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

© 1995 Bo Olsson
The winter of 1957-58, I spent at
Ollerup Technical College. It was a
completely new perspective that
unfolded after four years as a
carpenter’s apprentice. Inspiration
came at first from a good Danish
teacher, and then from all the
interesting people who came to give
lectures. One of the lecturers told us
that meditation gives the ability to live
in the midst of life’s bustle - and be
yourself. Not buried in your own
thoughts but resting in yourself, acting
freely from your own center. What he
said captivated me so much that I never
forgot it - I quoted it in my book, Yoga,
Tantra and Meditation in Daily Life: “I
heard about a man who had a well-run
shop, a wife and a lot of screaming
children, with the shop opening on to a
street in the noisiest, busiest part of
town. Yet that man could cut off at any
time; wherever he was, he shut his eyes
and entered a deep rest within himself.
And when he reopened his eyes after
any length of time, he was refreshed.”
After Ollerup, I went to Sweden to
work at Sparreholm Sawmill, in
Södermanland. For a few months, I
worked on the sorting bridge. It had a
large, long “table” on which the planks
were conveyed. There were a few of us
sorting the planks and boards and
placing them on the right wagons,
according to dimensions and quality. I
stood furthest down the bridge with
five to six wagons to load. It could get
very busy and I had to get all the
remaining boards on to the wagons,
before they reached the end of the table.
Otherwise they would pile up and I
would stop the whole sawing process.
However, several times a day a nail
in a log would make the saw stop and
then nothing came out to us for a while.
It was in these breaks that I began to
tilt the body up to the horizontal in the
Peacock (Mayurasana), while
supporting myself on the edge of the
table and balancing the body on the
forearms. The Peacock is a very
effective pose for the digestion and
metabolism. Yes, it is even said, that
one can
become
immune to
poisons if it
is practised
regularly. I
was
completely
unaware of
all this,
though. I just felt like doing it and
mastering it. I did not “know” that I
was doing yoga. At that time I had
never seen a book on yoga, but it did
me good and I used it several times a
day. Was it something I “remembered”?
At the end of the year, I attended the
Forest and Sawmill College in
Härnösand, Sweden for three months.
Here, I began to seek a little more
consciously - a quote from my diary:
“26/9/1958. Today, like so many other
days, I have thought how I should go
about building my knowledge of other
people and how I can develop my
thoughts - in other words, develop a
little knowledge of human nature and
teach myself to think as concentrated
as possible.
I have talked myself into being
interested in philosophy without
actually knowing anything about
philosophy, so I have begun to read a
little and have thought about starting
to explore psychology. Henry David
Thoureau says in “Walden”, which I
am presently reading, that you should
not just study life, but also live it and
take part in what you want to study. I
quote: “Which would have advanced
the most at the end of a month, - the
boy who had made his own jackknife
from the ore which he had dug and
smelted, reading as much as would be
necessary for this - or the boy who had
attended the lectures on metallurgy at
the Institute in the meanwhile, and had
received a Rodgers penknife from his
father? Which would be most likely to
cut his fingers?...”
At the time I sought knowledge of
others and not foremost of myself. That
was my mistake and the reason why the
psychology literature I had found did
not satisfy me. All in all it was about
judging others, instead of experiencing
and gaining first hand knowledge.
There was no guidance in how one
could work with oneself, no wisdom.
From Härnösand, the journey went via
Copenhagen at Christmas, to Bremen
in Germany. Here I was to spend a year,
working in the Industrihafen in a large
veneer yard. Apart from what I learnt
from my older work mates, about their
lives and what they had experienced
during the war in the various countries
where they were stationed, I became
very active in my free time.
I came into contact with a large
international group of young people, I
plunged into modern literature,
especially the German writers, such as
Stefan Zweig, Max Frisch, Ingeborg
Bachman, Wolfgang Borchert and
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