Episode Transcript
Introduction (00:00)
What happens when a pioneering physician encounters profound loss and discovers a deeper dimension of healing, not just for the body, but for the human spirit? Today's guest embodies this extraordinary journey from medical expertise to spiritual awakening.
Dr. Raj Kumar Mani is a distinguished pulmonologist and critical care specialist with nearly four decades of medical excellence.
As director of clinical services at Yashoda Hospital and past president of the Indian Society of Critical Care Medicine, he's been at the forefront of introducing life-saving innovations like non-invasive ventilation and sleep medicine to India. His medical achievements are impressive. Over 100 published articles, leadership roles in international trials, and pioneering work.
in sepsis management and COVID care. But Dr. Mani's most profound contribution may be in an area many physicians struggle to address, the intersection of medicine and meaning, of clinical care and compassionate presence. He led the landmark legal efforts that established India's right to living wills and dignity in dying.
representing his profession before the Supreme Court to ensure terminally ill patients could refuse unwanted life support with grace and choice.
Yet behind these professional accomplishments lies a deeply personal spiritual journey that began with devastating loss. At just 14, he lost his father. At 23, fresh out of medical school, he lost his beloved mother. In that moment of profound grief, something shifted.
As he describes it, a sense of an immense presence descended on me. I became aware of the spiritual dimension of life for the first time.
This awakening transformed not just how he practiced medicine, but how he approached life itself. As he puts it, the spiritual life led to a value-based life, strongly away from materialistic objectives. Yet this path wasn't without struggle. Through the demands of his medical career, marriage, and fatherhood, his faith has been continuously tested, creating
what he describes as a new internal struggle between what I thought was a vision of the divine nature against the pole of the materialistic world. Dr. Mani has learned to find the sacred in everyday moments.
treating patients with deeper compassion, and discovering that true wealth comes not from material pursuits, but from peace, harmony, and purpose found in our own selves.
In this episode of Podmasana, join us for a conversation that bridges the clinical and the contemplative, exploring how a spiritual awakening navigates the challenges and complexities of professional and personal life.
Brendon (03:00)
Raj, welcome to Podmasana.
Raj Mani (03:03)
Hello.
Brendon (03:03)
Thanks for being here. Raj, can you take us back to your childhood and tell us about your family, your mother, father, your sisters and how they all influenced and shaped your upbringing and what values did they instill in you?
Raj Mani (03:19)
Sure, I mean, it is a very loving family. Father, mother, two older sisters.
And we were a middle-class family. Father was a famous lawyer in his time. Mother was a housewife. The values were varied between the two parents. Mother was more traditional, wasn't questioning the state of things.
She was very pious, religious, doing pujas every day and typical Hindu value system she embodied. Whereas father was less traditional. He was a more, he was sort of authentic person. I mean, he wasn't like anybody else.
that was a striking memory. He had very practical but lofty ideals. The values were very open, embracing everybody for one thing. Didn't discriminate between people. He didn't overtly believe in any
any religion. He was not a worldly Hindu where his mother was. He was more, shall we say, secular. I mean, embracing values wherever he found them.
not separating people into categories. So although he wasn't openly rebellious of any religious tradition, he wasn't wholeheartedly embracing the traditional values. He was sort of emphasized the fact that we have to create our own value system.
You know, it can't be.
just borrowed or just taken unquestioningly. Okay, that was what he embodied, you know, that sort of value system, which is more attractive but more difficult to follow as I discovered going further. Sisters were very loving. They doted on me. They still do.
What happened in my childhood was a sudden shock of the passing away of the father at age 14. And it was a sudden shake up of whatever we were used to in terms of socioeconomic status, which we each and also
the big figure of the father. He was a very influential figure. Although he didn't spend too much time with us individually, he was too busy. However, watching him was an education itself. He was very disciplined, very industrious and as I said, had a very open heart.
open mind. So with the sudden shock of his passing away, there was a whole lot of churning in the mind, you who to follow, who will be the role model. You know, there was a sudden taking away of the role model, personally speaking for me and of course very shattering for my sisters as well and especially for my mother.
Brendon (06:25)
Mm.
Raj Mani (06:37)
So this is in a nutshell what happened in my childhood and what values my parents carried and which I'm sure have influenced my later career.
Brendon (06:49)
you said you were just 14 when your father passed away suddenly and that threw your family into financial uncertainty. How did that early loss shape your understanding of life's fragility and your sense of responsibility?
Raj Mani (07:05)
You know, at age 14, I didn't really articulate it to myself. But yes, what you call fragility came as a real experience, know, came face to face with it for the first time. But it hadn't sort of formulated into words at that time. It was perhaps there in the subconscious because
The next shock when it happened, my mother took up a job for the first time in her life, after father passed away. It's a humble job, but it sustained the family. And for nine years, I was with my mother after the passing away, my father, my sisters were married. And I spent the longest time after the passing away.
of my father with my mother and she was also with great suddenness taken away, know, within a few days of a fever, a brain fever she passed away.
And all that was locked up inside, know, as you call it, fragility of life, you know, that I became even more starkly visible to me as an inner experience, you know, not just it was not outward, it was very much an inner shaking up. Shifting, shifting of perspective.
Brendon (08:18)
Mm.
Raj Mani (08:21)
A collapse of the world as you knew it, it came even more starkly than after the passing away of the father. here now, this time around, I was totally alone. was no... I mean, my sisters were, you know, where belong to another family. You know, they had the families of their own growing families. So here I found myself sort of orphaned.
Brendon (08:30)
Mm-hmm.
Hmm. Hmm.
Raj Mani (08:47)
passed
away and so I found myself practically alone in the world, unprepared and then this shift of perspective that the world is transient, what we take for granted isn't the real thing, you know, the real is concealed from us, it's not necessarily frightening but as a fact.
Factually, everything is ephemeral. What you take for granted, you rely on, what you depend on, what you stand on, lean on, they can be taken away seemingly cruelly from you anytime. So such a churning, I was not prepared for, but it actually happened.
Brendon (09:36)
after your father's death, Raj, you talked about how your mother had to work for the first time in her life while you were continuing your education. What did you learn from watching her resilience during those difficult years?
Raj Mani (09:51)
she was an amazing woman. As I said, she hadn't stepped out of the house for a first of 40 odd years. And then she made bold to step out and take up an employment and then manage the family, manage the three children, children and arrange and manage the...
marriages of her two daughters and also protect the plot of land she had got from her husband in a house building society and to build a house. So her resilience, her determination and the protective maternal instincts really coming to the fore.
so so vividly in my before me you know it can't it was nothing else but love and admiration
Brendon (10:37)
Hmm.
Raj Mani (10:41)
And there that is another reason why the loss seemed so flattening to me. mean, the sense of loss was so complete and so shattering.
But strangely, I wrote the experience of that bereavement later on in the form of a poem. And, you know, it expresses the sort of inner experience that I ⁓ went through at that time. is called the bereavement. A presence from me suddenly taken over.
Brendon (11:05)
Hmm, yeah.
Raj Mani (11:11)
The world as I knew suddenly blown away. The heart, in a deep sense of loss, from her wrenched. She left me grieving, but in her blessings drenched. Strangely,
in the hushed silence of the heart. The heart got silent.
all that had taken for granted suddenly vanished. There was nothing. It was empty. In that emptiness, in that hush.
I could feel her blessings. There was something sacred. There was something delicate but
Brendon (11:38)
Hmm.
Raj Mani (11:44)
beautifully coming in the inner experience, Although it was a huge shock, it didn't leave me finished. It sort of made me reborn with a different perspective. Reborn into not a vacant space, but a world which seemed more intense, more vivid.
more meaningful.
Brendon (12:07)
when you lost your mother to brain fever when you were just finishing medical school at 23, you've been describing this as a moment when something within you shifted in terms of perception. Can you walk us through what happened in those immediate days and weeks after her passing?
Raj Mani (12:24)
Yes, I think immediately afterwards, while I wept for her,
I had this shift in perception.
I could feel that there was something deeper, more meaningful in life than I had suspected until that time. It is not all outside. That's just the tip of the iceberg. There's a huge component, dimension within us which gets revealed to us by chance or by providence.
or by design, don't know, but it does happen. And so it made me very seeking after solitude.
So for six months afterwards, I lived like a recluse. I would go to the hospital, come back, but then I wouldn't mix with anybody. I would be in my room. I read whatever books I could lay my hands on because there were a huge amount of questions. And what is it that I perceived outside? How do you explain it? And how do you explain all this experience? So I had to read books on religion, all religions, it's not just only
the religion I'm born into, I read whatever, you know, Christian or even, non-religious philosophic and psychological, literature I could find myself delving into and making sense. You know, different traditions, you Western and Eastern made sense. They were not
opposite of each other, they were complementing each other. the strange thing is you're born into a certain culture, a tradition, a religion.
But seemingly other traditions which seem to be at war with your culture didn't seem any more like that. They were not opposing each other. They were complementing each other. They were all alluding to a deeper reality.
Brendon (14:16)
an underlying truth there. Yeah.
Raj Mani (14:16)
that's where they came together. I lived
into a deeper reality. I became more contemplative, naturally meditative and I was involved with reading these books wherever I could find time between the hospital rounds and everything. But something drove me there. And one day as I was
contemplating, I had another sort of vision, something that was an inward experience, that had a transformative power. And I found myself uttering the mantra, Om Namah Shivaya. I was never religious, I just had the religious exposure through my mother.
But I was more inclined to my father's approach to life.
However, I found myself reading these religious books. I read the Gita in translation of course, but I could read the Sanskrit also and it made sense to
when I sat, sat, you know, willy-nilly in yogic asanas. Strangely, the yogic asanas seem to align with this mood, so to speak. Brendan, as a yoga teacher, you know, where it comes from, the original yoga idea came from this consciousness, awareness of the deeper realities of
Brendon (15:22)
Mmm.
Hmm.
Raj Mani (15:37)
That's
why they endure for so many millennia. You know this would occur to me and then I would sit in those postures without being tutored. Maybe read some literature on yoga and saw some pictures, but this the posturing was natural. Asanas were natural and that is very strange and they just
made my body energetic and light and flexible. Okay, this is not a something I have read, you know, just came to me like that and once you know, I had this there was a as I said in the contemplative mode, there was a transformative vision, you know, which is endured all my life. That also I sort of recorded in the form of a
poem. And if I may, I'll read this out.
Brendon (16:25)
Yeah, please share,
please share.
Raj Mani (16:27)
It's titled The Auspicious One.
My Lord is Shiva, the auspicious one. His ethereal visage, my inner eye can see.
He of the lotus pose, of restful luminous half-shadda.
Eyes are half shut because both the outer and the inner, one big word, of a heady fragrance my breath can feel.
Those indescribable fragrance. Serpents hiss playfully. You know the imagery of Lord Shiva, serpents round his neck. Serpents hiss playfully round his venom darkened neck.
mythology says that he drank the poison to save the world from the poison and for the world he gave the Amrit or the elixir out of the churning of the seas. His blissful stillness my heart does feel.
So that vision.
made me touch the still side of the heart.
exists always but we are not aware, it made me aware of him. The matted locks the smiling moon, the sparkle of the fair river, the Ganges flows down his hair, the vast brow, the smile mysterious, my whole being enthralled.
So there was a quietude, was a stillness, was a fragrance and there was this flow of the river of purity.
He of a myriad variety.
The formless they embodied, he can be worshipped as a formless, as embodied. The contemplative, the creative, he's not just contemplating, he's also creation. Both are in this vast consciousness, whom no word can find. These are indescribable. Poetry is only an attempt to describe the indescribable.
You you resort to poetry because prose can't capture the spirit. Poetry touches the soul a little bit closer. Every moment of his dance, you know, the celestial dance of Shiva, it's a whole imagery. Every moment of his dance, every pose, every beat of his drum holds eternity still.
the originator of sound.
So that is where it comes from, the drum, the origin of sound, the primordial. Such a being lives, it is not in mythology, it lives within and without, within us and outside of us. As truth lightens...
Brendon (18:47)
Mm-hmm.
Raj Mani (19:01)
So the Sanskrit equivalent is Satyam Shivam Sundaram.
Truth, Light and Bliss. Truth, Light and Bliss lives within us and outside us.
Brendon (19:11)
Absolutely.
Raj Mani (19:13)
and as the nature of man, is the real nature of man which we are in search of, which we want to realize. The simple, the ingenuous, he's supposed to be simple as a child, the well-beloved, the stainless, the one and the many. So the various ways of describing the vision of the conscious.
The prime module, it is a prime module, what do call energy.
primordial energy of life is this consciousness. The undifferentiated, it first came as primordial energy, then it differentiated into various beings, various creatures, living, nonliving. The essence, the essence of our existence, the substratum of where we operate, the awesome and the unfathomable.
So you can perhaps I can convey to you that is the most extraordinary
inner experience triggered by the passing away of
Brendon (20:17)
Mm.
Raj Mani (20:19)
and the wrenching of the heart I in her absence of her loving presence. But to be honest, after a few days, I stopped feeling her absence.
It was replaced by a glow in the heart of the shift in perception which seemed to hold a light.
for the what the life may bring and what path I would adopt, know, which way I may grow or evolve, what I would value. So it had very deep significance in my life this year.
Brendon (20:59)
So during that six month period that you've been talking about when you became this social recluse and you're reading everything you could find on religion, psychology and philosophy, what do you think you were searching for and what questions were you trying to answer?
Raj Mani (21:15)
See the first question was, why me? Why did it happen to me? Did I do anything wrong to deserve my mother going away? Did I not protect her? I mean, I have grown up enough. I thought it was some lapse on my part. And then after this...
experience which
just made all the old thoughts disappear. Let me say suddenly all the
old patterns disappear, new questions arose, what I just saw within me or I saw new and new this world around me, I mean is it real or is it just a hallucination?
Is it a hallucination of a depressed fellow or somebody who lost his very beloved mother? Is it my imagination? Okay, is it my self-defensive mechanism? is this shared by others? Is this something peculiar to me? So that's what made me read.
You know searching for this answer is this is this real or not? And everything that is said in the literature of the world, the classical literature suddenly became intelligible to me. No, previously I used to read because they're supposed to be they were supposed to be good or supposed to be educated.
Brendon (22:33)
Hmm.
Raj Mani (22:35)
But this is not for education. This was to look for validity of my experience. See what I mean? It was not looking for information.
It is looking for some relatability to whatever others have experienced and I found, to my surprise, it was relatable to everybody on earth.
I saw the
The shallowness of barriers of West and East, white and brown and black and okay the various religious traditions I thought they were artificial barriers.
Brendon (23:09)
Mm.
Raj Mani (23:09)
they were not real and all the confrontations, hostilities did not seem real. On the contrary, the instinct of human beings to try and figure out what the other half is doing, that seemed more real and that figures why because fundamentally the consciousness we share is the same.
various countries are different, the environments are different, this socio-economic status and political life is different. But as I said, the substratum is the consciousness and Shiva was symbolic of this consciousness, not a deity, it's a symbol and that's how it made a difference.
Brendon (23:49)
Hmm.
Raj Mani (23:53)
worshipping or doing puja to a stone figure.
okay nor to something because I was told to do so. It's a good thing to worship, it's a good thing to pronounce the mantras in a certain way. You know this is what we were told as in the Brahminical tradition of the Hindu religion but all that became a very it's meaningful only in a very shallow sense.
Brendon (24:00)
Mmm. Mmm.
Mm-hmm.
Right, cultural programming, yeah.
Raj Mani (24:23)
in a deeper sense those things disappear. You know the ritualistic side of Hindu religion disappeared before my
Brendon (24:34)
I think that's an interesting comment ⁓ coming from someone who was born Indian, and because the role of ritual, as you know very well, is a very large part of Indian identity writ large. Could you maybe speak to that a little?
Raj Mani (24:36)
All
Yes, so I am as a in my boyhood I was ⁓ questioning all that. Subconsciously I was questioning why should I utter mantras which I don't understand? Why can't I pray in simple language in in whatever way my words form? Why should they be in a sing song you know Sanskrit?
shlokas which I don't understand at all.
Brendon (25:15)
Mm-hmm.
Raj Mani (25:16)
And then I didn't feel the piety that my mother felt in the the puja room. I didn't feel it. I was more inclined to read something or know something which appealed to reason. See the heart side was not there. Prior to this experience, it was all the brain side.
Once you saw that it's all basically the consciousness that human beings want to touch, want to realize, willy-nilly, whether they know it, they are aware of it or not aware of it. Even in the materialistic world, that's what they are looking for. They're looking for that principle within themselves, which is a life force, which is a light within themselves.
Okay, in any way you go, whether you go outward or you go inward.
you are searching for it. So I didn't find any difference between the material and the spiritual to be honest. Such a division also is artificial. Whatever be your endeavor, whatever be your search or path.
The meaning that they embody or they represent is to be found in the reality of consciousness that we hold within ourselves. life is equal to that consciousness. When consciousness departs, the body doesn't live.
and that consciousness is same in all living breathing things and in fact the Vedantic philosophy of Hindu religion says that vibration is there in inanimate things as well non-living there is no difference between living and non-living it is the consciousness which is a vibration
So these principles, these ideas, they actually intersect between science and art and religion and philosophy.
Brendon (26:53)
Agreed, yeah.
Brendon (26:55)
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Brendon (27:52)
Raj, you described in some of the writings you shared, experiencing a new internal struggle between what you thought was a vision of the divine nature against the pull of the materialistic world. As a young doctor, how did you navigate wanting to abandon medicine for a more spiritual path while building your medical career?
Raj Mani (28:14)
Yes, see after the initial flush of discovery was gone, it was gone as suddenly as it came. Only a dim memory persisted in one corner and that was not forgettable. Right, there was a forgettable, unforgettable residue left by those experiences.
So this is followed by a struggle of a different kind. You know, there was at one point I was contemplating just leaving it all, know, medicine, everything, because it didn't align with the new discoveries. If you wanted to pursue this new discovery to make it actualize in your life and every bit. that was the passion at that time.
that you know I would like to actualize this right whatever you found now you must actually live in a way that doesn't differentiate between people and it doesn't you have to live in a way that embraces everybody live in a way that doesn't produce barriers in fact brings down barriers now how would you do that living in this world you know in practical
Medicine is in many ways a very materialistic science. It deals practically in reason, in measurable things, and in delivery in a particularly structured way, ⁓ formalized way.
Brendon (29:31)
Hmm.
Raj Mani (29:40)
then I found a way to somehow express what's in my heart in medicine by actually working on the human side of it. See what I mean? Because you don't work with machines, you work with human side. So you make it central to your job.
Brendon (29:49)
Mm.
Raj Mani (29:57)
you work around the human side, not just the science side.
you use science as a tool rather than as an end in itself.
That way I try to adapt my new knowledge or discovery to the career that I had taken, no longer held the same sort of meaning to me as it did before, my path of past. I was thinking of a more linear career graph, but this suddenly changed the whole scene for me and made me think anew what I want to do.
Brendon (30:11)
Hmm.
Raj Mani (30:31)
Anyway, willingly, I stuck to the job. I stuck to my career. I did my exams, managed to stay the course in medicine. And, course, it took me to England for five years. and I did more advanced training. All that went on, but there was this inner voice.
which kept speaking to me about the truths that were so clearly shown to me, given to me or the grace that came to me at a certain time period in my life. that memory of it lingered and never went away. It intensified my struggles with coming to terms with the realities of
Brendon (31:17)
Hmm.
Raj Mani (31:17)
in a
new way, in new sense.
But another thing I must tell you that the navigation through medicine, through the materialistic side of medicine, integrating the human side was inevitable for me and
The ethical code of medicine was even more real and in fact it included a lot many more things. is to actually work for the benefit of the patient and family, not just for the disease but to work towards the wellness became a passion and which became a daily sort of practice for me to.
to realize the the goals of aligning myself with the truth that came to
Brendon (32:09)
Mm-hmm.
Raj Mani (32:10)
my new spiritual path that was given me. I had to align myself with that to be an integrated person, to feel self-respect. That happened, that drove me to, of course there were some in the early part of my career did a lot of scientific things, but then in the last 20 odd years of my career, my attention has been
very much occupied by the end of life care. the mortality of the human being is very real and which the healthcare person comes face to face every day. And as an intensive care specialist, I was coming face to face with it even more often than the usual practitioner. Then the way we answer to the needs of the time became very important.
Brendon (32:34)
Mm.
Raj Mani (32:55)
is not just adjusting their physiology or treating the disease and also misapplication of technology became very important in this country.
So it drove me to new regions in the context of Indian medicine because in Indian medicine it was attention being paid to the dying experience or addressing the needs of the dying or appropriate withdrawal or withholding of technological care, technologically intensive.
life support systems. So it brought me to that stage and I happened to lead the reforms and end of life care in the country over the last 20 years.
Brendon (33:32)
Yeah. And so all of that hard work studying for over the years, regardless of what country you were in, definitely translated into some career accomplishments. And you were a pioneer in introducing non-invasive ventilation and sleep medicine to India in the 1990s. How do you think your spiritual awakening influenced your approach to innovation and patient care during these groundbreaking years?
Raj Mani (33:58)
I think there was an intensity in the practice. Because it was not just driven by the ambition to progress in your job. Of course, that was there, very much there. Ambition to earn more, be more fluent.
But underlying it all was the ambition to align myself with the spiritual path.
that is to be an integrated whole and to address every human being as a whole person, not just as a patient or a customer or a beneficiary of medicine. It is to hold the personhood in front of you. And then that drove me to innovations because the non-invasive ventilation
was an idea which was there elsewhere in the advanced world but was not yet there in India in the early 90s and which could spare many patients the tube ventilation, the invasive ventilation. the machines were scarce in India at that time, there wasn't too much money, families would get destroyed by...
stint on the invasive ventilator. So we had to find alternatives. So that's what drove me to develop the non-invasive ventilation concept and to disseminate it across the country. And now of course it's there in every nook and corner.
The challenge of intensive care, seeing life very closely and, know, the rescue that's involved in the intensive care is really appealing to me.
and it needed an intensity and a certain sort of a
instinct for quick decision.
which also seem to be there in me to some extent which I could develop.
Brendon (35:43)
your work on end of life care and the legal right to living wills also seems deeply connected to your personal spiritual journey. what drove you to take on the legal establishment and fight for patients rights and dignity in dying?
Raj Mani (36:00)
because it seemed so unfair, you all the burdens towards the end of life. families would get destroyed by mindless expenses towards the end of life. And the patient's lot was not good at all, suffering, struggling. That's what drove me. You know, we had to do something to mitigate the suffering.
seemed very preventable suffering. It is not something which is inevitable.
And that's what, the big barriers where the culture, the prevailing culture in the professional circles of not thinking beyond just correcting physiology or just doing what they've been used to doing, mechanically, thoughtlessly.
Brendon (36:33)
Mm.
Raj Mani (36:42)
The idea was to drive colleagues to thoughtful action and that would culminate in end of life decision making, appropriate decision making, good communication with the family, empathetic, meaningful and patient communication. So all these values seem to be in alignment with the values that I cut.
So and then the legal barrier was very big.
in most doctors minds, they felt that they could be legally liable if they took appropriate treatment limiting decisions. So it was my job to persuade them passionately not to think in those terms and I worked simultaneously with the legal systems. You know, there was Supreme Court judgments which were
Brendon (37:15)
Hmm.
Raj Mani (37:29)
pronounced in our favor as 81, over the years. Now we have a legal sanction for these decisions and a legal procedure. So we have come a long way in 20 years.
Brendon (37:41)
certainly. Thanks for your efforts on that front, for sure. And so we all ⁓ recall the COVID-19 pandemic and the challenges that were experienced during those years. During the pandemic, as a pulmonologist and critical care specialist, you were on the front lines of that unprecedented crisis. How did your yoga practice and spiritual foundation that we've discussed help you navigate those intense
months of treating critically ill patients.
Raj Mani (38:09)
See, yoga practice is very important part of my daily life. Even if I'm traveling, I do 15-20 minutes of yoga, which in the hotel room, somehow it grounds me, gives me perspective. The worries subside for a while and fears are mitigated. So without yoga, I couldn't have faced uncertainty.
like a pandemic and the family was very anxious for my health naturally and also were anxious I should bring the infection home. I have an elderly father-in-law. So these concerns were there, there were practical family concerns. But there's certainly yoga practice gives you perspective. It gives you a sense of the wholeness of life and you feel protected by a big.
by immense presence, let me put it that way. we call him God or whatever, superpower. But I think it is not God up in the sky. So God in your daily life, in everything that you do and think, there is a principle, there is a light which guides your actions, which guides your decisions.
That's what you connect with in yoga.
When you do yoga, yoga is not just the physical side of the asana. The larger, much bigger side is the psychological and the spiritual side. And actually what we attempt to do is to connect with the inner resource, the sanctuary. The inner sanctuary is a calm lake.
Brendon (39:26)
Mm-hmm.
Raj Mani (39:34)
You sit by the lake for a while, you get your perspective, get your bearings, and then you go into the world and do your decision making, your actions. So that's how I'm sure yoga had a lot to do in my decision to participate in the COVID pandemic management as a physician. Otherwise I could have taken the decision to retire by that time.
Brendon (39:36)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
I appreciate, the answer because, I've encountered, other people in high demand professions, let's say, doctors, lawyers, And one of the reasons why they often give to why they don't do yoga is that, Oh, I don't have the time I just don't think it'll be good for me. So as someone who.
has alluded to yoga being that underlying support structure during your career, during your life. What would you say to people who think that way?
Raj Mani (40:24)
I would say even 10 minutes or 15 minutes will do.
Brendon (40:27)
Hmm.
Raj Mani (40:27)
It's like taking a rest, taking a break from the hustle bustle of life and it makes you more efficient. It makes your tasks easier. fact, you accomplish more efficiently. So it is useful pragmatically and of course some spiritual practice is very much needed for every human being.
Brendon (40:36)
Mm.
Raj Mani (40:51)
Whatever be our tasks at hand, it's an essential.
Brendon (40:54)
even 10 to 15 minutes can help you ground and connect. And I think if there was however many billion humans walking around the earth that were a little more grounded and connected, perhaps some of the things we see as problems might go away or be lesser than.
Raj Mani (41:09)
Yes.
Brendon (41:10)
Yeah, so you've discussed Raj how your medical profession, marriage and fatherhood have tested your faith over the years. Can you share how you've maintained your spiritual practice while meeting the demands of being a husband, father and a leading physician?
Raj Mani (41:29)
I think I've mentioned how it changed my practice, the spiritual approach and the value systems that I came to admire. In your personal life, know, marriage and fatherhood, what is vital, most vital is very clear to me. It is the love that we share. And love is a...
is actually a whole journey. It's not just one-off thing. It's not something there or not there. It's a challenge to keep it there. It's a challenge to discover it and make it flower. Because love is so difficult to understand. What I believe is that the
spiritual experience that I shared that brought to me very vividly, very clearly, unmistakably that the way we relate to consciousness is love.
Actually, love is our reality. It is not an add-on. It is not anything artificial. The most natural part of
The dimension of us which is the simplest and most natural is the attitude of love.
and to bring the challenges of understanding love.
to you is what is marriage and
in all the vicissitudes of marriage and parenting.
You hold on to this truth about love. you hold on to it dear life. You hold on to it. Don't let go. However difficult it may seem for a while, all that is temporary. In fact, that's how yoga also helps. When you feel overwhelmed by the stresses of these relationships, you sit by the lake of the self.
Brendon (42:51)
Yes.
Raj Mani (43:08)
That's what yoga is. Yoga is not just the postures. Postures come naturally as we sit by the lake. the body conforms to your thoughts, to your attitude. Of course, they feed each other. Your body posture also transform your attitude and vice versa. But you begin somewhere. You begin at one end.
You begin with this attitude of love and it transforms our body posture and shape.
So I think everything flows from conscious.
Brendon (43:38)
Mm, mm.
Raj Mani (43:39)
nothing is separate. So you don't have to willfully remain spinster or a bachelor. You don't willfully need to shun anything. You don't have to willfully leaving behind everything, go to the mountains. You don't have to do that. I mean, at least it is not an essential. If you feel impel to do so, if that's what your life is designed to be, that's well, that's fine. But it is not an
essential part of the search. The search is all inside within.
Brendon (44:10)
Yeah, I like that answer. And it makes me think of the comparisons or commonalities between marriage and yoga. Right. So just like yoga is a practice and whatever might be derived from it will come from that commitment, to the practice. Similarly, if we aren't showing up in our relationships and practicing that present moment,
observation and stillness where you said that the divine resides. Those relationships can benefit from us spending time practicing.
Raj Mani (44:43)
Yes,
in fact, marriage and fatherhood is a practice. see? you know, one of the accomplishments of yoga. You know, it's a yoga in action in practice, in the real world.
Brendon (44:48)
Yes. Yes, exactly.
Yes.
Yeah, absolutely.
Brendon (45:05)
Hello, Podmasana and the listeners. Did you know the show is on Blue Sky, Mastodon, Instagram and threads? If you're on one of those platforms, feel free to give the show a follow for the latest updates. You can also follow or subscribe to listen to the show on Apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or any other podcast app. Thank you.
Brendon (45:28)
Raj, in one of the poems that you shared, you write beautifully about going shopping for an armful of golden sunshine and a long full of cool breeze rather than material things. As someone in the later stages of a distinguished career, how has your relationship with material success and achievement evolved?
Raj Mani (45:53)
think now material things in themselves don't seem meaningful to me unless they symbolize something, unless they represent the truth that you perceived, a truth that was given you in fact, you didn't go after it, given you.
Brendon (46:07)
Mmm.
Raj Mani (46:10)
In day-to-day life, everything is relatable if you perceive things through that perspective of meaningfulness in the larger scheme of things. If we narrow our vision, there is a lot of suffering in the narrowness. If broaden the vision,
Brendon (46:25)
Mm.
Raj Mani (46:26)
there is a healing process which reduces the impact of these, the toxicity of narrowness.
all around us is a lot of potential for toxicity. You know there is toxicity to our health and to our inner well-being but most important of these is the toxicity in our thoughts and attitudes.
If we get a larger perspective and as I said, we remain close to the inner sanctuary of the heart, the tranquility of the lake in the center, then
you find a way to mitigate these toxicities and that's what health is, that's what happiness is, that's what joy is. It can't be artificially given you, joy can't be artificially given, it generates itself. When you mitigate the, toxicity, there is so much being spoken and written about how we must conduct ourselves, live, how
Brendon (47:08)
Yeah, not from external, internal.
Hmm. Hmm.
Raj Mani (47:16)
We must look at our daily lives and change it towards wellness.
You know, Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Zen Master has spoken a lot about paying attention to your breath.
Brendon (47:24)
Hmm.
Raj Mani (47:28)
so when you pay attention to your breath, you connect with reality, right? So all these breathing techniques people have propagated. He also mentioned something called the walking meditation. As we walk, what we focus on, what we center ourselves on, that is a meditation.
So in the poem that you alluded to, it is something to describe the walking meditation. it's titled, The Morning's Fair.
The morning was fair, so I went shopping. Fair has two meanings here. It's a fair morning and it's a fair as well, where you do shopping. There were too many things one could buy. There are so many assaults on your senses. I collected whatever I could. An armful of gold and sunshine, a lungful of cool breeze.
An eye full of green, yellow, red colors, spectrum of colors. An ear full of bird song. That's there naturally. Wherever you looked, were sights galore. Whatever you look at, it's a sight. It is something glorious. And people like you and me, and people are all around you, they like you and me.
made of the same stuff, having the same experience of life. Whatever I could see, even the friendly stray dogs, a lot of stray dogs in a typical Indian city, and the naughty monkeys, even a spy monkey or two, I put in my heart's back.
That is the love in the heart takes in all this, puts it in the bag.
It was all a barter system still. In this shop, in this fair, the shopping that you do, through a barter system. Where all your currency and cards didn't work. Your material possessions don't work here. You had to pay in your cares and stresses. The cares and stresses you give away, drop, relinquish, and then you get these. Get these.
things to shop and the me sense. You have to pay in your cares and stresses and the me sense. You don't separate the me from what you see. There's no separation in the world around you. Then you can shop. You can truly shop anything. The more you paid, the more the trolley filled for the family table. You could go for a walk.
See all the sights, put them in the heart's bag and bring them home. All the sunshine, the breeze and the birdsong.
Brendon (49:56)
Hmm.
that poem has moved me hearing it fresh now. you mentioned that increasingly the heart is moved by music and poetry and that you often put your spiritual experiences into verse, How has writing become a form of prayer or meditation for you?
Raj Mani (50:23)
You see as I shared with you my experience as a young man.
You know, I couldn't communicate that to people around me and not be not raise an eyebrow or two.
not connected with the immediate reality. And so I found my diary as my confidant. So you articulated whatever you couldn't speak openly about, or you articulated something that disturbed you, didn't upset you, all right?
Align with what you value. That happens most of the time. That you don't frequently where people's values align with each other. We go through the motions of social interaction, but not necessarily all of them are in harmony. So you have that.
then you need to articulate that. you can't articulate that with another human being then you can do that to your diary.
Brendon (51:16)
sure.
Raj Mani (51:16)
And that
is how most of the poetry has arisen in attempting to articulate either something that occurs to you in your solitude
You don't get that mood or that experience in the din of the world, your solitude. You tune yourself to your authentic self. And then you find expression to certain feelings and thoughts which you couldn't articulate.
So it is not just for a spiritual experience, it is just for communicating, you know, certain ideas, thoughts, which you can share with others openly. That's how I think my poetry was born. What was not easily expressed, but found expression in my solitude.
Brendon (51:54)
Hmm.
you had mentioned Thich Nhat Hanh earlier, and he, of course, comes to mind. Poetry has long been associated with spirituality and some of the world's faith traditions. And like Thich Nhat Hanh, immediately some esteemed Taoist poets such as Lao Tzu, Tu Fu, or even Sufi poets such as Rumi and Hafiz come to mind. And maybe you probably read some of these. And then
Raj Mani (52:19)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Brendon (52:23)
Why
do you think poetry has been an outlet for you to explore and express your spirituality?
Raj Mani (52:30)
Because I think more than prose, poetry is closer to the heart. Heart is closer to the soul than any other part of the body. So, somewhere it touches the soul. And that is why it attracts me when I read it or when I want to express something that touches the...
Brendon (52:34)
Mmm.
Raj Mani (52:48)
deeper parts of our life and living and thinking, then you need to resort to poetry in my mind. prose is too stiff, too much
within strict boundaries poetry gives you more freedom. It touches on regions which are deeply subjective. prose lends itself more to objective expressions. Now poetry is not objective. is deeply subjective. It may use objective symbols but they are meaningful only in the symbolism. They are not meaningful in themselves.
Brendon (52:59)
Mmm.
Raj Mani (53:19)
unlike science which deals in numbers and numbers are just that. If you want to touch the human core, then you have to listen to music or to touch poetry. Music is also like that. It has got no boundaries, boundaries. Music is immediately appealing.
immediately transports you to your consciousness. doesn't involve a thought process. it doesn't involve a thought process. What doesn't intervene?
Brendon (53:40)
Yeah. And lyrics are just poetry. Yeah. Yeah. No, I was just going to say, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. ⁓
lyrics are really just like a form of poetry like for music. yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Raj, looking back on your journey from the adversity you experienced in your younger days to when, to who you are today, if you could sit with that young man,
Raj Mani (53:51)
Yes.
Brendon (54:05)
In his moments of profound loss, what would you tell him about the path ahead and what it means to find what some call the light of life?
Raj Mani (54:16)
I would tell that young man just that.
Everything is temporary. Everybody in your life is temporary except the light.
the light you carry from birth to death and maybe beyond as all philosophers tell you, life is not finite, it is infinite and this we are a drop in an infinite ocean. To that young man I would say
and you experience whatever you're experiencing. You're experiencing the loss, you're experiencing the tragedy.
you are down in the dumps, you feel it, feel it intensely. Don't run away, don't run away to a thought process that lessens the impact.
Brendon (54:47)
Mm.
Raj Mani (54:54)
In fact, is the embracing of whatever is thrown at you in life fully without reserve, without fear. That's what makes you aware of the real you, authentic you. That is your inner light. You are your own light. You're a light unto yourself. You don't have to borrow that light. You can't take another person's light.
you can.
help another light his own life. You can't be that light. You can't give that light. That's what I would say.
Brendon (55:27)
I guess it could be surmised as connect to the light, keep it on and carry it with you. Yeah. Yeah. If we're trying to break it down into a succinct poem. so the last question I have Uncle Raj is there's a poem that is on a tapestry at the home office. It's attributed to Zen Buddhism.
Raj Mani (55:33)
Yes.
Brendon (55:48)
Would it be okay if I shared it with you? Yeah. Great. If there is light in the soul, there is beauty in the person. If there is beauty in the person, there will be harmony in the house. If there is harmony in the house, there will be order in the nation. If there is order in the nation,
Raj Mani (55:51)
Yeah, sure.
Brendon (56:16)
There will be peace in the world. Having heard this poem and thinking about modern times, what is a spiritual person to make of this poem?
Raj Mani (56:29)
I think we are all aware diametrically opposite things happen around us and what's contained in this poem.
There is very little of harmony, there more strife. There is very little light, is a lot of ignorance and darkness.
and
Homes are not harmonious, nor are nations, nor is the world. What does the spiritual person do?
if he or she finds a light within herself or himself.
then one must grow in the protection of it.
be protected by that light and protect that light yourself. Because nothing comes without giving anything. So the purpose of life is to stay close to that light, hold it in your hand.
Go through the path, whatever be the winds thereof, protect that light and be guided by that light. You both ways, it works both ways. What you're guided by, you must protect with your life.
Brendon (57:27)
Yeah, I like that. Well, thank you very much Raj for being on Podmasana.
Raj Mani (57:32)
Thank you. Thank you, Brendan, for all those nice questions,
