Why Is Sadhguru Thankful To The Virus?

Don't miss this rare opportunity to join Sadhguru Darshan, live from Isha Yoga Center last 17 April 2020. Yogi, mystic and visionary, Sadhguru is a spiritual master with a difference. An arresting blend of profundity and pragmatism, his life and work serves as a reminder that yoga is a contemporary science, vitally relevant to our times.

Transcript

Namaskaram everyone.

Well every day we have some sessions on the news channel and what idea of whether interviews are being done,

Almost everywhere.

One common question is,

Now that we are under lockdown,

We are very anxious,

Can we do pranayama,

Can we do meditation,

Can we do yoga?

In this culture,

There is a term called smashanuvairagya.

That means somebody near to you,

Especially when somebody of your own age dies,

You go for the cremation,

There you see this person who was on yesterday,

Today,

Poof.

Suddenly your own mortal nature comes and hangs in front of your face.

Of course,

Till then you were immortal.

Just when you see another human being just like you,

If they are very old,

You say,

Ah,

They are okay.

Tch,

That's not yours,

Because you are immortal,

They are mortal people.

But when somebody that you know of your own age group,

Reasonably around,

Somebody that's intimate to you,

You have known them and when they die,

Suddenly it hits you.

Well,

This is also mortal.

You will see post cremation conversations will happen in the families.

What is there,

What are we fighting for,

What are we working for,

What does it all mean,

Anyway it will all end like this one day.

These kind of very dispassion,

Talks of dispassion will happen.

But by the time they come out of the cremation grounds,

By the time they come near the vehicle,

Already there is one dozen WhatsApp messages.

Vairagya is gone and again back into thing,

One more death has to happen.

Well,

The next one may not be somebody else,

It could be this one.

The next one may not be another person.

But because most people live under the presumption that other people die.

You know those dying people,

They die.

So now I think this virus is slowly bringing mortality home into everybody's minds and hearts.

Tch,

What an unfortunate way to learn simple facts about life.

You have to kill 140,

000 people on the planet to realize that we are mortal.

How tragic is that?

That's how it is unfortunately.

But at the same time,

Looking at the situation in India,

Maybe by mid-May,

By end of June probably,

This could be completely gone most probably,

Unless a second wave of second generation of virus come at us in a big way.

We don't know about that,

Some people are talking about it but nobody's sure about that,

Whether it'll have a second wave like this.

You will see by July,

August,

Everybody will again become immortal.

But I'm sure there'll be a few sensible people who will stay with the realization we are mortal.

When we say we are mortal,

All we are saying is,

We have a limited amount of time.

We have not been here forever.

We will not be here forever.

We are here for a limited amount of time.

Before you were born,

You are dead for a very long time.

And after you're dead,

Again you will be dead for a very long time.

So most.

.

.

Most of the time you're dead.

Just for a little time you're alive.

In this little time,

How much mess?

If you just look at it,

Then you will put your life into order.

What is the top priority?

Naturally,

You will put your time and energies into that.

But right now because we are immortal,

We have time for all kinds of things.

You know,

Many things,

I don't want to make comments about people's lifestyles,

But many times it amazes me.

If you.

.

.

Especially,

You know,

Because in India I don't get to see much these days because wherever I go,

I'll get mopped up.

So for some thing once in a way in United States,

If you go out into the.

.

.

Into a big mall,

How many damn things are being sold?

I can't believe it.

How to trim your hair in the nose,

There are twenty-five different kinds of instruments.

I just looked at this,

What?

No different ways.

Instruments and innovations and innovations.

I'm saying like this,

How to trim your nails,

It's a big thing.

All kinds of shops,

Just nails and hair.

Hair products,

Nail products,

The amount of money involved in this is much bigger than what we have invested in our brains.

Yes,

And it's showing.

The results are showing.

So this is not to give a commentary on somebody else's life.

All this is happening because somewhere there is a sense of immortality.

We.

.

.

It's not individual people if they want to do something,

They can do something,

But entire humanity,

Businesses,

Commerce,

Everything is investing like this,

Simply because they've become so important.

How I am right now,

My way of being is far less important than how I look,

Far,

Far less.

Well,

For which you're paying a price.

So we can go on like this and the amount of money that being spent on,

You know,

The amount of industry involved in producing alcohol to cause a certain amount of inebriation or unconsciousness,

How much money?

Because people are even convincing themselves they function better with alcohol.

Well,

Mildly,

You know,

Because these days in some of the universities that I visited in United States,

I don't want to name them,

Very rich universities,

They have free beer dispensers.

Even companies,

The top companies in America,

I didn't see the corona one,

But the other ones,

They have dispensers where beer is free for the students,

Any time of the day they can drink,

Because that is not really considered a hard liquor,

It is just mildly like that.

So the students came all little beard up.

No,

No,

I didn't mean you.

And then the professor made a comment about it.

Then of course,

Because everybody has a philosophy and you know,

There is a philosophical background to every idiotic thing that we do always.

So they said,

Why are you making negative comments about our beer consumption?

Because most people function better with alcohol.

So the professor said,

Nobody functions better with alcohol,

It is just that they are less ashamed of doing things badly.

They do things badly,

But they do it with swagger,

Because they are no more ashamed of doing things badly.

If you're not inebriated,

If you do something badly,

You feel not good about it.

But when you're drunk,

You can do idiotic things and still feel great about it.

That's an advantage.

So now everybody wants to learn pranayam,

Meditation,

Turn inward,

Spirituality,

Woo.

Right now just stay alive,

Stay sensible,

Stay sensible,

Stay balanced,

Stay alive.

That's all the best you can do right now.

Suddenly,

Because you read two sentences from a scripture,

You don't become spiritual.

You just need.

.

.

See,

What you're looking for is not spirituality.

What you're looking for is a little bit of psychological balance,

Because you're going crazy staying at home.

Not that you are very sane going to work.

It is just that your insanity was distributed to many people,

So it was not felt.

Now it is concentrated towards a few people,

So it's clearly there.

I'm sure people at home,

Some of them are telling you clearly who you really are.

Tch,

This happens.

Because outside,

You know,

Engagements are small,

So people will say nice things to you.

You went outside,

Somebody told you,

You are the most wonderful human being because they want to get something done from you.

So you little floating on cloud number,

Whatever.

Here in the south we do leaven,

Maybe elsewhere you do nine.

We take pleasure in riding the leaven cloud,

Not nine,

Not cloud nine.

Here south India leaven because we are at eleven degrees latitude,

You know,

Everything is leaven.

But you went home,

People at home told you who you really are,

Poof,

The cloud melts away.

The wisdom of this is,

Cloud is not a good vehicle for you to ride,

Whether it's one or eleven.

Because anytime it'll melt.

It's not a good vehicle.

Fairy tales,

They ride clouds,

They even ride pumpkins.

Don't do those things.

You don't have any vehicle,

Use these two.

Otherwise,

Build something reliable,

Resilient,

Which will carry you across.

You try to travel on a cloud,

We know where you will end up.

Very clearly,

Whatever the number of the cloud,

I'm telling you.

If you try to ride an unreliable vehicle like that,

You will crash.

Right now,

This is all that's happened.

You have to,

You have to live this life through this vehicle,

This body and this mind.

Now little heat around you,

This cloud evaporates.

Suddenly it puts you down.

Many times it put you off,

Tch.

Maybe sometimes powered by some spirits.

A little boy asked his father,

Father,

What do we call those people who connect us with spirits?

The father said,

Botan.

So maybe because you are connected with spirits,

The cloud mushroomed into something big and fanciful,

Fantastic things happened,

But it'll crash.

So pranayama pratyahara nitya nitya viveka.

This means just with keenness of attention,

You decipher what is true,

What is untrue.

What is the nature of existence,

What is made up in your mind.

This distinction you must make.

If you misunderstand your thought process to be existence,

Of course you will suffer.

You must suffer.

Otherwise,

What is the point of my life?

If you with fanciful ideas,

If you're floating aesthetically all your life,

What is the point of lifetimes of effort to decipher what is true and what is untrue?

So this must be done.

If virus has inspired you,

Thanks to the virus.

But don't think,

You know,

I think the lockdown is partially ending in another two days,

Twentieth.

In two days you want to turn spiritual.

No,

You can.

.

.

You can make up.

.

.

You can make up your mind on that.

But you cannot suddenly pretend to be spiritual because spirituality is not a philosophy,

It is not an ideology,

It is not an attitude that you take,

It's not some belief system.

Spiritual process means you clearly disentangled from all the things that you made up,

Your entire investment.

When I say all the things that you made up,

It includes everything,

Your social scape,

Your family,

Your body,

Your mind,

All these things you made up.

No,

No,

I didn't make my body,

You did.

Either you made it well or you made it badly,

But you did.

If you disentangle or at least create a little space between all that you have made up,

Then spiritual process is a natural process.

There is no other way to live.

So this sudden interest in spirituality is very wonderful,

But I'm looking at it with a little bit of amusement.

How long will this striving or this longing last?

The moment lockdown is lifted,

Will it get lifted elsewhere or has virus definitely brought some realization in your life?

That's fantastic.

If it has,

It should.

Two more days are there in India.

If you're a farmer,

Otherwise another fifteen days,

Okay?

If you're not in essential services,

Another fifteen days.

Two weeks is a lot of time to realize.

It doesn't take fifteen days or two weeks to realize.

It just takes a moment of sense.

To come to that,

How long will you take?

Please make up your mind,

Because at least I've been reminding you always.

But now virus is making the point in a different way,

That life is a very brief happening.

So how long you want to take to make up your mind,

That's all.

Once you make up your mind,

Yes,

I want to know the nature of this life,

It is not far away,

Because what is within you is not far away.

As I've told you many times,

You know,

A few people wanted to come to Isha Yoga Center.

Right now it's under lockdown,

I'm just saying,

For those of you who are not here.

And they came to local village and asked the boy,

Young boy there,

How far is Isha Yoga Center?

He said it's 24,

996 kilometers.

I said,

What,

That far?

He said,

Yeah,

The way you're going,

If you turn around it's four kilometers.

It's right here,

Not there.

If it was there,

How long,

How long?

When it's here,

Where is length of time?

It's a question of willingness.

This question is from Arundhati.

Namaskaram,

Sadhguru.

You were speaking against belief system yesterday,

But someone who believes in a particular God may have a wonderful experience of life because of that belief.

How is this any different from someone experiencing life wonderfully because of a deity created as a yantra?

See,

Because you believe something,

When you believe something,

It brings you lot of confidence.

That's the reason why we believe.

Well,

We started with believing God.

These days it's become fashionable to say,

I believe in myself,

I don't know what that means.

How can you believe in yourself?

No,

No,

I believe in myself.

All you're trying to do is confidence boosting exercise.

Confidence is a dangerous damn thing.

Most stupid things in the world are done because somebody is confident without any clarity about it.

Most idiotic and disastrous things are done by people who have confidence without clarity and they're usually believers.

Either they believe in that or this or that or something.

Essentially belief means you're fundamentally dishonest.

You're not willing to see,

I do not know.

Well somebody believes and their life is wonderful,

Their life may be wonderful because they're devoted to something.

It may be a deity.

It may be the temple.

Usually devotees are not really doing much with a deity.

They're sweeping the temple,

They're cleaning the temple,

They're washing this and that,

They're washing vessels in the temple and it all feels wonderful because they're devoted.

It is like,

You know,

Someone has a child,

Little baby,

Oh they're so devoted to this little child.

Everything is beautiful,

Take.

.

.

Changing the diaper is beautiful,

Wiping the shit is beautiful.

Everything is beautiful.

Yes,

It is.

Not because shit is beautiful,

Simply because you're devoted.

That's why everything is feeling beautiful.

That is the nature of devotion.

Whether it's a child or a temple or a god or a deity or a tree,

It doesn't matter what.

If you are devoted,

Your devotion will make everything beautiful because devotion is the sweetest emotion you can nurture within yourself.

When your emotion is so sweet,

What does it matter?

You ate well,

You did not eat well,

You slept well,

You did not sleep well,

Nothing matters.

Everything is beautiful.

This is the power of devotion.

So with belief system,

If you're trying to build devotion,

Fine,

But devotion is just one step.

There is no need to create another intermediate step because that intermediate step can be hugely misleading.

When you believe,

You become right,

Others become wrong.

A devotee never thinks like that.

A devotee is never right.

He knows he doesn't know a damn thing.

But he just knows I'm devoted,

That's all.

And that is the power of devotion that you transcend all the limitations of your own logic simply with the power of devotion and life becomes extraordinarily beautiful.

It is not that you know a thing,

You may not know a thing,

But it doesn't matter because the power of devotion is beyond the power of knowledge.

It is.

So that is not coming from your belief system.

That is because your heart has melted for something.

Doesn't matter what it is.

It may be a child,

It may be a husband,

It may be wife,

It may be a tree,

It may be a cause,

It may be anything.

But you're devoted to something.

And it is best that you devote yourself to something which doesn't say.

.

.

Change much shape and form.

Tch,

See you just got married,

You are very devoted,

But after three days.

Because what you devoted yourself to and this creature are two different things.

So that is why it is best to devote yourself to a deity unchanging.

Yes,

It's a fantastic tool.

I'm not making a joke out of it.

It's a fantastic tool because it fixes one significant dimension of who you are.

That is your emotion.

People think they're intellectual,

They're not.

They're largely emotional.

Emotional means they may not be dripping with love.

They're angry,

They're anxious,

They're agitated,

This is all emotion.

Emotion gone bad.

If you just become devoted,

All these things are gone,

Just sweetness of your heart all the time.

So devotion has that power.

Do not misunderstand devotion to believing something.

Believing something means you made up something in your mind and make it like a reality.

No,

That's not devotion.

That leads to fanaticism.

What is the difference?

There is a big difference.

One happens in your head,

Another happens in the level of your emotion.

One is made up in the thought process.

Another is not made up in the thought process,

It's just the way you feel.

It need not be right,

It need not be wrong.

Devotees don't care whether something is right or wrong.

All they know is they're devoted.

This gives them a sense of freedom and lets them fly over all the bad terrain in their life.

Yes.

They don't touch any aberrations,

They just fly over everything.

Simply because the sweetness of emotion has the power to do this.

And even today,

Though people think and claim that they are very intellectual,

Still emotion is the strongest dimension in most human beings.

Maybe it's not finding expression,

It's gotten constipated in expression,

But inside,

It's roiling them all the time.

They are not experiencing sense of absolute love towards everything.

But they're angry towards everything,

They're anxious about everything,

They're tense about everything,

These are all emotions.

Next question is from Prabhu,

Namaskaram Sadhguru.

Yesterday you spoke about deities as tools.

In my experience,

All the tools I use,

They enhance the function of one of my sense organs.

I can't perceive anything outside of the five sense organs.

So how can I utilize a tool like a deity,

Which supposedly enhances my perception on a dimension that I cannot even perceive right now?

No,

No.

First you enhance the existing perception.

Wear spectacles.

You'll see better,

You know.

Yes,

Just a small lens,

An invisible lens,

A contact lens if you wear,

Suddenly the world becomes clear,

You know.

That's all it takes.

Now you do not approach a deity in terms of I want to access this,

I want to access that.

There are certain type of people who do that.

That's not the way to go.

The simple thing is,

If the deity is properly consecrated,

When I say properly,

Each one of them is consecrated normally for a specific purpose.

Now we have a Dhyanalinga.

It is for meditativeness.

You don't cry there,

Go there and cry,

Dhyanalinga,

My financial situation not working out,

Please,

That guy just sits like this.

Because he doesn't know what is financial situation,

He doesn't care.

Because he doesn't eat,

He doesn't do anything.

What does financial situation mean to him?

Then you go to Devi,

You know.

There you can cry because she needs these things,

She understands that part.

But this different things are made for different purposes.

All that might have gotten gobbled in the culture today.

People think temple is a temple.

It's not like that.

Well,

I've been trying to explain this about certain temples about which there are controversies.

Some of the men here are protesting,

Why can't we be Devi?

You know,

Bhairaganas.

Only why women are in charge of the temple,

Why is it only their privilege,

Gender discrimination?

That's how it is because she's consecrated that way.

It needs women,

She needs women around her.

She needs that and that's the way it is done for a specific purpose.

So if it is well consecrated for a specific purpose,

Consecrations are of different kinds.

There are some consecrations which just reverberate.

They have no discrimination.

Like well you have these lingas in the Surya Kund,

They have no discrimination,

They just reverberate.

They've been set up for a masculine energy,

They simply reverberate.

Whoever comes,

They don't know.

Even if you put a buffalo into the pond,

They won't know,

They will do the same thing.

Because they just.

.

.

It's like light.

Light is on,

You can read,

You can write,

You can see,

You can do whatever the hell you want.

It doesn't care,

It just puts out light,

That's all.

So they are that type of consecration where is.

.

.

There is no discrimination or any kind of discernment in that.

But Dhyanalinga Devi,

These are made differently where there is a discernment.

It's not that when I.

.

.

If I say this,

This could be taken literally.

If you enter the temple,

The deity knows who you are.

Who you are means not your name,

Your father's name,

We don't care.

Even I have not asked what's your father's name.

When I wanted to marry my wife,

I didn't ask her,

What is your father's name?

My father was shocked that you don't know her father's name and you're marrying this girl.

I said,

I'm just marrying the girl.

So there are certain people who wants to know father's name,

How much wealth he has,

What is his financial status and social status because they're marrying something else.

So this aspect of the deity able to recognize you has been done in many ways.

This is done in a very refined,

Sophisticated way so that it recognizes anybody based on how their energy situations are,

Where the status of life is right now,

What level of evolution,

How it is in that sense.

But there are other deities which is very common in southern India which is probably these days lost in north is we have Kula Devatas or Kula Daivams.

That means a particular deity created for a particular Kula.

Kula means a smaller segment of a caste.

So here the genetic map of this Kula is kept and the deity is consecrated to serve only that type of genetics.

This is why this fight in the villages,

Any inter-Kula marriage or inter-caste marriage means why they're struggling is,

Then you won't have a god of your own.

You will become outcast.

Well that's taken on a social dimension and their ugly forms,

That's a different matter.

But essentially it is coming from this fundamental understanding because you have created an energy form which takes care of this particular genetic information.

If somebody who doesn't belong to that comes,

It won't respond.

So these things were done in a very scientific way for different purposes.

There are many fantastic processes even today,

But mostly lost.

So it is better to create universal things which are not based on genetics,

But based on the evolution of one's energy.

That is what we are doing.

That is why these new temples,

Which will not recognize you by genetics,

It will not like recognize you by your parentage,

But will recognize you for what you are right now.

So both these things were done right from ancient times,

But most of the temples were done for genetic material because that is what people would fund.

They want a specific temple in their town for their clan,

So that their well-being,

They created those things.

A few were created for everybody's well-being.

So they were always named differently to make you understand a little bit.

Here let us say there is one Mariamman temple,

It will have a prefix name of a particular kula and then that.

But let's say some other temple like let's say Kashi Vishwanath,

It's Vishwanath.

That means he is for the entire world.

He is not recognizing you by your genetics.

He is recognizing you by who you are right now in terms of your energy,

In terms of your evolution,

Where you are right now.

In that context,

Dhyanalinga will not recognize your genetics.

He doesn't care whether you came from your mother's womb or dropped from heaven.

We don't care because we don't think coming out of your mother's womb and dropping from heaven,

One is superior to the other.

It doesn't matter how you came.

How are you right now?

That's all that matters.

So this is a different dimension of consecration.

So when we talk about deities and about you enhancing your perception,

You don't go there to enhance your perception.

There is a process what to do.

You just do that process,

You may get enhanced.

Oh,

So it is iffy,

Is it?

It is not iffy.

It depends on where you are.

Accordingly,

It will enhance you.

If you get enhanced for what you are not ready,

You will go crazy,

Believe me.

You lose your mind.

If you saw the things that I saw when I was very young,

I'm telling you,

You would have lost your mind,

Many of you.

Because I saw all kinds of things and sat there like this.

And even people around me thought I have some psychiatric issue because I sat seeing all kinds of impossible things.

So if you develop a perception to see something which your mental framework and your energy framework is not ready for,

You will be shattered.

So you never go seeking a particular level of perception.

You just go do the process.

The deity is been created in such a way,

It is of a higher intelligence than you.

You allow it to work with you.

You just do your sadhana as it is prescribed.

This is the access,

This is the code.

Just make use of it and how much access you find,

Let's see.

Depends on who you are.

Yine.

Thanks for watching!

Reviews

enLIGHTened! www.gratefulness.org, ahimsa

Awesomeness

So interesting, I learned a lot and my thoughts changed. Especially the part about deities and devotion.

Devotion = a blessing.
Consciousness of our mortality brings clarity and focus to this moment = so much to adore about wisdom shared by Sadhguru. EVOLving www.gratefulness.org, ahimsa

WORTHY readS include Sadhguru’s “inclusive culture” perpetuating texts, “Karma” and “Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy”, aka unconditional happiness, as well as the book, “Nonviolence: Twenty-five Lessons From the History of a Dangerous Idea” by author, Mark Kurlansky. Kurlansky’s text was the non-fiction winner of the 2007 Dayton Literary Peace Prize.

Perhaps the most life serving film U will EVER watch: www.kissthegroundmovie.com.

May each of us choose 2 “live life, how a river flows, carried by the surprises of it's own unfolding (John O'Donohue {1956-2008}, author and human BEing extraordinaire)”!

I very much enjoyed your words of wisdom, Sadhguru! Thank you ❣️🙏🏼