Turiya is the ‘spiritual name’ given by Swami Nischalānanda meaning the “Fourth”, but refers to the state of Being beyond all concept. That is, the first is the waking state, the second is the subconscious state, the third is the unconscious state, and the fourth is beyond words.

Healing the Soul

Turiya is an Approved Spiritual Healer having studied, practiced and passed the written and practical examinations of the Spiritualist National Union.

Turiya is available by private appointment for anyone in need of Spiritual Healing or Counselling.

Spiritual healing involves ‘channelling’ energy to bring

 

Phone: 0772 631 9449

E-mail: info@yoga-practice.net

Spiritual Healing

White Tara goddess of Healing

Spiritual healing is often given towards the end of  Turiya’s yoga classes in Kingston as and where it is felt needed ~

REVIEW from Yoga Magazine

 

“Our Encounter with a Spiritual Journeyman - Turiya”

 

“Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.“ - Carl Jung

 

The following narrative of our informal talk with Turiya is of course very subjective and tainted by the lens of my own average perceptions. I will however, to the best of my ability, try to recapture part of the essence of our encounter, through what he said and from what I sensed just by being in his company. I do not intend this as a poor excuse for what may read as a feeble and lame description of what was said on that day, I only want to point out the difficulty of writing about things one has not fully grasped oneself yet, even though the seeds are already in the ground. This article reflects more what I felt during our conversation than what was actually said.

 

Many wonderful and totally unexpected things happened during our time with Turiya and we are most grateful, Mandy and I, for the generous gift of his time to us. Within the first few moments of our stepping into his welcoming home, I knew exactly why I was there. We had come to visit him with the purpose of having an informal talk, but somehow the roles got reversed, and I was the one doing all the talking! And I talked, and I talked and I talked, as if there was no tomorrow, as if my whole life depended on it, fully aware that I was totally overstepping the limits of politeness in more ways than one, and yet entirely unable to end it. I still do not know what brought all this about, but suddenly I had the very distinct feeling that Turiya was trying to figure out my own world by getting me to talk about it. I sensed his sincere desire to help, as if he was trying to take away the pain and heal the dark holes in the intricate web of my life. (I certainly did not come prepared for this!) There was so much I wanted to share; all the things I have been working on in my life; everything all of a sudden came flooding out inexplicably and compellingly. I became aware that he was trying to make out the issues in my life – or “distractions” (in Pascal’s sense) - to enable me to release them, if I so wished to. As I bared my soul to this almost complete stranger, an incessant inner voice at the back of my head kept asking me why anyone would be so genuinely interested in my existential problems. I guess because this is what I needed the most, someone who would sit and listen as I opened my heart. I certainly did not have any intention for any of this to happen, it is as if something within me had taken over. I started to wonder whether someone else within me was actually doing the talking for me, someone who is me and not me at the same time. I also realized that only those who have totally resolved their own issues, those who have restored their inner balance and found peace deep within are capable of being available to others in such a compassionate and entire way. Turiya listened to everything we said with the greatest respect, even though it became evident on more than one occasion that his views were very different. There was absolutely nothing forceful about him, only gentleness.

 

Turiya is a person who speaks directly from his heart and his capacious mind, with thoughtfulness and truthfulness. Turiya belongs to these people who bring out the best in you and invite you to go to this special place deep within because this is where they are themselves.

 

The more we talked with this amazing spiritual journeyman, the more acutely I felt that I was in the presence of someone who is quite different from most of us. Each attempt I made to invite him to talk about himself somehow unfolded into me talking even more about myself, and engaging into even more profound soul searching!

I managed to glean a few facts of his life here and there and that is all. Turiya speaks more through his silences than through his words. As a seeker for truth, he is finding within himself the true strength to forgive everything he has not quite reconciled himself with yet. The practice of Ahimsa (or non violence) is bringing him to the realization of unity and oneness of life. “No self-realization is possible without Ahimsa” – Sri Swami Sivananda.

 

More than once on that day, I felt that I was losing my footing, that the rug was being gently pulled from under my feet, that all my beliefs were being tossed up in the air, that I was being pulled out of my shell, that I was being asked to take a leap of faith to enter into a space I am still too scared to go into. And yet, as I kept identifying with this likeable aspect of myself which I could see reflected in Turiya , this made me want to search deeper still.

Each life encounter helps model our evolutionary process. I do not believe in chance encounters; as we think so we become; as we think so we create our own world, our own reality. We can only perceive what is appropriate for us at this moment in time on our life journey; we are all on different rungs on the ladder of self-realization, and we all come with our own paraphernalia of beliefs and emotional clutter. What we admire or loathe in others are but mere projections of ourselves which we have not made our own yet. To achieve whole body healing, we need to embrace and integrate all these different aspects of ourselves. We are much more than what we think we are, we need to own what we perceive as the light and the dark because they both are part of us.

 

By encouraging the best possible conditions to make things happen, it is sometimes possible to make them happen quicker than they would, had they followed their normal course. Enlightenment can happen right now, overnight even, if the ground is ready told us Turiya. We are all looking to end the unnecessary suffering in our lives, in the best way we know. Spiritual guides are here to help us in our quest in the same way as gurus point their disciples to the right direction by leading them from darkness to light, eventually enabling them to find their own inner guru.      

“The spiritual path is like climbing a mountain: we don't really know what we will find at the summit. We have only heard that it is beautiful, everybody is happy there, the view is magnificent and the air unpolluted. If we have a guide who has already climbed the mountain, he can help us avoid falling into a crevasse, or slipping on loose stones, or getting off the path. The one common antidote for all our hindrances is noble friends and noble conversations, which are health food for the mind." - Ayya Khema

 

Turiya asked us to look with honesty within ourselves so that we would understand why we react in a certain way to certain people and certain situations and to look for negative and positive patterns in our lives. We need to look within to find out why we attract certain realities in our lives, what makes us dislike and fear so intensely some situations. What is our lesson? What would happen if we could let go and open ourselves up to these people and situations which bother us and make us so unhappy? Does not the problem (and its solution) lie within us? Doesn’t all this reflect a total lack of balance in our being? What would happen if we integrated these aspects into our lives and worked towards a more cohesive state of integrity with our Self? How can we go about making the changes we need to make?

 

“Belief precedes experience” Turiya went on. We all cling on to the set of beliefs we acquire along our life’s journey, and it is these beliefs that shape our own reality. Believing and knowing are totally different. Our different beliefs make us think that we are not alike and are the source of our misery. Reality can only manifest itself if we let go of all our attachments. Why are we all trying so hard to be what we already are? Why deny ourselves the state of being-ness which is here for us to enjoy?
As we create our own reality through our actions and words, so we can change it to become whole again, reuniting the fragmented pieces of ourselves together again.

Reality happens when judgment, separation and distortion no longer are. We must avoid locking ourselves into blind belief systems. Things need to be experienced for what they are, without giving them undue importance, and then they need to be dropped. A parallel can be drawn with an essential aspect of Kierkegaard’s philosophy; Kierkegaard makes a distinction between objective truths based on a correspondence between facts and beliefs, and subjective truths based on our passionate commitment to ideas and beliefs.
We need to become conscious “knowers” as opposed to faithful believers. We can achieve this by connecting to the Divine Love in our hearts.

 

People turn to the physical practice of yoga (Hatha Yoga) when they feel that something needs to be addressed and changed in their lives, even though they do not know what it is. They are looking for a meaning, a purpose to living. They are no longer happy with the usual answers; they want to live fully, mindfully and in harmony with all that is. Asanas have their place in yoga; however, they are certainly not essential. Asanas are not a prerequisite for meditation. A lot of people meditate out there who have never practiced yoga in their lives. Some achieve to stop the fluctuations of their minds “citta vritti nirodha” without doing the physical postures. This is what happened to Buddha reminded us Turiya. Hatha Yoga is one way to become self-realized but it certainly is not the only way. Its purifying effect enables us to transcend the physical body to tap into the energy body and eventually into the spiritual body. This can be achieved by working with the chakras, and the flow of prana through the nadis. However, if we attach too much importance to the postures, they too become a distraction from what our heart truly aches for, in the same way as drink can be a distraction. All distractions, good and bad (what is good and what is bad?) need to be dropped. We do not want to get stuck in the postures, they should not be an outlet for the ego to raise its ugly head once more; asanas are but a tool, a very useful tool, but a tool all the same. Yoga for Turiya is just what it means, Self-Awareness. All the rest is excess.

 

We attract what we are, and we attract who we are. Everything we attract is determined by our unconscious. “If you have truth in your mind, you see truth in others, what you see in the outer world is what is in you” added Turiya.

Our degree of consciousness of who we are is what determines what we attract; it also affects our contribution to the world through the way we interact with others.

 

In his capacity as a spiritual healer Turiya supports and empowers those he meets on his path to follow their inner light. He helps people resolve the internal battles that they are inevitably brought to fight some day or other by letting go of what oppresses them; the uneasiness they experience is the sign of their soul awakening. This too is yoga. Turiya brings them to see what arises when they are in certain situations and then when they are not in them. Turiya invites them to take the place of the one who observes so that they may discover that the observer and the observed are but the same one, and with this comes the acknowledgement that duality no longer exists. He challenges them to understand what needs to be integrated into their lives to end the suffering.

 

Thank you Turiya for Shining your Light so Bright into our Hearts.

Namaste

about an improvement or a resolution of a physical or emotional ailment and is being increasingly recognised, along with other ‘complimentary therapies’, as part of a more wholistic approach to health-care, or well-being.

 

Spiritual Counselling is a process of moving forward through understanding the 'purpose' of life at the higher level. It seeks to answer the questions about 'is there more to life than this?' by coming into contact with the 'Underlying Consciousness'; that is, who we really Are.

 

 

 

“….we call this deeper level of Being, Consciousness. The basic premise is that this Consciousness is not only our Essential Nature but that, fundamentally, it is also the same Intelligence behind all things manifest in the universe." ~'The Edge of Infinity' by Swami Nischalananda 2006 ~ Spiritual Head of the Mandala Yoga Ashram