Sadhguru: Hardcore Spirituality — Unreleased Chicago Talk 2005

Everything that you are right now will feel threatened if you just sit with me. I want to turn your life upside down, so that you see things the way they are. If we want to raise people's energies to the highest pitch, it needs very severe sadhana. According to one's karmic structure, the solution has to be different. Those who want to grow we'll do the job for them. Voice Over: What happens to one's past karma when their spiritual process is put on fast-forward? Sadhguru: See, all impressions, whatever the karmic impressions, they are being worked out with the simple process of life itself. This is called as prarabdha. Prarabdha means the allotted karma for the lifetime. There is something called as sanchita, which is the warehouse of karma. It's a large stock. But for this life term, something is allotted, this is called as prarabdha. So, if we put you on fast forward, we also have to secure your life in certain ways because if the prarabdha gets over, the life within you thinks its term is over. So it will try to leave. So, we will have to put certain anchors in the system, so that even if the prarabdha gets over fast, the life will not think that it's over. It still stays in the body. So when we put you on fast forward, if you're lots of misery, you will see you will go through enormous misery. Very fast, very intense, never in your life you have known that kind of suffering, it'll go like that. Because your suffering was coming in small doses every day, now it's all in big doses. You just go through it. It is just that instead of suffering for the next fifty years, you are going to finish it in the next maybe five weeks, or ten weeks, or maybe five months, maybe one year. So you will see suddenly - not for everybody, it depends what you have, what stuff you carry - but suppose you are already in some kind of thing, you will see once we put you on a fast forward, everything is like fast. What was coming in small doses comes to you in big doses now. But it'll last much lesser time. Instead of spreading it through your life, you finish it off in a short span of life and then see what to do because as long as this little, little things are coming every day, it is not allowing you to progress. It'll not allowing you to look forward. It keeps you looking down here on a daily basis. You finish it all in a short span of time, then it's so much easier to aspire for something bigger. So, that is the thing that happens. So even if that has to happen, that if one has to go through this intensity, he needs a supportive atmosphere. Without a supportive atmosphere, if it happens somewhere else, he may get totally, you know, paranoid that something is going wrong with his life. Nothing is going wrong, it's just that things are happening faster. Let us say one year of misery happens in one day. You know, it's going to be a lot of stuff to handle, isn't it? But you are saving three-hundred-and-sixty-three days. You are saving three-hundred-and-sixty-three days of no misery but one day you are going through enormous misery because one year's dose is happening in one day. I'm just... Not necessarily like this, I'm just saying for example. Questioner: The sanchita karma, does that also...? Sadhguru: You don't have to work out everything. Once your prarabdha is handled, there is a certain space. It gives you certain room to look at life from a completely different way. So now, you need not necessarily work it out because the whole thing is so imaginary. It doesn't exist really. It is only an imprint, it is not a reality. But within you, it's going on like a reality. So once you work out the prarabdha, it gives you sufficient space to look at life, to perceive life, to know life in a completely different dimension. So, if you give you... yourself this much space, you will have the clarity to see that the whole thing is illusory. When you are able to see this whole karmic influence is so illusory, you can just drop it with certain realization. You don't have to work out all that. If you try to work out your sanchita, it's a long process, very long process because the accumulation is so huge, so very huge. You don't try to work out those things. You see how to just dissolve it right there in one stroke. It's only prarabdha that you're trying to work out because it's already there in allotment. What's in the storehouse, you don't try to work that out. You try to just burn the store together. You don't even want to see what's there in it. You don't even make an attempt to see what is the content because once you open it, it may engulf you. You just handle the prarabdha, it gives you a clear space. Then dispose of the warehouse, wholesale. You don't try to see the content of that and work it out. That's going to be a very, very long process. Voiceover: In spirituality, they talk about burning up past impressions and karma. But the desire to learn and grow itself is based on past impressions. Isn't this contradictory? Sadhguru: Now you used two words, learning and growing. Growing is different, learning is different. You learn basically to earn, isn't it? Earn this or that. Grow is for a different reason. There is no benefit for growth but it's everything. There is really no benefit. Now you become enlightened, nobody is going to pay you, okay. See, more than twenty-five years I worked, I still don't have a dollar in my pocket. So if you become enlightened, nobody is going to pay you anything. You don't do that because it's going to get you something, because it's actually everything. There is nothing really else valuable. But we learn a few things to make our life in the world. You know, in India, tradition always took care of the spiritual aspirant. He need not bother about his food. Wherever he goes, somebody will give him food. Slowly, it is going away. But otherwise, traditionally, if you just say, "I'm a spiritual aspirant, I'm seeking enlightenment," your food, you don't have to worry, somebody will take care of your food. Wherever you go, people will feed you. Even today, it's there. But in big cities, it is getting lost. So the society took care of you because you are aspiring for the highest. You don't have to worry about your food. We don't want you to spend time trying to earn a living but such an arrangement is not there. We have to learn some tricks to earn our food also. Yes? So you learn for that. But growth is not concerned with that. Growth is an inner longing for which there is no payment, for which there is no benefit. The world is not going to reward you for that. They may persecute you - actually they may. Unless you know how to clothe yourself properly, they may persecute you, they may crucify you. You know, they did it, isn't it? Any number of times, they've done it. So there is no reward for growth but there is reward for learning. So, those two are not the same. Emptying your consciousness is definitely not learning, isn't it? Hmm? Filling it up is learning, isn't it? So it's definitely not learning. So at certain levels, I may be talking about learning because you want to live your life in a particular way. You came to yoga because they printed all those benefits at the back of the brochure, isn't it? So if you want something, you have to learn something. You don't care for any of the benefits, you don't care if you fall dead tomorrow morning but you want to grow, then they are different. We handle them in a different way. They don't have to learn anything. I will do different things with them. There are people who come to the ashram - the first day they come, they have no interest in taking the program, nothing. "Sadhguru, I have come", that's all. Okay, come. Everybody has do to some work because, you know, if all of us have to eat, something has to happen in the ashram. And we have taken so many social projects and other things, so we put them to some work. We don't even teach them anything. Okay, you are in the ashram, anyway for health and we don't want to pay medical bills for you, so we teach you asana, kriya, something. But not really any kind of learning as such. You simply hang around, that's all. Those who want to grow need not do anything, they just have to hang around. With total trust and receptivity, if they just hang around, we'll do the job for them. But those who want to have things in the society, they want to manage this, they want to manage that, they want to have benefits, then they have to learn, they have to strive to learn. There is no other way. So which one you want, learning or growing? You don't have to decide right now. Take your time. Take your time. Voiceover: How does a person become more sensitive to these energies? Sadhguru: How does a person become more sensitive to these energies? Doing the sadhana, one thing. If you take little more drastic step like a Bhava Spandana, that could help. You've already been there? Nothing moved? You volunteer there. See, three days is not a big affair. You may be thinking in your mind, "Oh, I went to... all the way to Atlanta and I did my Bhava Spandana and nothing moved inside me." Three days, one weekend! I think I have changed the whole parameters of spiritual processes and the expectations have become too big with people. For example, let's say Ramakrishna, or let's say Ramana, who is more close in time. You know Ramana Maharishi, you've heard of him? He is right now known as one of the, you know, greatest mystics in twentieth century, well-known at least - maybe not the greatest in those terms but more well-known ones in the world. All this... He became known. He never left his ashram. He just stayed there. He never traveled anywhere. He barely taught anything to people. He had no education. Very little he could speak and all this. A wonderful human being - we are not questioning his realization, he is a fantastic human being. I'm talking about his worldly skills. All that happened was one American man went there. Ramana looked at him, into his eyes, and this man's spine shook, his spine trembled. And that man got so inspired, he wrote books and books about Ramana. Everywhere in the world, in every language, he wrote books and put it everywhere. And Ramana became worldwide known just because this man's spine shook. I have you rolling and expectations are becoming bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, you know.. This used to happen in the seven days itself earlier. In the initiation itself, I would have eighty percent of the people rolling on the floor. We stopped that because people were getting scared and running away and all those things. If... You see what's happening in Samyama and various other processes that we are doing, the kind of energy contact that people have is so enormous. You won't see that... As far as I know, you won't see that anywhere else in organized groups. There are other people, who will do these things, but they will never be organized large groups. They always handle small number of people - people who are close to them, with them alone. In large number of people, an organized group of people like this, these kind of things happening, I don't think there's any other place like this anywhere in the world, where just you know, people gone. And because of this, expectations are growing bigger and bigger and bigger. One weekend you go and come, you want to reach enlightenment now. One weekend you spared and you expect something else to happen. You're blown over by the experience but you're beginning to think that's not enough, something else should happen because people around you are talking bigger things. No, don't go this way. You don't worry about these energies. You just give yourself to the sadhana. If you went to Gautama, you know, Buddha - today he is nice to talk about 2500 years later - if you went to him, two years you're just required to simply hang around, simply sit there. They won't even give you work. No initiation, no practice, no teaching, no work. Even to earn the work, you have to hang there for two years. Even to sweep the floor in the ashram, two years you must wait, you understand? Then two years if you wait, then you can wash the dishes. Five years if you wash the dishes, then you will be given the sutras, which you can read and recite. Another five years if you do this, then you will get an initiation. We should have done it that way. Now within a week you are initiated and in a weekend you are, you know, going through ecstasies in Bhava Spandana and it's not enough. Hi-tech, you know. Voiceover: You mentioned that you want to spend more time on spirituality. Can you elaborate on that? Sadhguru: See, the programs themselves are complete by themselves in many ways. But still, in certain ways, if you look at it, it's more like an introduction to a spiritual process. If one gives themselves totally to this, this seven days itself can be a path to enlightenment, it has the ingredient in it. But how many people make that happen? That's always questionable. People just use it to get little healthier, little more peaceful, little more stable, little more something else. They are only thinking in terms of little more with the program. They are not thinking to reach out to their ultimate nature. So, for that, we would like to... Because different people's needs are different ways, only to a certain point we can do common things with everybody. But beyond a certain point, it becomes very individualized. What you do with one person, you cannot do with the other person because it's very different. According to one's karmic structure, according to how one has built himself into... what kind of trap he has built himself into, accordingly the solution has to be different too. So, what is hardcore spirituality? Hardcore spirituality is a place where there's no teaching. Nobody is telling you how to be, how not to be, all this. It's fundamentally handling the life in you - not your mind, not your emotion, not your body, just handling the life energies and taking them in a certain direction. You see the moment you sit here, you are little disturbed. People are going... they are making noises and if you let them be, they'll go through the ceiling. If you just let them loose, there are people here, who'll just, you know, fly through the ceiling, they are like that. Because ultimately, if spiritual process has to happen within this lifespan... Within this life, if you really have to reach your limits, one way is intense devotion, where you throw away your life completely, nothing matters. You know all those mad people - you have heard Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, you know Meerabai, these are all utterly mad people, I want you to know this. Today you worship them, it's easy. People who lived with them, they had a horrible time because their devotion is such, they are absolutely insane people. They have no sense of the world around them. You should see the kind of trouble Meerabai's husband Bhoj Raj went through - unbelievable. Another man would have broken. He went through such a horrible time because this woman is a devotee, a mad devotee. If you don't have the madness, you cannot be a devotee, you must know this. You are a very controlled devotee - you are not a devotee, you are a great deception. There's no controlled devotion. Devotion can only be mad. There is no other way. So that is one way. But if you go that way, you have to be in protected atmospheres in today's world. Otherwise, if a Meerabai or a Ramakrishna Paramahamsa appears in United States, you will immediately hand him over to your psychiatrist because they are exhibiting all the qualities in which the psychiatrist or a psychoanalyst sees a client, a permanent client. Yes, they are exhibiting all the qualities. They belong to another world but it doesn't matter. You don't bother about such things today. If such people appear in United States, they will definitely be pumped with all kinds of medicines and controlled and ruined. They are insane people. They need protected atmospheres. So for that also, you need an ashram, a hardcore place, where insane people can go about normal - totally insane people, mad with this. And another thing is if you want to do the gnana or the intellectual path, then you need lots of sadhana to sharpen your intellect, to make your intellect like a... like a razorblade, that nothing sticks to it but it can cut through everything. If this has to happen, we need lots of sadhana. For that also, we need a certain space, where they are left untouched by other people, otherwise it won't be possible. If we want to do kriya, if we want to raise people's energies to the highest pitch and get them across, then also it needs very severe sadhana, which will need a place. The only thing which you can do in the world is karma. You can do karma yoga in the world and get appreciated. If you do any other type of yoga in its intense form, you will have trouble in the world. You'll definitely have lot of trouble in the world. The world is not mature enough to accept such things. In United States, it's going to be very bad. Even in India, it's bad. Slowly, they all became westernized, you know. Even in India, today, if Ramakrishna appears, they will... he'll have big problems. Those days, he passed off somehow, today, he'll have problems. Today, he has to be, you know... I'm looking for a right word. He has to be society savvy like me, otherwise he won't survive. He won't survive otherwise. Me also, only in the last seven years I'm like this. Earlier, I wouldn't care a hoot what somebody is thinking, somebody is doing, all this nonsense. Only when I, you know, to a point I built the whole thing and Dhyanalinga and then... Before consecration and after consecration, I am a completely different personality. People who know me before, they can't believe I'm the same person. Everything about me, I changed. I wanted to change further but then I thought they'll be too heartbroken, so I controlled a little bit of it. But you should have seen Sadhguru Sri Brahma. He was like fire. People would be just terrified if they looked into his eyes, they would be just terrified. See, now I have softened myself constantly. If I... If I don't smile for one hour, you will be terrified sitting with me - not because I'm dangerous, because I'm threatening. I threaten your very existence the way you are right now. Everything that you are right now will feel threatened if you just sit with me and if I don't smile. I am constantly smiling, so that you don't run away. Yes. If this intensity is not there, it is just talking spirituality. If a guru doesn't constantly threaten everything that you are, why do you need him? To learn something, you can learn from a book. You don't need a guru to learn. Guru is there to demolish those things that you yourself can never demolish, so that the limited is destroyed, so something beyond happens to you. So if something beyond has to happen to you and you want to achieve things in this life, then if new dimensions enter your life and you don't know how to handle it, you will be in lots of trouble. Today, solace peddling is passing off as spirituality - "Don't worry, I'll bless you, everything will be okay, everything will be okay." I don't want anything to be okay for you, do you understand? I don't want anything to be okay for you. I want to turn your life upside down, so that you see things the way they are. Turning your life upside down does not mean uprooting your house, or your job, or your health or something - your perspective. Your perspective of life has to be completely turned upside down, otherwise you will not see things the way they are. That, you cannot do by yourself. If you do it by yourself, the changes that happen will make you so scared that you will again run back to the old ways, unless there is somebody here guiding you and tempering those things and controlling those things for you. When...On the energy level when changes happen, you... you will think that you are actually going to die. Something totally new is happening. Anything new feels like death for most people. Anything new is very threatening. Anything absolutely new, people will think death is going to come, isn't it? See, right now, let us say something black and big just comes out of this wall - huge fear, why? Because you think it's going to eat you up. You think death is going to happen. Anything new means your mind will feel threatened and it will think that you are going to die. So when big changes happen in your energy system, you naturally think you are going to die. Unless there is somebody there, who will temper these things and allow these things to happen in certain ways as it's suitable for you, then you won't progress. You'll keep one foot forward and if something happens, you'll take ten steps backward. So, spirituality, hardcore spirituality means managing all these things. You... These days, we have... In the... In the Yoga Center in India, we have controlled many things. Things are very controlled now. You should have seen the first three years when we came there, people were just going... Some of them howling like crazy day and night, some of them you know, dripping over... over very blissfully, some of them in all kinds of conditions, some of them totally intoxicated that they cannot stand for many days, various kind of things happening because we were making certain fundamental changes in a very drastic way. But now it is very tempered and set forth in a certain way. And whatever we did in the early times, it has made such a big difference for that space. Those of you who've been there, depends to what extent you are sensitive to these things, but you just stand outside - I'm not talking about the building, I'm talking about this piece of land - stand outside, feel that space. Okay, sit outside in the forest, forest is very beautiful, sit there and meditate, come inside and meditate. You'll see the big difference. The whole space is like loaded with energy. So creating a space where everything is on fast forward, putting your life on fast forward. Spirituality fundally... fundamentally means putting your life on fast forward. You don't want to go at the normal evolutionary pace, you want to mutate. That's what spirituality means. So creating an energy space where everything happens fast. And when everything happens fast, you know, life will happen in a... a little different way than the way you understand. If you play the music on fast forward, you know how it sounds? It'll be like that. So, when you are playing that kind of music, there must be somebody to decipher what's happening, otherwise people will just run away. It involves various aspects but fundamentally, to put it simply, yes, to put your life on real fast forward. We don't want you to go at the evolutionary pace. That would take too long. I don't have that kind of patience. I'm not going to be around that long.