Yoga and the Path of the Urban Mystic

by Darren Main

  The trip was not a bad one—at least not compared to others, which had conjured up some scary hallucinations. When I started to come down, however, I felt the weight of tremendous guilt beginning to bear down on me. At one point I looked at myself in the mirror and realized how much I hated what I had become.

  That’s when I decided to kill myself. I turned my room upside down looking for a razor blade or any sharp object. Although the trip had ended, I was still not completely sober and I was, thankfully, unable to find a blade. In frustration and utter depression I collapsed on my bed in tears. I had experienced emotional breakdowns before, but this was a catharsis of such gigantic proportions that I could almost feel my heart stop.

  Then samadhi happened. Everything stopped and I felt complete peace. It was a serenity and quiet that was so complete and so whole that all my pain and suffering vanished like darkness at the flick of a light switch. It was so foreign to everything I knew in my life, and yet it felt like the most natural thing in the world. I couldn’t help but smile, and I felt love pour through me. It was not love for one person or a group of people—it was love for all. In addition to love, there was a timeless quality to the experience, and I couldn’t say how long it lasted. I fell into a deep sleep after that and woke up with the worst hangover of my life.

  That night everything changed for me. The thing I had been chasing my whole life was realized in that moment. I had tripped on acid enough to know that it wasn’t a drug-induced experience. In fact, I lost almost all desire to get high after that, and I have never been high or had a drink since.

  I wanted that experience again, but I didn’t know where to look. I didn’t even know that my experience was a spiritual one. I continued my quest for answers, but because of my negative experiences with the Catholic faith I avoided anything that looked at all like religion. Perhaps that’s why yoga was so perfect for me. It didn’t look or feel like the religion of my past, so I wasn’t threatened. How I started yoga is another story, but I have come to believe that fate has a funny way of putting what we need in our path. Through a series of unlikely events, I found my way to a yoga class, and began my conscious journey through the eight limbs.

  What happened to me that night was more Grace than anything I could have planned, and it turned my life around. Now I seek that experience on a daily basis when I come to the yoga mat or sit in stillness. I am not at a point where I can surrender as completely as I did that night, but yoga has prepared my mind for the occasions when it does happen.

  There are two basic ways to achieve samadhi. The first is through catharsis. A catharsis looks a lot like a mental breakdown, and I wouldn’t call it fun, having experienced it that night back in 1989. As I studied and grew spiritually, I realized that samadhi was something that was often preceded by complete and utter despair. There are countless stories of samadhi happening with people who had terminal illnesses, or were being tortured in concentration camps; they had nothing left to cling to, which allows for a state of complete surrender. It is this surrender that opens the door.

  Perhaps the most beautiful true story about this experience concerns a man called John Newton. His early life was filled with abuse and he was devastated by the loss of his mother. A series of events led him to a job as the captain of a slave ship. Most accounts of his early life show him as a hard and angry man. There are many different stories about his so-called ‘great deliverance,’ but they follow roughly along these lines. On May 10, 1748, he was on the high seas with a shipload of slaves. A great storm hit, and he believed that he and all on board would die. Although he had never been a religious man and considered himself an atheist, he surrendered and prayed for the first time. The storm passed, and his life was spared.

  He was a changed man. In the silence that followed the storm, he could hear the moaning of the slaves below deck and he was so moved by their faith and passion that he penned the words, “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound . . .” to the tune of their moaning. Some accounts of the story have him turning the ship around and freeing the slaves, while others have him keeping the slaves but treating them with exceptional kindness and keeping them safe in his care. In either case, he was a changed man that night and I believe he had an experience of samadhi.

  Because of my ‘accidental’ experience with samadhi, I too was like a new person overnight, and I wanted that peace and that feeling of completion again. I didn’t know how to find it. I was a bit nervous since it was only through a near fatal bout of suicidal depression that I had been able to find it up to that point. I wanted the experience again, and in my heart I knew there had to be a better way to find it. Yoga, at least for me, is that better way.

  The second way we can seek out the experience is through mysticism. There are many mystical techniques that can prepare the mind for samadhi, but in this book we are focusing on yoga.

  As we work our way through the eight limbs, we teach the mind how to let go and surrender the psychological, physical and emotional blocks that keep us held back in life. This process of learning to let go will sometimes give way to the experience of samadhi. Samadhi is not something you can decide to experience. It is something you experience when you allow yourself to let go of what you are not and remember your true identity as a spark of the Divine. Since that night in 1989, I have revisited the ecstasy of samadhi a dozen or more times. Most often it is during my seated meditations or on the yoga mat, but on occasion it has occurred during some other aspect of life.

  In 1999, I was at the Pink Saturday celebration in San Francisco. Pink Saturday is a giant street party where thousands of queer and queer-friendly people flood the streets of the Castro. [The Castro is a prominent gay neighborhood in San Francisco.] It was a warm night, so thousands of people showed up to dance and celebrate sexual diversity.

  I was supposed to be meeting my friend Jasper there, but the crowd was quite large so I knew that spotting him would not be easy. I decided to climb up onto a bus stop shelter and wait for him there. I figured I would have a better view, and it would be fun to rise above the fray. And rather than just sit and wait, I thought I’d spend some time dancing. There was a DJ station right across the street, and she was playing some great music. At first it was a bit awkward to dance as the shelter was rounded on top and a bit slippery. I was also a bit self-conscious, being up in front of so many people. In time, though, I slipped into a relaxed dance space and enjoyed the moment. As I danced and let go more and more, I found that I slipped deeper and deeper into a trance-like state. I started to notice a pulse of energy over the crowd that connected us all like some sort of a web. It was as if we were all breathing and moving in sync.

  Shortly after that, time stopped and my sense of ‘me’ disappeared. I realized that there was dancing happening but no dancer. There was breathing happening but no breather. I was fully in the experience, but also much bigger than the moment. It was like every particle in the universe had been arranged to make that moment one of unimaginable joy. Although there were thousands of people there, I knew them all and had a deep sense of unconditional love for every one of them.

  Then I had a thought, “Wow, I’m in samadhi!” With that thought, the experienced dissolved. As soon as there was an ‘I’ and an experience of time, I was no longer in samadhi. That’s when I noticed Jasper waving to me from the ground with a few of his friends. I wasn’t sure if I had been in samadhi for a few seconds or a few hours, but it reminded me that, in any moment, ecstasy is a choice.

  In many ways, this brief glimpse of samadhi is like waking up for a few minutes and learning that what you were dreaming was just a dream. Although you may roll over and go back to sleep, the dream can never be the same because you know it is a dream. Through yoga practice we open ourselves to these moments of alertness, and when they happen, Truth is revealed. Once you have had the experience of samadhi, no matter how briefly, you will not be the same. Things that once seemed so important will appear meaningless, and things that once seemed like a fairy t
ale will more and more become your reality.

  With each experience of samadhi, we are reborn. A piece of the ego is transcended and Atman is consciously realized. This is the goal of a yogi and of all true spiritual paths. By practicing the seven previous limbs frequently and consistently, this experience will manifest more and more often, and a seeker will make great strides in his or her spiritual evolution.

  Enlightenment

  For him the universe is his garment and the Lord not separate from himself. He offers no ancestral oblations; He praises nobody, blames nobody, is never dependent on anyone.

  —Paramahamsa Upanishad 1:4

  Although I get along quite well with my family, I think I am sometimes seen as the black sheep. The last time I was home, we were all sitting around the dinner table telling jokes and having fun. First my cousin John told a joke about two nuns. Then my brother told a joke about a guy getting involved in a bar contest. I decided to share a joke that had been floating around the yoga community in California. “What did the guru say to the hotdog vendor?” I waited for a few moments and answered, “Make me ‘one with everything’.” They just sat there. There was not a smile—not even a courtesy chuckle.

  My brother flatly asked me, “What does stretching have to do with hotdogs?”

  I explained to my family some of the basic ideas of yoga that we have been exploring in this book, and while they still didn’t find the joke funny, they were interested in knowing a bit more about yoga. After my explanation, however, my brother had yet another question, “Are you ‘one with everything’?”

  “Yes and no,” I responded. “I am one with everything, and so are you. Actually, everyone is. It is really not a question of whether a person is one with everything, because that is a given—it can never change. The real question is, ‘Have I realized that I am one with everything’? In that case, my answer would have to be ‘no’.”

  As I’ve just mentioned, I have had brief glimpses into samadhi, but for the most part I identify with the separateness of my ego much more often than I do with the wholeness of Atman. There are people, spiritual masters, who have let go of many of their samskaras, and they live in a state of samadhi most of the time. People like these are no different than the rest of us, but they live in a state that for us is only a potential. The key difference is that most of us live from our egos and on occasion have brief glimpses into samadhi, whereas these masters live from Spirit and briefly get deluded by Maya, but quickly return.

  There are many masters who have become enlightened through the practice of yoga, but yoga is not the only path. There are enlightened beings from almost every religion and culture. People like Black Elk, Buddha, and Jesus are just a few.

  Unfortunately, people often take these masters and turn them into gods and superheroes. Rather than learning to model their lives after these masters, people can easily be deluded into wanting them to save the day. It’s easy to feel ourselves in free fall, like Lois Lane waiting for Superman to swoop down and catch us. This is not the goal of an enlightened master. Instead, they remind us that we have our own wings.

  While these enlightened ones are not there to save the day for us, they can play an important role in our own journey to enlightenment. This, they can do in several ways. First, they serve as models. How they lived their lives can be a great source of inspiration in how we structure our own lifestyles.

  For example, Gandhi can serve as a great example for all of us in the way took abuse and refused to resort to violence, but went to prison for his convictions. When life presses us and we’re tempted to respond with violence, we can remember the life example of Gandhi and know that non-violence can free us from our egos in much the same way that Gandhi’s non-violence led to the freedom of India.

  Another way in which these masters can help us is through their teaching. Albert Einstein once said, “You cannot solve a problem with the same thinking that created it.” Most of us think in constructs that the ego has created, and this is why it can be helpful to learn from a more enlightened being. We need a new way of thinking.

  Since the ego is incapable of creating this new way of thinking, it can be incredibly helpful to learn from someone who is further along the path. Asking the ego to come up with an enlightened way of thinking is like asking a child if he or she wants vegetables or candy for dinner. By trusting in the knowledge and wisdom of a more enlightened person, we gain from their wisdom and create a new way of thinking for ourselves.

  One of the greatest gifts a master can give is to set an example. If it were not for the great masters from both East and West who have demonstrated that enlightenment is possible, I might well have given up a long time ago. For me, the great masters act as a cheering squad as I climb my mountain. Because they have already reached the top, I know it is possible, and that I will eventually make it.

  I tend to think of enlightenment as a ripening or maturation, rather than as a goal that we reach. People love to speculate about whether a teacher is enlightened or not. I prefer to see teachers as being of varying degrees of ripeness. Likewise, I tend to think of my own enlightenment as a process. In time, I will be more enlightened. This will happen as I transcend more and more of my samskaras and allow Spirit to guide my thoughts more and more of the time. Once a yogi lets go of a large number of his or her samskaras, he or she will begin to experience that sense of oneness with everything.

  To be one with everything would be to walk through life and see the interests of others as no different from your own. It would mean seeing Atman in everyone, from the homeless person to the person of an opposing political persuasion. It would mean surrendering the voice of your ego and replacing it entirely with the voice of Spirit, and it would require choosing ecstasy in each moment over the constant drama of the ego.

  Enlightenment sounds like fun, and I have no doubt that it would be a lot more fulfilling than the ego-driven existence where most of us live. But it means letting go of the ego identity altogether, and that is the source of our greatest fear because it means letting go of the basic notion of good and bad.

  I went to hear Marianne Williamson speak a few years ago, and one of the gentlemen in the audience shared with us that he was very afraid of becoming enlightened. She told him not to worry, because most of us are not that close. Her response was very wise, because Spirit does not cause us to become enlightened by ripping the rug out from under us. That would undermine free will. For most of us this process is a gradual awakening, with Spirit gently rocking us to a more conscious state of being.

  Before we can really become enlightened, we need to look at the root of our ego’s thought system. All of our samskaras are really growing from the same seed thought—duality. Duality is the idea that some things are good and others are bad. All delusion flows from this basic illusory notion. To be fully enlightened would mean that the seed of all thought would not be founded in duality, but rather in Oneness.

  This way of thinking is so foreign to the duality-based thought systems that most of us use that it’s hard to imagine what it would be like. In many ways the duality-based thought system and the thought system based on unity are like the Macintosh and Windows platforms on computers. While they may function in many of the same ways, their basic ‘behind the scenes’ programming is quite different. That is why you can’t run programs designed for Macintosh on Windows and vice versa.

  For most of us, we experience life through the eyes of duality, and that is where Spirit meets us – to teach us unity. Yoga teaches us to let go of our dualistic judgments one by one, until the step from the old way of being to the new way of being is easy and painless. It is a self-defeating idea to worry about one’s own or another’s level of enlightenment. It only serves to distract us from the task at hand—forgiveness in the present moment.

  Enlightenment is inevitable. It will happen as surely as the sun will rise. But in the world of time it may take many years or lifetimes. The only way to speed up this process is to practice the e
ight limbs of yoga or some other form of mysticism. By working the eight limbs of yoga into all of life, we reduce our suffering and draw the mind closer and closer to that day when samadhi will be the norm, and ego drama will be nothing more than a minor distraction.

  The Conscious Exit—Mahasamadhi

  In the supreme climax of samadhi they realize the presence of the Lord within their heart. Freed from impurities, they pass forever beyond birth and death.

  —Shvetashvatara Upanishad 2:15

  When I first moved to San Francisco, I felt a strong calling to work with people who were in the advanced stages of AIDS. At the time effective ways of dealing with AIDS had not been developed, and the death toll was mounting daily. The obituaries were many pages long each week, and there was a general sense of despair on the streets. I had seen the reports in the papers and I had lost some friends back east, but I was not prepared for what I was walking into.

  Shortly arriving in California, I met a man on the bus. We had a nice conversation, which eventually led to his asking my occupation. I told him I was a massage therapist and a yoga teacher and that I had just moved to the city to see if I could make a difference in the AIDS crisis. He told me of a friend of his who was very sick and wanted to get regular bodywork in these waning days of his life. Although I didn’t like the idea of doing house calls with my big, heavy, massage table, the man seemed so concerned for his friend that I felt this was something that I needed to do.