Isha Drums

People who inspired me to break my limitations

                                                         Automen.  This is the last word that people would expect anything from them.  And here in this part of the world, they are infamous, for charging exuberant money from passengers, infamous for tampering with meters, rude behaviour etc.
                                                         Recently, when the isha yoga class was conducted, there was shortage of volunteers to organise the class.  At that crucial time, I came to know that there was a group of Automen who have done the Isha Yoga Classes and were eager to partake in the organising of the classes.  What was surprising is that, these automen, who come from low income group, forsaked their prime time of earning money (Saturday Night) and got involved in Banner pasting.  I could see the joy in their eyes that how much they loved Sadhguru.  Really, this man can inspire anybody.  Even today, one of the Auto Volunteers came and gave me 2000 rupees, which they have collected from people towards donation for Isha Yoga.  I have also seen these Automen volunteering in the management of the parking area. when Sadhguru attended chennai for Mahasathsang.  Now, this is the last place, where anyone would want to work.  One thing is that, this place is far from, where all the exciting things are happening. You just name it.  Whether it be to watch Sadhguru live or to witness the hussle & bussle of all festivity that is going on, in the ground.  Only a person, who has experienced of being in love with Sadhguru, can work in that area without any restlessness.   Its truly inspiring to see them working selflessly.

                                                          Again, in this new episode, during the Mahashivarathri Celebration, our group was given the job to look after the cleaning work, which means one should see that the toilets are clean or the grounds are clean where people are throwing foods at all corners of the place.  Many volunteers forsaked this cleaning job and turned a blind eye to it, not getting involved with it.  I myself was quite unwilling to do it but more than my unwillingness was my deep desire to be with this man, Shakthi, this volunteer, who single handedly took on the work to keep the whole place clean.  He was not worried about what people may think of himself, if they see him cleaning the toilet or cleaning the left over food.  His whole concern was that if they leave the place dirty, then the ground management will never give the place to Isha Foundation again. He inspired me to work along with him.  The most inspiring image which I will remember all my life was that, where on one side people were shying away from doing this job, this man, who had two buckets of waste bin in each hand, started  dancing crazily to the tune of Sound of Isha.  Just visualize the situation and imagine to what extent this man has experienced the egolessness.  It was such a joy to work with this volunteer for whole night and we enjoyed our time together.  Its really a blessing to find wonderful people in Isha.  I bow down to this wonderful people who have inspired me to break my limitations. 

Sadhguru, you said we shouldn’t look at Surya Namaskar as a physical exercise. What’s its purpose then?

Sadhguru: The purpose is to generate your prana [1] in such a way that it radiates like the sun. The sun has no intention of either roasting you in the summer season, or giving you solar energy, or making your plants grow. The sun just burns; this burning radiates and we all benefit from that. This is the nature of the existence. And this is how a human being should be too – but he’s unwilling to be that way. He doesn’t radiate anything – he thinks he has to do. Petty human beings are just living on intentions which they think are lofty, which make them feel great. This is a poor way to exist. They find a little bit of fulfillment through their intentions, not by their way of being; they haven’t attained to such grandeur.

Surya Namaskar is designed in such a way that it makes your energies radiate. Then you don’t have to have good intentions; you don’t have to have any intentions. If you simply sit here, your presence is beautiful and beneficial. Nobody needs to think we should make use of such a person’s presence; anyway it is beneficial, whether others are aware of it or not. To what extent you radiate depends on whether you are willing to face the sun or whether you sit under a concrete block. So if you are radiating, what will happen? What does it mean?

Radiation means who you are is spreading in a subtle way. If I sit here like a cold block of meat, I’m just here. If I am radiating, in a subtle way, I’m all over the place. The more I am able to experience the existence, the more the existence is able to benefit from me – both ways it works; it’s a transaction.

So if I radiate, my being radiates in a big way. It is like a large umbrella that people can experience. And above all, I can experience the existence because who I am is not a piece of meat anymore, it’s radiating. If it radiates, prana will come in touch with akasha [2]. You are doing Surya Namaskar because you want to become like the sun. Becoming like the sun does not mean you will burn up tomorrow morning. It simply means you will be in akasha. Right now you are just stuck to the planet, but if you become like the sun, you are in akasha; you are in the vast expanse of creation; you are not stuck to a limited space anymore.

So, does the akasha have an influence upon us? First of all, it is always holding us in place. Your understanding may be that earth’s gravity is holding you in place, but that’s not how it is. The idea that the earth is like a magnet, holding all of us down, is a simplistic way of looking at things. What is holding the earth in place? To think that the sun’s gravity is holding you is a very childish, infantile conclusion. The sun doesn’t even have a solid substance. What is holding the whole solar system in place? Why is it not falling off? That’s because of akasha. You want to be held in the embrace of akasha because that way, your experience of life becomes purely existential and universal in possibility; it is no more limited to the physical.

Maladihalli Swami, who first taught me yoga, used to do 4008 Surya Namaskars per day. Just like me he got into yoga for the wrong reasons. Right from his infancy, he had been a chronic asthmatic. He was just wheezing day and night. In those days, there was no proper medicine or treatment, and even if there had been, his parents would not have been able to afford it. They did whatever they could, but the boy was just wasting away.

When he was about 11 or 12 years of age, a yogi came by and the parents asked him to heal the boy. The yogi said, “Anyway this boy is not going to be of any use to you. If you keep him with you, he will die. Give him to me; I will take him with me.” He didn’t belong to the kind of people who are recruiting disciples. He wanted to walk alone; generally, he didn’t take anybody. But he took compassion upon this boy because he had his mission. This yogi was Palani Swamy – that’s my Guru too. So he took this young boy and trained him in the ways of yoga. The boy not only grew out of his ailment, he grew into a physically almost superhuman person – and he came and reminded me of yoga. [Laughs]

So if you radiate substantially, akasha is not only something that your planet is held in, it is something that you also swim in on a daily basis. Then your life is very different.

My sadhana is very, very limited. I neither have the time nor the inclination to do any physical part of the sadhana. Now this is going to make your eyes red. [Laughter] I do only one Surya Namaskar every day. Wherever I am, I just do one, and I can do even without that. I can just sit and mentally do it – even then, it still works. This is because even though you do have a body and you are limited to the physical laws, if you are in touch with what is known as akasha, that which is holding the whole system up, will also hold you up.

Life has left everything open for you; the existence has not blocked anything for you. If you are willing, you can access the whole universe. Somebody said, “Knock, and it shall be opened.” You don’t even have to knock because there is no door – it’s open. You just have to walk through it, that’s all. But because your instinct of self-preservation keeps on telling you, “Unless you build a wall, you’re not safe,” unconsciously, you go on building walls all the time.

So what you are battling with is neither the creation’s nor the Creator’s unwillingness to open up the possibility. What you are struggling with is just the concrete walls that you have built. That is why the yogic system does not talk about God, the Ultimate Being, or the Creator – it only talks about karma – because we are interested in what blocks you. We are not interested in talking about the Ultimate. If we talk about the Ultimate, you will go into fanciful imagination. We are only talking about what is blocking you because that is what needs to be attended to.

God doesn’t need your attention. There is nothing to do about the Ultimate; that which binds you has to be broken, that’s all, and that bondage is 100% your making. That is why we are only talking karma. You have no work with the Existence. You have work only with the existence that you have created.

– Excerpted from a Talk by Sadhguru

Street play - The most playful way of bringing awareness to people about Yoga

Shout it from roof top.  Isha has come with the new way of bringing awareness to people about the presence of Isha Program.  I will call it the most playful way that one can imagine.

                                                                    I first witnessed it when I attended this Mahashivarathri in March 2011.  I witnessed that people were more receptive, more attentive, more joyful to it, on what was being said through this street play.  It became more attractive when I saw that even aged people to the age of 80, were being involved in this play.  It was so wonderful to watch them act in the play.  What was unbelievable was that I came to know that they have been performing this in the streets for almost a month to enable people to join the Isha Yoga Program on March 25 - 27 where Sadhguru himself is taking the class.  Its such a joy to watch the vibrant energy on play.
                                

The Dhyanalinga Yogic Temple - The Past, Present and Future

A new music release from Sound of Isha - "Yoga Padhi"

                                                       The best part of this music release is that it contains an instrumental music which the music lovers in Isha have been waiting for.  People who have already done the basic 7 days course must have heard the music, when they entered the class in the early morning.  I have generally witnessed that people were so enchanted by that divine music that they were ready to pay any price for that music but to no avail.  The music cd were not available for sale.
                                                       Now what are you waiting for.  The music is available now in the Isha Stores.  Rejoice.  It has come with the name of the album   "YOGA PADHI" from "Sound of Isha"

It has been nothing short of miracle that how "Sound of Isha" have managed to give, back to back hits in music? This being their 6th release. It is nothing short of mystery. So much peace and silence pervades the atmosphere, when you play this music. May everyone experience the joy of being in love with Sadhguru.

Download Caller Tunes of Isha Yoga

Download Link :

callertunesforsadhguruvudanishayogaprograms.zip

Question: Osho, would you say something about your father's death yesterday?

Osho: Vivek, It was not a death at all. Or it was the total death. And both mean the same thing. I was hoping that he would die in this way. He died a death that everybody should be ambitious for: he died in samadhi, he died utterly detached from the body and the mind. I went to see him only three times during this whole month he was in the hospital. Whenever I felt that he was just on the verge, I went to see him.
The first two times I was a little afraid that if he died he would have to be born again; a little attachment to the body was there. His meditation was deepening every day, but a few chains with the body were still intact, were not broken. Yesterday I went to see him: I was immensely happy that now he could die a right death. He was no more concerned with the body. Yesterday, early in the morning at three o'clock, he attained his first glimpse of the eternal -- and immediately he became aware that now he was going to die.
This was the first time he had called me to come; the other two times I had gone on my own. Yesterday he called me to come because he was certain that he was going to die. He wanted to say good-bye, and he said it beautifully -- with no tears in the eyes, with no longing for life any more. Hence, in a way it is not a death but a birth into eternity. He died in time and was born into eternity. Or it is a total death -- total in the sense that now he will not be coming any more. And that is the ultimate achievement; there is nothing higher than it.
He left the world in utter silence, in joy, in peace. He left the world like a lotus flower -- it was worth celebrating. And these are the occasions for you to learn how to live and how to die. Each death should be a celebration, but it can be a celebration only if it leads you to higher planes of existence.
He died enlightened. And that's how I would like each of my sannyasins to die. Life is ugly if you are unenlightened, and even death becomes beautiful if you are enlightened. Life is ugly if you are unenlightened because it is a misery, a hell. Death becomes a door to the divine if you are enlightened; it is no more a misery, it is no more a hell. In fact, on the contrary, it is getting out of all hell, out of all misery.
I am immensely glad that he died the way he died. Remember it: as meditation deepens, you become farther and farther away from your body-mind composite. And when meditation reaches its ultimate peak, you can see everything. Yesterday morning he was absolutely aware of death, that it had come. And he called me. This was the first time he had called me, and the moment I saw him I saw that he was no more in the body. All the pains of the body had disappeared.
That's why the doctors were puzzled: the body was functioning in an absolutely normal way. This was the last thing the doctors could have imagined, that he could die. He could have died any day before. He was in deep pain, there were many complexities in the body: his heart was not functioning well, his pulse was missing; there were blood clots in the brain, in the leg, in the hand.
Yesterday he was absolutely normal. They checked, and they said it was impossible; now there was no problem, no danger. But this is how it happens. The day of the danger, according to the physicians, didn't prove dangerous. The first twenty-four hours when he was admitted to the hospital one month before were the most dangerous; they were afraid that he would die. He didn't die. Then for the next twenty-four hours they were still hesitant to say whether he would be saved or not.
A suggestion had even come from a surgeon to cut the leg off completely, because if blood clots started happening in other places it would be impossible to save him. But I was against cutting off the leg, because one has to die one day -- why distort the body and why create more pain? And just living in itself has no meaning, just lengthening the life has no meaning. I said no. They were surprised.
And when he survived for almost four weeks they thought I was right, that there had been no need to cut off the leg; the leg was coming back, becoming alive again. He had started walking also, which Dr. Sardesai thought was a miracle. They had not hoped for that much, that he would be able to walk.
Yesterday he was perfectly normal, everything normal. And that gave me the indication that now death was possible. If meditation happens before death, everything becomes normal. One dies in perfect health, because one is not really dying but entering into a higher plane. The body becomes a stepping-stone.
He was meditating for years. He was a rare man -- it is very rare to find a father like him. A father becoming a disciple of his own son: it is rare. Jesus' father did not dare to become a disciple, Buddha's father hesitated for years to become a disciple. But he was meditating for years. Three hours each day, in the morning from three to six, he was sitting in meditation. Yesterday also, in the hospital also, he continued.
Yesterday it happened. One never knows when it will happen. One has to go on digging...one day one comes across the source of water, the source of consciousness. Yesterday it happened; it happened in right time. If he had left his body just one day before he would have been back in the body again soon -- a little clinging was there. But yesterday the slate was completely clean. He attained to no-mind, he died like a Buddha. What more can one have than Buddhahood?
My effort here is to help you all to live like Buddhas and die like Buddhas. The death of a Buddha is both! It is not a death, because life is eternal. Life does not begin with birth and does not end with death. Millions of times you have been born and died; they are all small episodes In the eternal pilgrimage. But because you are unconscious you cannot see that which is beyond birth and death.
As you become more conscious, you can see your original face. He saw his original face yesterday. He heard the one hand clapping, he heard the soundless sound. Hence it is not a death: it is attaining life eternal. On the other hand it can be called a total death -- total death in the sense that he will not be coming any more. Rejoice!

I am in love with this Video. Its my favourite.

I am completely bowled out