When we say Shiva… The word Shiva has become synonymous with the third eye. The third eye… What it means…
These two eyes are to look outside. These two eyes are capable of showing you the physicality of the existence; these two eyes can only perceive that which is physical.
The third eye is an inward-faced eye. It’s not gonna open up upon your forehead. The third eye is an inward-looking eye. But you have heard stories, “Shiva opened his eyes, and he burned Kama”.
✨
In India there is a god of love and lust, called Kama (“kama” means lust, which you don’t like to face head-on, so you make it love [audience laugh]; because you need some aesthetic to it). So… He hides behind a tree, and shoots an arrow. And Shiva is hurt. Target is found and Shiva gets a little disturbed. Then he sees it’s Kama (that is, it’s his own lust coming up). Then he opens up his third eye, a fiery eye, and burns Kama, who is hiding behind a tree. Burned him into ashes. Then Shiva took the ashes of this burnt Kama; smeared himself. That put these things to rest for good.
That is the general story told to the people. But you tell me: your lust arises within you, or behind the tree?
Now, you may go behind the tree; that’s another matter… [Roaring laughter]
But where does it arise? Within you! Desire is not hanging outside. It is not because a beautiful woman or a beautiful man is sitting there that your desire comes. Because the desire, the kama, is within you.
So he opened his third eye. And burned the kama within himself. Not the one who is standing outside. Because he never, ever stood outside.
Please look at this and see. Your lustfulness, your desiring nature, never ever stood outside. It only stood inside.
So he opened his third eye; not this way [pointing outward]. Inward! Then he saw; this lustfulness. Which essentially means that some aspects are built into you, which make you feel incomplete. So you think you will find completion only by going towards something or somebody.
Lust is not just about the opposite sex. Shopping is lust! Because you have to go towards something. Only then life will be complete. Every desire is lust! Because,
“Without that, I cannot exist! I want that, because only when I have that, this [lightly thumping his chest with both fists] will be complete!”
It may be a thing, it may be a position, it may be power, it may be sexuality… It doesn’t matter what it is. Essentially lust means, it creates a sense of incompleteness within you. And a longing for something, that it makes you feel, if you don’t have that, you are not complete.
So he decides to burn the kama within himself. He burned the kama, and then, instead of sweat, ash oozed out of the pores of his body. This is the yogic story. The common story told to the public is, he was hiding behind a tree, and burned him; opened his eyes and burned him; and then he took that ash and smeared himself. The yogic dimension of the story is, kama arose within him, he opened his third eye, burned him, and then ash slowly oozed out of his body, clearly showing him, everything is laid to rest.
🙏
[Video concludes with introduction to next episode]
Everything that you know as yourself should die. When I say death, it’s not the physical death which is a problem.
The question is your losing “Everything that I know as myself right now”. Your personality. Your identity.
Once you learn to be an individual beyond physiological and psychological formats, that means you are for good. This is what living death means. So if you know how to be an individual, still, without physiological and psychological format, you are a living death. If you are a living death, you are eternal in your existence.
It is time that you become living death, so that you live eternally.
If you make this very clear
to your own biology, to your own chemistry,
and to everybody around you, you will see;
people will not fall sick,
as often as they are right now.
So set that up for yourself.
You will see you will get healthy.
If you can turn your mind this way,
you can also turn it this way.
I want you to understand this.
“No, no, I’m like this because…”
If you know all that,
you can as well turn yourself around.
Isn’t it? It’s time.
You must understand.
Mentally;
physiologically;
chemically;
energy-wise;
you must clearly understand:
it doesn’t pay
to be sick, unhappy, depressed.
It doesn’t pay!
To be joyful and ecstatic, it pays!
If you make this clear
to all these people inside,
they will all behave properly.
There is another dimension within you, for which the birth has not happened,
nor will the death happen to it.
Only if you touch that dimension,
you have something called as a future.
Otherwise, you have just karma.
Karma means, you are repeating your past as future. You may be changing the colour, you may be changing the style of how you do it, but still the same stuff, nothing different. Same stuff; what the caveman was doing, you are still doing the same stuff. Style and capability might have changed, but it’s the same stuff. Isn’t it so?
This is like anchor. This is an anchor; you throw in an anchor, and you’re trying to move your boat. At the most, it can only go in circles, isn’t it?
So we’re trying to pull in the anchor, or cut the rope which holds us to the anchor, so that next time we power, it will go away.
So the whole spiritual sadhana is based on this, that you want to become free.
Free does not mean you have to forget, but you have to become free from the memory which rules you, and the memory is not just in your mind; every cell in your body carries memory. This much is very clear to us, through genetic science and other things, you are carrying the memory of your forefathers, and you’re still behaving like them. You’re still having a nose like them; look at this; unless you had a nose job done recently. Yes?
There are many many symbols, or there are many many aspects in the body, which clearly say that the memory of these eighty-four Creations are still there in your body. It is there in every atom in the Existence.
So what you’re trying to cleanse is, you want to cleanse it from the memory, because this memory binds you. This memory gives you a sense of belonging, at the same time this memory binds you; it doesn’t let you go.
So when you do sadhana, you are trying to cut everything, because without cutting that, without cutting your anchor, you’re not going to move ahead.
So, “Why this memory is holding me back?”
It is that memory which has given integrity and stability to your body and the structure of who you are right now. Without that, without this memory, this body couldn’t be created. Without the memory of a single-celled animal being within you, without all that information being carried through the evolutionary process and you sitting here, without that memory, this body cannot be structured and held together.
So memory is not your enemy;
it is just that you don’t know how to hold it.
You are into it, that’s the problem. You are into it.
Now, you want to get out of it,
you want to make use of the memory,
but you don’t want to be used by your memory.
That is spiritual sadhana.
You want to have a future,
which is different from your past.
Because what is human, is not an established state.
It is a possibility. It is not a fixed state.
If this possibility has to be made use of,
there is a whole system of understanding
that needs to happen; understanding
the mechanics of how this life functions,
and what we can do with it.
This mechanics,
this technology,
this science,
we are referring to
as yoga.
I don’t know 🙏 what types of stuff you’re doing, but my experience in United States, particularly in California… A lot of people believe, yoga started in California. [Audience laugh] Yes? I met someone who seriously believed it was Madonna who started yoga! [Laughter] Yes?
So this mechanics of life, is as simple as this:
I’m sure almost all of you are carrying an instrument, some kind of electronic instrument… A phone at least. The more you know about this phone, the better you can use it. Is that so?
Last year [2013], the cell phone companies in India made a survey.
India is the largest, you know, growing market for telecommunications right now. Every month we’re adding about five and a half million cell phones. Okay. In a year, about sixty million cell phones are being added to the service. Because everybody’s having three, four, five these days. [Laughter]
They made a survey… [at this very moment, a ringtone goes off in the audience, making everybody burst into laughter]
That’s the second one; you haven’t heard the first one.
[Resuming] …They made a survey, and they found out that ninety-seven percent of the people are using only seven percent of the capabilities that are there in an ordinary phone. I’m not talking about the smart phone; I’m talking about the dumb phone. In the dumb phone, ninety-seven percent of the people are using only seven percent of its capabilities.
So they were contemplating: If we remove ninety percent of the electronics, still most people will never know… And we can even give them a five-hundred-rupee discount! They will be happy, we will be happy…
You know? Maybe they’ve already taken it off; we don’t know… Only if you try to use all of them, all the functions, then you’ll realize, something is not working.
So, in a little gadget, you’re using only seven percent.
[Opens his arms] This
is The gadget.
Every damn gadget
has come out of this.
How much percentage do you think are you employing this gadget? Just make a guess. [Looks around in the audience] Mm? How much percentage?
Two? Five?
You’re being very generous to yourself. [All laugh]
It’s well below one percent. Because, for your survival process, to conduct your life in the material world, you do not even need one percent of what this is.
This is capable of perceiving
the whole cosmos.
If you prepare it properly,
if you hold it,
just like an antenna [slightly shifts his torso],
if you hold it in the right position,
it can just grasp everything in the existence.
It is just that we are doing all kinds of things with it,
because right now, our whole perception of life
is limited to the physical nature of the existence.
Physical, is like the peel of the fruit.
It has no purpose of its own.
In the sense… if you have a fruit, the moment you eat the fruit, the peel goes straight to the trash can. Isn’t it?
The peel is only a package.
Only because the fruit is valuable,
package is important.
Right now as you sit here, this body is very important. You have to feed this, you have to clothe this, you have to decorate this… You have to pamper this, in so many ways.
Tomorrow morning, that something inside, which you never experienced, if that goes away, nobody wants to have any business with this. Yes? Only because the fruit is inside, this peel has become very valuable.
Now, yoga means, not just about twisting your body, not about standing on your head, not about holding your breath… All these things, a circus artist can do better than most yogis. Really. Yes or no? Don’t you think so? A circus artist can do far better than most yogis in terms of twisting the body, doing this, doing that, holding different positions… That is not the purpose of yoga. Unfortunately, if you utter the word yoga, people think you have to be in some impossible posture. Yoga is not about postures. It is just a minuscule aspect of yoga.
Yoga means,
in your experience,
everything has become one 🙏
The word yog means “union”.
What is the union? What can unite with what?
As you sit here, your idea, and your sense, and your experience of who you are is very strong. You’re here, as an individual!
But what the trees are exhaling right now, you’re inhaling. What you’re exhaling, the trees are inhaling. Or in other words, one half of your lung is hanging out there. [Laughter] Yes or no?
This is not just in terms of breath. Today modern physics is proving to you that as you sit here, every subatomic particle in your body is in constant transaction with everything else in the existence. If this transaction stops, you will cease to exist.
So yoga means
to know it by experience.
Modern science is proving to you,
the whole existence is just one energy.
The religions of the world have been screaming for a long time that God is everywhere. Whether you say “God is everywhere”, or you say “Everything is one energy”, are we talking about the same reality? Or a different reality?
“God is everywhere”, “Everything is same energy”;
are we talking about the same reality or different reality?
Same reality!
It is just that a scientist has never experienced this;
he has arrived at it through mathematical deductions.
A religious person has not experienced it; he believes it,
because it’s written somewhere, or it’s said by somebody.
If you are a hard case,
that you’re not willing
to settle for deductions
or belief systems, then
you become a yogi.
[Laughter]
Yes, if you’re a very hard nut,
you want to know it yourself.
Then you become a yogi.
You want to know the union of the existence.
You want to know the oneness of what it is.
Not believing it.
Like you experience the five fingers of your hand,
if you can experience everything around you,
then we say
you are
in yoga.
✨ Your body and your brain works at its best, only when your stomach is empty.
✨ Any correction and purification that needs to happen in the body, your stomach needs to be empty. It’s very very important. Otherwise, the purification at the cellular level will not happen.
✨ Health is not something you can do from outside. Health is something you have to do from within.
✨ Minimum eight hours gap is what is recommended in yoga; between one meal and the next meal, there must be an eight-hour space. If you do this, you will see half your problems of health –whatever you have, health problems– minimum fifty percent will go in six weeks time.
✨ If you do certain other things, which may right now seem a little extreme to you, if you have a little yogic practice, something meditative within you, then you will see, ninety percent of your problems will go away. Ten percent, if it still persists, can be treated.
If one completes his allotted karma for that life, he will die; just like that; without disease, without accident, without any injury. When one dies simply, like that, that person may find another body within hours. This is why in this tradition always they said, if one completes his life and dies peacefully, it’s the best way to die, because he need not hang around; immediately it goes on.
Now, when you walk the spiritual path, the ultimate goal for every spiritual seeker is, he wants to break this whole process. Or otherwise, to use an analogy, we can say what you call as my soul right now is like a bubble. The outer periphery of the bubble is your karmic structure. Inside, there is air. Suppose you blow the bubble, you burst the bubble… Where is the air? Where is your air? There is no such thing as your air; it’s become part of everything.
So what you call as soul, is fictitious, because there is no such thing as your soul and my soul and somebody else’s soul. Right now, this unboundedness is contained in the limited karmic structure, so it makes you believe as if this is a separate entity. If you take away the keys which hold the karmic structure, then it just collapses. So this afterlife, next birth… don’t believe all this nonsense, but right now if you sit here and just close your eyes, you can clearly see, more than this body you are, isn’t it?
What you see is your well-being. You stick to that! Tomorrow it looks like horror to you. It doesn’t matter; you stick to it! It feels like hell; you stick to it! That’s well-being. If you keep shifting, nothing happens.
Sadhguru, you’re talking about perception and clarity. But at the same time, illusion also seems so very real. Now, where is the fine line between illusion and perception? Because, when I say, both are of the mind… now how do I really rationalize between, Look, I’m in an illusory state, or I’m in perfect clarity. Because, when I’m in that state of clarity also, how is it that, whatever has been recorded, or whatever I have gone through, is what is reacting to the situation. So how do I really make that distinction at any given moment?
So now you are asking for trouble.
So you’re talking about the fine line between illusion and perception. There is no fine line. It is all one big illusion. By the time you know it, life has passed by.
But you don’t have to worry! Because passing by is also an illusion. Nothing passes by.
So if everything is illusion, isn’t enlightenment one big illusion?
In a way it is!
In a way it is…
That’s why I’ve been talking not about knowing, but about ignorance. I think I’ve been telling you, in one of these programs I’ve been telling people; earlier we used to make our brochures like this: From Ordinary to Extraordinary;
Do this yoga and you will move from ordinary to extraordinary.
People thought they are going to become very special. When they came in –after they enrolled, paid their money; before that we never said [laughter]– after all that happened, then we told them: This is about becoming more ordinary than others; extra ordinary. [Laughter] This is not about becoming special.
The enlightened club, club of the enlightened ones, is a place, there –there is no such thing as illusion and perception– where everything is illusion. [Holding up his hands] I have twenty-four fingers, can you see? [Laughter] Why? Can you see or no? No? What can I do? That’s ignorance! Lack of perception! [Laughter and applause] This is lack of perception. You don’t see my twenty-four fingers. You missed it.
Now. You tell me.
Is number 10 a less of an illusion than number 1?
Mm? Is it?
Is 100 a more of a reality than number 1?
Is it so?
Everything is made-up, isn’t it so? The only reality is zero. Rest is all made-up. It’s not incidental that zero is discovered in India. Because this is the only place where people spend a maximum amount of time with their eyes closed.
If you sit, eyes closed; any silly fantasies will go on, chattering will go on, gods will come, devils will come… If you simply sit, sit, sit, sit, sit… Then you will see, you are one big vacuum. You are just one big zero.
So, if you perceive that you are an empty shell, would you call that “perception”? Or would you call that “realization” of what an illusion you are? M? What would you call it? It’s up to you what you call it.
But there is no fine line. That’s the whole problem.
Or that’s the beauty of it! There is no fine line… There are no lines to cross… It’s just fine, the way it is.
But the problem is, you’re in a certain state of compulsiveness, that you have to move somewhere. This compulsiveness has essentially come as a consequence of the huge accumulation that you have made within yourself. This accumulation has happened because you have the illusion that you are perceiving something. Because you believe that you are perceiving something, the accumulation has happened.
If you realize; experientially, not intellectually; experientially if you realize that you are actually not perceiving anything… You actually are not!
Tell me, after all these years of being with me, what have you perceived? [Laughs with himself] And whatever you perceive, and you’re feeling wonderful, two days later I come back and demolish it anyway! Whatever you think we have attained, I come back and trample it anyway!
So what have you perceived? In these many years?
Slowly, you are beginning to make yourself comfortable in your own ignorance. That’s good! Because that’s the only place you can be. And that’s not some kind of damnation. That is the beauty and the mystery of life.
If you become… you become, a total illusion –you are right now; but you don’t know; you think you are something!– why… In so many ways we told this to you, in the Isha Yoga itself, we told you you’re nothing, but you said “I am a cobbler”; I said OK.
Didn’t we tell you you’re nothing? In the introduction itself I told you! That you are actually nothing…
But then you said, “No, I am a doctor”; “I am an engineer”; “I am this…”
I said alright. Let’s play the game for some time.
When we say you are nothing, does it mean… “Can nothing be perceived?” Or “It is an illusion?” Nothingness means non-existence. That means, you are an illusion yourself. You are a make-believe happening.
But, when you say, “The illusion looks real”…
Only illusion looks real. What else can?
If you go to your cinema, don’t you see, people in the cinema screen, they are only two-dimensional? All the great heroes that you have seen, and you may have joined the fan club… Whether you are Rajinikanth club, or Robert Redford club, or whatever, all that you saw of them was just flat on the screen! They were not even three-dimensional, isn’t it? Just a little bit of light playing; if you… if you raised your hand a little bit, your hand would be there instead of his face; isn’t it so? Did you ever try it? Did you interrupt… You must do these things! [Laughter] If you raised your hand, the great hero’s face would be gone and your hand would be there! Isn’t it? That’s how fragile it was. But didn’t he look larger than life? Don’t you worship him today, more than all the people around you, who are flesh and blood? You only saw light and sound! But, hasn’t it become more real than the real? Isn’t a cinema theater, what happens in the cinema, much more real than the reality of life?
So illusion is always exaggerated. So it always definitely looks more real than the real.
If you… You’ve heard of Ramakrishna Paramahansa. Ramakrishna became a devotee of Kali. For him, Kali was not a deity; Kali was a living reality. She’s danced in front of him, she ate from his own hands, he called and she came. And she left him dripping with ecstasy. This was real. Actually happening. You could have tested him if you wanted, chemically; he was all ecstasy!
One day, he was sitting on the banks of Ganga, the Hooghly River, and a very great yogi –a rare yogi; very few like that have ever happened– Totapuri, came his way. Because, though Ramakrishna’s body, mind and emotion was dripping with ecstasy, his being was longing to go beyond this ecstasy, and somewhere there is an awareness that that itself is a bondage.
When I tell people simple things about their lives, when I say everybody has the choice right now, to be either this way or that way, people say, “That’s easy for you, Sadhguru. You are aware.”
Tell me, who is not aware? Please look at yourself and see. Even in an extreme moment of emotional anger, there is a spark of awareness even in you! Isn’t it so? Isn’t it there? If it is not there, that means you’ve become pathologically ill. Otherwise, even in the most extreme moments of emotion within you, there is one dart of awareness. It is just that you are empowering the emotion –because you have an investment there– and you are not empowering the awareness. That’s all.
Have you ever had a situation in your life, when there was not even a spot of awareness in you? It was always there. It is just that you did not invest in that. You are betting on the wrong horse; you are betting on the horse that you are used to; a known horse. So, because of your friendship with your anger, friendship with your love, friendship with pleasure, friendship with… whatever sweet emotions that can happen within you; you’re investing in that. You are not investing in that tiny spot of awareness which has always been there with you. There is nobody who has not been aware; there is nobody who is not aware. It is just that most people have not empowered their awareness. They have empowered something else. So accordingly life is happening.
So, Ramakrishna was longing somewhere, but the sweetness of ecstasy that he was experiencing was too much to leave and go.
This is not any different… –hm, this shouldn’t be misunderstood– but, this is not any different from a drunkard being addicted to his drink, a drug addict addicted to some substance; it is not any different! The only thing that is different is; alcohol and drug may be damaging the system, this may not be damaging the system; because this is internal. But the addiction is same, the attachment is same, the longing for that is same. And the limitation is also same.
It’s beautiful…
There’s no question about it.
So, Ramakrishna, whenever he had contact with Kali, his object of devotion, he would be dripping with ecstasy, and he was fine with that. He didn’t want to leave the beauty of that and move on.
So when Totapuri came, this transpired between them. Totapuri said, “This is very simple. You have the necessary energy; you just have to empower your awareness. You are empowering your emotion. You are empowering your body. You are empowering the chemistry within you. You are not empowering your awareness. So Ramakrishna said, “OK, I will empower my awareness,” and sits like this… The moment he has a vision of Kali, he’s again gone. Into uncontrollable states of love and ecstasy. Any number of times he sat down, the moment he sees Kali, he just flies off.
Then Totapuri said, “Next time Kali appears, you have to take a sword and cut her into pieces.”
Ramakrishna asked, “Where do I get the sword from?”
Totapuri said, “From the same place where you get Kali from. If you are able to create a whole Kali, why can’t you create a sword? You can do it! If you are able to create a goddess, why can’t you create a sword to cut her? Get at it!”
Ramakrishna said, the moment Kali came, he burst into ecstasy, and forgot about the sword and the awareness and everything.
So Totapuri said, “You sit this time; the moment Kali comes, see here,” he picked a piece of glass, and he said, “With this piece of glass, I am going to cut you! Where you are stuck, that I am going to cut. When I cut that, you create the sword, and cut Kali down.”
So he went; Ramakrishna was just on the edge of ecstasy, Kali appeared in his vision. Totapuri took a piece of glass and cut him really deep across his forehead. Then Ramakrishna created the sword and cut Kali down. And he became free from the mother, and the ecstasy of feeding off her.
And that’s when he truly became a paramahamsa. Till then, he was a lover. He was a devotee. He was a child to the mother goddess that he created.
So this is not something that you go about, making distinction between what is reality and what is illusion. You don’t do that. Whatever is happening within you, it doesn’t matter what’s happening within you. You keep your steering wheel straight. As I’ve been telling you for some time now, you keep your direction straight. Whatever is happening within you, it doesn’t matter. You just gas it and gas it and gas it. As long as you’re traveling straight, you just keep the throttle down. Illusion is happening, keep the throttle down; reality is happening, keep the throttle down; you are hallucinating, keep the throttle down. Don’t let go of the gas pedal. Just down and down and down. That’s all. That’s your business. Rest I will take it. Your business is to put your right foot down. Not the other one. Just your right foot down all the time. See? Left foot up, right foot down. If you put the other one down, it may touch the brakes or the clutch; then you will simply rev in the same place, you won’t go anywhere. All the time, a leaden foot down. Whatever is happening. Illusion is happening, gas it. Reality is happening, gas it. God is happening, gas it. Devil is happening, gas it. You have to break through all of that. You don’t think, “OK, this is reality, let me settle down here; this is illusion, let me discard this.” No. You just gas your way through all that. It doesn’t matter. You don’t try to decipher what is illusion, what is reality. The moment you try to do that, it’ll become endless intellectual circus. Too much circus it will lead to. An endless circus. And a purposeless circus, because it’ll not get you anywhere. It will make you look smart among people, but existence will see you as stupid, because it doesn’t open its doors for you. It doesn’t matter how smart you are with people; how smart you are in the society. This existence will not open its doors; it will open its doors only to the smartEST.
And the smartest is also the dumbest.
Really.
“So shall I be dumb?”
You can’t be dumb. Just see that. If you try to be dumb, you’re trying to be smart, isn’t it? You see this. Do you see you can’t try to be stupid? If you’re acting stupid, that means you’re trying to be smart, isn’t it so? You’re being super smart.
So you can’t do that. That’s why I say; Always, whatever is happening, see that you’re stupid, because you can’t do that. You can’t do nothingness, isn’t it? You can do some-thing. You cannot do no-thingness. You can be a somebody, but you cannot be a nobody. “I am a nobody” is a great assertion of your somebodiness, isn’t it?
You can’t do it.
When you tire, and simply sit quietly…
… it happens!
Your effort has to tire.
All you need is phenomenal intelligence to go beyond effort. Right now, whatever is happening, you’re only trying to get out of it. You are driving through the mountain, you are trying to get out of it. You are driving through wonderful planes, you are hurrying up to get out of it. All the time, gas pedal down. Wherever you are, however beautiful it is, as quickly as possible you want to get out of it. That should be your intention. Always. However wonderful it is. You are in God’s lap; you must be getting out of it as quick as possible.
If you’re doing that constantly, then you will get to that ultimate stupidity where you don’t have to try to be smart. You’ve given up on that. Then you are at ease. Absolute ease. Life is at ease.
When this life comes to absolute ease, then the whole existence is wide open. No door is closed. Everything is open. Just everything. Creation and Creator is accesible to you. Simply because this has come to ease. Total ease.
