Reflections on the Isha Yoga Centre Experience

J John

How does one reflect on your experiences at the Isha Yoga Centre, Coimbatore, part of the Sadguru Jaggi Vasudev-led organisation, the Isha Foundation? It so happened that I stayed in Isha Yoga Centre for a night and had the opportunity to move around the open areas.

Isha Yoga Centre is a place where you lose your identity and merge with a perceived reality. The organising of the visible and operational spaces of Isha Yoga Centre usher someone into this perceived reality marked by apparent harmony and absence of contradictions. 

1. Gender

At Isha Yoga Centre, there is obvious fusion of women and men in all spaces and activities. At Isha Yoga Centre women and men move around freely and both genders are everywhere without discernible boundaries. Men and women manage gates. Women and men are at the reception. Women and men are in the open grounds, under the trees sitting individually and performing meditation or chanting. Women and men perform same roles in serving food at the mess hall. Women and men are in the cloth shop and merchandise stores. Women and men manage cottages where visitors reside. No job, no space seem to be demarcated exclusively for men and/or for women.

Does this mark gender equality? How does the consciousness of gender equality work? Where seemingly there is no gender discrimination, how one could gain consciousness of gender equality. Where, the ostensible material reality defies gender contradictions, the consciousness that you attain takes you to an unreal world, far away from the historical, cultural, political, legal and institutional discriminations. The consciousness of the unity of women and men gets geographically circumscribed. 

2. Caste and Religious Identities 

In the visible and operational spaces of Isha Yoga Centre, caste and religion are not factors that establish the identity of the individual. The most obvious spots where caste or religion become non-issues are at the time of entry into the premises, at the time of registration, at the time of taking food, at the time of allocating rooms and most importantly, at the time of entry into the temple premises. There are no visible indications at any of these spots to make one feel that the representatives of Isha Yoga Centre are conscious of the caste and religious identity of the person they are interacting with. Consequently, you also lose sense of your caste and religious identity; you are just one among the many inmates of the Isha Yoga Centre and merge into the Isha’s surreal atmosphere. 

3. Women as Priestesses

In India, managing the temples and its most sacred place is an exclusive privilege of brahmin males. Temples at the Isha Yoga Centre manifests a fundamental divergence. Linga Bhairavi Temple at the Isha Yoga Centre is managed by women priestesses. Whether they are from the Brahmin caste is irrelevant at Isha Yoga Centre. A marriage ceremony was solemnised by woman priestess supported by another woman. Women monks and devotees are allowed to enter the temple and its sanctum sanctorum even during menstruation.

In normal circumstances this step, that turns on its head centuries old religious beliefs, traditions, and practices, could be seen as a revolutionary step contributing to great churning and transformation in the society. However, this is not happening. Probably, Isha Yoga Centre has been cautious that the message remains within the precincts. 

First, Isha Yoga Centre does not consider itself as a religious order. It says, there is no religion in Isha Yoga Centre and that it is a spiritual centre. 

Second, Isha Yoga Centre underplays the social significance of women performing the tasks of priests in temples within the premises of Isha Yoga Centre. Isha Foundation does not consider it as an act that fundamentally challenges the male domination in priesthood. Rather, Isha Foundation underplays female priesthood as a matter of ‘suitability’ and a ‘tilt’. To quote from the Isha Foundation website, “The question of who maintains a temple is not about superiority and inferiority, it is a question of suitability. For different kinds of jobs, different kinds of people are suitable. Accordingly, it is done. It is not the gender, it is the quality. Certain qualities come much more easily to women. Certain other qualities come much more easily to men. But this is not a fixed ratio. …So when we say men and women, we are talking about that little tilt and about making use of that tilt because life is always working with probabilities, not with certainties.”

4. Absence of Discord and Divergence

The group dynamics within Isha Yoga Centre and engagements outside are marked by the absence, non-recognition or avoidance of discord and divergence. 

Within the Isha Yoga Centre premises, there is unification of identities, as evidenced in interpersonal behaviour, that subsumes divergences. Inside the premises, people interact among each other, do yoga, attend classes, take food, purchase clothes and other artefacts, visit temples, go in and out of gates, sleep etc. Apparently, gender, religion or caste do not define interactions associated with these activities. 

How do we understand this ‘reality’? It is a perceived subjective ‘reality’ within the confines of the Ashram. Most importantly, it avoids recognition of historically constructed social, cultural, and economic discords and divergences that defines identities and characteristics of individuals and their interactions. The ‘reality’ of the Ashram derives from not recognising and resolving the discords and divergences that exists in a world outside the phenomenal world of the Isha Yoga Centre. The Isha Yoga Centre ‘reality’ originates from the subjective perceptions of individuals that the historically evolved discords and divergences in caste, gender and religion do not exist within the precincts of the Foundation. It is more a ‘subjective reality’.

The immediate world outside the Isha Yoga Centre, the world in which we live and the world in which Isha Yoga Centre situates, is marked by the ‘empirical reality’ of caste-based, ethnicity-based, religion-based and gender-based discriminations, violence and exploitations. Isn’t it important to engage with this discord and divergences and transform the corporeal, material, and cultural factors that engender and sustain those? 

5. Deep Religiosity

We get a sense of deep religiosity in Isha Yoga Centre, though it is being emphasised that Isha Yoga Centre is not a religious institution. Shiva, the Adiyogi or the first Guru who is acknowledged by the Sadguru as the innovator of the science of yoga, is the reigning deity of Isha Yoga Centre.  Coimbatore Isha Yoga Centre has in its premises a 112 ft bust of Adiyogi, which was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the Mahasivaratri day, 24 February 2017 in the presence of Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Palanisamy and the state’s Governor. The 112 ft signifies the 112 methods of yoga the Adiyogi has prescribed. The sprawling campus has the statue of Nandi, Shiva’s vehicle in eternal waiting mode, Dhyanalinga Temple, Devi Temple, Ling Bhairavi Temple Adi Yogi Alayam and Spanda Hall. The area reverberates Shiva Mantras. The Centre emphasises on inner transformation of individuals through adoption of ‘scientific’ yogic practices. 

All activities in Isha Yoga Centre is ritualistic. Waiting for registration and the act of registration, walking through designated paths, removal of chappals at various points, entering and taking food at the Bhikhsa hall, entering temples, and offering prayers, open air yogic practices or those done inside buildings, reverberating mantras – all have ritualistic element in them. In the absence of scriptures, texts like that of established religious creeds, the behavioural order and behavioural commonalities are achieved through the ritualistic actions that allows for layers of interpretations.

It is this omni present surreal religiosity and ritualism that gives the Isha Yoga Centre its ‘perceived reality’.  The inmates and visitors are drawn into an immanent consciousness where they are largely free of the discords and divergences of the world outside.

6. The Gates

Probably, the perceived subjective reality at the Isha Yoga Centre is not meant to confront the objective reality of the external world. The Gates have an important function to play in the sustenance of the perceived subjective reality of Isha Yoga Centre. There are many Gates within the premises, and all are managed by Isha Yoga Centre staff or volunteers. As mentioned earlier, many of the Gate keepers are women and all Gate keepers are extremely polite and soft-spoken. They are highly alert and verify your legitimacy as you pass through gates. The most visible identifying mark is a band tied on your wrist at the time of registration. It remains with you till you finally pass through the departure gate. The wrist band has a QR code, the place of your stay and the date up to which you have your registration. It is on you all the time, even when you are bathing. At the exit gate, when you leave the Isha Yoga Centre, the gate keeper, with a pair of scissors, cut it down and takes it away. You are now in the ‘empirical reality’.