isha forest flower may 2014

8/12/2019 Isha Forest Flower May 2014

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Grace & Blessings

Volume - 2 / Issue - 5 ` 15 Annual Subscription ` 180 May 2014

DeutschlandGuttural gumption

of the German tribe

Epitome of discipline,

the very mechanics of skill

Even the wily English

took a deutsche queen

But the German dream

lies waste consequent

to one man’s wanton

acts of unparalleled tyranny

May the world not breed

another one of his kind

Never, Ever, Never.



Isha Forest Flower – ONLINE!

Editorial

Dear Readers,

Sadhguru maintains that if we want to live sensibly and evolve spiritually, we constantly need

to remind ourselves of our mortality. Therefore, in this edition, we focus on this inevitable part

of our lives that most people rather not even think about - death. In our Lead Article, “Where

the Body Ends,” Sadhguru reveals why enlightened beings through the ages (including Shiva

himself) have mostly lived withdrawn from the world rather than working with the living, why

death can be a great possibility, and how to approach it in order to make use of it.

When asked about Sadhguru, lyricist Prasoon Joshi once said in an interview, “He doesn’t shy

away from debating issues. He’s always ready to answer those questions. He’s very different

from many other Gurus I’ve seen in India.” In the latest edition of our In Conversation with theMystic series, “Death & Beyond” with Prasoon Joshi, Sadhguru proves just that. Enjoy the frst

part of a fresh and eclectic exploration that alleviates some of the obscurity that this subject is

otherwise shrouded in.

In a recent darshan, a meditator raised the question why, according to Sadhguru, 70% of disease

are mind-created. Read in our Musings article, how, as Sadhguru put it, we unconsciously cook

up a “Poisonous Soup” within ourselves, and how it affects our body. Our recommendation at

the height of the mango season is a liquid of a positively nourishing kind – a tradition Kairi Panha

in three variations – with raw, cooked, or charcoal-roasted mangoes!

Last but not least - Sadhguru will be back at the Isha Yoga Center from 18 to 24 June for a whole

week of three-hour evening darshans. Make sure to save the dates!

The Editorial Team



CONTENTS

Lead Article

Where the Body Ends

Sadhguru on the Essence of Life and Death 4

Musings

A Poisonous SoupSadhguru on the Main Source of Illness 9

Isha Hata YogaSadhguru on How to Enhance Your Sadhana

Part 5: Why Empty Bowels are Essential for Hata Yoga Practice 11

Leela Series

The path of the playful – part LV:Life on Fast-Forward 13

In Conversation with the Mystic

Death & Beyond – part 1 Sadhguru in Conversation with Lyricist and Writer Prasoon Joshi 16

Sadhguru Spot

On the RoadExcerpted from Sadhguru Spot of 2 April 2014 19



time trying to think what happens beyond death,

because that is not the realm of your mind.

The only way to know is through pragna, as we

would call it in Indian languages. In English, wewould say “awareness.” but do not take the word in

its normal sense. If you are aware, you have a way

of knowing things without thinking about them,

without getting information about them. If you are a

close observer of life around you, there are so many

things that every creature knows without thinking

about them. Actually, if you had to think about it,

you would not even know how to breathe. It simply

happens. That is not your intelligence – that is the

Creator’s intelligence. If such a complex machine

like your body was left in your management, it

would be a disaster.

A whole lot of things happen without your

assistance, understanding, or thoughts. Pragna is

beyond thought. Pragna is that which is the very

source of creation. If you nd access to that, you

can cross what we think is the boundary between

life and death. Actually, there is no boundary – you

are living and dying right now. Somebody is here

today, tomorrow he is gone (which means he is

dead) – that is only on the social level, in the limited

experience and perception of people. But in terms of

life, in terms of existential process, there is no such

thing as living and dying. It is all Leela – a play.

When we say that this is all divine play, it does not

mean the Divine is a sadistic force playing with

your life. We call it a play because everything is

intertwined. Existentially, you cannot separate

it is the same thing continuing to play. We say life is

a play because it cannot be separated. What you call

an individual and what you call the universal cannot

be separated. What you call atomic and what you

call cosmic cannot be separated.

The only problem that I have with people is that

they lack the needed intensity. If they were intense

enough, we would not have to work towards the

ultimate for a lifetime – today, the work could be

done. The moment of death or the possibility of

death is the most intense experience in most human

beings’ lives. Most of them would have never

touched that level of intensity throughout their

lives. In their love, in their laughter, in their joy, in

their ecstasy, in their misery – nowhere else do they

touch that level of intensity – only in death.

Because of that, Shiva went and sat in the cremation

ground or kayanta, waiting. Kaya means “body,”

anta means “ending.” Kayanta means “where the

body ends” – not “where life ends.” It is a kayanta,

not a jeevanta. All that you picked up on the planet,

you have to leave behind. If you have lived in such

a way that your body is all you know, then the

moment when you have to shed it becomes the most

intense moment of your life. If you know something

beyond the body, it is not of great signicance. For

one who has realized the nature of who he is and

what he is, kayanta is not such a great moment. It is

just one more moment – that’s all. But for those who

lived just as a physical body, when the time to part

with all that you know as yourself comes, it is going

to be a very intense moment.



as realization, not as an accomplishment or

achievement. If you see it, it is there for you. If

you do not see it, it is not there for you. It is only a

question of perception – no fundamental, existential

change. If you are equipped, not with the senses, butwith your pragna, then you know not only the kaya

but the jeeva, and you are naturally immortal. You

do not have to work towards your immortality. You

just have to realize that this is the way it is.

So, Shiva shifted his residence to kayanta or

shmashan. Shma refers to shava or corpse, shan

refers to shanya or bed. Where the dead bodies

lie, that is where he resides, because he realized

working with living people is a waste of time. You

cannot get them to the pitch of intensity that is

needed. You have to do so many tricks to make

people a little intense.

Intensity does not arise because you have made the

instinct of survival the biggest thing within you.

There are two fundamental forces in this living

body. One is the instinct of survival – another is

the longing to expand limitlessly. If you empower

the instinct of survival, it always tries to play low,

because survival means playing safe. If you empower

the longing to become limitless, if you are seeking

limitless expansion, if that is what all your energy is

focused on, then there will be full intensity of life.

The instinct of survival is dominant in every othercreature. With the phase of evolution where we

have become human, a higher level of awareness

and intelligence has entered into our lives – this is

the time where the instinct of survival can be kept

Whenever people ask me questions about death and

what happens after death, I keep reminding them

that it is best to know it by experience. I am not

suggesting they should die. What I mean is, you must

experience the jeeva, the life within you. If you onlyexperience the body, then whatever I say, you will

come to wrong conclusions. If your experience of

life is limited to your mental and physical structures,

you cannot access this dimension. Death and that

which is beyond it are not a secret that is hiding

somewhere in heaven or hell – it is right here, rightnow. It is just that most human beings have never

paid enough attention because they are too busy

with other things.

Their career is much more important than their

life. Their love affair is much more important than

their life. A petty problem they have with someonenext to them is far more important than their life.

What clothes they wear is way more important

than their life. These are just examples. Because you

have wrong concepts about life, life is eluding. But

actually, life is not eluding – you are dodging life.

Life is not trying to avoid you – you are trying toavoid it in so many ways.

The bitter, painful experiences of life were never,

ever caused by life. They were only caused by your

inability to manage your mind and your body. Life

has never caused any pain or suffering to you. It is

just the body and the mind. You do not know how

to manage your mental structure and your physical

structure. Two wonderful instruments were given

to you, but you are messing it up. All the pain and

suffering have come from yourself, not from life



Shiva is sitting at a place where life makes utmost

sense. But if you are fearful, if you are on survival

or self-preservation mode, this will not make sense

to you. Only if you are longing to expand and touch

the ultimate, it will make sense to you. He is notinterested in those who want to survive. To survive,

you just need four limbs and a few working brain

cells. Whether they are earthworms, grasshoppers,

or any other creature – they are all surviving, doing

ne. That is all the brain you need to survive. So if

you are in survival mode, if self-preservation is the

most dominant thing in you, he is bored with you –

he is waiting for you to die.

He is referred to as the destroyer not because he

wants to destroy you. He is waiting at the cremation

ground so that the body is destroyed, because until

the body is destroyed, even people around do notrealize what death is. You may have seen that when

someone dear to them dies, people will fall all over

the dead body, hug it, kiss it, try to bring it back to

life – many things. But once you set re to the body,

no one ever goes and hugs the ames. Their instinct

of self-preservation tells them this is not it.

This is not a question of right and wrong but of

limited sense versus ultimate sense. Is it wrong to

be limited? No. But it is painful to be limited. Is it

wrong to be in pain? No. If you enjoy it, what is my

problem? I am not against anything. The only thing

that I do not like is if you want to go in one direction,but you are going in the opposite direction. If you

want to go in the opposite direction, it is okay with

me. But if let us say you sit in a car and you want to

go forward, but you go into reverse and back up, this



have a nice, warm shower, you will sing a cinema

song. If we put you in the cold kund 1 – “Shiva!

Shiva!” The moment there is difculty, Shiva comes

to your mind. When life is going the way you want

it, you will think of all kinds of people and all kindsof things. If someone puts a gun to your head –

“Shiva! Shiva!” He is the wrong guy to call. He is

waiting at the cremation ground. If someone puts a

gun to your head, and you call Shiva to save you – he

will not.

Every life is aspiring to go forward. The more

conscious it becomes, the more it wants to go

forward. The less conscious it is, the less the

longing, but even if just in little ways, everyone

wants to move forward in life, whatever they think

is forward. If forward is how you want to move and

you are in reverse gear, that is the only problemwith me. Otherwise, wherever you go, I have no

issue. Because wherever you go, you are still within

creation – you cannot leave it. You are still in the

hands of the Divine. But it can happen easily that

you go backward in the process of life. You know

Charles Darwin told you, you were monkeys atone time and you became human. This is seen as a

forward movement. But a whole lot of people act

like monkeys or other creatures, having the same

compulsions that other creatures have.

A dog is peeing all over the place not because he has

a urinary tract problem – he is building his empire.If you have the same instinct, that all the time, you

are trying to set your boundaries, within you and

around you, it is an evolutionary downscale. You

are trying to go backward. If you try to go backward,

trying to curtail life and turn it backward.

Trying to turn it backward is the one thing that will

not work with life. If you run forward, whichever

direction you go, whatever you want to do – yousing, you dance, you meditate, you cry, you laugh –

as long as it takes you towards a higher level of

intensity, it will all work. If you try to roll it back,

it does not work. Sitting in the cremation ground,

this is Shiva’s message: even if you die, it will work,

but if you curtail life, it will not work. The question

whether you curtail life or allow life to happen does

not depend upon what you do and what you do not

do, but upon how effervescent and how intense this

life process is right now.

It is not a question of whether what you do is

useful or not. If you can bring intensity into uselessthings, it will still work. But you need meaning for

everything that you do. Unless it is meaningful,

unless it is useful, you cannot throw yourself into

it. In that context, meaningfulness and usefulness

are important. Otherwise, meaningfulness and

usefulness are essentially psychological. They are an

inspiration, not an end in themselves.

Those of you who are looking for the meaning of

life – life does not have any meaning. It is too great a

phenomenon to t into any meaning. It can neither

be contained in a dictionary, nor a Gita, a Bible,

nor any other book. It is a phenomenon beyondall that. It is phenomenon beyond what your mind

can contain. It includes everything. There is no

such thing as life and death. It is neither life nor

death – it is just a play of all these things. You can



A P SpSadhguru on the Main Source of Illness

The following is an excerpt from a darshan with

Sadhguru at the Isha Yoga Center, Coimbatore,

Tamil Nadu, India, on 20 March 2014.

Questioner: Sadhguru, Namaskaram. You

mentioned in previous discourses that 70% of all

illnesses are mind-created. If that is so, what would

be the emotional pattern and the thought pattern

behind it, and how to correct that?

Sadhguru: You sound like a disciple of Freud. Only

recently, certain letters became public domain thatshowed how hollow this man was who is seen as the

father of modern psychoanalysis. This is not the way

to approach it.

To give you a simple analogy – suppose your right

hand was acting funny, beating you up, strangling

and torturing you every day – would this not be

sickness? For sure it would be. That is exactly what

your mind is doing. It is acting funny, hurting you,

poking you, making you cry, making you suffer –

is this not sickness? But too many people are with

you – you can form an army of sick people. When

there is an army in front of you, sick or otherwise,there is no point in arguing with them – just bow

down to them and keep going. That is what most

enlightened beings have done – they just closed

their eyes and sat.



limited control about what we eat, what we drink,

what we breathe – all that is somewhat poisoned.

The world is trying to poison you in some way, but

if you are not only on industrial help but on self-

help, depending upon how hard you strive, you willsucceed. You know, “self-help is the best help.”

Ancient societies always saw disease as something

wrong – a human being should not be in any state

of illness. But modern societies are treating disease

as normal, because there is a whole industry that

thrives on it. The second largest industry on the

planet is pharmaceuticals, which means there is

too much lousy soup. Every day, you have to add

something to it to make it nice. If you are willing,

we can make this into a wonderful soup, without

external chemicals. Once your chemistry is in a

fantastic state, to be blissful will be natural. That

way, 70% of the ailments could vanish from the

planet. For the remaining 30%, there are many

external inuences, which are not always in your

control. But what you are doing from within can be

100% in your control.

If you are constantly creating a nasty chemistrywithin you, how is life within you supposed to

understand that you are seeking wellbeing? It will

assume you like ailments and will give them to you.

Some people may have a robust system that will take

a lot of beating – some people will fall at the very

rst assault. But if you are poisoning your systemfrom within through the thoughts and emotions

that you generate, sooner or later, it will get you.

From 18 to 24 June 2014, Sadhguru will offer Darshan at the Isha Yoga Center, Coimbatore,Tamil Nadu, India, every evening from 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.

Open to all!

Meditators who wish to stay at the ashram during this period,please pre-register with your local Isha center.

D S

Delhi: 98186 46666

Mumbai: 99201 51720

Kolkata: 98300 23666

Chennai: 83000 11000

Bangalore: 93412 82551

Hyderabad: 99488 75588

Ahmedabad: 90990 54029



In this series, Sadhguru discusses various aspects through which you can take your yogic

practice to a whole new level.

Questioner: Namaskaram, Sadhguru. Why should

we do hata yoga on an empty stomach?

Sadhguru: You should not only be on an empty

stomach – your bowels should be empty too. If you

do Hata Yoga, You must ensure to leave at least

10 or better 12 hours between your last meal and

your practice. That way, you give enough time for

digestion, so that when you get up in the morning,the body will naturally purge. If you eat late at night

and get up early, the digestion will not be complete.

In traditional Indian medicine, whether it is

methods to restructure your system. In a way, you

are trying to recreate yourself by remolding your

system the way you want it to be. For this to be

done, there should be nothing but your body. The

only thing that is okay to have is water.

Practicing yoga means beginning a partnership withthe Creator. You cannot do it all yourself, but you

can create the necessary atmosphere for the Creator

to do the job. You want that which is the source

of creation to become your willing partner. The

rst time you were made, it was not your choice –

it was your parents and forefathers who decided

how your body should be shaped, and how it shouldfunction. It happened from genetic memory. This is

why in this culture, we refer to enlightened ones

as dwias, or twice-born. Once born out of your

mother’s womb – the way you were born was not

Part 5:

Why Empty Bowels are Essentialfor Hata Yoga Practice

I H Y Sadhguru on How to Enhance Your Sadhana



you may change. It may change the experience for

the beholder, not for you. Your experience will only

change depending on the extent to which your body

is in line with the source of creation.

If you really look at creation, you will see

everything smacks of phenomenal intelligence.

If you pay enough attention to a simple leaf, you

will know what kind of intelligence has gone into

making this, and how many functions it has. In a

way, a leaf is a plant’s energy source. The dream of

today’s scientists is to create a leaf as a renewableenergy source that could power your house, and

even provide food and water for you. Scientists

have been working on this cutting-edge technology

for years. They are struggling so much to produce

one leaf, because it is incredible how many things a

leaf can do at the same time. Even in a single atom,phenomenal intelligence is involved – we are not

able to really gure it out.

The nature of the Creator is intelligence. You may

think you need love, money, wealth, or whatever

else – no, you need a little more sense – no

matter what your IQ is. How many times haveyou looked at people around you and thought, “I

only wish they had a little more sense.” If not just

your intellect but your intelligence doubled today,

you would grasp everything so much more easily.

What you would otherwise learn in fty years,

you could learn in ve years.

Being partner with the source of creation means

getting a huge infusion of intelligence, a kind of

intelligence that you would not believe possible. For

this to happen, obstacles need to be removed. This

body is the work of the source of creation. The food

that you have put into it is not yet part of the body,

and the stool that you have produced is not part of iteither. Therefore, your stomach and bowels should

be empty. But if you are doing yoga for four, ve

hours continuously, it is all right to lace the water

that you drink with a small spoon of honey. We

want the water to be tepid because if you drink cold

water, the body has to warm it up, which results in a

loss of energy. If the water you drink is within three

degrees above or below body temperature, the body

treats it as part of itself.

Tepid water and honey are the only two substances

that are allowed in your stomach, and nothing

else. There must be only body – no other obstacle.Otherwise, the Creator will not have anything to do

with you. The source of creation, the intelligence

which functions within you, treats anything else as

an external substance, which will not participate in

your asana. The Creator or the source of creation

must function and participate in your asana – only

then does an asana become a yogasana. Otherwise,it is just a posture.

Excerpted from talks by Sadhguru at the Isha Hata

School of Yoga. For information about hata yoga

programs, please visit www.ishahatayoga.com.



Life on Fast-Forward

The following is an excerpt from Leela, the path of the playful, a unique exploration with Sadhguru

into the mystical realm of Krishna, which took place at the Isha Yoga Center in September 2005.

Leela Series

The path of the playful –

Part LV

Questioner: Sadhguru, if we assume Krishna was

God himself, why did his devotees face so many

difculties? And as for myself, until I laid my eyes

upon you, my life was what most people would envy.

Now still people envy my life, but in a different

way. In fact, it has been quite a rollercoaster ride for

me. If it is not about making life smooth, then what

is Grace all about?

Sadhguru: You know, Balarama asked a very similarquestion when they had to leave Mathura and

were going through all kinds of hardship, walking

through forest without proper food or rest: “Why

are all these things happening to us, and that too

with you around?” Krishna’s answer was, “Don’t

you complain when life is happening to you in great

measure. It is because you look at certain situations

as good and others as bad, or certain situations as

desirable and others as undesirable, that you ask

yourself why these things are happening to you,

h h j i lif lif Th

Even if a thunderbolt hit Spanda Hall right now

and all of us got struck and burnt up, I don’t think

it is a tragedy – it is just a happening. “Then what

about the Isha Foundation, what about my family

and my children?” For all of them, life will also

happen in great measure because we suddenly

evaporated. I want you to look at this beyond the

identication of good and bad. Life is happening in

great intensity – that is all.

If you want to turn spiritual, naturally you are

seeking a larger slice of life. In fact, anything that

you are going for in life is an effort to have a larger

slice of life. If you were only eating a thin wafer of

life, maybe it would be all sweetness, but it would

still only be a thin wafer. If you took a cake andlived on the icing alone, after some time, sweetness

would become poison. You said, “My life was

what many people would envy,” but you know

how empty it was. People who do not have a car



I am talking about life in the sense of being,

existence. Right now, you consider many things as

life that actually have nothing to do with life in a

deeper sense. This has nothing to do with reality –

it is a mental condition. All suffering comes fromthat insanity.

When you walk the spiritual path, your inner

situation is on fast-forward. There are various reasons

to this. One fundamental reason is your prarabdha –

the allotted karma for this lifetime. Creation is very

compassionate. If it gave you the whole lot of yourkarma, which is called sanchita, in this lifetime, you

would die. Many of you are not even able to shake

off memories of this lifetime. Suppose I reminded

you of a hundred lifetimes in great intensity, most

of you would fall dead right here, unable to bear the

burden of that memory. Therefore, nature is allottingan amount of prarabdha that you can handle. If you

go by nature’s allotment, and we assume that you

will not create any new karma – which is not true –

to dissolve let us say a hundred lifetimes of karma,

you may take a minimum of a hundred lifetimes.

But in the process of these one hundred lifetimes,

you may gather enough karma for another thousandlifetimes.

When you are on the spiritual path, you are in a

hurry to get to your ultimate destination. You do

not want it to take a hundred or even a thousand

lifetimes – you want to hurry it up. If initiations are

done in a certain way, they open up dimensions that

would otherwise not open up. Maybe you would

have lived a more comfortable and peaceful life if

you were not spiritual, but a more lifeless life too.

Wi h hi f d l h i

their choice, their nature, or whatever nonsense,

they are trying to pass their lives comatose. Is that

your intention?

Entering the spiritual process means being willing toexperience life in great measure. Once you come and

sit with me, this is my blessing too – let everything

that is life happen to you. “What if death happens?”

That is wonderful too. If instead of taking 75 years

to get there, you can get there in 35 years, is it not

wonderful? This is not just a question of logic – this

is the reality of life. This is exactly the statementKrishna is making in the Gita: If you can provide

them the right kind of situation, let them get there

soon. There is a beautiful Tamil poem about the

wedding of a bala yogi [child yogi] and a girl who was

also a great devotee. They organized a big wedding

for 3000 guests. They got married, and then, thebala yogi, who was also a great poet, started reciting

beautiful devotional poetry. Everyone’s attention

was on him, and that was exactly what he wanted.

He used this moment of total attention to dissolve

all of them – they all left their bodies right there,

in the wedding hall. Many hundred years later, this

poet laments beautifully in a poem: “If only theyhad invited me to that wedding, I would not have to

struggle like this. I would also have made it. I came

a few hundred years late. Oh, will there be another

wedding like that for me?”

He did not consider 3002 people dying in a wedding

hall as a tragedy. He saw it as a great fortune, that

because of the bala yogi’s presence, all of them

attained at the same time. A spiritual person does

not look at events as good and bad – you are only

d b h i l lif i h i



wrong with your life, which is not so.

Positive terminology can always be misinterpreted

in a million different ways because your mind dwells

upon it. I consciously use negative terminology

because you will not misinterpret it. If you want to

be spiritual, fundamentally, it means you want to

end yourself, the way you are right now. A positive

way of putting it is, you are seeking liberation. You

are seeking your ultimate nature; you are seeking

God; you want to become unbounded. When you

want to be boundless, you want to cease to exist theway you are right now. Once you express this wish

and the necessary energy is invested in you, things

will happen to end you the way you are right now.

This does not mean negative things will happen to

you. It is just that life will move on fast-forward, at

a tremendous pace.

Then what is Grace? In this existence, energy

functions in various manifestations. It functions

as sunlight, as breeze, as gravity – similarly, it

also functions as Grace. Gravity is trying to pull

you down; the breeze is trying to blow you away;

the sun is trying to burn you up – Grace is trying

to pluck you off the planet. This is using negative

terminology. If you want to express the same in

positive terminology, the earth is trying to hug you;

the breeze is trying to cool you; the sun is trying to

warm you – Grace is trying to make you grow. Let’sgo by the negative terminology, because you will

not get attached to it. Grace is trying to pluck you

out of the limitations in which you are stuck right

now. The limitations include the planet, the people,

the body, the mind, the emotions – everything. If

you have invited Grace and it is doing its work,

if it is pulling you up but you drop your anchor,

you create unnecessary struggle. If because of the

spiritual process life is happening, it is ne with me.

If struggle is happening, it is simply because you

have invited Grace to pull you up, but you drop your

anchor – that way, naturally, you will struggle.



D & B – p 1

Sadhguru in Conversation with Lyricist and Writer Prasoon Joshi

Prasoon Joshi: It is quite strange that the rst

poem I ever wrote in my life – when I didn’t even

understand what I was writing – was about death.

Then later, in Kashi, Sadhguru enlightened me

with a lot of aspects that I had never thought about.

After that, we lost someone in the family, and more

questions about death started coming up.

Why is death always portrayed as dark and sinister?

Why is so much fear attached to it? You called it

So it is darkness only for the living, but death itself

has always been portrayed as a grand event in this

culture. It is only now that Indians are imitating the

West and walking with heads down when someone

dies.

Above all, there are wonderful stories. The legend

goes that Shiva has made the Maha Shmashan his

earthly abode and is waiting there. Every time

somebody dies, he dances in celebration. What kind

In another edition of the “In Conversation with the Mystic” series, Sadhguru met with lyricist,

writer, and advertisement guru Prasoon Joshi for a session under the theme “Death & Beyond”

on 28 March 2014 in Mumbai. Among other awards, Prasoon Joshi has won three Filmfare Best

Lyricist Awards (the last one in 2014 for Bhaag Milkha Bhaag) and two National Film Awards (for

his work in Taare Zameen Par and Chittagong). Here is the rst excerpt of their conversation.



atmosphere that is all over. When the bubble burst,

a drop of soap water fell on the oor, but where the

content of the bubble went, you could never see,

because it is part of everything.

This is the nature of life. The whole cosmos is a

living mass of life. When the bubble burst and this

air or this life that was trapped in the bubble got

released, what is happening on the other side is way

bigger than what can happen within the trap of

physicality. Shiva is laughing, singing, and dancing

because one life got released from the mortal coil.

Prasoon Joshi: Once, there was a death in the

family and I had gone there. There was a kid

playing with a pinky-guard, and very naturally, he

also went over the dead body, as if it was a thing

lying there. People pulled him away, but the child

did not register why. Is it conditioning that weperceive the fact that somebody is gone as such a

big event or a calamity?

Sadhguru: Seeing death as a tragedy is physically,

mentally, emotionally, and socially a reality –

existentially, it is not. A child is an offspring of life –

he is not yet a slave of social conditioning. He wouldeven play with the dead; it would not matter. But

because adults feel this is inappropriate, they will

try to condition the child. When somebody very

dear to them dies, most people actually feel as if

this is the end of the world. But after some time,

they will come around. Children do not have this

time-lag – they come around quickly, because they

are less inuenced by what is happening in society.

How society handles death has a purely mental and

emotional basis, which means, it is our making –

ld m k it hi h nt M b

This is how every yogi starts his life. From the age of

eight to seventeen, I spent an enormous amount of

time in the cremation ground – it simply intrigued

me. I would just sit there. People would come and set

re to the body. You know, rewood is expensive,so some people want to save on the wood. I do not

know if any of you witnessed this – when the body

gets cremated, the rst thing that burns up is the

neck, and unless they made the wood arrangement

very large, invariably, the halfway burnt skull rolls

off. This happens after three and a half to four hours.

By that time, no relative is there – they are all gone

within one or two hours. So I would pick up the

skulls and put them back on the pyre.

Everyone talks about so many things – I want to see

it myself. I spent days and nights in the cremation

ground, not even knowing why. Today, we send

those who are seriously on the path to the cremation

ground to spend a certain amount of time there,

because mortality has to sink into you. You must

understand the essential nature of your life. Only

when you realize you are mortal, the longing to

know that which is beyond will arise.

If you think of God, you will not become spiritual –

you could actually become very stupid. You will

think that you can do idiotic things in your life, and

with a prayer, everything will be xed. You do not

do your job properly, but you think you will produce

good results. You do not study for your exam, and

you think you will be rst in class because of yourprayer. The moment you address the mortal nature

of who you are, the longing to know what this is all

about, and what is beyond this thing that people are

here today, gone tomorrow, will become a natural



but you still do not believe it, or you have not paid

enough attention.

Prasoon Joshi: Sadhguru, the way we treat our

bodies after death – why do we have so many rituals

around that?

Sadhguru: To understand why there are certain

processes as to how we treat the body after a life has

exited the body, we need to look at the life process

as such. Life does not engage with the body just

like that – it happens as a process. When a woman

conceives, two little cells come together; then it

literally becomes a meatball. For this meatball

to become alive, somewhere between 40 to 48

days after conception, life enters. You know, no

two children are the same – even with the same

parentage, same genetics, right from the day they

are born, they are very different. This is because theinformation package that has entered that particular

piece of life is always unique.

Now the life process is happening, and one day death

happens. Why does death happen? Each individual

has a huge package of information, which we call

karmic body or sanchita, in traditional terms. Howdo we generate this information? Every moment of

our life, our ve senses – seeing, hearing, smelling,

tasting, touching – are gathering input. Every sight,

every smell, every sound, every touch – everything

is recorded. Only if it is acute – either very pleasant

or very unpleasant – you will notice it. You will not

notice the most minute things in normal course of

observation, but it is all recorded.

We have always known this and we can

experimentally prove it today. Suppose you were

fast asleep, and I would come and speak in a language

that you do not understand. You were completely

unconscious of this, but even 25 years later, we can

hypnotize you and make you speak all the sentences

that I spoke, without your knowing the language, just repeating those sounds. This memory is deeply

entrenched in your system.

The volume of information that you gather in

wakefulness and in sleep is phenomenal. It is because

of this volume of information that so many aspects

of our life happen automatically. If that informationwas not there, you would not know how to walk;

you would not know how to stand; you would not

know how to sit. This information or the prarabdha

is your allotted karma for this lifetime. This part of

your information is playing out – it is not in your

hands to control it.

This prarabdha runs out at a certain time, depending

upon how you live. Your body may have been still

strong and good, but once the information becomes

less, the life energy will become feeble. Once the

life energy becomes feeble below a certain point,

it will exit the body. This is considered a normal

death. This is a good way to die, when you ran outof the allotted information and you exited. Most

people chose to die by breaking the body in some

way and making it inhospitable for life – either

with a car crash, a heart attack, lung cancer, or

whatever else – so life exits. If life exits because it

has run out of information or prarabdha, then thislife will be very feeble, and there will be nothing

much to do about it.

To be continued.



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Fresh breath Fresh lifeLife and death

All in one breath

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