About

SELFITY is a record of one person's practice, kept in the open since 2014.

I am Gaurav Goel. I write here about what the Upaniṣads, the Bhagavad Gītā, Tantra and Kriyā Yoga look like when you actually try to live them — in an ordinary life, with work, a family, and a commute. Not the philosophy held as philosophy. The philosophy as something you do on a Tuesday.

What you will find here

Essays and notes, added steadily ever since. Some are short. Some work through a single verse in Devanāgarī, transliteration and English, and then sit with it. Some are about attention, breath, sleep, food, anger, or the particular difficulty of staying awake inside an ordinary day. Some are in Hindi.

A few ideas recur here often enough that they ended up with names:

• Ātma-Viśrānti — rest in the Self: what it is, why it is not relaxation, and how it is approached.
• The SELF-REST framework — seven living movements of that rest, written as something to practise rather than something to agree with.
• SELFITY — a seven-stage map of conscious growth, each stage keyed to a chakra and to a movement of transformation you can observe in yourself.

These are mine. I arrived at them by practising, writing, getting things wrong, and writing again.

What this is not

I write as someone still practising, not as someone who has arrived. Nothing here rests on a claim about my own state, and I would be wary of anyone whose writing does.

This is not medical, psychological or professional advice. Several posts discuss diet, breath, sleep and traditional practices; none of it replaces a qualified practitioner, and you should consult one for any health condition.

This is not the teaching of any school or lineage, and nothing here is published with any lineage's sanction or on its authority.

Why it is public

Because a practice kept entirely to oneself tends to go quietly vague, and writing it down in public is the cheapest way I know to stay honest about it. If something here is useful to you, take it. If it is not, leave it — the writing is not an argument and you owe it nothing.

Writing to me

Questions, corrections and disagreements are welcome at email. I read what arrives.