Yogi Re!

Right now, I would say 99% of most people’s thoughts would be meaningless because they are all around the compulsiveness of the body. It is all about saving yourself, protecting yourself, and keeping yourself comfortable. If you did not have a body, you would not be looking at concerns, you would be looking at possibilities. The only question would be, “What is the ultimate possibility for a human being?”

You must get this one thought out of your head – “What about me?” Don’t worry about that. What about you? You will die! That is the ultimate secret of life. If you drop this concern about yourself, your body will be just a stepping stone in your life. Unfortunately, people are making this physiological mechanism a barrier, not a possibility, simply because they are identified with it. If you remove this one thought, you will become a tremendous possibility.

𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗗𝗼𝗲𝘀 𝗜𝘁 𝗠𝗲𝗮𝗻 𝘁𝗼 𝗕𝗲 𝗮 𝗬𝗼𝗴𝗶?

Sadhguru looks at what it means to be a yogi, and speaks about hatha Yoga and the possibility of experiencing life beyond the physical.

𝙎𝙖𝙙𝙝𝙜𝙪𝙧𝙪: Hatha Yoga is a tremendous possibility if it is practiced and transmitted in its right sense. Right now, hatha Yoga is widely perceived as an exercise form. Changing this perception is an onerous task. Hatha Yoga is not about losing weight, fixing your back, or getting healthy. Those are consequences, not the purpose. Exercise is a very recent idea. In earlier generations, only wrestlers and warriors exercised. The rest of the people just worked. There was a lot of physical activity, so naturally, people were well-exercised.

Getting the idea out of people’s heads that Yoga is an ancient form of exercise is a big task by itself. But if we don’t do this, true Yoga will not happen. When you do Surya Namaskar for example, do not focus on your muscles but on becoming in sync with the source of all energy in this solar system. How long will it take to get there? How long does it take to become a yogi? It can be a moment, it can be a millennium, or it can be never. You might as well ask how long it takes to fall in love with someone, or how long it takes to become a devotee. You can set a time only for physical aspects, not the subtler aspects of life.

If your goal is to become a Yoga teacher, five-and-a-half months are good enough. If your goal is to become a yogi, it may happen in five-and-a-half seconds, or it may not happen in five-and-a-half lifetimes, because it is not of the physical nature. It depends on how an individual being allows it to happen.

𝐓𝐨 𝐛𝐞 𝐚 𝐘𝐨𝐠𝐢

It is my wish that at least an element of being a yogi comes into people’s lives. Otherwise, something very fundamental is going waste. Bending and twisting your body has its benefits for your physical health, but there is much more to being a yogi. Some sense of being a little more than the physical body is the important thing. Even if you are not like that 24 hours of the day, at least a few moments in a day you should be a yogi. If you keep it alive, things that you do not understand, things that you have never experienced, will happen to you. That means you are allowing another dimension to function.

If you do not become a yogi in some way, life will put you through all kinds of things. That is why most human beings choose to hide from life. When someone cannot talk to more than three people in their life, when they cannot walk on the street with an open heart, loving everything that they see and cannot see, they are obviously hiding from life – they want to be safe. A coffin is a very safe place.

To be a yogi means to live without the coffins that people build around themselves. Yoga means union. It means you have breached the boundaries of the physical and have the ability to touch and experience everything in the universe. Unless a human being acquires this quality, they are somehow trying to hide from life.

You can easily be saved from life, but you cannot be saved from death – no one can. With Yoga, you may live a little longer, but there is no insurance against death. Knowing fully well that this life is a limited lease of time, do you want to hide from life or become available to every aspect of it? When I say “every aspect,” people may think of smoking, drinking, sexuality, and things like that. These are only different aspects of compulsiveness. There is much more to life. If you are really conscious that time is ticking away, you will naturally long to become a yogi.

𝐋𝐢𝐟𝐞 𝐁𝐞𝐲𝐨𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐁𝐨𝐝𝐲

Physically traveling around and touching the entire universe is out of question. The only way to touch everything and know life in all its dimensions is to transcend the limitations of physicality. The process of Hatha Yoga is designed to allow you at least a few moments of breaching the boundaries of the physical and transcending its compulsive, cyclical nature.

You close your eyes and sit, but something, something happens, somebody made some noise, somebody did something - Not like that. 

Especially, when you think something important is happening, you must close your eyes. Yes. Because engagement with the world has to become conscious, that's all. If engagement with the world is conscious, however much you're engaged with the world, it doesn't leave you disturbed or freaked out. When your engagement is compulsive and reactionary, then you will see, smallest things are throwing people off.

Most human beings, just earning a living, raising a family, dying one day. For this, how much turmoil people are going through is unbelievable. It's not even fair, just to do simple things that every other creature is doing. Right now, look at the sparrows, evening family affairs they are settling, with a birdbrain. But they are managing it in their own way. For this human beings are, with such a big brain freaking out. This is because their engagement with the world is compulsive, not conscious.

This is a good time for you to experiment with this, that you bring some Pratyahara into your life. Wherever you are, whoever you are, it doesn't matter. You don't need any training. Just sit with eyes closed. It's alright, mind is running away, let it run, don't try to stop it, because there are no brakes on it. All the three pedals are throttle, whichever way you touch it, it'll only run faster. So don't do anything, it will run. It will run because it has a certain karmic momentum.

If you just leave it for some time without tending to it, it will slow down and it will stop. Do not worry about stopping the mind, not stopping the mind, all I'm saying is, do not engage with the outside world, for whatever number of hours that you can. Start with an hour, push it to six-to-twelve hours a day, you will see, you will have the necessary energy to hit the peaks.

Right now the biggest problem why human beings are not able to become blissful and exuberant within themselves is lack of energy. If they're joyful for three minutes then they will sink, like that. Actually, there are sayings like this in the society. Socially people believe that if you become very exuberantly joyful today, tomorrow you will be miserable. This is generally said in the society - "Don't be so happy, because tomorrow you will become miserable." Because their batteries are like that, that today if they're very exuberant, tomorrow it will become depressed.

So, Pratyahara is a key element to create that kind of an energy system which can take any experience of life in its stride and doesn't put you down. Good time to turn to Pratyahara. The important thing is, if you engage with your thought process, that is not internal, that is also engagement with the world. "No, no, I did not look at anybody's face, I was just thinking." This is also engagement with the world, because your thought doesn't belong to you. 

The content of the thought is all from outside. You are running a private world in your head. But there is no private world. Existentially there is only one world, you either live in it or you don't. Your private world is a madhouse that you made up. Sometimes, of course, it gives you some pleasure, but living in an illusionary made-up world is not going to last for long.

Especially if... you know, people are always saying I got disillusioned. This is my blessing, you must get disillusioned as quickly as possible. Because disillusion means all your illusions got destroyed. Should this not happen at the very beginning of life? It should happen at the earliest time, that all your illusions fell apart. My blessing is may you live in the majestic beauty of this creation, not in your own illusion, however sweet it looks right now.

𝗥𝗮𝗶𝘀𝗲 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗘𝗻𝗲𝗿𝗴𝘆 𝗟𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗹𝘀 𝗪𝗵𝗶𝗹𝗲 𝗦𝗶𝘁𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗔𝘁 𝗛𝗼𝗺𝗲

𝙎𝙖𝙙𝙝𝙜𝙪𝙧𝙪: Those of you who are at least believing that you're on a spiritual path, this is a good time. Because, in today's world, where there is such an onslaught of sounds and colors and visuals upon our senses. In the sense, if you were here hundred years ago, well, you saw greenery around you, brown earth, blue sky. If you had to see anything more dramatic, you had to wait for the sunset or get up early and wait for the sunrise, rest of the day this is all it was.

Now it's not like that, if you turn on your television colors are going on all the time. If you just open your phone, whole cosmos is happening there, or just about anything that you want to see is there. So the amount of visual input and the audio input is so heavy today that turning inward looks like a very remote thing for most people. This is a good time to check yourself out, and also use this opportunity.

In yoga, there is a dimension in the Ashtanga Yoga. Well, Ashtanga Yoga as some people think is not a brand, Ashtanga means eight-limbed yoga. There are eight limbs to yoga. One of the limbs is pratyahara. Pratyahara means taking your sensory engagement from the outside world and put it inside.

In today's world people cannot even comprehend what that is. Well, many of you who've been through periods of sadhana have experienced this. Well even before things happened with me, when I went away into forests just to enjoy the forest and just to walk. For weeks on end when I just walked by myself in the jungles, I just realized that just not seeing human faces, for a few weeks there's something to you which is incredible. There were wild animals but there were no human faces for weeks on end. 

Well, I noticed something very, very different in my system, a kind of energy and exuberance which was kind of, you know, making me walk a-few-inches-above-the-ground, kind of feeling. Though mostly these weeks I was largely starved. No, I'm just laughing at that pains of hunger now, because they're very painful. But still, I was energized in such a way that I would be walking almost few inches above the ground, that kind of feeling. 

And I realized, when I look at trees, animals, the engagement was one kind you know, it's just looking at it, appreciating it, or simply looking at it for what it is. But when you look at human faces, knowingly unknowingly there is a certain amount of transaction happening. Like, dislike, approval, disapproval so many things are happening you don't even have to participate in it. If you just look at someone, it just happens. 

So it is from then that I started kind of closing my eyes more and more because if I just close my eyes for hours on end in a day. Consciously closing your eyes, not sleeping. You will see there is a new dimension of energy available to you. This is what Pratyahara means that you took away the sensory engagement with the world and turned it inward. 

This is a good time if you're willing, wherever you are, to experiment with this. If not the whole day, let's say six hours a day, or twelve hours a day, or whatever is possible for you. You can even start with one hour or two hours. Just keeping your eyes closed, not looking at anything. Initially your mind may go all over the place. It's okay, don't try to control it, let it go wherever it wants. 

I want you to understand it doesn't go anywhere. It's just replaying old stuff. "Oh my mind will go somewhere", no your mind doesn't go anywhere. This is the illusion you have to break, that you believe, your mind is going somewhere, which means you're misunderstanding psychological process for an existential reality.

Psychological process is just made up by you, playing your own stupid, badly directed cinema and believing it's true. This is a good time, its a good time that you try to do this in a day, a certain amount of time, whatever that is.