A recent interview with Dr ANANDA BALAYOGI BHAVANANI

[Guest guest]

A recent interview with Yogacharya Dr ANANDA BALAYOGI BHAVANANI by the world famous photographer Mr. Derek Biermann who is writing a book on a spiritual journey through India with wonderful photos and interviews with many Yoga masters of modern India. “YOGA - PERSONAL JOURNEYS IN INDIA”, is scheduled for publication in 2005. The material for the book was compiled after four months traveling through 28 cities in India and the 50 yogis provisionally selected for the book comprise both Indian and Western teachers and students who answered questions relating to their personal experiences and journeys in Yoga. The proposed format of the book is a high-quality, bound, quarto-sized, hard cover publication of approximately 225 pages, and over 100 full-page colour photographs of portrait

and Yoga poses.

 

Ananda:

It is a great privilege for me to have been born to Swamiji and Amma, and to have grown up in an atmosphere like Ananda Ashram. It was a privilege that I can only explain in terms of positive karma from my past lives. To Swamiji, everything was yoga, it wasn’t something you got up in the morning to do, or something you did in the evening, the entire day was yoga. Whatever you did was yoga. If you got up at four-thirty in the morning you would find students practicing meditation, if you went at six o’clock you would find Hatha Yoga classes under the big tree, if you went at eleven o’clock they would be doing pranayama, if you went around in the afternoon you would find classes on the therapeutic aspects of

yoga, and in the evenings there would be mantra chanting followed by the satsang that often stretched in the late night. The entire day, wherever you looked, had something going on and there was something to learn. In addition to that, hundreds of local children used to come to Ananda Ashram on Sundays. They would receive free food and clothing, and this was done in order to entice them to yoga. There had to be a pull to get them to come and then once they did, the yoga took over. We had children who came here from every aspect of Indian society, the rich and the poor and from all religions. There was no way that I could escape that atmosphere’s influence on me, and I knew that I had been put there for a definite purpose.

At the age of four, I was officially named to be my father’s successor. Many people asked what a four-year-old could know or understand, but I recall the occasion vividly. I was then not only exposed to yoga, but also to mantra chanting through a Sanskrit pandit who taught me different mantras from the vedas. When I was 12 years old I had to go to school because I had to have an official education. My teachers thought that I would be uneducated but they didn’t realise that my elder sister Yogacharini Renuka Giri taught me maths, and my mother English, general knowledge, geography and history. I also had a local tutor who taught me Tamil, and a pandit who taught me Sanskrit. I had received all the education that I needed so when I went to school I did very well, and was always easily at the top of my class. I tell

the children I now teach that I was lucky to have been spared that ‘so-called’ education because I grew up in an atmosphere where I was exposed to real life. We also had a small zoo at the ashram, and so I grew up with monkeys, deer, foxes, mongooses, ducks, and rabbits running around. It was an atmosphere where concepts simply entered my young head effortlessly and in a natural way. People ask me what special lessons Swamiji taught me, but he didn’t have to do anything because each moment was a learning experience. I didn’t always understand what Swamiji taught me, but it still made an impression. Those memories stayed in my thoughts so that when I wanted to call upon them, they are there. I think that consciously and unconsciously I was imbibing everything from my environment - I was practicing and taking part in classes, and even teaching if necessary. Amma encouraged me to sit down every month and to write a one-page article about yoga. I wrote about

different asanas for about months with Amma correcting my English, and we published a small book on Yoga for children from my writing.

When I went to school I didn’t have much time to continue to practice my asanas. I was not treated any differently from any of the other children in my class because of my world famous parents, and I was never put on a pedestal. I think that it is important for children to understand that they are a part of a group, and not act only as a single unit. I must have been about or when the rebellious side of me started to surface. I decided that I was going to become an architect after I read Ayn Rand’s book, Fountainhead because that was the sort of philosophy that was popular amongst my peers at school. I decided that I wanted to have my own life and not to follow in Swamiji’s footsteps. Swamiji was not happy about my rebellion because he had dedicated himself to guiding me, and didn’t understand what I was talking about.

One day the school principal called me as I was making my way to a meeting with other students who wanted to become architects and engineers. He said, “Ananda, your father is a doctor who has done so much good for the world through yoga. Don’t you think that you are closing your options? If you follow him into medicine, then you can use it to complement your yoga.” I credit my principal and Sri Bala, a student of my father with planting that thought into my 18 year-old ‘pea-brain’. I thought about it and realized that God had been kind to me that day otherwise I might not have gone into medicine. I took a step back and once the idea clicked, I realized what an idiot I had been not to see the great gift that was right in front of me. I immediately wrote to my father and said, “Swamiji, as soon as I have completed my education, I would like to do the six-month yoga teachers training course with you.” He wrote back and said, “I’m so happy”.

Instead of just six months, I studied with Swamiji for the next two years. I attended his courses like any other student, which was a life-changing experience for me, though I realized that I already had all the tools from my childhood. It really put my thinking in the right place. It gave me a sense of purpose in my life because I felt that I knew what I was doing. I decided that I would begin my medical studies after I had completed the two years with Swamiji, and that I would combine yoga with medicine. My father saw where I was heading and was pleased with my decision.

He had been disappointed before because there is an unbroken lineage of teachers in our yoga parampara that had existed for thousands of years. Perhaps if it had not been for my principal’s suggestion then I would not be a doctor today. I met him again a few years ago, and he was pleased to hear that I was a doctor and continuing my father’s work. Swamiji also felt that I was the reincarnation of one of his friends; a swami from Kerala, who had told my father in his last days that he, would be reborn to him. I don’t claim to recall my past lives, but I certainly have had all the opportunities to follow in his footsteps.

I learnt a lot of what I needed to know in the two years that I studied with my father. It is said, ‘When the student is ready, the teacher appears’, and at that point I was ready to absorb his teaching. I began to realize the systematic codification of his Rishiculture Ashtanga Yoga teaching, and how all his teaching was interlinked. All the pieces of the jigsaw from my childhood came together. The other advantage was that I lived with him, so there was always the opportunity to talk to him about my questions. We would often have conversations after satsang where we would sit up late into the night. In those talks he didn’t teach me magical things or tell me secrets about special techniques, what he said was always very practical. He taught me

that the brain has a certain capacity, and that we should not waste it by filling it with useless knowledge. He said that I should know where to look for something when I wanted it; in that way I wouldn’t have to try to learn everything. He said that I should know which book and chapter to refer to, instead of trying to learn the entire book. He made me think about how I was going to link my studies at medical college with yoga. In those two years of study he taught me and prepared me for what I would face in my five years of medical studies. He influenced my view of the sciences of medicine and of yoga. A doctor trained in ‘the system’ would view yoga within the limitations of modern medicine, while Swamiji taught me to look at allopathic medicine without limitation. Those two years gave me a perspective that I did not have before, and it helped me to see what it was I had to do. I could see the greatness of his teaching and of him, and it helped me to firmly decide to

continue his work.

Everybody knows me here in Pondicherry, and I know them because I was born here and I grew up here. When I was at college in Nagpur, it was a totally alien situation for me. I had to learn a new language and a new culture, in addition to my medical studies. Then I observed people’s attitudes towards me because I was different; in my class of about 100 students, I was the only white person. The medical college had about 500 students, and the dental college next door had about 400 students, and still I was the only white person. It kept a check on me, because I did not dare to do anything wrong. I could never skip a lecture or run around with a girl, because in any situation I was immediately recognized; for me it was almost a kind of chastity belt. Then I realized that if I did something good then people would remember me easily, so I started to build on that idea. In my college studies I got the highest marks in every exam, receiving a gold medal in preventative

medicine, and a distinction in surgery. It still hurts sometimes when I walk down the street and someone makes a comment about my white skin. As a boy, I learned to speak Tamil, and in a sense it became my first language. I played with Tamil kids, and even today I often still think in Tamil before English. I am basically an Indian, a Tamilian and a Pondicherrian in a sort of disguise, and I cannot relate to anything else.

For me, yoga is a continuous process. The whole problem with something being goal-oriented is that people think that the goal is something to be reached at the end of the journey, but it is the journey itself that is important. This entire yogic process is not what you learn and not what you achieve.

Even in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra, the problem is that we start to think that samadhi is something to be attained at the end, but it is actually just a step along the entire process. You may achieve certain powers, but they are only stepping stones for you to progress. Yoga is something that you live until your last breath, and even that last breath should be completed with awareness. You should go with the satisfaction of knowing that you have done your best. Unless you have awareness and consciousness at the end, which would mean that yoga has no end, then it’s like saying that when you die, you are gone forever. For me there is no fear of dying as such, because I believe that life is a continuation. In the same way, yoga is a continuous process. It is a journey and the goal is the journey itself.

Yoga is life and everything we do is yoga. Yoga is in every second of life, yoga is in every action you do and in every thought you have and in every emotion that you feel. For modern man in a modern setting, I feel more than anything else that yoga is action. Whatever you do, you should do with the attitude that it is to be done to the best of your ability and with total effort. I think that to have action that is skillful and yet not motivated by any desire is a model concept for modern man. At the same time, it allows for conscious evolution because anatomically I don’t think that we are going to grow horns or bigger teeth or longer ears. I think that physically we have more or less achieved a peak of evolution and that the next stage has to be on a mental level, at a level of consciousness that goes

further into the concept of the mind and self. That could be called conscious evolution. I see yoga, in its modern context, as skillful action without desire or concern about the fruits of our actions. You are balancing the internal world with the external world. Patanjali talks about the cessation of the fluctuations of mind, the conscious as well as the subconscious. Yoga is the union of the self with the higher self. Yoga, on a more practical level, is the union of the body, the emotions and the mind. Yoga is getting to know what your body can and cannot do. Yoga is watching the breath, slowing down the breath and discovering that you can have a wonderful control over your emotions when slowing down the breath, because breath is the seat of our emotions.

People search for techniques to help relieve their stress and hypertension caused by our modern world. What they need are asanas and pranayamas and other yogic techniques. Take the little finger on my hand. It is a part of me, but my little finger does not represent all of me. It is the same with yoga, where asana techniques and pranayamas are yoga but it doesn’t stop there. I talk to people who say that they have been doing yoga for years. I ask then how they ‘do’ yoga. Yoga is something that has to be lived, and not something to be ‘done’. People often ask Amma how many hours she spends in meditation every day. Amma always laughs, because she says that every moment for her is a meditation. People have it fixed in their minds that they can do one hour of yoga

asanas and minutes of meditation, and then the rest of the day is spent without yoga.

The basic practices of yoga have given certain energy levels to my life which I cannot compare to a ‘before and after’ effect, because there has not really been a before and after of yoga in my life. Perhaps I took certain high energy levels that I had as being normal, because people would ask me how it was possible for me to do my college studies for so many hours on end. People would ask me how I could sing for three hours, or how I could dance for two hours without tiring. On an energetic level, I would say that the asana and pranayama practice gave me a certain energy that helped me to push through my limitations. That doesn’t mean that I didn’t rest or sleep, but the concept of feeling weak or tired was something totally foreign to me. I also saw those high energy levels in Swamiji and Amma. They were and are

amazing; they could sit and work on something together for so many hours on end. I also developed the ability to be alone with myself, which Swamiji and Amma also possessed. I can sit on my own for hours without getting bored. Most people don’t understand how I can be alone for so long without needing something to distract my mind. I am at peace with myself, I am not afraid to look at myself, or to look inside myself. Yoga as a whole, not just the asanas, has helped me to look at myself more closely.

Many people criticize Swamiji and me for supporting yoga sport competitions. People say that according to yoga philosophy, what we are doing is a corruption of yoga. I look upon the tree of yoga as having many different branches. Compared to some of the other branches, yoga sport is still a tender green branch but to criticize it by saying that it is not yoga is against the spirit of yoga itself. Some of the criticism comes from qualified teachers who have the idea that yoga will be spoilt. The yoga competitions are aimed at stimulating youths because it gives them a goal. Goal-oriented activities are important for children because they need something to look forward to, something that pushes them. Once they get into it, then the yoga can take over. In the yoga competitions they initially want to

win a prize or to show off to their friends, but then they get drawn into the deeper aspects of yoga, and that is our aim. I accept that some children will stop at that point and their egos will inflate but just because this may happen to a few of them, it doesn’t mean that we should condemn yoga sport. If you find a rotten tomato in a box, you don’t have to throw the whole box away, so similarly if someone has the wrong attitude then the job of the teacher is to correct him or her. When my students go to the competitions and they don’t win, they often come back wiser for having the experience. They saw someone who was better than them win, someone who put in more effort than them, but there was nothing lost if they didn’t win a prize. If they do win a prize, then I remind them that they have not won too much and that they are still learning.

The concept of yoga sport has really developed in India, Europe and South America, and even in the United States. I think it is a good thing as long as people realize that it represents only a small part of the whole. The competitions also get more people to hear about yoga and to see yoga. Here in Pondicherry, thousands of people gather to watch the competitions. It attracts many children and once we draw them in, it is then our duty to see that they are led along the right path. The concept is good, but it still needs too be improved. We had the idea of putting theory into the competitions, making the children aware that yoga is more than just asanas. I am collaborating with the Vivekananda Kendra Yoga University in Bangalore, where the Himalaya Olympiad is conducted every year. My next objective is to try and take the ego out of the yoga

competitions. We tried a group competition, so instead of one person winning, it became a team event and a team effort. I feel that yoga competitions should be given time to develop. If something does not have innate goodness, then it will not survive. If yoga sport has already survived the past 30 years, then in today’s context it must mean that there is something good about it.

I think that when Swamiji left us, he went totally satisfied. Everything was going okay, so it was time for him to leave. There is no other explanation for me, because I think that he could easily have lived for another ten or years. As a doctor, I have looked back and there was no other reason - he simply felt it was his time. The week before he passed away he was actively taking classes, and when I received a telegram from him I was stunned. The telegram said, “Come”. I had an exam that day, but I jumped on the first train home to see him. I arrived on December 27th, and on the 29th he left his body. It was a time for me that explained the fallacies of allopathic medicine. We had a kidney specialist, who came to look at Swamiji, and he wrote down that everything was normal with his kidney; a cardiologist came and wrote that

everything was normal with his heart; an endocrinologist came and said that his endocrine system was normal. To this day I think that they all forgot to observe him as a whole person. That is one of the reasons why I haven’t gone into specialization, because I decided that I didn’t want to know more and more about less and less. Specialization is ‘knowing the most about the least’, caring about one area of the body, and ignoring the rest. Swamiji had been fasting, and Amma was chronicling his last few months, which she believed was a step-by-step preparation and approach towards leaving the body. This also included his dog Shambu leaving, which is an interesting point. This dog had a wonderful bond with Swamiji, and he died a few months before Swamiji went. Looking back at it, I think that Shambu was clearing the way for Swamiji to follow.

I remind people to look at all the different aspects of yoga therapy, yoga competitions, athletic yoga and gymnastic yoga, and to weigh up the good and the bad for themselves. There is a saying from Tiruvalluvar, a famous Tamil poet who wrote the Tirukkural, the monumental Tamil epic in which he talks about attitudes towards life. He wrote: “Look at the positive, look at the negative, whichever weighs up more or needs more work, then choose that”. I think this is absolutely true.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yogacharya Dr.Ananda Balayogi Bhavanani

Chairman : Yoganjali Natyalayam and ICYER

25,2nd Cross,Iyyanar Nagar, Pondicherry-605 013

Tel: 0413 - 2622902 / 0413 -2241561

Website: www.icyer.com

www.geocities.com/yognat2001/i_am_here