Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev is a realized master, yogi and profound mystic from Southern India. He embodies the universal truths of the great spiritual masters, both East and West, who transcend any religious divide. Through public talks and yoga programs, he teaches a unique perspective to all seeking a higher expression of life, inner peace, health and fulfillment. Following are his comments on some spiritual concepts and present concerns:
Yoga: Yoga is a complete spiritual path by itself and not just a workout to tone up one’s body. It is a path that breaks all bondages establishing joy and peace as a moment-to-moment experience and ultimately leading to the liberation of the Self.
Yogic Science: Just as there exists the physiology of the human body as understood by modern science, there also exists a complete and complex energy system of the human body, which is understood in great depth by yogic physiology. If the nadis (energy pathway s ) could be revealed to the eye, the body would appear as a highly complex network of energy.
Self-Mastery: Every experience you go through is just an expression of your energy. If you’re angry, it’s a certain expression of your energy. You’re happy, it’s another expression of the same energy. You’re loving, it’s another expression of the same energy. If you have some mastery over your own energies, you can express your energy as you wish. You will see that you will naturally become a joyous being because now your energies find a conscious expression.
Human Compassion: If you have found true value within yourself, then whatever you do is simply what is needed for the situation. You’re not doing it to fulfill yourself. There is no desperation in your action. Your action is just an expression of your divinity.
Crime and Aggression: Suppose right now you’re pursuing your happiness very vigorously and I stand in your way. You will want to kill me, or somehow get me out of the way. It’s a natural instinct in you. See, we’re labeling some people as criminals. All that they’re doing is pursuing their happiness very vigorously, so vigorously that they are not concerned with what is happening to people around them.
Global Unrest: Today, you see people who have more comforts than they could have ever dreamed of. An average citizen possesses today what even kings and queens couldn’t afford a hundred years ago, but still you see people are so distressed. This is simply because they expend so much effort and energy throughout the day attending to worldly matters, they find there is no inner peace and they become desperate. There is desperation everywhere. As society becomes more and more affluent, you will see people becoming more and more distressed, desperate and hopeless. Like never before we have comforts outside, but like never before we are uncomfortable inside.
Peaceful Possibilities: Forces of love/compassion and anger/hate are always functioning in the world. It is a seesaw game. The question is, which end of the seesaw do you want loaded? If we are really on the brink of a terrible situation, it is all the more important that the spiritual process is applied more vigorously. Ultimately that is the only thing that can maintain sanity in the world.
Spiritual Liberation: The very process of spirituality–and really the whole of spirituality–is to become in such a way that if I just sit here, I’m complete by myself. I don’t need to become anything or make myself into something else. If I simply sit here, all the world is within me. I am so absolute that all existence is within me.
Universal Consciousness: That which is unbounded, that which is omnipresent, cannot be understood with the mind. It can only be experienced. You can merge with it, you can be one with it, you can experience the joy of being with it, but it is not something that you can grasp with your mind. If people really want to know the truth, they must come to terms with what they do not know. It’s difficult for people to say “I don’t know,” but “I don’t know” is the only beginning for knowledge.
The Nature of Mind: The mind is fluid; you can make anything out of it. How it is shaped simply depends on how it is influenced. You have accumulated this mind in bits and pieces. Your mind is just your background. Consider what kind of family, education, religion, nation, society and world you’re living in. That’s the kind of mind you have.
Awareness: Now, what faculty do you have to look into yourself? You look at the mind with the mind. One part of the mind is looking at another part of the mind and trying to correct it. That will never happen. The mind is like a thief. It will go on deceiving you. It will create the problem; it will offer the solution. It will take the solution and create a deeper problem. It is an endless trick. So looking inward you need some other kind of faculty. You need to evolve something else within you.
Meditation: Unfortunately meditation is being handled like it is a technique. In Isha yoga meditation is not taught as a technique. It is a way of empowering a person to become naturally meditative, because meditation is not an act, it is a quality. You can become meditation; you cannot do meditation.
In this society the word meditation doesn’t mean anything anymore. If somebody is sitting with their eyes closed, in English we say they’re meditating. With your eyes closed, you could be doing so many things. There is japa [ recitation of mantras ], tapa [ asceticism ], dharana [ continuous concentration, one-pointedness ], dhyana [ meditation ], samadhi [ equanamous mind when the subject and object merges ], shoonya [ conscious non-doing ], or you might have simply perfected the art of sleeping in a vertical posture. When I say meditation, I’m referring to dhyana. Dhyana is about attaining to the absolute stillness within you. When you’re totally still, all that you have thought about yourself until now will evaporate. There is a clear space inside of you that is not of the mind but is beyond the mind. You have transcended the duality of the mind and you are absolutely still.
Meditation is the only way to freedom from all the stress that man is going through because this dimension of life is not of the mind. All the stress and struggle of this world is of the mind.
Sadhguru has served as delegate to the Millennium World Peace Summit of Religious and Spiritual Leaders, the Alliance for the New Humanity, and is an active supporter of the World Council of Religious and Spiritual Leaders. His initiatives for world peace and his outreach programs for life-term prisoners, impoverished children and rural rejuvenation in southern India are internationally renowned.
Over the past decade, Sadhguru’s programs have impacted people from all walks of life, cutting across boundaries of gender, race, nationality, and religion. Today, Isha yoga flourishes as a transformational practice for participants from all over the world.