Me, My Non-Self, and I: More On Where Our Teacher Learned

As I mentioned in the last post, a friend took me yesterday afternoon to the old yogashala, in the old part of Mysore, where T. Krishnamacharya taught Ashtanga to Sri K Pattabhi Jois in the 1930's. It's at the center of the ground floor of a huge white palace building that is at once stately and deteriorating, in a sort of charming way.

The history books have it that Krishnamacharya was summoned to Mysore in 1926, by Shri Krishnarajendra Wodeyar IV, the then Maharajah (or "King" of Mysore), who had become gravely ill. Krishnamacharya cured the Raj with yoga, and was then granted this yogashala on the Jaganmohan Palace grounds. Early students included not only Pattabhi Jois, but BKS Iyengar, who arrived at the age of 15, suffering from malaria, tuberculosis, typhoid and malnutrition. Iyengar was also cured. The yogashala was closed in 1941, as fighting in the streets of Mysore broke out in the battle for Independence from Britain.

Walking into the building, and onto the very floor where yoga titans Jois and Iyengar were taught by the most influential hatha yoga teacher in the world, I got goose bumps. History was seeping out from everywhere. I imagined going back in time, and showing up here to learn. I imagined how I probably would have gotten my ass kicked. Although the ground floor is now reputed to be a mutt (or math, a kind of Hindu monastery), it looks like hardly any maintenance has been done since 1941. I did not encounter any monks or devotees or anyone or anything alive other than spirits and pigeons. The latter have left droppings all over the tiled practice floor in the center. The practice area is smaller than that of SKPJ's shala in Gokulam, but the room is enormous. With the ceiling about 30-40 feet high, no chance of hitting your hands on it while doing Surya Namaskar A! Pillars, balconies, and walls were painted in a dozen different colors. There is no electricity, or lighting, other than beams of sunlight streaming down through the dark air. My friend told me that the word "guru" means light meeting darkness.

Upstairs is the shala of BNS Iyengar (not to be confused with BKS), another of Krishnamarchya's students. In appearance, and I am told in many other ways as well, BNS's shala is the opposite of Pattabhi's. It's dark, dingy, and ramshackle. In the West, it would be called shabby chic. People would be organizing rave parties there. On one of the old rugs, a homeless man was sleeping. On the walls are amazing photo albums, showing Krishnamarcharya perfecting some of the most difficult poses imaginable.

The whole place is like an unkept museum, with no locks on the doors, and no security. Amazing, considering that at least the ground floor should be considered perhaps the most historic location in all of hatha yoga.