Musician
Joshua Pollock talks about his best-selling book, 'The Heartfulness
Way – Heart-based Meditations For Spiritual Transformation'
Photo of Joshua Pollock by Albin Mathew
By
Shevlin Sebastian
As author Joshua Pollock enters the Crossword book store in Kochi, on a weekday afternoon, he looks a trifle tired. That is because for the past few weeks he has been travelling all over India, going to places like Jaipur, Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Hyderabad and holding events highlighting his book, 'The Heartfulness Way – Heart-based Meditations For Spiritual Transformation'. This has been written by Joshua, along with his guru Kamlesh D. Patel, who is otherwise known as 'Daaji'.
And
all this hard work has paid off. The book, published by Westland, had
reached No 1 on Amazon and the Hindustan
Times/Nielsen Non-Fiction Bestseller list. “It is very
gratifying,” he says. It helped that the President of India Ram
Nath Kovind released the book. In Jaipur, it was Chief Minister
Vasundhara Raje who did the honours and immediately tweeted a photo
of herself and Joshua. And this is what she wrote: 'The Heartfulness
Way' offers interesting insights into the spiritual way of living by
and from the heart.'
Joshua
seems an unlikely person to lead a spiritual life. A classical
violinist who grew up in the USA, he played for several film-based
songs of double Oscar winner AR Rahman. “But there was an emptiness
within,” he says. A chance meeting with a woman while standing
outside a shop in the US led him to the Heartfulness way of
meditation which is propagated by Daaji, the fourth guru in the
Heartfulness lineage, who lived and worked in New York for many
years.
What
attracted Joshua to heartfulness was the many parallels with music.
“The heart always has to be the leader, especially when you are a
musician,” he says. “It does not matter how technically perfect
it is, the music will fall flat. It is the sincerity that is most
important. That is not just for music. It is true for everything that
we do in life.”
In
the book, Joshua elaborates on three topics: meditation, cleaning and
prayer.
“What
do we do in meditation?” Daaji says to Joshua. “We go within. We
move towards the core of our being. In deep meditation, we come into
contact with our Source. Dissolving in it, mingling in it, and
merging in it, we become one with it.”
But
it does not come easily. “You have to wait, but not impatiently, as
if you are pacing back and forth waiting for a bus,” says Daaji.
“It is a relaxed kind of waiting. You are at ease. You are
comfortable. Everything happens in its own time. For example, you
cannot cut open a butterfly’s cocoon before it is fully matured.
That would kill the butterfly. Similarly, we cannot expect spiritual
states to bloom before their time.”
Apart
from meditation, cleaning is very important. This is how it is done.
“Sit in a comfortable pose,” says Joshua. “The aim is to remove
all the impressions you have accumulated during the day. Close your
eyes. Imagine that all the complexities and impurities are leaving
your entire system. Feel that they are leaving you in the form of
smoke and vapour.”
Continue
this process for approximately twenty minutes. “You will know it is
finished when you start feeling a subtle lightness in your heart,”
says Joshua. “You have now returned to a simpler, purer and more
balanced state. Every cell of your body is emanating simplicity
lightness and purity.”
This
cleaning is the unique aspect of the Heartfulness way. “It is all
about inner hygiene,” says Joshua. “It makes your consciousness
crystal clear.”
As
for the third aspect, prayer, it remains an essential way to connect
with something higher than ourselves, says Joshua.
“But
prayer is only the first step,” says Daaji. “It must mature into
prayerfulness. For example, it is common to pray before eating, but
if, after the prayer is completed, your attack your food like a wolf,
then what happens to the prayerful mood that you have just created?
Without a prayerful inner state, prayer is absurd. So we must offer
prayer with feeling. The subconscious only knows the language of
feeling.”
So,
there are many tips in this well-written book, that if followed
diligently, will enable one to reach the inner core of divinity that
is within us.
(Published
in The New Indian Express, Kochi, Thiruvananthapuram and Kozhikode)
No comments:
Post a Comment