Yogi Re!

If you are sensible enough to identify the quality rather than condemn the person, before Guru Purnima comes and we shift to Dakshinayana, or the southern run of the sun, you should have reaped a rich harvest. A rose plant has more thorns than roses, but we still call it a rose plant because we recognize its beauty. A mango tree has more leaves than mangoes, but we still call it a mango tree because we recognize the sweetness of its fruits.

Every human being has at least one drop of sweetness in them. Why don’t we see this? Please do this with everyone around you – try to recognize that one drop of sweetness in even those people who you otherwise consider to be horrible. Only if you recognize it in others, it will reflect in you. On the other hand, if you see terrible things in other people, that is what will reflect in you. This does not mean you should become blind to everything. You see the leaves in the tree; you see the thorns in the rose bush – but you acknowledge the flower and the fruit. That is all you need to do. Let’s make this happen.

𝐓𝐨𝐝𝐚𝐲, 𝐉𝐚𝐧 𝟏𝟑 𝐢𝐬 𝐁𝐡𝐨𝐠𝐢!

𝗠𝗮𝗸𝗮𝗿 𝗦𝗮𝗻𝗸𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘁𝗶 𝗙𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗮𝗹 | 𝗣𝗼𝗻𝗴𝗮𝗹 - 𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗮 𝗙𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗵 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁

When you live in close proximity with the same people for a period of time, you slowly get to know everything about them. Sometimes you see them beautiful, sometimes angry, magnanimous, or petty – everyone’s drama unfolds in front of you. You know how they think and feel. Consequently, you may become hugely opinionated about each individual.

With Bhogi Pongal coming up, this is a time of the year where you are supposed to burn all this old baggage. From Dakshinayana, or the southern run, the sun is shifting to the northern run – from sadhana pada, we are shifting to kaivalya pada. That means it is time to harvest. If you want to harvest, first you have to cut down the crop. Whatever opinions, ideas, and conclusions you may have about other people and about yourself – now is the time to drop them. Everyone has the possibility to flower into a beautiful being. The more opinions, ideas, conclusions, and prejudices you have, the bigger the distance between you and that possibility. Allow yourself and everyone else a fresh start.

There is a beautiful incident in the Ramayana. Previously, many unfortunate events had happened in Rama’s life. He got cheated out of his kingdom, had to retreat into the jungle, and lived a hard life. Then, his wife got kidnapped by Ravana. Out of love and concern for her, he walked all the way down south, gathered an army, crossed over to Sri Lanka, waged a war, defeated Ravana in battle, and slayed him.

As you know, Ravana had ten heads. Rama had to cut off all the ten to finally kill Ravana. With the battle won, Rama said, “I want to go to the Himalayas and do penance, because I have committed a great sin. I have killed someone who was a great devotee of Shiva, a phenomenal scholar, a great king, a generous man.” The others were shocked. Lakshmana, his brother, said, “What are you talking about? He kidnapped your wife.” But Rama said, “Out of the ten heads of his, there was one that had great wisdom, piety, and devotion. I regret cutting off that head.”

Everyone has ten or more heads. One day, your head is full of greed, another day full of jealously, hatred, love, lust, beauty, or ugliness. Or you go through everything in one day. If you see someone in a moment of jealousy, you conclude he is a jealous person. If you see someone in a moment of greed, you conclude he is a greedy person. But actually, at different times, different heads are working in everyone. Everyone has at least one head of love, beauty, generosity, or compassion. The mistake people make is that, instead of identifying a quality, they condemn the individual.

What Rama was trying to say that no matter what horrible things Ravana had done, there was one aspect of him that was a tremendous possibility. Just follow this fundamental principle – if you see something wrong in someone, condemn that, not the person. If you bring this wisdom into your life, you will be free of baggage. When you do this to others, the same will happen to you.

Someone once said, “Love is a thing that happens between a man and woman who do not know each other.” That is true only if you live a frivolous, judgmental life – a life without wisdom. Otherwise, the more you get to know someone, the more love and compassion should arise. When you know all their struggles, you know they are as human as you are.
Rama did penance for having killed a man who had kidnapped his wife and had done many other terrible things. Still, Rama identified this one head that was beautiful about him. This is a man of great wisdom, which is why he is worshipped. He failed in many aspects of his life, but his failures never altered his wisdom and quality. No matter what life did to him, he stayed above that. I want you to remember Rama’s example throughout the year.

If this happens then the world would become a truly beautiful place.

𝐓𝐨𝐝𝐚𝐲, 𝐉𝐚𝐧 𝟏𝟐 𝐢𝐬 𝐍𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐭𝐡 𝐃𝐚𝐲!

𝗜𝗻𝘀𝗽𝗶𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝘁𝗵, 𝗜𝗻𝘀𝗽𝗶𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗪𝗼𝗿𝗹𝗱

Sadhguru touches upon the importance of creating a situation where the world’s youth are focus and inspired, if we want to make this planet a better place to live in.

𝙎𝙖𝙙𝙝𝙜𝙪𝙧𝙪: The youth are more alive than you, more idealistic than you and more inspired than you. If the world was guided by the young, the world would be a better place to live. Because they are in a certain level of high-energy compared to the other part of the humanity, it is just that every little thing that they do is little exaggerated. If something constructive has to happen in the world, it has to be by the youth. If something destructive has to happen in the world, it too has to be by the youth.

Actually, it would be wonderful if this world were guided by little children because they’re closer to life than anybody else. After all, everything you wish to do is for human well-being. Human well-being means human happiness. If you look at your children and yourself, your children are definitely a lot happier than you are. This being the case, children should be consultants on life and not you. You are carried away by your thoughts and emotions; they’re much closer to life. If only the world learned from children rather than trying to teach children, the world would be a beautiful place.

Usually the older generation handle youth as some kind of disease that needs treatment. They don’t need treatment. It is people who have gone away from life who need treatment. Those close to life just live. The youth is in a certain state of high energy and if there is no inspiration or proper guidance, that energy can very easily turn negative.

Our educative systems have become 100% informative, there is no inspiration. Without inspiration, no human being raises beyond the limitations in which he lives. When it’s all information you can get it from anywhere. You don’t really have to listen to a teacher.

A teacher is not the best means of transmission when it comes to pure information. A book is better, the internet is even better. Only if the teacher’s role is to inspire people to learn and to create a thirst for knowledge, only then a teacher’s role has something to give. If he’s just trying to transmit information, the other means of transmission are better than a human being because a human being can always misinterpret. Making the whole education system purely informational has caused enormous damage. The time of life when you’re youthful, when you’re capable of many things, unfortunately goes waste simply because the necessary inspiration is not there.

It’s like nurturing a plant, if you want it to bear fruit, you have to nurture it everyday, you have to water it everyday, and you have to take care of it everyday. If this dedication is shown by adults, the youth will do miraculous things. Only because such dedication is missing in the general population, the youth seem to be disoriented - they don’t know what to do and they are doing their own things. Because everybody is working on short-term goals, the youth also work on short-term goals.

One big thing that needs to happen with the youth and with everybody is that their identification with humanity should not be limited to just themselves, it should include a larger society and a larger world around them. Unfortunately, this is missing in education. Modern education is constantly training people to only think about themselves and nothing but themselves. The whole process of science is only about how to use everything for our comfort and well being. Initially, we use the planet, then the trees and plants, then the animals, then of course the human beings also. We exploit everybody to our benefit and comfort. This attitude has been deeply set with the process of modern education. As we are investing our time, resources and energies in transmitting informative knowledge, we have to invest a certain amount of time, energy and resources to inspire the youth.

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.

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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.