My name is Yogi Isha. At the age of sixteen, I set out in search of God. I am not a religious person, yet I passed through the valley called religion and moved beyond it. I performed religious rituals in temples and in solitude. These rituals brought me joy and bliss, but I felt compelled to go further. Humanism and freedom became my religion. My temple is within me. For me, people are not divided into spiritual and worldly. The boundary that separates the secular from the spiritual ceased to exist for me long ago. Only Brahman exists.
From the age of twelve, I began practicing sports, and a little later yoga entered my life as well. The discipline and willpower required for athletics—middle- and long-distance running, and eventually marathon running—merged naturally with yogic practices. Exhausting training and regular competitions transformed the body into an instrument for cultivating the spirit. Yet yoga became something far greater than a passion: quietly, it led me toward inner change and transformation. Seventeen years of active sports became a step on the path toward realizing my spiritual nature. And it was only after being tempered by regular practice that I met my Guru, Pilot Babaji.
Long before sports, from early childhood, I loved playing with my grandfather’s musical instruments. When I received my first guitar, it gave me the ability to create musical images. Yoga and meditation began to do their work, and the guitar became a vessel with which I journeyed in search of treasures found by diving into the depths of my inner nature. Music and word, manifesting through the instrument, became the most natural way to convey—first of all to myself—messages from the very center of existence, from the place where love and life are born. This inner necessity for music eventually took form in the creation and realization of Shakti Orchestra.
I have practiced yoga since my teenage years. Yet even when I practice nothing, I remain a yogi. Yoga is my state of being; I feel yoga within myself. My Guru, Pilot Baba, gave me the name Yogi Isha, although I had told him nothing about myself.
My Guru is outside of me, and my Guru is also within me. Between everything that exists, there are gaps. There is my Guru, there is me, and there is a gap between us. In this gap, there is neither Guru nor me—only Truth itself.
My greatest teacher has been my existential pain. It constantly reminded me of my separation from God. My heightened sensitivity to the world does not allow me to forget that I exist. When I was twenty, I asked people whether they felt this pain, and they did not even understand what I was talking about. Pain always led me somewhere. And when it did, the veil that separated me from God would slightly open, and I would begin to perceive something.
My pain and my search for God led me to music. Music became my path; it became an inseparable part of me and of my yoga. Through music, I can best express what lies beyond words. Word and sound became my means of manifesting the Pulsation of Infinity. And this pulsation is knocking directly at my mind.
