ELEVEN

Remember Who You Are

–1–

By the time I stepped on to the solitary railway bridge, leaving the old town of Mathura and its many lights behind me, I found myself in utter darkness. It was a long walk to the monastery at Durvasa Tila, on the other side of the Yamuna River. The sun had long set, and I had left my journey far too late.

Bands of armed robbers roamed these remote parts, and I wondered if it wasn’t wiser to return the way I had come. I raised my palm to my face: I could hardly make out the contours of my hand. As I slowly felt my way along the long railway bridge that spanned the river, my eyes gradually adjusted to the darkness. I could make out sinister shapes where the river flowed.

The bridge gave way to a winding dirt track. Out here I was completely vulnerable. I could be shot with a pipe-gun, or bludgeoned, or hacked to pieces by a machete. I doubted anyone would hear my screams. A dog howled in the distance. My heart leapt.

For a while, I was quite sure someone was following me in the darkness. I broke into a light jog, and ducked behind a bush. Remaining still, I listened intently, waiting for a silhouette or a noise. Time seemed to slow down.

Several minutes elapsed; but the only thing that punctured the stillness was the pounding of my heart. A little embarrassed, I got up, peered around and continued on my journey. “Why in the world did I make this late trip?” I thought. “What was I thinking? I’ll never do that again.”

If I saw anyone, I decided, I would sprint for dear life. I was pretty sure I could outpace any human if they were wielding a machete. I couldn’t see more than a few steps in front of me, but then, neither could an assailant. That thought gave me some comfort. It was a long walk, and I made a deliberate effort to be less on edge.

As I started to relax a little, I became aware of the vast and serene stillness of the night. I let it fill my lungs. A faint smell of jasmine seemed to cling to the night. I surrendered to the stillness, and had the strange sense something close and familiar, maybe some hidden part of me, might reveal itself.

The feeling intensified, and with it came an unpleasant, sickly feeling—dread of the unknown. My reaction was instinctive: I began drowning the unfamiliar stillness with mental chatter. It had been a long, busy day, and my mind now began revisiting what had transpired, assessing and judging the minutiae.

This manoeuvre was not lost on me. I could see the workings of my mind more clearly than usual, as an observer. Earlier, I had felt terror, then embarrassment. This incongruous overlay of emotions had given way to an unusual sense of detachment from the chatter of the mind.

The simple act of watching the mind dispassionately had brought it to a place of calm. As I breathed in the stillness of the night, I was swept away by an overwhelming awareness of my own presence, my aliveness.

It’s sometimes said that the mind is like a pond. For most of us, that pond is dark and impenetrable, its muddy bottom stirred continually by our agitated and restless thoughts. In our hectic, results-driven daily life, we don’t allow the waters of this pond to still. We don’t let them reveal their transparent depths. Since the field of perception is mostly clouded and disturbed, all that is visible to us is the movement on its surface: the continual play of form in the world. We can call this “surface perception”.

There’s another kind of perception: “deep perception”. When we allow the lake of the mind to still, we can see right through the crystal water to its magnificent hidden depths.

In a state of alert awareness, when the restless, overbearing mind is still, everything seems magnified in clarity and intensity. I felt an unusual lightness of being, a total immersion with the universe. As I looked about at the heavens filled with innumerable stars, I became aware of one familiar light shining brighter than all the rest. The light of consciousness is what illuminates all things.¹⁴

The centre of my consciousness, I noticed, was no longer located within my physical body, but had risen somewhere just above the crown of my head. The clarity of perception from this place was breathtaking. I felt completely free from suffering.

Everything, including my body, was an inseparable field. To my wonderment, I saw that this field was the ever-flowing river of time. Everything was connected to everything else; and everything was in constant change. But as I looked about me at this inseparable field in flux, I realized that I, the soul, am changeless. The immense river of time flowed around me, and I knew I carried eternity inside.

I longed to remain in this heightened state of awareness. What a joyful place! Could this be where the yogis throughout the ages went in their meditation?

Could I remain here? Remembering the world I would be leaving behind, I suddenly felt afraid—I wasn’t ready. Immediately I was pulled back into my physical body, forcefully reabsorbed into the constraining and limiting storyline of my small human life. It felt like violence inflicted upon the soul. That immensely spacious and joyful place was lost to me.

To describe the experience now, having re-entered my mortal story, is to do it injustice. It was one of those rare moments in which we look through the waters of perception into the heart of the universe. I understood now why the yogis and sages had described that luminous part of us that exists beyond the ego—the soul, if you will—in the way that they did in the sacred texts.

I believe most people have these experiences at one time or other. By reading about them, we can grasp them conceptually, but we never truly understand them until we experience them ourselves. When that happens, it transforms us forever. We realize we’re much bigger, and more wonderful, than the beleaguered human being in the small, anxious and ordinary story of our life.

When lost in our story, our life is marked by constant struggle and striving. We become creatures of anxiety. We measure our own worth by the fickle judgments of others, or by how much we own or what we can do. We lose the courage to be true to who we are; because, like Arjuna, we have forgotten who we are. As a result, we experience an emptiness inside that we can’t seem to fill. We’re always dissatisfied, despite having so much.

Sometimes it takes darkness to appreciate the light, I thought, as I continued towards the temple on the hill. The stars shine brightly twenty-four hours a day; they never cease shining. But it’s only in the obscurity of the night that we see their brilliance and beauty. We speak about illuminating the dark; but sometimes it’s the darkness that allows us to appreciate the light.

In that thought, I had connected with the very heart of the soul’s dark night and the yoga of despair. The obscurity in a dark night experience, when what is fleeting has been broken apart, can give us a glimpse of the self-luminous soul.

–2–

Who was this unfamiliar face in the mirror? I ran my fingertips lightly across my mouth and cheeks.

I hadn’t looked into a big mirror for five years. In the temple monasteries in India, there are no full-size mirrors, just tiny hand-held ones used for applying sacred markings in clay to one’s forehead. Monks don’t spend time gazing into mirrors.

Living a simple, austere life in the temple monastery, meditating every day, withstanding the scorching heat of the summer and the freezing cold of winter, walking barefoot for miles on pilgrimage, and practising the ancient yoga teachings—these things had enlarged the spirit and awakened the soul. They gave me a sense of my transcendent spiritual identity, beyond the small stories of this world.

I had left India to renew my five-year visa. Now back in England at the home of a friend, I switched on the bathroom light to find myself in front of a mirror so large it covered an entire wall.

Looking at the face in the mirror, I couldn’t help but think, “Who is this? This mask of flesh and skin isn’t me. I’m simply residing in this body for a short time. Ageless and timeless, I’m not made of destructible elements, like flesh, skin and blood.”

Many people identify with their physical body, but our body is simply a covering of the self, like a garment. It’s the vehicle by which we, the transcendent self, express ourselves in this world. When the self leaves the body at death, the body is inactive, like a car without a driver.

When there were no motor cars in India, people frequently used chariots. The sages and seers, therefore, give the analogy of a chariot to help us understand the self.¹⁵ We’re passengers in the chariot of our body. Driven by the mind and senses, our chariot moves across the field of life, meeting with pleasure and pain, gain and loss, enjoyment and suffering.

Just as a warrior needs to feel at ease on her chariot, so a yoga practitioner needs to be able to rest and feel at home in her body. We reside in this body for the time being and can give ourselves permission to feel comfortable in it. If we don’t accept our body and mind, we struggle to find the tranquillity we need to practise yoga.

At the same time, it would be ludicrous for a warrior to believe that the chariot is who she is. Most cells in the body are replaced over a period of seven years. That means our body of seven years ago has been ecologically dispersed throughout the environment. This physical body is not who we really are. We’re not fat, thin, young or old. These attributes relate only to the body.

When we look at photos of our childhood, it’s easy to recognize how we’re distinct from the changing physical body. We’re the life force that animates that body. When people identify too closely with the body, they think strongly in terms of bodily distinctions such as black and white, male and female, Indian and American. But all these designations refer to the body only.

While it’s fairly easy to understand we’re not the body, it can be more difficult to discern that we exist beyond the creations of our mind. Those who meditate find it easier to perceive this, because meditation is a practice for stilling the restless mind.

The yoga warrior on the field of life asks, “What part of me never changes? What part of me is indestructible?” I used to think of myself in one way; now I think of myself differently. My thoughts about myself are subject to change. Therefore, if I believe I’m the lead character of my story, I’m bound to be disappointed.

To help Arjuna understand that he exists beyond the play of form of this world, Krishna differentiates between what he calls the “field” and the “knower of the field”¹⁶ The “field”, Krishna explains, is the body and everything connected with the body. This includes our senses, our thoughts, our feelings, our desires, our will, and all the transformations that these may go through in life.

The “field” Krishna is speaking about is the field of perception. Krishna explains that we, the true self, are the “knower of the field”. This means we’re distinct from the field.

Krishna is telling Arjuna that we’re not this physical body, and we’re not the temporary sensations we may experience through that body either. We’re not the “good” or “bad” thoughts we may have. Nor are we any of the things of this world we may perceive, desire or identify with. We’re spiritual beings beyond the transient play of form of this world. Don’t look for yourself in the field of perception: whatever you see there is not who you are. You are the knower of the field.

–3–

While wandering through narrow lanes, a woman spotted a beautiful object in the window of an antique shop: an ornate birdcage. With twenty-four rib-like pillars, the entire cage had been delicately carved from a single block of jade. There were perches of ivory, and the cage floor, which sparkled like a mirror, reflected an intricate, patterned design on the cage’s domed turquoise ceiling.

“Where is this cage from? How much is it?” the woman enquired eagerly.

“This birdcage belonged once to the great Mughal emperors who ruled India,” the shopkeeper confided. “It’s a rare collector’s item.”

The woman paid a large sum for the cage. She took her collectible home and placed it in the hall, where it could be admired easily.

“The cage could do with a little polish, to bring out its splendid colours,” she noted. So, she spent all evening carefully cleaning the ornate antique and marvelling at its beauty. She felt it must be worth even more than she had paid for it.

So enamoured was the woman by her antique that she failed to see the little hummingbird inside. Its breast a dazzling, iridescent green, the tiny bird hovered in the centre of the cage, like an emerald suspended in the air.

“Feed me, please feed me!” the hummingbird sang softly, but the woman paid no heed. She saw only the cage.

That night the woman dreamed of royal cages, the prized possessions of Mughal princesses and mighty Maharajas. But of all the gilded cages in her dreams, none matched the one she now possessed.

When the lady awoke, she went straight to her antique. She admired her possession for a long while. So taken was she by the cage that she again failed to hear the bird’s plaintive cry: “Feed me, please feed me.” The lady saw only the cage.

“I must arrange a party,” the woman thought, “so that I can show off my new antique to my friends.”

She went through her address book and invited all the influential people she knew. As she sent out the invitations, she could hardly contain her excitement. It would be a spectacular event.

The woman cleaned the cage until it sparkled like a pin. She decided to buy several yards of fine silk brocade for the cage. All night she stayed up sewing. In the early hours of the morning, she stood back to admire her work.

“What a splendid collectible,” she said to herself with a smile.

“Feed me, please feed me,” the hummingbird cried out feebly. But the lady had eyes only for the cage; she never saw the starving bird begging for food within.

Putting on her apron, the lady went about preparing for Saturday, baking currant buns and iced fairy cakes. This would surely be an event to remember.

Guests soon began to arrive in twos and threes. They gathered around the draped object, now positioned in the centre of the room. Glowing with excitement, the lady unveiled her new collectible for all to admire.

The ornate cage, gleaming in the sunlight from the window, caught everyone’s attention. The guests marvelled at the object.

But a little girl began to cry.

“What’s wrong, my dear?” her mother asked, trying to console her. The little girl pointed to the cage floor: lying on its side, the hummingbird, without food for days, closed its eyes. Its little wings were still.

“Feed me, please feed me,” it whispered with its last breath. The tiny bird’s heartbeat came to a stop.

The guests looked at each other in shock and discomfort. One guest dropped her sandwiches; another spilled his tea. The owner of the cage fell silent, embarrassed at her absentmindedness. She had so admired the jade collectible—how could she not have noticed the dying bird inside?¹⁷

I first heard this story in India, as a young boy. The pampered cage, with its twenty-four rib-like pillars, is the body and everything connected to the body. The bird is the soul. We think this body is everything, so we focus on the body, but starve the soul within.

Most of the things we seek in our life relate to the body and our identity in our small human story: money, influence, achievements and the admiration and approval of others. But all the vanities of life can’t satisfy the soul. As a result, we feel a great lack that can be difficult to identify. We don’t know the cause, but the feeling is nonetheless strong. It doesn’t go away. We long to fill the emptiness in our heart.

That feeling of emptiness is the hunger of the soul. The purpose of yoga is to nourish the soul and set it free, so that it can express its own true nature.

–4–

An elderly Samkhya teacher grew weary of his student’s complaining. One morning he sent his student to fetch some salt. When the apprentice returned, the Samkhya master instructed the melancholic young man to put a handful of salt into a glass of water and drink it.

“How does it taste?” the master asked.

“Terrible!” spat the student.

The master chuckled. He then told the young man to take another handful of salt and put it into the nearby lake. The two walked in silence to the edge of the large, serene lake behind the master’s hermitage. The apprentice poured his fistful of salt into the water.

“Now drink from the lake,” the master said.

As the water dripped down the student’s chin, the master asked, “How does it taste?”

“Fresh,” remarked the apprentice.

“Do you taste the salt?” asked the Samkhya master.

“No,” said the young man.

At this, the master sat beside this troubled young man, who so reminded him of himself, and took his hands: “The pain of life is pure salt; no more, no less. The amount of pain in our life remains the same, exactly the same. But the amount of pain we taste depends on the container we put the pain into. So, when you’re in pain, the only thing you can do is enlarge your perception of who you are. Stop being a glass. Become a lake.”

The master continued: “When we live within the confines of our small human story, we’re a tiny glass. Our pain takes on a very large significance, to the point of becoming unbearable. But when we remember we’re spiritual beings, not the lead character of our small story, we experience immediate freedom and spaciousness. We grow from a tiny glass into a large, serene lake. The misfortunes of life no longer affect us in the same way.”

We don’t generally invite pain into our life; but it comes anyway. And when pain comes uninvited, we can’t simply will it away. Krishna tells Arjuna that pain and pleasure come and go, like heat and cold. But if these sensations don’t trouble us, then we’ve truly attained wisdom.¹⁸ Becoming equal in pain and pleasure means becoming a lake. It means remembering who we are.

We have the mortal self and we have the mortal story. But we’re more than our mortal self; and therefore, we’re also more than our mortal story. When we remember who we are, we’re no longer bound by mortal limitations.

Krishna, speaking of such a person who can remain equal in pain and pleasure, declares, “Such a wise person is prepared for immortality.”¹⁹ This is because such a person transcends the limitations of her own mortal story.

Thus, a Samkhya master is not someone who no longer experiences any difficulties in her life; a Samkhya master is a person who is no longer troubled by those difficulties.

–5–

One summer, my wife and I spent a week at a professor’s home in Yorkshire, to look after her border terrier while she was away. It was a large, beautiful house facing the Yorkshire Moors. Each morning, we would take the professor’s dog, Charlie, out on a walk. He was a ball of fur with a peculiar but sweet personality.

On these walks through the stunning moors, I would often be lost in thought on the poetic verses of the Bhagavad Gita. Suddenly, I would look around and Charlie was nowhere to be seen. I would call out the dog’s name, anxiously scanning the moors in every direction. Imagine losing someone’s dog on the Yorkshire Moors.

Wondering what to do, I would inadvertently glance at the ground beneath my feet, and to my complete surprise, discover Charlie. He had this ability to silently follow you, not in front or behind you, but directly between your feet.

It struck me that we spend an entire lifetime searching for happiness. We work very hard to find it; but as soon as we fulfil one of the desires we believe will make us happy, another emerges, in an endless chain. We’re always looking in every possible direction except the most obvious one.

Our happiness doesn’t exist somewhere out in the future. It lies right here, within our own being. And that’s the very last place we think to look.

Now, whenever I become distracted and find myself looking for happiness in future outcomes and events, in things, in accomplishments, I check myself and remember Charlie. “You’re looking for Charlie again,” I tell myself. “Stop looking for Charlie.”

Our habit of looking outside of ourselves for happiness can even enter our yoga practice. We’re on a yoga journey; but it isn’t a voyage to a distant location. The self is not something far away we need to travel to, nor something we need to become. We’re the self already. Our journey is therefore really a journey of knowledge, a journey of remembering. The Kena Upanishad refers to “awakened knowledge”.²⁰ Yoga helps us out of our forgetfulness of who we truly are.

Just as the natural quality of fire is heat and the natural quality of water is wetness, the natural quality of the self is happiness.²¹ Not a shallow, temporary happiness, but a deep and abiding fulfilment that doesn’t depend upon the play of form in this world.

Krishna explains that a person who truly knows the sacred self finds complete fulfilment and contentment in the self.²² A yogi or yogini can directly experience this happiness through her daily practice of yoga. In other words, she doesn’t need to look outside of herself for fulfilment.

Happiness is our natural state when illusion is removed or stripped away. Therefore, the way to happiness is not to try to create it, but to seek everything that obstructs it.