Editor Aparigraha Jain
Editor Carla Geerdes
After entering the building by the main gates, one reaches a squarish entry hall. Another little corridor opens then into an octagonal hall, decorated with wonderful inscriptions on different coloured backgrounds. In the middle, two staircases are seen. The upper one is flanked by stairs, whereas the one in the downward direction is opening into one stair with walls, painted in blazing light green colour. This is the way to a big Meditation or Yoga hall, which was about to be furnished with air condition when we were there.
The pink doors are also closed at night; nobody can get in or out. We were offered to stay in the Needam for the whole length of six weeks not only for security reasons, but also to have every day people to look after us.
This room diverging from the octagonal hall, is often used for preparing the newsletter of the Needam for mailing. It is send quarterly, and reaches more than 3000 recipients in India, as we were told. It indicates upcoming courses, special events, and new yoga teachers.
The combination of colours with extraordinary architecture makes people feel different from day-to-day routine. Most of the halls and rooms for common use don't have square shape.
S.L. Mathur is Senior Director of the Tulsi Adhyatma Needam. He aims to extend the programs founded by Acharyashree. According to him, it is important that people might find an appropriate environment to be ready for Sadhana. Inspiring colours are able to influence their Leshya, air condition provides better facilities for summer camps.
Anshuman Sharma is assistent director of the Needam. He was coordinating the team work between kitchen, accomodation, and course administration, and further, he was responsible that the different schedules were connected seamlessly. Supplementary to his many tasks, he was caring a lot for the three of us. Whenever we needed something or some information, he made shure that we got it.
This wonderful pink staircase leads to the ladies' accomodation in the basement. The green floor behind it opens up into the big meditation hall, providing enough space for big meditation camps. The upper side of the stair case is a stair giving access to one of the roofs that can be reached from gents' accomodation in the first floor.
Samanijis Sanmati (middle) & Jayant Pragyaji (right) were about to leave for JVB Houston, Texas, when we met in the Needam (left: editor Karuna Jain). They had given several Preksha Meditation & Preksha Yoga sessions to the future trainees of Preksha Meditation during their three months course.
The first floor opens straight to the terrace, right and left are gent's rooms normally. We took the left floor to our rooms. They were situated at the end of the floor, the last of four on every side. The lavatories are at the end of each side.
When we were there, about ten Sadhaks were longtime residents of the Needam. One of them was Nitin, he was waiting for his ordination. His parents did not yet support his wish, to lead the life of a monk. So he had decided to bridge the gap between his parents' compliance and Diksha near Acharyashree and the monks. He spent his whole days with them, only early in the morning and late in the evening he was seen, how he left or came back to the Needam. Another one was Kamal, he had decided to spend some time near Muni Mahendra Kumar, and to give him a helping hand. Further, his brother-in-law was preparing for monkhood; he got Diksha during our stay, we will report on him later on.
This was our room, the three of us got the only ones with attached bathrooms, right behind the curtain. Paulo's room was in front of ours. Originally all rooms have the same size for one person, the one we got, was changed from two equally large rooms into a bigger one with attached bathroom. Normally ladies and gents, even married couples, are not accomodated together.
The small room provided seclusion, but was not too comfortable to make forget that we stayed in an institution where lay persons can realise a secluded, nearly ascetic lifestyle for some time. After two weeks on a two fingers small cotton plaid serving as mattress, we added one layer of meditation cussions. Amazingly, neither the pains in the bones had stopped, nor had they vanished during day time after these two weeks. We remembered the monks' and nuns' 'beds' on the blank floor, without mattresses or cussions... and understood that the way to get used to this discipline is very long...
The nights were very cold, about 3°C in January, and we were reminded to the stories of our parents, that they had gone to bed in their coats during the war, when there was no heating. We wished we had taken our coats to India.
When we left in the morning, we were rewarded with this beautiful view in the sunny Rajasthani morning. The columns were made of turquoise Rajasthani marble, they had been newly polished and competed to get our attention with the pink lattice. But they both failed, our attention was drawn to the fact that we felt very good every morning in this environment which had contributed to our emotional and spiritual purification, in spite/because? of its modesty.