Don't Fix The Broken Yogi

File under: Blogs of Note

Today we were informed one of our more challenging interlocutors in the comments on this blog, Conrad Goehausen, aka Broken Yogi, has one of his own, The Broken Yogi Samyama, in which we turned up a few months back:

I recently had an interesting exchange with Jody over at Guruphilliac over a criticism he made of Bharat Gajjar, an elderly yogic teacher in the Sivananda tradition teaching in Delaware who had mentioned in some newspaper interview that he at times felt and even saw Sivananda giving him guidance in how to teach others. Bharat also mentioned that some of his students had at times seen Sivananda as well. Jody, who otherwise liked the guy, felt that this was an exploitive and deluding thing to tell his students, and that it would lead to delusions on their part. In our exchange, in which I tried to defend Bharat, who otherwise seemed to be the picture of a benevolent and kindly yoga teacher, Jody makes it clear that he views all such claims that subtle phenomena actually exist outside the imaginal subjectivity of the practitioner as simply superstitious personal mythologies, and represent nothing more than cultural indoctrination of Hinduism which deludes and detracts from higher understanding.

And there is not one single shred of evidence to prove otherwise, BY, outside of the cataclysmic flood of wacky personal anecdotes which comprise spiritual wisdom for your average, horrifically un- and under-informed New Age™ seeker.

Every subtle experience every person has ever known has been confined to their own, subjective envelope, even those allegedly experienced by multiple individuals. As a practitioner of self-inquiry, please be advised that any subtle experience you might have is to be accompanied by one clear question: who is the one who is having this subtle experience? That's all is takes to discount all subtle experience in one fell swoop with regards to our actual truth of being (along with anything and everything else that seems to occur in this world of ours.)

Despite the fact he's labeled us a [gasp] "materialist," we're glad Broken Yogi comes by and takes the time to keep us honest. While we may not see eye-to-eye vis-á-vis the import of seemingly supernaturally-generated spiritual experiences, the big wide world holds open the space for both of us to appreciate each others' take on the business of uncovering what is real.