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/

Choosing Your Destiny

Competition, then come, we will teach you meditation; we will set you on the path of meditation - not because you are useless for anything else, only beccause the need to compete, the need to be in the rat race has dropped.

Don't Gauge Your Worth by Your Salary

How much you are worth need not be seen in terms of how much you are paid. How much you are worth should be assessed in terms of what responsibilities are given to you. The privilege is not the money that you receive; the privilege is that you have been allowed to create something. Money is a means for our survival, yes, and to that extent it is necessary. However, you must always assess yourself in terms of whatever you are being asked to do. What is the level of responsibility that is being offered to you? What is the opportunity for you to create something truly worthwhile, both for yourself and for everybody around you? Any work that you do in the world is truly worthwhile for you only if you are able to touch people's lives deeply.

For example, if you were to make a film, would you want to make a film nobody would want to watch? Or write a book that nobody would want to read? Or build a house that nobody would want to live in? You would not want to produce something nobody wants to use. So in some way, you are longing to touch people's lives. If you closely observe your life, you will see that one thing of importance to you is that the activity you perform should touch people's lives.

Many people are trying to divide their life into work and family -- where work is something that you do just for money and family is something you do to touch people's lives. But no matter how much money you earn, if you find your husband, wife or children are not at all touched by what you do, it would suddenly seem meaningless to have a family. Somewhere in your life, you want people to be touched by what you do. This aspect need not remain or restrict itself to family alone; it could extend itself into every area of life. Whatever you do should touch people's lives -- that is all that really matters.

How deeply you touch people's lives depends on how involved you are in what you do. If your involvement is there, naturally the way you work will be very different, and according to your capabilities, you will be paid. Sometimes you will have to bargain a little or ask for a raise, perhaps your boss has forgotten that you need one. But generally, if people realize the value of what you are to that particular business or company, they will pay accordingly.

If you grow in what you are doing, some day, when it is necessary, you could shift from one position to the next, and your money could just multiply a 100 times over. For example, let us say you are heading a corporation and for whatever reason you are not paid much, but you have been given full responsibility to run the whole operation. If you are performing well and the whole world is watching, tomorrow anybody will be willing to grab you for any amount. So your value need not always be gauged in terms of money.

We have established corporations so that what we cannot do individually, we can achieve collectively. We could have all operated as individual entrepreneurs -- that is how we operated historically, where everybody was a manufacturer and trader of some commodity. But when we are willing to put the will of thousands of people together in one direction -- that is a corporation wanting to achieve something big.

Where are you are placed in this corporation of people looking to move in one direction? What is the level of responsibility and trust that has been placed in you? That is your real worth. How much you derive from it in terms of money is not everything. Yes, it is important but it is not everything. You must always gauge your worth in terms of the level of responsibility people are willing to give you, and whether what you are creating is truly worthwhile for yourself and for others.

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Isha Yoga programs are based on tested, scientific principles. They offer tools for optimal health, emotional well-being and professional excellence. To participate in Sadhguru's online "Inner Engineering" program, visit www.InnerEngineering.com.

For over 25 years, Isha Yoga programs have touched and transformed the lives of millions of people around the world.

Isha Kriya™ designed by Sadhguru, is a simple yet powerful tool to move from untruth to truth.  Free online guided meditation by Sadhguru. 

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