Original film description:

YOGI (yo-ge) An individual who has spent years in isolated retreat practicing secret self-transforming physical and mental exercises, and through these techniques has developed extraordinary control over both mind and body. The yogis in this film took unprecedented risks. Once vowed to extreme secrecy to maintain then purity of their practices, they agreed to these unique interviews and rare demonstrations to help preserve for posterity their vanishing culture.

Tibet and India have always held fascination for me and I have watched videos and read books over quite some time.

I have always had an interest in mastery whether it is sainthood, yogi mastery or even that of Christhood, which I view as a mastery too. As I was watching “The Yogis of Tibet”,  I began to see a pattern which I wanted to share with you. This pattern is one of struggle, why is it with us.

I was at the tail end of the 60’s movement but I experienced it in South Africa. Being in Africa, there is a flavor unique to Africa. It is true there was apartheid, but each of the cultures there had thriving ways of being. It was a collage of sounds, scents and song. This has stayed with me to this day and I love being immersed in different cultures. I love ancient wisdom, books, and their story telling. We ate curries and listened to the Hari Krishnas singing and dancing on the streets. The sonorous muslim calls rang out over the valleys in the heated evenings. South Africa was full of sound and a vibrancy. It was a song of the peoples, intense, passionate and full of song.

I bring this up because each culture is soulful and it is grass roots. These roots are true and are of this world, while those things on the surface in the ideas of ‘success’ and ‘financial viability’, those outward things, those things… are not of this world, not of culture and not of the grass roots.

There is a heart in people and it is to this heart that I see and speak.

I have thought much about the American Indian/Aboriginal people and how their culture was stripped from them. At some point I understood that it was like a seed of a tree held within winter that in the spring it can rise again. I believe it was Black Elk who talked about the world hoop and how it had been broken and the World Tree was dying.

But I see the people drew the seeds of their sacred culture into their hearts and when winter is over there will be a new Tree, the same tree but new, coming out of the heart of the people, rising again out of the hearts of those who hold to the sacred vision.

Many of the pre-Christian mythologies are also gone and now their seeds lie within the Christian teachings,teachings like Christmas and Easter. So the knowledge is transformed into stories that survive the winters until at some point in some time, the stories take on a new life and rise again.

I see it too in this film, how the Tibetans keep the culture by allowing it to transform into something new. It looks like their mastery is dying and culture will finally erode into dusts that travel on the winds. But for each person who loves their culture will bring what is powerful and holy to them into the sacred caves of the heart will treasure it like fire keepers, holding the sacred fire holding sacred dreams. And there in that place the teachings will rise again in the spring of our spirits.

Those that survived the holocaust did so because they took what is sacred to them into their hearts. I read a book somewhere that I can no longer find… that even though all things had been stripped from people in the concentration camps, taking human dignity and love from them, those that refused to be diminished would choose a place of honour, of self control, such as deciding to treat all others with compassion and love for instance, refusing to become as their captors were. These then became the ones who were not broken by the horror. They always had a place inside them where they held the highest thoughts, the best of themselves. It was they who survived. It is they who passed on knowledge, wisdom, human dignity and the Sacred Tree of their culture.

But there is also the struggle. One of the things that happen in oppression is that in order to survive the struggle, the struggle is viewed as ennobling so that struggle becomes a virtue. It is rooted in the deep of survival. The tree that grows out of struggle carries within it the trauma of the oppression and in due course that limitation will be cast off.

Also within this tree, is hope. In the deep roots of survival, going through a winter, the seed does not die and the codes of creation are within that seed, within the heart that carries the future in it.

Many prophesies talk about this time we are going into. It is said to be a time of struggle but also a birthing of a new world. Within us all are the seeds of a new future. We are all bearers and keepers of wisdom, of heart and of culture. We are of the future.

So I see that knowledge and wisdom are never lost and it finds its way into the a new home.

I can see Hope never dies and knowing that I know we will rise above this as a united people. Spring is Eternal and so too we can know God is Eternal as he made the Spring. I know we carry the tree within us, a pride, a human dignity, an eternal flame of the codes of creation and whether you call it the Word of God, the Song of Earth Mother or the fingerprint of God, we will last into eternity as well. How can we be overcome when we walk with Creation?

Ours is a story of humanity. It is one story because we are all brothers and sisters and each of us have been oppressed in one manner or another. Each of us have been betrayed and lied to.

In watching the apparent fading away of the Tibetan Culture and Masteries, seems sad. Watch with me to see how it is that the deep truths and values are put away into the sacred caves of their hearts… kept like the fires of the fire-keepers… taking it down into pure essence… and then with prayer, it is left for God to keep the seeds over winter as their hearts keep the seeds warm from generation to generation, all waiting until the seeds are being called forth into a new dawn.

These are the memories of people, our ancestors, the fires that burned before ours. In that, we are all united because as a people, we are one on this world.

Recently, I have seen an even deeper pattern of God if you will. And that is no matter what happens, no matter who oppresses, the heart of the Creator will always come through in some kind of story, in some way in culture. The story may be told 10,000 times and in 10,000 ways, but the story will always come through. It cannot be any other way because if we were created from the dust of the ground, then the fingerprint of God is in that dust and we too have that fingerprint on our souls. I saw too the illusions we live within and under, both here and in the afterlife and there will come a time when we all are raised above these illusions. It will not hold us for long.

There is only one story and that is as old as the Ancient of Days. It is the story of the grace of the Divine Mother who never forgets us and brings us to her bosom to comfort and love us. It is the story of Shakti, the great mother…who is known by many names. It is the eternal compassion of the Father who is with us all and knows us, who counts the hair on our heads and is a keeper of our dreams. It is the Great Spirit, the Creator. We are known, seen and loved and it is the story of the Son that always rises. Forever.