Johannes Hohlenberg Review

In 1915, amidst a raging world war, a young Danish painter and

philosopher, Johannes Hohlenberg (1881 – 1960), sailed to
Pondicherry in southern India. His goal was to meet with Sri
Aurobindo ( 1872-1950), a famous philosopher, yogi and Indian
nationalist. The meeting had been arranged by a fellow artist, Mirra
Alfasa (1878-1973), in Paris because of Hohlenberg’s growing passion
and interest in spiritual self-cultivation and alternative perspectives
on social and human development.

Hohlenberg met with Sri Aurobindo and recorded a series of

conversations and dialogues over a month that fuelled his mind and
imagination in new and unforeseen ways. Views developed in these
significant exchanges would last through his lifetime and help
formulate his later visionary writings in Denmark on political
economy, role of the individual and the social state, value of personal
freedoms, goals of spiritual self-development in the now and the
significance of the natural world in relation to human existence.

Returning to Denmark in 1916, Hohlenberg delivered a series of

lectures on yoga in its meaning for Europe where he outlined views
for peace and cooperation that were grounded in a nature-based
spirituality and depth psychology, so to speak. In his audience was
Carl Vett (1851-1956), owner of Magazin Du Nord and patron of the
arts. Partnering with Vett, Hohlenberg published his first classic, ‘Yoga
Dens Forhold Til Europa’ (1916) in which he laid out an understanding
of yoga and its unique significance for Scandinavian contexts and
Europe.
Yoga, for Hohlenberg, was far more than a form of physical fitness – it
was a methodology for integrated spiritual growth and self-
transformation for individuals and societies at a time of profound
world-wide historical and cultural changes.

At the core of vision here are perspectives of unity,connexion, and

interrelationships – of ‘Enhydsyn ‘ – an area in which, for Hohlenberg,
contemporary political,economic and cultural contexts were lacking.
He writes: “this deficiency is the cause of our material and spiritual
lives being split into a multitude of forces that are not only unrelated
but even repel each other like rockets moving in opposite directions –
religion, science,art, social life, the individual, have no connection
with each other and if they come into contact, they repel and thwart
each other”.

In contrast to this fragmentation,for Hohlenberg, “yoga provides a

basis for recombining individual and cultural factors and the
multitude of unrelated disciplines. It allows them to work with each in
complementarity and harmony as expressions of the same power or
force (‘Kraft’) which along different routes is heading for the same
goal. It brings unity to a stroke and emphasizes the individual
elements by not lessening them. In this respect, it can make a
contribution to European sciences in clarity and impact”.

The power or ‘Kraft’ that Hohlenberg refers to in his introduction of

yoga to western audiences, is a specific notion of dynamic energy in
all forms and structures of life – ‘Shakti’, in Sanskrit – that is
recognized as actively linking discrete elements of natural, cultural
and social contexts and allows complementarities, exchanges and
interrelations to be carried out and fulfilled.
Hohlenberg’s later ideas of social change and individual freedoms are
reflected here, as early as 1916, in his book on Yoga. He suggests how,
individuals and societies – like the natural world – are involved in
profound processes which are propelled forward when there is a
possibility of concentration of energies in living exchange.

Yoga as ‘Yuj’ or ‘Union’, for Hohlenberg, is how transformations

involving expansions occur. He writes: “ in the natural world, there is
a methodological striving towards a fuller unfolding of opportunities
present in a latent state and slowly emerging into realities”. Yoga,
then, is based on a systematic design learnt from these natural forces
and the practical use of these forces in the service of specific kinds of
development and growth – ‘Forskelling”. It is a kind of compressed
‘shortcut” consisting in an application of the methods of nature to
selected areas of great power and intensity. By convergence of
energies – ‘De enkette Deles forenede Kraft” – into one point of focus
or concentration, yoga achieves far greater effects in life. It involves
executing an association or a conscious acknowledgement of identity
– an identity that has existed as potential form and is allowed to
exfoliate fully.

In the rest of his book on Yoga, Hohlenberg, then, systematically

outlines the application of this application of concentrated energy to
each of the five main branches of yoga – ‘Hatha’ ( somatic and body-
based’), ‘Raja’ ( meditative), ‘Gnana’ ( knowledge-based),
‘Bhakti’( devotional) and ‘Karma’ ( action-based). The results of such
practices enable a fullness of growth and potentialities – freedom
from self-proscribed limitations and determinations. He sees human
societies and individuals as capable of expansion on an unimaginable
scale by working with – and not against each other and the natural
world.