Please allow me to introduce myself, I’m a man of wealth and taste…
I have been around for a while on this forum, but I’ve never taken the time to introduce myself.
My name is Antonin Tuynman. I am not Indian or otherwise of Hindustani origin (my wife is though). I am of Spanish-Dutch origin was brought up in the Netherlands in Christianity, but I became atheist at the age of 12 (Yes Thomas, I am a renegade). At the age of 17 I discovered Yoga and Hinduism. I practised asanas and read a lot of books during the years I was studying chemistry (MSc) and biochemistry (PhD), the bhagavad gita, the ramayana, Srimad Bhagavatam, the Upanishads. At the age of 21 I had a mind blowing experience which rooted my belief in Brahman. Since then I am a monist and consider Vedanta as my religious-philosophical path. It goes perhaps one step to far to call myself a Hindu, as I was not brought up in that tradition and do not know all the finesses thereof. At the age of 24 I started meditation practices (i.e. eightfold yoga intended to achieve meditation) and found a genuine teacher at the age of 25. I read most books of Vivekananda, Yesudian, Iyengar, I.K.Taimni (the Yoga sutras of Patanjali with Taimni’s comments), Y.Sarasvati, Satyananda (from Bihar), some books on tantra (Yohari) etc. I also read books about Buddhism, The Bardo Thodol, Taoism, Kaballah, Gnosticism, Aleister Crowley, Blavatsky i.e. other mystical movements. I practised yoga quite regularly until the age of 27, when I moved to Paris to do a postdoc. I got married with a French woman who was very frightened of my convictions. Blinded by my love for her, I put my inquiry into Yoga on a very low level for about 7 years. I got a son, and then got divorced. So I returned to my old Yoga school and have been practising since 4 years again. This time I got married to a Hindustani woman, with whom, you can guess it, I share essentially the same views. She also had a son from a previous marriage and together we have now two baby girls. So 4 children in total. A family man.
So it’s difficult to find the right amount of time to practise the eightfold yoga at the level that I aspire. I’ll just have to wait for a few more years that the children get somewhat bigger and more independent.
My normal job is that of a patent examiner in biotechnology, but I also invest a great deal of time in the development of artificial intelligence concepts which ultimately are intended for the creation of an intelligent conscious and self-aware world wide web: an aware www => hence my nickname Awwware.
I associate myself with the Singularity movement of Ray Kurzweil. I am highly interested in parallels between Yoga and science/technology.
Where do I stand now? Well, I have not attained Samadhi or kaivalya. There is still some serious polishing to be done on the plane of yama-niyama and the breakdown of my Ego. The techniques of pranayama, pratyahara, Tratak I am familiar with. Occasionally I may glimpse Dhyana. I try in my mantras to address Krsna, Hanuman and Shiva as representations of the one Brahman. In sofar you can call me a Hindu.
I must confess I’m not so much interested to a dialogue which is too much concerned with semantics, the right interpretations of terminologies etc. But occasionally something valuable comes out of it. Already the sole fact that Samkhya Karika has been recommended to me made it worthwhile to participate. I post my findings on a blog called: Brahmarandhra, where neuroscience meets mysticism and a technological blog on internet Awwwareness.
