“The Christian church was considered to be dogmatic, unhappy, disheveled with the worldly powers. Instead of the traditional building of faith, modern science spread: rational, interested only in the demonstrable, many too cold. Those who did not want to get along without a higher sense, suffered from the gap. India offered to fill these. The distant subcontinent stood for the very other. It had become fashionable for scholars to learn Sanskrit. Romantic swarming spirits like the Schlegel brothers, but also sober enlighteners like the education reformer Wilhelm von Humboldt.”
“Vivekananda knew … the Indian reality. The ascetics often annoyed their compatriots enough: holy worthless people who devoted themselves exclusively to their liberation from the earthly swarm at the expense of the general public. Her intrusive prayer was a plague to many. It was not advisable to get involved with them. The yogis, skilled in breathing and body control, often showed considerable fighting strength. Asceticism has its roots in military service, in preparation for the struggle. For centuries, Indian ascetics were on pay with rulers of this side … The warlike ascetics organised in their own regiments, taut by their spiritual leaders … To the modern Indian middle-class, these jugglers were a horror, an image of the old, backward India.”
Swami Vivekananda highly respected master, the famous Guru Ramakrishna, “an uneducated man from a Bengali village, lived as a simple priest in a temple of the ghastly goddess Kali on the Ganges .Almost every day, he spent hours in ecstasy, obsessed with potions, he claimed.”
“Vivekananda stroked the gods, the cumbersome rituals, the temple service of the Hindus. What remained was little more than meditation, the art of immersion. And, as a framework, a new doctrine of yoga. Until then, yoga was a jumble of somehow redemptive exercises; every temple in the country could do it differently. Vivekananda made it a clear method that could also be understood by Western customers. His goal was an enlightened yoga, useful and healthy, intellectually equal to the West.”He saw yoga as the Indian science of higher consciousness,” says Van der Veer, “a kind of spirituality light.”
“Politically left and cosmically enlightened, that was not a contradiction in the 19th century. Especially in France and England, the worship of the East mingled with the protest against its exploitation…”
“The universities, from Oxford to Cambridge, were reserved for the Church and the nobility. So the people made their science themselves. To this day, the brave love of experiment unites the esoteric of all degrees.”
Monika Neugebauer-Wölk. The esotericists searched for the primordial religion from which the others descended, by proving that all human beings are children of one faith, they hoped to put an end to the devastating religious wars forever. They feared to get out of hand, so they had to become scientific themselves now.
“High energy physicist and bestselling author Fritjof Capra (“The Tao of Physics”, “Wendezeit”) propagated the unification of particle physics and Eastern mysticism. With an ecospiritual impulse about holistic consciousness and the “communion of the individual with the cosmos” he became the academic favorite guru of the “New Age”.”
Thomas Metzinger ideal image of the researcher: the constant searcher, who strives for the truth away from the earthly gear. He must not fool himself, and he must be prepared to give up secured positions at any time if new findings contradict them. Metzinger pleads for cultivating this honesty as a virtue. He has a worldly spirituality, the opposite of faith that simply believes. He meditate regularly for 36 years.
Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture by Mark Singleton. “The British religious scholar … proves that gymnastic yoga, as we know it, is not a hundred years old.”
In the classical Hindu scriptures - the Upanishads, the Bhagavadgita - there is hardly any mention of yoga. And if, then it’s about spiritual perfection, meditation. Physical exercises, if mentioned at all, are mainly used for breathing control and the high art of sitting still.
Eugen Sandow, Schwarzenegger of 19th century turned his well-modeled body into a spectacle of almost sacred grandeur: white powdered or painted in bronze, he posed as a statue on the stages of the world. Tours have taken him through England and the USA. He sold exercise equipment and guidebooks, published a magazine, and started a chain of gyms that taught Sandow’s body culture.
Pehr Henrik Ling, a pioneer of massage and curative gymnastics. Ling’s teaching quickly spread throughout Europe. The British even introduced “Swedish Gymnastics” in their schools and in the army. Ling’s ideas came to India via this route. In particular, the Christian Association of Young Men (YMCA) took care of the practical dissemination on site … the fitness apostles of the YMCA constantly worked out new asanas for them based on the well-known yoga poses … India provided the superstructure: only in the alleged motherland of spirituality could the good gymnastics be refined into a witty mystery.
Swami Vivekananda’s idea of the peaceful, spiritualized East as the counter-world became a real power of modernity.
“The Americans apparently reinvented Indian spirituality as a mix of wellness, self-optimization, and occasionally a whistle. Today, the idea of spirituality is no longer the progressive antithesis to the rigid state religion … What remains is a label that pretends to be more meaningful.”
concerning the spiritual in art The painter Wassily Kandinsky saw himself as a pioneer of a new spirituality. “Concerning the Spiritual in Art”, 1911 (Василий Кандинский, “О
drunkard’s search A policeman sees a drunk man searching for something under a streetlight and asks what the drunk has lost. He says he lost his keys and they both look under the streetlight together. After a few minutes the policeman asks if he is sure he lost them here, and the drunk replies, no, and that he lost them in the park. The policeman asks why he is searching here, and the drunk replies, "this is where the light is".
sgv wisdom of no escape What is something physical that you are working on in your practice (skill, awareness to generate, a thing to heal). What are the limiting factors in the present moment (specific, anatomical, connected). What are the tools that can help with these factors. Inner goal. What is the energy you are trying to create or a negative pattern you are working on to transcend. Alchemy. What is the good quality you already have that will help you with that other thing and the tool you learned (during the training) that will help you. Three most important things to grow as a teacher.
the spiritual bricolage of yoga from Is Yoga Not Even a Hundred Years Old via Instapaper “Vivekananda, clever enough to understand his audience, invented it. As Dworschak puts it
yoga sutra biography “The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali: a Biography” A comprehensive guide into Hindu texts in the beginning of the Chapter 2 Ramachandra Chaudhari became