Inner Engineering: A Yogi’s Guide to Joy

by Sadhguru

The yogic sciences, as explained above, do not speak of the mind or the soul. Everything is just a body—whether it is a food body, a mind body, an energy body, an etheric body, or a bliss body.

the very source of creation is functioning within you.

Life is one thing, but the source of life is another. In every creature, in every plant, in every seed, this source of life is at work.

There are two basic forces within you. Most people see them as being in conflict. One is the instinct of self-preservation, which compels you to build walls around yourself to protect yourself. The other is the constant desire to expand, to become boundless.

They are related to two different aspects of your life. One force helps you root yourself well on this planet; the other takes you beyond.

When you say “spirituality,” you are talking about a dimension beyond the physical.

To journey from the boundary-based individual body to the boundless source of creation—this is the very basis of the spiritual process.

the yogic system does not talk about God. It does not talk about the soul or heaven.

Yoga talks only about the barriers that you have set up, because this resistance is all that needs to be attended to.

Sadhana

You may have noticed this about yourself: when you are feeling pleasant, you want to expand; when you are fearful, you want to contract. Try this. Sit for a few minutes in front of a plant or tree. Remind yourself that you are inhaling what the tree is exhaling, and exhaling what the tree is inhaling. Even if you are not yet experientially aware of it, establish a psychological connection with the plant. You could repeat this several times a day. After a few days, you will start connecting with everything around you differently. You won’t limit yourself to a tree. Using this simple process, we at the Isha Yoga Center have unleashed an environmental initiative in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, under which thirty million trees have been planted since 2004. We spent several years planting trees in people’s minds, which is the most difficult terrain! Now transplanting those onto land happens that much more effortlessly.

If you are really interested in knowing life in all its depth and dimension, it is imperative that you look inward, not out.

An experience may be triggered by an external stimulus, but its origin is always internal—and there are times when the same experience can be generated even without an external trigger.

Yoga is fundamentally aimed at enhancing your experience beyond the five senses.

Enhancing your perception means enhancing your ability to receive life, just as it is.

Sadhana Start by paying attention to everything you think of as yourself just before you fall asleep: your thoughts, your emotions, your hair, your skin, your clothes, your makeup. Know that none of this is you. There is no need to make any conclusion about what “you” are or what “truth” is. Truth is not a conclusion. If you keep the false conclusions at bay, truth will dawn. It is like your experience of the night: the sun has not gone; it is just that the planet is looking the other way. You’re thinking, reading, talking about the self, because you’re too busy looking the other way! You haven’t paid enough attention to know what the self really is. What is needed is not a conclusion, but a turnaround. If you manage to enter sleep with this awareness, it will be significant. Since there is no external interference in sleep, this will grow into a powerful experience. Over time, you will enter a dimension beyond all accumulations.

The science of using the body to hasten your evolutionary process is hatha yoga. Ha denotes the sun and tha denotes the moon. Hatha yoga is the science of bringing about a balance between these two dimensions within the human system.

Hatha yoga is not exercise. It is, instead, about understanding the mechanics of the body, creating a certain atmosphere, and then using physical postures to channel or drive your energy in specific directions.

This is the aim of the various asanas, or postures. That kind of posture that allows you to access your higher nature is a yogasana. It is the science of aligning your inner geometry with the cosmic geometry.

For every different level of consciousness, or psychological state, your body naturally tends to assume certain postures. The converse of this is the science of asanas. If you consciously get your body into different postures, you can elevate your consciousness.

Once you are flexible, you are willing to listen. It is not about hearing someone talk; you are willing to listen to life. Learning to listen is the essence of intelligent living.

Dedicating a certain amount of effort and time to see that the body does not become a barrier is important.

It is easy to forget that the physical body is only a part of you; it is important that it does not become the whole of you.

preparing the body sufficiently before one goes into more intense forms of meditation is very important. Hatha yoga ensures that the body takes the upsurge of energy smoothly and joyfully.

Sadhana Look around. Among your family, coworkers, and friends, can you see how everyone has different levels of perception? Just observe this closely. If you know a few people who seem to have a greater clarity of perception than others, watch how they conduct their body. They often have a certain poise without practice. But just a little practice can make an enormous difference. If you sit for just a few hours a day with your spine erect, you will see that it will have an unmistakable effect on your life. You will now begin to understand what I mean by the geometry of your existence. Just the way you hold your body determines almost everything about you. Another way of listening to life is paying attention to it experientially, not intellectually or emotionally. Choose any one thing about yourself: your breath, your heartbeat, your pulse, your little finger. Just pay attention to it for eleven minutes at a time. Do this at least three times a day. Keep your attention on any sensation, but feel free to continue doing whatever you are doing. If you lose attention, it doesn’t matter. Simply refocus your attention. This practice will allow you to move from mental alertness to awareness. You will find the quality of your life experience will begin to change.

The body is like that antenna: if you hold it in the right position, it becomes receptive to all there is in existence.

The body never lies. So in yoga, we learn to trust the body. We transform the physical body from a series of compulsions of flesh, blood, and hormones into a conscious process, a powerful instrument of perception and knowing.

Sadhana Sit in any comfortable posture, with your spine erect, and if necessary, supported. Remain still. Allow your attention to slowly grow still as well. Do this for five to seven minutes a day. You will notice that your breath will slow down. What is the significance of slowing down the human breath? Is it just some respiratory yogic acrobatics? No, it is not. A human being breathes twelve to fifteen times per minute, normally. If your breath settles down to twelve, you will know the ways of the earth’s atmosphere (i.e., you will become meteorologically sensitive). If it reduces to nine, you will know the language of the other creatures on this planet. If it reduces to six, you will know the very language of the earth. If it reduces to three, you will know the language of the source of creation. This is not about increasing your aerobic capacity. Nor is it about forcefully depriving yourself of breath. A combination of hatha yoga and an advanced yogic practice called the kriya, will gradually increase your lung capacity, but above all, will help you achieve a certain alignment, a certain ease, so that your system evolves to a state of stability where there is no static, no crackle; it just perceives everything.

The very essence of dhyana, or meditativeness, is that you push yourself to the highest possible intensity where, after some time, there is no effort.

if you maintain your physical body in a certain way, you will become aware of subtle changes that happen in the planet and the cosmos. Once you become sensitive to it, your whole body feels everything happening around you. If you spend more time and pay attention to the ways of the earth, this sensitivity will increase dramatically.

The kind of spiritual system described above makes use of natural phenomena to support human efforts at spiritual growth. Another system—of meditativeness, or inwardness— completely ignores the changes happening in creation and focuses solely on the inner journey.

The second entails a withdrawal from external life situations; the first makes involvement mandatory.

Sadhana The body responds the moment it is in touch with the earth. That is why spiritual people in India walked barefoot and always sat on the ground in a posture that allowed for maximum area of contact with the earth. In this way, the body is given a strong experiential reminder that it is just a part of this earth. Never is the body allowed to forget its origins. When it is allowed to forget, it often starts making fanciful demands; when it is constantly reminded, it knows its place. This contact with the earth is a vital reconnection of the body with its physical source. This restores stability to the system and enhances the human capacity for rejuvenation greatly. This explains why there are so many people who claim that their lives have been magically transformed just by taking up a simple outdoor activity like gardening. Today, the many artificial ways in which we distance ourselves from the earth—in the form of pavements and multi-storied structures, or even the widespread trend of wearing high heels—involves an alienation of the part from the whole and suffocates the fundamental life process. This alienation manifests in large-scale autoimmune disorders and chronic allergic conditions. If you tend to fall sick very easily, you could just try sleeping on the floor (or with minimal organic separation between yourself and the floor). You will see it will make a big difference. Also, try sitting closer to the ground. Additionally, if you can find a tree that looks li...

surya namaskar

Firstly, this is not a salutation at all. It literally means organizing the solar energies within you, based on the simple logic that all life on this Earth is solar-powered.

Those who do surya namaskars regularly find that their batteries last longer, with less need for recharge or replenishment. Additionally, the surya namaskar aids the balance or reorganization of inner energies, in terms of right and left, or lunar and solar dimensions. This produces an innate physical and psychological equilibrium that can be an enormous asset in one’s daily life.

The surya namaskar is essentially about building a dimension within you where your physical bodily cycles are in sync with the sun’s cycles, which run about twelve and a quarter years.

Practicing surya namaskar maintains physical balance and receptivity, and is a means of taking the body to the edge, so that it is not a hurdle.

Anything that is physical, from the atomic to the cosmic, is cyclical.

the repetitive nature of cyclical movements or systems, which we traditionally refer to as samsara, offers the necessary stability for the making of life.

But once life has reached the level of evolution that human beings have attained, it is natural to aspire not just to stability, but to transcendence. Now, it is left to individual human beings either to remain trapped in the cyclical, or to use these cycles for physical well-being, or finally to go beyond the cyclical entirely.

in yoga both the human body and the cosmos are based on the magic of only five elements—earth, water, fire, air, and ether.

The entire cosmos is just a magnified projection of a little occurrence happening within you—the play of five elements. This is all it takes to make a throbbing full-fledged human being!

The most fundamental practice in the yogic system is bhuta shuddhi—the cleansing of the elements in the physical system so that they work in harmony.

Cleansing the elements of the compulsive tendencies that percolate into the individual as a result of mental, genetic, evolutionary, and karmic memory, helps bring a sense of absolute harmony between the individual and the cosmos.

When you achieve a level of expertise in your yogic practice, you approach what is called bhuta siddhi, or mastery over the elements. With this mastery, life opens up its bounty to you.

Health, well-being, clarity, enlightenment—none of these can be denied to you anymore.

Life is a bit like that. It is a complex web, but there is one simple pin. And that is your identity. The play of five elements is highly evolved and complicated, but the key to freedom is your limited persona. If you pull the plug, it just falls apart and you are free. If you know how to pull yourself out, life’s complexity collapses and everything settles. The simplicity of perfect alignment with existence is suddenly yours.

Sadhana The simplest thing that you can do to change the health and fundamental structure of your body is to treat the five elements with devotion and respect. Just try this. Every time you are consciously in touch with any of the elements (which you are every moment of your life), just make a conscious attempt to refer to it in terms of whatever you consider to be the ultimate or the loftiest ideal in your life, whether it is Shiva, Rama, Krishna, God, Allah (or even Marx!). You are a psychological being right now, and your mind is full of hierarchy. This process will settle the hierarchy. After some time, the word can fall away. But you instantly see the change as the number of truly conscious moments in your life increases. The air that you breathe, the food that you eat, the water that you drink, the land that you walk upon, and the very space that holds you—every one of them offers you a divine possibility.

Relief from something that you cannot hold within you is always the greatest pleasure, isn’t it? Whatever that thing may be! So, the body can become an issue. A big issue. A barrier between you and your enjoyment of life.