Continuing the Question and answer session from the south Asia centre Bangalore in 2002. This is an enjoyable and lighthearted session driven by questions from the listeners and is a chance to hear from Swamiji about some aspects of his life in India.
The presence at the event of his good friend Padma, (she had organised events for him in Hyderabad and around the South when he lived in India), inspires Swamiji to talk about the time when he was recovering from the damage to his lungs sustained at Bhopal, during the world’s largest industrial spill of toxic gas which came from the Union Carbide Plant. Many people in the city died, but he was on the outskirts and got away with his life but damaged lungs. He stayed with Padma in Hyderabad while he was using Ayurveda therapy to try and repair the damage.
This was also a time when he taught in quite a few different places in Europe; Swamiji has always been keen on teaching the Vigyana Bhairava Tantra, a text from Kashmir Shaivism but relevant to everyone on the Yogic path. Practices in the text are reminders to pay attention to your life in the Present Moment. We will publish a series of recordings from a Vigyana Bhairava Tantra course (also from the archives) very soon, on this blog.
There is another course Swamiji talks of, that he’s doing in Paris, on the Granthis so he gives an overview of that concept of blockages on the emotional level, and how the techniques of Yoga can work on the physical, energetic and mind levels to start to resolve such blockages. In this way, Yoga can work on releasing those aspects of the personality which are not very useful, however they have arisen.
In fact you’ll find recordings from those Paris sessions already on the blog.
The talk becomes wide-ranging and at some points becomes a debate with the young audience about whether animals have the capacity for self-reflection!
Please enjoy
Swami Nishchalananda 
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