GETTING INTO THE REAL YOGA

Yoga is an ancient Indian practice of acquiring mental, physical, and spiritual rigor. However, these are the means and not the end. Yoga aims for some much higher and loftier goal. To understand the primary objective of Yoga, Patanjali Yoga sutras are a valuable and authentic reference source. The “Yoga sutras of Patanjali” talk about enlightenment, practice, results and finally liberation as the objectives of Yoga. The Yoga sutras are the basic philosophical writings on Yoga. Unfortunately, Yoga as a practice has got diluted over the ages and is today understood as a physical fitness regimen through which people seek to acquire health, resilience and longevity.  The present times have seen a complete transformation of the Yoga and with Yoga training becoming a big business there are charlatans masquerading as Yoga trainers who claim to train people to achieve magical powers through the practice of Yoga. But Yoga is essentially means to acquire a higher level of consciousness through which Moksha or liberation can be attained. Though regular practice of Yogic exercises help a practitioner in acquiring robust internal and external health yet it is not the same as the original Yoga as mentioned in the Yoga sutras. It was this Yoga that Lord Krishna talked about in The Gita explaining to Arjuna both the significance and the ultimate aim of Yoga. Yoga that helps a sincere practitioner acquire the ability to rise above the sensual urges. It is about the unity of the Prusha and Prakrati, the essence of this universe. It is the practice that leads from darkness of ignorance to illumination of bliss. It helps a seeker and practitioner acquire the unity with Brahman, the illuminating light of consciousness by which everything is known intellectually, realized intuitively and experienced practically. It is this light of wisdom that removes all confusion and makes one experience the light of soul. When Prakrati or the matter merges with Purusha the vital truth, the pure consciousness is realized. This is the lesson embodied in the “Sankhya School of Indian Philosophical Thought”. As Lord Krishna declares, matters or the world of objects constitute the surreal or Maya which is perceived by the sprit. The knowledge of this reality is what the aim of Yoga sutras is. It is the path to Yogic integration which even the Lord admits that the great masters of the past before him have experienced. The Gita is the product of a wisdom that was realized in a rare moment of Yogic integration. It was narrated in a full state of Yoga. Modern Yoga as practiced today is thus a poor reflection of the original and has become a physical exercise for the mundane. It is not understood in the real sense as the path to get illuminated by the divine light. That, however, is not to negate whatever is being done these days in the name of Yoga. But the difference between the two needs to be understood. One is the practice of aligning the mind, the body and the soul while the other is related to largely physical and physiological health, and to a very little Psychological health. One is the path to the supreme knowledge while the other is the road to the mundane, a means to fulfill certain desires. The problem is that with seriousness gradually being lost gimmickry and mimicry in the form of practices like Chair Yoga or Beer Yoga seems to be catching up.

THE TIMES OF POST-TRUTH

These are the times of post-truth. Obviously, it is a logical sequel to the information age driven by data — cooked, invented and sometimes discovered. A scenario where the real is the surreal and the surreal is real. This is the post information society and media has become the instrument of awareness, information and education. From institutional media to social media to the cinema are all tools of information, agencies of information and instruments of change. The mechanism is story telling in all its myriad forms. But the dynamics of storytelling has changed. The media that was supposed to tell what is happening on ground zero or in other words report events and incidents is creating stories while the media that was supposed to create stories is reporting events and incidents with the help of stories. In other words reel news is real news and vice versa as cinema shows the truth through its screen plays while other forms of media are telling stories to camouflage truth. Thus the cinema stories are real while the media news are fake. Bollywood, the seat of Hindi cinema must be commended for its honest observation of the incidents and presenting the truth behind those incidents through its stories. In fact, it won’t be a hyperbole to suggest that the cinema stories are more research based and objective than the so called researches in the social sciences that claim to be based on analysis of real time data. Though the stories of cinema are based on observation and insight they carry more valid interpretation of incidents and events. A case in point can be the film, an Irrfan Khan starrer, Madari released a couple of years back. The film is about a man who lost his son in a bridge collapse and seeks to take revenge from the government machinery that has been responsible for the construction of the substandard bridge. The protagonist kidnaps the home minister’s son to bring the government to knees. In the last scene of the film there is the dialogue between him and the entire machinery of the government responsible for the bridge construction. The ministers, the contractors, the engineers and the administrators are all forced to come out as to what led to the collapse of the bridge. And what comes out appears to be the narrative that can describe any collapse. Including the recent one at Varanasi. It is not just one film. Film after film, the Bollywood has been telling the truth through its stories. It is only unfortunate that those agencies that were supposed to tell the truth are telling the stories. Even more unfortunate is the fact that the hitherto comparatively more objective print media has begun buying stories from the social media and has started presenting them as news. They are reporting from twitter handles and face book walls, though these may largely be the whims and fancies of the people posting them.  It seems as if the print media is committinghara-kiri. The people are not interested in knowing what a politician feels about other politicians or incidents or events. They are mere reactions, sometimes spontaneous and more often motivated. What people want is the truth, the real report from the ground zero. Faking has become the new normal and strategic reporting to suit interests and digress issues replaces truth. While falsehoods are means of information, information per se is coming out through stories.

CRAVING FOR HUMANNESS

The technological sophistication, the mechanical life style, the race for perfection, the search for formula 1, that is the best way of life has sapped humanness out of human beings. And slowly but painfully human beings are realising this. Given the fact that the essence of human beings is humanness, the programmed life style and the wired living has now started taking its toll on human kind. As man becomes confined to himself, Ghettoised and lonely, his craving for humanness has started to ignite his basic nature. Classical sociology maintained that man is gregarious by nature. That, however, was long ago. In modern times, the search for some unknown definitions of prosperity and perfection has led man astray. He is on road to nowhere. But the basic nature tries to wriggle out of this mess. So human beings are now being pulled within by the basic centripetal force that is drawing them towards their essential human nature. Look what has started happening. An altogether new vocation has come up. It is called “people walker”.

As the name suggests people walkers are those people who provide walking services or in other words give companionship for desiring humans at a price. In US these people walkers have started helping people fight loneliness by providing them company. The social disconnect is impinging so heavily on humans that they are now feeling depressed, which is the root cause of several fatal diseases. Rather ironical because it is an era in which human beings boast of being tuned and connected. The popular punch line being — stay tuned, stay connected. But the wired connect is now proving to be a mire in which humanness is slowly being bogged down in the morass of loneliness. The smart phones and the social media have deepened divisions and replaced real human relations with the surreal, the ersatz,and the artificial.

The growing global culture of individualism is proving to be a major cause of loneliness. Loneliness that pains. Loneliness that kills. Human beings love Company, may be just love love. The craving of human life is to love and be loved. But where is the time. People walker is just a trend round the corner, and the fact is that it will also prove to be a poor substitute. Buying the services of a people walker for $ 30 an hour may help human beings walk fast for the time being, but will certainly not make them go far enough. There is a popular cliché that says if you want to travel fast walk alone, if you want to travel far walk together. It remains to be seen whether the people walker will give that feeling of togetherness. Because companionship is a relationship that runs quite deep. It is more a heart to heart connect rather than business. For the love starved humanity, then, love is coming for a price. Will it, won’t it is the big question that lurks as the profession gets more popular and human beings more lonely. Studies pouring in are suggesting in no uncertain terms that face to face contact is important for mental and physical wellbeing. One of the biggest causes of sadness is eating alone. The family is being missed terribly with compulsion of individualistic life style drawing people into the cocoon of their own making. The African philosophy of Ubuntu, meaning “I am because we are” may provide some answer. Twitterati and the Glitteratti — are you listening?

MILLENNIAL PRIDE

Neighbours’ envy, owner’s pride’ was the punch line of a commercial promoting a popular Television brand in India a few decades ago. The advertisement had made waves as the innovative appeal had clicked with just about everyone.Today, we are in a different era. Television no longer is the product that can be reason for the owner’s pride. It has been replaced by the latest versions of Apple iPhones and tablets that consumers feel proud to possess. More so, the millennials. In fact, it has become the common thread among the millennials world over. It is not just the Indian youth whose craving for the Apple products borders on obsession. Even in as distant and distinct a culture as that of Eastern Europe, the young are desperate for the iPhone. It was experienced by this columnist while conducting a workshop on consumer behaviour at European University, Tbilisi, Georgia. As we were discussing how the big brands influence or rather manipulate consumers’ Psychology, one of the participants, a young Georgian girl named Likaput, put up a question. She wanted to know that since she was desperate to possess an iPhone but did not have enough money to buy it, what could be done. Having no clue to this aspect of consumer behaviour, I simply told her to go for an affordable brand. She was not satisfied. But the point to be understood is that this is how brand fixation works. Marketers play those many tricks to alter the consumer psyche. It is no longer about the “necessity” being “the mother of invention”. It is rather the other way around. An innovation with new features is created first, and marketed later, creating a need for the product. Many a time, it is not even innovation. It is only some incremental addition marketed as innovation. But this is what is happening. And it is not new. Somewhere around 1939, a popular Tea brand offered free tea to the people waiting at the Gaya and Patna railway stations of Bihar. And look what it did. Tea has become the favourite pastime of Indian people. With or without sugar may be the new additive, but the issue is tea. The consumer’s world is driven by marketers who are the trendsetters and the want makers. More importantly, the consumer fails to realize that he is the tool as well as the object. Tool for manipulation and object for business. However, what those so called global products that define lifestyles have done is that they have created a global consumer class. Particularly the youth who are fashionably called the millennials. Interestingly, these “millennials” have common trends in their psyche, be it in Eastern Europe, the Middle East or South Asia. They speak different languages, but their emotions are similar. Incidentally, there is a hybrid generation too, born during 1975-80, trying to find its place. It thinks it is young, has an unconscious contempt for the Gen X, but doesn’t quite fit in Gen Y. They try to imbibe the Gen Y- texting more than talking, abbreviating more than expanding. For them, all innovations veer around IT and Apps and think they are Gr8 and F9, meaning great and fine. An interesting way to express, it is more of a subtle manifestation of existential angst than some freedom of choice. The domain of consumer psychology is wide and fuzzy and interacting on the subject at Georgia courtesy professor EkaDevidze, the host, was more of learning than teaching.