A friend of mine is a Yogi. I’ve known him from the time when not even a ghost of the idea of a Yogi was anywhere near his head. Then, he was a family man.

He is now hailed as an accomplished Yogi, wears long hair coming down to his waist and black beard with streaks of grey brushing his chest. His get-up gives him an aura of a mystic, attract people whose minds he is said to set at ease. You can find him sitting on his carpeted floor spreading out his legs, eyes shut, lost as if in trance, his back leaning against the mud wall in his knee-long maroon robe, chanting mantra or dead quiet.

I am privy to his history. This man had two wives rivalling each other who fought like cobra and mongoose. Having got down and dirty with each other, they would take it out on him. When it came to a head, he decided to get away from it all ditching them both. He split his property between the two, slipped into robes, left home, wandered, and ended up at a place of a Guru. He became a disciple of the Guru, remained steadfast in his loyalty to him, served him for a good seven years, learnt tricks of Pashupat Yoga (One that Lord Shiva is believed to have taught His consort Parvathi), and then quit the place after his Guru departed this life for heavenly abode.

Now, he’s settled down in a riverside hut at the backyard of the Shiva temple. He’s been there for some years. His place is about 800 meters away on foot from mine. Both his hut and my house sits on the bank of one and the same holy Ganges winding down in the serpentine course. His is upstream and mine downstream.

I haven’t seen him for some time. Previously, on occasions, I’d drop by him at least once in a six months’ time while passing by his door. Sometimes he’d pay a call on me. We would exchange greetings, take seat, wouldn’t say a word, sit quiet for hours, drink tea, and bid goodbye, promising to see each other soon. Once or twice we got in on some spiritual or religious conversation, but that didn’t go far enough.  Soon we discovered that we have been poles apart on matters of religion, spirituality and those sort of metaphysical stuffs.

He walked a path paved for him by his Guru and held God. I have been a free man. He favored moral, physical and spiritual discipline. I favored joyful madness. He’s a kite flown on string-line. I’m a kite off string-line. He’s a ripe fruit hanging by a tree. I’m fallen off tree, waiting to be eaten. So, unbridgeable gulf, and hence, no dialogue between us.

The last time we met was when he approached me for translating his Pashupat Yoga guidebook penned by him into English language. I had asked him for the rationale behind this stressful exercise. He had said that he’d be happy to see his little work spread all over the world and people benefit from it. I had argued that the world had had enough of these stuffs. But, if it was all about trading on the stuff and making a fortune, then it was okay by me provided that he was willing to pay for it. He had said that he had no money to cover the translation cost. I had said that I had no energy and zeal for it. We haven’t seen each other ever since.

The Yogi has a good fan following, no doubt about it. A flock of Europeans are his disciples who learn skills and tricks of Pashupat Yoga from him. He puts them through Yoga sessions on the frosty bed of grass in the tranquil air of the wood at dawn, little way off the Ganges on the high land. The Yoga sessions are followed by spiritual and religious discourse, language is a barrier, though. The Yogi is not good at getting his ideas across blamed at language problem. At times I had to act as his interlocutor.

His one-room shelter is a cozy place to be, warm, parqueted floor with woolen carpet over it, well-furnished, equipped with modern day amenities. In the wee small hours, his shelter gets swarmed with fans and disciples, some of whom queue up to put their head down on his feet, others bow low in reverence. He raises his hand in air in a gesture of blessings. They take their seats on the carpeted floor while he preaches.

About a year or so ago, I and the Yogi were sitting on the opposite corners of his hut spreading our legs, facing each other, quiet, leaning our backs against mud wall, sipping hot tea from a mug served to us by one of his female European disciples. Two Russians in robe, after the fashion of him, on naked feet, walked in lowering their head. The Yogi motioned them to sit down. They turned out to be his disciples. The Russian monks slumped to their knee on the carpeted floor at an arm’s length from him. No words were spoken. After a while, one of the Russian monks broke the silence putting his queries to the Yogi.

Here are some key issues figured in the dialogue that had lasted for nearly two hours.

The Russian Monk: Is it at all possible to attain and to live in total peace in this dog-eat-dog order or this cut-throat world we’re living in?

The Yogi: Peace is immune to any order humans create to live. Peace is not contingent upon any order. The Order and Peace are entirely two different things. Peace is an eternal and unchangeable state which was there before humans and will be there after humans. It is up to humans whether or not they can live in peace. Peace is neither created nor destroyed. Order is a state you create to live in, and hence, alter it to suit your need. Peace is not created. Order is created. Your whole being may be absorbed into peace provided of course if you reach or achieve the condition for it. But no amount of effort you put into it brings peace. You only can go into the endlessness and limitlessness and boundlessness of peace. Order is something you create, modify, turn and twist, bend and so on. Peace is neither an idea nor is knowledge or a discussion topic or logic or intellect and all that human mind creates. It is a state you fall to when you suddenly fall from other state you were erstwhile trapped in.  Peace is not something you attain on the strength of your knowledge, intellect or logic. There’s absolutely no correlation between the Order and Peace. So, be there a dog-eat-dog order or cut-throat world or any other unpleasant order, the oasis of peace is always with you no matter where you go. No order humans create can dry it up. One who lives in the oasis of peace will live in it come hell or high water, cut-throat or dog-eat-dog order. You put a gun on his head and threaten to blow his brain out in next 30 seconds. He’d live in the oasis of peace for remaining 29 seconds.

The Russian Monk: Are you trying to say that we lack the idea about how to allow our whole being get absorbed into peace or wallow in the oasis of peace?

The Yogi: The idea is the enemy of peace. Humans were at peace when they were not invaded by idea. It is the idea that drove out peace from your whole being. You developed knowledge and knowledge, in turn, fueled ideas. Now, idea and knowledge together are driving you. You have fallen into the vicious cycle of knowledge and idea. They have overpowered you in such a way that you are reduced to idea and knowledge. You are no longer what you really are, but you are a bundle of idea and knowledge. Peace lies beyond the premises of knowledge and idea. Do humans own an instrument higher than idea and knowledge to oversee, control and rein in knowledge and idea? No! The knowledge and idea are absolute sovereign. They are complete tyrant. You don’t realize it because they don’t allow you to get a glimpse of the thing that you really are to realize it. And the thing you essentially were and not what idea and knowledge have made you into has now become brutally colored by idea and knowledge. You can’t control them. Idea can only beget idea and replicate idea, can’t control idea nor can knowledge control knowledge. Peace is like unmolested, tranquil water of a lake. Ideas and knowledge are like wild buffaloes overrunning it.  And you don’t know how to rein them in.

The Russian Monk:  Yeah, but in the Order we are living in, it is simply unthinkable to go bereft of idea and knowledge. You are crippled, can’t function without them. You need them to earn your living. You need to work in a company, corporate, factory, industry, aviation, communication, start-ups and host of other sectors. They will slam the door shut on your face or show you the door if you go bereft of idea, skill and knowledge.

The Yogi: I don’t ask you to go bereft of idea and knowledge. It is well-nigh impossible and unthinkable in the order we live in. I only say that you don’t allow idea and knowledge to gain the upper hand and to run the thing that you really are and then reduce you to merely idea and knowledge.  I appreciate idea and knowledge as long as they are not sovereign and tyrant and rule you. I only say that the thing that you really are should be allowed to keep complete control over idea and knowledge and not the other way round. Allow the thing that you are to become the master of idea and knowledge and not the servant of it. The problem is that it is just the other way round. Idea and knowledge are sovereign. They have total control over you. And you don’t realize it. Unless you realize it, there is now way you can enter and bathe in the oasis of peace which is right there with you.

The Russian Monk: Is it the same with stress? I mean balancing your home life and your career, job, responsibility, family, relationship and then achieving state of happiness!

The Yogi:  What is stress? Stress has no life of its own. It can’t have a leg to stand on. You lend it a crutch to lean on. Let’s have a look at it. Can a person who live moment by moment with the whole of him/her into the moment suffers stress? Or a person who is split into two with half of him/her living the moment and the other half living the memory suffers stress? The problem doesn’t lie in what you call your job, career, family, relationship and all that. That is like shooting the messenger. You breed stress in your head by the way you chose to live.

Put the whole of your being in the job when you are in a job and not a fragment of you elsewhere! Put the whole of your being in your family when you are with your family and not a fragment of you elsewhere! Put the whole of your being in the relationship when you are in a relationship and not a fragment of you elsewhere! Can you still suffer stress? No. Well, that is living naturally.

You suffer stress because you (idea and knowledge) don’t allow the true you (the thing that you are) to live naturally. The thing that you call your body is immune to idea and knowledge but the thing you call mind is susceptible to it. And thus the thing you call body live the moment and the thing you call mind lives the memory. That means the whole of your being is living not in sync but in conflict. That is living unnaturally. Stress results from this conflict.

The true you is allowed by nature to live the moment and not the memory. No matter where the true you is, it is there where it is. It can’t wish to be elsewhere.

The Russian Monk: Agree, but can you still be practically responsible to your family, job, and career if you live the moment and not the memory, I mean, if they are not on your mind, what else can possibly tell whether or not one is genuinely responsible?

The Yogi: I see the problem lies in how we are made or rather accustomed to looking at the thing. There are two things in it – be responsible and look responsible! All of us expect one to act responsibly and not necessarily look responsible when it comes to real action. But again, in the Order we live in, we tend to attach importance to whether or not one is seen responsible by others towards whom his/her responsibility is regardless of how he/she acts when it comes to the crunch. There is this contradiction. Having someone or something on your mind may be a testimony to being seen responsible but that doesn’t account for the action expected of responsibility. Someone without having things on mind will act with complete responsibility because he/she has nothing on mind. Those mind that have things on it can never ever be empty at time of action or out of action. A mind that is totally empty can deliver lot more than a mind having things on it. The problem is that we want to be assured or secured, and hence, seek proof of responsibility. This is how we live in the Order we have created. We don’t go by “Act and Forget” way. We go by “proof of responsibility way”. What is important is to be honest and not necessarily look honest. Unfortunately, we live by the opposite.

The Russian Monk: What is anger? What is love? Do they exist or like “stress” we lend them crutch to lean on?

The Yogi: (Creasing into a cryptic smile):  It is a dangerous question, akin to poking a finger into a beehive. I’ll be in deep shit (he laughed).

All the essential ingredients for anger is right there in you. You have a mine of it in you. It can’t be found elsewhere. It is all about the state of what you call mind or the state of your whole being. In other words, if you (the true you) takes control of the other you (idea and knowledge), the mine is dried up. There is no way can you be angry at anything. No way! To get angry you must think. You can’t think without the aid of knowledge and idea.  Once you get your true you evolved and takes control of things, all the doors and windows for anger is closed.

I honestly don’t know what this thing called “Love” is. It is certainly not an action. All actions are preserve of what we call body. Wonder if what we call body ever loves a thing. It is driven by necessity and not love. And body is immune to idea and knowledge. Emotion is slave of idea and knowledge. Where does love sit then! If we take love to be an action, then it is very tricky and dangerous action. You can’t have love without hate. They go together. If you love a thing, then you hate the other thing. Without bringing hate into play love ceases to have any meaning to it. Everything we value get its value from its relation to the other thing.  You hate the same thing that you love when the thing ceases to serve your interest. So, if you love, you must hate. Have both or none. That means have pleasure and pain! Or rise above the whole thing and have nothing!

The dialogue between the Russian Monk and the Yogi went on. Several other issues figured in their dialogue ranging from happiness to success and pain and pleasure and so on. I promise to bring them out in course of time.