To spread the original, universal and eternal truth, path or law of yoga, which remains forever the same in essence, yet always adapts to the time and place.

The Taste is in the Tongue
Interview with Harish Johari


As a precocious child, Harish Johari once told his father that he wanted to renounce the world, become a saint and live in a cave for the rest of his life. But Harish Johari underestimated his father's sly wisdom.

"That's fantastic," his father said, "but what is the world?". "It's everything around me, all the things outside, like the caves in the mountain," replied Harish Johari. "That's good," continued his father, "but do you think the world is outside you?".

First he gave Johari a bite of his favorite sweet, then a gulmar leaf to chew, then another bite of the confection. Johari's second bite registered as sand, and he spit it out. He looked at his father in confusion. "Where is the world, inside or outside of you?" his father queried.

Click for a larger image of Shiva and Shakti inside the brain"First you love the sweet, then you spit it out like sand. I gave you a gulmar leaf which paralyzes the sweet taste buds. The taste is not in the sweet but in your tongue. The sight is not in the outside world but in your eyes. You never touch anything but your own skin. You never hear anything but your ears. The world is inside you. Even if you go into your mountain cave, you carry your world with you. If you learn about the cave inside yourself, you'll always be safe."

The cave is the corpus callosum, the hollow space between the brain hemispheres, Harish Johari's father explained, pointing to the top of his head. "He said if I learned to go there, I would be in the world but not of the world, because in that cave there are no signals, no neuro-motor connections. So I've always been trying to learn that - to go inside my own cave, yet be in the world with everyone, as brotherly and friendly as anybody could be yet also completely unattached and without problems."


About this page

Extract from "Ayurveda's Renaissance Man - for Harish Johari - artist, composer, chef, teacher, tantric devotee - desire is the brush, and the five senses are the palette." - Interview by Richard Leviton for Yoga Journal, issue July/August 1991.


Related pages

Sanatan Society is an international networking association of students of the late Harish Johari, joining efforts to promote his teachings of yoga philosophy, tantra, worship, art and love. Sanatan Society stands for the original, universal and eternal truth, path or law of yoga. Though it is Hindu in origin, Sanatan Society is not limited to any religion, race, time or country, nor in fact to any particular organisation. More about Sanatan Society...


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