Rohit Arya on Samyama awakening, Ramana and Rathas

When I began Yoga I was all afire. Enthusiasm and unrealistic expectations competed with each other inside me. As experience was painfully accumulated, a sense of reality dawned. This was a long haul, and intellectual integrity was the most valuable climbing tool you had. It is one of the paradoxes of Yoga, part of its innately quirky humour, that it rewards its practitioners with no regard for effort or even simple natural justice. The more you strive, the more you stagnate. Newcomers zoom past bewildered, sometimes bitter, veterans. I do not know how it is with others but for me the point of breakthrough has almost inevitably been when I say – “I do not care anymore if the process is working, I will just do it and sit in meditation.” Of course at that point, which is usually a most inconvenient one in the matter of your outward daily life, breakthroughs start tumbling into your lap at an embarrassing rate!  Quite recently the power of Samyama activated within me. It has not stabilized completely, nor is it a continuous enduring process as it seems to be with the Masters, but in my own  Rohit style I have gained access to a remarkable aspect of consciousness.

Samyama is a facet of consciousness which the Zen masters of Japan know as “Focussed Attention”. Simply put, if you put your attention, your regard, your full focus, the entire power of mind and body upon a subject or thing, the knowledge about that is vouchsafed to you. {Scientists with their unflagging research practice Samyama unknowingly.} It explains how Masters are able to answer questions about subjects they know nothing about. It is not Omniscience, though very understandably it is confused with it.    When overly excitable disciples see their Master answer queries about things he could never have a clue about, the tendency to assign infallible knowledge to him {and by association themselves} is a pleasing conceit to the megalomania that lurks in all. It is just Samyama. The limitations of the process are many. If you do not care about the situation or thing under consideration, it works imperfectly or fails completely. So emotional strength plays a part, and in any case it is clearly understood that it is not a phenomenon of the mind, but of the entire body, the inner energy sheaths, though the mind reports the conclusions reached. I do not wish to give too many details and incite people into premature mental and physical strains. To be honest I never thought it was possible for me until quite recently when it began to leak into my consciousness so as to speak.

One of the pre-requisites it seems is stillness of mind. I am not at the level of no-thoughts at all. Yet the mind has stilled, the constant racing of thoughts is an infrequent occurrence.  The cessation of internal chatter is bewildering at times so habituated was the organism to that. This has led to physical stillness increasing dramatically too. What was a jittery, shifting, restless annamaya kosha, the food sheath or body, has now become something that can sit three to four hours in stillness. Even in my daily interactions I get feedback that I sit quite disconcertingly still and the manner in which I pay attention to the person in front – or don’t, that still swings wildly, – is quite remarkable. These are external clues, which is why I lay stress upon them. But they seem to add up to some shift in the personal energy field which has made the activation of Samyama possible. It is not understanding or comprehension or even knowing though it encompasses all of these. It is pure Awareness, not quite rational, transcending it, infusing you with a certitude that you do not at all feel inclined to question though you get adequate confirmation later if you wish. It is Samyama.

Suddenly things became clear at a deeper level, insights surfaced that nothing in my knowledge or experience could explain. I knew, and knew it was right. It is not quite intuition, it is like asking for knowledge and suddenly it is at hand. Samyama is not just an internal process; what you need to know suddenly comes across your vision from multiple sources, you hear it, you deduce it from seemingly completed unrelated input. It is some sort of a-causal synchronicity at work.  Its parameters in my case were very clear; if I was not keenly interested in the subject it would not work. The point is I did not pursue this aspect of yoga, seek it or attempt to develop it once it activated. It was there, sometimes clear, sometimes murky, though nowadays I can consciously increase the likelihood of it. All of this seems remarkable but very soon I was aware of its mortifying drawbacks. Or perhaps that is a deduction from my still limited stage of evolution.

You begin to see things at a deeper level, true, but there is a karmic responsibility contingent with such insight. That might not be what you wish or are comfortable with. Where ignorance is bliss etc etc… I was listening very intensely on the phone to somebody I was in relationship with and loved madly. She was describing a meeting with an old friend after many years and suddenly I comprehended that she had cheated on me with him. Our next meeting, indeed our relationship, did not go well as you may imagine. When this activates within you, the end point of what people wish to communicate is clear except they take an inordinately long time to get there. I tended to jump to the conclusion and answer it which was regarded as both rude and vaguely frightening. I am learning to keep quiet now, but then the stillness takes over and I zone out the drone! Again sorry, I don’t mean to be intentionally rude.

 

This month I had the good fortune to finally see the great shore temples at Mamallpuram or Mahabalipuram near Chennai city. I also went with friends to the sacred hill of Arunachalam which is a Fire Tattva Lingam, and where Ramana Maharshi spent his entire life. The power of these sacred places seems to have sent my Samyama up a notch. At Mahabalipuram, for instance there is a beach with the so called five chariots or Pancha rathas, five stone structures over a thousand years old, nominally temples. Yet at first glance I saw the inner yogic story there. These five structures are visually separate, but they are not constructed, they are sculpted!! A huge boulder was somehow dragged to that beach and then hollowed out, after which the ‘temple’ was sculpted from the top down of the five freestanding blocks plus some spare rock left for a Nandi or vahana of Shiva. Only two of them are complete, the others are in various stages of possibility. But the real story was something beyond the standard gorgeousness of mythological carvings.

I have no evidence for what I am saying now. It is my understanding. I do not seek to persuade anybody. The whole complex seems to have been created by a very ambitious yogi who was seeking a concentrated energy field to do Tattva shuddhi or Great element internal purifications. Earth, Water, Fire, Air and Akasha or spirit are clearly represented there for those with the vision or the discrimination. Rock is a standard choice for temples as it can be infused with heightened energy and also retains the energy of yogic and other process that are conducted within it. The rock also serves to insulate the yogi from the scorching sand. Putting the temple on the blazing sands by the beach ensures the meditations could only be done post evening and for a couple of hours after sunrise. This is pure Tantra. I saw a whole lot more but it is not appropriate to reveal such stuff. If people are advanced enough they can see what is there to be seen. The complex is not fully energized, either because the money ran out which is plausible, or because the yogi who persuaded the royal patrons to spend so much money dropped his body before it was completed which is what I suspect happened. In fact I am sure of it, but evidence is impossible to come by.

At Arunachalam the sheer magnitude of what I was going to experience was never clear to me. After we did the ashram visits and hill clambering we went to the main temple in the town of Tiruvanmalai. Flames were flowing into me from my bare feet in the temple courtyard and no, it was not the heat, it had rained and we were mostly in shade. Just tremendous influx of energy because I had been cracked open by the visit to Sri Aurobindo’s samadhi  two days back and the Hill of Arunachalam itself. I tried to sit down inside the temple; the gushing intensity of flame was so strong the muladhara chakra could not endure it and I jumped up and stood within five seconds. But when I first saw Arunachalam, the thought arose, “This thing is alive, by God.” Later on I realized it was a mountain of quartz and as we were clambering up it to go to the caves were Ramana spent so many years in fearsome sadhana, Samyama activated again.

 

The hill of Arunachalm is a Being of colossal magnitude, a Master who has now attained divine status. It is regarded as a Fire lingam, the veritable essence of the Maha Tattva of Agni or fire element. All I know is that it is staggeringly old and has been enlightened for aeons. The Hill awakened and then slowly, agonizingly, evolved to Enlightenment and then began to radiate its power. A properly activated Shiva lingam is an energy being with all the chakras and powers, and none of the human limitations, of a Master. But Arunachalam is another scale altogether, only Kailasha is more powerful on this planet, but then it is doubtful if Kailasha is even from this plane of existence.  Words fail when confronted with such ancient power. I felt completely insignificant and was so conscious of my failings I did not even feel like steeping on the Hill, it seemed a very brazen, rude thing to do. That too is puffery; Arunachalam cannot be insulted by such as me so I went.  The previous evening my friends and I had gone on the Girivallam, the sacred circling of the mountain, a 15km trek by foot and the way the energy radiated off that incomprehensible thing will never be forgotten.

When we reached the Skandashrama I almost burst out laughing. For the entire spot for mediation was in front of a natural rock formation that was a  gigantic Ardhanarishvara yantra. Ramana spent years and years there mainlining the immense possibility of that rock. These are the oldest rocks in the world, some of them up to 400 million years old, and that yantra is also unbearably old. It is a calm yantra however, unlike the Devi rock yantra at the Hanamkonda Bhadrakali temple in Warrangal, which is much huger and far wilder. I sat outside the Skandashram, allowing the yantra I had recognized in Samyama do its work.  At the famous Virupaksha cave I began to ‘see’ again. Yogis require to be surrounded by Earth energy for some specific purposes. Rock caves provide the driest, coolest options, unlike earth pits which get moist as well as hot and then the water ruins the vibration of earth that is required. But Ramana was doing something else, something more ambitious, for there was a river flowing right behind, indeed touching the cave, and of course overhanging the cave, was a massive jut of rock which was a shaped like a fire triangle. Earth, water, fire corresponding to muladhara, svadhisthana and manipura chakras. Whatever he was doing it took him, even somebody so great as Ramana, seven years to accomplish. I mediated in the cave and slipped away so fast I had to come out instantly. My friends had only begun to mediate and would not have known what to do if I went into Samadhi as is my wont recently. For what this trip gave me, for what it taught me about Samyama, I remain grateful and joyful.  

 

Rohit Arya is an Author, Yogi and Polymath. He has written the first book on Vaastu to be published in the West, {translated into five languages} the first book on tarot to be published in India, co-authored a book on fire sacrifice, and is the creator of The Sacred India Tarot {82 card deck and book}  published in the last quarter of 2011. He has also written A Gathering of Gods due at the same time. He is the Editor of The Leadership Review, a corporate trainer, as well as an arts critic and cultural commentator. Rohit is also a Lineage Master in the Eight Spiritual Breaths system of Yoga

Rohit Arya on Karma, Healing and Predictions

 

 

I had a long career as a ‘miracle worker’. Now it is over. After you get burned consistently your thick skull finally entertains the possibility the Universe is trying to tell you something. It was not called miracle working; I called it ‘manifesting; or ‘beaming energy’. I had begun Reiki, discovered a completely disconcerting talent for it, and progressed to such an extent that over the years I attained all the exalted grand panjandrum levels the Reiki crowd so love. More importantly my Reiki went to a level that very few people manage, it began to flow cold, - still does- like ice water from a Himalayan stream, and the healings that resulted were supernatural. I made a lot of money and got entangled into a lot of futile karmic bonds as a result of this, but the discovery of cold Reiki almost made the whole process worth it.

Almost.

I did incredible things with healing, I see that today, what counts as bonafide miracles, and all I want to do today is kick my own silly ass. But healing was how I came to realize I could bend reality as it is understood, basically because it is imperfectly understood. All the healing and working as the editor of my Guru’s book on the Kundalini Shakti – she was not my guru then – caused the awakening of the Kundalini within myself. I began serious meditation and a spiritual process. My powers amplified and naturally I made an even bigger ass of myself doing ‘miracles.’ I once kept a vehicle going for nine kms, till we got to the destination, after the gear shaft came out in the hand of the person driving it. And unless you have seen urban Indian traffic you don’t know how bat-shit insane this was! This is the only example I will give, for good reasons. I know what I did, the people concerned know what I did, and disbelief is irrelevant

 

My Other great skill was in making predictions and advice … I remain very good at reading hands, very skilled at the I Ching and I am the only person in India who has written two books on the Tarot, apart from creating a deck based entirely on Indian mythology and Yoga. I also know, to some extent, the ancient Indian skill of Mukha Lakshanam, reading the signs of the face. In Tarot reading I am a god, modesty be dammed, especially as I do not read any more unless in dire circumstances. I got very, very good at these interventions, in seeing how things were going to play out, though I was somewhat of a Cassandra. This was a blessing; I did not know it then. My predictions seemed to be most potent in the long term where they were crushingly accurate. Of course I developed schandenfreude, a mean streak of “I told you so, but you did not listen, so suffer now!” Power in the hands of fools intoxicates and degenerates. I made a lot of money from the tarot too, but when the stream started thinning I could not comprehend the lessons it was seeking to communicate. This was not the proper use of the Tarot, which is a Yoga, a spiritual path, in its own right. To utilize it primarily for questions about money grubbing and relationship failure was to demean it and you don’t demean a dragon no matter how tolerant.

 

As my Yoga got stronger, I began to understand the sombre consequences of such meddling. Here are some of the lessons I learnt. When you do such things, a certain quality of people begin to cling to you, and the experience is akin to being embraced by a weepy sentimental octopus in a gas chamber. When we perform such actions, no matter what we feel or say, we have expectations of gratitude from the others. That is bound to be disappointed. People have no concept of the energy drain involved in doing such things and more importantly they do not care – they are only interested in their benefit.

If you do something remarkable once, you have to be remarkable all the time. When you display the truth of Somerset Maugham’s statement, “Only a mediocre person can be at his best all the time” they are disappointed and feel cheated. You can never satisfy expectations once you have made the blunder of miracle mongering. Siddhis, the inner energy powers, are the biggest temptation and flaw for a yogi. The people you perform miracles for, the karma between you and them is so imbalanced, it burns out and such relationships rarely survive. When you heal, when you intervene, when you fix things, you are actually starring in a spectacular heroic role in your mind, the hero, the saviour. It is complete idiocy.

 

When you perform an intervention like this you are interfering with karma. There was a karmic originating cause which manifested a situation as a response. That situation is causing trouble; by fixing it you merely remove the reaction. The karma that caused the first situation is still active, and it sends another packet of karma from your store across lifetimes, the sabija, and almost always the replacement karma is worse than the original karma! This is why healing is a blunder of enormous magnitude. As the healer, the reader, you interfered with the karma, you peeled back the veil which mercifully covered the process. Your responsibility is therefore great, as much as the person who asked for and participated in the intervention. Such things do not come without consequences, such abilities cannot be paid for only in money. In any case you cannot heal anybody, the best you can do is to help them integrate themselves. Once they become integral, the dis-ease also dis-appears. 

 

The same principles apply in making predictions and suggesting pratiharams or remedies. But over time I began to see something even stronger manifest. So there is a situation and you do a reading of some sort, a “read the future, see what is in store and how can trouble be avoided” intervention. Well and good – or so it would seem. However …I began to comprehend something so much deeper it refused to be consciously acknowledged at first! It was so massive in scope, so prodigious in its implications, and so athwart my skills that I did not wish to acknowledge it, not really. The stunning realization was this. Once you foresee the consequences of a situation {or heal it} you are bound to that outcome - and there may be much better possibilities that you are therefore aborting!!! The head reels…I know. Karma operates in such peculiar fashion. What we call destiny, or Dridha – ‘fixed karma’ is also just one band of vibrational possibility. This aggregate of forces can be changed with Purushartha, or mindful effort, the application of Will, but if we venture into prediction, into foresight, we are, so as to speak, bound to that particular line of possibility. All other, greater, more desirable results get shut off. This is staggering. It is also completely inexorable. We have no choice but to accept what we have foreseen, though if we had not done that, and creatively responded to the situation we might have ended up with much more splendid outcomes. In fact, not to intervene, to heal, to read, is almost always the best option as it retains space for creative response, and that usually leads to optimal results. What we desire as outcomes is predicated upon our limited natures and expectations, whereas karma may have something transformative in store for us, which we impede with our unthinking actions.

 

When I could no longer deny the relentless nature of this process, my readings and healings dwindled almost to zero. Every intervention is now an interference with karmic possibility. There has to be very compelling reasons indeed for such impertinence and I no longer have the hardihood to rate myself so highly. Genuine healers, those with an unmistakable Vocation, in the grand old sense of the word, have enough karmic links - Rnanubandhana, the debt-bond - with those they heal. The rest of us are muddling ourselves up in karmic quicksand. It is very difficult to accept this, especially when you are supernaturally skilled at something, as I remain. It is Skill, not Vocation and the difference is critical. The humiliating realization is that such interventions are a loss of freedom and for a Yogi such a thing is an impossible affront. For you cannot accept or reject evolving circumstances and tailor a creative response anymore, you can only go by the parameters you have created by your own good intentioned meddling. Even your movement of energy, your every action, is then circumscribed by what you have anticipated. “The road to hell is paved with good intentions” warns the old saw, and if not hell, at least long term ineffectualness is your lot when you do such things. I desist therefore, unless there is a clear internal command, an adesha, to intervene, but Shiva is merciful and such occasions are rare. 

 

Rohit Arya is an Author, Yogi and Polymath. He has written the first book on Vaastu to be published in the West, {translated into five languages} the first book on tarot to be published in India, co-authored a book on fire sacrifice, and is the creator of The Sacred India Tarot {82 card deck and book}  published in the last quarter of 2011. He has also written A Gathering of Gods due at the same time. He is the Editor of The Leadership Review, a corporate trainer, as well as an arts critic and cultural commentator. Rohit is also a Lineage Master in the Eight Spiritual Breaths system of Yoga

Rohit Arya on how The Power of Now impacted his life

What The Power of Now did for me

The Power of Now is one of those great unrelenting beasts of a book, a genuine spiritual classic, something obviously from another level of consciousness. Eckhart Tolle became a phenomenon with this book and every bit of it is not only well deserved, people still do not value the man as he should be! There is really nothing much one can add to the praise for the book so I restrict myself to what it gave me, what it taught me, how it impacted me. These are myraid, but I will talk about the 4 most important impressions.

The pain-body

Now this was something I had always experienced, both in myself and others, but I could never put my finger upon what exactly was it that was so brilliantly sabotaging lives. Eckhart has done mankind an enormous favour by identifying this energy being within almost each and every one of us. When I first read about it I was stunned. Rem acu tetigisti – he has touched the matter with a needle! Such precision, such elegance, such compassion about what is a snarly, nasty, dark side element of our personality, and he is only on page 27! He talks about the pain body at length in his follow up masterpiece, Towards a New Earth. It is infused with his deeper wisdom and experience but the sheer magnitude of the impact the concept had belongs to The Power of Now.

In Tolle’s own words, “The accumulated pain is a negative energy field that occupies your body and mind. If you look at it as an invisible entity in its own right, you are getting quite close to the truth…It can then rise up, take you over, “become you”, and live through you… it will feed on any experience that resonates with its own kind of energy, anything that creates further pain in whatever form: anger, destructiveness, hatred, grief, emotional drama, violence and even illness.”

This kind of insight would have him burned at the stake a few hundred years back. I am still dealing with all the implications of this discovery for I was well on the way to complete dominance by my pain body. It occasionally sneaks in a victory, and they are ghastly defeats let me tell you, but increasing Presence is weakening the pain-body, God be praised.

Surrender

I thought I knew what it meant, I thought I was practicing it, but it was all ego acting out. “Surrender is inner acceptance of what is without any reservations.” This sentence sank deep into the mind, and it has acted as a change agent ever since. Before that ‘surrender’ was a reasonably happy state when things seemed to flow well and I did not lose my temper as often as I used to. These were significant gains, but they were all dependent upon external factors. Too much pressure, more than two unexpected ‘setbacks’ in a row and the pain-body got its full share of nourishment. I was nicknamed “Smiling Cobra” at this time, for I had a perpetual surface happiness and smile, but the venom was always ready and I was not reluctant to use it! In fact I used to believe that since I struck without foul language and shouting, my usual accompaniments in the past, I was actually just being ‘frank’ and ‘honest’. Yeah, I know.

Now I am not always happy, but I am permanently in ananda, ever new joy. The difference is subtle, but enormous. Surrender was the core element in this change. It is not even the cynical wisdom of “Shit happens!” Yes, but that is only armour to protect from the blows of life. To be open, to be- not vulnerable, but uncluttered with expectations- to not ‘push the river’ of life, the relief it provided to a control freak like me… words fail… as they should. Nowadays when people ask me how I am I have a response that disconcerts them – “I am always awesome!” I am being factual, not facetious.  

 

Help

I was a healer. A damn good one. No longer. I was - and remain- a superb Tarot consultant. A damn expensive one, thanks for asking. When I would intervene in people lives, ‘help’, there was always the problem, “Now what?” what do I tell them, give them, so that whatever transpired during the consultation is strengthened, does not wither away in the natural course of things? I had middling success in keeping people on the right track but once I started recommending The Power of Now, everything changed. I got a lot of popularity and gratitude that I perhaps did not deserve; many people experienced spiritual awakenings on reading the book and began to mediate; even larger numbers began to get a serious grip upon their lives. It was magic. It Is Magic.

What I learned from the whole experience was the futility of thinking we can “help and heal”. At best we can facilitate people into becoming Integral and even that they actually do so by themselves, not because of us. Once people become more and more Integral, these problems start drying up on their own! Not good for the ego, and certainly not good for the income stream, but it is wisdom.

Inspiration

I began to meditate only when I was in my mid-thirties. Not out of choice or desire but out of sheer necessity. The Kundalini had spontaneously activated, and it was either meditate and get it under some sort of control or go stark raving mad, perhaps die. Soon I discovered, to my personal consternation, that I had a natural aptitude for sadhana – spiritual practices. I would zoom along, achieving things really fast, prompting my guru to once give out this immortal zinger – “Tumhari na aukaat hain na haisiyat, bus kismet hain!” {“You have neither the stature nor the earned effort for such success, but get it all because of destiny”} That took the puff out of my sails for a while.

But in all this I had a huge nagging problem. The biographies of sages and masters seemed unanimous that they were naturally talented at spiritual effort and were at it, consciously or unconsciously since childhood.  Where did that leave me, what hope did that leave me with? For I had no illusions about the karmic load I came with, and I had done everything possible to increase it in this lifetime by being as obnoxious as possible and having a very good time, if you get my drift. That is fun, until the karmic bill has to be paid, when you realize the sheer colossal stupidity of promiscuity. I persisted with meditation, for it was keeping me alive and sane, but I had no real hope of any genuine spiritual attainment, all my success notwithstanding. I was stupid.

When I read about Eckhart, and his awakening upon a park bench, after the sort of harsh early years he endured, the sense of relief was enormous. The whole ‘deservedness’ argument that took up internal space died, and the space was being filled up with Presence. The shift in mind-set was one of the most significant things that ever happened to me. Sadhana did not become a process or goal to ‘achieve’ anything any longer, it just was what one did, like breathing. Of course when one stops this frenetic striving one progresses faster! So Eckhart inspired me with Ordinariness - you do not have to be super special, you just be in Presence.

The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle

Available everywhere.

Rohit Arya is an Author, Yogi and Polymath. He has written the first book on Vaastu to be published in the West, {translated into five languages} the first book on tarot to be published in India, co-authored a book on fire sacrifice, and is the creator of The Sacred India Tarot {82 card deck and book} to be published in the last quarter of 2011. He has also written A Gathering of Gods due at the same time. He is the Editor of The Leadership Review, a corporate trainer, as well as an arts critic and cultural commentator. Rohit is also a Lineage Master in the Eight Spiritual Breaths system of Yoga