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Bhashkar Perinchery has been teaching the art of inner growth and “flowering” of the human potential for 25 years, giving individual counseling, leading seminars, and lecturing at universities and symposiums all over the world. In 1998, he came to the U.S. to lead events and talks during the Martin Luther King-Mahatma Gandhi Peace Celebrations. Since that time, Bhashkar Perinchery initiated the Inner Metamorphosis University and has offered various events in and around Chicago. He lives in Germany where he leads the Universal and Multiversal Academy.

Guy Spiro: Bhashkar, I usually like to start by asking how you got to where you are now.

Bhashkar Perinchery: One of the things in the life process of the human being is that it is not just chronological. It is not something we can explain logically. This is part of the mystical process of life and when we try put it in a logical way, it loses its real sense. But for the fun of it, one can put it in this way:

     The Inner Process is not something that starts by just the logical part, and in my case it was not something which I was planning to do at all. It’s much more that in my growing up, the insight arose (which one can refer to as something from this life or something from the previous incarnations) that one has to orient to nature; that is the basis, that is where one has to look, where one has to find the foundation.

     This was one of the factors which led me as I studied filmmaking. Not for money making, but to move in such a way as to allow life to guide me, rather than just trying to fix in my head which direction or way I should go.

     I started studying filmmaking and I did some, but then as life carried me, many things turned in different ways and I came across the mystical teachings. It became more and more in tune with what I was inwardly feeling, and developments came forward that I find myself in Germany for the past 25 years.

GS: What were the first mystical teachings that you ran across?

BP: Growing up in a simple Indian village, you see that life there is very much oriented to the perception that there is something beyond us. There is a divine process behind all life. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to India, but there is still a certain connection to this mystical process, which I find really valuable, especially when I see how life has manifested in different parts of the world. In some parts, it manifests with a different emphasis so that there is a variety of processes taking place, in parallel. I have found a great emphasis on the spiritual dimension and the orientation to something deeper, something higher, as the basis of the whole of my life. Just the day to day life process is filled with many experiences which are also affirming this mystical basis of reality.

     In my further development, I came across many mystics and many people who are, in their way, manifesting this insight and understanding. One can call them people who are manifesting the quality of love. This is very unique. You can say it is reflecting a different kind of love; one which is allowing the playfulness and wondrousness of life, and accepting and respecting life in its wholeness. I don’t know if it is graspable when I put it like that, because perhaps when one is expecting a very logical and rational way of putting it, one may find it a little difficult to understand what I am talking about.

GS: One of the things that I have found is that too few people, perhaps especially in the West, but too few people have ever thought about thinking. Too few people have thought about who they might be relative to their thoughts. As I looked through your book, The Source of Joy Within, which is beautiful by the way, I noticed you have a similar realization that we’re not our minds, we are that which functions through the mind. But people have identified with the mind and lost themselves.

BP: That is part of the life process, and that’s why I speak about these aspects. At the same time, it is not judging and putting anybody down or putting somebody above, but more saying, hey, this is how it is manifesting and we are part of it. We have the possibility, when we realize the deeper dimension of our reality, to not play the victim. Of course, it is again our individual freedom to play the drunkard and indulge in whatever one wants to do. But the blind way of doing things brings more and more entanglement and suffering.

GS: It turns out that it’s a great deal more fun to be awake.

BP: It is recognition that as a human being, we cannot go backward. We can only go forward if we want to be given a life of fulfillment. Again, this is not something which you can imagine as a static state. It is a process and so, when we become more aware, the whole of life becomes more alive, more rich and also you come to see the beauty in a different way. There is so much intelligence, so much playfulness, so much care behind the whole manifestation of life.

GS: What steps do you recommend for people to take in the waking up process?

BP: One has to start connecting to one’s own inner sensibility and allow oneself to observe oneself. In a regular way of living, one is more trapped in the conditioning of the mind and thereby limits one’s self to the idea that I’m just this or that personality, and that personality, with all its programs and defensiveness and all that has been put into it, is reacting almost mechanically.

     But the unique aspect of all human life is that, in the middle of this process, there is another factor lying hidden, and that is the potential of awareness with which we are able to observe ourselves. This capacity is unique to the human being: you cannot find this same unique capacity in any other living being on Earth. It is what gives the human being the possibility to blossom, to flower into a quality of love and joy that is incomparable.

     But on the other side, one has also to see that when the human being is not orienting to this potential, one can get entangled and fall into suffering. For us as human beings, both extreme directions are open. The most horrible, uncreative, destructive process is within our capacity as well as the most creative, most valuable, and the most fulfilling process of love and peace.

GS: We have the highs and the lows.

BP: Yes, we have both. Both the extremes are possible. We have a great responsibility towards ourselves and towards our fellow living beings, whether we want to admit it or not. It is a question of slowly, slowly recognizing the revealing, and moving into this reality of ours; it is like a metamorphic process.

GS: You have put forth a series of steps for people to follow in this process.

BP: Yes, I have on different occasions given different context bridges which can be started by any individual, irrespective of whatever their background. What I teach is not just a changing of the periphery, but bringing light into whatever they are. Whatever cultural background, whatever national background, whatever religious background anybody may have, if they would start bringing more consciousness into their life, and allow steps and factors which support them to encounter themselves, and to get familiar with the possibility of silence and peacefulness in their life, that will open them to further possibilities and the riches which are hidden.

GS: Hidden in plain sight.

BP: Yes. Within oneself.

GS: It’s like it’s not even hidden, it’s just right there waiting for us to see.

BP: As long as we keep the eyes closed and do not look at what is in front of us, it is hidden for us.

GS: How do you recommend people seek to become more aware?

BP: There are various methods which I have been developing, which I introduced in some of the literature, and which also I share in the seminars and the academy, and other places where some of these exercises are practiced. But there are also the classical methods for a meditative process, whichever religious background they are coming from. As long as they help a human being to open and look at reality more deeply and not run away from it, it can be supportive.

GS: One of the things I usually offer to people is to find a moment of silence in the mind. When the mind is silent, awareness remains, and that’s where you start to know who you are.

BP: That is easier said than done. It is easy to put it like that, but the disturbance in the mind is simply as it is said in the zen tradition, “The lake when the wind is there is full of waves. But when the wind stops, the lake is calm and it reflects the moon very clearly.” So it is with the inner world; when we are trapped in our unconscious fears and dreams and desires; then it is like a lake in the storm, so there is no clear reflection of the reality. But as we start becoming aware of the factors which are working in us, the desires and dreams and the fears, and the whole thing connected with our idea of who and what we are, then slowly, slowly, we spontaneously tap into the depths inside, where we start noticing and experiencing factors which otherwise are not perceived by us.

     So it is a process, but it has to be a conscious orientation to allow this deeper encounter with oneself. In the usual way of going, we are almost like a slave of the mind, and only through a deliberate inquiry and encounter are we able to witness the mind without identifying with it. That orientation is the clue. The teachings for meditations are helping a human being to look without interfering and projecting, a quality of mirroring, a quality of witnessing.  Some people go through the approach of prayer. If that is in their background, there can be a quality of trust and a deeper connection to the reality. Then, going deeper into the prayer, in a careful and wakeful way, enables them—from a different angle—to attain such a quality, because in their depths, prayer and meditation come to the same state of attunement.

GS: Yes, I agree with that.

BP: Only at the starting point are they approaching from different angles. But in the depths is awaiting the beauty and mystery and the wondrousness of this life in deep joy and gratitude. So it is like, for example, the Lord’s Prayer where Jesus says, “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done” ... Thy will, not my will. If someone who has a Christian background and who has some feeling for it, if they would just practice this as a religious prayer, and take such an attitude even for some moments; suddenly they will see that it is allowing a state of silence ... because you stop interfering. And when, I say, we stop interfering, that means our mind stops interfering.

GS: Yes.

BP: When the automatic and mechanical process of mind is in such a way prevented from overtaking our energy in the moment; it becomes the basis for a revelation. This is also the whole thing in the life process, that we all have unique impressions of life, unique conditionings. In a way, it is such a wonder that we are able to communicate and to speak, to understand each other up to a certain level, in spite of the differences in the perceptions which everybody has.

GS: Well, when you’ve had the realizations that we’re talking about and you’re talking with another person who also has, then it really is just language problems.

BP: Yes, that’s what I mean.

GS: Because we’re saying the same thing, just in a different way.

BP: This is the same for the life process: on one side, in the essence, there’s experience, but on the mind level, there are so many different ways of looking and interpreting and figuring out that one cannot really put everything together. On the mind level, the mind can only have impressions of the parts. Passing impressions.

     In a way, as an old saying goes, there is nothing old under the sun and there is nothing new under the sun. So, it’s something like that, but it’s always amazing to see how each moment is unique. I’m always surprised at how there is so much aliveness in each moment, and so when I share that moment, what is there is very alive, it’s very present.

GS: That’s the experience.

BP: It is not just saying something, it is not just presenting a concept. It is being in touch with essence, and living that. It is being here, right now.

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Bhashkar Perinchery will host free events at Yoga Now in Chicago on Thursday, June 22; at Garfield Park Conservatory, Chicago, on Friday, June 23 and Saturday, June 24, at the Inner Metamorphosis University. His weekend workshop, What Enables One to Attain Authentic Love and Move Into Fulfilling Relationships, is Friday evening, June 23 through Sunday, June 25, at the I.M.U., 1418 W. Howard St. at Sheridan Ave., Rogers Park, Chicago, IL 60626. Visit www.Lifesurfing.com or call 773-262-1 IMU (468) for more information.

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