Yoga of Living (An Old and Rare Book)

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After finishing her speculative study of Adi Sankara's relevance today, Mrs. Bhoothalingam turned her attention to our epis She sought to glean some useful guidance from the life of Krishna and interpreted the Gita in terms of modern life. The Voice of Krishna served to inculcate in the minds of the people of today, the eternal values expounded by the Vedas and the epics. It can be regarded as the new Gita for the present day, striferidden world.

At this stage, owing to overstraining herself in interpreting spiritual information and perhaps also to the neglect of her physical health, she fell ill affected by spondylosis and was rendered inactive for more than two years. During various kinds of treatment including acupuncture, her mind continued to be active and she was quite exercised, strangely, not by her illness, but by econdition of her country, which had lost its direction and was sliding downhill fast, towards social, political and cultural decline.

She found that since Independence, people had lost all initiative and become passive participants in a milieu where corruption, envy, violence and false pretensions reigned supreme. The will to regain our past glory was lacking. Subject to continuing decay in morals, lulled into a sense of drugged somnolence, they had abdicated their responsibility in a democratic set-up where, the collective will of the people should guide their destiny. The inactive spell enforced by the illness enabled her to explore the social and political climate and find a remedy for the malaise. The result is the Yoga of Living.

She begins by delving into history and investigating the cause of the decline in that background. She realised that leaders like Gandhi and Nehru by dint of their positive dynamism were able to hold the attention of a whole people."Yet neither came as far as rearranging the previous links of thought" as Newton had done in his discovery of gravitation. She seeks to find in religion the need for a synthesis of the left and the right in a human being to achieve balance in behaviour and progress. Citing scientific research, she explains that the left hemisphere of the brain, is masculine, and the right is feminine and intuitive. She feels that we could consider the two modes of consciousness as Siva and Sakthi in terms of our religious background. While scientists are careful not to be dogmatic ab about this apparent dichotomy, our sages were intuitively aware of this, a kind of looking within and listening to what Gandhi called his inner voice. In a detached 'Quest Within' she finds that "until we attain inner harmony, we would not be able to restore peace to this suffering nation". The way to this harmony lies in the Yoga of Living, which needs courage, grit and perseverance. To achieve this she spells out a programme of integrated interaction among groups of young people with a dedication to serve the community through discussion and action.

She envisages that such groups will place consciousness at the centre of our life and history. The groups must foster the fullest evolution of life or creativity to the highest human potentiality. The youths who wish to prepare themselves for fresh forms of social re- construction, should begin with the ethic of responsibility.

(Speech delivered on the 18th of September 1992, on the occasion of the Agni-Akshara award to the author)

We writers take up the pen because of the urge in us to create, and express ourselves, either in poetry or prose. To begin with the writer is usually absorbed in his own meanings and convictions. Later his play, in this sphere of created meanings, becomes make-believe. While so playing, the distinction between belief and make-believe breaks down. Suddenly he finds his world has come alive and calls upon his potential creative energies. This lures him and dwarfs him at the same time. He writes, furiously gripped by the sudden desire to rise above the feeling of being diminished. Let me put it this way. What he does, against the backdrop of culture, faith and belief, is to mould his meanings and also weave in the hard world of reality into make-believe. It is this approach that gives the writing its aesthetic quality. By this firm fusion of fiction with nature, and by infusing the realities around him with his own meaning, the writer succeeds in producing a creative piece of work. The result, for him, is aesthetic joy. Unlike other pleasures this joy is soft, gentle and glowing, expanding within the writer and filling him to the brim. His work becomes successful communication if it gives a similar joy to the reader.

Now I shall run over some patches in my life which have a bearing on my urge to create and how, throughout my life as a writer, aesthetic experience has given me strength to carry on with creative work, sometimes against great odds.

That I was born at the end of the year in which Mahatma Gandhi returned to India from Africa, and also I was brought up in Bombay, the hub, the rallying point of the freedom struggle, might have had profound influences on what I wrote. There is no doubt that I retain distinct memory pictures of the speech, conduct, sense of fairness and trueness of my grandfather, K.S.Aiyar, and of the men of public spirit who moved closely with him. He was the pioneer of commercial education in India.

What I imbibed from my parents definitely built me up for my role in life. My father combined his analytical powers with his intuition very successfully. His judgement of men and matters was perfect. So was his perceptive objectivity in action. His values were such that one could see and know they were true. Of these, self discipline and the work ethic that all of us acquired were his invaluable gifts to us.