In the twenty years of teaching yog, I have interacted with lots of spiritual aspirants – some come looking for solutions to their problems, some others are seeking peace and happiness. Some want to add to their knowledge and some just want to try something new. Most of these people remain dissatisfied and leave the path, the experience of yog evades them because one can only get what they are looking for and none of the above is a search for yog.

Yog begins and ends at the feet of your Guru. Guru is the channel through which the gyan and experience of yog flows into the shishya. And to get a Guru, you need to have the intent for the Guru. That is, whoever you are going to, you must want to access him completely, whatever he is, his positives as well as negatives, only then can you reach somewhere because his positives and negatives are not for you to judge and if you are judging your Guru, you might as well read a book. The path of yog first leads to the Guru and then your Guru carries you on the journey that lies ahead. So before going to anyone for yog, be sure that you want to be that, only then can you get any experience from him.

What is experience? When I ask people if they have had any experience of yog, they tell me, they saw certain shapes and colors when they sat with their eyes closed…even the mentally unsound see shapes and colors. The experience of yog is something else. Mentally sound and unsound, those with eyes and without, those with exceptional hearing abilities and those who are deaf, all those who are connected experience the same things.

There is person at Dhyan Foundation who went for jet skiing with his friends, his ski turned over and he was stranded in the middle of the ocean with no one around to rescue him. He just remembered his Guru and out of nowhere a boat emerged and took him to the shore. In those ten minutes of being stranded in the ocean he got his experience...there was a complete transformation in him, he who could not see beyond himself and his social life, suddenly immersed himself into charity and service.

There is yet another person in the Foundation who regularly lectures a huge crowd on Bhagwad Geeta. His friend, who is well into his 70s, recently developed a serious ailment. He came to me nervous and in a state of frenzy, asking me to help save his friend. I asked him, why just your friend? Why not thousands of others who too are suffering? After all, Geeta teaches nishkam karma, that is, helping whoever comes your way in a detached manner. He had no answer, he just asked me to help his friend live ten more years. Here was a man who preaches the world the path of detachment, a slight problem in his own house, and he was in a state of complete mess, Geeta forgotten. I wonder what would be happening to his students! This event explained to me the reason for the present state of world for here the teachers themselves have no faith on what they teach.

So, in a matter of seconds a complete nobody can get so much gyan that he starts teaching me only and someone who had attained so many heights, reaches rock bottom. This is the process of Guru and gyanand it is beyond the understanding of brain. Till this process begins inside you, you will keep wandering in circles looking for solutions to your problems.

There were four kids who came to me to learn chess. They were fourth-class students who wanted to appear for an open tournament (where classes upto 12th were participating). The game of chess requires at least 6 to 8 months of training and they had just three weeks. Nevertheless they had complete faith in me and for those three weeks they came to my house every single day. At the end of the training, I accompanied them for the tournament. I would go with them every single day, excepting one day when I reached late. That very day, the instructor replaced one of the better players in their team with an extra, who was the son of a bureaucrat…no prize for guessing that the instructor had got a call from the top. The final result was 2-2 but the 4th class kids got half a mark less than their senior team, thanks to the ‘call’. The ‘call business’ is the most unfortunate thing in our country…

So imagine if 4th class students in just matter of three weeks could match the capacity of their senior teams, there is no limit to what you can achieve if you have the focus. The capacity of the Guru is limitless for the shishya, he is willing to give it all away, but you should have the desire and capacity to receive it as well.

- The Writer Yogi Ashwini Ji is the head of Dhyan Foundation, Delhi.
For details contact: ashwiniyogi@yahoo.co.in.