Life is Yoga.

All of Life is Yoga

A journey begins much before the first step is taken. It begins when the first thought about it enters your conscious mind. But at another level it may have begun much before that, when the seed of the journey is implanted into one’s sub-consciousness. This seed is nourished by various circumstances, thoughts, ideas, over a very long period. May be even years. And one fine day, due to some subtle neural connection it sprouts and assumes a conscious meaning. It then takes on an conscious life. After that, it is only a matter of time before the physical journey manifests itself.

My journey began much before I actually took to the road. Quite literally.

Mine was a journey of inner cultivation. And I had been on that journey for a long time. Subconsciously I don’t know when the seed to this journey was implanted, but I am sure it was a very long time ago. With a lot of reading. Over a lot of writing. After  a lot of self-enquiry.

What is the purpose of this life?

It is evolution. It is a refinement of our physical, mental and spiritual aspects towards perfection. Life, as is normally lived is a natural way of evolution. Life has been on this path since it manifested millions of years ago. When life reached its evolutionary stage of humans it had reached a crucial and significant stage in this evolution. It had evolved the crown of all life forms, and human-mind was the most refined aspect of this human-life. In human mind, nature had evolved an instrument that could become aware of its evolutionary purpose and thus accelerate its own evolution by its conscious decisions and acts. And before long the human-mind developed a system that could guide and enhance the process of this evolution. This wonder system is Yoga. Yoga is the way of physical, mental and spiritual evolution. Patanjali, an evolved human himself compiled and structured this system into ‘Yoga Sutras’.

Swami Vivekananda, another great human who had made yoga his way said that all life can be considered Yoga, but in a very dispersed way, but the system of Yoga may be regarded as a means of compressing one’s evolution, may be into a single life, or a few years or even a few months of bodily existence. Yoga is the way by which one can consciously take oneself on this path of evolution, a way of consciously assisting nature in its objective.

Yoga has been my way of self-cultivation too. This cultivation was my inner walk. And I have been on this walk for a long time. And one day, due to choking external events the inner cultivation connected to external rituals. This inner walk connected with the the external walk that I had taken to appeal to Providence. And now this pilgrimage walk and the rituals that came along with it became a part of my Yoga, my self-cultivation.

So now though the pilgrimage walk was prompted as an outward response to the external circumstance, I gradually took it inward, to connect it to my inner cultivation, in realisation that this would be the only way, that any benefit, atleast some inner-benefit could be realised. The outer larger world and its events may remain beyond our effort, of reason, of emotions, or of faith. I can only relate to this outer world in humility and in abeyance to Providence. To be indifferent or disdainful felt out-of-question then. And also having or thinking of any outside benefit felt shallow and somewhat an adharma. An inner objective gave the feeling of inner integrity. I did not want the cultivation to be focussed against anybody or anything outside. I wanted it to be within myself. I wanted it to be only an inner issue.

It grew to become relevant in my emotional and mental areas too. It assumed meanings in relation to my cultivation of discipline, will, etc,.Thus once the journey was born inside of me, it assumed a meaning and life of its own. It grew in its relevance. It touched and became relevant to various aspects of my inner cultivation. Eventually it enveloped my consciousness. It sort of connected and networked with various points of my consciousness.

The mandatory rituals that came along with this walk was a crash course on the yoga. Though  I have been doing following yoga for a long time, the rituals were more intense and formal. Ofcourse it was a ‘pilgrimage’, to Palani. A ‘padhe yathirai’, a journey on foot. An act of offering oneself to the higher, divine forces. It was imperative that one cleanses oneself spiritually for this offering. So one had to take up rituals that help one in this process of cleansing. 

An intense phase of self-cultivation for a period of around one and a half months, during which one tries to cultivate a state of ego-less and desire-less living. At the end of this intense period one makes the ‘offering’ of oneself to the symbol of the perfect and absolute, to that which we aspire to attain. 

‘Fasting’ was a primary requirement. It is not ‘fasting’ in its limited sense. But fasting in a more holistic sense. It meant physical fasting, sensual fasting, emotional fasting. It meant withdrawing one’s consciousness inward. It meant concentrating one’s life energy on one’s spiritual consciousness. 

I had started on my ‘fasting’ more than a fortnight before the walk. But even after a week my mind had not been completely and continuously reined in, or focused on the objective - the objective of attaining a state-of-being that is of pure mind and pure spirit, an inner integrity, an inner coherence. To enter a higher level of  meditation I thought I should take to higher degree of fasting. May be I should adopt this state-of-living, so as it does not become some temparory, passing phenomenon but a sincere and a deeper mode-of-living. 

For all the meditation and yoga, not to mention all the cultivating hard work  I have put in, there was  in my daily awareness, periods of slack, when mind loses its attentiveness, its sharpness. And it was these gaps of ‘slackness’, that  I wanted to reduce. It was ‘mindfulness’ that I was primarily trying to cultivate. For it was this slack gap that had let me down and lead to this major tragedy. 

While I had started on these rituals, I realised that there was still a very large ‘physical-baggage’ that I was carrying. Though I wanted to be totally taken up by the inner effort, I was still concerned about losing weight and bothered by it. My consciousness was still taken up by such issues instead of  being focussed on my ‘cultivation’. But at the same time, I was apprehensive of giving up my rational balance, and take umbrage in emotions or faith. My experiences, my knowledge, held me back from this, as I had learnt that emotions and faith don’t get any umbrage from worldly problems. It was only ‘reason’ that I could hold on to, atleast in relative reliability.

Though I was working to realise any new truth or principle, either of emotions or of faith, I was still only working with one foot in reason and had not totally given it up. Though I was exploring the value and potency of faith, I wanted to remain firmly grounded in reason and I hoped to realise the way to be impeccable in this.

The external rituals signalled  to the people around me that I was on a spiritual ‘cultivation’ and they provided me the space and time that I required. It signaled to them of my serious intentions and it recieved the solemnity that the process required. 

During this period of cultivation, I hoped and worked not to get engaged or entangled with anything that will lessen the intensity of my cultivation or make me deviate from my focus. 

I was resorting to all those external rituals to physically and manifestingly experience, and thereby add that to the various bits of memories and experiences that offered a definition of myself, to myself. Definition that took into function, my will, my discipline, my experiences, etc. Though the actions needed only a little of will and discipline, there is a difference between saying,”I can”, and actually doing it. By doing it, the experiences that the actions provide, becomes imprinted into your memories. Mental, as well as bodily memories. Memories of experiences that define one’s sense of self-identity and even one’s ego. And it certainly deepens oneself and one’s perspective.

I realised that the inner journey would go on, and would have to go on as long as one lived. But that period was just an intensive phase and it was symbolically connected to the physical ritual of walking to Palani. Thus the walk to Palani was to be only  a marking of a certain phase, it was just for my convenience. Like marking one year from another. The inner cultivation would have to be continuous, like the flow of time.

Behind all my rituals and effort of inner cultivation, I was waiting. I was contemplating and sharply exploring the way my life was, in its structure and its possibilities. I hoped to change and overcome my life’s present structure and restrictions. I hoped to realise new possibilities. I hoped to realise my true potential and perhaps my true destiny. I wanted to find a way to do it that was within dharmam. Universally righteous. 

I hoped that this walk, this pilgrimage, would help me realise this.