“This was one place where I felt I was at an advantage,” said Eshaan smilingly. “Otherwise I would have definitely opened my eyes each time my legs creaked in pain after sitting for so long. Instead, I threw myself into the process with everything I had, and these eight days have given me a vision that nothing can take away. A vision into life!” 

The Accident

On an unfortunate night about four years ago, when Eshaan was traveling with a friend, asleep in the passenger seat, a collision ensued, and Eshaan woke up blind in a hospital after four days. He was just 19 – a rebellious young teenager with a wild lifestyle. 

In the aftermath of this tragic experience, his mother asked him to try yoga. She had asked before the accident also, and he had refused. He refused this time also. A year later, he heard an Isha Inner Engineering video on Youtube, and it intrigued him immensely. “Is it really that simple to know the highest - just by doing a program?” The question nagged at him, hounding him until he found his way to the ashram and learned the Shambhavi Mahamudra Kriya. 

How to do life?

Sure, he remained unconvinced that a practice could change his life, until he decided to enroll in the four-day Bhava Spandana program last minute. He wondered whether without an ability to see it was appropriate for him to jump into something like this. However, the moment he arrived at Isha Yoga Center, an Isha volunteer met him right at “Welcome Point”, and took care of him throughout. 

As he went through the class, Eshaan’s doubts began to crumble. In one physically demanding process, Eshaan recalls, his inability to see what others were doing had him in his own bubble of striving, where there was no competition, no benchmark, allowing him to go all out.  

Coincidence seemed to sit around Eshaan on that trip to the ashram – after BSP, he still wondered, how to do life? Would there be relief for his burning question? A darshan with Sadhguru that evening laid his last lingering doubts to rest – Sadhguru began the darshan with the line: “So how to do life?” At that point, Eshaan shares, he knew that Sadhguru was guiding him every step of his journey. 

No one would teach me…

“Last year, about 7-8 months after completing BSP, a lot of stuff I had buried started to come out,” Eshaan shares. “I felt extremely sad and lonely. Maybe the practices are the reason for that feeling, I thought. But the very day I stopped the practices, we received Sadhguru Sannidhi at our home! It was a glaring reminder to me - I had forgotten that the biggest part of the whole journey of being a meditator is that you alone are responsible for your life.” And things started to settle after this. 

Later, a longing to learn Hatha Yoga arose within Eshaan but he found that no teacher was prepared to teach him. Until he met Ramyata, an alumna of the Hatha Yoga School, who organized a private class for Eshaan. 

Venturing into Samyama

Now a regular practitioner of hatha yoga, this March Eshaan returned to the Isha Yoga Center for Samyama – an eight-day silence program. To an outsider, it might have seemed impossible for a blind man to get through all 8 days without gesturing, but by meticulous advance planning about his movements with Vijay anna, a volunteer, Eshaan maintained his silence with ease. 

“We fixed before the program, every long break I would go first to the toilet, then to my room, to dining, and back, and a different sequence of stops for the short. As I was determined I wouldn’t make any gestures, so sometimes even when I didn’t need to go to the bathroom, I would just go anyway and stand there,” he said proudly. 

Sadhguru Resolves

During a powerful process when Sadhguru asked the participants to focus on a particular object in the hall, Eshaan felt broken-hearted that he couldn’t see it. “Though a volunteer whispered a variation in my ears as instructed by Sadhguru, I couldn’t help feeling sorry for myself for a while. But soon I heard Sadhguru saying that in reality we are not focusing on a point outside, the point is actually within us.” I was overjoyed, and felt Sadhguru said that only for me.  

“On Day 6 of Samyama, there came a moment when I no longer had a grasp on time—it could have been a moment or hours. A lot of things I had constructed within myself at that point melted away,” Eshaan shares. With grace soaking into him from every corner of the Alayam, Samyama unfolded magically for Eshaan. 

My Blindness found the path

Having returned to his life as a musician in New Delhi, when asked how the whole spiritual process helped him deal with his blindness: “No, it’s the other way round. My blindness has helped me find this path.” At 23, Eshaan embodies profoundness way beyond his age. “I’ve always been a bit extreme. From the day I took Inner Engineering, I knew I wanted to go all the way down the path,” he admits. “Before Samyama this was about keeping myself well, but now it’s about something much bigger in a lot of ways than what I call - myself.”

Editor's Note: To know more and register for Isha Yoga Programs near you, please click here.