So there we were, four of us: a man in orange robes with a dead angel’s smile, a tall blonde, a mad cross-eyed woman, and me. We were talking to the man in the robes about 1968, the year The Beatles turned an obscure town in North India into the most famous place in the world that no-one had ever heard of. Two of us were talking, in Hindi and English, and the mad woman was rolling her eyes a lot, a disconcerting thing when you are trying to talk, and translate, and not sit on your microphone pack, amid the curious breast-like domes where John, the boys, the babes, and the Maharishi once roamed.

We were in search of the egoless state.

It had started back in London with the perfect shot: Jerry Hall, all long, tall, and blonde, decked and tressed as Boticelli’s Venus to appear in the window of Selfridges as a goddess for Evian water. She was talking to camera about the idea of filming this search, and all the while the primpers and polishers bustled around her.

‘It’s a search for the egoless state, and it’s all about me,’ she said as she threw her head back and let rip the Texan rumble, and out of that a film schedule of irony.

So, back at the ashram it’s Jerry, a film crew and me, and the mad woman too, though she had just attached herself for the ride.

The swami rolled his angel eyes and asked why we had a film crew with us if we were searching for a state of diminished ego. That would not help, he said.

He was right of course. How contrived to set out to sandpaper down the ego with a camera stuffed up your nose, but that’s the thing with so much of the West-does-Eastern philosophy. We love the idea of being able to buy into the whole concept of inner peace as long as we can do it expensively and quickly, which is about as far as you can get from the sense of what it really is.

Freedom from desire leading to freedom from fear, and the ability to be able to exist in the present moment in a constant state of open awareness, these are not instant fixes. They can take a lifetime they say, many lifetimes of practice. That is not quite what is happening in many, not all, but many of the glossy centres from Barcelona to the Bay Area; pump air, pump muscle, look into your third eye: ‘And that’ll be $25 dollars please, and the tapes and DVDs are available with aura t-shirts and energy-enhancing toe rings at reception as you leave,’ says the girl with the Om t-shirt and the degree from Bristol or Brown.

That is why we had gone back to India, back to the root, the core, where world awareness of the science of yoga hit the hip-hop scene in the sixties. Ringo came with a suitcase full of baked beans in case his guts kicked up, and they all left three months later in a cloud of dust, rapidly packed kurtas, and prayer beads, when the Maharishi Mahesh, having preached the virtues of celibacy to the fertile four and their various wives and girlfriends, was apparently quite open about having had sex with a young nurse from California.

Rishikesh is now a small-big town with all the cultural paraphernalia of India’s holy cities garlanded around and about. Whilst we were expecting to dive deep into the lagoon of Vedic learning on offer we did not expect Jerry to live ashram life in 45ºC amid a sea of domestic Hindu tourists, all out on the Ganges for a bit of hot season relief and spiritual cleansing. We went to a spa instead.

The group that started Ananda-in-the-Himalayas set out to address the international crowd who wanted to dip their toes into the river of knowledge without having to sleep on a charpoy or be up and out for the 5.30am meditation. While most of India fried in the hot season we at Ananda were able to be attractively limp in the hills above the ferment that is Rishikesh. Jerry and the girls could be magnificently dripped on by various Ayurvedic oils, and the boys got to discuss sound rigs whilst playing a round of golf on an interestingly vertical course in the midday sun. Ananda contended gracefully with our sunstroke, heat dementia, and tantrums. Such are the skills of those who run the über spas of the world.

We practiced yoga on the banks of Ma Ganga with a Sikh teacher who came to class in his day job mechanic’s clothes, whirling up on his motorbike, then popping behind a rock to become insto-yogi in shorts and top knot. We sat with the swamis of the leading ashrams, most particularly Swami Chidanand Saraswatiji, the gloriously grey-streaked head of the popular Parmath Ashram, as well as being Chairman of the India Heritage Research Foundation, and Spiritual Head of the Hindu-Jain temple in Pittsburgh. He sparkled at us and talked of duality in our lives; children versus stardom, the scriptures versus the internet. We found a man who, though he is officially known as Swami Sovereign Sky of Sudden Enlightenment Cosy Corner, became known as Swami James Brown for his choice of shades and his fascinating conical ego-negating hat. He gave it to Jerry, and she graciously accepted. We meditated in the twilight and practiced postures among 12-year old trainee monks in the early morning. And every moment of it is there on film for all to see.

And the mad woman of the introduction? Her ego was huge, and she fixed herself to us, intent on using us as her passport to making a big Bollywood film about her, and starring her. But, there is always wisdom in the mad—she made no pretence of what she wanted.

The Roots of Modern Yoga

Some of the main schools now dominant in the West stemmed from one source, Professor T. Krishnamacharya, considered by many to be the father of the modern form. His son, T.K.V Deshikachar, said of yoga at a conference in 1999 ‘…yoga is like a river that has been flowing for many years. It has now entered the Western World. It will have many tributaries, it will swell. Our ancient peoples did a lot of research within themselves. One of the greatest gifts that yoga gives is observation of the self and of others. Nothing is constant. Even science believes things will change.’

Krishnamacharya’s pupils developed some of the main strands of the yoga now practiced in the West. His son, Deshikachar, continued to develop a style now called Viniyoga, a gentle system that favours one to one tuition. B.K.S Iyengar, another pupil, became the father of the perfect form, the teaching method that believes that enlightenment can surely come from perfect alignment. ‘The yogi uses his body to refine his inner intelligence.’ Perhaps the most widely known of Krishnamacharya’s protégées is S.K. Pattabhi Jois, the man who developed the highly dynamic Ashtanga Vinyasa system so loved by movie stars and pop giants. For more information: Viniyoga: Tel: 01293 536664 or www.viniyoga.co.uk. The headquarters in America: T.K.V. Desikachar, New Number 31 (previously No. 13), Fourth Cross Street, RK Nagar, Chennai 600 028, India. www.kym.org. Ashtanga Vinyasa, The Life Centre, 15 Edge Street, London W8 7PN tel: 020 7221 4602 www.thelifecentre.com or in India: Shri K. Pattabhi Jois, Ashtanga Yoga Research Institute, Mysore, India. www.ayri.org. Iyengar Institute, 223 Randolph Avenue, Maida Vale, London. W9 1NL tel: 020 7624 3080 or www.iyi.org.uk or in India: B.K.S. Iyengar, Ramamani Iyengar Memorial Yoga Insitute, Pune, India. www.bksiyengar.com

The crew of Tiger Aspect for Jerry Hall Gets Kama stayed at the spa Ananda-in-the-Himalayas: www.anandaspa.com

Surinder Singh, the biking yogi: irus42@hotmail.com Parmath Ashram, Rishikesh: www.ihrf.comSwami Shyamendra Sovereign Sky Iamtheuniverse@indiatimes.com Jerry Hall Gets Kama will be shown in three parts in the BBC autumn schedule.

Financial Times, September 12, 2003