ityEva ityEva ityEva

The Art of Living Shop, Jayanagar, Bangalore, is strategically located. So strategically located that I have to notice it everytime I commute to the institute or while going to a lot of other places of interest. Of course, now I am just about accustomed to it and don't feel the "thrill" I felt when I saw it the first few times. As you would have rightly guessed, they don't sell The Art of Living books. May be they sell them too, but that's not their main business, I suppose. Even a fleeting glance from a distance of several feet, from my bike, reveals a variety of magnetic merchandise - shirts, kurtas, women's tops, T-shirts, perhaps, amlets bandannas caps, and definitely many other things which I have not been able to identify. Probably they will design The Art of Living Tattoos on you; strategically located tattoos. May be I should venture once and find out.

It should not really be so intriguing a matter. After all, spirituality has been a huge business for a while now. There are numerous spiritual schools; handful of channels broadcasting spirituality round the clock; regular conventions. Spiritual gurus are celebrities; their products and preachings have a brand value. Essentially, spirituality sells and there are a lot of takers. So, The Art of Living Shop is just a next logical step. Why should I be surprised/thrilled then?

Is it because I am conservative and associate puritanical conduct to spirituality? Not really. I don't know anything about what The Art of Living (or any other school, for that matter) says. I am not interested either. Although I have great propensity towards the arts, I am not ready yet to transform my mundane life into an artistic one. What will be the result of the transformation anyway? An Artistically Futile Living? Art does not change the nature of futility; it only makes it more intricate. That aside, when I think again about it, I am merely amused by stuff like the shop. It's not at all a "Rama Rama.. where's the world heading?" kind of a concern.

This amusement is because I am seeing it from a particular viewpoint that I'll explain briefly. As I said, I don't know what these spiritual schools talk about, but my understanding is that they all have the Vedanta/Upanishads as their basis. Again, I haven't read the Upanishads, but one of the important notions there is that of "elimination". nEti nEti nEti (nEti - na + iti, not this) -- not this, neither that, nor the other one, and so on until you find the thing that you need. A meditator uses this to dismiss all the thoughts that are not necessary on the path to clarity (or awakening of the soul or self realisation or whatever else). At a higher level, this is the elimination of the non-essentials on the path to understanding the nature of truth/reality/God/whatever. In this light, I find all these - the competition across spiritual schools, the hype, the buzz, the branding, the merchandise, the broadcast - very amusing. It looks like an elaborate process: do extensive state of the art study, develop a spirituality theory that is different from the state of the art, give it a cool sounding name, whatever be the theory in your textbook, make it practical enough to be attractive, print handbills (glue them on trees), create brand value, design merchandise, grant franchise, hire an advertising agency (also warn people that there are only a few outlets, and that the school is not responsble for any ill effects that may ensue out of buying merchandise in a non-authorised outlet). So, instead of nEti nEti nEti, the new buzz phrase would be ityEva ityEva ityEva - this one, that one too, oh, and, of course, you would need those things as well - in order to reach your ultimate goal. An all-embracing holistic approach!

Perhaps. Or everything is quite alright and I am imagining too much.