Conversation Guruji-1
by Neela Karnik
The afternoon sun slants oddly into the cavernous library. The air is hushed and composed around our dear Guruji. His dynamic and energetic stance is relaxed, but there is a certain quiet alertness in his asana as he sits today on his furry chair. This is a rare opportunity to catch Guruji by himself when he is in an expensive mood ready to talk and the words flow like a mountain stream. Guruji has been talking about consolidation, repose and his increasing detachment from the effort of teaching yoga. The struggle in one sense is over.
Question: You have often spoken of your perseverance, trials and triumphs in the path of yoga and of the influence that this struggle has had on your practices, especially in the evolution of the dynamics of your poses. How must your students, who rely so much on your book Light on Yoga understand this? Surely a perfect pose may be utterly "hollow".
Answer: Oh yes. He chuckles impishly, many of my sincere students try to imitate me. It has the wrong kind of effect. I convinced them to be creative and not imitative. I tell them to transform imitation into originality. Each Asana is a manifestation of a mental working. I speak of my yoga as an art, and I use my body as a painter would his canvas or musician his instrument. Yoga asanas are not proto technics. The quality of spirituality is inherent in each body. If the body is the mirror of the mind, the asanas will reflect that self-awareness, consciousness and deep intelligence – it will be an act of the mind.
Question: But the "Light on Yoga" is a teachers book. It concentrates on the techniques of the asana's.
Answer: If I had to write it again, I would write it quite differently.
What a revelation – as I gasp in astonishment. Guruji gently talks about one of the most difficult and challenging phases of his life, which culminated in the idea of "Light on Yoga".
The book was written when I felt the need to convince people by my authenticity and sincerity. I had no Guru at that time for the kind of task I had to perform – to carry yoga to the people at large. I had to evolve my own techniques to teach. I was also convinced that asana was an essential part of the eight limbs of yoga or the Ashtanga Yoga as Patanjali had claimed it. It could not be separated from the others. Yet, I had to convince people – they had to see. To project my asanas as a totality was the challenge of the 30s and 40s. I faced these boldly by vigorous practice in minute attention to details. It was "swadhyaya". My body was the book, and my mind and awareness was the keen, avaricious people who could not learn enough. Even my limitations helped me to learn.
Later, I also learnt that mathematical precision, calculation, and skillful presentation are the essence of this art, which culminated in the poses in "Light on Yoga". The understanding, the struggle, the dynamics were the hidden context that forced the precisions of the asanas which I developed. The asana's came because I followed the principles of yama and niyama. I involved my entire self:physical, emotional and intellectual. The entire body becomes the basis for meditation. Each pose is meditation. The body is a temple. The "atma" needs a clean place to live. That is why the book shows a detailed technique. But the yama - niyama has to be understood. The book has limitations, but my pupils must realize this. When I am teaching you, you realize your involvement and your own "culturing". You are evolving emotionally, intellectually, spiritually. Now this could not be put in the book - it is implicit in my technique.
Question: How would you change the book?
Answer: I would conclude the finest things as well. How to penetrate the "panchakosha" which brings about the changes in you. This is a subjective transfer. It cannot be given as a rule.
Question: Do you feel it is easier to teach now than it was before?
Answer: Yes. A lot of the early tension has eased; problems like how to teach yoga in a group, or how to teach women or very young children, or the effort I had to make to prove that yoga had to be part of the syllabi in an educational curriculum are no longer acute problems. More people accept it – probably because it is fashionable..
I don't know. Now the struggle is very different - wrong things are propagated more easily than the right things. By this I mean that a teacher, more than anyone else, has to teach by example. One cannot grow spiritually without moral or ethical awareness. My ethics make them aware of their ethics. That is my way of teaching. If I am sometimes blamed for this, well, it is for the good. One must take a longer view and look at the good of society.
Question: Were there any failures in your life? Did you feel exiled from the grace of your art at any time?
A shadow passes over his eyes and for a moment his ebullience is stilled as he recollects the days of frustration when nothing would move with the fluidity of motion and joy.
Answer: Yes, they were distinct periods of barrenness or turbulence... In 1944 - the year of my first failure, when I felt stale... Nothing was moving within. My practice was still hard but it was coming from my will, my ego. There was no inner harmony - it was important and it was missing. My presentation was "soulless".
When Guruji speaks with such sensitive self-reflectiveness and anguish, who can say that his yoga does not reflect the inner life?
In 1958, it was the onset of giddiness – it affected me whatever I did. There wasn't anything but tenacity in my practice. My horizons went beyond pain into the clear light of knowing. This is how I evolved. I am self-taught in this way... The evolution of this intelligence,and my awareness of a language – where does it come from? I am a sentimental man and I have faith in my subject – a faith that bathes a soul. I believe it comes from there. Then in 1977, I had two accidents which I felt negated all my progress in yoga. I was in a zero stage.
I felt the prickles crawl along my back as I imagined this man of vitality and optimism facing the abyss of zero – how did he begin to recover? Where did he look for that spring of regeneration?
I had torn the muscles in my shoulder; my spine was curdled, and was like a log of wood. Each asana was painful. I vowed not to cut my hair until I had regained some of my former skill and strength. Then came the long arduous and almost clinical analysis - the ABC of Trikonasana. It was a form of meditation for me. In the process I developed a masterful technique for teaching this asana. I had recovered. God gave me the pain - you get the benefits.
A smile flashes. In a mercurial moment, his mood changes from the sombre to the bright.
Question: Guruji, in your class you have students of different calibres, how do you teach them all at once? Each student understands and applies what you teach in his or her own way - according to the kind of 'sadhaka' he/she is. Is this something you do consciously as a teacher, or is it inherent in the art of yoga itself?
Answer: It is in the teaching. I had to evolve a method and then a language. The subject is highly esoteric and was riddled with misconceptions. A large part of my teaching was to clarify certain ideas for myself and for my students. It was a highly educative process. I had compassion and I learnt from every kind of student – the mind (mridhu), middling (madhyam), and intense (teevra). I tried to internalize their weaknesses and identify with them and I learnt from them. I have taught great intellectuals like J. Krishnamurthy, Huxley, Yehudi Menuhin, Jai Prakash Narayan; but I have also taught great duffers, eh!
Guruji laughs heartedly, remembering no doubt, some uproarious situations. He has taught scientists, philosophers, businessman, housewives, professionals, and even men of faith - Christian priests, Muslims, and Jaines. He has communicated the philosophy of yoga and the language of each one's faith. Truly remarkable! He is generous with his art.
He says,
Even if a totally unethical man develops a bit of an ethical quality, I will have done my duty. That is why I teach according to their capacity... When I teach children, I teach according to their nature. I have to become a child. So I learned from everybody. There is a quality of innocence that one must take from a mad man, and a quality of courage from the wise man.
Question: Recently, you have been talking more and more about renunciation and practice. What does it mean? Have you invested this term with your inimitable interpretation?
Answer: "Renunciation in practice" was my answer to a lot of people who wondered why I continue to practice even after I had achieved what I wanted. But by "renunciation", I mean freedom of the self; when one stops thinking of the "effect". It is a deep, inward experience. Nor is it meditation as the term is used today – which is more a kind of sedative, a drug, which does not allow full spiritual growth. "Dhyana" is electrifying. Through it, one withdraws from the periphery to the core.
Excerpt from 70 Glorious Years of Yogacharya B.K.S. Iyengar (Commemoration Volume)