Silence Is the First Gateway to Yoga

Silence is where yoga actually begins. Before asana, before pranayama, before any technique, there is the decision to stop, a decision to start the journey within, a decision to be still. But what I am saying should not be taken wrongly: not to escape the world, but to stop arguing with it inside your head. We are so used to noise — the noise of opinions, of planning, of replaying conversations — that we mistake it for thinking. But real thinking, real seeing, starts only when that noise settles.

Every tradition points to this first. In Patanjali it is called Pratyahara, the withdrawal of the senses. In Sri Aurobindo it is the turn inward, away from outer agitation toward the psychic being. The reason is simple. You cannot train the body or the breath if the senses are still running after every distraction. Silence is the training ground. It teaches the eyes not to scan, the ears not to hunt, the mind not to react. That is sense training, and without it, yoga remains exercise.

Silence also prepares you for the way the world responds to anything new. First people laugh at you for sitting quietly, for choosing books over gossip, for not joining the noise. Then they criticize you for being distant, serious, impractical. And finally, if you keep putting in the endeavours, they accept you. Silence is what carries you through all three stages without wasting energy on defense. It gives you the steadiness to observe from above, like an eagle above the wind.

This is where what I call Pessimoptimism helps. Look at reality with clear eyes. See the chaos, the criticism, the limits. That is the honest part. And then choose silence anyway. Choose to sit for five minutes with coffee and breath. Choose to read one paragraph and let it sit in you. Choose not to answer every provocation. That is optimism with dexterity. It is not denial. It is protection.

Asana makes the body ready. Mantra makes the mind focused. But silence makes you available to yourself. It is the first gateway because everything that comes after — courage, clarity, teaching, work — flows from a centre. The moment you enter silence, you stop performing yoga and you start living it.

Laugh, Criticize, Accept

Pargat Sir during my B.Ed. often said us this in his lecture:  

“First people will laugh at you, then they will criticize you and finally, they will accept you. Only we need to keep on putting endeavours.”

Then our understanding was only this much that Sir did this only to motivate us.  But now I truly understand what he really meant to say us.

Every new idea looks mad at first. The world laughs because it doesn’t fit the old template. Then it criticizes, because it threatens the old template. And much later, quietly, it accepts — because the idea proved itself by staying.

I felt it first with my own ideas.

When I spoke about pessimism, people thought. “He sees the dark first.”  

When I spoke about Pessimoptimism — seeing the dark clearly, and still choosing to work in it — they laughed. “Too complicated. Just be positive or negative.”

Then came the criticism. “Impractical.”  But before Wright Brother, the concept of Aeroplane was also impractical. Isn't it? “Confusing.” “Why make a new word?”

But I kept putting this in my writing by all my endeavours and preparing my students for the worst too as life is not a bed of roses. The concept is quite simple. The optimists invented aeroplane and pessimists invented parachutes and pessimoptimists like me discovered the judicious middle path: looking at reality with rationality, and still move with dexterity.

And we need to comprehend this too that pessimism without work becomes paralysis and Optimism without eyes becomes denial.  

Slowly, the same people who laughed started asking questions. Then they started using it.

That’s the cycle Sir meant.  

Don’t fight the noise. Don’t chase acceptance.  

Keep working. The world catches up later.

Truth doesn't Belong to One Person

When I first read Sri Aurobindo, I was shocked. 

Not because he was new to me. But because he had already said what I had been finding on my own.

I had been thinking about a yoga that is complete in itself. Not yoga as exercise, not yoga as escape, but a Purna Yoga — a yoga of the whole life. Body, mind, senses, and soul, all trained together. And there he was, writing about it decades ago.

I had been thinking about the psychic power, about training the senses, about going deeper than books and lectures. And there he was again, describing the same inner work with a clarity that felt like he had read my mind before I wasn't born even or maybe I was in another form then. Spirituality says that life and death are unending cycle. As I have been fascinated to know about myself since my childhood, I always strive to know about it. Often I feel curious about myself. Am I only the mortal body or a mind who keeps thinking endlessly? Or I am someone beyond all these and just using mind and body as tools. 

The strangest part came during my B.Ed. in BCM College of Education, Chandigarh Road, Ludhiana.

The first time I was given a chance to come to stage, I spoke. I don’t remember planning it. It was just an extempore. To be honest, I hardly prepared anything. That day the words just came. Later, when I read Sri Aurobindo’s Philosophy of Education, I froze. Whatever I had spoken that day was completely aligned with what He taught to His disciples! And believe me, I had not read him before that day! After the speech, my teacher of Philosophy, Dr. Gurwinder Singh Ji said, "Sudhir, today, you spoke about Sri Aurobindo. Have you read about Him?" My reply was, "No Sir!"

That was a shocking moment. Not because I had spoken what Sri Aurobindo said many years before but because it felt like two minds, separated by time, were looking at the same mystery of life.

Maybe that’s how truth works. It does not belong to one person. It keeps appearing. 

The world may call it coincident but for me, it's more than that...

I don’t claim to be anyone. And how can I? I was just an average student during my school time. I was the one who afraid to speak and write in English. However, I managed to score 50% marks just because my grammar was good. But that's how destiny works. The universe assigned me something which I always afraid to do. Rest my students can better tell.

The Ones The World Calls Mad: The Judicious Middle Path II

The world never dares to fight two kinds of people: one who holds power, and another who looks mad but is sometimes the wisest.

~ Sudhir Singh

History remembers them. Shah Hussain sang on the streets of Lahore and was called a drunk. Bulleh Shah was dismissed as a fool for speaking to God in the language of the common man. Kabir was too sharp for both temple and mosque and Ramkrishna Paramhans was mocked in 19th century Calcutta for weeping in the temple of Maa Kali. Osho Rajneesh, too, faced this during his life span as he speaks truth without using any filter and it caused unrest among the so called civilized society which live behind multiple faces. The crowd could not argue with them, so it labeled them.  

I saw the same pattern closer when I read the blog of my Professor cum guide, Dr. Sunil Aggarwal. His Guru, Shree Ramchandra Gandhi was also declared “mad” by people who could not meet his level of clarity. To call someone mad is the oldest trick to avoid listening. When logic fails, people reach for ridicule.

Look at present India. The ruling government spent years trying to frame Mr. Rahul Gandhi as “Pappu.”.  The project was simple: if you repeat a caricature enough, people stop seeing the person. They simply accept what is repeated on the surface.  

But caricatures crack under pressure. In Parliament, in Bharat Jodo Yatra, in his conversations with students and farmers, a different Rahul Gandhi emerged. Not the TV clip, but a man who listens first, who quotes the Constitution, who chooses to walk instead of shout. Call it wisdom, call it stubbornness --- but it is not the image they sold.  

This is a sort of indoctrination done in politics. The saint is called mad because he refuses the game. He does not play for applause. He speaks plainly, walks long distances, and lets the noise exhaust itself. Power fights power with power. The “mad” one fights with stillness, repetition, and truth. That is why the world never dares to fight him directly. It prefers to mock from a distance.

Students who agitated in Jantar mantar are called impatient and vulgar. The same words used for saints of past. But students need to understand that agitation without inner quietness becomes performance. Wisdom without power looks like madness. Power without wisdom becomes arrogance.  

The middle path is not in the middle of lies. It is what the eagle does: rise above the heat, see both light and dark, and choose when to descend.

So let them call names. Let the winds talk.  

Keep writing, keep walking and remember what the Former Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh Ji said, "Honestly I believe that history will be kinder to me than the contemporary media."

The Middle Path: Pessimoptimist

Once I wrote: “It can be synthesised easily if thou can see the depth of thy mind with rationality and dexterity. Don’t be pessimist or optimist, rather be pessimoptimist like The great Buddha. If ye see only dark like an owl, ye miss the light. If ye close eyes like a dove, ye become prey. So, it is better to choose the judicious middle path like an eagle or the immense Sky.”

 — Sudhir Singh, 23rd Feb 2017  

That line keeps returning to me these days. 

We live in a time when every street feels like a microphone. Present Indian politics is loud, reactive, and allergic to pause. News cycles turn into verdicts in minutes. Loyalty is measured by volume, not by thought.  

And in Jantar mantar, students are found agitating. Some for jobs, some for justice, some for dignity. The anger is real. The questions are real. But anger without stillness burns the one who holds it. Agitation without reflection becomes noise that feeds itself.  

In all of this, I have returned to three things: coffee, books, and a few friends. 

Some prefer noise. Some prefer whispers about others. I prefer pages.  

Coffee teaches bitterness without malice. Books teach truth without applause. Friends who understand this need no explanation.  

There is a quiet power in choosing stillness with clarity. When you sit with a book and a cup, the world does not stop. But you stop performing for it. You stop being bait for every provocation. You become like the immense Sky --  above the heat, watching both light and dark, having no desire to move.  

To be with inner quietness is not to be apolitical. It is to be unaffected in the noise. It means you can witness the agitation, feel for the students, read the politics, and still not lose your centre.  

Let's feel that inner void inside us.

The Power of Being the Leaf

This Article is inspired from my own Facebook Post shared on March 1, 2014.

I once wrote: “It is good to live the life of an unidentified person because the fewer people who know you, the more you can enrich yourself spiritually. Totally become ordinary and simple, and you will become part of existence.”

Twelve years later, I am able to understand my own thoughts better than before. I can see my Subconscious mind has already been preparing me to completely become an ordinary and unidentified person since 2014. Actually I don't like to be highlighted. I always prefer to be with me and to live life on my own conditions. I already know this: the more we are highlighted, the more pressure we have to face from the people, society or community and such pressure forces us to do what others admire. But this is not my path. Rather, I would say, I don't like to follow any path because truth is a pathless land.

We live in a world that only claps for the flower. The bright, the loud, the one everyone notices. Offices, social media, even friendships reward performance. Everyone wants to be the flower, however, I don't like to be because it will boost my ego and I can never explore truth if I'd have been an egoistic. 

And that's why, I have chosen to be the leaf. 

The leaf is simple. Anyone can ignore it. It doesn’t demand attention. Yet without the leaf, there is no flower. The leaf holds the plant together. It breathes. It sustains. It exists quietly, and in that quiet, it becomes part of existence itself. 

When people Gaslight, they actually want to pluck the flowers but I am not flower. Their gaslighting will hardly affect me, however, they will expose themselves in my eyes. My real life happens elsewhere — in writing, in thought, in the ordinary moments not on spotlights or loud appreciations. There, I enrich myself quietly. There, I am not performing. I am simply being. 

To be ordinary is not to be less. To be unidentified is not to be invisible. It is to be free. 

Paash in 2026: Would Truth Still Be Written?

What if great writers like Paash and Shiv Kumar Batalvi were born today? 

Today is an era of filters. We live behind masks. We post carefully, speak carefully, and even feel carefully. Privacy has become secrecy. Secrecy has become silence. In such a world, would Paash and Batalvi ever become “great”?

Maybe not. The system today rewards safe voices. It rewards people who don’t offend, who don’t question, who don’t bleed on paper. Paash’s "Sabse khatarnak hota hai hamare sapno ka murda ho jana" would be called “too political”. Batalvi’s "Mainu vida karo" would be called “too emotional, not brand friendly”.  But only people like them can feel the vastness of existence, only they can be one with the cosmos as they have guts to accept themselves in a certain role which is assigned to them by the Existence. 

But what the world would like to suggest them? Perhaps they would be suggested to keep their pain private. Perhaps they would be told to write motivational quotes instead of revolution.

But I don’t think they would stop. 

Because a true scholar of literature is not made for applause. He is made for truth. Masks suffocate such people. You cannot write about a burning world if you are busy protecting your image. You cannot write about love and death if you are afraid of judgment.

Paash did not care if they jailed him. Batalvi did not care if they called him mad. They wrote because they had to. Because not writing meant a living death.

So yes, they might have 200 followers today instead of 2 million. They might be called “controversial” instead of “classic”.  But they would still write. 

And that is the test of our time. Are we brave enough to live without fake masks? Are we willing to be real in a world that pays us to be fake?

Literature was never born in comfort. It was born in courage.