Q & a with Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev
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Q and A with Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev In Conversation with Kavita Chhibber Thank you again for the overwhelming response to my continuing conversations with Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, the founder of Isha foundation. As mentioned earlier every other month we will continue the Q&A session with Sadhguru. The questions have been reformatted to make better sense. No question is off bounds with Sadhguru and I hope readers will continue to think about life and ask relevant thought provoking questions so others can also learn from the discussion. Here are the selections for this month. Q: My cousin sister and her husband were brutally murdered in January, in New York. Their bodies were discovered by their 12 and 13 year old sons when they returned from school. We still have not found the culprits. The older son asked this question of his parents’ spiritual teacher - You say its God’s will. Fine, but why my parents? - Uma Sharma When it comes to human society these things have always been there because there is greed, avarice, mental imbalance in people. So tragedies like these are realities that the human society has already lived with. Today a couple being murdered is very shocking because it is not a daily occurrence. A thousand years ago it happened all the time. Parents got murdered in wars, tribal fights and so on. Today these kinds of tragedies become even more saddening because of the new nucleus family of father mother and just the kids. When such a family breaks the world of young children is torn apart. In the old days when people lived in joint families, while the tragedy was heart breaking, the support system was phenomenal and it was a lot easier to learn to live with it. The realities have changed and the best thing to do is to create a graceful atmosphere of love, caring and warmth for those children. When someone says why my parents, it brings forth the question, would it have been better if it was someone else’s parents? It isn’t is it? Why something like this happens is a random act. Its not due to this or that or to say its divine will. Certain people happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time and became victims of this tragedy. In New York, it happened to one couple but all over the world parents of young children are dying because of war or disease, terrorism and so many other things. The media is full of such news. It is most important for humanity to bring up future generations with compassion and sensitivity to the world. Unless we consider all tragedies as “ours” we cannot reduce the possibility of these kinds of tragedies repeating themselves to us and others around us. There is no divine explanation for something like this. This is a physical reality which we need to respond to with a deeper sensitivity. Even after thousands of years of civilization we still can’t stop exploiting each other and fighting wars. We continue with the strife as individuals, as a society and as a nation. When we have invested so much worldwide in arms and ammunition, we obviously carry the intention of repeating this violent tragedy for so many around the world. Q: What is the difference between Sadhguru and Buddha?. When he meets an enlightened person, is he instantly aware of it? Is he aware of things happening on the other side of the planet? Is he psychic? - Mark Carter The most significant difference is Buddha is dead and I’m alive! Jokes apart, the most significant difference is that Buddha’s way was only for the monks. That is why he kept it so dry and uni-dimensional. My way is for every one. There are monks, married people, and single people young and old: all kinds. As for being psychic or knowing when I meet an enlightened being, I do know everything that goes around me when I’m in a certain state. When you use the word” Yoga” it means union but one cannot live in that union all the time. One knows it and has access to that possibility again and again. So when I’m in that state I’m aware of everything, but that state is not sustainable. You cannot contain that in the human body for long. Its like a spell. And also I don’t want to burden myself with that kind of awareness all the time. Psychic is a very poor way to be really. All you do is try desperately to read someone’s mind. What is the point? Its better to be in a position where you are reasonably aware of what is happening around you by simply being sensitive to life. If you close your eyes and someone walks into your house, you will sense their presence if you make yourself aware of your surroundings. People have become so wrapped up in all the psychological activities in their mind that they have missed out on all possibilities like these. Every human being is capable of knowing so many things on his own, but allows these perceptive abilities to be lost in that noise. Q: Guruji, first time I read your book mystic musings although impressed, I wasn’t attracted. Second time I felt this great urge to see dhyanalinga, experience the force, ask him to be my spiritual guru and get some spiritual progress. But my visit to the temple was disappointing, even after sitting in silence in the temple for hours I felt nothing. I must admit that at some level I was skeptic about you, the foundation and the temple and thought I might not get spiritual progress there. They say that when the student is ready the teacher arrives, I know I am not ready but need a teacher to get me ready, a guru who will tell me what I am doing wrong. How can I find one and how will I know when I have found him. These were the same questions I had in my mind when I left the dhyanalinga temple to visit the pateeswarar temple. A man clad in white dress came up before me from nowhere and said "I am also from velaingiri" and showed his rudraksh, I was attracted to him but ignored him thinking he is a beggar and went ahead to have the deity's dharshan, when I came out of the sanctum within a 2-3 minutes he was nowhere to be seen. Just when I entered the temple he signaled with his hand in a way that to me meant "go!!" Did the guru come in front of me and did I miss recognizing him. Will he ever come again? - Badrinath This is a problem I see all the time. People are always looking for things to happen because they are raised on a staple diet of fantasy ridden stories of how a guru will appear in a most mysterious way. Don’t search for the guru because there is no reason to do so. Create a longing and when that longing becomes deeper you’ll fine many ways to learn. I would like to share a story with Badri and your readers. There was a yogi who was on his death bed. Somebody lets say it was Badri who came to him and said-you are obviously enlightened. Who is your guru? The yogi said I have had thousands of gurus but I’m about to die so I can’t share the stories. When Badri insisted the yogi said okay I will talk about only three of my gurus. His first guru, said the Yogi was a thief. “I walked into town one day very late at night and saw the thief trying to rob a house. I asked him if I could find a place to stay in the town. The thief said, it was too late at night and none of the places would be open, so if I was okay with it I could stay with him. I went to the thief’s house-he shared what he had and put me up. In the morning he did not disturb my sadhana and went about his business. Each night he came back empty handed and I asked him-what happened? Were you not successful in looting a home? He replied-no but it will happen tomorrow. I stayed a month in his house and each night the same thing happened. During my prayers and meditation there were many days that did not yield any results but I learnt from the thief that there was always tomorrow to look forward to. And things did happen one day.” So Badri needs to understand that he cannot come to a temple for an hour and expect to find a guru or have things happen to him. The yogi’s next guru was a dog. The yogi was about to drink water from a lake when he saw a thirsty dog come by and do the same-except when the dog peered into the water he saw a dog looking back at him-he barked but the dog barked at him and the dog fled. The dog in the lake seemed a lot bigger in size. A little while later he returned because his thirst got the better of him but again he fled when he saw the other dog was still there snarling back at him. The third time the dog couldn’t handle the thirst and instead of barking at his reflection plunged right into the lake, didn’t find the dog, drank his fill and left with his thirst quenched.