Tattwa Bodha
Finding yoga
Saturday 10th July 2010.
Talking to John Ransley (Kundan)
John: I was wondering if you could talk how you first came to yoga and then how you first came to the Walsh Ashram.
Tattwa: My uncle was a yoga teacher and I would go and see him each time I needed [something]. So I started to participate with him about the time I was 28. But I knew about it from when I was 7 or so. My aunt and him were also very joyous people and I knew he was a yoga teacher and he did some show, yes it was a show but at the same time he was discussing and talking about their life when I was young.
John: Did he demonstrate it?
Tattwa: No he didn’t practice yoga in front of us. They were so joyful they would make kind of show for children it was a man, a very classic one and a stupid one, but it was fantastic when you see the man – I don’t know exactly but they were making the hands and the feet and something like that.
John: Shadow puppets?
Tattwa: Yes kind of whatever I told it was and laughing all the time and playing music and artists and I loved it very much and I think if I’d had a less important life then it would have been them.
John: Their names?
Tattwa: Nilsa and Isha Daum. So they are still alive and they are my friends. To touch them to see them. Theu will always be there for me and the first time I really practiced I was 28 and I stayed for a week with them and practiced with them. He said it was a high level practice, I never noticed if it was higher or not and when I had the first cancer in ’94 I went to see him.
John: Diagnosed in ’95.
Tattwa: Yes the first time ’95. I went to see them in ’95 and spent a week there and again they helped me and I would have this healing, a light he was saying and I would feel it. That’s it. Then I had been offered yoga classes for one year. Of course I had a small classes of yoga before, one was a yoga teacher and I went to her classes but I was not really [interested] and I wasn’t really convinced by her yoga teaching. I got bored in front of her and she is not a yoga teacher anyway. So I was told that there was a good yoga teacher in ’95 and I’d been offered a yoga class for a year by friends, they paid for me so I had no escape I had to go. I was under the impression that yoga was something, I don’t know why, it was too nice, I loved it too much. Stupid thing. So then I started yoga with them in ’95
John: Their names?
Tattwa: Bibekamani [?] and I joined the classes.
John: What town.
Tattwa: Ix-fauis [?] in the South of France. The first year you know I had this cancer I couldn’t walk very well and I wanted to practice yoga, not even been able to walk, to climb the steps and the stairs, and I would after the class feel very well so it was great. Good experience for me.
John: This while you were having treatment?
Tattwa: Yes. I did also other things too, things to be well in my life.
John: Like
Tattwa: Like Tai Chi. What is the expression, dance [expression?] This I didn’t do for very long, because I didn’t like it. I didn’t like to be the actor, I was not too good at doing it anyway and that’s it.
Tattwa: With my uncle it was beautiful, it was different because I was there and all week given my family and there was a sort of fun that they were artists and musicians you know, we were drawing, painting and musicians. So each time I would go there it would be a pleasure for me, just pleasure, pure pleasure to enjoy. More than once a week. Lena was practicing in the morning also in my house and after the second year she said there was a seminar, go to the seminar and when she said that it was 80 Francs I thought that was too expensive so I didn’t apply. And then I said I should do it, it is quite interesting, it was a festival of yoga.
John: In?
Tattwa: Aix-les-bains. I would go there and then I asked in the next class that I want to come and she said “oh but you’re not ready”. And then she said to come to an ashram was 3,000. I said it is more expensive even than the other so she made that she misunderstood me. I was thinking at this time that if it was a misunderstanding maybe that’s what I should do. So I left it as it was and I prepared. She said I not ready but she said I will prepare you and she started giving more classes about chakras, first because it was more kriya yoga
John: so she is preparing you for?
Tattwa: Kriya yoga
John: For Niranjan or for Wales?
Tattwa: For Wales. Niranjan I never went because there was this special understanding, so I went to Wales. He was talking about the fact that when I prepared my year. It becomes to be a bit painful to tell the story because it is all mixed up with the death of my daughter, it was ’97 and it was July. So she was telling me she had this pain in her heart and that’s just what it was. I didn’t believe that she was so sick of course and what is concerning me in a certain way is that even if we knew we wouldn’t be able to do anything, at the time we didn’t know. I was packing and I was ironing and I saw on television twice, two different days, two different channels, once about the mother of [a daughter?] and I saw a woman who was very, very, watching everybody accurately. She had [rapport?] about her and she was watching and looking at everybody in front of her and she was stopping and looking. She had this acuteness, very deep it seemed to me, I didn’t know her at all.
John: She was looking at the camera doing this?
Tattwa: No, no she was not looking at the camera she was looking at the students and the cameraman was filming the whole thing and then
John: You saw her doing this twice?
Tattwa: No. [the Dalai Lama …] So I thought I had to go and I thought I can’t escape to go there. I also had the experience with the river flowing just before so I felt really pushed to go there somehow. Because it was not in my mind at all and then we went and when I arrived there the first foot I put in the ashram was as if I had lived all my life there. It felt just like a [?home]. I knew because I got this kind of impression. But this time it was true, I had a strong feeling that here I was and here I should be and here it was the right thing to do and that all my life leads me to be there. That’s it.
John: What was the course like?
Tattwa: OK, the course was excellent and I really enjoyed it.
John: And it was conducted by?
Tattwa: Serena Chandanda