Amma's April editorial in Yoga Life

[Guest guest]

Water, Water Everywhere. . . But Nary a Drop to Drink By Yogacharini Meenakshi Devi Bhavanani (Amma) Director ICYER at Ananda Ashram, Pondicherry, South India Sometimes I think that modern man is Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Ancient Mariner” – like surrounded by oceans and oceans of water – but dying of thirst! Such a plentitude of what looks to be the very thing he needs – but in a form totally inaccessible to his very being. The lament of that dying sailor, “Water, water everywhere, but nary a drop to drink” is really a poetic metaphor for the present state of global civilization! There is an abundance, nay, a super – abundance of everything man could ever possibly need – desire – want! There is plenty of food to the extent that farmers are paid not to plant their crops – yet millions die of starvation! Worse still, in the richest country of the world, the USA, people are “nutrient – starved” by their addiction to “fast foods” which “look good, taste good” and “seem to be food” but in reality, are not “real food”. Fruits and vegetables in supermarkets are “picture – perfect – but just that,

only that. Eating them is like eating the paper on which the picture is printed – they are so “chemicalized, hybridized, dehydrated, stored, transported” that there is little sense of natural tastes (let alone nutrients) left. One must struggle harder than our primitive ancestors in primordial jungles to find “real food”. Fruits are picked “green” and ripened chemically. Vegetables are frozen and stored for ages, rotting almost as soon as one leaves the shop. Tinned, packaged foods promise to contain a long list of “essential vitamins and minerals” but for the most part, it is all hog wash. Even “health food stores” do not really sell “healthy food”. How can anything in a box, a tin, a packet be healthy? The very act of “preservation” ensures the vital Prana is long gone before the morsel is placed on the tongue! Lured by media, which has hypnotized mankind into a limited Reality perceived only by “the eyes and the ears”. The consumer (What a label! It calls to mind

Fredrick Nietzsche’s definition of man as only a mouth and an anus connected by a alimentary canal) is befooled into thinking, “It looks so good, it must taste good – be good”. Isn’t that the plight of the Ancient Mariner? The poor devil, adrift hopelessly on the vast sea, looks out on water which looks so good, but, pitifully enough, cannot be drunk! The media makes everything “look so good” but in reality, the so-called civilization is starving the human spirit. One must search hard and long to find anything that is real. This metaphor can be extended to practically every aspect of modern life. Even – or especially – Yoga. Yoga is an omnipresent word in the 20th –

21st century. It appears in international News Magazines like Time and Newsweek with regularity. A story on “Yoga” can be found nearly everyday in newspapers. Talk show hosts gossip about it – movies feature the heroes or heroines in Yoga poses. There is a Yoga school on every corner and Yoga teachers are ubiquities. Yet, where can “Real Yoga” be found? It is as difficult to access a real teacher of authentic. Yoga as it is to find an apple freshly plucked from a tree or a carrot pulled freshly from unpolluted un-chemicalized soil. The “fast food” mentality has also permeated Yoga. Everything looks good, sounds good. But, there is no substance! Perhaps the

Divine still insists – in the ancient mode – that the “Real Spiritual Truths” be reserved for the Adhikaran – The Fit Persons – The Rishis in their wisdom knew that sensitive spiritual truths were not for mass consumption. Perhaps that is why – they put salt in the water – and kept the real “water of the spirit” reserved for those who had Viveka –spiritual discrimination. The essence is for those who have the power to separate the water from the milk and the unreal for the Real.

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