Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
It Takes A Living Master To Bring Alive Sutras
become alive. This is why traditionally, there is much reverence for a live guru. Doing yoga without a living guru is like
stillbirth. If you are looking for exercise, i would say go play tennis, take a swim, take a walk or
climb a mountain. The yogic system was not created as an exercise form. It is a subtle manipulation of your
system to allow it to rise to a different level.Yoga means ‘union’. Every asana, everymudra, every way of
breathing — is focused towards ultimate union. If it has to become alive, you have to breathe life
into it. This is why yoga was given in the form of sutras.The word sutra literally means ‘thread’. Without a thread, there
is no garland, but you never wear a garland for its thread. You wear it for the fragrant flowers that it
holds. But without a thread, there is no garland. When Patanjali gave the sutras, he only gave the thread.It has been
for each master to put together the flowers,beads,pearls,or diamonds, or whatever else he likes. But
Patanjali gave the thread; you cannot change the thread, nobody can because it is a live thread. This is not something that somebody
thought up;this is not an idea.This is a very deep observation of life. So you cannot change that because that is how life is made. But what
kind of garland one makes out of this thread is left to each master or guru who comes along the way.
To make a garland out of this thread, he has to have some stuff of his own; otherwise, it is not possible to do this.
This cannot be done in a yoga studio.This will not happen because you have a certificate in yoga. Some subjectivity has to happen,
which needs sadhana. You must hold it above your life, not as your profession, not as your hobby, not
as something that you do on the side. This must be more important than your life,only then we let you teach; because without subjectivity, you
cannot breathe life into it. There are many ways to breathe life into the spiritual process. The most rudimentary way is through
sacrifice. The simple technology of this is to take a life which is young, a life which is vibrant.
When you break that life,it releases a certain amount of energy. There is a whole technology of using
that energy to convert it into another form.
Many idols are consecrated by this means. Once you have a consecrated idol, every day you must make the necessary offerings
depending upon how that particular energy form is created. Because it is not a toy to play with, it
is not a toy for you to work out your emotions. It is not a psychological tool. If you do not keep it up all the
time, it will die. Or it will become a receding energy.When it becomes a receding energy, it causes more harm than well-being.
So, constantly sacrifices were done. That is very rudimentary technology. There are more sophisticated ways of doing the
same by using one’s own energy system. This needs a certain level of mastery and development of the energy system.
If you were not restricted by the limitations of logic, if all of you were simply open, i would not waste your time and my
time talking. Everything that needs to happen, will happen, just by the presence. My work is not about changing your
attitude but to touch you at your core. A touch that will leave you transformed. Not changed but transformed.
By Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/4305268.cms
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Astrology: The Science of Cosmic Oneness
Astrology is perhaps the most ancient subject and also in a way the most ignored. It is the most ancient because astrology has been in existence as far back as we have been able to investigate the history of mankind. Astrological inscriptions have been found on bone remnants from the Sumerian civilization, which existed twenty-five thousand years before Jesus. Bone remnants have been discovered with astrological inscriptions and with an outline of the moon's orbit in the sky.
But in India this science is even older. In the Rigveda reference is made to a certain constellation of the stars, which could only have occurred ninety-five thousand years ago. Because of this, Lokmanya Tilak concluded that the Vedas must certainly be even more ancient: the constellation of the stars as the Vedas describe it could only have occurred at a certain moment ninety-five thousand years ago; so that particular vedic reference must be at least ninety-five thousand years old.
That particular vedic reference could not have been added at a later period. Other, younger generations would not have been able to work out a constellation that existed many years before. But now we have scientific methods, which we can use to discover where the stars were at a particular moment in the distant past. The deepest laws of astrology were first discovered in India. In fact it was only because of astrology that mathematics was born. To make astrological calculations, first mathematics was needed.
The digits used in arithmetic were invented in India - the numbers one to ten, which exist in all the world's languages, are basically Indian in origin. And throughout the world the decimal system has been accepted: the decimal system was born in India, and it slowly spread throughout the entire world. When you say nine in English, it is simply a modification of the Sanskrit word nav. When you say eight in English, it is simply a modification of the Sanskrit word aht. The numerals one to nine, prevalent in all the world's languages, came into existence only because of the influence of Indian astrology.
Six thousand years before Jesus, the Sumerians were the first to open the doors of astrology to the Western world. The Sumerians laid the foundation for the scientific study of the constellation. They constructed a gigantic tower, seven hundred feet tall, and from that tower Sumerian priests used to observe the sky twenty-four hours a day. Sumerian metaphysicians soon learned that whatever happens to mankind is somehow ultimately connected with the stars ? they are the source.
Six thousand years before Jesus, it was the view in Sumeria that whenever illness occurs, whenever epidemics are born, the stars are somehow connected. These days there is a scientific basis for this view. And those who understand the science of astrology today say it was the Sumerians who began the history of mankind.
In 1920, a Russian scientist, Chijevsky, investigated this matter deeply and discovered that every eleven years enormous explosions take place on the sun. Every eleven years a nuclear explosion occurs on the sun. Chijevsky discovered that whenever such nuclear explosions occur on the sun, wars and revolutions begin on Earth. According to him, during the past seven hundred years, whenever such phenomena have occurred on the sun, there have been disasters on Earth.
Chijevsky’s analysis was undeniable and, because it went against the Marxist viewpoint, in 1920 Stalin had him arrested and thrown into prison. Only after Stalin’s death could Chijevsky be released. For Stalin, Chijevsky’s conclusions must have seemed very strange. According to Marxist and communist thinking, whatever revolutions occur on the Earth are fundamentally caused by economic differences between men. But Chijevsky declared that the cause of revolutions is the explosions happening on the sun.
If Chijevsky’s thesis is correct, then Marx’s entire system disintegrates into dust. Then you cannot explain revolutions any longer in reference to economics and class struggle; then only astrology can explain revolution.
Chijevsky could not be proved wrong. His calculation covering seven hundred years was so scientific, the connection he established between explosions on the sun and phenomena on the Earth was so close, that to prove him wrong was difficult. But to send him to Siberia was a simple matter.
After Stalin’s death Khrushchev released Chijevsky from Siberia. Nearly fifty valuable years of this man’s life were lost in Siberia. After his release he only lived another four to six months, but in those few months he gathered together even more evidence for his thesis. He also linked the spread of epidemics on the Earth to solar influence.
The sun is not a static ball of fire as we ordinarily think, but rather an infinitely alive and dynamic, fiery organism. The sun changes its mood every moment. And when the sun changes its mood even a little, life on Earth is affected. Nothing happens on the Earth without something happening on the sun. When there is a solar eclipse, the birds in the forest stop singing twenty-four hours before. During the entire time of the eclipse the whole Earth becomes silent. The birds stop their singing and all of the animals in the forest become oppressed and frightened, full of apprehension. The monkeys abandon their trees and come down below. They form themselves into groups, apparently as a means of protection. And it is a surprising thing that these monkeys, who are always gossiping and making a hue and cry, become so quiet at the time of the eclipse that even meditators cannot compare with them.
Chijevsky explained this entire matter, but such thinking first originated in Sumeria. Afterwards, a Swiss physician named Paracelsus discovered more information. He made an unparalleled discovery - and this discovery will transform all of medical science, if not today then tomorrow. Up until now this discovery could not be considered valid because astrology is such an ignored subject - the most ancient, the most ignored, and the most respected at the same time.
Last year in France, it was calculated that forty-seven percent of the population believes that astrology is a science.
They have so many clients that they can never finish their work properly - Americans pay millions of dollars yearly to astrologers. It is estimated that throughout the world, seventy-eight percent of people believe in astrology. The seventy-eight percent who believe in astrology belong to the general public. Thinkers and intellectuals are on red alert at the very mention of astrology.
C. G. Jung said that university doors have been closed to astrology for three hundred years, but that in the coming thirty years these doors will again open and astrology will enter the university. It will happen because claims that astrology has made, which have up to now been unproved, can now be proved.
Paracelsus gave birth to one discovery - that man becomes ill only when the harmonious relationship between himself and the constellation of stars at his birth somehow breaks down. For this, a little explanation is necessary. Many years before Paracelsus, some six hundred years BC, Pythagoras gave birth to the very valuable principle of planetary harmony. When Pythagoras proclaimed this principle in Greece he had just returned from a journey to Egypt and India. At the time when he came, India was intensely absorbed in the ideas of Buddha and Mahavir. After his return to Greece, he included in his reports a specific reference to Buddhist and Jaina monks. He gave the Jaina monks the name Jainosophists, and also reported that they walk about naked.
Every movement of the stars gives out a vibration, and every star has its own individual movement. All the vibrations of the stars together make a musical harmony, which he called the harmony of the universe.
When you are born, the melody that is created by the tuning of the stars at that time is inscribed on your mind in its freshest, most unsophisticated, and most sensitive state ? that of birth. Throughout your life this will cause good health or ill health. When you live in tune with the original musical harmony that existed at the time of your birth, then you are healthy. And whenever your tuning with this fundamental musical harmony breaks down, you become ill.
In this connection Paracelsus has done very significant work. He would not prescribe medicine to any patient until he had seen his kundali, his astrological birth chart. And it is a surprising thing that after having examined a patient’s birth chart, Paracelsus would cure patients who had confused other physicians - patients who could not be cured by any other physician. He used to say, “Until I know the position of the stars at the time of this man’s birth, it is not possible to know the notes of his inner harmony. And unless I know the arrangement of his inner harmony, how can I make this man healthy?”
But what is meant by health? This we must try to understand. Ordinarily, if we ask a physician what the definition of health is, he will only say that health is the absence of sickness. But this is a negative definition. It is unfortunate that we must define health in terms of illness. Health is a positive thing, a positive state; illness is negative. Health is our nature; illness is an attack on nature. So it is very strange that we must define health in terms of illness. To define the host in terms of the guest is very strange.
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Friday, February 20, 2009
Sadhguru on Yoga
When we say "yoga," probably for many of you it means some physical postures: twisting yourself into some impossible postures. That is not what we are referring to as yoga.
Yoga means to be in perfect tune. Your body, mind and spirit and the existence are in absolute harmony. When you fine-tune yourself to such a point where everything functions so beautifully within you, naturally the best of your abilities will just flow out of you. When you’re happy, your energies always function better. Do you see that when you’re happy you have endless energy? Even if you don’t eat, if you don’t sleep, it doesn’t matter; you can go on and on. Have you noticed this? So just a little happiness is liberating you from your normal limitations of energy and capability.
Now, yoga is the science of activating your inner energies in such a way that your body, mind and emotions function at their highest peak. When your body and mind function in a completely different state of relaxation and a certain level of blissfulness, you can be released from so many things that most people are suffering from. Right now, you come and sit in your office, and you have a nagging headache. Your headache isn’t a major disease, but it takes away your whole capability for that day. Just that throbbing takes away everything. With the practice of yoga, your body and mind will be kept at their highest possible peak.
There are also other dimensions to yoga. When you activate your energies, you can function in a different way. As you are sitting here right now, you consider yourself to be a person. You are identified with many things, but what you call as "myself" is just a certain amount of energy. Do you know, modern science is telling you that the whole existence is just energy manifesting itself in different ways? If this is so, then you’re also just a little bit of energy functioning in a particular way. As far as science is concerned, this same energy which you call as "myself" can be here as a rock, lie there as mud, stand up as a tree, bark as a dog, or sit here as you. Everything is the same energy, but functioning at different levels of capability.
Similarly among human beings, though we’re all made of the same energy, we still don’t function at the same level of capability. What you call capability or talent, what you call your ability to do things in the world, your creativity, is just a certain way your energy functions. This energy, in one plant it functions to create rose flowers, in another plant it functions to create jasmine, but it’s all the same energy manifesting itself. If you gain a little bit of mastery over your own energies, you will see, things that you never imagined possible, you will do simply and naturally. This is the experience of any number of people who have started doing these practices. It is the inner technology of creating situations the way you want them.
With the same mud that we build such huge buildings, initially people were building little huts. They thought that’s all they could do with it. With the same earth, haven’t we built computers? What you call a computer is dug out of the earth. We thought we could only dig mud and make pots or bricks out of it. Now we dig the earth and make computers, cars, and even spacecrafts out of it. It is the same energy; we have just started using it for higher and higher possibilities. Similarly, our inner energies are like that. There is a whole technology as to how to use this energy for higher possibilities. Every human being must explore and know this. Otherwise, life becomes very limited and accidental; you get to do only what you’re exposed to. Once you start activating your inner energies, your capabilities happen in a different sphere altogether.
Yoga is a tool to find ultimate expression to life.
Extracted from the book ‘Mystics Musings’ - Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev
Source: http://www.ishafoundation.org/QandA/Sadhguru-I-have-heard-you-say-that-yoga-is-the-Ultimate-Expression..-what-is-that.isa
