Me

reflection. It isn’t a kind of yoga that requires a lot of physical exertion, but is instead a process of internal exploration. It was through this process that the swami helped me open the so-called kundalini—an evolutionary energy, invisible and immeasurable, that ascends through the spine, moving through the seven chakras of being. It’s pretty crazy, because supposedly through the practice of kriya yoga one will ultimately begin to hear the body’s natural sounds. According to the philosophy of kriya yoga, the body is full of sounds and fluids where energy comes and goes; what happens is that we, in our mad rush to live in the modern world, ignore them. But these bodily sounds are what they really call the sound of silence, which, once you hear it, can connect you with your own center, where you will find tranquillity, serenity, and peace.
    Silence is really one single note, just one note. It is the sound you hear when you turn off all the lights and all the gadgets in your house, when you are alone and you lie down in your bed to sleep. What you hear in those moments is the sound of silence. And it is the sound that one seeks to hear through the practice. That is the note I am looking for in my meditation, the one that allows me to concentrate and removes me from everything around me. That is what the swami taught me.
    When I arrived at this ashram, in that village by the sea in a corner of India, I didn’t know anything about this. I had traveled to India because I thought it was an interesting country, because I needed to rest, because the little yogi’s words awoke a curiosity in me. But I didn’t have the slightest clue what I was looking for. I didn’t imagine what I would learn. In fact, my vision was so simple that when I was told that the swami was a yoga master, I imagined he would teach me how to stretch or touch my big toe to my ear.
    As we know it in the West, the practice of yoga has been completely commercialized. Today it is just another business, and anyone can become a yoga instructor just by paying several hundred dollars to become certified. But in India, the country where yoga was born, the people who teach it have spent entire lifetimes preparing to do so. Now, I am not saying that commercial yoga is a bad thing—if it works for you and gives you the peace and tranquillity you need, then carry right along. But because I had the good fortune to be able to learn from a sage who explained the whole philosophy on which it is based, this is the yoga that I practice.
    I only spent four days with the swami on that trip, but those four days changed my life completely. Every day we would do a ceremony in which he would repeat various Sanskrit mantras with the purpose of helping me to find that divine sound, the sound of silence. Once you find the sound of silence and you are able to hear it in any situation, be it in a train station when you are surrounded by lots of people or alone in your room, you get closer to seeing the divine pendulum and feeling a divine vibration. The divine pendulum is something we always carry within; it is a frequency that moves from ear to ear when we close our eyes. Only through practice will you be able to appreciate this. And later, with more practice, you are able to feel the divine vibration that circulates throughout your whole body.
    Everything begins with silence. Once you find the sound of silence, you are able to separate yourself from all that is physical and everything around you. That’s when you can advance to the next level—the divine vibration and the pendulum.
    When he taught me this I not only believed that I found my center, but I also connected with the energy of the universe. He sat down next to me and placed his hand on my ears and I heard it right away—that high note that came from deep within me. Later the swami placed one hand on my spine and the other hand on my chest and asked: “Do you feel it?”
    And in that precise moment, I felt the vibration. Later he put his hands on my eyes and I could see the pendulum, exactly as he had described it to me.
    I thought, “What is this? This man is a magician!”
    Later I tried to do it again on my own, but I couldn’t. So he said to me:
    “Keep trying. Keep meditating, because with practice you will get there. With practice everything is possible. When the end comes, everyone will throw themselves to the ground and pray. When the chaos comes, when the world is coming to an end with