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FOREWORD

There are many very good books and reference works on hatha yoga and yoga in general, not to mention the countless yogic scriptures written by yogis and their students down the centuries.

I am writing this book more as a guide for my students and for those who may long for new perspectives beyond the hatha yoga mainstream. Apart from a few exceptions, I have not included any instructions on asanas or on pranayama techniques. There are very good and detailed practice books for this.

Rather, it is meant to give practitioners of hatha yoga a certain orientation in their daily yoga practice and in reading the spiritual scriptures, whether they come from the Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Tibetan traditions or from our own equally deep tradition in the West. Those who seriously search will find what they are looking for anywhere.

The idea for this book was born from my own practice and from many years of experience as a hatha yoga teacher and my earlier years as a teacher of Aikido.

My own search began with the reading of “Tao Te Ching” by Master Lao-Tzu, a Taoist work that has accompanied me throughout my life to this very day. At that time, I was 19 years old and had never heard of Taoism, let alone spirituality. I was a convinced Marxist and enthusiastic about "dialectical materialism". The idea that we are all connected with each other and that the eternal, intransient Tao flows through us was not at all acceptable to an "angry young man" such as myself at that time. Nevertheless, this little masterpiece from the 7th century BCE continued to fascinate me over the years to come. I always carried it with me and could not escape it. It felt like an eddy, pulling me more and more into it. This magical and omnipresent, flowing Tao became more and more a part of my view of the world.

The "Tao Te Ching", together with the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads and the works of the English philosopher and sage Paul Brunton, is still one of my favourite and most inspiring readings.

In the mid-1970s, I came into contact with the writings and ideas of the still relatively unknown genius Wilhelm Reich. Especially his middle and late work on vegetotherapy and the discovery of "Orgone" fascinated me. With the term "Orgone" Wilhelm Reich meant exactly the same as the Tao, an energy / power flowing through the universe and us human beings.

A few years later I did psychotherapy based on Reich and Gerda Boysen (a ground-breaking massage therapist from Norway) and was able to experience in my own body what energy currents flow through us and how chronic blockages can dissolve.

From the 1980s until the early 1990s I practised and taught Aikido. Here this universally flowing force is called Ki (in Chinese Chi).

Some years ago, I came across the books of the English philosopher and sage Paul Brunton (1898-1981). This pioneer of spirituality travelled through many countries, especially in Asia, in his search for what he called Truth, until he found his teacher in Ramana Maharshi. From 1934 until the 1950s he wrote and published books, articles, essays and notes on Eastern and Western philosophy and on his own spiritual quest. After that he retired from public life but continued to write daily notes. It was important to him to remain anonymous. He did not accept any students. His notes were collected posthumously from 1984 onwards and were arranged according to subjects into 16 volumes. Today these “Notebooks of Paul Brunton” are accessible to everyone on the website of the "Paul Brunton Philosophic Foundation". They are an immense source of inspiration for all of us who, like him, want to know the ultimate truth about our existence. In a deep sense, this book is a tribute to this small, modest man, with the hope that his life's work will become better known in the hatha yoga community.

So, many of the ideas and experiences I am describing here are not new. Some of them I have adopted from teachers of very different spiritual traditions that I have had the good fortune to meet on my personal path. Although I am writing from the perspective of hatha yoga, I feel equally committed to other spiritual paths, which ultimately all lead back to one and the same source. The names and terms used are only sometimes different.

Nevertheless, I hope very much that I have recounted all these ideas and experiences faithfully and that they "ignite" in my students and other readers just as they once did in me. I have tried to see and to convey them in relation to our daily practice, both on the mat and in everyday life. Above all, I am aware that the knowledge imparted here was written down by me, but by no means belongs to me alone.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank those who helped me clarify these ideas in the many conversations we had, especially Andreas Buhr for the janitor/headmaster analogy, Ewan Bacon for his help with quantum physics, Ute Busch-Bernard for her motivating support and Kirti and Prema Seetharam for their meticulous proofreading and many helpful suggestions.

My very special thanks go to Dr Shrikrishna Bhushan Tengshe from Mumbai and Dr Bettina Bley from the Rosenwaldhof in Brandenburg. Without these two amazing people this book would not have been possible.

To be a teacher is a great privilege for me, but at the same time it is comes with an obligation. On the one hand, there are the many teachers, still alive or passed away, who have enriched and delighted us all with their knowledge and experience. And, on the other hand, we have our own students, to whom we feel obliged and whom we would like to help to follow their own path of knowledge.

Without students there are no teachers, and without teachers there are no students. It is like an endless continuum. Properly understood, they help each other on their respective paths.

Out of this feeling of gratitude I now dedicate this book to the many inspiring teachers and wish my own students and readers many new and, most importantly, real-life insights on their spiritual journey.