Incidentally, the Shivalinga that Virashaivas wear is encased in a tiny silver, gold or sandalwood case. Each Shivalinga is prepared with herbal ingredients and made by people specially trained for the purpose.
After reading his writings, I was very keen to meet Sri Kumaraswami. I had also heard many people praising him over the years. My desire to meet him was fulfilled in 1980 when I was working in Tumkur. Hanumantharaya, a journalist friend of mine, was close to Sri Kumaraswami. He suggested we organize a programme for Sri Kumaraswami in Tumkur, and he took on the task of organizing funds for this. With the help of some teachers in the local technology school, we scheduled a three-day event at a local venue. Sri Kumaraswami had agreed to speak on yoga in general on the first day and on Shiva yoga for the next two days.
Hanumantharaya and I went to Dharwad to extend a formal invitation to Sri Kumaraswami. He was then spending most of his time in austerities. There was a radiance on his face and, even at the age of eighty, his voice was as sweet as someone in his twenties. I mentioned my interest in yoga to him. I also told him about one of my dreams in the recent past, where he had appeared and reminded me that I had immense power within me. He said, ‘Such things happen to many people without my knowledge. They get directions from my subtle body.’
I invited my communist friends to the event. My friend Yatiraja was so disturbed at my invitation that he said of me to some other friends, ‘He is finished.’ I had clearly disappointed him. While I didn’t see any contradictions between my spiritual and socialist aspirations, both the spiritually inclined as well as the communists had a problem with it.
Sri Kumaraswami’s sermons drew a huge crowd in Tumkur. Before his first lecture, he sang as a prelude one of his own compositions. I marvelled at his melodious singing and at the purity of his diction, which he had modelled on the great vachana poets. In his talk, he explained that in the ancient Indian yogic tradition there were two streams: the yogic tradition of the Vedas founded by Prajapati; and the yogic tradition of Agamas founded by Rudra. While the Vedas are hymns associated with sacrifices, Agamas are texts that describe and prescribe the installation and worship of deities.
On the following days, Sri Kumaraswami spoke only on Shiva yoga, which has emanated from the Rudra traditions. He also spent a lot of time talking about the theological framework of Virashaivism. He explained concepts like ‘shat sthala’ or the six stages, and ‘ashta varana’ or the eight shields. I was more impressed by the aesthetic aspect of his sermons than by the theological content, which I found uninspiring. The words he spoke lingered in my mind far longer than the concepts he referred to.
Sri Kumaraswami had agreed to teach us the Shiva yoga method the next day at his guest house. After the initiation, I said to him, ‘I have not come across this technique either in Shiva Yoga Pradipika by Channa Sadashivacharya or in the compositions of the vachana poets.’
Without contradicting me, he said, ‘I got only vague clues from the vachanas. This technique is mostly the outcome of my own personal practice and insight. Many disciples, both in India and abroad, benefited from it instantaneously. A disciple of mine from Britain was able to recollect six of his past lives after practising this technique. As you go on gazing at the point on the Shivalinga, you will begin to see the glow of different colours around it. These colours correspond to the different chakras in the human body. This experience will culminate in erasing the dividing line between the self and the other, which is the foundation of the deepest samadhi.’
From then on, I added Shiva yoga to my daily practice. I normally practised for three hours at a stretch, late in the night. Sometimes my gaze would become so glued to the Shivalinga that I was not able to take it away for long periods. When this experience became very intense, I felt a point of light entering my eyebrow centre, leading to very subtle vibrations.
The Shiva yoga practice resulted in the fulfilment of many of my desires, for instance, poetry started pouring out of me.
Years later, I was initiated into other dimensions of Shiva yoga when I came in non-physical contact with Shivalinga Swami. I also realized that there were actually several traditions of Shiva yoga. The ishtalingam sadhana of Virashaivism, which is what I was practising, was only one of them. The Shiva yoga of Tamil Shaivism is predominantly devotion-based whereas the Shiva yoga of Kashmir Shaivism is awareness-based.
Sage Agastya taught me in a dream another type of Shiva yoga. He has asked me to keep it a secret till I get his permission to share it with the world. The concept of Shiva yoga also appears in the Shakta tradition of Shrividya. In the Bhavanopanishad, whoever experiences his own body as a Srichakra yantra (the Cosmic Mother’s yantra) is called a Shiva yogi.
Another passion of Sri Kumaraswami’s was ‘kalajnana’, an esoteric tradition that prophesied the apocalypse in cryptic prose and verse. Based on his readings of this tradition, he declared around 1985 that the world would come to an end within two years. This, of course, did not happen. He rationalized this by saying that the prayers of devotees had warded off the disaster. I found it difficult to digest this part of his personality.
After my initial meeting with him, I had just one more opportunity to meet Sri Kumaraswami. I had gone to see him along with Hanumantharaya to persuade him to come to Tumkur. An influential woman from Tumkur had unleashed a slanderous campaign against Sri Kumaraswami, and we wanted him to sort things out.
When we met him, we discovered that he was furious with us because we had done nothing to get her jailed. I was shocked by his feelings of vengeance. I thanked him mentally for the guidance he had provided, and said goodbye to him. I never met him again though I was grieved when I heard about his passing away.
My work with Shiva yoga was happening at the same time but independently of the sadhana I was doing with Swami Buddhananda and the BSY. When I shared my Shiva yoga experiences with Swami Buddhananda, he asked me to take the sadhana to the next stage. He suggested I visualize the Shivalinga at the crown of my head and then see my whole body as the Shivalinga.
Some days my practice would go on till 4 a.m. Once, after an intense sadhana that lasted the entire night, I went to sleep. For the first time, I had an out-of-body experience. I found my body lying down on the bed while my light body was outside the room. My light body could only move as a whole; a limb or a body part would simply not move independently. I was so frightened by this experience that I entered my body again. On hearing this later, Swami Buddhananda said, ‘It was a wonderful experience. But you didn’t know what to do with it. This is what happens when you get experiences you are not yet ready for. That is why I always pray to my guru not to give me any siddhis. I pray only for the cessation of mind.’
Then another powerful experience occurred. I was sitting in the public transport bus one evening on my way back home when I suddenly felt a bright ray of intense white light penetrating my eyebrow chakra. It was so powerful that, upon reaching my house, I went straight into my room and assumed the siddhasana posture; my body became absolutely still.
The meditation lasted several hours. I was being led by Swami Satyananda who spoke to me all the while in the language of silence. I could see innumerable gates open one after another in my eyebrow chakra. Finally, both of us entered a Shivalinga.
When I told Swami Buddhananda about this meditation, he just waved it away. ‘It was a small experience. The external deeksha by the guru is followed by a series of inner deekshas till we attain the ultimate realization. So don’t cling to such experiences.’
Soon afterwards, I was transferred from Tumkur to Bangalore. On Shivaratri night in Bangalore, I decided to devote the whole night to Shiva yoga sadhana. But this was not to be as several strange things happened that night. A thief entered our compound and some police constables came chasing after him. All this commotion made the Shivalinga slip from my hands and break. I had heard that this was a very bad omen.
Over the next three months, there were very rapid and unexpected developments in my pers
onal life. As a consequence, I had to walk out of my house forever.
Fortunate are the people who stick to one guru and one path, as this method brings clarity to the sadhana. I have had multiple gurus in my life. Most of them were committed to a single master and a single path. Though deeply knowledgeable about their own tradition, these masters betrayed contemptuous ignorance of other paths. It was only when I met Swami Satyananda that I had the feeling I had reached an ocean, one that has absorbed many rivers.
I am still waiting for that auspicious moment when all the paths I have experienced converge at one point, like streams, tributaries and rivers meeting in the ocean. I can now hear the waves of that ocean of unity—a sign that I am not far from my goal.
SEVEN
In Search of the Heart
In the early eighties, I became interested in Sufism. The person who introduced me to Sufism was my philosophy guru, Prof. Jamakhandi. As I have mentioned earlier, I had felt a strong need to understand various branches of knowledge when I became an atheist. I engaged with Marxism during the late seventies and it was during this time that I met Prof. Jamakhandi.
Prof. Jamakhandi, a physics professor, was deeply committed to physics and mathematics. Due to some bitter experiences in childhood, he had settled for a life without marriage. He was an excellent reader of horoscopes and had read his own birth chart in his teens, which revealed that marriage would not bring him happiness. So he never got involved with a woman; instead, he set himself the goal of acquisition of all knowledge.
He was the person who introduced me to several important facets of modern physics, including the theory of relativity, and he explained all this to me in an intelligible manner. When he found me feeding on different kinds of books, he said, ‘Why do you meddle in so many subjects? For instance, what are you reading so many books on mathematics for?’
I replied, ‘I need certainty. Since art and literature do not contain objectively verifiable truths, I am looking for these in mathematics.’
Prof. Jamakhandi smiled, and proceeded to explode the myth that science is all fact. ‘Where is certainty in science? For example, physics does not have a consensual theory of time. In the theory of relativity, time is a dimension of space. In the world of quantum mechanics, there is no time. According to the second law of thermodynamics, time moves in a linear way. When there is no unanimity in the understanding of a basic concept like time in physics—the most fundamental of sciences—how can you expect certainty? It is as difficult as expecting certainty in poetry.’
He went on to explain that there are three mutually incompatible world views before us. The first is the model of a physical universe emerging from science. The second is the aesthetic order, which has its own justification. No less valid is the third one, the spiritual order, informing the experiences and expressions of great mystics. There is no need to mix up these world views as each one holds good in its own context.
Prof. Jamakhandi also cautioned me on the kind of books I was reading. ‘You cannot read books on science as you do poetry books. To understand the most abstract theories, you need a lot of what can be called the mathematical imagination. For mathematics to have any certainty, its principles have to be established on the strong foundation of physics. Given the situation, one could say that the aesthetic order, for instance, is as important as the scientific order. Instead of getting lost in a domain that is not yours, why don’t you go deeper into the understanding of the aesthetic order?’
By the ‘aesthetic order’ he meant an intuitively perceived experience of unity and beauty different from the demonstrable verities of science or the prescriptive dos and don’ts of religion. Despite the fact that he did not take my spiritual quest seriously, he suggested I take to Sufi poetry because it expresses spiritual content in an aesthetic form that is easily grasped. In those days, I had the habit of immersing myself in a subject that I wanted to learn. So I started studying the works of the most celebrated Sufi writers like Hafiz, Rumi, Attar and Sheikh Siraji, which were available in translation.
I also happened to read a number of books by Idris Shah, a wonderful contemporary writer on Sufism. I discovered that there was one word that recurred in Sufi works: ‘murshid’, spiritual master. The perception of this need within me finally led me to my own murshid, Sheikh Ashad-ullah Quadri Wali Shivayogi.
This is how it happened. Prahlad, a friend, got a job in Bangalore with a daily newspaper, Munjane, and rented a house in Hebbal on the outskirts of the city. Beside his house was a small hill with a Shiva temple at the top. There was a cave behind the temple where a Sufi pir lived along with an old female disciple. Prahlad knew I was looking for Sufi saints at the time. When he told me about the person in the cave, I was very interested in meeting him. We went to the cave one evening and met the pir. There I learnt that he earned his living by reading people’s futures. Apparently, people would ask him questions and he would consult a soiled old book, written in Urdu, which he had lying with him.
The pir thought I had come to have my future read. I was disappointed and irritated. When I told him I had come seeking knowledge of Sufism, he said that he had never heard the term ‘Sufi’. He asked me a little about myself. After this brief exchange, we left the cave.
Despite this uninspiring encounter, my heart was deeply drawn to the guru and I wanted to become his disciple. Prahlad used to walk up the hill daily, so I asked him to talk to the guru about me again. When Prahlad broached my subject, the guru told him that my time had not yet come.
When I visited the cave a few weeks later, Baba, as the pir was called, was more forthcoming. He even prepared tea for us. I shared with him the insurmountable difficulties in my personal life and begged him to show me the spiritual path. He gave a solution that sounded rather simplistic to me at the time. He said, ‘There is just one remedy for all this—develop your mohabbat for the guru. Understand the story of Laila and Majnu. Who are they? Laila is the guru and Majnu is the disciple.’
Once again, he told me that my time had not yet come for I had not cleared my debt to the world of the senses. I was unable to swallow this. I had learnt many spiritual techniques at the Bihar School of Yoga and was convinced that with my efforts, I could control the events of my life.
My third visit to Baba would just not take place, no matter how hard I tried. Whenever I tried to go to the cave, all kinds of obstacles would come up. One night, I dreamt that I had climbed the hill and gone to the cave. Baba had come out, taken me by the hand and led me down the hill.
Finally, things changed for me. Prahlad and I had gone for a literary conference to Challakere. It was 8 p.m. when we came back to Bangalore, and it happened to be the night of Shivaratri. Baba had invited Prahlad to spend the night with him in the cave. I offered to go along. The moment Baba saw me, he said, ‘Why did you bring this principal? Didn’t I tell you his time hasn’t come?’ (He was illiterate and used to think that all lecturers were principals.) We sat down quietly in front of him, and I hoped he would change his mind and let me stay. The old woman, whom we called Ammaji, and Baba’s disciples, Sattar Sahib and Dayanand Appa, also sat with us.
After some time, he said, ‘It’s okay. If the principal has come on Shivaratri, it is the Guru who has brought him here. He will not go empty-handed. The principal has got the Guru’s hukum today.’ I was ecstatic. Though my intellect was rebelling against all this, my heart started beating for him.
Thus Baba took me on as his disciple and my sadhana began. As soon as my classes at the college would get over, usually by midday, I would rush to Hebbal to see him. This became my routine. He got used to my daily visits as well. If I didn’t go on a particular day, he would wait for hours, asking the old woman repeatedly, ‘What happened to the principal? Why hasn’t he come today?’ I had lived without a proper home for many years after my mother’s death; now, Baba’s cave became my home. Baba and Ammaji treated me like a son.
Baba imparted the guru’s secrets more through stories, examples
and karamats, miracles, rather than through words and ideas. One afternoon at about 4 p.m., I was sitting in the cave practising a new meditation technique I had recently learned. My breath slowed down and I experienced deep peace and joy. When I opened my eyes, Baba asked, ‘Shivaprakash, what were you doing?’
‘Meditating,’ I said.
Baba laughed. ‘These techniques of breath control and concentration are child’s play. The greatest technique is the surrender to the guru. You have to buy the guru by giving up everything else. What have you given up to buy your guru?’
I had no answer.
Another evening when I sat talking to Baba, he said, ‘In Kaliyuga, knowledge is freely available for everybody through books.’
I then asked a question that had been bothering me for quite a while. ‘If all knowledge is available in books, where is the need for a guru?’
Baba said, ‘It’s getting dark. We need to switch on the lights. Could you please do that?’
I got up and pressed the switch but the lights didn’t come on.
Baba said, ‘Sorry, I forgot that there are several wires dangling outside the door. If you join two of them the lights will come on.’ I went out and did as he said, but without any luck. I tried other combinations with the wires but those did not work either. Then Baba came out and joined two wires. The lights came on.
He said, ‘Look, you have the switch, proper wiring and a power supply. Even the bulb is perfect. Still, you didn’t know which wires to join. That is why a guru is necessary.’
Baba used to say that the Guru is the greatest principle in the Universe. Though, ultimately, the Guru is formless, he can appear in any form. ‘But the difficulty is that the Guru is also playful. He can appear in a form we do not expect to find him in.’ Baba revealed this to me through another karamat.
Everyday Yogi Page 6