Collection of Some Articles written or

spoken
by Sadhguru

1. The Three Fundamental Nadis Ida, Pingala and

Sushumna
Sadhguru speaks about the three fundamental nadis or energy pathways in the system,
the Ida, Pingala and Sushumna.

Sadhguru: Within the spine, if you know its physical construction, you will know there are
two holes on either side of the spine which are like conduit pipes for all the nerves to pass.
This is the Ida and the Pingala, the left and the right channels.
In the Pranamayakosha or the energy body, there are 72,000 nadis. The 72,000 nadis spring
from three basic nadis the left, the right and the central the Ida, Pingala, and Sushumna.
The word nadi does not mean nerve. Nadis are pathways or channels of prana in the
system. These 72,000 nadis dont have a physical manifestation. In the sense, if you cut the
body and look in, you will not find them. But as you become more aware, you will notice the
energy is not moving at random, it is moving in established pathways. There are 72,000
different ways in which the energy or prana moves.

Only when energies enter into Sushumna, life really begins.

The Ida and Pingala represent the basic duality in the existence. It is this duality which we
traditionally personify as Shiva and Shakti. Or you can simply call it masculine and
feminine, or it can be the logical and the intuitive aspect of you. It is based on this that life is
created. Without these two dualities, life wouldnt exist as it does right now. In the
beginning, everything is primordial, there is no duality. But once creation happens, there is
duality.

When I say masculine and feminine, I am not talking in terms of sex about being male or
female but in terms of certain qualities in nature. Certain qualities in nature have been
identified as masculine. Certain other qualities have been identified as feminine. You may
be a man, but if your Ida is more pronounced, the feminine may be dominant in you. You
may be a woman, but if your Pingala is more pronounced, the masculine may be dominant
in you.

Bringing a balance between the Ida and Pingala will make you effective in the world, it will make
you handle life aspects well. Most people live and die in Ida and Pingala; Sushumna, the

central space, remains dormant. But Sushumna is the most significant aspect of human
physiology. Only when energies enter into Sushumna, life really begins.

Vairagya
Fundamentally, Sushumna is attribute-less, it has no quality of its own. It is like empty
space. If there is empty space, you can create anything you want. Once energies enter into
Sushumna, we say you attain to Vairagya. Raga, means color. Vairag, means no color, you
have become transparent. If you have become transparent, if what is behind you is red, you
turn red too. If what is behind you is blue, you turn blue too. If what is behind you is yellow,
you turn yellow too. You are unprejudiced. Wherever you are, you become a part of that, but
nothing sticks to you. Only if you are like this, only if you are in a state of Vairag, then you
will dare to explore all dimensions of life when you live here.
Right now, you are reasonably balanced, but if for some reason the outside situation goes
crazy, you will also go crazy in reaction to that because that is the nature of Ida and Pingala. It
is reactive to what is outside. But once the energies enter into Sushumna, you attain to a
new kind of balance, an inner balance where whatever happens outside, there is a certain
space within you which never gets disturbed, which is never in any kind of turmoil,
which cannot be touched by the outside situations. Only if you create this stable situation within
yourself, you will dare to scale the peaks of consciousness.

2. The Types of Yoga: Understanding the Four Essential

Paths

Yogi and mystic, Sadhguru answers a question on the different types of yoga and explains
that any yoga that you do comes under four essential paths.

Questioner: Sadhguru, there are so many different types of yoga. How do I know which kind of yoga
is best for me?
Sadhguru: Right now, the only things which are in your experience areyour body, your mind,
and your emotions. You know them to some extent, and you can infer that if these three
things have to happen the way they are happening, there must be an energy that makes
them happen. Without energy, all this cannot be happening. Some of you might have
experienced it. Others can easily infer that for these three things to function, there must be
an energy behind them. For example, a microphone amplifies a persons voice. Even if you
dont know anything about the microphone, you can infer that there is a source that powers
it.
These are the only four realities in your life: body, mind, emotion, and energy. Whatever you
wish to do with yourself, it must be on these four levels. Whatever you wish to do, you can
only do it with your body, your mind, your emotions or your energy. If you use your
emotions and try to reach the ultimate, we call this bhakti yoga. That means the path of
devotion. If you use your intelligence and try to reach the ultimate, we call this gnana yoga.
That means the path of intelligence. If you use your body, or physical action to reach the
ultimate, we call this karma yoga. That means the path of action. If you transform your
energies and try to reach the ultimate, we call this kriya yoga. That means internal action.

These are the only four realities in your life: body, mind, emotion, and
energy. Whatever you wish to do with yourself, it must be on these four
levels.
These are the only four ways you can get somewhere: either through karma, gnana, bhakti
or kriya body, mind, emotion, or energy. No, no, I am on the path of faith. I dont need to
do anything else. Is there anyone who is only head, no heart, hands and energy? Is there
anyone who is only heart, not the other things? You are a combination of these four things.
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It is just that in one person the heart may be dominant, in another person the head may be
dominant, in yet another person the hands may be dominant, but everybody is a
combination of these four. So you need a combination of these four. It is just that, only if it
is mixed in the right way for you, it works best for you. What we give for one person, if it is
given to you, it may not work well for you because that person is so much heart and this
much head. That is why on the spiritual path there is so much stress on a live Guru. He
mixes the cocktail right for you, otherwise there is no punch.

The four yogis

It happened once. Four men were walking in the forest. The first was a gnana yogi, the
second was a bhakti yogi, the third was a karma yogi, and the fourth was a kriya yogi.

Usually, these four people can never be together. The gnana yogi has total disdain for all
other types of yoga. His is the yoga of intelligence, and normally, an intellectual has
complete disdain for everyone else, particularly these bhakti types, who look upward and
chant Gods name all the time. They look like a bunch of idiots to him.

But a bhakti yogi, a devotee, thinks all this gnana, karma and kriya yoga is a waste of time.
He pities the others who dont see that when God is here, all you need to do is hold His hand
and walk. All this mind-splitting philosophy, this bone-bending yoga, is not needed; God is
here, because God is everywhere.

Then there is the karma yogi, the man of action. He thinks all the other types of yogis, with
their fancy philosophies, are just lazy.

But a kriya yogi is the most disdainful of all. He laughs at everyone. Dont they know that all
of existence is energy? If you dont transform your energy, whether you long for God or you
long for anything else, nothing is going to happen. There will be no transformation.

These four people customarily cant get along. But today they happened to be walking
together in the forest and a storm broke out. It grew very intense and began raining heavily.
They started running, looking for shelter.

The bhakti yogi, the devotion man, said, In this direction there is an ancient temple. Lets
go there. Hes a devotee; he knows the geography of temples very well!

They all ran in that direction. They came to an ancient temple. All the walls had crumbled
long ago; just the roof and four columns remained. They rushed into the temple; not out of
love for God, but just to escape the rain.

There was a deity in the center. They ran towards it. The rain was lashing down from every
direction. There was no other place to go, so they moved closer and closer. Finally, there was
no alternative. They just hugged the deity and sat down.

The moment these four people hugged the idol, there was a huge fifth presence. Suddenly,
God appeared.

In all their four minds the same question arose: Why now? They wondered, We expounded
so many philosophies, did so many poojas, served so many people, did so much bodybreaking sadhana, but you didnt come. Now when were just escaping the rain, you turn up.
Why?

God said, At last you four idiots got together!

If these dimensions dont walk together, human beings will be one big mess. Right now, for
most people, these dimensions are aligned in different directions. Your mind is thinking and
feeling one way, your physical body is going another way, your energy another way. Yoga is
simply the science of aligning these three dimensions.

Yoga The ultimate union

When we say yoga, for many of you it probably means some impossible physical postures.
That is not what we are referring to here. Yoga simply means to be in perfect tune. When
you are in yoga, your body, mind and energy and existence are in absolute harmony. When
your body and mind are in a relaxed state and at a certain level of blissfulness, you can be
free of so many nagging ailments. Let us say, you go and sit in your office with a nagging
headache. Your headache is not a major disease, but just that throbbing could take away
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some of your enthusiasm for work and perhaps some of your capability for that day. But
with the practice of yoga, your body and mind can be kept at the highest possible peak.

When you experience everything as one in your consciousness,

then you are in yoga
The word yoga literally means union. When you experience everything as one in your
consciousness, then you are in yoga. To attain to that unity within you, there are many ways.
For example, there is hatha yoga. Hatha yoga means you start with the body. The body itself
has its own attitudes, its own ego, its own nature. Apart from your mind, do you see, your
body has its own ego? Suppose you say, From tomorrow, I want to get up at five in the
morning and walk on the beach. You set the alarm. The alarm rings. You want to get up but
your body says, Shut up and sleep. It has its own way.
So we start with the body. Hatha yoga is a way of working with the body, disciplining the
body, purifying the body, and preparing the body for higher levels of energy. All of us are
alive, all of us are human beings. But all of us do not experience life to the same intensity
because our pranic energies are not the same. Different people experience life in different
levels of intensity.

For example, someone sees a tree. A tree is just a tree. Most people dont even see it.
Somebody sees the tree in more detail. An artist sees every shade of it. Someone else not
only sees the tree but also sees the divine in it. Seeing is not the same because the level of
intensity with which you experience life is not the same.

The whole process of yoga is to take you from something that you
know, and take the next step into the unknown. We have made
this yogic science almost like a physical science
The whole process of yoga is to take you from something that you know, and take the next
step into the unknown. We have made this yogic science almost like a physical science.
Suppose you mix two parts of hydrogen and one part of oxygen, you get water. Even when a
great scientist puts it together, it is water. Even if an idiot puts it together, it is only water.
Similarly, in yoga too, whether a great yogi does it or an ignorant person does it, it does not
matter. If he does the practices and sadhana properly, the result is there to be seen.
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In yoga, these systems have been identified. To start with, you work with the body, then you
move to thebreath, then to the mind, then to the inner self. Like this many steps have been
created. They are only different aspects. They are not really different types of yoga. In fact,
we address all of them at once. It is important that in a very balanced way all of them are
addressed at once, as one unit. Otherwise, if you work just with the body, it is only
preparatory in nature. So, there is really no division as such. Yoga is a union of all these.

3. Kundalini Yoga: Beneficial or Dangerous?

Sadhguru speaks about what kundalini is, and looks at the process of Kundalini Yoga. He
explores how this powerful spiritual process should be approached with utmost
responsibility and reverence.
Sadhguru: In the yogic culture, the snake is a symbolism for kundalini the unmanifest
energy within you. The nature of kundalini is such that when it is still, you do not even know
it exists. Only when it moves, you realize there is so much power within you. Till it moves it
is almost non-existent. Because of this, kundalini is symbolized as a snake because a coiledup snake is so hard to see unless it moves. Similarly, you do not see this coiled-up energy
unless it moves. If your kundalini is aroused, miraculous things that you cannot believe
possible will happen with you. An unleashing of a completely new level of energy begins and
your body and everything behaves in a completely different way.

Kundalini is symbolized as a snake because a coiled-up snake is

so hard to see unless it moves.
Heightened states of energy are also heightened states ofperception. The whole yogic system
is aimed only towards enhancing your perception. A spiritual process essentially means just
that to enhance your perception because you know only what you perceive. This is the
reason for the symbolism of Shiva and a snake. It indicates that his energies have reached
the peak. His energies have reached the top of his head and so his third eye has opened.

The Third Eye

The third eye does not mean someones forehead has cracked and something came out. It
simply means another dimension of perception has opened up. The two eyes can see only
that which is physical. If I just cover them with my hand, they cannot look beyond that. That
is how limited they are. If the third eye has opened, it means another dimension of
perception which is inward looking, which looks at life completely differently, has opened
up and everything that can be perceived is perceived.

If the necessary supportive atmosphere is not there, simply

attempting to raise kundalini could be very irresponsible and
dangerous.
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Nowadays, a lot of books and yoga studios talk about Kundalini Yoga and its benefits,
though they dont know anything about it. Even to utter the word kundalini we always
bring a sense of reverence and then utter the word because it is so enormous. If you have to
activate the kundalini, the necessary preparation in your body, mind and emotion should
happen, because if you pump energy into a system which is not ready for that kind of voltage
or volume, things will fuse out. So many people have come to me who have lost their mental
balance and physical capabilities because they tried to do Kundalini Yoga without the
necessary guidance and assistance. If the necessary supportive atmosphere is not there,
simply attempting to raise kundalini could be very irresponsible and dangerous.

Energy has no discretion

Kundalini Yoga in its essence is the most dangerous form of yoga. I am saying dangerous
because it is the most potent also. What is most potent is always the most dangerous if
improperly handled. For example, there are various kinds of ways in which electricity is
being produced. One of the ways we do it is through nuclear reactors. It is the most efficient
way of producing energy that we know right now but it is also the most dangerous way, isnt
it? When things are going right, it is the easiest and best way to produce energy on the
planet. When things go wrong, they go seriously wrong in ways that you cant fix it. Similarly
with Kundalini Yoga, it is the most potent and it is the most dangerous. Without the
necessary preparation, without constant, expert guidance and observation, no one should
ever attempt it. But the problem is books have been written about it and everybody wants to
do the highest yoga. Nobody wants to start with A, everybody wants to start the alphabet
with Z. This attitude itself is dangerous.

Kundalini Yoga in its essence is the most dangerous form of

yoga. I am saying dangerous because it is the most potent also.
In classical yogic traditions, there is a certain type of yoga we teach for people who live in
family situations. There is a certain other type of yoga we teach for ascetics. We never teach
those in family situations the ascetic form. That is the most potent way to do it but it will
demand a certain dimension of discipline and focus, which your regular lives will not allow.
If you do that kind of yoga, it will dismantle your outside life instantly.

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This doesnt mean there is something wrong with Kundalini Yoga. It is a very fantastic
process but it needs to be done properly because energy has no discretion of its own. You
can make your life out of it or you can burn your life out of it. Electricity is making our life.
But if you stick your little finger into it, you know what will happen! Energy has no
discretion. How you use it is how it is. Kundalini is also like that. You are using it right now
but in a minimal way. If you maximize it you can raise beyond your limitations of existence.

All yoga in one way is towards that but Kundalini Yoga is particularly towards that. In fact,
all life is towards that. In some way, people want to experience life more intensely than they
are experiencing it right now. Someone wants to sing, someone else wants to dance,
someone wants to drink alcohol, someone else wants to pray why are they doing all this?
They want to experience life more intensely. Everyone is trying to raise their kundalini but
they are doing it haphazardly. When you approach it scientifically with a proper method, we
say it is yoga.

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4.The Benefits of Meditation Shambhavi and Good Health

Meditation is a powerful tool for spiritual growth, and is essentially a process to take one
beyond the limitations of body and mind. Teachers and practitioners of these inner
technologies have also experienced the many physical and mental benefits of meditation
and yoga. In recent years, a growing number of scientific studies and research on meditation
have corroborated these experiences.

Ishas introductory practice is the Shambhavi Mahamudra, an ancient kriya that has
millions of dedicated practitioners who aver that they experience greater emotional balance,
concentration, focus, stability and better health with regular practice of the meditation. In
fact, there have been several scientific studies that measure the various benefits of
practicing the kriya regularly both with regard to brain activity during the kriya, as well as
statistical research of how it affects peoples health and well-being.

How does the Kriya Work?

The reason why most people are unhappy or unhealthy is that the physical, the mental and
the pranic body are not in alignment.

Sadhguru says, There is a certain way to engineer our system, to make this body, to make
this mind the very chemistry within us the way we want it. Traditionally, yoga sees the
human being as five layers of body: the physical body, the mental body, the pranic energy
body, the etheric body and the bliss body. The reason why most people are unhappy or
unhealthy is that the physical, the mental and the pranic body are not in alignment.
Sadhguru explains, If they are properly aligned, a natural expression, an overwhelming
expression of joyfulness will naturally happen within a human being. Now, we are looking at
the technology of keeping these three bodies constantly aligned so that joyfulness is not an
accidental happening; joyfulness becomes a normal condition, a natural way of living for
you.

The Studies
Studies on Shambhavi Mahamudra have been varied: some have examined its impact on
disease status and medicine usage, some have looked specifically at menstrual disorders,
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while others have studied the benefits of this meditation on sleep, heart rate variability,
brain activity, etc. Other studies have researched general well-being and improved attention
spans among regular meditators.

Lets take a look at the results of some of the key studies.

Improved Cardiac Health

Two studies published in 2008 and 2012 examined how Shambhavi Mahamudra supported
cardiac health. The studies showed that participants had a more well-balanced Cardiac
Autonomic Nervous System and an overall increase in Heart Rate Variability (HRV) during
the practice. A higher HRV has been linked to better immunity to stressful situations, and is
said to bestow a greater survival advantage on individuals. A lower HRV on the other hand
has been linked to various heart diseases such as coronary artery disease, hypertension,
chronic heart failure and myocardial infarction. The researchers conclude that practitioners
of the Shambhavi Mahamudra and other Isha Yoga practices have higher exercise tolerance,
better cardiac response to stressful situation, lower probability of undergoing hypertension
of cardiac troubles such as ischemia or infarction.

Greater Coherence Within the Brain

A study from the Centre for Biomedical Engineering, IIT Delhi, looked at EEG
(Electroencephalography) data from practitioners brains before, during and after practicing
the kriya. The results show that practitioners experienced a greater level of coherence
between the right and left hemispheres of the brain. EEG coherence is known to be a
measure of how well connected various regions of the brain are. Higher coherence indicates
greater exchange of information between various regions, as well as improved functional
coupling and coordination. Higher levels of coherence are also correlated to higher scores
on IQ and creativity tests, as well emotional stability and cognitive flexibility.
The researchers also measured signals at various prominent EEG spectral bands known as
the alpha, beta, delta and theta. Shambhavi practitioners were seen to have higher alpha
band power in general, indicating that they experienced lower stress levels. There was a high
increase in delta band power and theta band and a notable reduction in beta band power. A
reduction in beta band power indicates reduced susceptibility to mental tension, excitement
and anxiety. Higher theta and delta activity have been noted in previous research as
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indicative of conscious access to deeper states of meditation. Delta rhythms combined with
alpha are known to reflect an inner intuitive empathetic radar, a kind of sixth sense the
researchers note.

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4. Why North isnt the Best Direction and Position To Sleep

Sadhguru looks at why Indians traditionally never slept with their heads pointing north,
and explores a few other things that can help us sleep well and rest better.

Sadhguru: In India, you were told that you should not place your head to the north
while sleeping. Why? First, lets look at the way your body is engineered. Your heart is not
located half-way down, it is placed three-fourths of the way up because pumping blood up
against gravity is more difficult than pumping it down. The blood vessels which go upward
are a finer arrangement compared to those going down. As they go up into the brain, they
are almost hair-like, to such a point that they cannot even take one extra drop. If one extra
drop is pumped in, something will burst and you will have a hemorrhage.
Most people have hemorrhages in their brain. This does not incapacitate you in any major
way, but small damages happen. You may become duller, which people are becoming. Your
level of intelligence after the age of 35 drops in many ways unless you take enormous care to
keep it up. You are managing because of your memory, not because of your intelligence.

When you put your head to the north, what happens? If you have any kind of blood-related
problem, lets say anemia, what would a doctor prescribe? Iron. It is an important
ingredient in your blood. You have heard of the magnetic fields on the planet. In many ways,
the earth is engineered because of its magnetism. Thats how powerful the magnetic forces
are on the planet.

When the body is positioned horizontally, you can immediately make out that your pulse
rate drops. The body makes this adjustment because if blood is pumped at the same level,
too much will go into your head, causing damage. Now, if you place your head to the north
and stay that way for 5 to 6 hours, the magnetic pull will cause pressure on your brain. If
you are beyond a certain age and your blood vessels are weak, you could have hemorrhages
and paralytic strokes. Or, if your system is sturdy and these things dont happen to you, you
could get up agitated because there is more circulation in the brain than there should be
when you are sleeping. It is not that if you do this for one day, you will fall dead. But if you
do this every day, you are asking for trouble. What kind of trouble depends on how strong
your system is.

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So, which is the best direction to sleep with your head pointing towards? East is the best
direction. North-east is okay. West is alright. South, if you must. North, no. This is true as
long as you are in the northern hemisphere sleeping with your head towards any side
except north is okay. In the southern hemisphere, dont put your head to the south.

The Right and Wrong Side of the Bed!

Your heart is an important aspect of your physiology. The station that pumps life across the
body if this one thing doesnt happen, nothing happens starts from your left side. In
India, the culture has always said that when you wake up, you must roll to your right side
and then get out of bed. When your body is in a certain state of relaxation, its metabolic
activity is low. When you get up, there is a certain surge of activity. So you need to roll over
to your right side and get up because at a lower level of metabolic activity, if you suddenly
roll to your left, you will put pressure upon your cardiac system.

The First Thing You See

In the tradition, they also told you that before you get up in the morning, you must rub your
hands together and place your palms upon your eyes. They said that if you do this, you will
see God. It is not about seeing God.

There is a heavy concentration of nerve endings in your hands. If you rub your palms
together, all the nerve endings are activated and the system comes awake immediately.
When you wake up in the morning and still feel sleepy and drowsy, just do this and see,
everything comes awake. Instantly, a whole range of nerves connected with your eyes and
other aspects of your senses come awake. Before you move your body, your body and brain
should be active. You shouldnt get up dumb, thats the idea.

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5. Kriya Yoga A Powerful Way To Walk The Spiritual Path

Yogi and mystic, Sadhguru, looks at what kriya yoga means, and what it takes to walk this path and
explore the very mechanics of the life process.
Sadhguru: Fundamentally, kriya means internal action. When you do inner action, it does
not involve the body and the mind because both the body and the mind are still external to
you. When you have a certain mastery to do action with your energy, then it is a kriya.
If you do external activity we call it karma. If you do internal activity we call it kriya. In a
way, both are certain kind of karmas or both are certain kind of kriyas. But traditionally, or
in the general sense of the term it is understood like this: karmas are those which bind you,
kriyas are those which release you.

Once we start working with the energy in a certain way, it has a

different kind of depth to life
Whatever we do with your body, your attitudes and your thought, for example today your
thoughts may go in one direction. Tomorrow if another person comes and influences you,
they will go another way. Similarly, whatever we do with your body, your body is well today
so it likes asanas. Tomorrow morning if your body is stiff, you will hate asanas.
Youremotions are not at all reliable. At any moment they can shift from this to that. But your
energies are different. Once we start working with the energy in a certain way, it has a
different kind of depth to life. Suddenly, there is a different dimension to every aspect of
your life because your energies have been touched and activated in a completely different
way.

A powerful way
Kriya yoga is a very powerful way to walk the spiritual path, but at the same time it is a very
demanding way. What it demands out of a person is so tremendous. For a modern educated
person today, kriya yoga would be inhuman because it needs that kind of discipline and a
certain exactness about everything. Most people dont have the body, the mind or the
stability of emotion for the kriya yoga path anymore because right from childhood, people
are in too much comfort. Comfort does not mean physical comfort. Sitting in a comfortable
chair is not an obstruction. But your whole being is seeking comfort always, that is a great
obstruction. If you are sitting on something which is comfortable, enjoy it there is no
problem about it. But if you are constantly seeking comfort, then that kind of mind and
emotion is unsuitable for the path of kriya yoga. Kriya yoga cannot be done with people who

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are loose, people who talk freedom everywhere, Am I not free to do this, am I not free to
do that, cant I eat this, cant I sleep there?

If you take someone into the path of kriya, if I tell you sleep with your legs up and head
down, that is how you should sleep without asking questions because all of it can never be
explained. You may understand as you go, but it can never be explained. And if it has to be
explained, the essence of the kriya will be lost. If people start asking stupid logical questions
for everything, kriyas cannot be imparted.

If we want to teach you kriyas just as a physical practice, I can write a book about it, and you
can read and learn it. But if you want the kriya to be a live process, if we want the kriya to be
imprinted into your system in a certain way, then it needs discipline and dedication. It
needs trust to open up your energies to the other person so that you become absolutely
vulnerable. He may do anything with you, and initially you will start wondering what the
hell he is doing with you because the initial stages of kriyas can be such that you dont know
whether you are getting enlightened or you are going mad. You must have enough trust to
sustain through those periods. Otherwise kriya will be difficult.

So generally on the path of kriya, most Gurus make the disciples wait. You come and you
want to learn kriya yoga. Okay, sweep the floor. No, I want to learn kriya yoga. That is
why I said, sweep the floor. You swept the floor for one year and said, I did one year of
sweeping. Oh, you are done with one year of sweeping the floor? Wash the dishes. Just
make him wait, wait, and wait. Use him, misuse him, abuse him, and still his trust does not
shake, Oh, there must be some reason. When he comes to this, then he can be initiated
into kriyas. Otherwise, once you power him in a particular way that his system is vibrant
beyond normal standards, if his attitudes and emotions are not proper, he will cause
immense damage to himself.
But in todays world, to get that kind of time with people to make them wait and go through
all this and when they come to that kind of trust, then imprinting this is a little remote. It is
not impossible, but it is a little remote in the modern world.

The mechanics of life

Kriya yoga is important only if you want to do things beyond realization. If your interest is
only to somehow escape this prison and get away, you just want enlightenment or mukti,
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then you dont really have to walk the kriya yoga path because kriyas are so elaborate and
involve so much discipline and focus. If you just want to be liberated, then kriyas can be
used in a small way, it need not be too intense. Kriya as a whole path is not necessary
because it needs too much application.

With the path of kriya you are not only seeking realization, you
also want to know the mechanics of life-making
If you follow the path of kriya very intensely, without guidance it may take a few lifetimes to
mature. If there is someone alive who can do things with you, then it can happen in this life.
Otherwise kriya is a little roundabout way. With the path of kriya you are not only seeking
realization, you also want to know the mechanics of life-making. You want to know the
engineering of how life is built what to do about it. That is why it is a much longer process.

People who have come up on kriya have a completely different kind of presence about them
because of the mastery over their energies. They can dismantle life and put it back together.
But if you are just pursuing other ways, like gnana for example, you are razor-sharp, you can
do many things with your mind but still there is nothing much you can do with your energy.
If you are on bhakti, there is nothing you can do and you dont care, you only want to
dissolve. If you are on the path of karma yoga, you do many things in the world, but you can
do nothing with yourself. But kriya yogis can do whatever they wish with themselves in
terms of energy and they can do a lot with the world also.

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7.The Moment of Death Using the Dying Process For

Spiritual Growth
Yogi and mystic, Sadhguru, looks at the dying process and how maintaining awareness at the
moment of death can be a means of spiritual growth. He also explains how some of the traditions
in Indian culture surrounding the moment of death evolved.
Questioner: In the Bhagavad Gita it says that whatever state of being one remembers during
the dying process, he will attain that state, being absorbed in its thought. Is it so Sadhguru?
Can we use the moment of death to create pleasantness in whatver comes later?
Sadhguru: Yes, it is that simple. But There is a very beautiful story. Wherever he went,
Sage Narada only said Narayana, Narayana. Narada had a passport for all the three worlds
he freely traveled everywhere. One day, he saw a farmer plowing his land in a state of
ecstasy and bliss. Narada was eager to find out what the secret of his bliss was. When he
approached the farmer to talk to him, the farmer did not even notice him, so engrossed he
was in plowing his land. At noon time, he took a break from his work and went to eat under
a tree. He opened the container with whatever little food he had and just said Narayana,
Narayana, Narayana and started eating. The farmer wanted to share the meal with him, but
because of the caste system, Narada would not eat with him. Narada inquired, What is the
source of your bliss? The farmer said, Every day, Narayana appears in his true form to me.
That is the source of my bliss. Narada asked him, What sadhana do you do? The farmer
said, I dont know anything. Im an ignorant, illiterate man. It is just that when I wake up in
the morning, I say Narayana three times. When I start my work, I say Narayana three
times. When I end my work, I say Narayana three times. When I eat, I say Narayana three
times. When I go to bed, I say Narayana three times. Narada calculated how many times
in 24 hours he himself was saying Narayana. It ran into millions. But still, if he wanted to
see Narayana, he had to go all the way to Vaikuntha[1], which was a long journey. But to this
farmer, who just said Narayana three times, before eating, before plowing and whatever
else, Narayana came right there. Narada thought this is not fair, it must be some kind of a
mistake.

If you can maintain your awareness in the moment you are

shifting from one dimension of life to another, from the physical to
the beyond, that is mukti. But to come to awareness in that
moment, you must practice awareness for a lifetime.

20

Immediately, he made his journey to Vaikuntha and asked Vishnu, I say your name all the
time, but you dont appear for me. I have to come and see you. But to this farmer, you
appear every day and he is living in ecstasy! Vishnu looked at Narada, asked Lakshmi to get
a vessel filled to the brim with oil, and told Narada, First, there is an errand to be done.
Please take this vessel full of oil to Bhuloka without spilling a drop, leave it there, and come
back. We will answer the question later. Narada took the vessel with oil, went to Bhuloka,
left it there, and came back. Now, answer my question. Vishnu asked, When you were
carrying this vessel full of oil, how many times did you utter Narayana? Narada said, How
could I say Narayana at that time? You said not a drop should spill, so I had to pay
attention to that. But coming back, Ive said many Narayanas. Vishnu said, That is the
whole thing. This farmers life is like carrying a vessel full of oil that may spill any moment.
He has to earn his food; he has to do so many things. In spite of that, he is saying
Narayana. When you carried the oil in this vessel, not once did you utter Narayana. When
you have nothing to do, it is easy.

Using the dying process

When the moment of death comes, it takes something to be aware enough to say what you
want to say. Most people die in unawareness. In this culture, if someone is dying, they will
always start a chant like Ram naam satya hai, Aum Namah Shivaya, or whatever they
know, because they want the dying one to utter a gods name or somehow become aware in
the last moment. You dont even have to say anything. If you can maintain your awareness
in the moment you are shifting from one dimension of life to another, from the physical to
the beyond, that is mukti. But to come to awareness in that moment, you must practice
awareness for a lifetime. Or you must be in the presence of someone who can make that
happen for you. In that context, Krishna said that if you can think of him in the moment of
death, he will be there and ensure that you pass.
Here, he talks about an inner reality the yoga of attaining the Absolute. When it comes to
attaining the Absolute, if you do the right things, it is 100% sure that it will work, because
the only ingredient is you nothing else but you. So he could say with absolute certainty, If
you do this, I will take care of it. When it comes to outer realities, he would never have said
such a thing, because he knew life external realities are subject to so many factors.

If you can maintain your awareness in the moment of transition from the physical to the
beyond, you can attain. This is why for most people, the moment of realization and the
21

moment of leaving the body are the same. If the awareness comes when you are leaving the
body, anyway you will leave it. But even if it is not yet time to leave your body, but your
awareness rises to such a peak where you and your body are clearly separated, you most
probably will not have the necessary capability to hang on to the body, unless you are in
situations where certain control mechanisms are in place that ensure you will not slip out of
the body.

The moment of death and future births

If you have a certain thought at the moment of death, it becomes
the quality of your future birth.That is the reason why in this
culture, we always said you should not die among your family.
People used to go to the forest to die this is Vanaprastha.
One more aspect is, if you have a certain thought at the moment of death, it becomes the
quality of your future birth. We must create an atmosphere of peacefulness and wellbeing for
people during the dying process because whatever is the dominant factor in their mind and
emotions in the last moment will become the quality of their future lives. That is the reason
why in this culture, we always said you should not die among your family. People used to go
to the forest to die this isVanaprastha. Even emperor Dhritarashtra, his queen Gandhari,
and Kunti went into the forest after the Kurukshetra war, with just Sanjaya as an assistant.
They had all become old, so they went to the forest to die there, rather than in the palace.
Though Dhritarashtra was blind and stupid in many ways, that much awareness was there,
which is missing in the world today. Now that her children had become emperors, Kunti,
who had suffered all kinds of hardship in her life, could have enjoyed the palace, but she
also decided to go and die in the forest.
So they went into the forest and climbed up a very steep hill. There was a forest fire. Since
they were old, they could not run or fight the forest fire, so they just decided to offer
themselves to the fire. So Dhritarashtra told Sanjaya, You have served me very well till
now, but you are still a young man go away. The three of us will give ourselves to the fire.
Sanjaya refused to leave them, and all four got burnt in the forest fire.

If you die among the family, you will die with a huge sense of attachment, which, in the
future, will not bring wellbeing. You know that in India, even today, people go to Kashi to

22

die, because it is a holy place. They want to die in the grace of Shiva. They dont want to die
with their family throwing their emotions at them.

Time to pay back the loan

Death is the only certainty in life. If you lived your life well, death is not at all a bad thing. If
when you were alive, every moment, there was hesitation, fear, hatred, anger, it means you
never lived. If when death comes, you want to live, that is no good. After all, what is death?
You are shedding the body. The body is a loan you took from Mother Earth. If you take lets
say 10 million loan from the bank, and lets say in the next 50 years, you made these 10
million into 10 billion, if your banker comes to reclaim the loan, you will pay him joyously
with interest. You will treat him and give him gifts. But suppose you squandered these 10
million and lost everything, if the banker comes, terror arises within you. You will try to
hide. So many tricks you will try to play. Similarly, the Earth gave you this loan. If you have
made this into a blessed life, if you really put it to absolute use and you lived in great
sweetness within yourself, then, when Mother Earth says it is time to pay back the loan, you
will joyfully pay it back. And there is no interest. For one who joyfully pays back the loan, it
is over, because when you are joyful, being aware comes naturally. When you are aware, you
are on the path of liberation. Definitely, the last moments quality will become a major
quality of your future lives if you wish to have future lives. If you want dissolution into the
Ultimate, if you want to become one with it, then there is no future life. People have been
telling me, Sadhguru, dont use this negative terminology it scares us. We are going to
dissolve and become nothing? We could say instead, When you attain mukti, you will
become everything.

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8. A

Home for Growth Sadhguru on How to Grow

Spiritually
Can ones home feel like an ashram even in the midst of the city madness? Sadhguru looks at how to
grow spiritually and create a conducive atmosphere at home.
Questioner: When I stay in the ashram, my spiritual practices happen so effortlessly. But
when I go home, after a while, it becomes very mechanical. How to grow spiritually and
maintain this effortlessness even at home?
Sadhguru: Essentially, a home is an arrangement to live. People make arrangements
according to their means and according to their needs or sometimes according to their
neighbors needs! I hope your home is according to your needs, and not according to
someone elses idea as to how you should live. You must make your home the way it works
for you.
A home is not just the building. It also includes all your other arrangements your wife or
husband, your children, maybe your parents, your neighbors, and the neighborhood. The idea of
living in a town or city instead of living in the forest is to make our lives easier, to have
infrastructure and a community. It may not be working for you right now, but you chose to
live in the city so that life would be a little more effortless. You choose an arrangement that
is convenient for whatever purpose you live for.

What Makes an Ashram an Ashram?

What makes an ashram an ashram is that everyone is here because they want to be here they
are not trapped here. You need to create such a situation in your home too. Just see if
anyone is feeling trapped in your home. There may be people who feel that way, and you
dont even know. They may be speaking to the neighbors, not to you. They may not feel
entirely trapped, but maybe suffocated in some way. If they are feeling suffocated, open
larger windows for them, or put them on the rooftop whatever is needed to make sure
everyone is there because they want to be there.

Do not volunteer only in the ashram be a volunteer at home

tooYour home should be an arrangement for your growth.
Once you create this atmosphere, suddenly, home is a nice place to be. But if there is even
one person who does not want to be there, he will create a certain atmosphere and a vibe
that is difficult to live with. First of all, check yourself is this the place you want to be? If it
24

is not, see why. If it is, see why. Engineer your home in such a way that it feels like a
wonderful place for you to do your sadhana(spiritual practices), to live well, to be peaceful,
and to be joyful. Let this not become a hellhole for you it is your home. It is an
arrangement that you made no one shoved you into it. It must work the way you want it to.
Above all, clean yourself from all the stupid competition and opinions that you have about
how you should live in the city. You do not have to be in a particular way to achieve certain
things. You can be completely different, do completely different things, and still get there. In
many ways, I am a living example of this, regarding the spiritual process. People think you
are not spiritual if you turn your head briskly. They think you must turn it slowly, and you
must speak gently. People have certain ideas how someone who is spiritual is supposed to
be. Set patterns are destroying your life.

Set Up A Conducive Atmosphere

If you are a spiritual seeker, why cant your home be set up like an ashram? It would be great
if everyone was a volunteer at home. Do not volunteer only in the ashram be a volunteer at
home too. Many people have shared with me, Never in my life, I ever thought cutting
vegetables could be such a fantastic experience. I said, Why? You never ate vegetables in
your life? Yes, but When they are at home, they expect someone else to do it.
The fundamental thing is to make sure everyone is there because they want to be there. Set
an atmosphere where your home is not a place to be stuck in but a place to grow in. Your
home should be an arrangement for your growth.

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9. The

Golden Mean of Blissfulness

Sadhguru answers a question about the ups and downs of life, and looks at the importance of
creating a golden mean of blissfulness as a stable platform to go through life.
Questioner: Sadhguru, there are days when I am extremely happy, and there are days when I
am extremely sad for no reason. How to deal with these ups and downs?
Sadhguru: In southern India, if someone laughs too much and is too happy, they say, Dont
laugh so much. It will be followed by misery. This is an unfortunate kind of wisdom some
people have come to because life has been like that to them. If they experience too much joy
today, misery will strike them tomorrow. This is because people work themselves up. In
their minds, they multiply both misery and joy. Now you may ask, If we dont do this,
where is the beauty in life? Life is beautiful as it is. You do not have to give it a coat of
make-up.
It is because you have no attention for life in its fundamental sense that you are lost in your
psychological reality. The psychological and physiological aspects of who you are happen in
cycles. You may be overly exuberant and on a high today and hit the bottom tomorrow. Most
human beings are going through this psychological rollercoaster. You will always find some
outside influence as an excuse, but even if we lock you up in a room and there is no one who
can cause happiness or misery to you, still these psychological cycles will happen. Similarly,
there are physiological cycles, and both the psychological and the physiological cycles can
influence each other, depending on which is the bigger force at that moment.

You must hit your golden mean. It is time to simply sit no matter
if your knees swell, your ankles hurt like hell you are blissful.
The knowledge about these cycles has sunk into people in a certain way, and they kind of
psych themselves into believing that anyway misery will strike them and it will. If you
understand that you alone make up both joy and misery, there will be no problem. The
biggest mistake that people make is they try to be happy. And not only happy they try to
be happier than someone else. That is a serious problem. Do not try to be happy. Once you
experientially know that whatever happens within you is caused by you and nothing else but
you, you will be blissful. You will neither be flying high nor will you be in the dumps you
will just be blissful. This maintainable height of pleasantness may be different from person
to person, depending upon the intensity and the amount of energy that you have, but it is a

26

stable platform. If you want to enjoy an ecstatic state, you can always go up and come back.
If you like melancholy, you can go down and come back up again.

The Golden Mean

This mean experience of blissfulness is the golden mean, the middle path that the Buddha
and others have talked about. It is just that different people arrive at a different mean. This
is not a passive, sedate state but a lively, pleasant state like a nice morning. No thunder
claps, but everything is fine, going well. This is where the Good morning! comes from.
When you wake up in the morning after having been removed from the world for a period of
time, it feels so nice. Even the afternoon is nice, and so is the evening and everything else,
but it takes a withdrawal for you to notice this. It is like after having nothing but kanji
[liquid porridge] for five days, you eat regular food again. You will suddenly notice how nice
it is. Every moment is good in its own way, but it takes a withdrawal for you to notice this.

This golden mean is not non-participating. If you want, you can fly up and land again, or
you can go down and come back again, but in any case, you maintain a certain level of
blissfulness. Organizing this blissfulness is the work of your kriya. If you do your kriya
properly, you will hit that golden mean and maintain it. From there, you can strive to set
your golden mean at a higher, more exuberant level. Depending on how much energy and
aliveness you generate within yourself, your mean will settle at a higher or lower level. But
wherever it settles, it will be a beautiful experience for you. It is not effervescent ecstasy
because you cannot maintain that, or if you do, you cannot be active in the world. You can
get sozzled with ecstasy, but then you will not be able to do whatever you have to do.
If you want to be effective in the world, you need to maintain the golden mean of
blissfulness a blissfulness that is, for lack of better words, a combination of natural
peacefulness and joyfulness. Lets say you are moving around in the morning, making your
breakfast, humming without knowing; you simply feel nice this is blissfulness. Ecstasy is a
freaked-out state of pleasantness. You cannot stay there unless you have reached a certain
level of energy. There are yogis they are called avadhutas who are in such states of
ecstasy that they do not even know that they must eat. They do not care to do anything.
Someone has to feed them, someone has to take them to the toilet as if they were
completely drugged out. But in todays world, there is no one to take care of you you better
come down.

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A Stable Platform
You must hit your golden mean. It is time to simply sit no matter if your knees swell, your
ankles hurt like hell you are blissful. One part is in heaven, one part is in hell in between
is the golden mean. That is why long meditations to arrive at a state where you can be
engaged in everything in the world, but still be blissful. If you do not have this stable
platform and you get into activity, you will get lost. In todays world, most of peoples lives
are too controlled nothing extreme happens to you. Suppose you were living in the wild,
your golden mean of blissfulness would make you very alert and enhance your survival
capabilities.

If you are miserable and depressed, you will not survive well you will want it all to end and
become the tigers lunch today. If you are too ecstatic, you do not care if the tiger eats you
either. Only if you are in the golden mean, you can maintain your survival instinct, do all the
work that you can, and still be pleasant to yourself and to everyone around you, which is
important if you want to live in the world. If you are so freaked out in ecstasy that you do
not care what happens around, you have to withdraw completely. Such people usually will
not last too long they will die young, but this does not matter ecstasy serves its own
purpose. They are in such a freaked-out state of ecstasy that life may pop out any moment.
If instead of living for fifty years, they were in freaked-out ecstasy for five years and then
died, it is perfectly all right. They have seen everything that human experience can touch
there is nothing more to do.

The Bhava Spandana program is to show you that you can freak out in ecstasy for no reason,
which is nice, but you cannot stay there. If you want to always be in a pleasant state, you
need to create a stable platform a golden mean of blissfulness. Meditating a few days in a
year will not do. The idea is to take the sadhana into your life. If you give yourself to
sadhana, I will be a living reality in your life. Right now, I am a thought, a memory in your
mind. If you want me to be a living reality every moment of your life, you have to invest
some time into bringing clarity to who you are. If who you are is murky, whatever I am will
be missed. There is no space, no nook or corner, not one atom which is not touched by the
Grace of the Creator, but you completely miss it as long as who you are is murky. If you
settle this, suddenly, it will be like a new existence altogether.

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10. Patanjali

The Father of Modern Yoga

Yogi and mystic Sadhguru explores the incredible life and capabilities of Patanjali, the father of
modern yoga and the author of the celebrated yoga sutras.
Sadhguru: If you look at Patanjali, as an enlightened being, he cant be more enlightened
than someone else. There is no such thing. Realization is realization. But as a man and
above all as an intellect, he is such an intellect that the great scientists of today look like
kindergarten children in front of him. The breadth of his understanding of life is so big that
you cannot believe that this is possible in one human being. In his mastery of language,
mathematics and in his perception of astronomy, he is so fantastic. Todays scholars argue
that this is not one mans work, that many people must have worked to make this happen
because it is so big, it cannot fit into one mans intellect. It is one mans work. He is probably
one of the greatest intellects ever on this planet.
He is known as the father of modern yoga. He did not invent yoga. Yoga was already there in
various forms, which he assimilated into a system. Shiva, the Adiyogi or first yogi,
transmitted yoga to the Sapta Rishis or the seven sages many thousands of years ago. He had
the highest understanding of human nature, but he didnt put anything down in writing. He
was too wild to be a scholar. He found it was too difficult to put everything he knew into one
person, so he chose seven people and put different aspects of yoga into them. These became
the seven basic forms of yoga. Even today, though these have branched off into hundreds of
systems, yoga has still maintained seven distinct forms.

The Yoga Sutras

Patanjali came much later and sort of assimilated everything. He saw that it was getting too
diversified and complex for anyone to understand in any meaningful way. So he assimilated
and included all aspects into a certain format as the Yoga Sutras.

He just understood humanity inside out not as people but as a

total mechanism of the human body, mind, consciousness
Sutra literally means a thread. Or in modern language we can say it is like a formula.
Anyone who knows the English alphabet, even a kindergarten child can say E=mc, but
there is an enormous amount of science behind that little formula, which most people do
29

not understand. The sutras are like this, in thread form. Out of ignorance, people have just
taken these sutras and are trying to implement it as it is. A thread is of no consequence by
itself. There can never be a garland without the thread but no one ever wears a garland for
the sake of the thread. The thread was given so that each master makes his own kind of
garland. You can put flowers on it, or beads or pearls or diamonds. The thread is vital but
that is not a goal by itself.

Unless you are exposed to the culture, it is a little difficult to understand what kind of mind
Patanjali is. Even though the Indian scriptures like theVedas and the Upanishads are quite
phenomenal by themselves both in terms of grammatical excellence and in their poetic
beauty and content, the Yoga Sutras are an absolutely brilliant piece of work compared to
any of the scriptures on the planet talking about life and beyond.
They are a tremendous document about life and the most uninterestingbook on the planet. It
is the driest and dullest book you can read. It is not scholarly in the usual sense. Patanjali
does not teach any practice in them. He did this intentionally, and his mastery over
language and composition was such that he wrote it in a way that no scholar would be
interested in it. The idea is, this is a formula to open up life. If people like the poetry and
literary part of it, all kinds of people, especially scholars, will read it. Once they read it, they
will make a 100 different interpretations of it.
The sutra will mean something only to a person who is in a certain level of experience.
Otherwise it is just a bundle of words which dont make any sense. Someone who is
exploring his consciousness, if he is in a certain state of experience, if he just reads one
sutra, it will be explosive. You are not required to read the whole book. If you read one sutra
and make it true with your life, thats enough. It will realize you.

And Now Yoga

Just to give you some sense of what kind of a man he is he starts such a great document of
life in such a strange way: the first chapter of the Yoga Sutras is just half a sentence, not
even a full sentence. The sentence is like this, And Now Yoga. What do you make out of it?
Intellectually, it doesnt make any sense, but experientially what it is saying is, if you still
think that building a new house or finding a new wife or getting your daughter married will
settle your life, it is not yet time for yoga. If you have seen money, power, wealth and
pleasure, you have tasted everything in your life and you have realized that nothing is going
to fulfill you ultimately and work in the real sense, if you have gotten that point, then it is
30

time for yoga. All the nonsense that the whole world is involved in, Patanjali just brushes it
aside with half a sentence. This is why the first sutra is and now yoga. That means, you
know nothing works and you do not have a clue about what the hell this is. The pain of
ignorance is tearing you apart. Now, yoga. Now there is a way to know.
It is improper to call Patanjalis Yoga Sutras a book because it is not a book. It is a complex
arrangement of tools such fantastic tools arranged in such a brilliant way that if at all
something similar ever happens, it is too far away. Because someone with that kind of inner
experience usually would not care or bother with scholarly nonsense. And someone who is
so scholarly is usually so lost in his scholarship that he never has any inner experience.
Never before has there been one person with an absolute depth of inner experience, but with
that kind of erudition and scholarly mastery over language.

He just understood humanity inside out not as people but as a total mechanism of the
human body, human mind, human consciousness everything in such absolute detail and
completeness. There is simply no better way to look at it. It is not fair actually because
whatever you try to say, the guy has already said it! You think of the most brilliant idea and
try to say something, but he has already said it. He did not leave anything for anyone to say
about life.

The musician
They say he played a variety of instruments and was a great musician and singer. The veena
was one of his favorite instruments and he composed many ragas. His intellect was such
that he could find a way through anything. He was absolutely audacious in everything and
did things in a challenging way that no one could break through.

There was another sage Vyagrapada who was his contemporary. Vyagrapada means one
who has tigers feet. And there was someone else with a name that meant one with horns
on his head. Once, in their banter, they got into an argument and teased Patanjali. He then
took a challenge that he will compose music in any raga without using alphabets with
horns. This is almost impossible but he composed a complicated series of music. If you
listen to it, you will just see it seems impossible, but still the music sticks to the tones and
tunes of the ragas without those alphabets. It is so incredible. That is the kind of man he
was.

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Chidambaram temple
In South India, there were five lingas created for the five elements in nature. Patanjali
consecrated the linga for space which is inChidambaram.
In the yogic system, the snake is used as a symbolism for unmanifest energy
or kundalini because till it moves, you dont even realize that it is there. Patanjali was such a
great being, for him divinity is not an upward movement. He is a cascade of divinity. He is a
kind of human being that gods would be envious of. He is symbolically depicted in the
famous half-man, half-snake form indicating that he has risen above the duality of life and
attained to ultimate oneness, and in doing so, has opened the door for others to achieve the
same. Half of his body has been symbolically made into snake, because he is not seen as a
person anymore. He is seen as the very basis of the yogic system.

Chitta Vritti Nirodha

Patanjali defined yoga as Chitta Vritti Nirodha, which literally means that if you still the
modifications and activity of the mind, you are in yoga. Everything has become one in your
consciousness. We may be pursuing many things in our lives and going through processes
that we call achievements, but to go beyond the modifications of the mind is the most
fundamental and at the same time the highest achievement one can attain, because this
releases a human being from what he is seeking from what is within and what is outside
from everything. If only he stills his mind, he becomes an ultimate possibility. The mind
becomes a plain mirror, not a wavy mirror. A wavy mirror will distort ones whole
perception of life. At least if you dont look at it, you may have some idea how you are, but if
you look at it every day, it will give you a completely distorted vision of everything.
Right now, most human beings are using their mind only between their memory and
imagination. Memory and imagination are not two separate things. Memory is accumulated
past, imagination is an exaggerated version of that. If you bring your mind to a state where
you are neither contaminated by memory nor deluded by imagination, then it is a truly
intelligent, penetrative mind. It sees everything there is to see life and its source. For the
survival process, your memory and imagination are good enough, but if you want to explore
other dimensions of life, then memory and imagination are not sufficient because they are
only a recycling of your past. Once you recycle your past, there is a pattern to your life. And it
is an unbreakable pattern if your mind is just engaged in memory and imagination. Once
you are trapped by a pattern, it does not matter who created the pattern, it is a kind of
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slavery. Essentially, realizing that one is trapped in psychological realities and missing out
on the existential experience of the grandeur of creation is the first step towards liberation.
This is the reason why, of all the beautiful ways in which it could be expressed, Patanjali
chose the description Chitta Vritti Nirodha for yoga a technology which can take you
towards your liberation or realization.

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11. The

Most Important Things in Life to Fulfill Your

Potential
Yogi and mystic, Sadhguru, looks at the most important things in life that can help every
individual live a full-fledged life and blossom to their fullest potential.

#1 Reflect what is around you

Sadhguru: Your inner world if you want to call it that should only be a reflection of what
is around you. This may be diametrically opposite to some moral theories that say the outer and
the inner should not touch each other, otherwise you would immediately get corrupted by
everything around you. That is not true. You get corrupted by what is around you only when
you have opinions about everything.
You look at one thing as good, something else as bad. You get attached to what you consider as
good. You desperately try to avoid what you consider as bad, and of course that will rule you
from inside. This is not the way to be. Seeing everything just the way it is that is the way to be
within. If you see something other than what is there, it means you are contaminating the
world with your opinions and prejudices.

Touching the ultimate, rather than defining yourself through

patterns of thoughts and emotions, is the greatest and one of the
most important things in life you can do.
Creation is made so that you see it the way it is, not to make it the way you want to make it.
This is an obscenity that humanity is committing upon the Creators creation. Such a
magnificent creation what is there for you to do? Absorb it, if you can nothing more
and even that is not simple because creation is phenomenally multi-tiered. There are not
just things; so many phenomena are happening right here one inside the other, all in one
space, all in one time.

Everything that you think is past, everything that you think will be future is right here. If
you see everything the way it is, if the whole creation reflects within you, if you can contain
creation the way it is within you, you become the very source of creation. That is the way to
be, inside and outside.

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#2 Dont be a psychological case

Either you exist here as a piece of creation, which is pretty good, or you become like the very
source of creation, which is fantastic. But being a psychological case is not a good thing. To
be just a psychological case, you need not have put your mother through the trouble of
delivering you. She could have delivered a file, and someone could have studied the case. It
is not worth being a psychological case. If you consider only your thoughts and emotions as
your life and there is nothing beyond that for you, you are a psychological case. You should
not die as a psychological case abundle of thoughts, emotions, opinions, and prejudices. You
must become a vibrant, full-fledged life. These are the most important things in life.
Touching the ultimate, rather than defining yourself through patterns of thoughts and
emotions, is the greatest and one of the most important things in life you can do. You should
strive to become an absolutely full-fledged life. A full-fledged life does not mean going out
and doing all kinds of exploits in the world. It means allowing yourself to grow to full depth
and dimension. Every human being should do this.

#3 Doing whats really needed

What we do is determined by what is needed. These days, wherever I go, people recognize me
as someone who planted so many trees, educating so many children, built so many hospitals,
and so on. I squirm at the thought that this is what I am known for. It is most unfortunate
that most people cannot think beyond food, education, and things like that.
Suppose the country or the world was doing really well everyone had enough to eat,
everyone was well educated, everything was happening well what meaning would it have
to start an Isha Vidhya school and to give a midday meal? Right now, when the children have
not eaten properly, the midday meal seems like a great blessing. It is a blessing only because
of the cruelty of poverty. It is not a true blessing. Only because we created human beings
without having the necessary food for them, serving them a meal feels like a great thing. I
dont think it is. It is unfortunate that such things are still needed in the world.

Your inner world should only be a reflection of what is around you.

Even if everyone had eaten well and they had everything they wanted, enhancing the
experience of life to its ultimate possibility would still always be relevant. Ultimately, this is
the purpose of all life to blossom to its fullest potential. Whether it is a little plant, a tree,
an elephant, an ant, a man, or a woman the ultimate goal is to become a full-fledged life.

35

But being in the world, we have to play some game. Let us play a game that is of maximum
usefulness and meaning to everyone around us. If you reflect creation just the way it is,
there is no personal need to play a game and no compulsion to be a part of any game.
Whether you withdraw into a cave or plunge into the marketplace, it is still a game. The only
way to not be part of any game is to dissolve. That is a great thing to do, but when human
beings attain to a certain clarity within themselves, they are of immense value to everyone
around, so it is good if they hang around for a while and bring a little more clarity to others.

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12.What

is Conscience Should I listen to what it says?

How do we decide what is the right thing to do and not do? Can our conscience help?
Lets look at what is conscience with yogi and mystic, Sadhguru, as he explores the limitations of
morality and contrasts it against our humanity.
Question: What is conscience? Should we allow it to guide us in life?
Sadhguru: Conscience means that which hurts when everything else is feeling great! What
you feel guilty about or what you feel is right or wrong is essentially a social phenomenon.
That has been injected into you by social norms. Morality is of the society and it is different
from one group of people to another. Different times in history and different points of
geography have had different moralities. Whatever your grandmother thought was
absolutely immoral is something you do shamelessly today. So morality always differs from
person to person according to times and situations. It has no existential relevance. But your
humanity has existential relevance.

What is conscience? Conscience means that which hurts when

everything else is feeling great.
If your humanity was alive and active every moment of your life, it wouldnt be necessary for
somebody to tell you to behave this way or that way. It is only because people failed to keep
their humanity up that society has tried fixing it with morality. But though everyone has
received every kind of moral that they should, we havent been able to fix the world. With
morality you have just learnt to pretend with the rest of the people around you. Within
yourself all the nonsense is still going on. If your humanity is full-blown, you wouldnt need
morality. You would be fine the way you are.

Consciousness vs Conscience
With morality, you will develop a conscience, not consciousness. If your humanity is fullblown and on full-time you will not need any morality. Morality is an imitation of humanity.
Morality may fix a few things in society but it will cause complete havoc within the inner
nature of the human being. Humanity will also bring social order, but in a loose way without
any enforcement. It will make the human being beautiful. That is what is most important. If
humanity flowers and overflows, then divinity will be the next natural step. Only if you allow

37

your humanity to overflow within you, then divinity will flower. Without the richness of
humanity, divinity cannot happen, no matter what you do.

Make a list of all the things that the major religions of the world
call as sin. You will see, just to be alive is a sin.
Morality never brought divinity. It has brought guilt, shame and fear, because no one can
fulfill the kind of morals which have been set. Make a list of all the things that the major
religions of the world call as sin. You will see, just to be alive is a sin. Anything that you do is
a sin. Your very birth is a sin. Since the very process of life is supposed to be a sin, you
always feel guilty and terrified.

India is a culture without morality. There are no morals carved in stone to tell you, This is what
you do and this is what you dont do. We never depended upon morality because we
created human beings who are capable of stirring up humanity in such a big way. So the
need for morality or a moral code never arose in each generation.

Three keys for humanity

To stir up this humanity, we set up three fundamentals.
To stir up this humanity, we set up three fundamentals. One is, absolute passion towards
the source of creation. This is manifested in this culture in a million different ways. When
we wanted to build a town or a city, the first thing we built was a grand temple. The people
who built this temple lived in huts but they built a phenomenally grand temple. This is
especially so in the south of India. The other two fundamentals are, compassion for all life
around you and dispassion towards yourself. If you maintain these three things, your
humanity will be always on. Otherwise your humanity will get switched off and you will have
to pretend like a fake human being with a set of morals. Then you will develop a conscience.

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13.The

True Miracle of Life

Are miracles real or are they just stories told to the gullible? Yogi and mystic, Sadhguru, reminds us
that the answer lies in realizing that the true miracles are in the life happening around us every day.
Sadhguru: A lot of people keep asking me, Sadhguru, all the othergurus are claiming all
kinds of miracles. Why arent you performing any miracles? According to them, a miracle
means you must pull a rabbit out of a tissue box! At least if you pull a tissue, you can use it,
but what will you do with a rabbit!
Anything that is not in peoples perception or understanding is called a miracle. Today, with
a piece of plastic and a little bit of metal, I can call and talk to someone across the ocean. If I
did this a hundred years ago and told you I was talking to someone half way around the
world, if you were a rationalist you would definitely think I was either bluffing or I was some
kind of an idiot talking to himself. But today it is a simple fact.

Everything in Life is a Miracle

As your understanding and knowing of the existence widens and expands, there is no miracle for
you. Everything is just reality. If your understanding and experience of life is very limited,
everything is a miracle for you. Life happens in many different ways. Because people have
limited themselves to just the physical and the logical physical in experience and logical in
thinking they call anything beyond this a miracle. So there are no miracles, at least in the
way people are thinking. If there is a miracle, then everything in existence is a miracle.
Every atom is a miracle. Otherwise, there are no miracles and everything is just the way it is.
It is natural. Whether you call it natural or a miracle, it is the same thing.
These are the two ways to look at life. You see everything as a miracle or you see nothing as
a miracle. Everything is explainable. This is the difference of approach between science and
mysticism. A scientist sees everything as a process. A mystic looks at everything as a miracle.
Just look at the soil beneath your feet. If you put manure into it, you get a beautiful flower
on the tree. You put stinking manure, but look at the fragrance. If you did not know the
process and I were to tell you I am going to convert manure into a fragrant flower, would
you believe me? But now it is going through the tree and happening. Suppose if I were to
take a lump of dung in my hands and make it into a beautiful flower, then you would call it a
miracle. But when a tree does it, you dont think its a miracle. Why this prejudice?

39

The True Miracle of Life

The true miracle of life is not in you doing something, but in you realizing that life is already
a big miracle. Everything here is magical. If you eat a banana or a piece of bread or a fish, it
becomes a human being over an afternoon. What greater miracle do you want? All of you
are performing the miracle. The only problem is that it is happening unconsciously. If you
could consciously make a banana into a human being, you are the very Creator, isnt it?
Either you exist as the Creator or you exist as a piece of creation. If you live on the surface,
you live as a piece of creation. If you go a little deeper, you exist as the Creator. That is the
choice every human being has.
Recently, I happened to have some time before a meeting, so I decided to go swimming.
After swimming we met for lunch and one of the people said, I saw you swimming in the
pool. I said, Were you expecting me to walk upon water? He said, No, but you
were swimming! I said, Yes, I swim in the water and walk upon the earth. Do you want it
another way? Land is good enough for walking, isnt it? If you start walking on water,
where will you swim?
We are missing the essence of life by getting diverted by all kinds of fanciful things. Silly
stories are being passed off as great. But let me tell you about my miracle. I can show you
hundreds of people around me for whom not a single day passes without tears of bliss flowing
from their eyes. This is my fortune, that people around me are shedding tears of bliss around
me wherever I go. I can show you people for whom not a single moment of irritation or
agitation have come in them in many months. I think this is the miracle the world needs.

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15.Reality

Check 5 Things You Should Never Forget

Given the fast-paced world we live in, life can get overwhelming at times if we do not find ways to
stay rooted in reality. Here is a quick checklist of five things you could try not to forget.

#1 There is great intelligence in humility.

Sadhguru:
The difference between a fool and an intelligent person is that an intelligent person knows
how foolish he is; a fool does not. Noticing the stupidity of who you are is great intelligence.
Anything in this existence a tree, a blade of grass, a grain of sand, one single atom do
you understand any of these things fully? No. When this is your level of intelligence and
perception, how should you walk in the world? Gently, with a little humility, respect and
love for everything around you.

If not love, then at least with awe, because you dont understand a damn thing in this world.
If you just learn to walk like this, you will not escape a spiritual process. You dont need any
teaching. It will happen to you anyway. This is why in the eastern cultures, always, you bow
down to whatever you see whether it is a rock, an animal or a human being. Being in
reverence towards the very earth that you walk upon, towards the air that you breathe, the
water that you drink, the food that you eat, the people that you come in touch with and
everything else that you use, including your body and mind, is a way of ensuring success in
every endeavor that we partake in.

#2 Joy is not for saving.

Sadhguru:
What you save will never be your quality. What you dispense will be your quality. If you save
your joy, at the end of your life no one will take account, She saved every bit of joy in her;
shes the most joyfully dead. They will say, This horrible creature never even smiled in her

41

life. But if every day you dispensed your joy and love, people would say, Oh she was a
joyful and loving being.

#3 You are mortal.

Sadhguru:
A significant thing every human being has to do is structure their psychological and
emotional framework around the most fundamental fact of their life their mortality. Right
now, it takes a lifetime for people to understand that they are mortal; they need a heart
attack or the appearance of a malignant lump somewhere to remind them.
You need to celebrate and enjoy every moment of your life because life does not wait for you
even for a moment. If you were immortal, you could enjoy a hundred years each of
depression, anxiety, madness and misery and then on the 500th anniversary, you could
become joyful. But that is not the case. You are mortal and it is ticking away. So there is no
time for frustration, depression, anxiety, anger or for any unpleasantness in this life.
In the ashram I always tell people, no matter what work you are doing,every day you must
stick your fingers into the earth at least for an hour. This will build a natural physical memory,
a bodily memory in you that you are mortal.

#4 You can create a loving world.

Sadhguru:
You can create a loving world in every single activity that you do in your life. Creating a
loving world does not mean doing something more or less. If you live your life constantly
focused on what you want, it will unquestionably happen in your immediate surroundings,
and it will also begin to happen in the larger surroundings.

Creating a loving world is not a service that you do for someone else. Within yourself, is it
more pleasant to be loving, or to be angry, hateful and jealous? Which is a more intelligent
way to exist? Loving, isnt it? All I am saying is, please live intelligently. This is not for
someone elses sake. It is pleasant and beautiful for you. It is an intelligent way to exist.

42

#5 The quality of life is determined by what lies

within.
Sadhguru:
In many ways, peoples happiness, peace and love are mortgaged to the external situation.
So, if the stock market goes up you are happy, if the stock market goes down you are
unhappy. The quality of life is not about what is around you. Our ability to live joyfully here
does not depend on the size of the house we live in or the car that we drive. These things
make your life comfortable and convenient but the essential quality of your life is how you
are within yourself right now.

Living joyfully and peacefully is not new to you. You were like that as a child, isnt it? So, I am
not talking about taking you beyond, I am just talking about starting at the square one of
your life.

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16. Hellow Magazine's Interview with Sadhguru.

Sadhguru was recently interviewed by the lifestyle magazine Hello! in which he responded to a range
of interesting questions. In a three-part series, we have been bringing you excerpts from the piece
which appeared in the magazines May 2013 issue. While the first two posts dealt with materialism
and spirituality and the challenges of modern life, the third and final instalment has Sadhguru
speaking about our duty as human beings and how to reach our potential.
Q: Who is a good human being? What are his primary duties towards himself/herself and
society?
Sadhguru: As a human being, your only duty is that you grow to your full potential. If you
grow to your full potential, your very way of being is absolutely useful. The best things will
happen around you; there is no need for you to do any duty.
If you do not know how to make yourself happy, is there any possibility of you making the
world a happy place to live in? If you do not know how to manage your body, mind and
emotions, can you manage the world? It is not going to happen. If you do not know how to
keep yourself, you will definitely not know how to keep the world. So, dont worry about
your duty, see how to nurture yourself to the highest possible level. Then you will do what
you should do.

Q: How can one align the mind, body and soul in a way that holds the three together in a fine
balance?
Sadhguru: In yoga, we look at the human body as five sheaths. The first sheath is
called annamaya kosha or the food body, because what you call as the physical body is just a
heap of food. The second sheath is calledmanomaya kosha or the mental body. These two
layers can only function in connection with the third dimension, the energy body
or pranamaya kosha. You can compare this to computers today there is hardware and
software, but by themselves they cannot do anything unless you plug the computer into
quality power.
Pranamaya kosha is the dimension in which most of the yogic practices function. If you keep
your pranamaya kosha in perfect balance and fully activated, there can be no such thing
as disease either in your physical or mental body. Keeping the energy body in full flow is not
about doinghealing or things like that. This is about going to the foundations of your energy
system and activating it in a proper way by building a foundational yogic practice that
establishes your energy in such a way that your bodyand mind are naturally fine.
Q: How does one evoke happiness from within?
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Sadhguru: As there is a science and technology for external wellbeing, there is a science and
technology for inner wellbeing. Yoga is an inner technology. When I say yoga, dont think in
terms of impossible physical postures or twisting yourself like rubber bands. This is a deeper
understanding of your own body, mind and energy, and about creating an inner situation
where you are joyful and peaceful by your own nature.Being peaceful and joyful is not the
ultimate goal in life; it is the most fundamental thing in a human beings life. If you cannot
be peaceful and joyful, you are incapable of exploring any other dimension within yourself.
So, to be peaceful and joyful, we have simple methods. If you just make your life energies
function in a certain way, you are naturally peaceful and joyful by your own nature.

Q: How does one get rid of fear, especially fear of disease, death and material loss?
Sadhguru: The physical in the existence is constantly under threat because the physical is
always within limited boundaries it is always demarcated. With anything which is
demarcated, there is always a fear of losing it. For instance, this physical you is constantly
under threat. No matter how healthy, strong or young you are right now, tomorrow morning
you may be dead. I am not wishing it upon you, but you may be dead, isnt it? Because the
physical is under constant threat. Nobody can avoid it.
Fear has become so fundamental simply because your experience of life has not gone
beyond the physical. If we had explored and established ourselves in other dimensions of
experience, the body would not be such a big issue. But now, no matter what kind of
teachings other people give you, whether someone tells you that you
are atman, paramatman or whatever else, your whole experience is limited to the physical
body. So the fear of losing it is natural. But if you establish yourself in other dimensions of
experience, the body becomes an easy thing to handle. Life or death wont make such a big
difference.
Q: Do you think we control our destinies or does destiny control us?
Sadhguru: What you refer to as destiny are those situations which are going on without
your permission; they seem to be unfolding themselves without your intent. I know you
have been told that God is making your destiny and plotting your life for you, but I think you
are adult enough these days. There is no such thing as destiny. Whatever you call destiny is
something you have created unconsciously.
You are doing more things unconsciously than consciously. I would say, for most average,
educated, intelligent human beings, only about two percent of their life is conscious. They
create an enormous amount of their life unconsciously, which leads them in so many
directions.
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The whole effort of all spiritual processes is to see that you create your life consciously
instead of blundering through it. Once you make that effort, you will see more and more of
your life becomes self-determined, not pre-determined. If you have mastery over your
physical body, 15 to 20% of your life and destiny will be in your hands. If you have mastery
over your mind, 50 to 60% of your life and destiny will be in your hands. If you have
mastery over your very life energy, 100% of your life and destiny will be in your hands
every moment of your life can become self-determined.

Questioner: You have talked about attaining spirituality while being in the material world
and enjoying its benefits. Is there anything one must give up to experience a higher state of
being?
Sadhguru: These questions are always being asked: If I follow a spiritual path, can I live
with my family? Can I wear good clothes and eat well? Distinguishing between material
and spiritual life has come from a certain level of ignorance. The earth you walk upon, the
air you breathe and the food you eat are material. The body itself is material. Can we
separate whatever you refer to as the spirit in you from your body? So, how can you separate
the material and the spiritual?
What we need to change is not the content of our life. We need to change the context of our
life. Even if you go to a Himalayan cave, you are still the same person, arent you? So, this is
not about changing our world, we are changing the way we experience it.

As far as I can see, everyone is striving for happiness, everyone is striving to be free. That
means every human being is seeking spirituality. A few are striving consciously, most are
striving unconsciously. If you find unconscious expression to it, it gets labeled as
materialism. If you find conscious expression to it, we call it a spiritual process. Isnt it
better to seek consciously with eyes open rather than closed?
Questioner: In times when not managing a front-row invite, the latest designer bag/car or a
fancy holiday can cause stress to many, how does one justify material want when it is likely
to come with much angst?
Sadhguru: Essentially, every human being is trying to have a larger slice of life. If he knows
only money, he is thinking of a little more money; if he knows power, a little more power; if
he knows love, a little more love. But if you apply your awareness and look at it, you can
clearly see that you are not seeking money, property, love or pleasure; what you are seeking
is expansion. How much expansion would settle you for good? If you look at this, you can
see that you are looking for infinite expansion. It is definitely time to stop and look at what
46

is driving us like crazy, to possess more and do more because it is not the things that we
are after. There is something within you which does not like boundaries, which is looking for
a boundless experience.
It is wonderful that you are seeking the infinite itself but the problem is you are seeking it in
installments. You can never reach the infinite by counting 1 2 3 Unless you use the right
instrument, it will not happen. If you are looking for something boundless, it has to be nonphysical. The moment you seek that which is not physical, we say you are spiritual.
Questioner: Some critics have often termed new-age spirituality as a fad. How would you
respond to them?
Sadhguru: Unfortunately, today, spirituality is the most misunderstood and misrepresented
aspect of life. The way it is being presented worldwide, some of it is utterly ridiculous, a lot
of it is crooked, much more of it is well-meaning but stupid. Sometime ago in the US,
someone took me to a spiritual expo where they were selling spiritual bath soap, spiritual
toothpaste, and what not! This is like an Indian village shandy where they sell you a root
which makes you invisible. People are desperately trying to make simple situations of life
mystical. Any number of things have become spiritual except the human being thats the
whole problem.
Spirituality is not about right and wrong or about God and heaven. Spirituality is
about exploring the ultimate limits of who you are. Once you come here as a human being, all
that is possible in this human being, every dimension that exists as you must be
experienced, isnt it? If you go without experiencing yourself, thats a wasted life. If there
was a possibility that every moment of your life, no matter what is happening with the
outside situation, you could be bursting with ecstasy within yourself, wouldnt you want it?

Work-stress is a universal problem. How should one deal with it?

Sadhguru
It is not your lifestyle, your work, your family or the situations in which you exist which
cause stress. The cause is your inability to manage your system your body, mind, emotions
and energy. It is your lack of understanding and your inability to use this system the way it
should be used.
What can you do about stress? You need not do anything about it. Stress is like friction in a
machine. There is friction either because the parts arent moving properly or there isnt
enough lubrication. The less friction you have, the more efficient the machine becomes.

47

I am not talking about managing stress or keeping it under the surface. I am talking about
how not to create it, because stress is your creation. If you start a simple yogic process, you
will find your whole system begins functioning at a certain ease. Then there is no such thing
as stress. You can be most effective in your life only when everything is at complete ease
within yourself. If your ability to act becomes effortless, then naturally there is no such thing
as stress.
Q: Divorces are becoming common. What is the right approach towards a peaceful marriage,
especially when couples complain of boredom in marriages?
Sadhguru: Relationships have become a problem because we are not using it to enhance our
lives, we are trying to fill the gaps in our lives. If relationships have to be really beautiful, it
is very important that a human being turns inward and looks at himself or herself in a very
deep way before looking at someone else. If you become a source of joy by yourself and your
relationships are about sharing your joy, not squeezing joy out of someone, you would have
wonderful relationships with anyone. Is there anyone in the world who would have any
problem with you if you are going to share your joy with them? No. You are trying to extract
joy from them. That is where the problem is. If your relationship is about extracting
something out of someone, it does not matter how much you manage, there will be constant
trouble. If your relationship was an offering to the person who is next to you right now,
everything would be fantastic.
Q: Petty crimes as well as heinous ones such as rape and murder are on the rise. We have
leaders with blood on their hands. Can we change this fabric of society with individual effort?
Sadhguru: It has become a fashion to talk about how horrible the politicians are. Politicians
did not land here from the sky. They are one among us who stood up to do something. Now,
for whatever reasons, they have become the way they have become and we cannot
generalize that because you do not know how many have become like that and how many
havent. Whenever I go to public meetings, people say The politicians are corrupt. I ask a
simple question, If you are driving in your city, and there is no policeman, how many of you
will stop at a red light? Not even 10%! So if I make you the Minister, what kind of Minister
will you be? We only have the kind of leaders we deserve. No better, no worse.
Democracy is a peoples government. It cannot be a spectator sport, it is a participatory
process. Participation does not mean you come out once in five years to vote and your
responsibility is over. Democracy has various instruments through which you can
participate on a daily basis in the governance of your country, state, city and street. People
have not educated themselves about this because they have not cared. Only when people are
actively involved in implementing government policies, those in power will also be in line.

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Q: These days babies are born with iPads and mobile phones next to them. What is your
opinion of this generation of children that is so tech-savvy that they learn to operate remotes
before they learn to walk?
Sadhguru: Today, there are so many forces influencing children friends, Facebook
advisors, televisions; three-year-old kids are glued to the screen and we dont know what
they understand or take in. This moment there is a toothpaste advertisement, the next
moment somebody is talking about creating a beautiful world, the next moment there is a
bombing. We dont know how a three-year-old is drinking it up.
Would you give a sharp knife to an infant? No. I am telling you, the technology that you
have today is sharper than a knife. You must choose an appropriate age and level of
maturity before a child handles it. Unfortunately, society has moved in a certain way in
imitation of what somebody else is doing in the West. Statistics say that there are 25-yearold video game addicts in the United States who spend more than six hours a day playing
video games. Twenty-five is the age when a man makes his life. But they are playing video
games, which are just ridiculous kids stuff, six hours a day. They cant come off it, theyre
just on it.

Technology has no quality of its own. How we use it can make us or break us. It is left to the
individual and the culture to bring this awareness into the child that technology is made for
our wellbeing, not to destroy ourselves. If this is taught to every child, I think they will use it
in a positive way.

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51

18. Launching of Vivaha by Sandhguru

We will be launching Vivaha a certain form of consecration for marriages. This is a very
ancient form, probably not in vogue for quite some time. Its origin is in the yogic system,
where the fundamental process is Bhuta Shuddhi, which means having knowledge and
mastery over the magic of the five elements. The whole system of yoga is focused on this.
When one wants to transcend, he takes to sanyas and uses the methods ofBhuta Shuddhi to
bypass life. But for those who have succumbed to the ways of life, or have fallen in love with
the process of life and are not just focused on the ultimate goal, there is another system. The
same process of Bhuta Shuddhi can be used to bring a maximum sense of involvement and
merger between two people, with minimum sense of entanglement.
What Bhuta Shuddhi means on one level is purification of the five elements. The refinement
of the elements will determine what type of life anyone or anything becomes. In its grossest
form, a life form will be inanimate. As it refines, it becomes many things; a human being is
supposed to be the highest level of refinement. If a human being refines further, the
possibility of touching divinity is there, and this is what the whole system of yoga is about.
This refinement of elements also brings a certain union. The separation of each individual
form is actually determined by the grossness of the elements in every human being.

The nature ofVivaha is such that the benefit is not only for the bride and
the groom, but for everyone who witnesses and engages in it.
At times, you feel trapped in the limitations of your physical boundaries. There are other
moments when you feel like you are part of everything else. This is essentially determined
by how the elements are functioning within you. With just these five, what a magnificent
mischief has been created in the form of the Cosmos and in the form of life.

With Radhe and Sandeeps marriage, we set this process. We are now making it available to
the world. We will be training people of a certain integrity and devotion to make this process
available to everyone. For those of you who are interested in offering this to others, you may
contact us, particularly if you are a married couple.

Offering this service to the bride, groom and their families can be the most valued and
important process in their lives. The nature of Vivaha is such that the benefit is not only for
the bride and the groom, but for everyone who witnesses and engages in it.
Love & Grace, Sadhguru
52

19. What is Intuition?- Sadhguru

Question: What is intuition? Can you please explain if it is an aspect of the spiritual path?
Sadhguru: What is intuition? Everything that a human being does is happening from the
information that he or she has gathered. Information does not mean you read a book or a
newspaper. The five senses constantly gather information through what you see, hear, smell,
taste and touch. This continues to happen even when you are fast sleep. Experiments have
been done where a person was fast asleep, and ten sentences were spoken to him in a
language that he did not even understand. In spite of that, much later, they could hypnotize
him and he would speak those ten sentences again. He was not conscious but all of it was
recorded as good as on a tape-recorder.

Intuition is not a different dimension of perception, it is just a different

dimension of computing.
So there is a phenomenal amount of information that you are not conscious of. Just look at
the fact that you can walk. Walking is so simple. But if you analyze the process of what it
takes to walk on two legs, it is an extremely complex process. How the weight shifts, what
happens in the muscles and how the whole thing happens is a phenomenally complex
process. If you have to logically understand this, you will go crazy. You will not get it even if
you study it for a lifetime. Thats how complex it is, but all of us can walk. We know this
intuitively not intellectually.

A better analogy would be driving. When you were first learning to drive a car, you turned
on the ignition, then pressed the clutch, then the first gear, and you slowly released the
clutch, but the damn thing would just jump and stop no matter how many times you tried.
But now you have been driving for ten years, and you could be talking on your cell phone
and still everything happens right. And even today after ten years of driving, if you sit in the
car and think, What should I do properly? First, ignition, then clutch, then first gear, then
clutch again you wont know how to drive.

If another dimension of perception has to happen, you have to enhance

your perception beyond its present boundaries. Thats what spirituality is.

53

If you go intellectually, for every little thing that you do there are ten steps. Instead of going
through these ten steps from one to ten, if you jump, that is what is intuition. But intuition
is not a different dimension of perception, it is just a different dimension of computing. You
are computing it faster, but still it is the same information. If your brain becomes more
intuitive, you can use what you know better. To move from a dumb phone to a smart
phone and from a smart phone to an iPad, we did not discover anything new. We are just
learning to use it better. It is the same thing with your brain when you are intuitive. But that
is not another dimension of perception.

If another dimension of perception has to happen, you have to enhance your perception
beyond its present boundaries. Thats what spirituality is to enhance your perception.
Essentially, to be spiritual means to go beyond the physical. If a dimension beyond the
physical becomes a living reality for you, you are spiritual. When I say physical, it is not just
the body andmind. Everything else that you perceive through the five sense organs is
physical. If you transcend that, or if your perception transcends the limitations of the five
senses, then you are spiritual.

54

20. Why

Vegetarian or Vegetarianism? by Sadhguru

Questioner: What is the benefit of eating a vegetarian diet and how it can be easily implemented in a
persons life?
Sadhguru: What kind of food you eat should depend not on what you think about it, or on
your values and ethics, but on what the body wants. Food is about the body. When it comes
to food, dont ask your doctors or your nutrition experts because these people keep changing
their opinion every five years. When it comes to food, ask the body with what kind of food it
is really happy. Try different foods and see how your body feels after eating the food. If your
body feels very agile, energetic and nice, that means the body is happy. If the body feels
lethargic and needs to be pumped up with caffeine or nicotine to stay awake, the body is not
happy, isnt it?
If you listen to your body, your body will clearly tell you with what kind of food it is happy.
But right now, you are listening to your mind. Your mind keeps lying to you all the time.
Hasnt it lied to you before? Today it tells you this is it. Tomorrow it makes you feel like a
fool for what you believed yesterday. So dont go by your mind. You just have to learn to
listen to your body.

Every animal, every creature knows what to eat and what not to eat. The human species are
supposed to be the most intelligent on the planet, but they dont even know what to eat.
Forget about how to be, human beings do not even know what to eat. So, it takes a certain
mindfulness and attention to learn to listen to your body. Once you have that, you know
what to eat and what not to eat.

Just experiment and see, when you eat vegetarian food in its live form,
what a difference it will make.
In terms of the quality of food that is entering you, definitely vegetarian food is far better for
the system than non-vegetarian. We are not looking at it from a moral standpoint. We are
just looking at what is suitable for the system we try to eat foods which would make you
comfortable in the body. Whether you want to do your business properly or study properly
or do any activity properly, it is extremely important that your body is at ease. So, the kind
of food with which your body would be most at ease and would not struggle to get
nourishment out of, that is the kind of food we should eat.
55

Just experiment and see, when you eat vegetarian food in its live form, what a difference it
will make. The idea is to eat as much live food as possible whatever can be consumed in its
aliveness. A live cell has everything to sustain life. If you consume a live cell, you will see the
sense of health in your system will be very different from anything that you have known.
When we cook the foods, it destroys the life in it. Eating foods after its process of
destruction does not give the same amount of life energy to the system. But when you eat
live foods, it brings a different level of aliveness in you. If one eats lots of sprouts, fruit, and
whatever vegetables that can be eaten in a live condition, if you bring in at least thirty to
forty percent live food things that are alive you will see, it will sustain the life within you
also very well.

Above all, the food that you eat is life. It is other forms of life that we are eating the other
forms of lives are giving up their life to sustain our life. If we can eat with enormous
gratitude for all the living things which give up their life to sustain our lives, then the food
will behave in a very different way within you.

56

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