The Vasudeva Principle: Notes from my Path

The Vasudeva Principle

NOTES FROM MY PATH

 

by Rob Diggins

 

As a beginner—really, a Level II TTP student—I first read an assigned article about

something called the Vasudeva Principle. At that time, I felt nothing. As a musician in a

local kirtan band, I regularly chanted Sanskrit phrases, including one that contained the

word “Vasudeva.” Still, skepticism lingered within me.

 

Faith—the practice of believing simply because of tradition or indoctrination—had been so ridiculed and denigrated during my childhood that skepticism became my default posture. Faith itself was cast as the problem, the “opiate of the masses,” and the once-popular bumper sticker Question Authority might as well have been flashing somewhere behind my eyelids, insisting that only fools accept claims without proof. Because of this, I found myself wary, even judgmental, of many of my kirtan-chanting peers—individuals who had rejected their inherited religious traditions as patriarchal, yet who seemed to adopt Sanskrit hymns without hesitation. The irony of this shift—from Hebrew, Latin, or English hymns to Sanskrit ones—did not escape me; it remained a source of genuine puzzlement.

 

“It’s easy to have faith in something if you believe in it!” — or maybe it was — “It’s easy to believe in something if you have faith in it!” I associate both versions with Swami Rama and his pithy humor.

 

Regarding the familiar question of whether Yoga is a religion, I can still hear Dr. Arya

(later Swami Veda Bharati) smiling through his words: “Yoga is like tennis. Do you need to have faith to play tennis?” You start doing yoga, and then, maybe, you begin to have faith in it. Yoga is not a religion; yet you might find yourself practicing it religiously. Like tennis. Then, eventually, perhaps you feel something. Something inside awakens—a quiet, inner sense of spirituality that is personal and unmistakably your own.

 

During periods when I was engaged in my TTP assignments, the themes I was exploring—faith, skepticism, inner experience, contemplation—naturally occupied the foreground of my meditation. I have come to see this activity of thinking, analyzing, remembering, and imagining not as an obstacle, but as a meaningful phase of practice. These movements of mind serve as signposts in the process of discerning valid knowledge, or pramāṇas. From direct experience, I have learned that sraddha, or faith, cannot be forced or adopted by imitation; it arises organically, as a natural outcome of sustained contemplation.

 

When I say that I sit to meditate, especially in the early phases of practice, I fully expect the mind to be active. Thoughts arise, recede, and reappear, punctuated by moments of silence and stillness. Occasionally, in the midst of the stillness, I become vaguely aware that while I am supposedly meditating—or contemplating—something entirely different is occurring. Perhaps this is the brief emergence of meditation itself. As for talking or writing about Vasudeva, the best I have managed is to feel my way toward the word and give it meaning on my own terms. Otherwise, for me, it remains empty syllables.

 

I confess my skepticism and acknowledge my reluctance to accept the words of others

without deep reflection and exploration. I need direct experience. Do I need to jump off

a cliff to understand death? No. But yes—frankly, on some level, yes. That is yoga for

me: comprehension through direct experience. Like the time I developed a severe

poison ivy rash. I chose to simply observe the experience—without ointments or

medications, just awareness. Forty-five days later, when the rash finally disappeared,

my yoga mentor asked, half-jokingly and half-seriously, “Have you gone and jumped in the poison ivy again? That’s what a yogi would do.”  I hadn’t.

 

Somewhere along this path, I learned the power of words. Much later, after my initiation into the Himalayan Yoga Tradition by my spiritual preceptor, Dr. Usharbudh Arya, I read Mantra and Meditation. In the book he makes a compelling case for the

power contained within sound—like the power hidden in a seed—held within syllables, shapes, vibrations, and ultimately, the silence that surrounds them.

 

Silence: the source.

 

His guidance in all things gradually dissolved doubt and skepticism—not through belief, but through experience. So, I began contemplating the word itself, letting it open toward silence:

 

Va – vacation, vacuity, vacuum, vacillate, vague, Vagus nerve, vanquish…

Wander everywhere without specification and eliminate.

 

Su – suspend, support, superior, supper, sublimate…

Sustain and embrace all that arises.

 

De – develop, defend, desperation, deepen, detail, devotion…

After all is said and done, faith alone remains.

 

For me, Vasudeva is an all-in-one, eternal, subsuming, nondiscriminatory, all-embracing

presence—the one thing I can have faith in. It is during these rare moments, when

something entirely different emerges in meditation—contemplation—I feel I might be touching a direct experience of Vasudeva.