and Twitter and other awaken the chakras and rise to higher anything about chakras, that you can transmits it into the pranic body, and During the more than three billion similar forms of addictive social media levels of spirituality and it should be used sort of shoot for the highest first—the creates strong pranic centers— years of life on Earth, this awareness has RS There are now so many methods, but that they spread their awareness so far responsibly and not just squandered, in supreme reality. You know, seek ye first incarnated in bacteria and trees and dogs they all serve the same purpose. Puberty into the “fake” archetypal world that order to facilitate that awakening. It has the kingdom of heaven and all else shall RA Just let me ask, is the pranic body and every other living being, by virtue of is a crucial phase of individuation; they never become acquainted with the its purpose for sexuality but that has to be added unto thee—that kind of thing. more manifest or less manifest that the which it has gained immense experience, it’s nature telling the organism, world of genuine archetypes. be put in proper proportion, as does Is that what you’re saying? subtle body? immense awareness about how awareness “Congratulations! You have survived Even when it is feasible to introduce everything in life. Food has its purpose and matter interact and can cooperate with long enough to truly individuate! But awareness of kundalini it may not be but you can become a glutton. RS Yes, that may work for some people RS It’s more manifest. one another. Prana has driven evolution there is no free barbecue for you,” as easy, though it is often easier for girls and may not work for others. The on our planet, as it seeks always to create we say in Texas. “You have been given than for boys, because girls enjoy a RS Yes. Sleep has its purpose but you chakras are definitely very useful, when RA More manifest, OK. the best possible protoplasmic platform this organism and it is your task, now natural “initiation into adulthood” in can lie around in the hammock doing they actually exist. The word chakra through which to radiate awareness. It that you are able to reproduce, to do the form of menarche. As soon as a nothing all day. Because sex is such a has taken on its own constellation of RS Right. We have the physical body— would appear that the human being is so, to produce more of your kind or girl starts to bleed, a wise mother will primal drive, central to the continuation connotations that have now become the physical body is, in Sanskrit, the the best-evolved organism (thus far) for at the very least to provide meaningful take advantage of that radical shift from of life on earth, nature goes out of her way implicit to it, connotations that work annamaya kosha. Anna means food: this purpose, though prana basically has assistance to your relatives and friends childhood into fertility by presenting to to make this desire so strong. On the one on us without us necessarily being aware the physical body is made out of food, to recapitulate evolution each time a new who are producing more of your kind.” her to the basics of female spirituality. hand, yes, it’s a specific desire, but desire is of how they’re working. The chakras nourished by food, made sick by food human being appears, first in the womb, If you’re not going to have kids yourself In the past this used to be done for boys desire. You can take a specific desire and, are centers of energy, and certainly and made well by food. The pranic then outside it. you will do well to do something nice also, and it is more necessary for boys if you alter its direction, you may end up

30 Issue 20 Spring 2015 31 in a very different place than you would not just in the Christian church, in The cultivation of carpet grass is another the words without the shakti that they RS Exactly. In certain Indian contexts, who has been thoroughly convinced of have had you simply followed that desire any organization—problems will good example of how plants can induce us transmitted. Maybe you’ll come up with that’s what the guru would do. The guru this reality of the energetic journey for to where it was leading you, directed by arise. Consider India’s sadhus. Though to assist them in their spread. Think about some novel interpretation, and you’ll would find a text or a practice—let’s use thirty three years.” I didn’t respond to your personal karmas, the karmas of your some are really genuine, fine human it: otherwise rational humans, mostly find some people who will go along a text as an example—and he would tell her, but if I were to respond, I would parents, and the karmas of your culture. beings, and a few are most amazing, men, spend hundreds of hours of their with those interpretations, and they will the student to go study the text. The idea probably say you can write off anything That’s of course where we hope that your probably 90 or 95% are just ordinary valuable free time each year doing nothing build you a temple and ashram, and you was that the text provides a framework as illusion. Gravity is an illusion but it’s guru, mentor, or benefactor guides you, individuals who should not have taken but tending to smallish patches of green will sit there amid your interpretations, into which you can take the experiences still a phenomenon in relative creation gives you an idea about potential creative sadhu vows. A few of them are actually in front of and behind their houses which creating more complications instead that you have—both your internal that you have to deal with and respect. uses for this energy, uses other than malign. Many wander around saying, they have to regularly cut. In this way a of disconnecting yourself from your experiences and the experiences you have In any case, the key question here is simple procreation, uses other than what “Yes, I’m celibate,” meaning “celibate” handful of grass species have colonized already-existing complications. externally—and you can try to use them the intensity of your own kundalini everybody else is telling you to do with it, in a very particular sense. As they say millions of acres all over this country to understand how you as an individual experience, on what foundation you and what you may be imagining about it. in India, "Mile to mari, nahi to sada and others. We could argue, in fact, that RA You brought up some interesting interact with the idealized world of speak and write about it. Also, perhaps, Interesting transformational possibilities brahmachari," which translated loosely the grass has taken over those humans points there. The one about the plants, the text. The text conveys something what advice and even cautionary do exist, subject to practical limitations. means “If I find her I will enjoy sex with that care for it, and is driving them if I were to summarize that, I would say mythic, something that’s out of normal notes you might give for those who In my case, I never wanted to become her” (actually a stronger word is used), around telling them what to do. It has that there’s an evolutionary force that time. The text is in mythic time and want to get more involved in it and a professional dancer, but had I had that “otherwise I’m always a brahmachari.” been suggested, and I personally endorse permeates and ultimately motivates you are in normal time, and the creative think it would be cool to awaken their desire, I would not have been able to So, “I’m a brahmachari—whenever I’m this view, that almost every species out all creation and that you can see it dynamic between those two time streams kundalini—what they might actually be fulfill it, because I was never coordinated not having sex.” there very much wants to get humans to functioning in various plant and animal facilitates even more evolution, both in getting themselves into unknowingly. enough to become a dancer, even when work for them. Other species are aware species in that they conduct themselves you and in the myth itself. I was young and vital and enthusiastic. RA Yeah—so a lot of hypocrites and that humans are the world’s paramount in such a way as to have other species, RS Well, let me start off with my advice I could’ve tried, but I would have failed phonies out there. species, and that humans can make big namely us, the most influential one, RA Interesting. Let me bring it back to people who think it would be neat to miserably. You have to know your changes in the world. Look at our pets: serve them. There’s sort of a higher to kundalini again. I’ve seen all sorts awaken kundalini. My advice is: Don’t. limitations. But, in the context of those RS All of us, at some time or another, dogs control us, cats control us. They have intelligence that can be discerned in of things over the years. I’ve been You absolutely do not have any clue as limitations, there are still many, many me especially, have acted hypocritically, found strategies that work well for them. these so-called more lowly intelligent on long meditation courses. In one to what you might unlock in yourself, things that you can do that will move but there is great value in being able at These strategies work because humans are species. That seemed to be the key point. particular case there was a whole group what you might unleash, and you have you in the direction where you really least to admit to yourself what you are willing to identify these other species as of people who were actually asked to sit no clue as to whether you’ll be able to need to go, which is the direction of doing, and to find a way to stop doing members of the extended human family; RS And the more that we think of on the stage who were going through put a leash on it. being as transparent as possible to the it. Unfortunately, once you develop for some people, their pets are their family. ourselves as being the higher species, the kriyas—just kind of flying, thrashing supreme reality while at the same time in yourself a really strong pattern, it Our species does things like this because easier it is for these other so-called lower around. I’ve see people almost literally RA Once awakened, kundalini cannot being a functional human being. can become so strong that it can take of ahamkara, the ability to identify as self species to manipulate us. bouncing off the walls. I have a friend be put back to sleep. you over. As Vimalananda would very things other than our selves. whose body was cooking so much that RA We could talk about priestly frequently say when I was pouring When you start to release ahamkara RA And then the point about the he could sit with the windows open RS Exactly. In my personal case, I had celibacy, which probably arose in the out whiskey for him, “Whenever you from your normal self-definition, you Bhagavad Gita and the temples and all in the wintertime with hardly any no idea at all about kundalini when from this principle drink, remember one thing: either the start to ask, “Who am I? Now I know that. You’re basically saying that people clothes on and he was still hot. I have ,just a few weeks after I turned 16, we’re discussing here, but it’s not for drink is going to drink you or you are that I’m not only the body, and if I am can speak or write, and do naturally another friend who really went through I took LSD for the first time. All of a everyone and if it becomes something going to drink it.” What he meant was not just the body, then who exactly am speak or write, from their level of hell with kundalini and was unable to sudden, without knowing anything that’s mandated for everyone, at least that whiskey will change your internal I?” Just asking the question “Who am consciousness but that’s usually not sleep and was burning up lying on the about India’s spirituality—OK, I had for a whole class of people, then there chemistry, which will change your I?” was sufficient for Ramana Maharshi. the level of consciousness from which bathroom floor at three in the morning read the Bhagavad Gita maybe, without are problems. awareness, and either you will use that Unfortunately, it’s not sufficient for people hear or read what they’ve said or with this sort of intense energy frying understanding anything or thinking altered awareness to become more open everybody, because everybody doesn’t written and so there’s a communication her. Eventually she passed through it was particularly interesting—that RS And we see what the problems are. If to the supreme reality, or you will use have that supreme ability to see things gap. And knowledge crumbles on the that and it all settled down. I just told was of course the Edgerton translation celibacy is something that’s natural and it to reinforce all the limitations of as clearly as he did. My mentor used to hard rocks of ignorance. Things can be her I was going to be interviewing which was a bit— spontaneous, then that’s great. If you your awareness, which will drive you say that although people give discourses completely garbled and misinterpreted you and she read something you realize to yourself, wait, this is not really to repeat your usual mistakes. In this on the Bhagavad Gita all the time, they and misunderstood and watered down. wrote about kundalini. She said “It RA Pretty dry— what I want to do, I don’t really want context your biggest mistake will be to don’t realize that the Bhagavad Gita was People on a spiritual path find that they sounds very scholarly. I’d like to know to be part of the world as it is, I want drink even more, since that is alcohol’s delivered by Krishna, an avatara of a can read a book like the Bhagavad Gita if this is coming from his own direct RS Dry, yes. All of a sudden—I had to spend my time more in that other chief agenda. Alcohol wants you to , to Arjuna, who was nearly a every five years for fifty years and that experience.” So that’s one question for never heard the word “prana” before but world even though I’m going to be drink it, so that people will brew and rishi himself. We only have the record every time they read it, they get a new you. How much have you experienced all of a sudden I KNEW what prana partly in this world—that’s a wonderful distill more of it, so that more people of the words they used; unless you’re level of meaning out of it. Their level of all this yourself—going through the was, I felt it moving, I understood how thing. But not everybody can do this, will drink it. Michael Pollan—his name at a similar level of awareness, how consciousness has inched its— whole kundalini awakening process? it was moving, and I also understood and especially not in the context of an is so appropriate, since he writes about will you be able to perceive the actual And she added that, “It’s interesting that if I permitted myself to do so, I institution. When things start to get botany—wrote a book entitled The prana that was being conveyed between RS It’s evolved. you should send this now because I’ve could easily depart from my body. I also organized—you know the old saying: Botany of Desire, a book about how four them, the emotions that were being had the deep insight recently that the understood without knowing how I God said “Look, here’s awareness!” and popular species—the apple, the tulip, conveyed? You won’t, and because you RA It’s come closer to the level at which whole kundalini experience is illusion, understood it that if I did exit my body the devil said, “Great, I’ll organize it!” cannabis, and the potato—have learned won’t you will only be able to see the it was expressed. just more maya, just another belief at that moment—having never had any When spiritual things get organized— how to induce humans to serve them. words, and you will try to interpret system. I’m saying that as someone thoughts of this sort of thing before—I

32 Issue 20 Spring 2015 33 still somehow understood that if I exited several other unusual experiences I had in me, I had to work with it, to try to level, the only reason you’re existing at Many get connected to the non- they continue to cling to whatever belief right then that I would be unlikely to be had while crossing the continent. I was, do something good and to try to hold that level is because there’s a part of you physical in a negative way; some for or idea or image it was that kept them able to return. There was a strong pull for example, cured of a severe disease together while I was doing it. Of course, identifying as being at that level—that example when very young are taken from completely flying to pieces when to leave, and a strong sense of needing by a “witch doctor” in Ivory Coast, and I had no real idea of what I was doing, which we call ahamkara. Ahamkara over by a disembodied human or they were going through that initial to stay; I spent quite a number of hours while I was recuperating there, I read and so I made mistakes; happily, none of and kundalini are the same thing— some other astral being with a not- awakening. in that in-between state. Those hours Autobiography of a Yogi. After finishing them were fatal. Several accidents befell the only difference is one is directed particularly-spiritual agenda, and that Of course, your situation will be during which I hovered between leaving it, I knew I needed to check yoga out. me, and I was jailed twice, once for four towards greater manifestation in the being becomes part of their reality far worse if prana is unable to move and not leaving created some tensions I flew from Kenya to England, crossed hours and once overnight. Each time externalized multiplicity of the duality from a very young age, and directs freely because your pranic channels are in my pranic body that took many, overland to India, got robbed there, the energy dragged me back into the of the physical world and the other is much of what they do thereafter. Thank obstructed. Anything that you consume many years to work out. hated the place, went to Nepal, loved right direction, often in spite of myself. directed in the opposite direction. The God that didn’t happen to me. Thank but do not digest—including food, That was the first time I took LSD; the place. After three months in Nepal I Back at that time, no, it didn’t manifest pravritti marga is the life path that God. Instead I was able to experience, prana, thoughts, emotions and ideas— I took LSD—I don’t know—another heard the Dalai was going to give in me as a bunch of kriyas or heat or extends outwards in all directions, to a very small degree no doubt, the will behave within your body like toxins, 100, 150 times, even though it didn’t some teachings in Bodhgaya in India. whatever; it manifested in a different and the nivritti marga is the path back reality of Jesus Christ; and it was in which will make your adaptation to the benefit me by providing me further Though I had heard of the way. It was completely transformative, inwards. Expansion and contraction, that inner environment, however energy all the more challenging. clarity about how to proceed. However, and Buddhism they then meant nothing but in an often harsh way until I finally externalization and internalization, this distorted it might have been by my If I had it all to do over, I would have LSD and the other entheogens I later to me, but everybody else was going so started to comprehend how to refine the duality is continuous at every level. mental & emotional impurities, that started doing yoga at age one month, experimented with were, at that time in I thought I’d go too. In January 1974, experience, which took some years. the awakening of the prana kundalini and I would have continued doing the 60s in Oklahoma, the only things I and 500,000 Tibetans and a bunch Was all that an illusion? It was, in the RA Kundalini then is responsible occurred. The prana kundalini seeks to yoga as I grew so that I developed a that I knew of that I could use to expose of other people landed in Bodhgaya for sense that I was experiencing something both for accreting and preserving enter the central channel and move in it foundation of good control over my myself to an immaterial reality that I only the fourth Kalachakra initiation that I could not have explained or our individual identity and at the without obstruction. prana. Then, when the awakening knew I had to get more of. that the Dalai Lama had ever performed. communicated to anybody else; same time for dissolving it. But as we As my mentor used to say, there are two dawned, I would have been able to Once I realized that I had to find The Kalachakra really blew my mind; the ordinarily I wouldn’t have believed discussed earlier, its dissolution is not basic routes to spiritual development: circulate the prana, insuring that I had another path to follow, I knew I had whole thing, and His Holiness, for sure, that what I was doing was “spiritual”, its destruction; it dissolves the binding the right nostril and the left nostril. The sufficient downward-moving apana to to go abroad to try to find it. When but most significantly, Dilgo Khyentse but this energy had taken over and was influence so that we grow to realize that right nostril is the sun, the left nostril keep myself stable and using the rest to in the mood I can be methodical, so . There was something about moving me in the direction of where we are not only that but we are both the is the moon; the right nostril is jnana, connect to other realities. I figured out a way to graduate from him—even physically, he was a very I clearly needed to end up, without universal and the individual and can the left nostril is bhakti. Eventually you college after two years, and then I went large man—but there was something knowing how I was going to get there. live the two in an integrated way. Is that need both jnana and bhakti, because RA You probably would have skipped to Africa, which was, at the time, the else about him that I could sense but not what you’re saying? the only way to get kundalini into the the LSD altogether— most exotic location that I could think name. I saw him and thought, “I don’t RA You’re saying that perhaps your LSD central channel is to get your nostrils, of. I crossed Africa overland from the know what he’s got and I don’t know use actually awakened kundalini and RS Exactly. I would propose that and the channels in the pranic body that RS Yeah, there would have been— west coast to the east coast. In Kenya I how he got it but I gotta have some of that once awakened that energy began to anytime that your awareness becomes are associated with them, into balance. got an opportunity to participate in an that myself.” My whole organism aligned direct the course of your life in ways that disconnected from your individuality But that’s not so easy. RA no need— ethnographic expedition during which, with that experience, and I intuitively probably your peers back in Oklahoma and becomes connected to the cosmic Once you grab hold of the tiger, for a variety of reasons, I was invited to knew that I had to go in this direction. couldn’t have imagined and you could or the ultimate or whatever you want to and the tiger starts to sprint, it will RS no particular use for that. join the tribe. I did so; I am the first That meant that I needed to stay in India never have imagined would happen. call it, to the extent that your awareness be a roller coaster ride, and you will white man ever to become a member of for an extended period, which meant One thing just kept leading to the next. is able to connect to that reality, to that have to hold on, somehow. Your body RA Right. What you’ve just been saying Kenya’s Pokot tribe. I needed a long-term visa. The easiest But you’re kind of crediting awakened extent it is kundalini that is connected will do whatever it can do to try to points to several things in the notes I Joining the tribe was quite an way to get such a visa back then was to kundalini with this orchestration of to that reality. At this stage it would compensate. If the energy floods the took. One is that you mentioned that, experience, and, though I had to become a student; but I had no idea of your destiny—this intelligence woke probably be good not to call it kundalini right nostril you’ll start to burn up; if ideally, kundalini must awaken in a proceed to Europe shortly afterward ,I how to go about getting a student visa. up within you which began to direct all the time, because that word has now it takes over the left nostril you’ll get slow and controlled way. With practice intended to return and spend a longer In the event, I procured one within a the course of events in mysterious and accumulated additional associations, cold, constricted, frightened. If you and preparation you have to build a time there—something that never week: after the Kalachakra ended I took ultimately beneficial ways. even in India, but especially outside feel sufficiently terrorized you will grab foundation. As you said, you would’ve happened. Even though I’ve never been the train from Gaya to Bombay, where a India. Even though I was born in hold of some concept and use it as a started yoga at one month and you back there, and even though the main few days later I met a couple and their son RS I think it’s important at this point to the West, in the United States, I was post on which to tether your sanity. It’s would’ve built a strong physiological reason that I was invited to join was outside a restaurant who introduced me to draw a distinction between the physical fortunate to be born to parents who understandable; your body can’t have all foundation for its awakening. Maybe so that the initiation could be filmed other people through whom I met India’s kundalini, the pranic kundalini, and were Christians in the real sense of that of its cells suddenly waking up to the we can also refer to something else and otherwise documented by the then most eminent Ayurvedic physician, the mental kundalini, because self- term. I have had a personal connection supreme reality; you would explode. you wrote, that kundalini without, ethnographers (to preserve something who immediately arranged for me to be definition happens at all these different to Jesus Christ since I was very young— Your body has to find a way to hold perhaps, that necessary preparation, can of the tribe’s traditions, many of which accepted into the Tilak Ayurvedic College levels. not just an intellectual and not just an onto some of that prana, somehow; awaken in such a way that it inflates have, sadly, already disappeared), in Pune. I began my studies there in May emotional connection, but gut level later, if you are fortunate, you’ll learn and empowers limitations, so one may something real happened during that 1974; sixteen months later, in Pune, I met RA As we have our existence at all those connection as well. As that developed, how to let it go. Or maybe you’ll never end up with an insatiable hunger for initiation, sufficiently real that I can Vimalananda. levels, would you say that kundalini and to the extent that it had developed let it go; I’ve seen many people who’ve sex or food, or a huge ego inflation still feel the earth of Africa deep in After I was introduced to kundalini has its kind of manifestation and by the time I took LSD, I had already had partial kundalini awakenings who or deflation. You wrote of half-baked my own organism. Africa is a place of I had no idea of where I was going to functioning at every different level? established a connection to the non- freaked out and got stuck, and never aspirants, inflated with the power and great reality of a certain variety, and go or how I was going to get there, but physical world in a positive way, which let go. They can still make progress, but charisma of kundalini, becoming gurus. this experience was the culmination of I knew that whatever this energy was RS Absolutely. If you are existing at any was incalculably valuable for me. that progress will be limited so long as

34 Issue 20 Spring 2015 35 RS Well, let’s suppose that the kundalini less subtle centers will, if you allow universe to universe as a devotee of Lord RA And you’re not going to keep Veda was not written down until very liberation.” I get the sense—I harp on is awakening, the prana is moving now, it, encourage more energy to project Vishnu— refining if you think that there’s nothing recently; for thousands of years, its study this too much probably—that there trying to get into those very, very, very itself preferentially into those less more to refine, if you think— was exclusively oral—which means in are a lot of people who become aware subtle spaces where it can activate the subtle centers. If kundalini flows into RA Oh, is this the story about the water? practice that a student of the Vedas had of this whole Advaita thing and non- seeds of those chakras— these less subtle centers, your pranic RS You’re not going to keep refining if to sit for three hours a day for twelve duality and so on, and it resonates with and physical bodies will be delivered RS Indeed. Narada asked Vishnu, you think you’re already refined. years reciting his portion of the Veda. them deeply and intuitively. They then RA Are you referring to the sushumna tremendous amounts of prana which “Please show me your Maya,” and At the end of twelve years of Vedic mistake that knowledge that begins to here? will create within you a strong desire to Vishnu said, “OK. Go meditate RA If you think you’re done. That’s recitation you can be sure that you dawn for the actual experience to which activate those regions of your organism. over there.” Narada sat by the river, actually a key element in these would have perfected both asana and these sages and scriptures refer but as RS Sushumna. Since this happens before the process meditating on Vishnu. Before long interviews. Usually, toward the end, I pranayama; you simply cannot sit you said in the thing that you wrote, of transformation has progressed very a beautiful woman showed up, and ask the person, “What’s the next horizon reciting for three hours without aligning what many consider the culmination RA OK. far, your personality will still retain suddenly Narada was overtaken by love for you now? Where do you see it going your prana. I’ve done it; I know. But of their practices may be just be the substantial limitations, making it unable for her, and forgot Vishnu entirely. from here?” Most people have some recitation alone will not offer you access beginning. There are a lot of people RS Getting your prana to move into to see things from a wider perspective. Narada and the woman married and sense that there’s going to continue to into the Vedic world; if it were sufficient, who seem to think they’re finished who sushumna is doable, with some effort. You will then think, “I’m so hungry had children, and were living happily be refinement but some people think many thousands of priests and their are probably just starting out, in the big But prana moving in sushumna means that I simply have to eat,” and you will until one day a terrible flood came that it’s a dumb question. “How could there parrots would have been enlightened by picture of things. nothing more than prana moving in eat, and then eat some more. The more washed away Narada’s home and family. be anything more? All there is is this.” it. No, to enter into the Vedic reality you sushumna. Prana has to become much you eat, the more you will be hungry This made Narada miserable, and as And the whole notion of further—in have to activate the mantras you recite RS And in no way do I suggest that their more subtle before it can attain to the for, and you can easily find yourself he sobbed uncontrollably over his loss fact there are some fairly predominant so that they introduce you to various experience is not real. But it’s one thing level of sushumna where the chakras spiraling into a food addiction. Vishnu suddenly reappeared and said, spiritual circles these days which regard ethereal beings, with whom you will to have that experience and be in that are, which is the level where the five This can happen in any part of your “Now have you seen Maya?” the whole notion of progress and levels need to establish equitable relationships. space, and another thing to integrate elements exist, the five elements that organism, and it can happen to anyone, If Maya can do this to a being like of development and all that as utter BS. Only at the end of this complex process reality into your daily life. Otherwise make up the fabric of our external anywhere. How many so-called gurus Narada, what might Maya do to you They feel that it’s just a concession to will you be in a position to assert that instead of alcohol, it’s the experience reality. When you start to be able to have we seen, in this country and or me? What about Moses? Moses duality and that it’s just going to hang you are ready for Vedanta, for only that takes you over—if you’re drinking directly connect to those five elements others, who have achieved perception of was no an ordinary person; he had you up; you’re forever following the then will you be able to see that there in the experience, that’s one thing; that it is critically important that you be a certain quality and degree of absolute directly communicated with God, he carrot and not sort of realizing that you is something beyond both the physical can be useful, because the experience is calm and stable, otherwise you can do reality, but then fail to recall that such had extracted the Israelites from Egypt are that now. and the astral reality that cannot be an interface between you, a manifested real damage to yourself. That’s why the perception must be continuously re- and guided them through decades in imagined, much less spoken of. being, and the unmanifest. It’s a snapshot chakras are buried so deep in the pranic refined, and all detectable personality the wilderness, and just at the moment RS Just as you were saying that, there Just the other day I was re-reading the of where you are in your process of body: so that you will have to willfully limitations continuously re-dissolved, when he and they were about to enter was another earthquake. Isha Upanishad, which plainly states that, transformation, but it is only a snapshot; apply abundant attention and subtlety if one is not to reinforce one’s blind the Promised Land God said to Moses, while those who follow tamas go into a the process is, or should be, ongoing. of awareness if you want to reach them. spots? Your organism will make use of “Speak to the rock over there and it will RA There’s no real earthquake; of very dark place, even that place is not so If you grab hold of the experience and But, of course, sometimes kundalini whatever personality structures you may give you water.” Maybe because of the course, there’s no earth. dark as the place that is attained by those cling tenaciously to it, you interrupt the starts to move before your awareness possess for the purpose of maintaining influence of Saturn, or of his ahamkara, who follow the path of knowledge. process, and get stuck there. You must has been thoroughly clarified. She a sense of stability to permit it to or because God really wanted it that way, RS There’s no earth and it’s all ultimately digest your experiences, and understand is moving upwards, trying to find continue to exist while kundalini is or for some other reason, Moses didn’t an illusion. If that’s the case, I will gladly RA I remember that verse. that they are nothing more than her way to the supreme reality, but trying to dissolve it; and the personality speak to the rock; instead he hit it with watch while you sit in the middle of the indications of how your relationship with her awareness as ahamkara can still structures that are most likely to be his staff. Water came out, no doubt, and Swarovski store and pieces of crystal fall RS Vimalananda used to say that the the unmanifest is developing. Everything be reactivated. Suppose you have an available to be self-identified with are everyone drank; but then God said, “Oh on top of your head and you maintain worst ahamkara, the worst egoism of in life is a relationship. Recently I read inordinate fondness for food. Your those very blind spots. my goodness, Moses, what have you your calm awareness of untroubled non- all, is the egoism of knowledge, the something that suggests that, from a regular expression of desire for food done? Now, as a result of this, you can’t duality. And yes, I agree, gutter water is state that exists when you have a little mathematical point of view, the entire directs much of your attention, and RA That is a real interesting point you go to the Promised Land which you’ve absolutely the same as clean water, and if knowledge and think you have vast universe is nothing but relationship. therefore much of your prana, to the just made. It’s insidious. There’s this been trying to reach for the past umpteen you can live on dog shit, go right ahead. knowledge. Forget the particles, the waves, and fire element, which is in charge of sort of subtle tricky tendency which years. Everybody else will go, but you are But I need to see you doing that in order everything else. Relationships alone exist. appetite and digestion. The fire element usually flies totally beneath our radar going to have to stay behind here.” Oops! to be convinced, because otherwise I’m RA A little knowledge is a dangerous In India, we say that these relationships in its subtlest form appears within the to reinforce, as you just said, to buttress If confusion can happen to someone like not convinced. This I think is something thing. are with various forms of awareness most rarefied portion of sushumna, structures of the individuality of the ego Moses, it can happen to you or to me that probably was, at least to some degree, interacting with themselves— and in its less subtle forms appears in and to prevent its dissolution, to prevent at any time. It has often happened to accelerated by the Victorians when they RS A little knowledge is a terrifically less subtle regions of the pranic body, the takeover of unbounded awareness. me, many times; it’s depressing to think were in India—the concept of Vedanta. dangerous thing. RA—consciousness interacting with as well as in the gut, the solar plexus, It’s so tricky. That’s what they say maya about it. But there’s no escape; you have Now Vedanta is a very noble concept but itself in your physical body. These locations is. There are so many interesting stories to keep refining, keep refining, keep nobody seems to pay attention to the RA So what you’re saying is, there’s are all centers of fire energy; they are not in the Vedic literature about maya realizing every morning as you get out of fact that it is veda + anta. Anta means nothing inherently wrong with RS—in different ways. And interaction chakras in the ultimate sense of what a tripping people up. bed that some degree of abject ignorance end; veda + anta = the end of the Vedic knowledge but—there’s a Tibetan with the unmanifest is verily blissful. chakra is supposed to be, but they are is the price that you pay for being able to process. Most people today who talk proverb which I often quote, “Don’t But as an individual human being, you energy centers nonetheless. RS Yes, like the story of Narada, the exist as a human being. You simply have about Vedanta appear to be unaware that mistake understanding for realization possess certain constraints, constraints Any energy that flows into these celestial musician who wanders from to continue to refine. the process of Vedic study was oral. The and don’t mistake realization for that mean that you will not be able to

36 Issue 20 Spring 2015 37 experience the reality of the supreme And there’s Guru Arjan Dev, the fifth feeling really stable in that state, it will You don’t have appropriate perspective. Number one is, if you are truly focused, must boldly go forth and murder his 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, without guru of the Sikhs. The story is that the be very easy for you to come to the For the same reason a good doctor will as Ekalavya was, and not cheating your guru, grandfather, and cousins, for it dissolving. You must have some Mughal Emperor Jahangir was misled conclusion that this— rarely want, in a crisis, to treat his— awareness, you may be able to project is a central principle of classical Indian greasiness on you palm, or your nose, by Guru Arjan Dev’s own brother, sadly, that quality of guru-ness onto something society, clearly delineated in the dharma or somewhere else, there must be some who testified to the emperor that his RA—right, that you’re done— RA —his daughter or something. and have that thing guide you. But it texts, that no karma is worse than interface that will permit you to connect brother was a traitor. Jahangir, who was is so easy to cheat your awareness: “Oh murdering your guru—who happened to your limited being. Even if you are an overuser of wine and opium and so RS—that you’re done. RS Yes. If you can find a human guru, yes guruji, are you suggesting that I to be Dronacharya. How can Arjuna able to drive your organism from way had a tendency to act before thinking, this is a great thing, but maybe this have lasagna today? OK, I will” or, “The even come to grips with this? Krishna up in the sky, you will still need to sentenced Guru Arjan Dev to be baked RA In a couple weeks I’m going to doesn’t happen. Lord Siva is a handy guru has revealed to me that you will had to show him his universal form somehow connect the blissful you and to death in hot sand in the city of Lahore. interview a woman who had sort of guru, Jesus is a good guru. There are become my consort.” Provided that you before Arjuna could actually realize that your not-always-blissful organism. His disciples were forced to watch, and come to that conclusion. She’d been gurus out there. can restrain yourself, you can use such a the only answer is for him to keep both Whatever is your connection will be those disciples were of course very on this spiritual path and she was very ‘guru-projection’ as a guru. those dharmic realities in his awareness your Achilles’ heel. miserable, because their beloved guru easily absorbed in samadhi and in a real RA But that can just be your imagination. The other lesson relates tosimultaneously, acknowledging both, was suffering so. Finally one disciple nice place all the time and then she gave There are people who would say—they Dronacharya, Ekalavya’s weapons guru. no matter how difficult that might be. RA Yeah, and to a great extent it’s a could no longer stand it, and blurted birth to premature twins, both of whom wouldn’t use the word guru—but they If you are a guru and someone has gone Eventually one has to do the same matter of integration and stabilization. out, “Guruji, just say the word and I were blind and severely brain damaged would say that Jesus is their guru and through that ‘guru-projection’ process thing with kundalini: to keep both the I think there are people who—I think I will use all of my shakti to burn down and handicapped. Her life tuned into they’re handling rattlesnakes to prove it. and has succeeded so spectacularly that reality of the infinite and the reality know some—for whom the experience the entire city of Lahore.” At that Guru this incredible challenge which brought You can delude yourself. he actually became a better archer than of zero aligned with one another at all of whatever phrase you just used— Arjan Dev, despite his intense misery, her to the brink of suicide. But then she any of your own personal students, times, without permitting cognitive the ultimate, the supreme—is largely had to smile, and replied, “My dear, somehow managed to digest all this and RS You can delude yourself even if you then you need to accept that face that dissonance to take over. predominant 24/7 but it’s like a zoom you are my disciple. Do you think that incorporate it and learn the spiritual have a good guru. you were in fact his guru, though you lens which, if they’re in traffic, it’s if you could burn down Lahore, that I lessons from it and kind of integrate it. were never such in person. Making such RA And that is probably the key. gonna reside in the background a little could not do the same thing myself? Do And now she wouldn’t actually trade it RA True. a student chop off his thumb, which If you get established in yoga, in bit because they have to deal with the you think that I could not have escaped for anything because it was something ruined him as an archer, is a terrific being in the absolute and universal situation at hand. But it doesn’t take somehow, had I wished to? No—I that god gave her which she could RS It’s happened on many occasions. insult to the process of teaching itself; consciousness, then perform action, long for it to zoom forth again once it’s submitted myself to this torture because barely handle but managed to handle, And if you don’t have a guru, there’s you perfect a student and then destroy you will automatically reconcile all practical for it to do so. You mentioned this is the will of God, and the will of and turned out to be an evolutionary the famous example of Dattatreya. He’s him. What a karma! You will have to these polarities and paradoxes and Christ earlier and getting crucified and God is extraordinarily sweet. I couldn’t opportunity. not called Dattatreya in the Srimad pay a heavy price for that karma, so it irreconcilable dharmic conflicts that the kinda losing it on the cross for a bit. turn away from the will of the Supreme, Bhagavatam; in that text he is known happened with Dronacharya: When human intellect simply can’t figure out, I always wonder about people who no matter what the cost to me.” RS Wow. I salute her. as “the avadhuta,” but Dattatreya is during the war he (wrongly) believed cause karma is unfathomable. say they’re awakened or enlightened, well known as the original and ultimate that his son Ashwattama had been “How well would this hold up under RA Interesting. RA Yeah. We talked about yogis falling. avadhuta. Dattatreya explains that he had killed, he became so despondent that he RS Exactly. That’s what yoga really is. It’s crucifixion?” I mean it sounds a little We didn’t use that terminology, but 24 gurus, none of them was ever aware permitted himself to be killed. joining together two things that are in the morbid, it sounds a little gruesome, RS Yes. I thank God daily that I don’t people getting egos, getting inflated, that they were acting as gurus to him. ultimate sense fundamentally identical but you know to what degree is this have to do go through something like and people feeling they’re done and He witnessed what was going on in their RA Interesting. I forgot that that was but, in the current environment in which enlightenment actually stabilized under this. I have my own difficulties— becoming half-baked gurus and all that. lives, learned from it, and transformed the resolution of the story. It always we live, are polar opposites. Instead of the most severe possible conditions? everyone does—but at least they’re What would be the safeguard against himself. Of course, he was Dattatreya. So bothered me that he made Ekalavya cut allowing them to polarize and be apart difficulties that I can personally weather. that? Having a guru oneself who can tell far there’s been only one Dattatreya. his thumb off, I thought, wow, what a from one another, one must bring them RS I have traveled to Italy on many I don’t mind difficulties; my prayer is, you you’re not done, that would be one creep. to a place where, at the very least, they’re occasions, and have often visited Assisi. “Let me please survive them.” I suppose or— RA There was that story in the joined at a point. It’s like a placenta. Half Several times I have also been to La Mahabharata where Arjuna’s rival for RS India has two epics. The Ramayana of it is created from the mother, half of it Verna, the sanctuary where St. Francis RA Well they say god never gives you RS That is the best way. supremacy in archery was rejected is all about Rama, who believed that is created from the fetus—the two halves received the stigmata. St. Francis went more than you can handle. by their guru because the guru had he had a good idea of his personal of the placenta arise from two different out of his way to make his life difficult RA And having a good measure of promised Arjuna that he would make dharma, and tried his best to follow organisms but blood and nutrients can and miserable, especially in La Verna. RS And I think that’s probably true as humility even if you don’t have a guru him the best archer. So the guy went off it. In the Mahabharata everyone has shift between the two. And at La Verna, in the locations that long as you’re willing to handle what so as to keep yourself in check, or is that into the forest and built a little statue some unsolvable question of what he frequented, a quality exists that you you are given, and as long as you’re perhaps like trying to pull yourself up of the guru, worshiped that statue, and dharma to follow and how to follow RA Yeah. We started out this can’t help but feel, a flavor of how, aware that you have to handle it. I fear by your own bootstraps? And you really became the best archer, until the guru it. The Bhagavad Gita, which forms conversation talking about polarities. despite all of the difficulty he went that this is what goes on with some do need an external guide who can keep caught on to it. He made him cut his part of the Mahabharata, distills this There are political polarities and then through, how connected he was to that people who think they have reached. you going? thumb off but— dilemma for Arjuna. His obligation there’s the pro-gun and the anti-gun, reality. I believe that the awareness of St. There is a natural desire on the part to his immediate family and his allies the pro-abortion and the anti-abortion. Francis—which you can still sense in La of your organism—body, mind and RS My personal opinion and the RS His name was Ekalavya. and to Krishna Himself is one aspect There are so many polarities—they’re Verna, and at his tomb in Assisi—would spirit—to be stable. Should you reach opinion of my mentor was that it is very of his dharma, and his obligation to kind of tearing our society apart—which be able to hold up under crucifixion. But a state of awareness in which you are desirable to have an external guide. You RA Right. his cousins and grandfather and guru seem irreconcilable. There’s very little how many humans have ever attained to able to connect to the supreme reality know the old saying, The doctor who is another. Arjuna is naturally taken common ground or communication the state that St. Francis did? on a regular basis, and you find yourself treats himself has a fool for a patient. RS I get two main lessons form that story. aback when Krishna tells him that he going on. But the way I see it, and I think

38 Issue 20 Spring 2015 39 you alluded to this, with an infusion and offers solutions to a lot of these is found to just disappear. I think that or that you’d like to throw out before RS That’s the same thing here. Because RA Right. And then it won’t be a matter of divine consciousness from the most destructive conflicts. For instance, take second element—and this ties back we finish? Anything we haven’t covered? this is a kind of a death and rebirth of willful focusing. It will just be that subtle level into society I think perhaps the environment: is global warming real, to the whole kundalini discussion— experience, that thought that you have you are that and nothing can shake it. we’ll see that, mysteriously, solutions are is it not real? Both camps are divided— is the sustenance, the essence, the RS One thing more, which I would like as you’re dying to your previous self is found which manage to reconcile and of course the scientists are on the side energy which animates everything, to address to people who like your friend going to determine substantially how RS Exactly. harmonize these polarities. We’ll be able of it being real. But a solution which is is that divine energy. Perhaps all the went through a kundalini experience you’re reborn to your new self, even to progress and survive as a society. holistic is, let’s not worry about whether difficulties we see in the world are due and who are now asking themselves though it happens to be in the same RA Are you aware of this kundalini care it’s real or not. Let’s progress and come to insufficient flow of it, insufficient whether that experience was nothing but physical body. institute in Tennessee? Joan Harrigan? A RS That is certainly my hope. That’s the up with technologies which would be supply of it, and if it can be enlivened in delusion. To these people, and frankly number of my friends have gone there way we’ve survived so far. Somehow or beneficial regardless of whether global the world, it will enrich the world and to anyone who is going through any RS Although the last thought at the and say that they’ve had great results another, some sort of compromise has warming is manmade or not. There can help all these problems to dissipate, just kind of kundalini experience, I would time of death isn’t necessarily edifying. in terms of kundalini that was blocked always been reached. During the Civil be an economic advantage; it won’t cost as a dullness and deadness of individual like to say this: in my opinion, the most So wouldn’t you say that the real anchor or misdirected being unblocked or War an extreme level of conflict was us jobs, it will create jobs. You know, life is dissipated by an enlivenment of it important thing in life is to stay calm. that we need to take in is the redirected. required before that compromise could that kind of thing. within the individual. You can if you like freak out when no self, the absolute. That’s why Krishna be reached, and the compromise that crisis is occurring, but when a crisis does was able to smile on the battlefield, RS I have. In fact a friend of mine went was reached was quite imperfect: first RS We know that there is more CO2 RS I agree entirely and, sadly, I think a occur, like last night’s earthquake when because he was that ultimate reality and there—it must be 15 , 20 years ago— there was Reconstruction, then Jim than has been in the atmosphere for big reason why there is an impediment we had to wonder whether a wall might therefore the drama unfolding before and also reported very good results. I Crow and re-segregation. Ironically it what? Hundreds of thousands of years? to progress in this direction is the actually collapse on top of us, you have him couldn’t overthrow, him couldn’t haven’t been there myself so it’s only was Woodrow Wilson, the man who fact that so many scientists are such to be calm. Maintaining calm is your overshadow him. hearsay but I heard good things back tried to get rid of war by promoting the RA Millions. dedicated materialists. path to survival. Whatever the crisis, you then, and you can report good things League of Nations, who re-segregated have to know where to position yourself, RS It’s true, but of course he was Krishna now. the federal government—a good RS Whether or not this is going to RA Yeah. when to run and hide and when to do and he was always, or almost always, example of how two very different cause global warming or global cooling, something else. You will only be able to swimming comfortably in that ultimate RA Yeah. I haven’t been there myself polarities can exist in one person. it’s not normal, and cannot have a good RS This is for me the basic difference function effectively in a crisis if you can reality. My mentor therefore used to say but half dozen friends have gone Frankly, it seems to me that compromise effect. We may not know what the between Indian science and modern maintain sufficient awareness of what’s that, until you get to a state of similar and said good things about it. So I’m should be possible for at least some of effect is, but we can be very sure that science: modern science believes that going on in the world outside, and an elevation, you are better off having a just throwing that out in case there’s the polarities facing our country now. any time—this is basic science—any everything is based in matter and that understanding about how you might act form and a name to focus on, whether anybody listening to this who is having For example, I don’t want to see abortion time you take a system at equilibrium consciousness arose by some process effectively in that situation. of Krishna or Jesus or a giant cosmic kundalini problems. They might want available on every street corner, and I and suddenly add something to it in of deus ex machina, while Indian A calm attitude is even more essential mulberry. Kundalini has been “put to to look that up. also don’t want to have women going massive amount, that system will going science believes that consciousness is in when your organism is experiencing the sleep” by evolution in general and your You’ve written about a dozen books, into back alleys and dying miserable out of equilibrium. Moreover, there fact the base of all existence and that earthquake of redefinition, so please time in the womb in particular; she including Aghora, books I, II, and III, deaths as a result as a result of botched are way too many humans now, more matter emerged from consciousness as don’t jump to conclusions, don’t assume sleeps when she identifies with the five and The Greatness of Saturn...quite a procedures. than the effective carrying capacity of consciousness became progressively more anything. When your transformational elements that make up your physical renaissance man. our planet if we desire health for our opaque to itself. In no way do I deny the energy gets activated anything you body—earth, water, fire, air, and space RA Right. many terrestrial ecosystems. It’s our reality of matter, but I’m often amazed imagine has a much greater potential and the five elements from which the RS Well, the more that I learn, the more responsibility as the apex species to be when I read or hear well-trained scientists than usual to actually manifest in some subtle body is fashioned—smell, taste, that I realize just how ignorant I really RS And I certainly am fine with hunters all the more attentive to minimizing as becoming ridiculously vehement about way, to become concrete. Please keep touch, form, and sound. For as long as am, which is a great blessing. (including many of my relatives) going best we can our footprint, our impact, the impossibility of consciousness coming back to whatever it is that you she is habituated, conditioned to exist out and shooting deer and feral pigs for on all levels of our existence. existing outside of protoplasm. How can have faith in. As a friend of mine in within these sensory walls, kundalini RA That is a good thing yeah. food, but am not fine with people being they possibly know? That insistence is so India is fond of saying, your real guru will continue to search via your senses able to take guns into churches and RA The point I keep coming back to in utterly unscientific. is the last face that you would see in for items composed of those gross and RS Good to know your limitations. colleges and airports and— my own thinking is that the best way your mind’s eye as you were drowning. subtle elements. Until your perception for us to do that is for higher conscious- RA I know, and that’s a topic for a whole Whatever is most dear to you will come becomes subtle enough to have RA Thanks again, Robert. RA Yeah. If we infuse a more enlightened ness, enlightenment—whatever terms other discussion. Some of the people to mind as you go down for that third “awakened” from the need for name consciousness into the equation, we want to use—to become more I interview, we have gone into that to time; whatever that may be, grab hold of and form, it’s often most useful to have RS Thank you. into the situation, then I think that prevalent in the world. This is part of some extent. In fact you might enjoy the it tenaciously and never let go, because a tool that is connected to at least one of tendency to polarize diminishes, the my motivation for doing this show. As science of non-duality conference out in that’s the thing that will have the them, a name or a form. RA I’ve been speaking with Robert tendency to rigidly adhere to one end Einstein said, you don’t solve a problem California. It’s a whole bunch of spiritual power to keep all your prana and your Svoboda and this interview is part of an of the spectrum without appreciation at the same level of consciousness at people and a whole bunch of scientists organism and your energy and all the RA Like a mantra or something. ongoing series. There are about 225 of for the other. You’re an example of which it was created. You have to go to getting together and discussing issues rest of you focused in more or less the them in the can so far. I do a new one someone can see both sides and they a new level of consciousness. This is the such as that. Probably better wrap it up. same direction as you proceed through RS A mantra or a visualization. The each week. They can all be found at don’t have to be mutually exclusive. principle of second element—you don’t It seems like you and I could go on all this transformational experience. face of god. Something that you can www.batgap.com They can both be incorporated into a get rid of the darkness in the room by day just taking little seed thoughts and grab hold onto until your awareness is larger perspective. Enlightenment has investigating it or analyzing it or arguing expanding upon them. This has been RA Well, they say that the last thought sufficiently stabilized in the expansive practical applications for the mundane over it; you get rid of it by bringing in great. I really enjoyed this conversation. at the time of death determines the next way that you can just focus on that issues that preoccupy our society a second element, light. Then darkness Is there anything that is in your mind birth. expansiveness.

40 Issue 20 Spring 2015 41 giant, a cross-cultural pioneer, and a questioning his superiors one time too contact with Indians from every region, BEHIND THE OCHRE ROBE profoundly private mystic. Born in 1923 many. Determined to take sannyas, he social status and background from THE EXTRAORDINARY LIFE AND DEATH OF AGEHANANDA BHARATI as Leopold Fischer in the luxury of his left for Banaras, the holy city on the the earliest years of his life until his family’s country estate in Czechoslovakia Ganges. There, on Nirvani Ghat, he met death. His unique experience not only ROXANNE KAMAYANI GUPTA, Ph.D. complete with private zoo, formal with his diksa guru (initiator), a Mahant transformed his personal identity, but gardens, and a bevy of servants, he was in the prestigious Sankaracharya order Western scholarship as well. raised in Vienna by nannies while his who, after questioning him for several Even as a monk Bharati could not mother pursued her social life and his days, agreed to perform the ritual. The hide his erudition and as his reputation father traveled the continent playing Dasnami or “Ten Named” branches spread, his company was sought out by polo. With only one younger brother, established by Sankara, the 8th some of the most educated, distinguished Leo was afforded great independence century proponent of Advaita Vedanta, and wealthy Hindus of the independence from an early age. He spent his youth unified myriad Hindu sects under one period. He was soon accepting teaching and early teens playing tennis, attending central organization and has ever since positions at Delhi and Banaras Hindu yracuse University, January 1991: the opera, and rummaging in city functioned as the major arbiter of Hindu Universities as well as at Nalanda SI bounded up the stairs to the bookstores. A brilliant student in the orthodoxy. His guru gave him the University. But his antinomian lifestyle, Department of Anthropology. I had classics, by the age of 12 he discovered name Agehananda meaning “the bliss added to his outspoken criticism of post- just returned to campus from Banaras, his true passion: India. He once told me of homelessness” and the title Bharati, colonial Indian cultural developments, India, where I had spent a year and a the story of how he discovered an old indicative of membership in the eventually got him into trouble. half researching a radical tantric sect. I and expensive Sanskrit grammar in an of Sringeri Math of the South. Ironically, his critiques of modernity could not wait to once again meet my antique bookstore and persuaded his In The Ochre Robe, Bharati offers a that many Indians found so offensive Ph.D. advisor, my mentor and beloved bemused father to purchase it for him. rare and critical insider’s glimpse into were from a more conservative classicist friend of 20 years, Agehananda Bharati, The owner of the shop commented, the rites, customs, and experiences perspective. He was, in many ways, more one of the world’s leading authorities on “This is a rare and precious book. Your of a Hindu sannyasi. Despite the rich Hindu than many caste Indians of his Tantra, Indian Philosophy and culture son is going to grow up to be a very and varied experiences that were yet generation. who was credited with opening up a new learned man.” to unfold, his initiation into sannyas Swami was fond of recounting the field within the academy with his now By the age of 14 Leopold could read remained the central organizing story of the straw that broke the camel’s classic treatise, The Tantric Tradition. Sanskrit, and, having arranged private principle in his life and psyche, and key back, the incident that ostensibly Known as “Swami” to those closest to lessons for himself, began conversing in to the contradictions he embodied. If played a major role in his leaving India. him, Agehananda Bharati, Austrian by Hindi and Bengali without ever having Bharati had so chosen, he could have Today there are a few surviving elderly birth, was the first Westerner on record stepped foot on Indian soil. On his 16th retreated then and there into a life of professors in Benaras who recall the to take sannyas (formal renunciation) in birthday he pledged his loyalty to India, meditation in a monastic cell, with all incident, now with nostalgic humor. the famed Hindu Sankaracharya order, converted to Hinduism and adopted of his needs taken care of. He might 1950’s Benaras was another world, a a ritual he described in detail in his the spiritual name Ramachandra. A few have risen to a high status within the microcosm of Hindu India, dominated autobiography, The Ochre Robe. He was years later, in 1942, he was summoned to institutional structure, or become a by conservative orthodox values, and a towering figure: Brilliant, outspokenly Berlin where he was secretly introduced renowned teacher on the ghats. But then as now, collectively self-conscious irreverent, and eccentric, He stood 6’7” to the enigmatic revolutionary Subhas instead, he chose to throw his danda of the city’s image as “Hindu Central.” tall and, for most of his life, weighed Chander Bose, legendary founder of the (ritual staff indicative of his status Bharati burst on the scene, the great close to 300 lbs. Fluent in Sanskrit and Indian National Army who disappeared within the order) into the Ganges and white anomaly. Administrators at the several European and Indian languages, a few years later, attaining something sought out the real India, the real world, University disapproved of Bharati’s his colorful history and personality was of a cult status in India. Soon after, and the real self. easy fraternization with his students, the stuff of legends in academic circles Leopold was drafted into Hitler’s army Bharati spent the next eighteen but he had been invited to teach by on three continents. where he managed a transfer to the months walking India barefoot, staying B.H.U.’s founder, Sri Madan Mohan I excitedly burst into my professor’s Indian Legion and served in the signals in towns and villages, and, in fulfillment Malviya. Bharati loved to take groups office. One look and my heart sank. corps. Already nauseated by the Fuhrer of his vows, begging for his meals. It was of his students on boating trips and One half of his face was fallen and and despite avoiding open combat, this extensive period of intimate contact field excursions to nearby sweet shops, expressionless, a sure sign of a stroke. what he experienced before, during with the Indian soil that planted the temples and pilgrimage sites. Years Within hours, we were at Upstate and after the war, including three years seed of his later career as an Indologist after Swami’s death, Pandit Siva Kumar Medical for tests and by evening I was as a POW, forged in him a lifelong and anthropologist, not to mention Sastry, the grandson of Malviya, shared the only person standing by his bed when aversion to violence, all forms of his inordinate fondness for the many with me his fond memories of those the head surgeon starkly announced: political authoritarianism and religious varieties of Indian home cooking. While outings, Bharati’s generosity in picking “Professor, you have advanced stage dogmatism. we in the West love to rehash the eastern up the tab, and his outrageous sense brain cancer.” Unflinching, Bharati After the war, in 1949, Leopold escapades of poets, dropouts and hippies of humor. What he appreciated most asked “How long do I have?” The reply: embarked for India. His first stop was like Alan Ginsberg and Baba Ram Dass, about him, he told me, was his lack of “Four to six months.” the Ramakrishna Mission headquarters Bharati’s enculturation provides a much hypocrisy. For Bharati, philosophy was So began the last chapter in the in Calcutta, but in less than three years deeper and complex narrative of East- neither a solemn affair nor a subject to extraordinary life of an intellectual as an acolyte, he was dismissed for West encounter, for he had firsthand be confined to the classroom.

42 Issue 20 Spring 2015 43 With his towering height and his upbringing. But his adoption of and his friends and supporters in high did not hesitate to shoot back “None of ears,” it took years and mounds of soft don the Ochre Robe. Following spreading notoriety, he could not hide the tradition did not stop him from places eventually got his visa reinstated. your business!” roti with ghee to live the episode down. traditional format, he would go through much. Things finally came to a head critiquing the oppressive treatment of Later in his life he spent every winter I vividly recall my first class with On another occasion he ridiculed some a text, usually one of the Upanisads, by when he arranged a love tryst with a minorities including women. Bharati university break in India, traveling and Bharati, “Magic and Religion,” naïve viewpoint of mine at a party and reading a verse in Sanskrit, translating it girlfriend, a young coed, in a dorm was a lifelong outspoken proponent lecturing. during the fall semester of 1971, my reduced me to tears. I had to consciously into English, and then do the same with room. Legend has it that the vice of the political and social equality of In the late 1950’s Bharati left sophomore year. It was enough to give decide whether our relationship was a traditional commentary on the text, chancellor and other authorities were women across cultures. India for a teaching stint in Japan. you culture shock: Over 200 students worth the ego injury. But India had usually Sankara’s, then an additional literally peeking through the keyhole His respect for the feminine went He then visited America for the first packed into the law school auditorium, already taught me that to learn from commentary upon the commentary when they were caught. Of course he even deeper. Although he kept it time, securing a teaching post at the Bharati on stage rattling rapid fire gurus, you have to close your mouth either in Sanskrit or one of the was immediately expelled. extremely private, at the center of his University of Seattle and, soon after, into a microphone–terms, jokes, jabs and swallow your pride. I hung in. vernacular languages. Finally he would Rather than showing the slightest altar was a Sri Yantra, symbol of the at Syracuse where he served as Chair and stories flying a mile a minute. When, after graduation, I took an offer his own comments highlighting regret, Bharati used to repeat this tale, esoteric worship of the divine feminine, of the Department of Anthropology After trying in vain to take notes, I eight-year break from academia to raise the issues at stake, and open the floor wearing it like a badge of honor. As a the tantric “secret” that lies at the heart for over twenty years. Over his career humorously tossed my pen into the air. my son and pursue dance, our friendship for questions. monk, Bharati took seriously the fact of India’s most orthodox, conservative, he published eleven books and more Joints were occasionally being passed remained my main connection to These were some of the highest that sannyasins were not bound by the and in some areas, outwardly misogynist than 500 articles and monographs in from aisle to aisle, while a small circle of academia and the intellectual life. My moments of my life. Week after week, normative rules of society. In 1960’s religious institutions. The only major English, German, and Hindi. Major hippies in the back row were engaged in husband and I opened a small vegetarian I would wait for others to ask their America, consensual sex between world religion to boast an uninterrupted Indian newspapers regularly carried a low level chant. Bharati stopped in mid restaurant and Bharati drove over an questions and then jump in. The volley professors and students was nothing to tradition of Goddess worship also his interviews and guest editorials. His sentence to inquire whether the coven hour to attend the grand opening. The would begin, back and forth, over the write home about and such openness includes the famous Manusmriti dictum publications often transcended the in the corner expected extra credit. Two following summer I arranged to pick “net of .” The more questions I was the norm. I can still see him now, that in youth a female should be under merely academic to become popular, dogs chased each other around the room him up for a dinner out in Syracuse. served, the more brilliant images would laughing at his exploits and recounting the control of her father, after marriage especially his autobiography and a later and attempted to copulate on the stage. To fool him into thinking our business he throw back to me, drawing me for the umpteenth time his definition of under the control of her husband, and philosophic exploration, The Light at the Bharati’s comment was inaudible above was a great success, I borrowed my deeper into my own reflexive awareness. a puritan: “A person who is worried that as a widow, under the control of her Center: Context and Pretext of Mysticism. the crowd’s laughter. No wonder he cousin’s white Lincoln Continental Drawing upon my meditational somewhere, someone might be having son. When Sati, the arcane custom He also inspired a character in Arthur developed something of a cult following complete with stereo sound system and and psychotropic experiences, the fun.” The quest for freedom in his eyes of widow self-emulation flared up Koestler’s The Lotus and the Robot. among the alternative types! an automatic convertible top. Dining teachings of my guru and latent past was not confined to the spiritual realm. as an issue in India in the 1980’s, the As an anthropologist Bharati was It was a year later, during my junior at a tiny French restaurant, at three life memories, I would leap frog over Throughout his life Bharati relished Sankaracharya of Puri, the head of the well-known for coining the term year in where I was adjoining tables sat three different concepts to plunge into the depths of the company of beautiful women, Eastern headquarters of the order to “pizza effect” which refers to the re- conducting an independent study of couples, each conversing in a different intuitive understanding. Just as in the provided they were as intelligent as which Bharati belonged, defended the importation of cultural ideas and classical dance, that we connected. language. Now it was his turn to show tantras and agamas where teachings are they were attractive. Yet, there was practice, but Bharati found as much practices once they have become I wrote to him, sharing some of my off–much to the delight of everyone framed in the dialogue between Siva and nothing lecherous about him. While he scriptural evidence within the same popular abroad. He used this concept to experiences, and towards the end of the present, he carried on a simultaneous Sakti, this interchange was the boon of shared his repertoire of “Count Bobby” tradition to condemn it. refer to the popular rediscovery of yoga year, invited him to be the chief guest conversation with every couple, each in a lifetime, an unequalled pleasure, an European off-color jokes at a variety The many contradictions of Indian in India which began in earnest in the at my arangetram, (first public dance their own language! interaction of supreme grace and energy of social venues, I never heard him culture were not lost on Bharati who 1960’s. He also wrote extensively on the performance) at Ravindra Bharathi In the 80’s, upon Swami’s recom- that I wondered what I had ever done recount anything nasty or misogynist– did not hesitate to point out the human “emic” (insider) versus “etic” (outsider) in Hyderabad. Of course he couldn’t mendation, I returned to Syracuse for to deserve. the punch line of his jokes was usually rights violations, hypocrisies, or simply distinction in anthropological method. attend, but he wrote me encouraging graduate studies and, almost up until Yet despite our mutual respect and at the expense of the male whose lust aesthetic ignominies of East or West. Bharati managed his own complex letters and I still cherish the telegram the time I earned my Ph.D., I became affection, Swami and I used to argue turns him into a fool. Despite his In India, the chaotic dialectic between East/West, practitioner/scholar identity blessing I received the afternoon of the a permanent fixture in his life, regularly on one issue in particular. While penchant for the open discussion of the Absolute One and its myriad forms, by segmentation–becoming acutely program. stopping by his office to discuss an Swami resonated with the 60’s quest sexuality, humorous or serious, for him, between the theoretical ideal and actual aware that the anthropologist in him I returned to America the following academic or personal issue, and inviting for freedom, he rejected the “new age” no less than for his colleague Wendy practice, between social hierarchies might take one position on a topic, the fall with my Indian husband, Jayant him to my dance performances which popularization of Hindu thought. He Doniger, a scholar and friend for whom and mystical non-dual states is woven monk another, and by a clarification of Gupta, the grandson of the Sanskritist he always attended. Bharati officiated vociferously and unrelentingly critiqued he had great admiration, there was no into the very “warp and woof” (to use intellectual values as distinct from his Dr. Raghuvira, and nephew of Buddhist at my son’s Upanayana (sacred thread the spread of Indian yogic traditions question of any opposition between an Upanisadic image) of the human mystical practice, a process he explains Scholar Dr. Lokesh Chandra, with ceremony) with the help of a Brahmin; in the West, right from Swami sexuality and what was then referred experience. The linguistic negotiation in The Light at the Center. However, both of whose scholarship Bharati was as a sannyasin he could not make Vivekenanda who addressed the World to as “women’s liberation.” Both these of Indo-complexity was Bharati’s when it came to his own mysticism, his very familiar. At a time when both offerings into the ritual fire. As the Parliament of Religions in 1895, up scholars, infinitely more familiar with specialty, which is why he always had so spiritual practice, he remained largely my husband and I were experiencing Hindu Chaplain at Hendricks Chapel, to “Maharaj Ji,” the 14-year old Guru the classical tradition than the vast much to say, in his teaching, his private tight-lipped. As the first Hindu chaplain culture shock, “Swami,” became one Swami offered weekly talks attended who in the late 60’s initiated thousands majority of their puritanical critics, conversations, and his writings. at Syracuse University’s Hendricks of our closest friends and supports. But by local and campus Hindus, mostly in the Houston Astrodome. In ASIA understood that kama could not be Yet after he published his Chapel, he would expound upon like so many sadhus, he could be hot Indian graduate students in science and magazine Bharati wrote: separated from dharma, artha or moksa. autobiography, Bharati was deemed Sanskrit verses and their traditional tempered and harsh with those who engineering, with scattered members "I state categorically that I regard The erotic plays a central role in Hindu persona non grata by the Indian commentators for hours on end, wanted to draw close. The first time he of the department all but two or three small Hindu myths, rites and worldview, which for government for a number of years. explicating the hairsplitting differences came to our small apartment for dinner, thrown in. I used to sit in the front row. organizations in this country as Bharati clearly gave the tradition an Exiled from his spiritual home, his between various schools of Hindu I nervously dried out the rotis in the For me, his talks were a metaphysical essentially fraudulent…The kind of aesthetic as well as theological edge interviews and articles continued to be philosophy. But if anyone ever asked oven. Not only did Swami, on the spot, treat, as he would remove his Hinduism that sells well in the West over the Judeo-Christian traditions of published in India as well as the West, him which interpretation he favored, he shout at me for serving him “elephant anthropologist’s hat and symbolically is a phony Hinduism, which I call

44 Issue 20 Spring 2015 45 “neo-Hinduism” or “swami-Hinduism” sampradayas, that allowed Swami to full Indian regalia, and donned a red in good form, humorously quipped conflict within me, as I could not share I have no idea if my words had since Indian swamis acting as gurus to admit me into his inner circle. Perhaps silk sari. I soon spotted him, head above that ours was likely the only tantric with my advisor any of the information, anything to do with it, but I never Western disciples are its harbingers. It it was that as Westerners we had both the crowd, in a baggy raincoat, coming gathering in the world where men and stories and experiences I had stored up saw him in that state again. Slowly, as relates to genuine Hinduism the way “gone native” and in different ways had toward me in a flustered state. women were housed separately. during my year and a half in Banaras. I weeks turned into months, a palpable pulp novels relate to literature, and paid for it. Or perhaps it was because “You need to come to my room The following fall I left for my could not take his help nor benefit from aura of peace grew around him. It was would not even be recognized in the we both loved to argue and then go for immediately!” doctoral research in Banaras. As my his incredible storehouse of knowledge. as if his heart was somehow playing villages of India." (ASIA, November, a cup of tea. “Why Swami?” advisor, Bharati had turned me on to Although I thought I understood what catch up with his mind. He was visibly December 1979) As a dancer and mother of a young “Don’t ask questions!” the topic of the Aghoris of Banaras, was happening, I had to struggle with a moved by the outpouring of concern In agreement with my diksa guru, son with diverse interests, I certainly Up we went in the elevator. Entering and was as excited as I was about it. selfish desire to hold onto the teacher I and gratitude as many of his former Swami Ganeshanand Saraswati, (aka never felt I could live up to the high his room he opened his coat and there During my year and a half in the holy had known. Later, I realized that what students, now associated with various Ganesh Baba) a dasnami Mahant with standards of scholarship he theoretically in the front of his pants was a large city, 1989-9I BI (before internet) we he was teaching me was an invaluable spiritual communities around the world, credentials Swami could not question, I demanded. Yet he read my devotion conspicuous hole. corresponded regularly. One letter, lesson about the limits of academia, and, called for special prayers and rituals. defended the incursion of Indian gurus to both him and the tradition, and “These are the only pants I brought! unfortunately lost now, stands out as ironically enough for someone who had In addition to the Sri Rajarajeshwari to the West as an evolutionary global delivered invaluable teachings to me You need to help me!” particularly memorable. I was describing identified so heavily with the intellect Temple of Rochester and the Sri movement worth taking seriously. in ways I could grasp. In return, I grew Swami had neglected his wardrobe for all the accounts of supernatural miracles throughout his life, the inadequacy of Venkateshwara Temple of Pittsburg, But Bharati judged authenticity solely close enough to him to be able to give years nor was his a pant size you could being narrated by my informants, the the mind to exhaust the full significance these communities ranged from the according to the standards set by the him honest feedback. One night after find in department stores. Needless to followers of Avadhut Bhagwan Ram, the of an incarnation. Sakhya Buddhist Community of textual traditions. A true classicist, he a talk he gave, I said to him “Swami, say, we missed the reception. With hotel head of the sect I was studying. I wrote, For the final months of his life, Bonn, Germany to a Columbus, Ohio, especially detested the Theosophists and you have no idea how harshly you come sewing kit in hand, I sat on his bed “Please don’t expect me to attempt some Agehananda Bharati shifted his Christian prayer group. A Puerto Rican Hindu reformists of the 19th and early 20th across sometimes. You simply cannot dressed like an Indian princess mending meta-explanation for these experiences, residence to Rochester where he Shaman was in regular attendance along centuries, who had laid the foundations continue to lambaste people so. It’s his pants while he stood there fuming in as if I know better what is really going was tenderly cared for by Rita and a with Rita herself who seemed the very of the current new age trends. Perhaps embarrassing!” In reply he uttered a suit jacket and baggy boxer underwear. on. As far as I am concerned, if these dedicated staff of health professionals. embodiment of compassion. As part of because he could see how endangered long drawn out “hmmmmmm,” a sign I lectured him on the need for a new miracles are real to them, they are real, There he received a steady stream of his soul’s education, the very forms of the Indian traditions were in the face of he was thinking about it. I knew that at wardrobe befitting his new size and period!” He wrote back that while visitors, friends and colleagues, and spirituality he had once critiqued now modernity, he stood squarely opposed heart he was an extremely generous and reputation. Thankfully, on his next trip perhaps he would have once objected, many former students who wanted to conspired to sustain his spirit. to much of what Ganesh Baba and I compassionate man, and that his rough to India he had a series of raw silk suits in case I hadn’t noticed, he had changed pay tribute to his influence. Those who Everyone who visited spoke of the celebrated–innovation, the translation, exterior had been consciously cultivated tailored and I never saw him in shabby considerably in the last several years could not come called or wrote letters, incredibly peaceful vibrations in the importation, and popularization of to keep the masses at bay. dress again. and wholeheartedly agreed with my many of them voluminous. house. Perhaps this was what acceptance Eastern yogic practices in the West, and Soon enough, Bharati underwent In the fall of 1988, in his honor, I decision to go with an “emic” (insider’s) As someone who observed my brings, but to those of us present, it the synthesis of Western science and a radical transformation: In the mid volunteered to host and coordinate the narrative. My heart leapt to receive that professor’s departure over a four-month felt like pure love. The more Swami Eastern spirituality. Yet arguing with 1980’s, his doctors informed him that semi-annual Conference of the Society letter, and the acknowledgment that he period, I can report that in Swami’s case, withdrew into the silence of his inner him never felt like an exercise in futility. if he didn’t lose weight he would not for Tantric Studies at Syracuse. The self-consciously embraced the changes Elizabeth Kubler Ross’s stages of dying world, the more the feeling deepened, He would easily concede points and survive another ten years. Immediately, program was organized as a tribute to he had gone through in recent years. He fail to do justice to the grace with which permeating the atmosphere until it was modify the discussion in light of new with the help of his devoted companion Bharati and his Buddhist counterpart, even pointed out that he had himself he underwent his final renunciation. those closest to him who went into a information. Unlike many academics, Rita, he severely restricted his food Alex Wayman, as founding pioneers experienced his share of inexplicable Perhaps it was partly due to the excellent kind of denial, as if we could take care he was never hesitant to change his intake and began exercising. With of the field. Held over events in India. “So,” I thought, “after care which ensured that he never faced of him forever and continue basking in opinion or admit that he was wrong. customary discipline, he stationed a weekend at a rustic Christian retreat all these years, we are not so far apart.” intense physical pain, but I never saw the bliss, the Ananda of Ageha. I sometimes wonder what Swami cycle in his office and rode daily for center amongst fallen leaves, I threw While losing weight had mellowed any signs of shock, denial, or anger. Agehananda Bharati’s final gesture would have had to say if he had lived precisely thirty minutes each morning Indian bedspreads over the beaten Bharati’s personality, it was during his Yet one Thursday, (I spent every was as dramatic as the life he had led. to see the current state of Hindu and afternoon. Weather permitting, down furniture, burned incense and final months that the real transformation Thursday with him those months) After a series of seizures had left him affairs, including the recent attacks on he also took up jogging. The results carved a tantric jack-o-lantern to took place. What was most remarkable about six weeks into his ordeal, I found drained, he could no longer move his the scholarship of such distinguished were dramatic. In a year he lost over a welcome participants, some of today’s to me was that, from the time he him in an entirely different mood, silent left arm. Yet ever the tantric and secret scholars as his colleague Wendy Doniger. hundred pounds and, in the process, most illustrious scholar/practitioners: received the diagnosis of brain cancer, and withdrawn. Looking into his eyes, devotee of the Divine feminine, he However much they might have once much of his hot temper. Like his David White, Paul Muller Ortega, Swami totally abandoned his academic I was startled to read an expression of somehow lifted his arm, reached over disagreed, I am sure that if either were outdated, hand tailored European suits, Thomas Coburn, Douglas Brooks, June identity and psychologically donned abject terror. Perhaps it was finally and placed his left hand on Rita’s head, alive today, both Bharati and my guru his arrogance and impatience no longer McDaniel, Miranda Shaw, and Daniel the Ochre Robe for his remaining days. hitting him. I asked, “Swami, What do then took his last breath. His body was Ganesh Baba would have been outraged fit him. Gold, among others. Papers were With so many half-finished articles, a you see?” Quietly he replied “Nothing. burnt in Rochester, NY and the ashes at any right wing attempt to enforce a That brings to mind a humorous presented with Bharati and Wayman as final autobiography in the planning, When I close my eyes I am staring into were scattered in his beloved cities of “party line” on the world’s most diverse episode we shared in the late 80’s. I first respondents. In the evening I had and several student projects pending, a void.” I took his hand and swallowed Rishikesh and Banaras. and tolerant religious tradition. was dancing for a plenary session of the scholars chopping vegetables and making including my own dissertation, he hard. Did I dare say what immediately At the memorial ceremony held at In retrospect, I realize that while Annual Conference of the American curries, and I suspect some passed turned his back on the intellect and came into my mind? If not me, who? I Hendricks Chapel, I offered a dance to Swami was defending an endangered Academy of Religion in San Francisco the peace pipe behind closed doors. entered fully into the heart. He never seized the opportunity. “That is exactly Lord Siva and my words included the tradition, I was defending my very and Swami was invited as a respondent. Two separate dormitories provided opened another book nor lifted his pen. where you have to enter in. This is the following: identity. Perhaps it was my commitment We arranged to meet at the cocktail the sleeping accommodations. Swami If I tried to sneak in some question or moment that all of your meditations It may be interesting to some of you to the discipline of Indian classical reception opening the conference. I enjoyed the company and scholarship of comment related to my dissertation, have led to. You must draw upon those who don’t know this, that at the time dance, the legitimacy of my guru wanted to surprise him by dressing in his academic offspring immensely and, he changed the subject. This created a experiences now.” of Swami’s departure from the body,

46 Issue 20 Spring 2015 47 according to the rules of his monastic very axiom. Only the axioms themselves dependent on American standards of order, there was no religious injunction must not be impugned.” (OR: p. 135) plumbing.” (OR p. 206) for any ritual to be performed. This is because the initiation of a Hindu On Hindu monks and the values of On the Siva Linga: sannyasi is one in which the adept “humanistic individualism”: “…The linga stands for Siva, who is consciously and systematically “In Hindu India, the monk is free to the god of asceticism, of renunciation, undergoes a ritual death and performs think and to teach as he pleases; the the tutelary god of all monks. The linga his own funerary rites…For seven nights layman is bound by social taboos at is not priapic; its erect shape indicates after his initiation in 1950, Agehananda every step. Compared to the latter’s complete control, retention, not Bharati meditated on the cremation strictures, the monastic discipline of emission. Every mental control, every fires that burn at Manikarnika. Between the Order appears trifling. Monks state of yogic concentration is a replica the new moon night of his ritual death are not really required to conform to of the linga. Desirelessness is supreme and the new moon day of his physical any social norm–hundreds of hymns beatitude. is desireless, hence liberation, a little over forty years and panegyrics on the monastic life again the symbolism of the linga.” (OR passed in which his life burned with revel in the description of the monk’s p. 245) the brilliance of those supreme offerings unbounded freedom. Maybe it is this of the cremation ground. The fire has that makes the executives of modern All quotes are from The Ochre Robe now consumed itself but the light at the secular India so suspicious of the ochre (Doubleday & Co, Inc. Garden City, Center burns forever… robe: under the uniform garb, there is New York 1970). The Light at the Center hidden a congeries of unpredictable is very technical and so is The Tantric non-conformities.” (OR p. 159) Tradition. Quotes from Swami's writings: On India as the Divine Mother: Roxanne Kamayani Gupta, Ph.D., has On the Bhagavad Gita: “…During roughly 100,000 miles of been dancing between East and West “…My graver misgivings about this rail travel in pursuit of my monastic since 1972 when she began her study of poem derive from its inane eclecticism, and scholastic tasks, the scene never Indian Classical Dance and Yoga under and its blatant moral contradictions. lost its sweet charm for me…this soil is traditional gurus in India. Studying the It preaches violent Junkerism in one the most tangible aspect of the magna languages and cultures of North and place, and extols complete withdrawal mater; for me, as a votary of Sakti, she is South India, she has taught comparative from worldly affairs in another; it both mother and ever-beautiful, divine, religion, anthropology and sociology propounds a half-hearted absolutism, beloved princess. The green pastures at various American colleges. She has avoiding offence to the monistic and the fallow fields, the cattle and the presented her thematic programs of teachers who seem to have dominated people and the peacocks–they are her Indian Classical Dance internationally the theological academies of its times, garb; this is why, so I think, the weavers and has taught Hatha and Kriya and then it disports a naïve theological and dyers of India so often decorate Yoga since the age of 21. She holds with a strong sectarian flavor as its with flora and fauna the more elaborate advanced teacher certification from doctrinal consummation…This is the saris which they create in gold and Kaivalyadham, Maharasthra and is a main difficulty: the text lends itself to color.” (OR: 173) certified Hippocrates Health Educator. any ideological slant. “(The Ochre Robe A committed environmental activist, she pp. 31-32) On becoming a monk: has been involved in international arts “I had become a monk, not because and education and holistic movements On the basic axioms that define the the world is full of grief, but because since the 1970’s. She is the author of Hindu scholastic tradition (emphasis it is full of joy; not because of a surfeit A Yoga of Indian Classical Dance: The mine–I wonder if he would still make of sensuous enjoyment either…but Yogini’s Mirror (Inner Traditions Int. this statement today): because of a desire for more enjoyment, 2000) and several academic articles and "{The Hindu tradition] insists on a few such as the senses alone cannot offer.” chapters. Roxanne is the founder of axioms: that the Veda is sruti, that there (OR 173) Surya Namaskar for World Peace. Visit is rebirth, and that there is an absolute her website at: spirit that is both immanent and On his own ego identity: www.suryanamaskarforworldpeace.org transcendent. Each of these dicta can “I have been trying to be whatever I am, be interpreted in innumerable ways– with no racial allegiance: A Hindu, yes, there has never been such a thing as a but not an Indian; a philosopher, but standard interpretation, or a compulsory not a British nor an Austrian, neither a commentary; new interpretations are European nor an Indian philosopher; a Bhagirati River (Ganga River) at Harsil always welcome, even interpretations so humanist, but not a European humanist; en route to Gomukh, Uttarakhand, radical that they seem to undermine the a man mildly fond of comfort, but not Himalayas, July 2014 © Robert Moses

48 Issue 20 Spring 2015 49 He seems otherworldly to Hardy, measuring device I could use to figure A couple of years ago, with ENCOUNTER WITH THE INFINITE as easy and dexterous with infinite out what was happening inside the tape Ramanujan’s 125th birthday quantities as with a knife and fork. machine: a string of symbols in service approaching, Ken decided to prove HOW DID THE MINIMALLY TRAINED, ISOLATED With his intellect finally being fed by to physical reality. “something special”—he’s the kind of a university, Ramanujan’s genius erupts But this seemed backward. What was person who can just make a decision SRINIVASA RAMANUJAN, WITH LITTLE MORE THAN into something never before seen. And in service to what? If the formula was a like that—so he took on the final AN OUT-OF-DATE ELEMENTARY TEXTBOOK, then he begins to die. Tuberculosis tool for measuring the physical world, mystery in Ramanujan’s writings: the is suspected and so, in line with the that implied that the physical world was objects described in his deathbed letter, ANTICIPATE SOME OF THE DEEPEST THEORETICAL treatment of the day, his doctors force the deeper reality, of which the equation which Ramanujan called “mock-theta PROBLEMS OF MATHEMATICS—INCLUDING him to live in an open room fully provided only an approximation. If functions.” Their purpose had been a exposed to the English winter. The that was the case—if mathematics was mystery for a hundred years. CONCEPTS DISCOVERED ONLY AFTER HIS DEATH? food the doctors bring him, Ramanujan subservient to reality—the equation “Wanna see something cool?” Ken writes, is inedible: botched curries would have failed, not the machine. I asked me one day. He took me into his Ramanujan commemorative postage “as hard as uncooked rice.” His body would have been sitting on the floor office and sketched out a proof. ROBERT SCHNEIDER WITH BENJAMIN PHELAN stamp issued in India in 1962 wastes away until he is little more than searching for a better formula, not Some mathematical functions spit a walking skeleton. Then he returns installing fresh diodes. What in fact out numbers of such enormousness Previously published in The Believer www.believermag.com January/February 2015 to India, expecting to die. As his last had happened was that the moment and in such a torrent that the apparatus act, he produces the strangest work the physical world contradicted the of mathematics breaks down; the pile of his career: a series of mathematical equation, the diodes burned up and the of numbers becomes a hill too steep formulae only recently understood. We electrons stopped flowing. The physical to climb. Such functions are said to now know that they grant the bearer world gave way and the equation “blow up” to infinity. The purpose of passage to the infinite. persisted. The equation, not the the mock-theta functions, Ken realized, If I had heard any of this when I was machine, was the fundamental entity. was to clear the path. Using the mock- growing up, in Ruston, Louisiana, in The machine was only a shadow. theta functions, Ramanujan had found There is a form of Buddhism so by his mother, predicts that he will be a ignore him. One of these letters happens the 1980s, I might not have become Basically, I got my mind blown by a way to carry himself over the infinitely 1potent, adherents say, that to hear genius beset by great suffering. “Svasti to reach G. H. Hardy, a famous number a musician at all. As it happened, I a broken tape machine. The challenge steep hill, all the way to the gates of its name spoken is to receive a promise Sri,” it reads, “when the moon was near theorist at Cambridge University and instead heard the story of Brian Wilson, of the psychedelic experience, as the infinity itself, and then, miraculously, to of premature enlightenment, of early the star Uttirattadi, when Mithuna was one of the only mathematicians in the another special boy who burned up his Beatles pointed out, comes after it is disappear through a keyhole and come freedom from the wheel of incarnations. in the ascendant, on this auspicious world with the right mix of training mind searching for the infinite. My over. You have to find meaning in it, out on the other side. The path through Something similar is true of Srinivasa day” Ramanujan is born. And indeed, and temperament to see Ramanujan friends and I who started the Elephant otherwise it was just an indulgence of was head-splittingly implausible, but Ramanujan, the super-genius who was his will be a short life, full of triumph clearly. Confronted with Ramanujan’s 6 music collective wanted to be like the id. So, once again following my Ken had shown me that it lay where born into deep poverty in an obscure and disaster. Growing up, he is gentle mathematical locutions, such as this Wilson and our other psychedelic idols, idols, I looked for the meaning. And it Ramanujan had said it did. part of southern India, who taught and quiet. "Weightless" is the word one one, which uses an infinite “continued and to see through their eyes. What was this: electric guitars, stereophonic Ken finished the proof just in time himself mathematics from a standard of his childhood acquaintances uses in fraction” to relate e, π, and the golden would the genius do? I’d ask myself, sound, magnetic tape, analog for Ramanujan’s birthday, and for textbook, and in total isolation became Robert Kanigel’s The Man Who Knew ratio1 to one another, and then study old studio photographs synthesizers, and the supreme joy of my inclusion in the lecture series being held a mathematician of such power that a Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan. to see what they had actually done. life, making music with my friends, all all across India to mark it. We bought hundred years after his death, at the age Beginning in his teenage years, Kanigel I taught myself to record by trying to existed because of a simple equation. plane tickets. We had good news to of thirty-two, the meaning of much of writes, Ramanujan “would abruptly re-create my idols’ sessions. Imagining What flowed through the circuits of the share: in 1920, on a bed in Madras, his work is still a mystery. In the middle vanish[…]Little subsequently became myself in conversation with them gave tape machine, through our headphones as Ramanujan was contemplating his of what I thought would be my life’s known” about these disappearances. me material. What was the idol trying and our brains, what made us feel loved coming encounter with the infinite, he work, writing and producing music, Around this time, Ramanujan acquires to tell me? and allowed us to express our love wasn’t found a way through. I heard his story; now I find myself a hoary old text (G. S. Carr’s Synopsis of Hardy realizes that Ramanujan’s One night, my band, The Apples music, or even electricity, but numbers. But I wondered, could I find a way in graduate school studying number Elementary Results in Pure Mathematics) formulae, so weird yet elegant, in Stereo, were hours into a recording Music, Brian Wilson said, was the voice to imagine myself into some kind of theory. that initiates him into the arcana. The supercharged with meaning yet concise, session when the tape machine’s motor of God; His language, said Galileo, was conversation with Ramanujan, as I had The story of Ramanujan is a variation Goddess begins to appear to Ramanujan “must be true because, if they were not exploded with a bang. The rest of the mathematics. with my other heroes when I was a kid on the same mythopoeic tale related in his dreams, showing him scrolls true, no one would have the imagination Apples went home. Alone in my studio’s While on tour with the Apples, in Ruston? in Star Wars and the New Testament, covered in strange formulae. “Nākkil to invent them.” So disturbed is Hardy control room, I ripped out all the I started exploring mathematics, Maybe not. With Ramanujan, there of a special boy born into adversity. A ezhutināl,” he later said, “She wrote on by the genius evident in Ramanujan’s burned-up diodes and cleared a space experimenting with formulae in was no book of studio photographs, mother cannot conceive. The Goddess my tongue.” letter that he sends an emissary to the on the floor. I opened an electronics dressing rooms and reading classic no paper trail to insert me into his appears in a dream, promising a son With such minimal training, edge of the empire, to India, to bring manual and, for the first time, read works by Euler, Einstein, and Riemann headspace. Paper had been too expensive through whom the God will speak Ramanujan rediscovers the mathematics Ramanujan back to the imperial capital. Ohm’s Law, V = I × R, the fundamental in the tour van. Then I heard the story to buy, so Ramanujan did almost all of to his creation. While pregnant, the of the preceding millennia. As he begins At Cambridge, Ramanujan is friendly equation of electronics, which weaves of Ramanujan. Within a few years, I his work on a small slate, writing down mother travels to her ancestral home. to make deep discoveries of his own, he and funny, easy company, but weird together the three basic properties had upended my life, put the band on his highly compressed formulae onto a During the winter solstice, the boy is writes to the learned men of the world, mathematics gushes out of him. He of an electrical circuit: voltage (V), hold, and moved my family to Georgia scrap of paper only after many hours born, under signs in the heavens that but his claims seem too extraordinary to can’t explain the reasoning that leads current flow (I), and resistance (R). The to study with Ken Ono, a Ramanujan of work, erasing the slate every few portend great events: his horoscope, cast be the product of a sane mind, so they to his formulae, nor their significance. text presented Ohm’s Law as a tool, a expert at Emory University. seconds. A typical page in one of his

50 Issue 20 Winter 2015 51 three “notebooks”—really just piles of whose push-broom mustache and “We’ll only be stopped for, like, three into pieces, the number line a road to to suicide some thousands of years ago; the medium, Askey compelled the scrap, bound after the fact—contains black-framed glasses made him look minutes,” he murmured. be plotted and rigorously mapped. The Cantor would be in and out of nerve orthogonal polynomials to yield their no words of explanation, just equations, like he was always in disguise. Wadim “But this is where Ramanujan was number line was “a path which never clinics for the rest of his life. He died in secrets. But there was weirdness afoot, of symbols, and strings of digits. Only four passed it to Ken. born,” I said. “This is awesome. We have breaks off.” It had to “remain passable a sanatorium in 1918. a prototypically Ramanujanian variety. photographs of Ramanujan exist, and Ken scanned the page and frowned. to experience it.” wherever the journey may lead,” even Askey appeared in the door of the “Ramanujan knew nothing about two of them are nearly identical. He had This was obviously not homework. Dick Askey, a number theorist who as functions blew up and spat out train, fussing that it was about to start orthogonal polynomials,” Askey says. no children. His family, including his Then he laughed, seeing how closely I graduated from Harvard in the 1950s, impassable oceans of numbers. Cantor’s moving. Ken thought we might be able And he certainly knew nothing about widow, are all dead. There was nothing was imitating the master. “Robert! You briefly woke up. mania for mapping this flooded terrain to race the train on foot. coding theory, a subject that had come to grab onto. I would have to rely on should be doing your homework! You “It is not awesome,” he said. “It is led to greatness after death but disgrace No one dates back to the days into being years after his death. Yet he other, less direct, ways of knowing. can’t have dessert before dinner.” merely good. You are softening the in life. of Ramanujan anymore, but Dick seemed to have anticipated that these As the sun set, it grew harder to fight language. It is a bad habit, and you’ve Prior to Cantor, infinity was a streak Askey comes close. He knew one subjects would one day exist, that they At Mysore, 12 degrees north of off half a planet’s worth of jet lag, but got to break it.” of insanity in the Western collective of the mathematicians who worked would be interesting to someone, and 2the equator, we boarded a sleeper car I had homework to do, so I tried to In the predawn darkness, a few consciousness. The pre-Homericwith Ramanujan during his time that there would be problems associated on the Mayiladuturai Express, a rusty stay awake. Wadim and I talked about commuters were out on the platform, Greeks, Aristotle, and contemporary at Cambridge, a “jovial, short, with them that would need to be solved. train that would take us even farther music. When I told him that the last reading the newspaper, nodding off on Europe had rejected mathematical plump” number theorist named John The simplest explanation is that south, to the two-thousand-year-old Apples record had been influenced by benches. We dawdled and took pictures. infinity outright. Yet, paradoxically, Littlewood. Ramanujan was a time traveler from the city of Kumbakonam. The city was only Electric Light Orchestra, he arched Through a hedge of flowers, I could see Christianity required infinity, for God “We have no idea how Ramanujan future. 250 miles away, but the trip would take an eyebrow at a high Slavic angle and the lights of Erode. was infinite. And since He was infinite, did the marvelous things he did,” Askey “It’s completely perplexing,” fourteen hours. looked me solemnly in the eye. To the left and the right, the train Cantor argued, His mind must contain says, though it had taken him a while to says Askey. “Since the orthogonal The scenery along the tracks was “I love the Electric Light Orchestra,” tracks vanished in the distance. Imagine all numbers. In which case numbers were see the depths in Ramanujan’s seductive, polynomials, I’ve spent much of my bewildering in its contrasts, as though he said. “I have all of their records.” the number line. In the middle is zero, not only infinite but also completed— flashy formulae. “I’d heard about him, time working in Ramanujan’s garden.” Eden were occupying the same space- Soon everyone was asleep, stretched the origin. To the right lie the positive an endless array that nevertheless had an of course, and somewhere along the line Around 1980, Askey read an time as a post-nuclear Florida. A out on folding cots. The moment the numbers; to the left, the negative end, and could therefore be held in the bought his collected papers. But I didn’t interview in The Hindu magazine with goatherd in a vermilion loincloth car was dark, as though a bell had been numbers. They go on forever in both mind as a single object, then classified look at them seriously.” Ramanujan’s widow, Janaki Ammal, squatted among smashed-in computer rung, cockroaches flooded out to scour directions, with an infinity at each end. and studied. At first, Askey had found Ramanujan’s that had gotten under his skin. When monitors and broken circuit boards— the floor and walls. I took my notebook Between them, as though between the Over fifteen years, Cantor proposed math odd and opaque, too eccentric Ramanujan died, his jealous mother an image of Paleolithic man zapped to a semi-enclosed space between the terminals of a battery, the numbers leap a brain-breaking taxonomy of greater to be of much use. Anyway, it was rejected Janaki, throwing her out of the forward to the end-time. A field of train cars, in search of a light bulb to into existence. As a boy, Ramanujan and lesser infinities. Cantor’s colleagues unrelated to Askey’s main interest, house poor and unskilled. Janaki was sugarcane and mango trees gave way do my homework by. A metal gate, ajar discovered that if he skipped along the rejected his work as, at best, wrong- a class of special functions called still a girl, uneducated, and after her to an industrial junkyard, where long- and clanging in the wind, opened onto number line, gathering and adding headed, but Cantor saw no conflict orthogonal polynomials. They were husband’s death she lived a hard life, horned zebu moved among rusted the countryside. A little dog trotted numbers according to simple patterns, between Christianity and mathematics, proving difficult to crack. His research even by the standards of southern India. machine-heaps, looking for garbage to alongside the train, hopping over when he arrived at infinity the sum nor much of a difference. “A more was leading him further and further By the time Askey read the interview, eat. railroad ties and easily keeping pace. could be a single, sensible number, like powerful energy,” he said, had afield, into an abstruse new area of she was near the end of her life, half- I opened my notebook and started All along the tracks lay burst bags one or one hundred, or even π, a number communicated the theory to him; the mathematics, called coding theory, blind and living on a pittance. The playing with a way to take Big O of of garbage. We were in the middle of with infinitely many digits that, like the theory had come to him from God, that seemed related to orthogonal government had promised her at least the coefficients of divergent infinite nowhere. Where did all this trash come avatars of the Infinite God, Vishnu, “the first infallible cause of all created polynomials, though he couldn’t discern a statue of her husband, whom they series and create a metric space—a kind from? An answer appeared as the door can never be fully written down. He things,” and it proved His existence. For the point of connection. There was no recognized as an Indian national hero, of nonsense, an attempt to measure opened and a flashy corporate type discovered the series that yielded the the primary characters in his syllabary one in Askey’s math department at the but they’d never delivered. immeasurable quantities, then arrange with a ring on his finger came outside, basic trigonometric functions sine and of the transfinite, Cantor used not x and University of Wisconsin, Madison, with “Nothing matters now,” Janaki told them in terms of how immeasurable carrying a plastic bag full of garbage. cosine, and realized that the infinite y but the Greek letters alpha and omega, the right expertise, and so, in perplexity, the interviewer in the Hindu. “When I they were. What would the genius do? He said something to me in Tamil, then series was the deeper definition not only the biblical symbols for God’s infinite Askey reached out to George Andrews, needed help, no one was around. Now Ramanujan might start by posing a crouched down and shoved the bag into of these but of all numbers. (In fact, nature. the hero-mathematician who had just it’s too late.” crazy question that didn’t seem worth the gap between the floor and the flimsy Leonhard Euler had made the same By considering the idea of infinity discovered Ramanujan’s final “lost” “In this interview in the Hindu,” wasting a moment on, such as this one. fabric wall, where it lodged. He stood discovery about sine and cosine in the seriously instead of as an inert article notebook in a library, in the belongings Askey says,“she lamented, ‘Where is the Then he’d take a few angelic leaps of pure up and pushed it through with the toe eighteenth century. When Ramanujan of , Cantor found himself in a of another professor, long dead. statue?’ I wasn’t smart enough to think intuition and arrive at an unexpected of his dress shoe. It was immediately found out that he’d been scooped by territory so flaky that he was accused of The discovery of the lost notebook immediately that something ought to be new truth. I was like a cat trying to shredded by the wheels of the train. the great Euler, he was not elated, but being a pantheist. It was maddening— was the final miracle in the Ramanujan done. But within a few weeks, I realized extricate itself from a five-dimensional Before returning inside, he bobbled his ashamed—mortified, even, and hid his Cantor intended his mathematics to be story. “I have a hundred-page, unknown that if we waited for the government paper bag. head and made a show of dusting off his work in the roof of his house.) used to complete Christian theology, yet manuscript of Ramanujan in my to build a statue, Janaki would be dead The sight of me writing must have hands: a job well done! The European mathematician who here he was being accused of paganism. briefcase,” Andrews told Askey when before it happened. I thought we ought given Ken hope that my homework, The train slowed as it approached most famously grappled with the The mathematical establishmenthe arrived in Madison. “You can have a to give her something to show her how now weeks late, might finally be done. Erode, Ramanujan’s mother’s ancestral infinite, though in the rigid logic of abominated Cantor. His own doctoral look at it for a nickel.” much the mathematics community “Robert,” he called out, “let me see home, where she had come to give birth. nineteenth-century German science, adviser, the great, grumpy Leopold Soon, all became clear: Ramanujan cared.” that notebook.” I hustled back into the dark sleeper car. was the brilliant, tragic Georg Cantor. Kronecker, sabotaged Cantor’s career had foreseen the problems Askey was Askey commissioned a statue himself, I passed the notebook back to Wadim “Ken,” I whispered, “we’re stopping at Cantor saw infinity not as a blessing, but and called him a “corrupter of youth.” facing. Reading from Ramanujan’s and provided a sculptor with a second- Zudilin, a Russian number theorist Erode. We should get off the train!” as a problem to be attacked and broken The identical charge had driven Socrates spell book, and with Andrews as generation photocopy of the only

52 Issue 20 Winter 2015 53 clear photograph of Ramanujan in “It’s not unusual for experts to acceptance letters. He pulled out a training studied modern theorists, every four years to a mathematician discovered until Ramanujan had been existence. He could have quickly raised totally miss the point of Ramanujan’s yellowed envelope, obviously foreign, technicians who labored over proofs of under the age of forty. In 1995, the dead for sixty years. all the money he needed with a few formulae,” Ono says. “That happens that was addressed to his father. He narrowly defined conjectures, mastered Galois representations appeared as “There’s no way Ramanujan knew phone calls. Instead, he sent letters to over and over again. Everyone has wrangled his Trek inside and handed his this or that technique, and polished the the key component of Andrew Wiles’s all these intermediate things,” says a hundred colleagues around the world, four or five favorite examples when father the letter. gleaming apparatus free of fingerprints. epochal proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem, Ono. “The concepts [encoded in the asking for twenty-five-dollar donations. they’ll say, ‘I thought I understood this At the sight of the return address, his When Ono began to dig a little more the largest, most notorious open tau function] didn’t exist when he He wanted Janaki to feel the weight of formula. I wrote papers on it, only to father staggered to the couch. He read deeply into Ramanujan’s formulae, problem in mathematics, which had was alive. That’s the mind-boggling the love the mathematics world bore her discover, five years later, that I’d missed the short letter, typewritten on rice he was surprised at the tangle of roots gone unproved for over three hundred part: Ramanujan anticipated the work and her husband. the point.’” paper, in silence. he encountered below the surface. years and was suspected of being of people who would live long after Before Ramanujan left Kumbakonam, Ono, now forty-six and slender as a Ramanujan’s crazy tricks linked up unprovable. Wiles, forty-one when he him. He had visions that said there Janaki said, he’d been fat and cheerful. greyhound, was all but indifferent to Dear Sir, with some of the deepest concepts in published the final version of his proof, were going to be some theories in the After five years in England, he was mathematics when he was growing up I understand from Mr. Richard math. They could not exist unless they was ineligible for a Fields, which only future. Somehow. He didn’t need any hollowed out by malnutrition and in Baltimore. He was good at it, but he Askey, Wisconsin, U. S. A., that you concealed massive theoretical edifices. seems unjust: no prize, not even a Fields intermediate steps for him to anticipate misery, perhaps carrying a parasite, got good grades in everything without have contributed for the sculpture Take the tau function, an oddity that medal, could be adequate to the mastery that there would be all these subjects, perhaps infected with tuberculosis, and having to study or try very hard. (“I in memory of my late husband Mr. Ramanujan discovered and studied in his proof. When the International and that he would find the first examples in a frighteningly deep depression. He’d was that kind of kid,” he says, “You Srinivasa Ramanujan. I am happy over during his five years at Cambridge. A Mathematical Union convened to hand of them, and that they would go on to heard nothing from his wife the entire know the kind.”) His immigrant father, this event. function is a mathematical expression out Fields Medals that year, it created be the prototypes that we desperately time he’d been abroad; his mother had Takashi Ono, was a number theorist at I thank you very much for your good that, when fed with a number, produces a special award for Wiles and, for the needed to build our subjects. Whether been intercepting Janaki’s letters and Johns Hopkins who worked from home, gesture and wish you success in all your another number. It’s a machine that takes ceremony, built two stages: one for the he’s in fashion or out of fashion has destroying them. so Ono saw the work of mathematics endeavours. some raw material and then stretches, Fields Medalists and one above it, where more to do with us, with where we are “If only you had come with me to every day. It wasn’t appealing to him. compresses, reshapes, or transforms it Wiles stood alone. in coming to grips with him.” England,” Ramanujan told Janaki, The elder Ono didn’t seem to do Yours faithfully, into something else. Functions embody “All that, from Serre to the Fields When Ono started looking into the “perhaps I would not have fallen ill.” much more than sit around the house, S. Janaki Ammal the relationships between numbers; medal to Wiles, is from only about mock-theta functions, there were a few There’s a theorem, Askey says, that presumably thinking deep thoughts, they are central objects of study in ten or fifteen pages from Ramanujan’s hints as to what they might mean. They states that no finite number of images and occasionally write something Ken’s father, normally so impassive, number theory. Ramanujan found notebooks, out of the hundreds seemed to help describe the spread of can be used to reconstruct a three- down. Like other Japanese men of his covered his face with his hand, seemed the tau function important enough that he wrote,” Ono says. “Which is cancer tumors, and physicists had begun dimensional object, such as a face, generation, Ken says, he rarely showed to crumple, and wept. to spend upward of thirty pages in his typical! And in fact, studying the tau to find them useful in understanding exactly. Nevertheless, when Askey much emotion, and gave no outward “That was the first time I heard the notebook exploring it, but it was hard function, the British mathematician how black holes unravel space and delivered the bust to Janaki, depicting a signs of the exaltation that mathematics story of Ramanujan,” says Ono. “It for other mathematicians to see why Louis Mordell proved some properties time and how string theory knits them chubby, youthful Ramanujan, “she said could bring. Math seemed to be just made all the difference in my life.” he’d been so interested. On its face, that were later developed into Hecke together. This was peculiar, since the it was as if his spirit had returned. She another dreary ritual of adult life, like At the University of Chicago, Ono there was nothing special about the algebras and the Langlands program, concept of string theory didn’t exist garlanded it every day.” polite conversation or public radio. switched majors, from premed to math. tau function. Hardy, Ramanujan’s chief among the two or three most important in 1920, when Ramanujan wrote his Janaki was ninety years old by Ono was an athletic kid with He was drawn to Ramanujan’s whiz- collaborator at Cambridge, worried that developments in twentieth-century letter, and black holes were brand-new then, but wrote a letter of thanks to ambition and talent, and raced bicycles bang formulae, but after giving them a the tau function’s homeliness might math. And that’s from a different five objects of speculation among a handful every mathematician who’d made a on a national circuit. (For the past few once-over, it seemed to him, as it had lead future mathematicians to see it as a pages of Ramanujan’s work on tau that of physicists. But still—when modern contribution. years, he’s been a triathlete on Team to Askey, that they weren’t all that deep. mathematical “backwater.” For decades have no intersection with the previous astrophysicists peer inside their black- Eleven busts were commissioned USA, and trains continually, even while They were just “crazy tricks that did after Ramanujan’s death, it was treated fifteen. In fact, it might be as short as a hole models, they find they are looking and sold to mathematical eminences abroad on math junkets.) As a teenager, something weird.” as one. page. One page from Ramanujan’s work at mock-theta functions. around the world. One stands in George he was promising enough to earn Ono’s personal opinion was irrelevant. Then, in the 1960s, a French may have given birth to all that.” Despite a few research applications, Andrews’s house. But mathematical sponsorships from Bianchi and Avocet. Ramanujan’s mathematics wasn’t widely mathematician named Jean-Pierre Serre There’s a subtlety here that needs to be the mathematical understanding of mega-stardom is one of the more He was not interested in sitting still or taught anymore; no one outside of a few realized that the tau function was an made explicit. It’s not remarkable that mock-theta functions was in a bizarre anonymous forms of celebrity, and a few thinking about numbers. His father was specialists studied him seriously. Though unassuming front for a powerful force. Ramanujan’s work on the tau function state. Dozens of papers had been years ago one of the busts ended up in an not interested in racing. he’d had a brief vogue shortly after his Its existence could be explained only led to interesting new mathematics. written on them, but no one could estate sale, in the custody of an auctioneer “He thought it was kind of silly,” Ono death, and a resurgence in the 1960s, if there was a brand-new theory of That kind of thing happens all the time; explain in the most basic sense what who knew nothing about Ramanujan. A says. “He let me do it, but I always had Ramanujan was unfashionable. His functions encoded in it. Serre called this it’s how the subject advances. a mock-theta function was. When mathematics professor bought it. to get people to pick me up and drive body of work consisted of notebooks theory, suspected but not proven, the With Ramanujan there is a seeming Ramanujan died, there were no clues “It’s not where it belongs,” Askey says. me. I think he watched me race only filled with short formulae, so there was Galois representations. Not long after, reversal of cause and effect. No one anywhere in the mathematical literature “Ken should have it.” once.” no overarching theory to study, and the Belgian researcher Pierre Deligne can write down a formula with deep, to explain why he found the mock- Ono dropped out of high school formula writing had been out of style proved that the Galois representations hidden properties unless they first know theta functions interesting. It’s probably Ken Ono has spent most of in the eleventh grade and spent his in serious mathematics for more than a actually existed, and in the process what the deep properties are that they not going too far to say that, in fact, 3 his career working a particularly free time on his bike. One day in the century.2 The formulists had had their clarified that the tau function was deeply are trying to encode. This is the way they weren’t interesting. All they did, fertile patch of Ramanujan’s wild spring, preoccupied with the National time. They were the sorcerers of math’s connected to algebraic geometry and mathematicians understand math to Ramanujan wrote, was imitate a class garden, discovering the subterranean Capital Open, in Washington, DC, he prehistory who had discovered the deep algebraic number theory. For proving work; it is the only way they—we— of functions called the theta functions, connections and root systems that rode back home from a long morning connections among the key concepts the Galois representations, Deligne know to approach the subject. But which had been around for a century or connect it to the forest of world of training in the countryside, stopping and encoded them in mathematical won a Fields Medal, the ne plus ultra the significance of the tau function— so. In that time, the theta functions had mathematics. at the mailbox to check for college haiku. Modern mathematicians-in- of mathematical achievement, awarded the reason to write it down—wasn’t been working perfectly on their own.

54 Issue 20 Winter 2015 55 No one had needed to imitate them. the great wall. The gleaming apparatus “This happens every time I come and an Iyengar who kept to a complex and my ears rang. A high-low honking Ramanujan had had an out-of- Ramanujan had produced a solution to is about to crash, but the mock theta here,” Ken said. diet that prohibited all meat, but was getting close, quickly, but I didn’t date elementary math textbook and a nonexistent problem. "Who cares?" function does its crazy trick, and the From inside the van, Kumbakonam also cheese, onions, salt, rice on some see the car until a chrome fender whatever was in the air. For five years would not have been an unreasonable infinite dissolves, just a little. A portal manifested as a blur of low buildings days, food of any kind on others, and stopped an inch from my kneecap. after he flunked out of college, this response. the size of an atom appears. The along a dusty, curbless street. Piled up governed who was allowed to prepare The driver’s face behind the glass was room was where he worked, looking out In the summer of 2012, Ono found apparatus threads the hole. And then it higgledy-piggledy were the huts of the his food, and in what state of ceremonial expressionless. A thought appeared in his window, becoming who he became. that the only way he could understand keeps going, and going, and going… poor, the ragged condos of the upper- purity, and with whom he was allowed my head, in words: This is not safe. How did he do it? the mock-theta functions was via Serre, middle class, and chaoses of splintered to eat. To live abroad would be to Then I was in the narrow jumble A sign in Tamil and English hung on Deligne, and others’ work on the tau The train pulled into Kumbakonam wood, dirt, and junk. Relics from abandon this web of identity. It would of Sarangapani Street. Ramanujan’s the wall: RAMANUJAN USED TO function. This made no sense. It meant 4 station at six in the morning. The antiquity seized the eye. A stocky stone be an act of self-destruction, a form of small house, preserved as a museum, SIT HERE FOR HOURS LOOKING that it was not Ramanujan’s own work sun glowed just below the horizon. avatar of the Infinite God, standing suicide, really. stood next to a hardware store. Its THROUGH THE WINDOW. on tau that had led Ramanujan from The air was dark and moist and hot, with the nonchalance of a fire hydrant, Hardy’s emissary persisted. Ramanujan door and single window were painted Southern India is an ancient and tau to the mock thetas, but the work of like the inside of a monster’s mouth. was surrounded by a spillage of brick went to Namakkal, a nearby temple- powder blue. Four blue posts held up unchanging place. The Kumbakonam others, of Serre and Deligne, that would The anti-malaria drug I was taking was and shredded roof-thatching from a town, and slept on the temple grounds a low roof, thatched with palm leaves of today is the Kumbakonam of a not be carried out until he’d been dead starting to go a little psychedelic on me, house that had collapsed into the street. for three days, until the goddess, in Ramanujan’s time, now covered hundred years ago, despite trinkets like for decades. casting a greasy iridescence over my Behind a wall made of fresh brick, tarp, Namagiri, avatar of and wife in red tiles. When it grew too hot cell phones and automobiles. Walk out Ono had the sensation of Ramanujan qualia. Mosquitoes whined in my ears and rusted metal barrels rose a temple’s of Narasimha, appeared, granting him inside, especially during the summer, Ramanujan’s front door and you see walking in his footsteps, but from the like winged synthesizers. Up and down entrance-tower, the gopuram, minutely permission to leave. Ramanujan would bring his slate out what he saw. You see through his eyes. wrong direction in time. the platform, the bodies of sleeping carved and painted in all the pastels of While he was in England, Ramanujan here to lie on a cot, sometimes all night What was the genius trying to tell “Whatever Ramanujan was thinking commuters with overnight connections the Indian palette, erected centuries ago. woke up in the morning and did , and into the next day, to do his research. me? about between the tau function and lay on woven mats, occupying every Somewhere back there, in the interior of prepared his food in a state of ritual To preserve his bubble of concentration, I walked out his front door. Virtually the deathbed letter somehow must horizontal surface available, like felled the two-thousand-year-old city, was the purity, painted the namam on his his mother quietly pressed curd rice into next door, the gopuram of Sarangapani have been parallel to what I was doing, stalks of wheat. I was nauseated and temple itself. forehead and then erased it—but on the his hand while he worked. Temple rose into the sky, a massive and without him knowing I was doing it, precarious, as though with a belly full of The khaki exterior of SASTRA day he sailed for England, he wept as he A hallway led from the front door intricate piling-up of what seemed like ninety years later,” he says. stomach acid and psilocybin. University was smooth and modern. cut his kutumi, a braid that would have to a second, inner door. Beyond it was the entire Hindu cosmos in a pyramid of With Ramanujan looking over his From the other side of the platform, SASTRA opened in 1984, and acts set him apart as an alien. If he left, he a small common room the width of a entwined limbs, naked bodies, animals, shoulder like a “chubby guardian angel,” a deputation of professors from as a conservator of Ramanujan’s told his English escort, it would break hallway, a galley kitchen, and a shrine for celestial entities, and the Infinite God Ono found that, as the numbers being SASTRA University (the Shanmugha legacy. Though Ramanujan flunked the web that bound him to the world, doing puja. It was dark inside the house, in his infinite incarnations. The infinity spit out by the theta functions started Arts, Science, Technology and out of college twice—spectacularly, and it would never hold him again. with a little light coming in through the of creation, in a sacred, teeming heap, to grow at an unimaginable speed, Research Academy) shouted over to earning grades as low as 10 percent in His place would be destroyed forever. murra, an interior courtyard that was was the first thing Ramanujan saw approaching and then far exceeding the Ken and started making their way some subjects—he dazzled his math If he ever returned, he would no longer open to the sky and the rain. I sat on when he stepped outside. It cast the number of atoms in the universe, the over, waving copies of the Hindu. instructors, who couldn’t tell if he was a make sense as a being. To the people Ramanujan’s bed. I was as close to him neighborhood in shadow. mock-theta functions began to imitate Ken’s glorious work on the mock- charming genius or a holy lunatic. They around him, he would not exist. He as I would ever be. A slate, similar to the them with eerie precision. In the lower theta functions, they said, was being tried to help him, but how could they? would haunt his own life as a ghost, one he had used, lay across it—scene The gopuram was the only part reaches of the number line, the behavior praised in all the papers. They led us They didn’t understand the first thing ignored. But Namagiri had given him dressing provided by SASTRA. I held 5 of the temple visible from the of the function and its doppelgänger outside, toward a bus waiting to take about him. permission, so he left. it on my lap and closed my eyes, rising outside. The rest was concealed, an was unlovely and chaotic. But out us to our bungalow, in a little villa just As Ramanujan entered adulthood, During Ken’s lecture on the mock- and falling on waves of nausea. organ within the body of the city. here, in the immense realms that had outside of town. In the street, a group he was a soul going to waste. Unless theta functions, an Indian professor All mathematicians—the great, Taking off my shoes and passing driven Cantor insane and enraged the of schoolboys in matching polo shirts he could get out of Kumbakonam, he collapsed in the heat. “Stay with me, the good, and the average—have through the gate, I left Kumbakonam European mathematics establishment, and shorts caught sight of Ken and would be subsumed by it, his discoveries Krishna!” his wife cried. a mentor and arise via a pedigree. and entered the city-within-the-city, an their relationship became clear. You started whispering to one another, lost forever. But when Hardy’s emissary The effects of the anti-malaria pill Hecke was taught by Hilbert, Hilbert orthogonal space, larger on the inside could take the ludicrous, unmanageable stealing glances at him as we walked appeared in Kumbakonam, offering crept back up on me. I felt suddenly by von Lindemann, von Lindemann than it appeared from the outside, output of a theta function, then subtract by. One of them stepped away from Ramanujan a position at Cambridge, ill and hurried to the bathroom to by Klein. Cantor was taught by his that rambled down long corridors, the ludicrous, unmanageable output of the group and pointed straight at the Ramanujan said he couldn’t go. The splash water on my face. Through the future antagonist, Kronecker (and by ran up and down flights of stairs, a mock-theta function, and the answer famous mathematician. Infinite God had appeared in a dream, open window drifted all the smells of Frobenius and Weierstrass), Kronecker opened onto stone-floored piazzas, and was shocking in its simplicity. The “Jackie Chan,” he said. “Jackie Chan!” telling him that the time had not yet Kumbakonam: clouds of roasting spices by Dirichlet, Dirichlet by Poisson (and sprouted fractal sub-temples within answer was 4. The rest of the boys joined in, yelling, come for him to share his gift with the and fresh fruits mingled with manure Fourier). Noether had Gordan, Gordan itself. Carnatic music came from distant With pencil and paper and pages of “Jackie Chan!” as they rushed over and world. and rotting garbage and the reek of had Jacobi. Dedekind, Riemann, and reaches of the city-within, in loud calculations in front of you, to see these mobbed Ken. “Jack-ie Chan! Jack-ie In any case, foreign travel was the Cauvery River. In one of the stalls, Möbius all studied under Gauss. Fourier blasts and soft, continual trickles. Old titanic quantities consume each other so Chan! Jack-ie Chan!” impossible. Kumbakonam was a a Western mathematician was on his had Lagrange, Lagrange had Euler, Euler men in little more than rags, retired precisely bends the mind. Ken patted them on their heads, place where culture and religion were knees, vomiting. “The smells are just had Bernoulli fils, Bernoulli fils had from the city-without and seeking “It doesn’t take any imagination,” saying, “Hello, hello, how are you? So completely intertwined. Ramanujan too strong,” he said, “much too strong.” Bernoulli père. The chain is how the enlightenment, walked and chanted, says Ono, “to recognize that four is a nice to see you,” and so forth, then was a Brahmin, the caste of priests Outside, the streets were a discipline is communicated down the collecting coins from passersby, while beautiful number.” posed for a picture, holding his hands and intellectuals; a Vaishnavite, who pandemonium. It was at least 100 centuries, stored in the collective mind of young parents, strolling through the As Ramanujan lies dying, racing jauntily out to the side, in the hang-ten regarded Vishnu as god over all and who degrees. An icy prickle raced back and a culture rather than in individual minds, city-within after dinner in the city- toward infinity, a dot of light appears in surfer . worshiped his local avatar, Narasimha; forth across my scalp. My head swam which are too small to contain it. without, hustled around, chasing down

56 Issue 20 Winter 2015 57 1 screaming children, in a state of mind being who resided in the Milky Way. He arcāvatāra, special avatars of the Infinite The golden ratio is also known as phi φ( ), and is equal to 1.618034… Phi possesses a host of surprising qualities, but it can that was far from holy. It was a sacred was a turtle, a fish, a boar, a dwarf, and God made of stone and metal. For be generated simply, by drawing a series of squares. place and a mundane one, which would the half-lion, half-man Narasimha. festivals and ceremonies, worshipers be a paradox, except that Hinduism is so Eight hundred years ago, the South hoist one of them, the utsava murti, and BUILDING PHI vast, it doesn’t recognize paradoxes. In Indian mathematician Bhaskaracharya carry it through the temple grounds. φ = 1.61803398874989484820458634365638117720… Ramanujan’s time, and even now, there wrote that dividing by zero yielded a The murti is fully God. It becomes the was no boundary between the spiritual number “as infinite as the God Vishnu,” infinite in its totality. The irrational number phi φ( ), which has a host of strange properties, has long been an object of fascination for number the- and the material. The infinite dwelled in a mathematical sacrilege that would Cantor had said that we must orists. Visual artists since the time of the ancient Greeks have found its graphical representation so pleasing that it has become the temple and flowed out into the city. have sent poor Cantor back to the understand mathematical infinity the known as the Golden Ratio. The digits of phi go on forever, and can be generated by mathematical expressions as intricate as You received visions of the Infinite God; laughing academy. Here in the temple, same way we understand the infinity of you like. A classical expression uses only the number 1 in an eternally descending continued fraction. But you can also gener- you saw your auntie in the street. Ramanujan had spoken of something YHWH. But YHWH’s qualities could ate φ simply, by drawing a series of squares, then measuring the resulting rectangles and comparing the lengths of their sides. I followed the music. It led me to the similar. The act of multiplying zero by not be known. “You cannot see my face,” As you draw more squares, the ratio draws closer to φ, circling it in a tightening spiral: 1, 2, 1.5, 1.667, 1.6, 1.625… until, at shrine at the heart of the temple, a stone infinity, he said when he was young, the Almighty told Moses on Mount the ∞th rectangle, you get φ exactly. chariot drawn by elephants. A sound of yielded all numbers simultaneously— Sinai, “No one may see me and live.” ringing bells and droning voices began the body of Ishvara, or God in its The paradox ruined Cantor’s mind. The to grow. A loose band of worshipers totality. Each number was a single act infinite was an alias for death. turned a corner and approached. One of creation among the infinitude that But the infinity that Ramanujan knew of them gestured toward a staircase created and sustained the universe from was just a stone. His friends carried it that led into another interior space. I moment to moment. Whenever there past him as he sat here, his back against climbed the stairs and, inside the sub- is injustice, says the literature, Vishnu the wall and a slate across his lap. temple, came face-to-face with an old enters the world as Krishna, Rama, Ramanujan could see the infinite with man who touched my forehead with Balarama, Parashurama, Narasimha. his eyes open. a silver bowl and pushed a bouquet of His forms are innumerable; they What is the idol trying to tell me? flowers into my hands. exhaust numbers. He was not infinite That to watch the Infinite God I sat on the stone floor and closed in size, like the indivisible YHWH of approach was not a catastrophic death my eyes. The antimalarial delirium was Cantor’s religion, but of infinite forms. trip but a drawing near to a place of fading again, leaving behind a drowsy His infinity signaled not madness but comfort. That even as he approached calm. Phosphenes pulsed on the insides life and its continuous, momentary re- the infinite, Ramanujan found a of my eyelids. creation. wormhole through, and beyond. Even We’re told that Ramanujan was here at “My Lord, you easily assume any form on his deathbed, mathematics was an the temple almost as much as he was at you desire,” his worshipers chanted, act of worship. Worship of a single home, doing mathematics and holding “Your body includes all the worlds.” infinity, in infinite forms, all of them forth on his own private religion, an I fell asleep leaning against the temple knowable. idiosyncrasy of , which wall. I dreamed I was back on the train, The authors wish to thank Vasudha is itself an idiosyncrasy of the vast traveling along the mock-theta function Narayanan, of the University of Florida, literature and culture that has come as it gathered speed in the far reaches for her many impromptu lectures on 2 to be called Hinduism. He preached of the number line. Somewhere else the subject of Hinduism in South India; A similar shift occurred in the English departments of the 1990s. One no longer roamed the inside of a poem to discover to the adults. He interpreted dreams. in time, Ramanujan was dying. Dick and to thank Krishnaswami Alladi, of where its lines of influence lay, but studied the lingo-heavy theory that exposed the poor poet’s limitations. He recited Hindu scriptures, whose Askey sat across from me. His soft eyes the University of Florida, for graciously cosmologies contained enormous, were turned toward the night. The facilitating numerous meetings, inter- unchristian numbers: no six thousand yellow lights of empty platforms strobed views and excursions while R.S. traveled years of creation, but a history unfolding past. in India. in cycles of time numbering in the Askey gestured outside. millions and billions of years. No twelve “They are the singularities,” he Robert Schneider is the lead singer tribes of Israel, but heroes like Rama, said, the points where the mock-theta of The Apples in Stereo, a record who commanded armies of 100,001,00 function shot off into infinity. producer (Neutral Milk Hotel, Olivia 0,010,000,000,100,010,000,010,001,0 The train picked up speed, pressing Tremor Control), and co-founder of the 00,001,000,100,000,100,010,000,000, me against the cabin wall. Straining Elephant 6 collective of musicians and 005 men. No One God above the angels against inertia, I turned to the window. artists. He is currently pursuing a PhD and humanity, but Vishnu the sustainer, The singularities streamed by as a river in number theory at Emory University, who embodied everything, including of light. in Atlanta, Georgia, where he lives with its opposite, including nothing. He The train stopped. his wife and son. was physically present in every atom of “This is the nth root of unity. We are Benjamin Phelan is a writer and musician creation, yet entirely outside it. His body near Ramanujan’s home.” who lives in Louisville, Kentucky, and is was the universe, yet the universe could I opened my eyes. a multi-instrumentalist in The Apples in not contain him. He was an immaterial In the heart of the temple are the Stereo.

58 Issue 20 Winter 2015 59 4 life. Ignorance is the fundamental dependent, and usually afflicted That moment when the jiva has been DREAMING IN EARLY ADVAITA VEDĀNTA: condition that causes these karmas to be states, is the ātman, the essence of the directed by the ripening of karma to THE PHILOSOPHY OF ŚAŃKARACARYA accrued in the mind of a person. individual that is permanent and most send energy into a particular subtle The distinction between the body closely related to the concept of a soul. energetic pathway is the real moment of NAOMI WORTH and mind itself is what allows for The ātman’s role in the manifestation of death, because the jiva has left the region transmigration to occur, and a new life is as an unchanging observer of this of the heart and goes out of the body. It physical form to become associated with process, and also as a sort of satellite of enters an in-between state, taking what a person. Bodies are cast aside and new Brahman, the everlasting and radiant are referred to as either the Northern or ones taken up while the mind continues God. Southern path; which path one takes is in an unbroken stream.5 If we were to At the time of death there is a process dictated by one’s relationship with God take an inventory of an individual’s true in which the senses sequentially reduce and how one fulfilled his or her ritual possessions at the time of death, they into one another, starting with the obligations. Those who did not take would be: speech and intellect, and are absorbed up ritual are immediately reborn as • A gross body made up of material into the mental organ (manas), which animals, insects or plants. substances; is in turn absorbed into energy (prāņa), This in-between state has been • Sense organs and their corresponding then finally into the individual self likened to a dream because there is a actions, such as speech, movement, (jiva), a collection of both awareness certain consciousness present.9 In fact, Introduction widely practiced in India, so he often being is found in the Upanišads dating thinking, grasping, sex, and excretion;6 and karmic residues, including those in Śańkara’s only non-commentarial debated the Buddhists; his debates were from around 700 BCE.3 • An intellectual sense organ (manas); that have already ripened into their monograph, the Upadeśasāhasrī (A Q: What is the cause of the urge to recorded in his own writings, where Of these four states, dreaming is the • A sense of ego that makes one feel manifest state as inclinations (vāsanās). Thousand Teachings), which might be a roam about? he directly addressed his opposition to quintessential metaphor of Śańkara’s individual and unique,7 and also makes The jiva then combines with the subtle source of his unqualified philosophical A: There is no cause. You merely their theories and philosophy.2 While Advaita Vedānta. An in-depth look at distinctions among objects of attention8 elements (tanmātras), five different position by nature of its being an dream that you roam about. In a Śańkara is often accused of being a the way he talks about dreaming provides (ahaµkāra); kinds of minute particles that are the independent work, he posits that few years your stay in India will crypto-Buddhist, it may be the case insight into the realities of perception itself. • An internal organ ( or seeds for the gross manifestations of the transmigratory existence (saµsāra) appear as a dream to you. You will that he was simply influenced by the Specifically, the fundamental premise of antaģkaraņa) whose function is to five gross elements, i.e. earth, water, air, can be described either via the cycle in dream some other dream at that popularity of Advaita Vedānta is that everything is an point the attention faculty towards fire, and ether. The tanmātras, or subtle which one takes up and then casts aside time. Do realize that it is not you which was so prevalent during his life. illusion; since most people agree with the an object with intention and the elements, comprise the subtle body that different bodies with their associated who moves from dream to dream, Even though Śańkara shares much with presupposition that dreams are illusions subsequent activities associated with will receive much attention both in functions, or via the cycle of dreaming but the dreams flow before you and the Buddhists, the fundamental basis of of the mind, it is an apt starting point these intentions; Śańkara’s system of practice, as well as in and waking, qualified by agency and you are the immutable witness. his theory, a monism with Brahman at from which to describe Śańkara’s views of • Traces of karma, or impressions from later examples of spiritual practices that experience. This type of transmigratory No happening affects your real its center, is diametrically opposed to reality, which expand the dream metaphor past actions, accumulated from both aim to manipulate the subtle energies of existence is experienced at every being—that is the absolute truth.1 the emptiness that lies at the heart of beyond the dreaming state and apply it to the current and past lives, whose effects the body. moment of life, and is used to incite the Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj Buddhism. waking life. have yet to be realized. In the process of death within follower to pursue liberation, or mokša. Śańkara emphasized four states of In their fruition, karmic traces effect the perpetuation of transmigratory To Śańkara, the cycle of waking and aŃkaracarya was an eighth century being: waking, dreaming, deep sleep, Bondage and Transmigration the internal organ (buddhi) and force existence (saµsāra), even as the organs dreaming is important because actions ŚIndian philosopher who famously and a supernatural, transcendent it to long for certain experiences and cease functioning, the body remains (karma) ripen both in waking and took on two powerful interlocutors state that most closely approximates ondage is the fundamental results; people are constantly subject to in the location where the jiva resides. dreaming states. The embodied system of his time, the Mīmāµsakas and the a human manifestation of union with Bproblem that Śańkara, and the effects of their past actions, which After the dissolution of the senses, the is summarized by Śańkara as follows: Buddhists, revolutionizing the popular God (turīya). For Śańkara, the state almost all Indian philosophers, set force them into a state of desire. In jiva takes up temporary residence at the theory and practice of of dreaming, which may seem the out to solve. To what are we bound? the Indian system, desire pertains to center of the heart. By some unknown Karmas (as the results of actions, good so effectively that he is still widely least significant from the standpoint Transmigratory existence (saµsāra), the both liking and disliking, as disliking is process, some particular karma ripens or bad, in the past existence) produce asso- revered today, and the philosophy of “reality,” is critical. It is a state self-perpetuating and continual cycle of simply the desire to get away from an into a vāsanā, or tendency, which forces ciation with a body. When there is associa- and practice he introduced mostly which later came to take on even suffering, which carries on from life to object. Karmas in their more ripened the jiva to take a particular direction tion with a body, pleasant and unpleasant extant. Philosophically, he worked greater significance in the “Six Yogas life in a stream of different situations form are termed vāsanās, and it is the of exit from the body via one of the things are inevitable. From these result to reinterpret the Vedas, and the of ,” a seminal practice in and embodied forms that accompany vāsanās that create the link between one subtle channels; the direction taken passion and aversion (and) from them ac- meaning of karma, so that his system the transmission of yoga from India an individual or ātman, all colored by life and the next. determines the destiny and quality of tions (kriyā). (Upadeśasāhasrī I, 1.3) maintained reliance upon the widely to Tibet. However, dreaming is not karmic tendencies. Karmic tendencies In contrast to these fluctuating, the rebirth taken. accepted authority of the Vedas, and developed into a practice in Śańkara’s are quite literally the spice of life, the yet changed the prescription for world- system, but is rather embedded into a ink in the printer, the projector of the 4 Karl Potter, The Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1970), 22. view and the subsequent execution system of four psychological “states of movie, existing as residual impressions 5 Sengaku Mayeda, A Thousand Teachings: The Upadeśasāhasrī of Śańkara (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992), 69. of Vedic injunctions. Additionally, being” that humans experience. The of past actions whose function is to fill 6 This list is particular to the Advaita system; other philosophical schools enumerate and include different aspects of action in during Śańkara’s time, Buddhism was first reference to these four states of in the colors, shapes and sensations of this list as sense functions. 7 Potter, Encyclopedia, 23. 1 Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, I Am That (Mumbai: Sundaram Art Printing Press, 1973), 318. 8 This addition was taken from an interview with Sri Narasimhan, M.A., an Indian philosopher/philologist, in the city of 2 Taken from an interview with M.A. Narasimhan in Mysore, India, on December 29, 2013. Mysore, , in December 2013. 3 Wendy Doniger, Dreams, Illusion, and Other Realities (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1984), 15. 9 Potter, Encyclopedia, 24-5.

60 Issue 20 Spring 2015 61 (From actions) (dharma) and karmas are the results of past actions Brahman also has a lower form with their appearances are different. Hence, validates the continuity and real-ness of that the word “illusion” may fall short demerit (adharma ) result and from mer- that cause one to be connected with positive qualities (saguņa), which is because of the non-difference between objects outside of the perception of any as a translation for the creative power it and demerit there results an ignorant a body. The body is the source of all God, and it is possible to know this God all aspects of creator and creation, individual, and God is involved with of God. Māyā itself, in actuality, is an man’s association with a body in the same experiences of pleasure and pain, and even through ignorant states (āvidya).12 this system qualifies as monist simply every aspect of creation. If a tree falls in aspect of the Lord/Īśvara in the same manner again. Thus this transmigratory from those states, desire and aversion Lower Brahman has the three qualities because it ultimately only has one the forest and no one is there to hear it, way that heat is an aspect of fire. The existence rolls onward powerfully forever arise. Based on desire and aversion, of Sat, Cit and Ānanda, respectively constituent.15 it does make a sound, because God is power of māyā is to veil reality, just as , like a wheel. (Upadeśasāhasrī I, 1.4)10 actions are undertaken, which result in translated as Being, Consciousness, and While higher Brahman remains the one who hears it. a small cloud can veil the rays of the the accumulation of merit and demerit Bliss.13 Sat, or being, is passive, non- untouched, it is lower Brahman, or Śańkara’s innovation was to introduce sun, which would otherwise cover great Returning to the consideration of (karma), which then lead back to the composite, not subject to origination God (Īśvara) that is the source of the the aspect of nirguņa Brahman that expanses of the earth with its rays. The the in-between state, if one is fortunate start of the cycle again. or destruction, and unchanging. Cit, diversity of life, precisely because it is runs parallel to all the manifest reality, cloud itself is only visible, however, enough to take the Northern or or consciousness, is a much more conditioned by ignorance. This aspect which is the perfect manifestation of because of the power of the rays of the Southern path, one is guided by deities Ātman and Brahman informative and dynamic concept, presents some problems, because, saguņa Brahman that creates, maintains, sun itself. In the same way, māyā gives through the process of transmigration which is the aspect of awareness and while lower Brahman/God is indeed and destroys. All this is not to say that rise to avidyā, ignorance.20 on to the next life. Those who, due to his process of transmigration witness of all of creation. Cit is the omniscient and omnipotent, lower Śańkara’s explanation fell short, but In order to explain how ignorance bad karma, take a lower rebirth into Tprovides a glimpse of the various radiant illuminator that shines a light Brahman also seems to be the effect of much attention was given to this issue and illusion manifest of out Brahman, the realm of Yama, the god of death, components that make up the onto all other objects. It has no form ignorance, which presents some logical by later thinkers in this tradition.17 Śańkara introduced a new concept into are immediately reborn as an animal, individual, as well as the process of unto itself, so it also does not possess an inconsistencies. How is it possible for Another issue is that of God’s reason Hindu philosophy that he borrowed a plant, or even a piece of grain—their reincarnation from life to life. It is now aspect of subjectivity, nor can it become ignorance to be more powerful than to create anything at all. There is no from the Chāndogya Upanišad called subtle bodies being encapsulated in essential to embed the view of the self an object of awareness. However, that which is omnipotent, and to force specific reason for being that is addressed “Unevolved Name and Form” (avyākŗte their new “body,” experiencing the within the duo of ātman and Brahman, a certain amount of direct access is it to manifest in a certain way? The only by God’s creation; he has neither desires nāmarūpe). It refers to a primary material pains of their existence as if they are in a which are ontologically the only real, afforded to Cit, because it is said to be explanation has to be that it is God’s to satisfy, nor any interests to fulfill. that is the source of the evolution of the dream. Eventually they become food for non-illusory aspects of Śańkara’s system. perceivable in the third state of the four will for there to be ignorance, but then He merely creates out of a sense of world, essentially acting as a seed for humans, and, once ingested, combine Ignorance (āvidya) and the play of psychological states of a person, that of the problem arises of why God would playfulness (lilā). He simply cannot help manifold existence. This concept seems with the blood or semen of the person illusion (māyā) are the cause for the deep sleep. However, the objects that create so much suffering in the world. himself. Even though God is presented to have been designed to take the place who is eating, and, along normal lines creation of the un-real world that is normally appear to the Cit are all the It seems that Śańkara did not have all in such an impersonal and unmotivated of the Sāµkhya system’s prakŗti, which of reproduction, become born. This based on ātman/ Brahman. products of ignorance (āvidya). the answers to these questions. Later fashion, he still conjures up a great provides an easy, although dualist, may be the source of the importance There could not possibly be any Ānanda, the third aspect of lower thinkers within his tradition dealt with deal of devotion from Śańkara and his solution for the problem of a diverse of food in Indian culture, because the positive language that could describe Brahman, is a special type of bliss, them extensively.16 followers. world and an unchanging basis (puruśa). karma of purer beings will end up in Brahman, for Brahman is only apparent which is completely different from the Śańkara’s attempt at a solution to this For the Sāµkhyas, the diversity of purer foodstuffs, so eating pure foods is when all obscurations have been mundane, temporary pleasure known by problem was to claim that all objects Ignorance and Illusion the world all evolves directly out of advantageous for having children with removed. Brahman has no name or ordinary people. In a rather surprising exist in relation to the consciousness one of the two components of that superior karma. form and, likewise, does not possess any assertion, Śańkara suggests that even that apprehends them, which is lower, or t is not clear where the first dualistic system, namely from prakŘti. The food eaten by the mother during human qualities. There is a higher and the liberated being does not experience saguņa, Brahman. Saguņa is translated Iappearances of ignorance (āvidya) Śańkara tried to appropriate the dualist gestation becomes the body of the new a lower aspect of Brahman, and when the Bliss of Brahman. However, it still as “with qualities,” and the qualities and illusion (māyā) are found, nor explanation, which makes a lot of sense person, colored by their own karmic one has knowledge in the form of a lies at the center of our very being, and attributed to God/Īśvara are the entire the equating of the two concepts that to people, but to retrofit it into his monist tendencies (vāsanās), and also assuming direct perception of higher Brahman later writers suggest that the fleeting universe, which is the body of God. Śańkara concretized in his writings, presentation by including diversity as an a genetic inheritance from the parents, (nirguņa, without qualities), that itself experience of pleasure is a taste of this God is therefore infinite, omniscient, although some have pointed to rather aspect of Brahman. In order to do so, he which is why children look like their is liberation (mokša). joy that is our very nature.14 and omnipotent in its will, and the infrequent references in the Řg Veda organized the physical elements into a parents. Brahman is the singular and ultimate When Brahman creates the universe, changes that occur are orderly in that or some of the older Upanišads.18 progressive system of manifestation and Thus the child is born. The descrip- cause of the universe, and is also ātman, it is essentially a process of self-creation they are aligned with God’s will. The Gauďapada, Śańkara’s guru’s guru, evolution—air evolving from ether; tion of karma gets elaborated on at this equal to the individual self or soul, or transformation (pariņāma), because higher Brahman comes into the picture makes sixteen references to the two then fire; then water; and then finally point, for the child is endowed with which acts as the passive perceiver of all Brahman is both the creator, and is also as the witness of everything, and is separate concepts, but does not associate earth. From earth’s combination with three different kinds of karmas. One the states that are subsequently caused everything that it creates. Therefore, termed nirguņa, or “without qualities” them in the way Śańkara did.19 the other elements, all material things type dictates the duration of life barring after ignorance. As the cause of the an important distinction between because its only role is the knowledge Māyā/illusion is the basis of error are produced, such as grains and plants. accidental death, while the others universe, Brahman is responsible for different Hindu philosophical schools or witnessing of reality. Because God inherent to all human perception When those things are eaten, they dictate the types of experiences to be the trinity of creation, subsistence, and lies in the differences between creator is constantly witnessing reality, the and judgment. That illusion is also create the bodies of men and women, undergone.11 destruction, the three main functions and what is created, because whether existence of the world does not depend the substance out of which Brahman who come together and make new An alternative presentation of that later are personified as the Hindu creator and creation are different or the on the perception of individuals for creates the world. The fact that māyā is people through reproduction. This is transmigratory existence, one more trinity of Brahma, Vishnu, and Śiva. same qualifies the system as monist or its existence. God is the witness that the creative power of Brahman means an important key to Śańkara’s system, reminiscent of Buddhism, is also given This higher Brahman is different from dualist. In Śańkara’s system, the creator by Śańkara. In this brief presentation, the material world. and created are identical, even though 15 Mayeda, A Thousand Teachings, 19. 16 Potter, Encyclopedia, 76-8. 10 Potter, Encyclopedia, 24-5. 17 V. Keshava Menon, The Mind of Adi Shankaracharya (Bombay: Jaico Publishing House, 1976), 50-3. 11 Mayeda, A Thousand Teachings, 71. 18 For more on this see Potter, Encyclopedia, 78. 12 Potter, Encyclopedia, 74. 19 Potter, Encyclopedia, 78-80. 13 Mayeda, A Thousand Teachings, 19. 20 Menon, The Mind of Adi Shankaracharya 14 Potter, Encyclopedia, 75-6.

62 Issue 20 Spring 2015 63 because it explains how unevolved name is real and not an illusion of God’s of pre-Advaita Vedantic thought, nowhere. One is only the owner of the seeing the rope/snake duo is that the productions of the mind of a perceiver. and form develops into evolved name making. The illusion exists independent especially of the teachings of Pūrva store when they possess all the qualities snake is simply an aspect of the rope. As a metaphor, this suggests that objects and form, and goes on to comprise of our thoughts, and will not go away Mimaµsa—according to Śańkara’s of ownership, such as the title, bank The rope/snake analogy is also applied experienced in waking life are just as materiality and experience. In a reversal because of any action undertaken by an methods, to achieve liberation one account, and knowledge of how to run to the process of transmigration. Higher unreal as those in a dream, and that of that process, there is always the individual. However, it is not a figment must abandon action altogether, for the store. You can work to get those Brahman cannot transmigrate because in the same way that we can wake up possibility of reducing objects back to of our imagination: it exists as God’s both pure and impure deeds result in qualities, but there is no injunction it does not change; however, the from a dream, we can also “wake up” to name and form: everything is merely play.21 God is unaffected by his own bondage. However, the Bhagavad Gitā that can be done that will coerce them individual self also cannot transmigrate the reality of our situation, which lies name and form. In that way, things creation. warns against not taking any action at into one's possession. The qualities because it is not real. Therefore, in the in stark contrast to how we normally are not real. The illusion of name and all, which would mean not performing will appear when they do. Īśvara is the same way that the snake is not real, perceive it. form is what people see, and it is a Liberation one’s duties, and assures us that that mediator between the unconditioned transmigration itself is also not real. The four states of the Self—sleeping, manifestation of Brahman. None of too is an action, the action of failing to Brahman and the conditioned jiva that Another prominent metaphor that dreaming, deep sleep, and turīya—can the manifestation is real in an ultimate t would be essentially useless fulfill one’s dharma. functions until the conditioning has demonstrates certain philosophical be distinguished among the mental sense, although it is relatively real from Ito point out the problem of Śańkara takes avidyā as his opponent. been removed. points is that of a pot and the space and physical life of a person as all the a common sense perspective. transmigratory existence without As long as ignorance is operating, desire, Some action is required in the inside, which is used to explain how an possible states of mind in the realm of Here Śańkara came dangerously close proposing a functional solution, and the activation of mental impressions, process of removing the obscurations individual, non-dual object is able to experience. They are the different ways to approximating a dualist Sāµkhya and like most Indian philosophical ripen into inclinations (vāsanās), which to Brahman and achieving liberation, produce duality without being modified that the ātman manifests, even though view of reality, nearly abandoning his systems, mokša, or liberation, is the are acted upon, thereby planting new because the state of ignorance has to be itself. Just as space can be partitioned in actuality it is only one singular entity. main assertion, that of monism— goal here. What constitutes liberation karmic seeds that provide fuel for the comprehended in order to transcend it. with the use of a pot without itself When the filter of ignorance is applied, everything is Brahman. In doing so, to the Advaitin? “Being, knowing, and cycle of transmigration. Avidyā cannot Therefore, adherents must contemplate being affected, so too can Brahman this pattern of distortion occurs, just as he also contradicted some of the Vedas experiencing one’s true Self.”22 When be destroyed by any action whatsoever. unreality in juxtaposition to the reality be divided into individual selves (jiva) a translucent gem appears differently that claim that material elements one is no longer forced to experience It is destroyed by the perfection of of Brahman, and in order to do that, without undergoing any real change. when certain colors are placed behind it. cannot possibly evolve directly from birth, aging, death, and rebirth, and its opposite, knowledge (vidyā). To Īśvara itself is the ideal object.23 Moreover, when the pot is destroyed, Until now we have mostly concerned higher Brahman, which itself is Pure experiences one's own true Self, then Śańkara, knowledge itself is not an act the space inside it effortlessly merges ourselves with the first state, the Consciousness and is not capable of liberation has been achieved. The at all, and therefore its possession does Another Look at the Problems of with the surrounding space, just as upon waking state, which is comprised of the creation. In explaining the unity of experience of the true Self is essentially not incur the accumulation of karma. In Advaita Vedānta liberation, a jiva simply and effortlessly mental and psychological experiences Brahman and Unevolved Name and the key to the majority of teachings on fact, we already have it, and we simply re-merges with the Divine.24 undergone on a day-to-day basis. The Form, Śańkara used the analogy of clear Advaita Vedānta. need to call our attention to it by e have to solve yet another ego is confined to the waking state, water and dirty foam floating upon the As we have already seen, the process creating the appropriate circumstances. Wbig problem: how does diversity Dreaming as a Metaphor for and the jiva only comes into contact clear water. The foam could not possibly of transmigration is caused by our Getting to the state of liberation is arise from a single entity (nirguņa Reality in Advaita Vedānta with phenomena on this level of exist without the water, its source; so ignorance (avidyā), but that ignorance like what happens to the space in a pot Brahman), and how do individuals consciousness. When the ātman is in while the foam is not identical with the is simply obscuring the true Self which when the pot breaks, which is in reality (jiva) arise from the one Self (ātman)? any analogies are used to the waking state the five sense organs water, neither is it completely different is already there, fully developed, radiant nothing at all. When a pot breaks, Furthermore, how does the appearance Mshow how the one God-Self are active, the internal sense organs are from it, since it cannot possibly exist and perfect. Therefore, liberation nothing happens to the space inside of of the world relate to God, and how develops into the various and diverse functional, and there is consciousness of without the water. We all know that does not require any kind of positive it; in the same way, upon liberation, the do our personal experiences relate to forms that constitute reality. However, external objects.25 dirty foam is different from pure water. transformation or development, but mokša that was already our core remains God? Later Advaita authors contributed none of the analogies are without In the dream state only the internal Water is clear and pure like ātman, while rather it must be revealed. In that vein, the same. Gauďapada even went so far much to these subjects, but Śańkara did problem, because they all rest on a basis organs function, so consciousness is foam corresponds to name and form. liberation has no beginning or end, as to say that there is no liberation at all. as well, again mostly through the use of of two things, namely a perceiver and aware of internal objects, i.e. the contents Since God is the one with the because it has always been there. It exists When ignorance is removed, actions analogy. an obstruction to perception, and the of dreams. In actuality, for Śańkara, power to create illusion in the Advaita nowhere else but right here, so there is (karma) cannot become activated. They To address how the self (jiva) duality inherent in the metaphor falls the dreaming objects of awareness are philosophy, the accusation is made neither heaven nor hell to go to. are not able to fulfill their potential, constructs objects through its own short in a monist system. Since it is vāsanās, or ripened karmic tendencies that ignorance belongs to God and Because liberation cannot be achieved and, like a burnt seed, are no longer illusion, the metaphor of a rope and a fundamental to the Advaita view that that are the byproducts of grasping not to individuals, which is a point through action, there is also no able to sprout. Furthermore, the actions snake is used. If, at dusk, one happens all such obstructions to perception are and attachment in the waking state, of contention in Śańkara’s system. possibility for falling from grace down that still must be undertaken in the upon a snake, and then realizes that essentially unreal, the metaphors are which then get stored in the memory. However, Śańkara retorts that this does into hells because of negative actions lifetime of a person no longer subject it is not a snake, but actually a rope, fundamentally flawed in their ability to In dreams, the ātman is freed from the not mean that Brahman is ignorant, that take place. Because of this, Śańkara to avidyā—one who possesses perfect the mechanism by which the snake is clearly relate the system. limitations of both embodiment and because ignorance (āvidya) is unreal, and has been accused of being amoral knowledge—do not leave behind any imputed onto the common shape is There is another analogy that might perception that encumber it during has no effect on Brahman. God gets all because there is no punishment system karmic residues. the memory. The mind superimposes succeed because it does not depend waking life, and is in a state that is the credit for the creation of the world, in place for bad deeds. In actuality, If a person were to take up some action an available memory onto an unknown on a subject-object duality, and it is more pure unto itself. Dreams are as and none is given to the individual self, Śańkara includes moral injunctions as an antidote, it would be as useless entity. The rope represents the positive that of dreaming. Everyone agrees real as waking reality upon a finite which is a defining feature of Advaita. throughout his writings for those at the as the checkout clerk at Whole Foods quality of Brahman that remains upon simply by common sense that dreams investigation and regression of what Individuals are responsible for their earlier stages of spiritual development. saying, “I am the owner of this grocery realization that the snake does not exist are not produced from the perception lies beneath. For example, the ultimate own misconstrual of reality. The error Instead of being bound to perform chain.” Just to say, “I am Brahman” is and was an illusion. Another way of of an external reality, but are rather analysis of a material object such as of humans is in thinking that the world particular actions—which is the crux equally useless, because it will get you 23 Menon, The Mind of Adi Shankaracharya,53-55. 21 Potter, Encyclopedia, 80. 24 Potter, Encyclopedia, 78-85. 22 Potter, Encyclopedia, 32. 25 Mayeda, A Thousand Teachings, 43-5.

64 Issue 20 Spring 2015 65 a chair shows that it is made mostly suffering experienced in waking and itself, or rather can be seen as “the body of God; thus whereas God can create the the illuminator of all the objects. world too seriously, to see it as simply an of empty space, and that its actual dreaming states. It is a more pure God.” However, dreams metaphorically waking world, which is relatively real, 5. And the intellect in the form of illusion that will become unimportant material substance is more of a lack form, but it is not in an ultimately convey the illusion or concealment of the self bound by ignorance can only certain objects must have been seen upon the realization that this is all a than anything else. Dreams are just as pure state. This state acts as a kind of the reality of Brahman. Everyone accepts produce unreal dream objects, its by the dreaming man before also. If dream, realizing that Brahman is the real as waking reality in that, while their home base for waking and dreaming that the objects in dreams are not real. true powers concealed by ignorance. not, how could he see these forms in one true ultimate reality. basis of reality is minutely small, so too to keep coming back to, and is a seed While they are created, sustained, and 111.2.1-6 31 the dreaming state? Again, when a Śańkara’s two main interlocutors— is that of waking reality. However, one for those two. It is precisely this seed then go out of existence over a brief form is being recalled, whence would the Mīmāµsakas and the Buddhists— does not dream while awake, and the that gets burnt by the attainment of period of time, they never seem to be The first striking point that Śańkara it come to him?32 help demonstrate his philosophy on possibilities for visual imagery differ knowledge upon liberation.27 Śańkara real in the way that waking life does makes about dreaming is that dreams the issue of agency in conventional, significantly—one does not typically fly explains deep sleep as a state that occurs from the perspective of being awake. are not real because there is no room How are the objects of dreaming conditioned reality. When Śańkara in waking life, for example, while this is when the organs are tired, including Accepting their unreality is easy, and for the objects of dreaming within the projected? Śańkara tells us here that it takes on his Vedantic counterparts, the a distinct possibility in a dream. Dreams the internal (sense) organs, and become yet the reality of waking life does seem body of the dreamer. If one dreams of is through the mechanism of memory Mīmāµsakas, he appears to reject karma do not have a special status in this temporarily absorbed into the breath, real—we do not regularly wake up from a car, the car could not possibly exist that forms take their shapes, and again altogether because he rejects their notion system, but are rather another mode of so that they cease functioning and no waking life and see it as an illusion in within the confines of the body as it lays we are reminded that past experiences of agent, action, and effect. He does not being in reality and illusion, powered by objects are perceived. There is no sense our own ordinary experience. However, in the state of sleeping and dreaming. dictate present ones. Nothing is outside allow for the dogmatic, marketplace ignorance. Their relative truth is just as of subjectivity in the state of deep sleep, according to Śańkara, objects of both Nonetheless, the dreams are not totally of the system whereby the imprints of approach where actions buy good relevant as that of waking life. Waking whereas in the dream state a sense of waking life and of dreams originate in useless, because they can function as past actions take the shape of mental results if prescribed by Vedic injunction. life also lacks utter realness in the same embodiment occurs.28 However, a thin the same source, and are equally unreal. signs or prophesies of some higher truth. impressions. They are stored in jiva, On the other hand, when engaging the way that dreams do. veil of māyā remains even in the state Śańkara’s own writings on dreaming say Furthermore, just as when we wake up the individual that is associated with a Buddhists in debate, he must defend a The differences between the waking of deep sleep, so it is not a state of the following: in the morning, the experiences that particular ātman. It is interesting that, foundational consciousness that acts as a and dreaming states illuminate several liberation. have been incurred while dreaming even though according to Śańkara’s storehouse of karma, which is the origin aspects of this philosophical system. The The three previous states are as From the Brahmasūtrabhāšya, 3rd integrate into our personhood or being, philosophy all of creation is the will of of the chain of actions and results. fact that self-consciousness is maintained impermanent as any other material Chapter, 2nd Section: in the same way when we wake up to our God, the role of the individual seems Śańkara places himself in the middle and does not vary from the waking state object such as clothes or wealth, and true nature’s equivalence with Brahman, to fill in the names and forms of reality. between these two. When discussing while a person is dreaming is given as have their basis in ignorance. The fourth The world of our dreams is not real, our waking life will appear to us just as The only way to resolve the discrepancy ultimate reality, he says that Brahman is proof that the ātman is the witnessing state, turīya, transcends all the other it is merely māyā, since things happen unreal as a dream does now. is to posit a lack of free will to the devoid of an agent with a will because consciousness of the self, which does not states, and is the state of liberation.29 It in dreams that cannot happen in individual, and attribute all individuals’ he must uphold the non-dual nature depend on a certain embodied form, but cannot be expressed by words because reality (that is, in the waking world). Śańkara also says: actions to the will of God. of Brahman. However, conventional maintains continuity throughout the it is Brahman, and it is the same in For example, there isn’t room for Persons are in the middle of a chain reality approximates the dependent various experiences of reality. Further, everyone. It is non-dual in nature, but dreamt-of chariots in the actual From the Upadeśasāhasrī, Chapter of cause and effect that makes up the origination of Buddhism, which is the world of dreams cannot be shared concealed by ignorance. Śańkara puts it body; the sleeper cannot go to points 14 on Dream and Memory world. The individual is most certainly mildly deterministic due to the power with others in the same way that the like this: far away in a single moment; the under the effect of his or her previous of past actions to create present reality, realities of waking life are clearly shared The dream state becomes unreal in sleeper’s body cannot remain visible 1. Since the form-and-color of a jar, actions, but seems to be free to create combined with the free will to make among different people, proof that the waking state, nor does the waking to others on a couch while it is far etc., is seen appearing in dream and new events in the future through the decisions within the confines of what is we are not all of one consciousness. If state exist in dream and sleep; both away experiencing things in quite memory, it is certainly to be inferred choices made in the present moment. presented.33 different realities did not exist, then the dream and waking state are absent in the another place; he dreams it is day that the intellect has previously been This is a widely accepted view of the liberation of the first person would have deep sleep state; sleep, too, is absent in when it is night, and it can’t be both seen in that form. laws of karma in Indian philosophy, Was Śańkara a Crypto-Buddhist? been the liberation for everyone, which waking and in dreams. Because of their at once. Nevertheless these illusory 2. Just as one oneself is not the where there is a strong sense of agency is not the case.26 mutual contradictions the three states dreams may be prophetic. The body which is seen wandering about in the theory on karma, insofar as the ańkara has been accused of being In the third state, deep sleep, no are unreal; but the Self is the Eternal waking world—“real” by comparison begging alms in the dreaming state, agent decides whether or not to take up Śa crypto-Buddhist even though he objects are encountered whatsoever, Witness of the three states and is thus with the dream world— is still not so is he different from the body which an act. However, if the availability of the explicitly disagreed with the Buddhists and even the internal organs cease beyond them. It is the One which is the absolutely real, as we have seen earlier; is seen in the waking state, since he is current choices of actions depends solely in many places in his writing and to function. Even though nothing is nature of pure consciousness.”30 the dream world is sublated each the seer (of the body). on past actions, the logical conclusion philosophy. He did not accept the perceived in the state of deep sleep, morning when we awake, whereas the 3. Just as molten copper appears in the would be an infinite regress of repetitive Buddhist philosophical view that the Pure Consciousness of Brahman ŚaŃkara on Dreaming waking world remains until ultimate form of the mold into which it was actions—always more of the same. there is no real self, but rather only a continues to be present and the jiva realization of Brahman’s identity with poured, so it is certainly experienced Further, in this system, there are infinite succession of mental states. To Śańkara, merges into it. There is no object of aŃkara did not use the dream the Self. As long as the Self is blinded that the mind, when pervading the previous lives and no first life which is the commonplace reality of the world perception, but the fundamental basis Śmetaphor to deny the reality of by ignorance it cannot produce for its external objects such as form-color, the beginning of the process—life is as we see it is as real as possible given of the ātman remains. In this state, waking life, because, as we have already experience anything real, even though appears in their forms. infinite and beginningless. The only way the circumstances. Objects are real, and the ātman is free from the pain and seen, the reality of waking life is God it is ultimately non-different from 4. Or, just as light, the illuminator, to get out of the conundrum of being even unreal objects such as the rope assumes the forms of what it stuck within a repetitive cycle of actions mistaken to be a snake has a reality of its 26 Menon, The Mind of Adi Shankaracharya, 76-77. illuminates, so the intellect is seen to that repeat themselves, according to own. To Śańkara, commonplace reality 27 Mayeda, A Thousand Teachings, 43-5. have the forms of its objects, since it is Advaitin philosophy, is to not take the is only unreal compared to what is real. 28 Potter, Encyclopedia, 90. 29 Mayeda, A Thousand Teachings, 43-5. 31 Menon, The Mind of Adi Shankaracharya, 81. 30 Menon, The Mind of Adi Shankaracharya, 81. 32 Mayeda, A Thousand Teachings, 136.

66 Issue 20 Spring 2015 67 Therefore, when he states that Brahman disappear moment-by-moment, and Śańkara in Practice to manipulate the results of their deeds Naomi Worth is a doctoral student at is the sole reality, he is implying a relative that nothing persists between any two with hopes of similar results. Śańkara the University of Virginia, where she truth to the phenomenal world.34 occasions. For the Advaitins, even n the basis of the four states views transcended the manipulation studies the yoga traditions of Tibet At first glance, Śańkara’s system though consciousness is an illusion, Oof being, embedded within the of circumstances through action. His and India. Her research focuses on appears to have much in common at its heart lies the manifestation of surrounding philosophy of Śańkara’s system, which prescribes knowledge contemplative techniques, and the with Buddhism, including the the pure consciousness of Brahman. Advaita Vedantā, it is clear that while and non-action as the antidote to history and philosophy of the subtle dependent nature of relative truth, the This pure source of consciousness there are superficial similarities with suffering, is accessible for those who body. She is on the directorate board of goal of liberation (mokša) from the is something that does not exist in Buddhism, the Advaita system is truly may be talented and already tapped into UVA's Contemplative Sciences Center, beginningless cycle of transmigratory Buddhism. Memory is what ties the unique unto itself. That being said, the higher knowledge to some extent, but and is an Authorized Level 1 Ashtanga existence (saµsara), the system of past and the present together, and the fact that Śańkara brought dreaming to beginners and the common man have yoga teacher. karma, what happens at death, and Advaitins dispute Buddhist philosophy the forefront of an Indian philosophical found it somewhat difficult to practice. finally, the cause for all of creation, by saying that a lack of a witness system may have been enough to plant When we dream, an entire world i.e. ignorance (avidyā). However, the consciousness makes their system of the seed for the use of dreaming as a manifests and we have an experience. shared components are only the same karma lack a proper foundation upon tool in the manipulation of karma, as During the dream, we identify ourselves upon a superficial glance. First of all, which to function. the Tibetans later did. The elements of with the subject, and there are other the early Buddhist view is restricted Furthermore, while in Buddhism ignorance, transmigratory existence, beings in our dreams, as well as a material Adi Guru Śańkaracarya mostly to the waking state, and gives the ego is something that should just karma, and so forth, in conjunction world, which all seem real. Upon waking Photo ©RobertMoses much less significance to the state be annihilated, something that exists with an importance of dreaming, all we realize that the dream was not real, of dreaming. Both Advaita Vedānta simply as a byproduct of delusion and set the stage for the appropriation of that it was merely a projection of our and the Buddhists say that the world ignorance, Śańkara considers it to be the dreaming state in contemplative own mind. The radiance of Brahman is an illusion and completely unreal. the seed of the witness consciousness practice in later spiritual practices. at the center of Śańkara’s philosophy However, Śańkara posits a caveat where that represents the pure consciousness We spend a third of our life sleeping, may be the seed for tantric deity yoga the illusion only extends to being of Brahman. and no matter what we do during the practices that associate the individual bound up in transmigratory existence For the Buddhists, ignorance is caused day, we always end in the same way. self (jiva) with the greater Self (ātman), conditioned by the state of ignorance. by the belief in an essential nature to Śańkara did not place a great emphasis so that one can ultimately see that he or For Buddhism, ignorance is also the things, and this results in desire and on the manipulation of action into she is God (Brahman). cause of all the diverse appearances aversion and incites the process of dharmic and adharmic deeds, e.g. of existence. However, Śańkara has karma and rebirth. Śańkara agrees that virtuous or non-virtuous actions, in something which is ultimately real, and ignorance is the cause of all suffering, order to manipulate the ripening of Works Cited that is Brahman. When looked at from but he says that another consequence their results. His system has always Doniger, Wendy. Dreams, Illusion, the ultimate point of view, the reality of ignorance is that it causes us to miss remained somewhat out of reach of the and Other Realities. Chicago: The of Śańkara’s system is very real, and the out on the reality of Brahman which common man because it seems difficult University of Chicago Press, 1984. Buddhists simply do not have a reality pervades everything, a point that, to practice. The attainment of vidyā Iyer, K.A. Krishnaswamy. Collected to rely on—their system ultimately rests according to Śańkara, is lost on even the through a simple act of knowing the Works of K.A. Krishnaswamy Iyer. on a lack. Buddha himself. true reality of Brahman seems almost Holenarsipur: The Adhyantama For the Advaitins, life is not a Finally, the Buddhists posit that upon unattainable, so that it is easy to see why Prakasha Press, 1969. collection of concepts. For example, the removal of ignorance, desire and the Tibetans, and also later interpreters Maharaj, Sri Nisargadatta. I Am That. ideas of dogs do not bark, real dogs do. aversion are uprooted, suffering ends, of the Vedas, went on to try to control Mumbai: Sundaram Art Printing Press, While Buddhism gives no fixed reality and nirvana is reached, even though their manifest reality through action, as 1973. to objects, they do allow for a certain there is no one there to “be” in nirvana. the Mīmāµsakas had previously done Mayeda, Sengaku. A Thousand amount of realness as well in the system For Śańkara, the removal of ignorance with their use of ritual injunctions. Teachings: The Upadeśasāhasrī of of dependent origination, or relative (avidyā) does not lead to nirvana, but Śańkara truly did lie in the Śańkara. Albany: State truth. Therefore, for both systems, all rather to vidyā, or pure knowing of middle between his interlocutors— University of New York Press, 1992. objects in relative truth are as real as the truth of the Self/Brahman. At the Mīmāµsakas and Buddhists. He Menon, V. Keshava. The Mind of possible considering the circumstances. second state for both systems, truth and rejected action where they both took Adi Shankaracharya. Bombay: Jaico Regarding consciousness, the early reality become one and the same. Vidyā it up, but in different ways. The Publishing House, 1976. Indian Buddhism that Śańkara likely however reveals that the Self actually is Mīmāµsakas used action, or karma, to Potter,Karl. The Encyclopedia of knew said that consciousness is a stream Brahman, the highest reality.35 force the Gods to give them what they Indian Philosophies. Delhi: Motilal of momentary concepts that arise and wanted, while the Buddhists used action Banarsidass, 1970. Timalsina, Sthaneshwar. “Self, Causation and Agency in the Advaita 33 Sthaneshwar Timalsina, “Self, Causation and Agency in the Advaita of Sankara,” in Free Will, Agency, and Selfhood in Indian of Sankara,” in Free Will, Agency, and Philosophy, ed. Matthew Dasti and Edwin Bryant, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 186-88. Selfhood in Indian Philosophy, ed. 34 Menon, The Mind of Adi Shankaracarya, 50. Matthew Dasti and Edwin Bryant, 35 K.A. Krishnaswamy Iyer, Collected Works of K.A. Krishnaswamy Iyer (Holenarsipur: The Adhyantama Prakasha Press, 1969), (New York: Oxford University Press, 169-176. 2014), 186-88.

68 Issue 20 Spring 2015 69 SELECTIONS FROM The idea of creating opposite sexes by Each philosophical system has its own school, matter is the only reality. Body splitting the original Person in the Rig perspective of the world, builds its own and mind are different forms of matter. IN SEARCH OF IMMORTALITY Veda lasted through the Upanishads model of how it is composed, and how it Consciousness is just a configuration of AN INTRODUCTION TO INDIC WORLD-VIEWS and the Puranas. The Brhadaranyaka works. Based on that, it arrives at its own matter. With the dissolution of body, BY JAIDEV DASGUPTA Upanishad says that the Self shed conclusions. Together, they cover a wide consciousness is also lost forever. Soul half of itself to produce a female. The range of possibilities about the nature of has no meaning for the materialists. Published in 2014 by Manohar Publishers and Distributors, New Delhi 110002, India. androgynous God Shiva is another time—as real or imaginary, absolute or In response to the question, "If there is For more information please see www.jaidevdasgupta.com example with both male and female relative, continuous or discrete. Space no permanent self, who experiences life principles in one. And, likewise, Vishnu is conceived either as a continuous or and is able to recall past experiences?", has his own feminine aspect. Thus the granular absolute substance or as an the Buddhists say that the five nama- here did the world come Man sees the world as some-thing other perpetuation of creation through the abstraction derived from the events rupa (name and form) — Wfrom?, Who created it?, What than himself, and is instinctively driven union of opposite polarities depends happening in nature. Causation has form, feelings, perception, volition, and happens to a person after death? to learn more about it, organize, control, upon the original sacrifice or division of its own share of variations: either a consciousness—characterize a person. Thoughts on such questions are found and master it as much as possible. Thus the first Being. permanent being or substance is driving These skandhas (bundles or aggregates) in the Rig Veda, the oldest extant Indo- the most basic drives for food, sex, shelter, Although the Nasadiya Sukta clearly the world phenomena, or the events are changing every moment from birth European text, dating back to circa and safety force humans to organize difference between the two? In answer to questions the role of gods in creation, are happening one after another due until death. Hence, they are different 1500 BCE. It provides insights into the experiences in a way to make some sense this, the Maitri Upanishad says that the it is quite tempting to assume that the to the inter-relationship between the at different stages of life. But through world-view of the Aryans who migrated of themselves and their world, learn Brahman has two forms—the formed Indic world-view believes in the theistic constituents comprising the reality. The an unbroken series of cause and effect and settled in India approximately important lessons, and derive rules for and the formless, i.e. the manifested and creation of the world. The strongest effects produced from these changes are the skandhas at any stage are caused by 4,000 years ago. Many of the concepts living a purposeful life. the un-manifested. The world manifests arguments against the idea of creation either distinct from the cause, pre-exist those of the previous stage and, in turn, and ideas that comprise present-day As the regularities and patterns in out of the un-manifested Brahman. The by God come from the Vedic school of in it, or the same as the cause. cause skandhas of the next stage...When Indian world-views descend from the nature become increasingly obvious, the latter is real, while the former is unreal. Purva Mimamsa...The heterodox sects the present skandhas identify with the Vedas and the Upanishads. world becomes more comprehensible This naturally begs the question: Why of Jains and Buddhists also refuted the Who Am I? past skandhas, they serve as the basis for However, couched in mythological and predictable, letting people think in a is the un-manifested real, whereas the idea of divine creation. recollection and give a person a sense of and religious forms, these concepts are more systematic and logical manner. Thus manifested world that can be seen, he Vedas do not seem to say continuity. prone to give a lopsided impression that mythical thinking is only an early phase touched, smelled, felt, and experienced How Does It Work? Tmuch about who or what man is. While the Sankhya scheme, with its Indian philosophy is theistic in nature. in the development of a world picture. is unreal? The reason is that ‘the real’ However, there are hymns in the Rig two ultimate realities, is much simpler But teasing them out from such literature As the picture becomes more mature is defined as that which lasts forever, ven when we hear a story that a Veda that speak of the continuation of in comparison to the Nyaya-Vaisesika leads to a loss of the context within with time, it reaches a stage when it is permanent and unchanging. The Egod separated the earth from the sky happy life even after death, suggesting system, according to which the world which they developed and evolved over allows philosophical and critical thinking manifested world, on the other hand, and created the space between the two, it a belief in an element of human being is made of nine different building time. In Search of Immortality seeks to and scientific probing of ideas that were is constantly changing, elusive, and usually doesn’t compel us to ask: Where that lasts beyond his or her physical blocks, Sankhya has its own problems. recontextualize Indian world-views by held dearly, and paves the way for either impermanent. So the world is unreal, was the god standing before the space death. And it is this element that How do matter and consciousness— tracing them from their origin in the supporting or refuting them, with a but the everlasting Brahman is real. was created? This apparent paradox —If experiences life in this world as well substances of entirely different Rig Vedic hymns to their evolution possibility of altering the world-view. Therefore, what is real exists, but what the space was created with the creation as in the other world. Thus the Vedas natures—interact with each other? into various orthodox and heterodox exists may not be real! of cosmos, then where was the creation assume imperishability of life. Although, unlike the Nyaya-Vaisesika, philosophical systems, and illuminates Where Did the World Come From? In the Shakta philosophy, Devi or taking place—is not a problem with The Upanishads' challenge is: How the Sankhya at least attempts to the cluster of quintessential ideas that Shakti creates, preserves, and destroys the Rig Veda. It is a problem arising to find immortality? Life’s happiness show an interaction between soul have molded the Indian psyche over here are varied speculations in this universe. The Shakti myth is from our habit of seeing things with depends on it. Man’s immortality has and matter, it is not clear how just several millennia. Tthe Rig Veda on how the world was considered to have a pre-Vedic origin boundaries lying in space, such that to be established on a firm ground. Just the proximity of soul could induce possibly created. This is because the Veda in the cult of Mother Goddess— we view even the universe as an object because the Vedas say that man has an matter to evolve. Furthermore, is soul he intrinsic curiosity of humans is a collection of visions and thoughts apparently the primitive form of located somewhere, some place outside afterlife isn’t enough. There must be a conscious of itself, or does intellect Tto know about the world and build of many sages and seers. Perhaps each Tantrism—in which people performed of it. The modern scientific picture of reason to believe in it. So to find the firm infer it? How does it realize that it is a world-view could be instinctive. There had his own opinion. According to one fertility rites and worshipped linga and creation—the Big Bang—runs into the ground for immortality, the Upanishads bound to matter and would like to be may be a knowledge instinct built into such opinion, multiple gods created the yoni (male and female organs) that same problem. We visualize the early turn to the unknown reality mentioned released from the bondage? human nature, which is driven by the world by sacrificing the Primal Being represent Shiva and Devi. Based on universe exploding somewhere. in the Rig Veda—‘By its inherent force The first person to propose the theory imperative to survive. It is well known called Purusha, the original Man and archaeological findings of terracotta In the Vedas, epics, and Puranas, Time, the One breathed windless: No other of Advaita Vedanta is considered to be that the pressure to survive has been the divinity, with a thousand heads, figurines of Mother Goddess and carved or Kala, is often seen as a god, an absolute thing than that beyond existed.’—and Shankar’s predecessor, Gaudapada, In working not only on humans but also a thousand eyes, and a thousand feet. specimens of linga and yoni, the cult is being, standing outside of everything and call it Brahman, which originally meant his Karika of the Mandukya Upanishad, on their ancestral animals for millions This story assumes the pre-existence believed to be as old as the Harappan controlling everything, from the events holy power, a magic spell, or a reality that Gaudapada proposes that life is like a of years. With this evolutionary past, it of an immortal Primal Being as well culture of the Indus Valley or may be of a human life to the creation and age grows, breathes or swells. However, this waking dream. The so-called objective is not hard to assume that this pressure as gods who sacrificed him to create even older. It has been argued that the of the universe. These views on time led ultimate reality is paradoxical in nature world including body, mind, senses, structured and programmed the human the world. There are also hymns that beliefs and practices of this pre-Vedic to speculation about the role of time in and hard to understand. and sense organs are mere illusions. The mind to view the world in a self-oriented present individual gods as the creators cult, which suggests a female-dominated practical matters that have a bearing on The philosophy diametricallyonly reality is the eternal or unchanging manner; and created a pre-disposition of this world. society, were later on absorbed in the human life and fate. Does time decide opposed to the view in the Upanishads Atman or Brahman, the only observer for understanding the world in a fashion If the universe comes in and out of this Vedic texts that had their origins in a human fate? Or, does man create his own is that of Indic materialism, also called or witness. Through its own power, or that would improve human survival... imperishable ground, then what is the patriarchal system. destiny with his efforts? the Lokayata philosophy. For this maya, Atman imagines itself to be an

70 Issue 20 Spring 2015 71 individual being, or jiva, which, in turn, the importance of the order that was requires a tremendous amount of spiritual upliftment. Material life it was introduced in the Upanishads, But among these schools and sects, imagines the rest of the subjective and placed in the world during creation. conviction, courage, and self-control. In gave the experience and knowledge the obvious question was whether one one idea is predominantly common: objective entities in the world. This order must be preserved to sustain a world where aggression and violence needed for the psychological growth had to leave the world for moksha happiness and moksha are attained with Pierre Baldi argues in his book, The the creation and prevent it from being are driven by the desire to protect one’s and release from the worldly life to or could one stay in it and achieve the removal of ignorance in life through Shattered Self, that the problem with destroyed. Being a book of law, the own self-interest and point of view, attain emancipation. The book of law, freedom. This was when the idea of knowledge, good actions, and devotion. the way we perceive ourselves is our Manusmriti is concerned with the social stepping beyond the sphere of personal Manusmriti, clearly conveys that only vairagya, which was earlier understood For these schools, this is the purpose of conventional self-centric view of the order and the rules comprising dharma, interests is extremely challenging. Only after meeting one’s obligations to gods, as leaving the worldly life behind, life. This is what gives life a meaning. world, and, with the realization of the moral order, for maintaining the with great knowledge, experience, and ancestors, and men, and having finished received a different meaning. In so far Man is constantly pulled between the possibilities offered by the technological social structure. These rules of dharma understanding, may one reach a stage worldly duties, should one focus on as one performed one’s duties and rites, conflicting dichotomy of pleasures and advances, "the boundary between the self determine the right and wrong course where he or she may choose to exercise achieving liberation in the last stage of met life’s obligations with equanimity to pains. He tries to maximize pleasures and the other, the self and the world, the of human action. The smriti says that in self-control and be able to break the cycle life. pains and pleasures arising out of these while minimizing pains to suit the inside and the outside has begun to blur, order to sustain and protect the world, of tit-for-tat behavior to practice ahimsa. A mechanized life regulated by actions, and developed self-control to needs of his ego. Thus the ego that helps and ultimately may evaporate entirely." the creator conceived four occupations However, the Mahabharata does not take rigid codes of conduct and traditions deal with fear, anger, lust, and desire, a person steer through life also brings It would be hard to say that the Indic for humans belonging to four different an absolute position on ahimsa. Despite might have felt stifled and bereft of any one was considered to have renounced misery. Different systems consider the systems have reached a definitive answer classes: Brahmana, Kshatriya, Vaisya, its insistence on the importance of non- spontaneous spiritual experience. It is the world and thus was free. Such sense of ‘I’ as ignorance. They either as to whether determinism or free will and Shudra. violence, the epic admits the limits to likely that the lack of resonance between a person, called jivanmukta (free in try to lower the heightened sense of governs life. The lack of clarity could Despite resentment and criticism, the ahimsa and forgiveness. external rituals and internal spiritual life), was believed to perform his part ego or completely eliminate it. The be partly due to the fact that in some caste system and its practices persisted The elaborate laws of conduct in experiences led to the need for rethinking dispassionately without any attachment two interesting solutions in this regard of the Indic systems, a person or a self until the later centuries, when saint- the Manusmriti do not mean that an the purpose of these actions. We find the to the fruits of his actions. are those of non-duality by Shankar is viewed as an illusion. Assumption of cum-social-reformers such as Kabir, individual is subordinate to the society. sages of the Upanishads questioning the Faith cannot be broken down into and of no-self by Buddha. The Advaita free will allowing a person to act upon Raidas, and Nanak in the fifteenth A person has the freedom of choice. He ritualized life prescribed in the Vedic texts, something else and further analyzed says that there is no individual ‘I’ or the surrounding world would entail century spoke against the system. By or she is advised to make choices in life and thinking differently about sacrifice for a better understanding of it. It is personal self. It is an illusion, merely subject-object dichotomy. But this this time, Islam was already in India, based on the interpretation of scriptures, and salvation. The sacrificial rituals were either there or not there. Perhaps it a reflection of Brahman. Buddhism dichotomy is the illusion, which is to causing another division in the society local customs, and one’s own conscience. now considered inferior. The Mundaka is similar to the primitive feeling or goes a step beyond. It drops the idea be removed in order to be liberated; to between Hindus and Muslims. These However, the appeal is to choose and Upanishad says: ‘These deluded men, belief in the indestructibility of life. It of a permanent soul or Brahman and, gain freedom, personal will has to be saints taught human fraternity above all act for the good of others, which does regarding sacrifices and works of merits as may be considered as an instinct that through its reductionist approach, suspended. Moreover, free will of an divides based on caste or creed. not mean suspending one’s self-interest. most important, do not know any other compels us to trust people, systems, systematically demonstrates that there is unreal person is in itself an illusion. Dharma is not an absolutely rigid code Society’s gain does not imply the good. Having enjoyed the high place of and institutions in the world, believing no person. It is only a fiction. There is Thus the verdict of modern science for all times and places. It is malleable and individual’s loss. The case of Ashokan heaven won by good deeds, they enter and hoping that we can rely on them. no real owner of experiences that cause on free will seems to fall on the side of life supporting. However, its flexibility Dhamma clearly shows how the king again this world or a still lower one’. The This instinctual faith does not assume suffering. And finally, the later schools the hard version of the Karma theory. due to the openness to interpretation of was able to strike a balance between the prospect of reaping the rewards of good the existence of any supernatural reality. of Buddhism argue that the world with But then, there are those who think that scriptures, following local customs, and personal and the collective interests. actions in this life and winning a place in A child, with no knowledge of God all its objects and experiences is empty, is although the brain works like a machine, acting according to one’s own conscience, Modern scientific research indicates heaven was not appealing anymore. Life or any higher doctrines, instinctively only a mental impression, a mind game. man is still responsible for his actions, It is what makes dharma difficult to decide. that, over the long course of evolution, in heaven as envisioned in the Vedas was places its trust in its mother. Facing There is no ignorance, no suffering, no is assumed that despite the deterministic It creates a conflict. nature has selected human behavior no longer considered sufficient. Man was any stressful situation, it automatically release from suffering. functioning of brain, a person has the In the third century BCE, , that promotes survival through sharing, now seeking escape or release, nishkriti, runs to its mother for protection. ability to control his or her behavior. the third and the last important king cooperation, and group formation. from the perpetual cycle of coming and This instinctive faith seems to have an Enduring Elements of Indian The same assumption underlies the soft of the Mauryan Empire, propagated his At the same time, these very instincts going. evolutionary advantage. Without it, Thought version of the Karma theory. version of Dhamma (the Prakrit form of also lead to the formation of mutually Going beyond good and evil does one can hardly imagine the survival of the Sanskrit term Dharma). According exclusionary groups, promoting the not mean the liberated person acts human beings against all odds during t is hard to point out what How Do I Act? to the historians of ancient India, there attitude of ‘us’ vs. ‘them’, and engaging unethically. Ethical behavior is a pre- our long evolutionary past. The ability Ireally inspired the search for freedom were immense social, cultural, religious, in group wars and genocides. Thus, requisite for reaching the state of to face and overcome all man-made and and immortality. Were there multiple erhaps the broadest definition ecological, and economic variations in on the one hand, society provides liberation. Only through experiential natural disasters in human history bears reasons or one specific cause responsible Pof dharma is provided in the the vast empire encompassing almost protection to its members allowing knowledge, truth, self-control, patience, witness to this faith. for this switch? Based on the available Mahanarayan Upanishad: Dharmo the entire Indian subcontinent. In order them to meet their needs, on the other and performing one’s duties selflessly, There are widely divergent views information, one may speculate that vishvasya jagatah pratistha…dharme to assimilate the diversity and govern hand, the groupish or clannish nature can one be emancipated. The liberated among the orthodox schools on soul, the overall social environment in sarvam pratisthitam, i.e. ‘The world is a complex society, a policy was needed of the society can also wreak havoc on person adheres to dharma without its nature and relationship with God, that period could have prompted the supported by dharma…everything is that would harmonize people at an the lives of people, if individuals fail to any expectations of gain. But, in this and on liberation. Even the Vedantists change. Part of the problem could have established in dharma’. In this sense ideological level and allow administering make right decisions. adherence, he is not chained to rules differ a great deal among themselves, been the mechanized lifestyle under the dharma is related to the word dhaaran, the large empire with a minimum use as an unliberated person is. Free from depending on how they interpret the varna-ashram dharma, filled with rites which means holding, supporting, of force. Hence, Ashoka enunciated the What is the Purpose of Life? the conflict of opposites and devoid of Brahma Sutra. Some believe the soul is and rituals. But other socio-political protecting, etc. To understand how the Dhamma principles. attachment, dharma flows out of his an illusion while others believe it to be factors might also have contributed world is established in dharma, we have The epic Mahabharata praises and hile moksha gave the overall being. Dharma is the way of life for real. Then again, the soul is either the to the dissatisfaction with life. For to go back to the story of creation, when upholds non-violence as the highest Wmeaning to life, dharma, artha, such a person. same as Brahman or is different from example, social stratification under caste the world came into existence. form of dharma—ahimsa paramo and kama laid the foundation in the As the idea of attaining liberation in Brahman, with different degrees of system led to serious social inequality. It seems wants to emphasize dharma. But practicing non-violence material world required for one’s one’s lifetime gained momentum after relationship with the ultimate reality. Numerous inter-tribal fights amongst

72 Issue 20 Spring 2015 73 Aryans and battles with non-Aryan local inhabitants for cattle, land, and political DEVOTION AT dominion could have added a further cause of destabilization in the society, LORD JAGANNATH breeding much anxiety and uncertainty. In this new environment, the RATH YATRA pressure from the rising popularity of the heterodox sects led Brahmanism PHOTOGRAPHS BY ROBERT MOSES to respond by adapting to the local TEXT BY SATYA MOSES tribal religions and sects. The old Vedic deities—Indra, , Soma, Yama, and —lost their high places and a fresh breed of new gods and goddesses arrived, such as Vishnu, Shiva, Shakti, Durga, Ram, Krishna, Vasudeva, Jagannatha, Ganesh, and so on. This was the fertile ground on which Hinduism was born as a result of the transformation of Brahmanism through its interaction with the tribal religious sects and assimilation of their deities, rites, and rituals. The old pre-Aryan practices and beliefs of the land survived through the as parallel traditions and resurfaced in the future through the major world-views of the subcontinent. By blending, transforming, apposing, reusing, and reinterpreting the ideas from the old and the new—the pre-Aryan and the Aryan concepts—these world- views have enriched and energized the intellectual landscape of India throughout the last 3,500 years. They have given rise to multiple systems of thought, all of which aspired to the same end goal of life, using many of the same constitutive elements. Despite having subtle or major differences in their world-views, these systems are glued together by a set of core concepts: karma, dharma, rebirth, ignorance, renunciation, enlightenment, and moksha. These form the kernel of Indic thought.

Jaidev Dasgupta, scientist, technologist, and entrepreneur, is deeply interested in Indic thought systems and their relevance in the modern context. He has an MS in Physics and a PhD in Biology. He lives in Massachusetts, USA.

74 Issue 20 Spring 2015 75 have lead some scholars to draw a connection to the wooden deities of Puri. One legend of the murthis’ origin tells of an ancient Odishan king, Indradyumna, who heard of a secret tribal deity named Nila-madhava. Nila-madhava came to In- dradyumna in a dream-vision and asked that the king build a temple in Puri and worship him in the form of Jagannath, along with his brother and sister. The deity arrived, floating on river water, in the form of a log, adorned with sacred symbols. A divine architect took the task of carving the log into the forms of Jagannath, Balabhadra and Sub- hadra, but insisted on working in total isolation. After fourteen days, Indradyumna became anx- ious and impatient. He entered the inner sanc- tum where he saw the deities in incomplete form, without hands or legs. The king feared the lord’s anger, but laughing, Nila-madhava told him that he meant to appear in such a form. This tale is only one of many which explain the birth of these strange gods with their un- fathomable, happy faces. On the days of Rath Yatra, it does not matter what you believe: you are caught instantly in the smell and sound, the torrent of humans rushing to praise a channel of energy which runs back to the time of the Vedas and perhaps further still. You are lost in the loud crowd, the pounding sun, and Jagannath’s wide, inscrutable eyes. Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu worshiping Lord Jagannath, his brother Balabhadra and their sister Subhadra in Puri, Odisha. The sacred flags are raised above ide-eyed, wide-smiling Lord tees of all castes, colors and countries dian murthis, are strikingly simple. The the sanctum of Lord Jagannath's WJagannath resides with his broth- gather on the Grand Road to witness wooden bodies have no legs and only temple in Puri, signifying the er Balabhadra and sister Subhadra in the the happy lord’s pilgrimage. The heavy the suggestion of arms; the facial fea- start of the annual Rath Yatra. city of Puri, Odisha. They make their wooden forms of Jagannath and his sib- tures of all three are uniform and arrest- home in a vast temple complex whose lings are carried out through the Lion ing: mouths curved in open toothless red walls and massive tower overshad- Gate and placed on three tall chariots. smiles, huge eyes, round and staring. ow the Grand Road which cuts straight These chariots are the spectacle of Rath The eyes of Jagannath and his siblings from the Jagannath temple’s yawning Yatra, built new every year and adorned penetrate deep into buried cultural Lion Gate, through four kilometers with paint and cloth. Jagannath’s chari- memory, into an older time, a world of of dust and marketplace babble, to ot, Nandigosha, has sixteen wheels and symbols which, passed from the rough the Gundicha Temple, God’s summer stands 13.5 meters high; Balabhadra’s hands of tribal ancestors through long house. Every year Jagannath and his chariot, Taladhwaja, has 14 wheels lines of lineage, hide beneath our mod- siblings come out of their temple and and is 13.2 meters tall; Subhadra’s ve- ern world like the deep foundation of a journey to Gundicha in chariots pulled hicle, Dwarpadalana, the “Trampler of glass high-rise. No surprise, then, that by thousands of devotees. This festival, Pride,” has 12 wheels and is 12.9 me- Jagannath worship in Odisha is consid- this concentration of ecstatic devotion, ters tall. These massive cars of god are ered to be one of the oldest devotional is called Rath Yatra. pulled down the Grand Road to Gun- cults in all of India, a land where reli- The festival proper begins in June dicha using sacred coconut husk ropes gion manifests everywhere as an ancient when Jagannath, Balabhadra and Sub- to the sound of drums and clattering and palpable force. hadra are given a ritual bath. Afterward brass, shouts of devotion and the sput- The origins of the deities and cere- it is said that the deities become chilled ter of hoses as the Puri fire department monies which take their modern form and fall sick. They then spend fifteen sprays down the sweltering crowd. in the worship of Jagannath, an ecstatic days in isolation, tended to by des- The deities, in all their finery of form of Krishna, are shrouded in leg- ignated priests. Finally the day of the cloth and gold, are transfixing. Their end. References to a sacred floating log Yatra arrives and over a million devo- forms, compared to the totality of In- in the Rig Veda (c. 1500-1100 BCE)

76 Issue 20 Spring 2015 77 A devotee touches the feet of Lord A sacred cow naps in the Krishna as Govardhan, one of circumambulatory road outside the guardian deities surrounding the temple on the evening before Lord Jagannath's chariot. the Rath Yatra. 78 Issue 20 Spring 2015 79 The eastern gate of the temple, known as the Lion Gate or Simhadwara is brightly lit and surrounded by worshipers. 80 Issue 20 Spring 2015 81 Throngs crowd the Grand Road, with the chariots under construction, two evenings prior to the Rath Yatra.

82 Issue 20 Spring 2015 83 The completed chariots lined up outside the Lion Gate in the early morning, awaiting the deities

84 Issue 20 Spring 2015 85 Hanuman entertains the worshipful crowd as they wait for the gods. Hundreds of thousands of devotees gather in the street before sunrise. The chariots only begin their journey in the early afternoon.

86 Issue 20 Spring 2015 87 Several people create a lavish painting of colored powder which will be driven over by Lord Balabhadra's chariot.

88 Issue 20 Spring 2015 89 Lord Balabhadra is lift- ed onto his chariot amid shouts and cheers.

90 Issue 20 Spring 2015 91 The Odisha Fire Service cools down the crowd. Temperatures can reach over 40 degrees Cel- sius by mid-morning. Many devotees faint in crush of the crowd and must be carried away on stretchers.

92 Issue 20 Spring 2015 93 Lord Jagannath mounts his chariot. Only priests from th temple may stand on the chariot.

94 Issue 20 Spring 2015 95 Once all three deities are in place the King of Odisha (in white turban) pays a visit to sweep the chariot platforms. This ceremony demonstrates that even royalty are servants of the Divine.

96 Issue 20 Spring 2015 97 Each chariot is drawn by four virile horses. Lord Balabhadra's are black, Lady Subhadra's are brown and Lord Jagannath's are white.

98 Issue 20 Spring 2015 99 Anticipation builds as the charioteers ready themselves for the journey.

100 Issue 20 Spring 2015 101 Lord Jagannath is finally in motion, pulled by thousands of worshipful hands. It is believed that pulling the ropes to move the chariots is a powerful religious act leading to liberation.

The English word 'juggernaut' origi- nated from British observations of the Rath Yatra ceremony.

102 Issue 20 Spring 2015 103 Address Label