Bindu 23 - engelsk 7.p65 - Scandinavian Yoga and Meditation School

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But I was actually awake and well when he came, and he was very surprised. I am in no doubt about the power of prayer, but I do not consider myself religious...” So much for the interview. The luminous being actually appeared a few times in my early childhood. The last time was when I attended a holiday camp run by the Apostolic Church, “The King Camp” at Sejerø Bay. This incident was probably the beginning of the end of my childhood faith. I saw the luminous being again one evening, standing at the foot of my bed. Not only that, other children in the dormitory saw it too, and it caused quite a stir. The reason for my dissociation from the church was that this was exploited by the adults to create a religious fervour. Next day we children were told that all except one had been redeemed, as a result of that incident. Of course, no one dared to confess that they were the 12 one who hadn’t been redeemed. I didn’t know of the word manipulation as yet, but I now knew what it was. My first experiences of silence Silence and stillness, “mauna”, is a part of the practice of yoga - and an important part of the fine tuning of the mind so that it can learn or perceive Kriya Yoga in the best possible way. I will cover this in the next article on Kriya Yoga, where I will also explain the importance of the length of the initiation period. When I was six years old, I didn’t know anything about the silence in yoga. Nevertheless, I had some experiences of silence which I still remember clearly. The most important was a way to be silent that I began to appreciate in those years. It was the twilight hour, a quiet hour observed as the sun was setting, late in the afternoon. I, together with others, have described this in the previous issue of Bindu, both the way it was (and still is) practised in our culture and as a supplementary knowledge of this phenomenon in the yoga tradition. Sitting completely still in the living room together with other members of the family and sensing how darkness settles, was my first experience of a state of peace that came very close to meditation. The other experience is maybe just a curiosity for the reader, but for me this silence made an indelible impression. It must have been the first year after the war, April 9, the day when we remembered the Nazi invasion of Denmark. Everyone in Denmark commemorated this day with two minutes of silence at noon. All traffic stopped in Copenhagen - trams, the few cars there were at that time, horse carts and bicycles. People came out of their houses well in advance, stopped talking and went to the main street nearby. Together we stood completely still on the pavements. For a child, living very much in the present, two minutes are long and full of happenings, and I realised that silence is a valuable act and a powerful means of expression. When the silence had descended over the entire country, then something happened that made one become even more aware of the total stillness. A coachman suddenly lost control of his horses. They were scared by the silence and bolted. They ran right past my mother and me, past the terminus of tram line 14 and along Peter Bang’s Street. The only thing to be heard in the whole city were the horse hooves and the wheels rumbling on the cobble stones - and I saw a completely overwhelmed coachman on the driver’s box. He probably wished himself far away.
The third kind of silence I have already mentioned - that was the silence and stillness I experienced when I lay completely still on the back in the living room and came into contact with my being. Authority, your own or others? I did not know I learnt early on that lack of knowledge of the law (also the unwritten) cannot be excused. When one grows up, one gradually conforms to society or to those one knows, family, playmates... One cannot know beforehand how to behave. This is learnt through upbringing. If one breaks unwritten rules, even those one does not know, then one is sentenced anyway - unless one is sure of oneself. I did as I was told I was in the school yard of the Søndermarks School, one day right after school in 1951. One of the teachers, on playground duty, had asked me earlier in the day to let down the tyres of the bicycles found outside the bike stand and leaning against the trees in the school yard. So I did as I was told. And now they stood and waited for me by their bicycles. The teacher did not get a thrashing, but I did. I was really boxed around by those bigger and older than myself, and whose tyres I had deflated. Hanne, the blond girl from my class stood and watched while I lay by the bike stands, holding up my arm in order not to receive any more blows to my head. I did not know that I should not do as the teacher had asked me, but I was about to learn now. At least I learnt to see the task I had been told to do and had also done, from a new angle. “You could have just pretended to do it. You could have bent down and said pssst with your mouth near the valve.” I wonder whether it was the same day and for the same reason that in a break, I had the whole school after me, whistling and shouting boo! boo! boo! in unison - all 300 children. A teacher came towards me and asked what was wrong. “Nothing,” I said as I ran past him. Well, at least I got Hanne’s sympathy out of it. We were the last to leave the bicycle stands and the school yard. Very much in love, we rode home from school holding hands. A teenager’s thoughts and wishes on telepathy When I was a teenager, I imagined how it would be when all people could read each other’s thoughts and emotions. I expected it was something we all would attain. I could not see the wood for the trees. I was fascinated by the thought and at the same time I feared it. I fantasised how others would react to what I was thinking, or rather how I would feel about having my innermost thoughts revealed. But why first as a teenager? Well, small children do not bother with thoughts in that way, they have not been hurt yet. Fear has not yet made them form rigid ideas on life, they have not yet learnt to take credit for what happens. Maybe children take it for granted that we all know everything. A child does not understand that adults are affected when he/she expresses what is in the air... “Imagine if others knew what I was thinking.” All the “flippy” thoughts a teenager has on the way into the adult universe. All the reactions that arise when one goes from one age group to another. Values that no longer hold, because experience grows and tells you that there are also other ways to see things. All my “own” desires and longings, it would be embarrassing if everyone could see what I was thinking. Maybe in my thoughts I would reveal something I had done, or wanted to do. Or things I cannot, or dare not, tell people but deep inside dream about telling - they would just be able to read in me: My fear, my longings about sex, romance and excitement, my love! It will be unbearable, I thought, and I imagined how one must learn to control one’s thoughts. I imagined, mistakenly, that this was what the yogis did. No one should see what I think. All the same... as much as I feared it, I wished for it and expected it to happen, that all of us little by little would become telepathic. So that we did not need to hide anything from each other and, therefore, did not need to feel fear or insecurity towards each other. At that time I did not know what I know today. I did not know that almost all people identify themselves with all thoughts, that they make the thoughts their own and isolate themselves behind pride, guilt or embarrassment. Rather than hide something from others, they hide things from themselves. Instead of experiencing the thoughts that appear in the mind, as something just going by of their own accord - as thoughts that are connected to situations and habits and learned ways of reacting. I did not know that certain thoughts are utterly 13
Page 2 and 3: A yoga school sees the light of day
Page 4 and 5: Yoga for pregnant women - before, d
Page 6 and 7: The shoulder pose is one of the pos
Page 8 and 9: Some look intensely at the yoga exe
Page 10 and 11: others. Nothing is final or permane
Page 14 and 15: asic reactions to life, and that th
Page 16 and 17: Heinrich Böll, as well as Franz Ka
Page 18 and 19: society lives on its own illusions.
Page 20 and 21: One day, a close friend, the painte
Page 22 and 23: population catastrophe. Rousseau wo
Page 24 and 25: As to being a yoga teacher, I do no
Page 26 and 27: and show you how to return to yours
Page 28 and 29: This was a little about my life as
Page 30 and 31: Håå International Course Center -
Page 32 and 33: Yoga, Tantra and Meditation in Dail
Page 34 and 35: Read Bindu - previous issues are st

Bindu 23 - engelsk 7.p65 - Scandinavian Yoga and Meditation School

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