My friend Mark Whitwell, the yoga teacher from New Zealand, has absorbed the teachings of several Indian yoga masters, primarily T. Krishnamacharya and his son and student T.K.V. Desikachar. These teachers did not imbue in Mark the usual puritanical claptrap about self-discipline and the need to keep searching for God. "If you are looking for God," Mark says in his Fiji twang, "it means you don't have God. Even getting close to God means you don't have God. Looking for God is like looking for your glasses that are on top of your head." He might almost be quoting that lovely line from the Quran in which Allah says, speaking in the royal plural as is his wont at times, "We created man and surely know what misdoubts arise in their hearts; for We are closer to him than his jugular vein" (50: 15b, trans. Ahmed Ali). Not long ago I went Mark one better. After a visit to the ophthalmologist, I was already on my way down in the elevator when I became convinced that I'd left my glasses in his examining room.
Continue reading Looking for Mr. Good God.
