Who

Robert has been practising and teaching yoga for over 36 years in South Africa, Mauritius, India and Australia. Robert was initiated into yoga and meditation at the age of 20 by his Diksha Guru HH Sri Swami Venkatesanandaji Maharaj of the Sivananda tradition, Rishikesh and was given the spiritual name Narayan.

Truth

This is not a static universe; as if someone had taken a slice out of time and space and somehow frozen it forever. To the contrary, everything is in motion, everything is constantly changing. The leaver flutter on the trees, in the breeze the grass moves, our bodies are constantly changing, growing, decaying, blood moving through the veins and arteries, synapses firing. From one moment to the next nothing stays the same. Everything everywhere is changing. The entire universe is expanding at an accelerating rate and we are caught up, a part of that expansion.

This being so, how can we come to an understanding of truth? If everything is always changing how can we know what is true and what is not? Thinking that we know what truth is, is a bit like riding on a railway carriage with the blinds all closed. We don't know we are moving because everything is moving with us. So my truth is that we are not moving. The problem arises when I believe I am absolutely right and if you disagree with me you must be wrong and so I become angry and decide you have no right to exist. I will chop off your head or nail you to a cross if you continue to disagree, to challenge my belief. Religions are like this, philosophies, world views. 

Then by some chance event the window blinds are opened and the landscape outside is seen to be rushing by and my whole concept of what is true changes. Suddenly I am not so sure. Looking out of the window I must accept some other truth is possible. Better still, get off the train and standing still by the side of the tracks watch it go by and disappear into the distance. All my certainties and concepts and firm beliefs are suddenly no more than a speck receding into the distance. 

So to know truth we have to be constantly enquiring into the changing nature of reality. Observing form a place of inner stillness. To know truth means to know that we do not know at all. As Sri Guru Gita explains in Verse 40:

Yasyāmatam tasya matam 

matam yasya na veda sah, 

Ananya-bhāva-bhāvāya 

tasmai śrīgurave namah. 

One who (thinks he) knows not, knows; 

One who (thinks he) knows, knows not. 

Salutations to Shri Guru, 

who's thinking has no other thoughts (but those of the Absolute) 

So truth cannot be reduced to a static concept, rather it is a process of constant discovery. Why would the creator, if there is one, bring this into existence with its associated suffering and grief? We celebrate the coming into being of new life and we grieve the passing of the old. Perhaps it is to give us the joy of constant discovery of the new. The artist has a vision of what was not there before and in creating and sharing that creation experiences delight. The travellers discover places they have not seen before and there is ecstasy and wonder. The old must pass in order to make way for the new. Everything remains in balance. Gain and loss, joy and grief. One cannot exist without the other. Can there be spring if there is not first winter? 

So we gradually discover what in yoga is termed surrender, Ishvara Pranidhana. We learn not to cling to our notions and expectations. We take the leap to get off the train and follow our inner yearning to be still. We watch in silence. In the midst of all the change there is a deep stillness within. And from this stillness understanding of truth arises. 

This is our practice. We sit for meditation and during the movement, the asana, we are watching, a witness to the ever changing form of the body. We adopt sakshi bhavana, witness awareness and in humility, knowing that truth can never be captured, reduced to a set of rules or contained in a particular world view,  we surrender to that divine unchanging infinite omnipresence that is the substratum of our existence.