TORSTEN BECK

GERMANY

“I came to find solutions; answers. I had studied a lot of science up until PhD level but it was always missing something. It always felt like I was on one side of the coin. Here at Shri Kali, I found a beautiful system that gives me the spiritual part of life. There are mobile phones, computers and such but that is all matter and we are all living, spiritual beings. This part is not explained in modern western science, even if you study biology or chemistry or even if you go to a psychologist. These sciences are just looking at you as though you are machine, like in the Newtonian/Cartesian worldview.

I have suffered from a personal autoimmune sickness that has attacked my eyes since I was only 3 years old.  I have a lot of injuries and scars on my retina and it was pretty disturbing while I was studying or using the computer for work. But here I found a system that helps me reduce my stress levels and see life and the whole world in a holistic view. This, ultimately, helped me relax about the pain and frustration around the issues with my eyes.

Originally I came to India to improve this health problem and to understand life.  I never came here to become a yogi but now I am becoming a yogi through the process of being here.

There is not one part of the system that I love more, it all works together.  I love the āsanas. They bring your body and your skeleton back to health in a very nice way over time. They also balance your inner health. You drop your issues and all your ‘funny programming’ that you get from your parents, neighbors, TV and so on so that you can find your inner core and your true self.  The philosophy gives you true information and a foundation to base your life on so that you can walk through your life with an understanding. The mantras and puja work to bring you deeper and deeper into your true self so that you can express from a place of honesty with yourself and everyone else.

I left Vienna in 2012. I was unhappy. I had a well-paying job and success but that was not happiness. Nothing made sense. Everything felt ridiculous. I went to India, traveled a bit around and then came to Shri Kali. Here I found inner peace, relaxation, and patience with everything around me and with myself. I don’t have that hassle anymore that I have to achieve something. I just go and do and try to relax. This is nice. I can grow with this. I am very successful with this because I am no longer stressed when I start something. I just go in, think and then act, much more intelligently. I also realized that my tolerance level for my eye condition has gone up.  I can read or be on the computer much longer because I am relaxed. I no longer internally emphasize so much on this problem.  

My nature is already non-linear so I love that about the structure here. I was doing management for a job back home and I always had a big problem personally with getting somewhere on time. It is still a process coming from a very linear culture, where you think things have to happen at a certain time or in a certain way. However, if you understand a little bit more of the philosophy here and also when you look to modern physics you can see that time is not really a linear thing. Slowly you integrate and go deeper and deeper. I came to understand this more as I read the philosophy. You cannot understand everything by reading it the first time so you read and read again. Later everything begins to make sense. There is no linear growth in the knowledge. The knowledge, experience and integration come like a spider web and eventually it all connects.

Before I came to Shri Kali, I didn’t care too much about yoga. I had done some classes in Vienna but even then, I realized that it wasn’t really connected to the traditional understanding. It was gymnastics. The wholeness of ‘real yoga’ is a much more holistic system. It cares for more than the muscles and bones. It is more subtle than just going jogging, for example. I always knew that if I did yoga in the right system as we do here, that it would be so much more. I personally never had that need for competition that is so prevalent in modern-day yoga. I never understood why people wanted to play competitive sports, even as a child. I was more interested in playing in the treetops and building funny things with my friends, where everyone wins. School, also, was never understood from a point of competition for me, but from a point of interest and curiosity. I did it from a place of desire: I wanted to understand; I wanted to learn; I wanted to be able to build a robot; I wanted to be able to calculate all those funny things like planes flying and to understand the math and the physics. I wanted to culture my knowledge.

Like many western people, we all have this neo-Tantric view. I am probably similar to many people who came here. I read a couple of books before I came but I had a very limited view. At Shri Kali, Tantra is portrayed very differently. It’s a very deep system here. You slowly grow yourself and your self-love, and from there, everything else comes naturally.

I love the place. This place rescued my life. I love being here. I am happy to study with all these wonderful people. I enjoy watching people come and seeing how wonderfully they evolve. I am very happy to support and be a part of Shri Kali.”

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