Mark Lester' Journal

        When we arrived there, Exeter, New Hampshire, had only one grade school. It was located in a large two story, square house, standing alone, surrounded by a playground. Or at least that is how I remember it. At the time it seemed huge to me, and extremely imposing because it stood so much on its own, as if a whole block had been reserved for it alone. It did not have a flat roof, like the more modern and much larger grade school they built later, but a four-corner roof with clay shingles, and a light beige facade. It must have been quite an attractive building, architecturally speaking.
        This was my first real school. My classroom was located on the ground floor. It was a very large room because the first three grades were there together. My teacher was, as far as I can remember, a very nice young lady, with dark hair. She was perhaps so nice that I allowed myself to be too free with her. Or else I wanted to impress my classmates, since I was the new kid in town. Or both. Anyway, I must have been too boisterous in some manner that I, for the life of me, cannot recall, and so it came about that she saw no other alternative but to punish me.
        The standard punishment at the time was always a trip upstairs to the other teacher. The other teacher was, for those of us on the ground floor at least, an image that immediately filled us all with great pangs of anxiety. She was the almighty headmaster, and her name started with a “Miss”. She was also in charge of the remaining three upper grades. Furthermore, she was very old and very ugly. We were sure that she had occult powers. It was therefore imperative that a trip upstairs should be avoided at all costs. Too, too late, I realized the consequences of my bad behavior. As I left the room I could almost physically sense the stifled horror of my classmates, as they witnessed me heading off to my doom.
        The classroom door lead to a central hall, where a great spiral staircase, with oak balustrade and marble treads, wound its way up past a large bay window that looked out onto the playground. It ended at the top floor, which was nothing more than a small landing leading to a dark door. I made my way slowly up, and when I had arrived at the door, I knocked as I had been told to do so. My heart was pounding in my throat.
        “Come in,” a harsh voice resounded. I opened the door and found myself being glared at by rows of older eyes.
        “What is your name, young man?” the voice resounded again. I turned fearfully to its source, and found myself face to face with the daunting Miss ___.
        “Mark, Ma’am”
        “Mark what, boy? You do have a last name, don’t you. Or are you perhaps an orphan?” The whole class burst into laughter. It stung me as much as if they had all gotten up and hit me with their fists.
        “Quiet!” Miss ___ shouted. “Well, are you capable of answering, boy?”
        “Lester, Ma’am.” I stammered.
        “Aha, well young Mark Lester, you have apparently broken the rules and are here to face the consequences, are you not?”
        “Eh, yes, Ma’am.“
        ”Well then, do you see that chair over there in the corner? Go sit there, sit with your face to the wall, and do NOT make me have to notice you AT ALL.“
        I went as fast as I could and sat down. Apparently that was all that was required of me, but I did not know it at the time, and I remained in constant dread of further retribution. Although the class went on, I still seemed to feel the heat of all those eyes burning into my back.
        I have no memory of how long I remained in the corner, when suddenly Miss ___ summoned me to stand up, and abruptly sent me away. Before I knew it I was back in the hallway again. My relief was so overwhelming that I ran down the stairs in total abandon, so much so that I lost my balance at the bottom and crashed into the balustrade, banging my head quite severely against one of the starting newels. Oblivious to the pain this caused me, I rushed straight into my classroom. Everyone’s gaze turned in unison towards me, including my teacher. I saw them all staring in horror, and then I felt something slide down my cheek. I wiped it with my hand and looked. It was wet and very red.
        The long and the short of the matter was that from that moment on I was something of a celebrity. My teacher took me and bandaged me up, and later everyone wanted to know what had happened. Of course, I couldn’t say that my bloodied head had resulted from the punishment Miss ___ had meted out to me, so I just told everyone the truth. To my surprise, quite a few of my fellow students did not believe me, preferring to conclude that Miss ___ had indeed been the cause of my wound, and that she had forced me, under threat of an even harsher penalty, to tell this other story. I did not mind this, for was I not therefore now the brave survivor of such harsh treatment?
        After this incident, I do not remember anyone else misbehaving in class to the extent that they would have to face the penalty of a trip up the winding staircase. I wonder if Miss ___ ever realized how crucial my contribution had been to the giant leap in magnitude her sinister reputation enjoyed from then on.

        I tend to repeat myself whenever I meet a German for the first time. What I keep repeating is that I once knew how to speak German. Although the fact that I now hardly can say a word makes this statement of mine probably appear somewhat unconvincing, I nevertheless never fail to make it border on the ridiculous by adding that I could speak German in three dialects: Hoch Deutsch, Schweitzer Deutsch, and Bayrischer Deutsch. I even childishly pride myself on being able to name these dialects properly. Unfortunately I have no way of proving this, and sometimes I wonder if it isn’t a figure of my imagination. But I cannot forget that, of the first six years of my life, I spent four in German-speaking countries. So it must be true. That I nevertheless am now unable to speak German is evidence of the power of the American Way of Life.
        When I was six years old my mother and I moved to Exeter, New Hampshire. That’s in New England, on the northeast coast of America. The four years before this move were the one’s we had spent in Europe. That was back in the early 50’s when you could still find areas of Europe that were in ruin, with large holes where bombs had fallen. This was especially the case in Germany, where we also stayed because my father was originally German. My mother was of Irish stock, born in Chicago, but brought up mainly in the town of Elmira, New York.
        My father was a refugee. He left Germany before the war, made his way to the United States, went into the army, partly in order to facilitate his naturalization, got himself stationed in the Air-force at an office job(!) in New York, met my mother, who was a secretary for some Colonel, fell in love, got married at the end of the war, and had me two years later. That is the story I was told. They never had any more children together, so I spent my childhood on my own coping with these two refugees.
        I say two refugees, because my mother in her own way was also a refugee, in particular from her small town American environment. Marrying this elegant European man of the world was her escape.
        Unfortunately the advantages she hoped to reap from such an escape proved to have certain drawbacks, the first and foremost being my cosmopolitan father’s infidelity. The official story my mother told me much later was that at a certain point she introduced herself at a party as “Mrs. Lester”, only to be answered by her hostess with the following remark: “That is strange. I’ve seen Mrs. Lester and you definitely do not resemble her at all.” This was not the only provocation in their relationship, but it was the one that broke the proverbial camel’s back. European society was very glamorous, but this was more than she could take.
        So here we were, my mother and I, in Exeter, New Hampshire. The official story, for my behalf again, was just that we had moved back to the States, and that my father was traveling indefinitely on business. After all why should I have to suffer from their difficult marriage? Hence this lie to save me from the hideous truth.
        So here I suddenly was in a small American town in the early Fifties. Now my mother, a very practical person, was always planning things meticulously. In fact, the primary reason why we went to live in Exeter, besides being not so far from her relatives, was that the famous Exeter Academy was located there. Upon our arrival, she promptly put my name on some special list of theirs, which cleared the way for my eventual enrollment in this prestigious prep school when I turned twelve. My mother knew the importance of higher education in this competitive world.
        But first I had to get through grade school. So my first school experience was in the first grade at Exeter Elementary. Apparently I managed to adjust to the situation quite easily, for shortly after starting my academic career, I was invited by one of my classmates to her birthday party. I informed my mother of this sudden promotion on the social ladder. She was thrilled.
        “Isn’t that marvelous sweetheart. We’ll get you all dressed up for the party.” I was obliged to put on my best pair of pants and shoes, and since it was Fall and no longer warm, she insisted I needed a coat as well. That had to be my best one: the cashmere duffel coat with leather buttons.
        The girl who had invited me wore jeans and a sweater, and sneakers. After the party was over she offered to accompany me back home. Instead of the usual way along the roads, she said she knew a back way through the fields and woods that skirted the town. I was in for an adventure, and not inclined to say no to her proposition. After all it was her birthday. We went out through her backyard and over the fields. Just before the woods we encountered a fence with barbed wire. She promptly negotiated this hindrance. I was obliged to do the same or lose face. I managed well enough, but just as I jumped to the other side I felt my coat get stuck. The sound of tearing caught our attention. Upon examination, we found a whole piece of the cashmere dangling loosely from the coat. It was obvious that something more sturdy than a Cashmere coat was needed when challenging the American wilderness.
        I arrived home eventually. My mother couldn’t help noticing the torn coat. I was expecting to get a scolding, but to my relief she said very little about it. From then on, the coat I wore was a sturdier kind, bought at the local clothing store.
        It was not long before I noticed that almost every boy, and even some of the girls, wore sneakers. Not any old sneakers of course; they had to be the right kind: Converse All Stars. You could get them in white or black. Nobody wore white.This was however one piece of clothing my mother refused to compromise on: shoes.
        Every other aspect of my transition to all-American boy was almost realized, but the fact that I was the only boy in America who wore leather shoes became a burden I could hardly bear. I made a point of whining as much as I could about it.
        “Out of the question. Those terrible shoes. They’re not even shoes. They have no decent soles, are completely flat and you’re not going to tell me that you feet will stay warm in the winter. You’ll be sick all the time and when you grow up you’ll have flat feet.”
        She was perfectly right of course, and when I grew up it turned out that I did have flat feet. But I didn’t care a bit about any of this now. All I wanted was a pair of those politically correct sneakers. My whining was relentless.
        Finally she gave in. I was now completely integrated. Well, almost. I still had a strange accent. This was the cause of some problems, particularly on the school playing field. Jerry Kowolsky, three years older than I and the leader of the school gang of bullies, when he wasn’t threatening to beat me up, found pleasure in hassling me verbally.
        “Hey there’s Lester-the-pester. Gee you talk wierd. You some kind of Commie pinko or something?”
        When I returned home in the afternoon I would usually find the TV on, and while I was eating a Twinkie my mother had bought, or a piece of chocolate cake with fluffy white frosting she had made, I watched something that she told me was actually happening in real life. Some guys sitting behind a long table asking questions to different people. In the sidelines lots of men with cameras. Some of the one’s being asked questions were nervous because they were accused of being commie pinkos. This meant they were in big trouble, because the question askers didn’t look pleased. There was this older guy who was the leader of the gang sitting at the table; he could have been Jerry Kowolski’s dad for all I knew. “That’s hardly likely, dear,” my mother assured me, “his name is McCarthy. He’s Irish like my family. Jerry’s family is probably Polish.”
        I didn’t care where they came from; they were all Americans. And that was what I needed to become, the sooner the better. So my knowledge of Schweitzer Deutsch, Hoch Deutsch, and Bayerische Deutsch was promptly and miraculously banned from my memory, as was my quaint foreign accent.
        Less than four years later my parents tried again to live together, this time in Geneva, Switzerland. I was back in Europe, but the only language I could speak was English. All that assimilation had produced only a short-term benefit. And nobody wore sneakers in Geneva, Switzerland. It was back to leather shoes for me.
        These days, I often come across someone wearing those same sneakers, not just a child, but an adult like me. Apparently, they’re en vogue lately. My eyes linger nostalgically on them as they pass by. I catch myself thinking about getting a pair. But my mother’s admonition returns from the past, and I decide not to.
        Anyway, it’s not that important anymore, and maybe they are bad for my feet, though I no longer have flat feet. Yoga poses have cured that. I wish I could tell my mother this now, but she passed away a long time ago. Still, she would probably not have been impressed. “Yoga? What are you wasting your time on that for, you still don’t have a normal profession.” “Sorry, Mom.”
        

        
        We were more than forty students packed into a large square room with a wooden floor filled with long black rubber mats placed neatly in rows, between which white belts, wooden blocks, and the occasional cylindrical bolster lay strewn about. We were huddled around the teacher, who was standing next to a student kneeling before a folded blanket. Those closest were sitting, while the rest stood intently gazing at the two actors in this short “drama”. I preferred to stand, since my lower back was aching from the previous poses. I welcomed, as we all did, this chance to relax a bit. Demonstrations were always welcome to everyone but the students chosen to participate in them.
        The pose being taught was headstand. The teacher had asked the short, older man from Germany to demonstrate the pose. Why he had picked him was unclear. Usually when the teacher wanted to show how a pose should be done he chose one of the flexible female students. Perhaps he wanted now to show how not to do it. Anyway, you could tell that it made the man uncomfortable. Not that I wouldn’t have felt the same had I been chosen. This teacher could be very demanding, very short-tempered.
        “Go on, do the pose, Gerhard.” Gerhard, on his knees, placed his forearms on the blanket, and grasped his elbows with his hands for a moment to get the right distance between them.
        “Just a minute”, the teacher interrupted, “ where did you learn this technique, certainly not here.”
        Since I enjoyed looking into other yoga styles, though I kept that to myself, I had seen this way of positioning the elbows on one of those teaching videos you could buy on the internet, a class in a different style from the one we were learning now. It was, furthermore, a style frowned upon by this teacher, as he had frequently made clear. He was adamant about not mixing different disciplines, and I suppose he had a point. Only he also insisted that this style we were learning now was the only viable one. In that I found he went too far, but I wasn’t about to be the one to tell him this. I just wanted my diploma.
        We all remained quiet, while the older student seemed to be trying to remember where he had heard this technique. “I learned it from David,” he finally said. David was a well-loved teacher who had died recently, rather suddenly, and whom many regretted not having around anymore because he had been an unusually kind teacher. I had been there too at that specific class, and I now remembered having also heard this technique being taught by David. So It wasn’t specifically a different style at all, just one way of doing it. I wondered whether I wasn’t the only one who realized this.
        “ Oh really?” the teacher replied, a bit annoyed. “ Are you sure?” The older student hesitated a moment. Maybe he wasn’t so sure. After all we were learning so much these days, so many “technicalities” as they were called. He could have been confused. But once again he uttered hesitantly, without looking up, “ yah, I remember.....that is where I have learned it....from David. He did it that way.”
        The teacher was silent for a moment. He kept his eyes on the student for a number of seconds. No one moved. Finally he spoke, as an unpleasant smile formed on his face. “Well, we’ll never know for sure, will we, since he’s dead and can’t corroborate your story?”
        The older student looked up in disbelief. We all remained deadly silent. Then he turned his head to us, a look of appeal in his face. But still no one said a word. Why should we have? It was a waste of time to argue these things, and nobody wanted to get on the wrong side of this teacher anyway. Sure it was a punch below the belt and I felt my own stomach go tense, but still I said nothing. The air in the hall was hot, heavy, and smelly.
        The older student, who had been kneeling, stood up and faced the teacher. “Are.... are you calling me a liar?” he muttered through clenched teeth, his voice shaky and high-pitched. I barely heard him, but apparently the teacher didn’t at all for he replied, “What did you say?” The student was about to repeat himself, but suddenly he raised his hands, while he backed away. “Never mind, leave it. Go ahead. You explain the right way to do this.”
        I expected the teacher to pursue his interrogation, but he too seemed to be satisfied to end it there and then. The incident was over. The lesson continued, about the technique of headstand. The subject, I reminded myself just to be sure, was yoga.

I’ve never been interested in those puzzles you find in magazines and newspapers, usually towards the last pages. Until lately. Now I cannot let a day go by without solving the daily Sudoku in my morning paper. I like Sudoku because it doesn’t challenge my knowledge of vocabulary or algebra; it only challenges my ability to look. One big square made up of nine squares made up of nine boxes, each of which is to be filled with a number from one to nine in such a way that each box of the nine columns as well as the nine rows are also filled with a number from one to nine. Very straightforward. The beauty of it is that of course there is only one solution; everything is interconnected. Put a wrong number in only one square and the whole puzzle goes wrong in the most exasperating manner.

What fascinates me about this puzzle is that I can succeed in filling up a number of boxes, and then suddenly find myself staring for minutes without seeing a single new possibility. This can become pretty frustrating if I persist. However, if I just give up and set the puzzle away for awhile - I don’t really know how long but it seems that it should be for at least an hour or two - then when I come back, almost immediately I notice a possibility and I can go on finishing the puzzle. In fact it usually is a possibility that is staring me right in the face, and I marvel at why I didn’t notice it earlier.

Now of course, the point is that there’s a lesson here. If I’ve come to a standstill in while dealing with a problem, then the best thing is to just let it go for awhile, and then come back with fresh eyes so to speak. Isn’t that a sound piece of advice? Well, I learned my lesson when it comes to solving a Sudoku puzzle. All I have to do now is apply the same lesson to more urgent and critical puzzles, the ones life dishes out on a daily basis.

Commenting on the difference in interpretation between the dualistic schools like Samkhya and the tantric viewpoint, I don’t think that tantra is trying to correct a mistaken viewpoint of Samkhya, rather that the former terminology they saw could lead to misunderstanding. It is more a change in the manner of explanation than an essential change in interpretation. The same experience can elicit very different explanations, and the whole discussion probably centered around the most skillful means of explanation from a didactic point of view. The apparent dualism of Patanjali is perhaps a small culturally defined “mistake” in the manner of explanation that could create an ambiguity in the unenlightened mind. To say that there are two realities, purusha and prakriti, invites a dualistic conclusion that would naturally be a hindrance to self-realization. To later say that in effect purusha is prakriti and prakriti is purusha, or form is void and void is form as in Sunyatta, is to avoid the trap of dualistic thinking. Another trap can arise from this and that has been shown by the radical forms of tantra that advocated promiscuity and even crime as a means of self-realization. As always an interpretation or an explanation remains an “as if”.

John Mills is dead. Just another one of those personalities created by my parent's generation who entertained my youth, most often on television with black and white films. One of the great English film stars. Someone I grew up with. And now gone. What a strange world: you get to be a certain age and then you read in the news things like this. Someone who was a household word in your past has died and is no more. It happens more and more often. There is no escaping the relentless certainty of it. Time swallows everything. The certainties of a lifetime, the beacons, vanish and are no more. What once was so actual, so relevant has become the subject of history books. Nothing lasts. In this sense Shakespeare was so right: all life is a stage. Plays come and go. What in God's name is the meaning of it all? Why is all this happening? Our lives are so fleeting and fragile. You can delete us in an instant. Perhaps we really do not mean anything at all. And death is the most normal thing in the world. All human endeavor but a sigh in the wind. Why are we taking all of this so seriously? Goodbye John Mills and thank you.

Most of us have heard of yin and yang. The circular symbol is a familiar sight even in advertisements. These two principles of nature are an aspect of Chinese spiritual philosophy. They denote the two dynamic opposites from whose interplay the Universe comes into being and is sustained.
The Indians have a similar set of basic qualities of Nature, but instead of two there are three, called the gunas. Two of these - tamas and rajas - correspond more or less to yin and yang respectively. Tamas can be translated as inertia and rajas is activity. The third quality - sattva - is translated as lucidity. The fact that the Indians have opted for three instead of two I find intriguing.
Yoga poses can be practiced with the gunas in mind. The poses allow us to become aware of areas in our body that are hard to feel, hard to get our attention on. A good example is the upper back area under the base of the neck between the shoulder blades. This area often has a tamasic quality. As Mr. Iyengar would put it, it is dull (in fact as far as he is concerned, the average human's body is almost entirely dull). By getting the back into alignment using extension and muscle action we activate such areas; we introduce rajas into these areas. This activity brings life energy into these areas. At the same time we become more aware there. And it is this awareness that is the same as lucidity, or sattva.
Two of the gunas have a positive and a negative aspect. Tamas is either dullness and baseness, or stableness and endurance; rajas is either violence and force, or dynamism and vitality. Too much of one guna brings out its negative aspects. What we do in the example above by accentuating rajas and downplaying tamas is to bring harmony between these two forces or principles. This brings about a transmutation of these gunas into their positive attributes. Balancing rajas and tamas furthermore initiates and stimulates sattva.
Sattva is different. It seems not to have any negative qualities and a predominance of sattva is always advantageous. It corresponds to awareness or consciousness and as such it has no limits. This lucidity which is meant to finally pervade the whole body/mind is a reflection of the universal consciousness that is the ultimate realization of yoga. A sattvic mind becomes crystal clear like a mirror. This mirror-like quality allows us to become aware of our true nature or purusha.
The study of consciousness is central to Indian spiritual philosophy. Why there are three qualities of nature instead of two is due to the importance it places on consciousness. The quality of consciousness is a also a fundamental aspect of each and every entity in Nature. All entities have some degree of consciousness or awareness, and it appears that the human species is the only one capable of being also aware that it is aware. Are these two different types of consciousness, or are they aspects of one? What is consciousness, where is it located in the psyche, how does it function and what are its contents? These are some of the central questions of yoga. It is therefore no surprise that the gunas are three and not just two.

For some people yoga is part of what they do. For a few it is part of what they are. Shri Aurobindo said that "all life is yoga." And if we do not limit our practice to those moments when we step on our mats or when we enter a yoga studio, then every move we make is asana, every breath we take is pranayama. In this way we realize that yoga is only and all about awareness, and awareness is a 24/7 affair.

We have to beware of becoming too concerned about everything we feel in our bodies as our awareness grows. This is a trap we can fall into. Awareness is moment to moment, and every new moment means letting go of the previous. Dwelling on all our impressions is a sure way or losing track of presence. The impressions themselves are not important. Presence is what matters. Impressions come and go, pain comes and goes, sickness, old age, and death come and go and are inevitable. Why worry about it? Worrying is a form of morbid dwelling on disturbing impressions. They are only disturbing because we choose to treat them as such. Indifference to pleasure and pain, as Patanjali says, is not just a form of stoic stiff upper lip. It is an indifference born of insight into the true nature of things. They have no intrinsic quality. We invest them with quality. We make them good or bad, right or wrong, pleasant or painful. Indifference is not cold-hearted, indifference is awareness of the true nature of things. In-difference - the abstention from making distinctions. I like this, I don't like that. My religion is right, yours is wrong. I love him, I hate her. Today I look good, yesterday I looked lousy.

If this sounds rather like a sermon, you're right. I often like to preach to myself.

I've been living up in the north of Holland in the province of Groningen for more than thirty years now and I still don't find it very attractive - the nature I mean, the people are nice and in many respects familiar too, having spent some of my youth in New England, where the mentality is strikingly similar. How I got here is another story.

Other people whom I meet for the first time, who have just moved up here, usually tell me how much they love the wide open spaces. And they are right about that; the sky is everywhere, uninhibited by any hills or woods. When I want to take a walk, I am given a lesson in exact geometry; all the paths are straight, since they follow the contours of straight, geometrically exact farm fields. Enormous farm fields, all furrowed or planted with rows and columns of agricultural products. It looks like they first planned it all with a spreadsheet.

I suppose this is done for a good reason, no doubt economical. I admit I know nothing about it. Nevertheless, the walks I have been taking for the past thirty years are what you could call a challenge to my sense of monotony. I am obliged to pay attention to the details, or else it is all dejå-vue. Luckily nature is not to be stopped in the details. But you have to become very sensitive to the details - a good exercise for a yoga teacher.

A curious word crops up to explain why everything is so geometrical and bare in the Dutch farmland: "ruilverkaveling". This term has something to do with a reorganization of the farms that took place a while ago in order to make things more efficient and economical. In order to achieve this, things had to be readjusted and straightened out, so to speak.

I never realized how drastic a measure this was until today. I've just finished reading an article in the weekend edition of the NRC Handelsblad - the New York Times of Holland - over a man who has been fighting for years to preserve nature in this tiny land. What l learn from him is that not so long ago the countryside - and I assume my countryside as well - was filled with winding hedges, clumps of old trees, and meandering waterways. There is even a kind of outdoor museum of this once traditional landscape in miniature here in Holland, which you can visit. The article contains a picture of the activist standing in the middle of this miniature countryside. It looks like Hobbit countryside, the Shire! Fantastic.

Today the sun is shining. Spring is in the air. My wife will no doubt suggest we take a walk. I already have the route embedded in my mind. That's easy. There is only one route around and through the village I live in - two actually if you take into account that we can go either clockwise or counterclockwise. I'll pay special attention to the details. And once and a while just close my eyes and imagine how it must have been, until functionality took over.

Being a yoga teacher, specifically Iyengar Yoga, I am very busy providing information on the body of poses constituting the basis of modern hatha yoga. Here the emphasis is on exercise and as such you can spend ample amounts of time and attention on the physicality of it all. For us Westerners this is a comforting and familiar emphasis, which allows us to work very concretely and empirically, while feeling spiritually justified by the mere fact of our practice being called yoga.

But is that all there is? Of course not. Nevertheless, I noticed the other day in the folder of one of the more renowned of my colleagues, who not only teaches Iyengar yoga but also runs a large center in one of our major cities, a curious statement. He praises the founder of this style of yoga for having disassociated hatha yoga from any of its former mystical connotations, by emphasising its precise, scientific foundations. I was struck by this well-known dichotomy, not so much because it came from my distinguished colleague, whose views on this matter were already amply familiar to me, but because of the use of the term, mystical. Had he used the word religious or spiritual I would have been more inclined to overlook his rather simple yet effective distinction between vagueness and preciseness. Yet the word mystical stopped me, and I wondered why this term should be so prone to negative connations, at least in our occidental minds.

Because the problem is that it does not take much research to discover that yoga in all its facets is probably the most basic and unequivical example of all that is mystical. It is at once the essence and the most elaborate expression of what is called Mysticism. Therefore, why would any of us wish to strip our yoga practice of its mystical side? The only explanation can be that we have some definition of what mysticism is that justifies our resistance to the term. So let us first of all take a good look at what the most exact definition on mysticism is. For this I refer to the Encyclopediea Britannica which states that mysticism is: “a spiritual quest for hidden truth or wisdom, the goal of which is union with the divine or sacred (the transcendent realm)”. This could just as well be a perfect definition for Yoga. So would it be an exaggeration to say that yoga is mysticism and mysticism is yoga? I think not. Yet accepting this identity is often a problem.

It is interesting to note that Britannica does not refer to mysticism as a philosophy, idea, or concept but rather as a “quest”. It is therefore something one does, an act, a movement, journey, search. It is not just a theory or a viewpoint.There is a process involved.

I was brought up as a Roman Catholic. Not that my parents were shining examples of piety. My mother obediently took me to church each Sunday, and saw to it that I received Communion and took my Confirmation, primarily out of her sense of decorum. She was Catholic and that is what Catholic parents do. My father was even an atheist, but still a “devout” Catholic in that the institution answered to his love of and allegiance to tradition, wealth, and power. Nevertheless, they were not at all “amused” when at the onset of adolescence I suddenly began to take my religion far too seriously. I insisited on being an acolyte, and at the age of 13 made konwn to them my future profession: priest. I would take long walks during our summer holidays, climb large hills, and have - now here’s that word again - mystical experiences on mountain tops. My mother did succeed in convincing me that the priesthood was not the only option, which promptly made me alter my choice to medicine - as in Albert Schweitzer of course.

As I moved deeper into the forest of adolescence, the opposite sex took on a more prominent role. Nevertheless I continued to take my faith very seriously until I was 16. During those years I was living in New York city, my birthplace. While I performed my duty as a young Catholic, I also began to take my religion, I suppose, even too seriously for my catechism tutors - the Dominican brothers who were responsible in that particular diocese for my religious education. I had this vague sense of something missing. All those stringent commandments, but no satisfying reason why they should be followed other than “obedience”. Especially since some of them, like chastity, seemed terribly impossible to realize, given the tremendous force of the onslaught from my fully-awakened libido. A whole scala of rituals and dogmas that became less relevant to my inner life, more imposed from the outside, and therefore stale, predetermined, unlived. It was all like a coat which I just needed to put on and all would be o.k. But what about the inside of me?

It was then that I began to read about my religion, to ask questions. Since I found no one to discuss them with, I spent considerable time in the local library. I must have been around 15 when I came across a book which opened up a whole new world for me. It was called “Freud and Christianity”. I have no idea who wrote it and I have not been able to trace it since then. The title intrigued me right away so I borrowed it. I had heard some things about Freud and psychoanalysis, about head shrinks and psychology, mainly derogatory or in jokes. I think I read it in one sitting, understood perhaps 10% of what it contained, but was overwhelmed by one main revelation: for the first time my religion was being explained in terms of a psychological process. At once I began to understand the background from which those commandments had come forth. Keeping a commandment was no longer a matter of blind obedience to some super father, but the outer trappings of a forgotten technique for creating a change of consciousness. Doctrines and symbols were no longer dogmas to be believed in, but metaphors for an inner process, for a transcendental psychological process. Of course, I was quickly aware that I had hereby entered the notorius realm of heresy, and luckily for me, living as I did in the latter half of the 20th century, the consequences were bearable: I risked no more than excommunication and eternal damnation by stopping my church attendance for good. Since then no chasitising ecclesiastical committee has ever rang my doorbell. I suppose that, even today, I am still enrolled as a member, in some large book in the Vatican.

This notion of a process is what sets mysticism apart from any other form of religious experience, I think. It is the need to know not just the what, but also the how and the why. It is the impetus to move from faith or belief to knowledge. Now here we immediately come to a tricky point of difference in religious history that has contributed to the somewhat troubled reputation of mysticism, atleast in the mind of the so-called religious person. For the scientific minded mysticism congers up a whole different set of objections, which matter I will deal with later. To the conventional religious mind, the notion of faith is crucial. You could say it is the only thing that matters. If you can believe or have faith in the unseen truths of religion, you have achieved all you need. God does the rest, so to speak. Dozens of evangelists reiterate this basic tenent ad infinitum on their tv shows - all you need is faith. So what is this faith? Let’s take Paul’s famous words: faith is “ the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” In other words, faith is the conviction that something is true for which we have at present no proof. To the conventional scientific mind this should already appear a grave error of judgement. However, is not all discovery of what was once unknown fueled by faith? Columbus had faith that the earth was round, and spurred on by this faith he ventured out into the ocean to prove it. So faith is also a hunch, an assumption, a hypothesis that turns us in a certain direction and tickles our curiosity, our hope, to search, to go on a quest for certainty, for truth, for knowledge that confirms - or disproves - our hunch, our faith. In this sense scientific investigation and religious conviction share the same port of departure. But historically, these two ships set out on very different courses after leaving the harbor. Or rather, the ship of religion never leaves the harbor. Faith is no longer a first step; it has become the goal. Why? Because that is the inherent nature of any heterodox religion. We are required to believe and that is all. We are given doctrines, dogmas, rituals. These are the rewards for our faith. Explanations, clear rules of behavior, set patterns of thinking. We do not need to go on a quest. Our faith is all that is required of us. In fact any desire to look deeper, to be less than completely satisfied with doctrine, to - God forbid - actually want to have direct experience as proof of the reality of what we have faith in, is considered as a sign of lack of faith! No wonder that the schism between science and religion has become so gaping.

Enter the mystic. The mystic actually stands in both worlds. He is at once a believer and a scientist. He differs from the religious person in one basic way. While the latter assumes that belief is all that God asks of us, the mystic sees faith as the first step on a journey that God actually calls us to. That this journey necessarily is a very personal one poses the basic dilemma for organized religion. Something personal is not to be controlled. How much more convenient to convince everyone that the first step is also the last. That faith itself is not enough; blind faith is the ultimate virtue. The choice not to make the quest, to deliberately remain blind, to accept all on divine hearsay - that is the ultimate surrender. It is the unquestioning acceptance of a higher authority that God asks of us. It is the relation of a small child to its parents. The Church exalts this infantile behavior as a virtue. Meanwhile it dictates the answers, it takes care of the comforting, familiar social structure, it lays out the proper patterns of behavior. And in so doing, it preserves and protects conformity - the basic attribute of any organization, human or otherwise.

Why? Because of the underlyimg premise in all social organizations that the answer to our problems can be found on a communal level. Change society and problems are solved. History is one long list of failed attempts at this. Civilization is the name of the game. All we have to do is find the ideal social structure and people will no longer be nasty. (Absolute success in this has failed so often that today we think we have finally created a foolproof system based now on the ultimate compromise. Accept man’s egoism, but keep it in control just enough so that we are satisfied, but not too satisfied. For this purpose we have created a society of the common denominator: everyone is allowed to be greedy, even encouraged, but we have to work hard for it, its not for free. Part of our income is reserved for the common good. And the common good is determined by election. Never before has so much peaceful equality been combined with so little joy and beauty.)

The mystic hears a different call. He is convinced that any real change is on a personal level. That is why he goes his own way. Faith to the mystic is ths conviction of things not yet seen. It is only the first step in any quest. To remain caught in this first step is to the mystic absurd. He cannot believe that blind faith is the ultimate goal of human evolution. He subscribes rather to the conviction that revelation is our true destiny. That all was meant to be revealed, even God. In particular God. In this sense he is a scientist. The hypothesis of an ultimate Truth he tests, because he believes that this hypothesis must become a certainty, or else it is a lie. From a theory it must become an actual experience. What is hidden is meant to become revealed. Instead of faith, the mytic makes revelation the highest, and ultimately the only, virtue.

Both the true mystic and the true scientist are driven by man’s basic need to know. They are not satisfied by boundaries. As long as there are boundaries, there is always something beyond those boundaries. It is interesting to note that in the Garden of Eden Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit of a specific tree, the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Now this was forbidden. Nevertheless they were tempted and disobeyed. Their thirst for knowledge got the best of them. However it is important to note that this particular tree bore the fruit of knowledge of a specific sort: good and evil. The knowledge of distinctions and preferences. A knowledge that craves boundaries and limits. A knowledge that puts everything in place, brings order, makes distinctions and judges. This is the knowledge of institutions, of civilizations. The serpent’s realm?

True knowledge breaks boundaries, unifies. This is the fruit of the tree of life. And no man can eat this fruit without first having purged himself of, or dis-identified with, the conceptual mind that only sees distinctions. “Yoga cittavritti nirodah.” is the famous saying of Patanjali, yoga’s foremost seer. Disidentify with the mind’s movements.

The mystic is concerned with seeking true knowledge. He does this in much the same way as the scientist. Of course there are all sorts of mystical approaches. In Western tradition, the more devotional type of mystic has survivied in our history books. This approach lies very close to orthodox devotion and as such has presented the least problem for the established religious order. Mystics like St. Francis or (on the edge) Theresa of Avila. This type of mysticism evidently was less of a threat. The more “scientific” minded mystics, the ones who used definite psycho-spiritual techniques and were looking for direct transcendental experiences, had either to go underground in secret societies, keep a low profile, or risk inquisition. We thus have little or no record of this type of mysticism in the West. And if we do it is shrouded in symbols and other masks, which do not contribute to much affinity with scientific thinking. So to the Western scientific mind, mysticism is vague, uncontrollable, and “airy-fairy”. So much so that even a renowned contemporary yoga teacher can praise his style as stripped of mysticism.

That first book which I found at the start of my quest spurred me on to look further. And as so many of my generation I eventually found my way to Eastern mysticism. It was there that I encountered a brand of mysticism that was openly scientific, presenting as it does definite techniques for self-realization. All of this knowledge was called Yoga.