Adiyogi: The Source of Yoga

by Sadhguru

‘I don’t know any teachings, any scriptures. All I know is myself. I know this piece of life absolutely.

The epithets are endless.

Because its ambit is audacious, it is also doomed to failure. But perhaps failure isn’t such a calamity, after all.

hagiography

And I am often happy to defer to disagreement as well. I like the mix of the rational and the non-rational that Sadhguru is capable of whipping up.

Does that mean Shi-va is nothing? No. Shi-va is no-thing. The hyphen is important.

When he emerges and becomes a part of this world, he is light.

But if you confront the dark face or go beyond that, you cannot transact with Shiva. If you want to go there, you need courage, you need to be willing to transcend, ready to leave everything you know. You need to be prepared to be sucked into another dimension altogether. No worship is possible there. There is just dissolution. There one exists not as an

Modern neuroscientists confirm this. It does not mean reality does not exist; it simply means that we are not seeing it the way it is. This is why this tradition speaks so much of ‘karma’.

It is your doing. The spiritual process is about learning to write your destiny consciously.

The evacuated space – that you now see as emptiness – is tremendous intelligence. It is the intelligence from which the entire creation has sprung. That space is life. That space is enlightenment. That space is whatever you choose to term the highest within you.

Shiva is only meant for those whose greed is unlimited, for those who are not willing to settle for life in instalments, for those who want to become one with the very source of existence.

If you have the courage, you carry him within you. If you are seeking the highest, you do not keep him in your home. You carry him in your heart.

religions have said that the human being is created in the image of God.

The Shiva within you has just gone into a long slumber. This is the only reason why he has not come into your experience.

The deepest core within you is dormant. What is needed is an induction of energy to make that latency become awake again,

You realize that you and ‘that which is not’ are not separate.

Unlike biological evolution, which happens over time without our conscious participation, spiritual evolution can happen much more rapidly, Adiyogi asserted, if it is undertaken consciously. All it takes is willingness.

I invoke him simply because he is vital for our times. And he is vital because there is nothing more important in the world right now than raising human consciousness.

For a tiny bit of knowledge, you are giving up the cosmos!

Then St Peter said, ‘See, here we go by the results. The manner of your preaching made people sleep. The manner of his driving made people pray – even in Sin City.’

The logic is simple: if you do the right things, the right things will happen to you even without your intent.

It was devised to awaken you in such a way that you can never sleep again in your life, to awaken you in such a way that even death cannot put you to sleep.

This is why lore describes Adiyogi as swayambhu – self-created. He has no parentage, no pedigree, no caste, no community. He

Enlightenment is meaningful only because human beings are invested in ignorance. A plant, on the other hand, does not need enlightenment. It is simply life itself.

What human beings term ‘knowledge’, said Adiyogi, is mere accumulation, pure memory.

At first, consciousness was a great stream of purposelessness. Then this great stream began to seek purpose. And so, it curved.

Life has no use at all, declared Adiyogi. It is simply a phenomenon. Little acts have purpose. But life is not framed within the narrow grid of utility. It is beyond frames. It is beyond grids. It is beyond utility. If you have a taste of this existence beyond purpose, of life beyond sense, you are enlightened.

possibility.

The Adiyogi story is not meant to lead us to conclusions. It is meant to lead us to a state that is alive, exploratory and responsive to the deepening mysteries of existence. It is an invitation from certainty to consciousness, from religiosity to responsibility, from the rigidity of logic to the roaring ecstasy of life itself.

When intensity meets relaxation, it is considered to be the ultimate blend for a spiritual seeker.

This is the combination that Nataraja embodies – intensity and relaxation, exuberance and equanimity, dynamism and stillness, creation and dissolution, ecstatic movement and supreme awareness, samadhi and pragna, in flawless and unerring equipoise.

Adiyogi stands testimony to the fact that truth is the only authority.

He circles a subject, swerves away, and suddenly returns to the point from another angle altogether. This is an invitation to the reader to draw close to the campfire.

But to discover a science, to be able to explore the algorithms of the human mechanism, you need a different level of capability altogether. That deserves to be acknowledged. Why? Because there is no system of human self-understanding more extensive than this.’

‘It is a question most people are not willing to address within themselves.

knowledge is never useless. Some day that knowing may open up a certain possibility.

In a lifetime there are only certain things you can choose to do.

‘It’s like trying to understand the ocean by drinking all of it. Just won’t work.’

Today, science is also telling us that the whole of existence is just a vibration of energies. There is no such thing as matter any more, as far as science is concerned; the universe is just a web of reverberations.

He is the most fundamental sound, the ultimate root of everything.’

So, just choose to respond consciously and willingly to everything. Externally, of course, you react differently to situations and people according to your social situations. But, internally, it has to be the same intensity of involvement with all aspects.

You turn to mantras if you don’t know how to access that. When a master is present, that is never necessary.’

‘There is no better sceptic than the spiritual seeker,’ says Sadhguru.

The sceptic has doubts. That’s fine. Doubt is healthy. But suspicion is different. Suspicion is a sickness.’

It’s the same for the yogi. There is no more fear because you know you are not your body or your mind; you are in constant touch with the truth. You have your bank balance. You are one with life.’