From wine to the divine

Questioner: Sadhguru, what about our needs and desires?  Don't we need to fulfill them?

Sadhguru: What is your desire? Just name one.

Questioner: I mean food. sex and sleep.

Sadhguru: Your desire is not about food, sex or sleep. You do not have a desire for sleep. When you have a desire you want to stay awake the whole night, isn't it? So sleep is not on the list of desires. Maybe when you are tired you want to rest, you want to relax, but sleep is not on your desire list.  Food is also not on the desire list. It is a basic requirement.  What type of food may be on the desire list, but food itself is not on the desire list. It is much deeper than that. Food is just for your survival. What I should eat tonight may be on the desire list; the variety, the choice is social.  So discounting those two, let us look at the third thing that you mentioned: sexuality. Your desire is not for sex. One part of it is that your intelligence has been hijacked by your hormones. Another part of it is that there is a certain pleasure attached to it.  Another part of it is that you are desperately trying to become one with somebody; it is a desperate attempt. You have tried hard, but it does not work. Has it worked? It has not. People are going at it with full vigor thinking they will become one. At that moment, it looks like it is going to happen. It looks like a possibility, but the next moment you know it is not. So either you realize this on your deathbed or you realize it now and look for other ways that may work.  Now, you may ask, "Oh, should I give this up?" There is no need to give up anything. As I said earlier, when you were a child, did you have some kind of a doll of your own?  Let us say 'you had a teddy bear or a Barbie doll, or whatever, something that went all over the world with you. Now you had this teddy bear with you. At one point in your life this teddy bear was more important than your mother, your father, God, or all of them put together, yes? At a certain point in your life, at that time, suppose I had told you, "See, this teddy bear is just a bundle of cotton. What is the big deal? Let us throw this nonsense away." Would you have listened? No way.  But as you grew up, you saw other things, got interested in many other things. Then where did the teddy bear go which was more precious than anything else in your life? Where did it go? Most of you do not even know where it went, or how it got disposed of. Do you know? Most of you are not even aware. If you had a very meticulous mother, then maybe you know where it is. Otherwise you do not know where the hell it went. Isn't it so?  So something that was so very important for you at one stage in life, at another stage in life, doesn't mean anything.  Similarly, right now, you are hanging on to certain teddy bears because you do not know any better. If you taste something bigger, the smaller will just naturally fall off. If you get to know something of a bigger dimension than what you know right now, the little things will naturally fall off.  Do you have to give it up? Do you have to renounce it? No, it will just fall off.  Now I am a hundred percent for intoxication. I will vote for intoxication always, but I never drink nor do I take any drugs. I just learned a different way of getting drunk – all the time, at no cost, and with no hangover. It does not cost anything. You can just get drunk anytime and at the same time you can remain fully balanced. You will have no hangovers, and it is good for your health. Is it not a better drink? Is it not better to shift from wine to the divine?  So suppose I taught you a simple technology with which your body is always in extreme pleasure. Do you want it to be touched by somebody now? No, because that somebody will be a disturbance now. You sit here and you are in absolute pleasure - a million times more than what you would know through sexuality. So why would you go for sexuality? The biggest problem with sexuality is that it never lasts, is it not? The biggest frustration for people who are dedicated to sex is just that. For people who do it with a certain amount of love and emotion, for them it may be different. But for people who are dedicated to sex, their greatest problem is that it is too bloody brief. So now if I teach you how to be in it all the time, twenty-four hours a day, with nobody's help, are you interested to learn?

Questioner: Yes.

Sadhguru: So that is why you are in yoga. Just sitting here and breathing is a million times more pleasurable than anything that you have known. There are people who have been to Samyama. They might have not known it all the time, but you can ask them. At certain moments of just breathing - just normally, not even breathing in any particular way, just in and out - ask them what level of pleasure they went into. And breathing is on twenty-four hours a day. If breath can become such a pleasure, why would

you go for anything less?  See, people buy anything in the market which is cheap either because they do not know that there is something of a higher quality or they cannot afford it. Why you are driving a beat up Ford is because you either have not driven a BMW or you cannot afford it. You do not know how to get into it.  Once you have driven a BMW you are not going to drive one of those downhill cars. I was driving with somebody in a car recently and he said, "This car goes downhill very well" I said, "That is good!"  Once you have known the pleasure of something of a higher caliber, will you go for something less? No. That is all I am not against pleasure. I am all for pleasure, but I think it is stupid to go for small pleasures. That is all

A Life-Transforming Weekend, May 4 – 6 

This is a 3 day program with Sadhguru.

http://www.innerengineering.com/houston/

Seeker's Predicament

SEEKER: Sadhguru, how does yoga help me perform better in today’s work environment?

SADHGURU: When we say 'yoga', probably for many of you it means some physical postures, twisting yourself into some impossible postures. That's not what we're referring to as yoga. Yoga means to be in perfect tune. Your body, mind and spirit and the existence are in absolute harmony. When you fine-tune yourself to such a point where everything functions so beautifully within you, naturally the best of your abilities will just flow out of you. When you're happy, your energies always function better. Do you see that when you're happy you have endless energy? Even if you don't eat, if you don't sleep, it doesn't matter; you can go on and on. Have you noticed this? So just knowing a little happiness is liberating you from your normal limitations of energy and capability.  

Now yoga is the science of activating your inner energies in such a way that your body, mind and emotions function at their highest peak. If I don't sleep for two days, you won't notice any difference in me. I can still have a full day of activity. When your body and mind function in a completely different state of relaxation and a certain level of blissfulness, you can be released from so many things that most people are suffering from. Right now, you come and sit in your office, and you have a nagging headache. Your headache isn't a major disease, but it takes away your whole capability for that day. Just that throbbing takes away everything. With the practice of yoga, your body and mind will be kept at their highest possible peak.  

There are also other dimensions to it. When you activate your energies, you can function in a different way. As you're sitting here right now, you consider yourself to be a person. You're identified 'with many things, but what you call as 'myself' is just a certain amount of energy. Do you know, modern science is telling you that the whole existence is just energy manifesting' itself in different ways? If this is so, then you're also just a little bit of energy functioning in a particular way.  As far as science is concerned,' this same energy which you call as 'myself' can be here as a rock, lie there as mud, stand up as a tree, bark as a dog, or sit here as you. Everything is the same energy, but functioning at different levels of capability.  

Similarly among human beings, though we're all made 'of the same energy, we still don't function at the same level of capability. What you call capability or talent, what you call your ability to do things in the world, your creativity, is just a certain way your energy functions. This energy; in one plant it functions to create rose flowers, in another plant it functions to create jasmine; but it's all the same energy manifesting itself. If you gain a little bit of mastery over your own energies, you will see, things that you never imagined possible, you will do simply and naturally. This is the experience of any number of people who have' started doing these practices. It's the inner technology of creating situations the way you want them.  With the same mud that we build such huge buildings, initially people were building little huts. They thought' that's all they could do with it. With the same earth, haven't we built computers? What you call a computer is dug out of the earth.  

Do you understand what I am.saying? We thought we could only dig mud and make pots or bricks out of it. Now we dig the earth and make computers, cars, and even spacecrafts out of it. It's the same energy; we have just started using it for higher and higher possibilities. Similarly, our inner energies are like that. There is a whole technology as to how to use this energy for higher possibilities. Every human being must explore and know this. Otherwise, life becomes very limited and accidental; you get to do only what you're exposed to.  Once you start activating your inner energies, your capabilities happen in a different sphere altogether.

A Life-Transforming Weekend, May 4 – 6

This is a 3 day program with Sadhguru.

http://www.innerengineering.com/houston/