BELLUR IS A SMALL VILLAGE in the Kolar District of the South Indian state of Karnataka. The man who would become Iyengar’s father was born there of Brahmin caste. He was given the name of Krishnamachar. He spent part of his life teaching children at the elementary school in the village of Narasapuk Taluk, three kilometers from Bellur. After thirty years of service, he left for Bangalore to work for a wholesaler whom Iyengar says was a Muslim. At that time there was no religious strife in India but great tolerance for any expression of faith.
Krishnamachar married Sheshamma, a very young, simple, and religious woman. Iyengar remembers her as a wonderful mother. He told me that when she visited him in Pune she refused to bathe with water from the faucet; it was to her less pure than well water.
Like many Indians, she was good to everyone. A kind of human solidarity exists in Indian village tradition. The same is still true in rural France, where a visitor could be Jesus disguised as a pilgrim or a beggar and would not be refused bread for fear of refusing God. The same spirit rules in India, the favorite country of the mendicant God-seeker. People don’t want to refuse anything for fear of refusing a true saint!
This harmonious couple produced thirteen children. Their father adored them. None of the children remembers having been scolded by this gentle man.
Sundararaja, our Iyengar, was born on Saturday, December 14, 1918, at 3:00 a.m. He was the eleventh child. He was born in the middle of a flu epidemic. His mother was a victim and for a long time their lives were in danger. Thanks to God both survived, but the little Sundararaja remained sickly.
Later, Krishnamachar had the premonition that he would “slip into universal consciousness” when his son reached the age of nine, which is what happened. Extremely difficult years began for the widow and her youngest children. The older ones were already married and with children of their own; they could barely help. During that time, Iyengar really knew hunger and a desperation that drives you to do anything to get food and to get an education. “Desperation and even thoughts of suicide,” he admitted.
Krishnamachar had predicted that his son would triumph after many difficult years and that he would raise and support a family, even become famous. This prediction often helped Iyengar and kept him from losing hope.
Iyengar felt a deep affection for his father. In the 1960s, he used his first savings for the construction of an elementary school in Bellur.
One day he told me: “I was not born into a family of saints. I was not destined to practice yoga.” But his grandfather, the great Sanskrit specialist Shri Shrinavasa Iyengar, was to go from Mysore to Gujarat, in northern India, to spread the philosophy and faith of Shri Vaishnava. Iyengar brought up all his children in this faith.
Iyengar has a family name preceded by three first names or initials, which is contrary to southern village tradition. Why?
Social integration in lineage and locality is very strong in India. A man is given a first name that will be preceded by the initials of his father and his village. Following that system, Iyengar would be called B.K. Sundararaja. Where does the name by which he is known, Iyengar, come from? When Yehudi Menuhin took him to Europe in 1954, he needed a passport, and it required a family name. He put down the name of the large family group he was a member of—his clan, you could say—a name made famous by many holy men and philosophers. Since then he has always kept this name.
To get this precious passport, he also needed a certificate to prove that he had paid all his taxes, so he had to pay! “I am probably the only yogin who paid any,” he said with a laugh.
Paying taxes did not bother Iyengar. He wanted to be a common man like anyone else, one who fits well into society. The temptation to play the sannyasin, or holy man, never crossed his mind. He never had the idea to single himself out with the fashions and customs of his country, as do so many Indians coming to Europe or the United States. For him, that is folklore and has nothing to do with true spiritual development, true sainthood. It has nothing to do with artha (purpose) or with dharma (virtue).
As an orthodox Brahmin, he respected all the rules of his cast and his community, so that his children would have the opportunity to get married and be happy. He says that action should be guided by intelligence and love, which motivated the rules originally, but they have become more restrictive over time. However, he has adjusted himself to this rigid frame. This is artha.
For example, a Brahmin cannot touch the untouchables or a Westerner. However, he always touched us, and he has always touched the untouchables. “They are men as we are,” he said.
And when he noticed that Western men don’t wear their hair long, he cut his Brahmin hair-bun in 1954.
In India the cow is revered religiously, as it was by the Aryan cowherds thousands of years ago. This sacred cult of the cow was kept alive throughout history, despite the influence of the various invaders of the highly civilized Dravidian fertile valleys.
Iyengar demonstrated this belief one day in Switzerland when we passed a stable. He opened the door saying, “Let me pay my respects to my Goddess,” and proceeded to caress their beautiful rumps. “How beautiful they are and well fed. Remember our cows? How happy they would be here!” In his gesture was the same respect and tenderness shown by people who caress the foot of a statue of St. Peter or a miraculous Virgin.
Touch is a profound gesture to an Indian. Touch of the hand or forehead, any contact as an exchange between two people, is felt strongly in India, where nobody touches in greeting.
Iyengar is a courageous man, not put off by difficulties, unstoppable in his tireless effort. Every year he continues to make progress, finding a purer, more beautiful way to approach an asana, going further into the details of perfecting a pose. Stagnation is death, he likes to say, but then adds gently that “at your stage effort dominates, at mine it is zeal.” Zeal is passion, and passion does not mean it is easy or there is no suffering! Zeal stimulates you to work continuously without dislike or boredom, but it pushes you also to continue beyond what you know. He says that what is known is in the bag; what is interesting is beyond and still unknown.
He always has a joke ready, a great, infectious smile, sarcasm and humor to soften the cracking of the whip. Working hard with him is not funny, but it is never tragic. In the end, there is always mildness or a practical joke.
When he was young, he wanted to know if he was on the right path, and every time he met a yogin, he proposed a mutual exchange or collaboration. An old yogi told him one day: “You do as much as the rishi of the Himalayas,” and that really encouraged him to continue.
Always this same affirmation came when he met a sage, a saint, or a yogin, be it Swami Sivananda, Vibhatijoti Swami, or Swami Ramananda, who was so holy that he was buried and not cremated. He met these swamis around 1940.
A very old yogin said something that struck him. “How does a tree know that it gives shade and that the shade is good? How can you know at what level you are? Continue.” And he went on. You could say that his life is an incessant effort towards perfection.
In 1959 he spoke to me of siddhis, what we call powers. When you realize that you have a power, you must be happy that you made progress, but don’t use it, he warned. He gave me an example. “In Bombay a student always asked me to give him a number. I did not understand why, but to please him I said the first number that popped in my head. Then another student on another day asked me the same thing and I refused, smiling. I wasn’t going to waste class time to give numbers! But the second student got upset and said, “Why did you give it to him and not to me?” Then I learned from him that the number I gave was always the winning number at the races. I stopped giving numbers immediately. I was not even tempted to use it for myself.”
Iyengar gave another example of a man who used his powers to make money. His spiritual development stopped, and he became crippled.
When you read his writings or hear him speaking about powers, you get the impression that they are something to be lived with. They arrive despite you. They are not something pleasant to be looked for, for satisfaction or glory. If we work honestly and in depth, it is just a sign from heaven confirming that we are on the right way.
He used to say humbly: “I am on the path. How can one say that one has arrived?” And he would add that you must not read, but experience. “I read only when something new happens to me; then I look for what Patanjali says about it.”
Several times he surprised me, telling me what I had done the evening before and where I was going to go that afternoon. One day I arrived in Pune for my class and told him that I would go to the horse races in the afternoon. He said, “I know, an hour ago I was thinking that you were going to go there.” Exactly one hour before, my friend Mani had called to invite me.
In 1960 in Gstaad during a lesson: “You went to Mount Eggli yesterday, I saw you there.” It was true, but how could he have seen me? I kept asking him questions to solve this puzzle. He had fun; it was like a game for him. Finally I asked how I was dressed. “The same as today,” he laughed. He was wrong. Finally I had the solution: he had not seen me with his eyes.
In 1959 he told me: “You will write books.” We were in the little room where we worked. The sun made a great rectangle on the floor, so it was late September, at the end of the monsoon. I was surprised: “Me? But Sir, I don’t know anything!” He insisted: “Today you don’t, but one day you will have a lot to say and you will write. Believe me.”
He said, “I am a teacher to those who still have their eyes closed, but I always remain a student.” Such words convey the humble attitude of all great searchers, be they saints or scientists.
Devotion is another quality of the master, who never complains and keeps a positive attitude. “When you get students, thank God that you have someone to teach. When no one shows up, thank God for being free to work more on yourself.”
He wrote me one day, “When the Lord wants us to dedicate more time to our own work, He Himself will provide. If he does not provide, we have to work and praise Him continuously.”
Ramamani was born November 2, 1927. I don’t think I exaggerate when I say that Iyengar is where he is today thanks to her. It is true that he himself is courageous, intelligent, and ardent in his pursuits, but his evolution has been greatly supported by the loving atmosphere she created around him. She left us on January 28, 1973.
They had a wonderful marriage. It began in complete poverty, as Iyengar said, “with only a sari and a dhoti.” I have rarely seen two people love each other as much and in every way. The hardships of his youth and his sensitive nature had taught Iyengar many things. He explained one day: “In marriage the key to a happy life is sensual pleasure. I satisfied my wife, and we lived in peace and happiness.” What a wonderful husband he must have been!
One day in 1960 in Brussels, when he had come to give some lessons to his “dear queen,” queen Elisabeth of Belgium, we walked around looking for the famous statue of Manneken Pis. Iyengar gaily made lighthearted jokes about the ways he could give a souvenir of the statue to his wife, and we laughed like two silly kids!
We spoke a lot about her and about happy couples and he said, “Today I am going to write my wife that to live in a palace without you gives me no pleasure. What good is a big bed and all this splendor when you are not by my side?” In fact, he was staying in a very nice room at Palace Stuyvenberg, where the queen lived. Iyengar was very comfortable there. He is comfortable anywhere, with the greats of the world and with the little people, in a palace or in a shantytown.
In my eyes, Ramamani was the incarnation of the perfect spouse: unassuming when he was there and perfect head of family in his absence. Such “spiritual gymnastics” always fascinated me. One day Savita got very sick and emitted a nauseating odor. Her mother really wanted to call the doctor, but Iyengar was against it. “Let me think about it,” he said. The fever rose, but Ramamani did not get the doctor. When the fever rose still higher, she insisted again, but in respect for her husband she waited for his permission. Then Iyengar had a brilliant idea: he closed one of Savita’s nostrils and told her to blow very hard, and then repeated it on the other side. Finally a hard piece of petrified blood came out. It reeked; they had to open the windows. But the child was cured.
Iyengar adored his wife. The first thing he would do after arriving in Gstaad was to pick me up: “Come and help me pick out a ring for my wife.” The ring was put on hold and paid off gradually as he received money from his lessons.
In Pune he was in the habit of coming down to Bombay every Saturday to teach a class at the end of the afternoon. Sunday mornings he would give another one and then take the train back around noon to arrive in Pune in early evening. One day I asked him, “Does it not bother your wife to spend every weekend without you?”
“No, why?”
“She might like to be with you.”
“My wife does not think like that; if she did, I would not do it.” What a sweet answer! This woman’s heart was pure love. And Iyengar’s was as well.
When Iyengar found himself alone after the death of his wife, he had this comment: “All these years I was a sannyasin with a wife. Now I am a householder without a wife!” Iyengar can only be described as a paradox; he seems to be pulled between extremes. It shows a dimension of his rich personality.
He had not foreseen this heartbreaking separation, which came so quickly. His plan was different: “When we have married off all our children, I will leave for the Himalayas with my wife. In general, men go alone. But I do not want to abandon her. She has given me everything; she has sacrificed for me. I will take her with me.” And as usual he added, “If God bless us.” God judged otherwise.
Did she help this man she loved so much “from above”? No one will ever know, and Iyengar keeps his secrets. But when I saw him again after the death of his wife, he had bounced back, as far as I could judge. In response to a letter in which I had carefully tried to pose some subtle questions, he answered: “Where I arrived I don’t know, but I do know that God has given me in yoga beyond my capacities.” In another letter, he wrote: “The yoga that helped me enjoy myself fully and legitimately with my wife, this same yoga led me to an inner depth at the moment when the Lord in his kindness called my wife to Him. He took my wife away for me to practice yoga all alone.”
Iyengar says that he has had six daughters and one son. Geeta, the oldest, was born December 7, 1944. When I was in India, she was fourteen years old and already wore a little sari. In 1959 Iyengar would accept her often into the yoga class with me, to encourage her. For me it was a joy to see this willowy vine, full of courage and eagerness. She made such quick progress, really had it in her blood! But don’t think that Iyengar was softer on his daughter than he was with us; he was an even more demanding guru to her. Geeta chose to remain single to be completely dedicated to her art. In this way, the second daughter, Vanita, could be married. She was born August 29, 1947.
“My next daughter died after the delivery,” says Iyengar. “I dreamed that I would lose this child. I wrote my wife, who was then in Bangalore, and it was exactly what had happened.”
One day Iyengar said to his wife: “Last night I came to you, and you shall deliver a son.” It makes you think of the biblical patriarchs. Sure enough, the fourth child was a son. He came into the world July 2, 1949. “During the night I dreamed of Mahatma Gandhi, and he blessed me. I don’t remember the day exactly, but the next morning I told my wife that we were going to have a son. For that reason, I called him Prashant: Peace. He is peaceful and likes philosophy.”
Everything went well, until one day Prashant was found dead. Iyengar demonstrated with arms together, palms up, how he had carried him to the cremation field.
“Did you cry?”
“No, why? I prayed.”
When they got to the cremation field, the little boy came to life and opened his eyes. No one ever could explain what happened.
“He is an odd child,” Iyengar told me in 1959. “He does not want to speak to women, except for his mother and sisters. You will see; he will not speak to you. He is there, looks at you, but will not speak with you. I think that he will be a great philosopher.”
Prashant received his Brahmanic cord in the ceremony of Brahmopadesham on February 7, 1960, during a waxing moon. He loves music, and he took up the violin due to the friendship with Menuhin. He plays it Indian style. Later he applied himself to yoga and now helps his father with the institute.
The girls are all pretty, one as much as the other. After Vanita came Sunita and then Suchita, born July 3, 1951, and July 21, 1953, respectively.
And finally Savita arrived. She was four years old when I knew her (her birthdate is May 5, 1955). She was a little, dark brown thing with enormous black eyes, a lively little savage that I tried to tame for two and a half months. When I arrived, she scampered off proclaiming to anyone who wanted to hear, “The girl that’s bigger than a house has arrived!”
One day during my lesson, she was in the little room. She was very good; nobody heard her. Iyengar had placed me in Sarvangasana, and without being able to see, I felt a finger sliding over the skin of my back. Iyengar often gives instructions this way—you obey his finger or his eye—so I stretched. Again, a sliding of the fingers: I stretched more, or at least tried to, because I was already at my limit. And again.
SAVITA IYENGAR WITH IYENGAR’S FIRST GRANDSON, 1973
“I cannot do more, Sir. I really don’t understand what you are asking of me,” I said.
“But I did not say anything,” answered Iyengar.
“But who is touching me then?”
Well, it was Savita, who passed her little finger over my back, then over the skin on her arm, and so on, to see if there was a difference between my skin and hers. You can imagine how we all had a good laugh over that.
Savita is now twenty years old (in 1975) and dances the Bharata Natyam, the dance of South India. She applies herself with the same zeal that her father stimulates in everyone who approaches him.
Iyengar is an exceptional father, tender and firm. All his children adore him. The year his wife died, he came to give his usual seminars in Europe and the U.S. But he would go back to Pune every month—one month gone, one month at home. “I must be both father and mother and get them slowly used to being without me,” he explained.
In 1959 I was the only foreign student and had the extraordinary opportunity to enter into the intimacy of this marvelous family.
A guru is extremely important in the life of someone who wants to advance seriously in a certain discipline. It is the image of the elder who takes you by the hand, the image of God, even. For the fake gurus of India or Europe, the temptation is great to give in to the adoration of students who have become their followers. Those followers like to create a cult, blinded by a personality who deceives them and may elevate himself to the level of deity. There are plenty of those in India. Sadly, the same is true in France.
This was not the case with Shri Krishnamacharya, Iyengar’s guru, who was extremely severe and did not tolerate this little game. Iyengar revered Krishnamacharya with enduring love and respect that never diminished, despite the sometimes harsh treatment by the guru.
The first time Iyengar spoke about him to me was in 1959 in Pune. He said: “My guru is my brother-in-law, the husband of my oldest sister. He came to see my mother one day and I was coughing. My mother was widowed, and we depended on people willing to help us. This was in 1934. He came up to Bombay for a tour of yoga demonstrations. Bangalore, where we lived, was on his way. He asked if I wouldn’t go and stay with my sister while he was gone. And that is how I joined the yogasala of Mysore that he directed. When he came back, he asked me to stay and taught me some poses.”
KRISHNAMACHARYA PRESENTS IYENGAR WITH A GOLD MEDAL, PUNE, 1961
Iyengar tells this story about an incident that happened with his teacher. “One day a visitor came and asked the Guruji for instructions about Hanumanasana (the great split); he did not understand how to do it. Guruji had me do the pose. I was very stiff and still very new, and I thought that he did not remember the difficulty I had with this pose. But how could I remind him? I only spoke one language, and it was the same one spoken by the visitor. So I said that I could not do it because my shorts were too tight. Guruji asked one of his students to get a pair of scissors in the kitchen and cut open the seams of my shorts; then he told me to do the pose. Because I did not want to put my brother-in-law to shame, I did the best I could and more, forcing a lot. For months afterward I suffered with a pulled thigh muscle. Because of the fear he inspired, I could never tell him. This taught me that you had to go far, but without forcing. Brutality is not the same as giving of yourself.”
Iyengar continued: “In 1936 Guruji left with several students to make a tour of yoga demonstrations. I was one of the students. A surgeon by the name of Dr. V.B. Gokhale was very impressed by our demonstration. Later, when this Dr. Gokhale retired and settled in Pune, he wrote Guruji, requesting him to send a man to Pune to teach yoga for six months. I already had given many demonstrations, but Guruji would have preferred to send an older and more experienced student. Everyone he asked refused. Finally he turned to me and said: ‘Do you want to go?’ I answered: ‘I will do what you tell me,’ and he told me to go.
“I have to admit that I was happy with this offer, which allowed me freedom and escape from the fear that my guru inspired. It was only for six months; it was worth a try.
“It was very hard: I left everything I knew. I left for the north of Deccan, a town where no one spoke my language and I did not speak theirs. The customs are very different there from those in the true south, where I come from.
“To earn the price of my train ticket to Pune, I walked 22 kilometers every day during one month, from Dhawar to Habli, to give a lesson.
“I really put up with a lot: I arrived in Pune with simply a dhoti and a shirt and one rupee in my pocket. It was 1937. I already told you that God did not bless me until after I passed a test: at the place where I was teaching, someone burned all my blankets, carpets, and work instruments out of jealousy. I survived. This was in 1939–1940. But the most difficult period of my life came later.”
“Later my guru wrote me that I should get married. I did not want to. Then Krishnamacharya told me that he belonged to a lineage of married yogins and that if I did not want to get married I could no longer call him my guru. But the choice of my wife was not made, according to tradition, by comparing our two horoscopes; and it was not Guruji who chose my wife. I saw a girl who came to the house with my sisters, and I decided to get married.”
“One day after doing pranayama, I was practicing Corpse Pose (relaxation) and lost consciousness. But inside I was full of awareness, as if in the middle of a sea: full of peace, lightness and light. I immediately wrote Krishnamacharya to find out what to do. He answered that it was a very good experience, but that I definitely should not try to make it happen again. Kundalini awakens when it wants to and how it wants to. We are not on earth to enjoy life. If such moments present themselves, enjoy them fully, but don’t look for them. If you do, you leave the straight path and cut yourself off from any possibility of further evolution. The past is the past. You must live in the present.
“I practiced yoga almost despite myself; I did not feel like it but felt obliged to return to the mat. Then one night I had a dream: Lord Venkateswara, the God who protects our family, appeared to me and smiled. With one hand, he blessed me, and with the other, he gave me a grain of rice. The next morning, I wrote Guruji to ask him an explanation of this dream. He answered that from now on God would feed us and take care of us, that I no longer needed to be concerned about it, and that we would no longer be short of anything. That gave me great joy, because at that time life was still very hard.
IYENGAR PRESENTS AN OFFERING TO KRISHNAMACHARYA, PUNE, 1961
From that moment on, it was no longer the yoga that stuck to me, it was me who stuck to yoga. And as you see, we are very poor but lack for nothing; the children are well fed and behave.”
Krishnamacharya is to Iyengar the venerated and respected guru. One day he told me, “My guru is a lot better than I am in pranayama, but to devote himself more deeply to the practice of pranayama he has abandoned the practice of asana. In asana I am better than he is. Right now, between the two of us, we encompass the wholeness of yoga,” he laughed. This was in 1960. Since then, who can tell how far the countless hours of daily practice have taken him?
One day, after a lot of urging, Krishnamacharya agreed to come up to Pune. That created a lot of emotion in the family. The following is a letter dated November 13, 1961, that relates the event:
“We had Guruji here during ten days. At my request, he passed by on his way to Varanasi. He gave several conferences where he took Geeta and Vanita (the two oldest girls) to demonstrate the poses. Many people came to visit us to see him. We all were on our feet from four in the morning till ten at night, without a break. He was impressed with my work and with the interest I had generated here and in Bombay. After twenty-two years of persistent requests, he has come to my home. He told me that he was proud of me and blessed us all.”
On his way back, Krishnamacharya stopped in again. In this letter of November 29, you can feel the emotion, joy, and devotion of Iyengar:
“My venerated teacher has come again and has blessed me intensely. His blessing will make deep inroads in me. He observed me while I was teaching, and when I practiced asana and pranayama he was impressed. He also organized a special public ceremony with the help of my students and presented me with a gold medal. He awarded me with a title he had engraved on the medal: Yoganga Shikshaka Chakravarti, which means ‘King among the teachers of yoga.’
“He also had diplomas printed to award to the students. You will get yours by separate mail; it is signed by both of us, him and me.
“He did not teach me anything new; his blessing will really bring the true path and new approaches into view. I will send you pictures.”
In another letter he again spoke of the celebration that was organized for him by the guru and was such a special event. This guru, once so severe, so remote, so impressive, suddenly recognized all the work that his severity and advice had triggered, and he approved. It was an unforgettable day.
The oldest son of Krishnamacharya, Shri Shrinivasan, was one of seven Brahmins that officiated at the inauguration of the Ramamani Iyengar Memorial Yoga Institute, in Pune, in January of 1975. A close relationship exists between Iyengar and Shri Shrinivasan.
“Look at this pose,” he said during a demonstration in Geneva. “Physically speaking it is perfect, technically speaking nothing is missing, but it is dead. There is no unity, because I am speaking to you at the same time. I have not created wholeness. Now look closely. I am going to unify everything in me, and then the pose will have life, will shine.” And what passionate transformation we witnessed that afternoon! The artisan became an artist, the genius had left behind the technique of the craftsman, and he offered us a masterpiece. It was beautiful and touching. He did it again to be sure that everyone could see the difference, understand it, and incorporate it in their own life.
“Judgment or understanding on one hand, dexterity on the other, must work together in you. Adjust one by one. Each movement is an art. Using the word art without reaching this perfection has no meaning,” he liked to explain. That day I understood that perfection of technique requires and provokes in the one who seeks it a progressive and constant refining of all mental and spiritual faculties. From soul to body and body to soul, the demand is transmitted to create the masterpiece that will be neither a beautiful physical pose nor a beautiful soul without a body, but an integration beyond duality.
Iyengar knows how to inspire respect for the guru in his students, but he also knows how to reward their efforts with simple, well-chosen words.
After our time together in 1959, a session that brought me so much but cost a lot of pain and suffering, he dedicated a book to me with these kind words: “To my grateful and sincere painstaking Noëlle, etc.” How well he had understood me, I was very happy!
When he came for the first time to supervise my work and give a class to my students in 1971, I felt ill at ease. We all did. He never gave me a compliment. He gave a dazzling session, and I awaited some verdict. He found an angle for letting me know his satisfaction without telling me directly: “Give me some paper, your dear mother must worry and I will put her at ease.” And he wrote her a marvelous letter, the best certificate a sincere student could receive from an admired teacher:
“Noëlle’s students did very good yoga. I am delighted to tell you that they all do well. Only master touch is required. Then the yoga in them blossoms. Her work is really good. May God bless her and you for having a disciplined daughter. She is an asset to you and to the Parisians who are interested in yoga. B.K.S. Iyengar, 26-6-71”
