Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy

by Sadhguru

The experience began to happen more frequently. When it occurred, I neither ate nor slept for hours on end. I simply sat rooted to a single spot. On one occasion, the experience lasted for up to thirteen days. I happened to be in a village when it began—this state of overwhelming and indescribable stillness and ecstasy. The villagers gathered around me and started whispering to each other, “Oh, he must be in samadhi” (a blissful state of being beyond the body, well-documented in Indian spiritual traditions). India, being the country it is, there was a traditional understanding of spirituality to which they were heir that I, with my blue denim–wrapped brain, had no clue about. When I emerged from that state, someone wanted to put a garland around me. Another wanted to touch my feet. It was crazy; I could not believe anyone would want to do this to me. On another day, I was having lunch. I put a morsel of food in my mouth, and suddenly, it exploded. At that moment, I was able to experience the miraculous alchemy of human digestion—the process by which an external substance, a piece of the planet, was becoming a part of me.