If you ever asked a Formula 1 driver, what he does to pass a corner, his reply would carry this essence — “it is advisable to use your vision techniques on a curve and to slow down with your accelerator.” The roads of life, of the township we live in, aren’t straight either. At times, we buckle ourselves up to the driver’s seat, insert the key to the ignition and take off on such roads where we know every nook and corner, the number of streetlights, and even the counts and placements of each streetlight and every speed-breaker that lies ahead of us. A drive where the speed of the car is pre-determined in our minds based on our familiarity with the roads in that journey. We precisely know the number of minutes it will take us to get to B from A.
Many times, to receive something priceless in life, to acquire something extraordinary, we need to pull ourselves out of and beyond that comfort zone. A zone that we were used to living in and surroundings which we call our society and have gone ahead to define it as our Universe. The Himalayas say our world is not just Earth, it is infinite, with the world we mean the entire cosmos.
The cityscapes have straight, silk-smooth roads, but this language doesn’t apply to the mountains. Roads made on the mountains as a labour of hard work will be brought down by the mountains themselves. Roads on mountains don’t belong to its nature. In no time, in a joyous, deep secretive way, these mountains sustain their treasures — the mountain itself will bring those roads down like it never existed. The roads on the mountains are never straight, they are full of curves and corners. When you take such roads, it switches on your austerity mode of living. You are shaken up from inside to out — your brain, mind and body are completely churned up and down. Mountains don’t let you sleep much, they want you up and awake.
But this law, on the contrary, doesn’t apply to urban life — humans can be found sleeping deep even on the roadside. On mountains, you will find people are awake, more so, when you are scaling the higher mountains.
(The author is a spiritual yogic master. Founder, chairman and course director of Akshar Yoga, and president of the World Yoga Organisation)
