Joy of living
Kambiz Naficy, Iranian meditation master, public speaker and poet, who was in Dubai to hold his ‘Joy of Life’ workshop at the House of Chi, says happiness comes with discovering oneself. Rajeev Nair met him
TWO-AND-A-HALF years of his life were spent in near-total silence. And silence helped Kambiz Naficy discover the hidden depths of his self.
Silence, meditation, yogic and energetic breathing techniques — all figure in his ‘Joy of Life’ technique that helps those who practise it “activate their minds, increase their natural energy levels and find joy in their daily lives.”
Naficy, an Iranian meditation master, public speaker and poet, had been in Dubai to hold a six-day ‘Joy of Life’ workshop at the House of Chi.
The joy of living did not come to Naficy by sheer chance. He prepared his body and soul for that goal. The fact that he could understand the realms of clutter caused by ‘mind-chatter’ even as a child helped him though.
Growing up in Iran, enjoying the influence of traditional Iranian poetry, he had a pleasant childhood enjoying the richness of tradition and the forward-looking optimism of modernity. “My father’s cousin, Saeed Naficy is a famous literary personality in contemporary Iranian literature, and from my childhood days, I remember the tradition of elders coming out in the afternoon and reading poetry.”
As a child, he had a philosophical nature. “My friends would come to me to discuss their problems. I could see the underlying reality within the apparent reality,” he says.
He would call his childhood, a naughty but inward-looking one. He even had an invisible friend in his first seven years, who he called Hagooli, which, he says, “has no meaning. He was so close to me, my mother would set an extra plate for him at the dining table. He was with me throughout the day and there was a conversation going on between us.”
Hagooli did not have a shape; it was a presence and voice. Years later as a meditation master, Naficy realised that Hagooli was his ‘witness.’ He explains: “As your meditation deepens, you realise that there is a witness behind your mind-chatter, which is what we call pure consciousness in meditation. There is a presence in every human mind that witnesses your self going through in life.”
A ‘witness’ is common in many children, says Naficy. Their urge to communicate with dolls, for example. “Any child play where they talk to themselves is they talking to their soul. But they tend to lose contact with their deep consciousness as they tend to socialise,” says Naficy.
There are two obstacles, he says, in realising the ‘witness:’ “One is ego. The minute you think separate, you are already in a sort of illusion because there is only one creative energy, and you break one of the natural laws. The second reason is that the minute you think, the random thought separates you from the present moment, and the minute you are not in the present, you lose the witnessing capability.”
Naficy did his MBA at the Iran Centre for Management Studies affiliated to Harvard Business School. He worked with Iran Electronics, a huge aircraft joint venture, before moving to New York, and did a one-year master’s degree in international banking from the Columbia University.
In New York, he started working with a Wall Street bank. “The first of the PCs came to the market at that time,” Naficy recalls. “I was offered a job to sell computer systems and install LANs.”
He became a successful sales person, and what he learnt during his sales career was to have a significant say later on in life: “Listen very deeply. Being present and careful listening are very much part of the meditation technique because with meditation, you learn to have a quiet life. Meditation empties the mind of ‘mind-chatter.’ The emptier your mind, the more you are present in the moment.”
Naficy was thus practising unaware this sublime process of meditation, even during his sales pitches. “My desire for being present and careful listening, and assessing the clients’ needs — those natural instincts were making me a good salesman,” says Naficy, who was then one of two top salesmen in the US selling a brand of financial software.
He quit job to open his own company, and then came the moment in time that was to change his life forever. “I had a particularly hard breakup with my fiancee. A break-up with a mate is a very painful situation. One of things students learn in meditation is that the actual moment of ego collapsing is usually a moment in time when there is a lot of pain. It is quite rare that an ecstatic human being will start yoga and meditation,” he says.
Looking around, he says, “for the first time, I realised that the highest purity lies within me, not outside,” he says.
The realisation was almost a flash, and came to him as he was taking a walk through the woods. That was the beginning of his journey — inward. “It was a moment of realisation that the highest source of peace and security is within,” he says.
Even today, living in Iran, he takes long walks, which, he says, is extremely helpful in clearing mind-chatter. “As you turn inward, the minute that journey inward begins, you feel a lot of closeness with nature because nature tends to absorb the nervousness and mind-chatter. A few hours in the desert or nature, makes your mind clear.”
He was introduced to yoga classes, and then went off to spent over two-and-a-half years at Fairfield, Iowa, the site of Maharishi International University.
His days at Fairfield also helped him to evolve as a creative individual. He started writing poetry. “I had always grappled with writing fiction. From the second week at Fairfield, a lot of poetry started springing up. This field that generates the poetry is what Albert Einstein called the Unified Field. It is a field of emptiness, which is not actually empty but the source of all creativity. If you speak to any artist, scientist or inventor, usually right before coming up with an original idea, they are floating in this emptiness and the idea comes from no-place called Unified Field. You can access this by emptying your mind. It is a field of infinite indulgence.”
He returned to New York to do his masters in poetry. “I walked into the middle of Manhattan with a completely silent mind. It is a lot of fun walking into 9 million people with a totally attentive and silent mind because you could see the whole melodrama. I enjoyed my masters, and my poetry was published,” he says.
The book was titled ‘God or Lust.’ “The first thing that any mediator would struggle with is inward consciousness versus the lust of the material world,” explains Naficy about the title. “One should, however, make no judgments because nature has it both. And what matters is how much of a master you are in balancing both.”
By this time, Naficy has also done a lot of research on ancient texts and found the constant references to atomic physics deeply enriching. He used this knowledge to unleash his own hidden reserves of energy.
“I did 11 years of research paralleling quantum physics and references to ancient texts. I realised that at the bottom of the human spine there is a reserve of energy called Kundalini Shakthi. This is dormant in more than 90 per cent people. It is absolutely alive in all the great masters of the world. This spiritual electricity goes up the spine and awakens dormant areas of the brain, and as it enters the brain, human enters super-consciousness. It is not a world of illusion. You start experiencing all of life 500 per cent because Kundalini Shakthi actually regenerates your entire body,” he explains.
Naficy says his own Kundalini Shakthi has been awakened. “Once it happens, the minimum level of joy you experience is much higher than before. You generate internal joy regardless of external circumstances.”
He says to uplift the student Naficy must help awaken his/her sub-atomic life-force. “This I did with ancient breathing techniques because life-force follows the breath. Breath is the carrier of not only oxygen but also sub-atomic life-force. When you direct your breath in a particular way, you are actually magnetising the human spine.
Naficy, eventually, returned to Iran, where he teaches meditation. Iran, he says, is very receptive to the breathing techniques.
He has evolved the Joy of Life approach, which essentially comprises 40 lessons, of which he gave six in Dubai.
“The lessons are art of life lessons from all cultures,” says Naficy. “Underlying it all is the technique I have developed to use your breathing to induce wave like motions of energy in the body because beneath the atom, is a pulsating wave.”
The highest level of meditation, he says, is when the observed and the observer becomes one.
Naficy does not believe in props like hair-dos and costumes in his meditation classes. “True spirituality is being totally honest with your self because you cannot fool your soul. As for being bogged down with costumes and long hair, I would say, do whatever feels honest to your heart.”
