"A book for the thirsty. It is a glimpse of an oasis for someone willing to rise above the intellect and move towards the fountainhead of knowing through the w isdom of an enlightene d master. "
- The Times of India "Meeting Sadhguru has been the defining moment of my life, changing my perspective on how to look at life and its challenges. Mystic's Musings is a beautiful compilation of some of Sadhguru's essential wisdom."
- Ravi Venkatesan, Chairman, Microsoft India "Mystic's Musings makes fascinating, thought-provoking, inspiring reading and starts a pilgrimage to the very core of one's existence."
- D.R. Kaarthikeyan, Former Director General, Central Bureau of Investigation & National Human R ights Commission.
In this book, Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, a mystic of unfathomable proportions, intrigues the reader as he dwells upon life, death, rebirth, suffering, karma and the journey of the Self. In a manner that is candid, audacious and unpretentious, he shatters conventional definitions of morality, religion and spirituality and provokes the reader to delve into spaces that are not for the faint-hearted.
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Mystic’s Musings
make your physical suffering into mental suffering and vice versa; it is possible. You can convert one form of karma into another another with certain adjustments in life, but it will come anyway. anyway. Only when you dissolve the seed, it is finished. It’s very resilient.
Seeker: Is looking at past past lives useful, Sadhguru? Sadhguru? I heard that during Samyama 1 programs, people were re-living past life experiences. Is it true? Sadhguru: In your memory, let us say you found out that the little boy next door was your husband in
some previous lifetime. Many emotions well up and you would not know how to be with that boy. boy. You You would also disturb him with your emotions and in no way would it be liberating for you; it is unnecessary Already with what relationships you have now, now, you are terribly attached and struggling with
Mystic’s Musings
make your physical suffering into mental suffering and vice versa; it is possible. You can convert one form of karma into another another with certain adjustments in life, but it will come anyway. anyway. Only when you dissolve the seed, it is finished. It’s very resilient.
Seeker: Is looking at past past lives useful, Sadhguru? Sadhguru? I heard that during Samyama 1 programs, people were re-living past life experiences. Is it true? Sadhguru: In your memory, let us say you found out that the little boy next door was your husband in
some previous lifetime. Many emotions well up and you would not know how to be with that boy. boy. You You would also disturb him with your emotions and in no way would it be liberating for you; it is unnecessary. unnecessary. Already with what relationships you have now, now, you are terribly attached and struggling with them. Just reminding yourself of past-life past-life situations will not do any good, good, unless some specific memory is opened up for you for a certain kind of work. work. Otherwise, for your well-being, for your your own liberation, it does not do any good. Why Gautama chose regression regression for the larger public is because it does not need any other preparation. preparation. You don’t don’t need any understanding, awareness or anything. The only thing that is needed is perseverance; you are willing to sit there and watch and watch. Even if you don’t don’t know anything, it does not matter. matter. Other systems need understanding, some preparation; regression regression doesn’t doesn’t need anything. That is the reason why he chose that for the public, but in closer circles, he did not do regression. What we handle in Samyama is much more than regression. regression. We are not doing anything particular to regress the person. person. At the same time, when your awareness is heightened in a particular direction, as your awareness becomes deeper and deeper, deeper, the unconscious layers of the mind start flicking up and coming into your consciousness. It can happen physically. physically. People can go through the whole act act – whatever their past life – physically, physically, within themselves, energy-wise or memory-wise. In the earlier Samyamas, Samyama: an eight day meditation camp offered by Sadhguru where one is transported to explosive explosive states of meditativeness. 1 Samyama: Held at Isha I sha Yoga Center. 16 8
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too many past life memories were coming up, but now I have almost taken away the aspect of memory because later on, people can struggle. For some people it’s very liberating to remember, remember, but for many, many, this remembrance can be very entangling. Whenever this remembrance happens on the energy energy level, it is always liberating, although you might not be aware of it on the mental level. You cannot call Samyama regression, because regression methods are generally generally psychological exercises. exercises. What people are generally calling liberation is mainly psychological exercises. exercises. It is only giving a different manifestation of your own present psyche. It’s more of a psychological exercise. exercise. It’s not really about past lives. It just brings in other dimensions of your psyche which are not in your normal experience, but that is not what it should be. If you go through through such experiences, it is cathartic, but it’s not at the level of bringing the unconscious into the conscious. Seeker: Sadhguru, can regression therapy to recall past lives be beneficial in any way?
exercises have got nothing to do with past lives. It is all just a different projection Sadhguru: Psychological exercises of your present experience. See, your mind has different projections of the same thing. That is what Freud was talking about. What Freud says is that if you look at your mother, mother, one thing is you see her as a caring, loving mother. mother. Another thing is: you are looking at her sexuality. sexuality. Another thing is: you remember her breasts from your childhood. Another thing is: when you were in the womb and coming out, you remember her reproductive reproductive organs. Because of all these projections, projections, you have so many things mixed up in you, which make you into a complex human being. This is not past life. There are so many images of the the same thing, which are normally not in your perception. The psychological processes of regression regression can only bring up those things. Now, Now, you think it’s past life, but it is not so. It’s another projection projection of your mind. Let us say you saw a film in positive. Now you see it in negative. It looks totally different. You are seeing it backwards, backwards, it also looks totally different. Let us say you saw your mother as a young woman or something else, which you have forgotten on a conscious level. level . When she delivered you, she was probably probably twenty. twenty. Today, oday, you remember her as forty, forty, or sixty. So ‘my mother’ means you y ou have an image of a forty-year-old woman, or a sixty-year-old woman, but somewhere in your mind there is a twenty-year-old woman. So when that image comes
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mixed up with so many things you may think, “Oh, maybe I knew my mother in my past life.” This is not the reality. reality. It is just the layers and layers of recording that are happening in your mind. That’s the significance of Freud’s Freud’s work. That is just a psychological psychological exercise, exercise, and the regression processes that are happening around the world are just that. Master, for instance, when I see a different time and I’m in a different place, is that still stil l true? Seeker: So Master, Say I am in France, in a cathedral, in front of monks giving me instructions, and as a result of not following the instructions, I see myself put to death by the Catholic Church. Church. I am seeing seeing all this happening! Even though this is not in my current experience, somehow it is coming up and I’m seeing this. What is this? What is happening? day, a drunk got into the subway train and plonked himself next to a parish priest. Sadhguru: On a certain day, After a while, the drunk asked, “Why are you wearing your collar backside front?” The priest soberly answered, “That is because I am a father.” father.” The drunk said, “So what? Even I am a father with three children!” The priest explained, “No, you don’t don’t understand, I am a father to my whole congregation.” congregation.” So the drunk said, “Wearing your collar backside front won’t help then; it’s your pants that you need to wear backside front!” So Patricia, keep your your mind backside front, otherwise you will have a congregation of fancy hallucinations. Too much of a Catholic upbringing upbringing has gone into you! All this is just your mind playing tricks with you. I want you to understand one thing: there is one dimension of a human being which is longing to be unbounded; the rest of it is all limited – your body, your mind, your perceptions – because the only tools tools that you have are body and mind. This body and mind try to do funny things to to project you as something more than what you are are right now – always. Some people call it romance, romance, I call it hallucination. I don’t don’t want to take all the beauty beauty of romance away from from people’s lives, but understand that if you are enjoying your dream, dream, just enjoy it. If you are enjoying a movie, movie, just enjoy it; that’s all. Enjoy it. There is no problem problem about about enjoying it, but don’t don’t create any significance to it. People who see such things, you will notice, are seeing so many things that don’t don’t even exist. Slowly they have become senseless about their life, about what is in front of them. Have you noticed this? A lot of these new-age people and others who are talking about past lives and all this have no sense about the life that they are living right now, now, isn’t isn’t it? This is simply because you are going into hallucinatory states. 17 0
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You You are not realizing it. If Realization comes, you will become absolutely sensible with what is here now. This is the significant difference between something that comes out of your awareness and something that comes from a hallucinatory state. Awareness spreads spreads into every dimension of your life; not just the way you eat, the way you stand, the way you sit, but everything, the very way you exist. You will become absolutely sensible. If you are moving into hallucinatory states, you are always having huge visions of great things, but in your physical reality, reality, you are becoming more and more senseless. This is a clear indication that you are hallucinating. Seeker: But Sadhguru, during this Karma Samyama, it has been spoken about how people remember
their past lives, and how real everything is in their experience. What is the difference between what is happening with Patricia and what is happening in Samyama? exercise that says, “Do this, see this, Sadhguru: In Samyama, there is no input. There is no psychological exercise say that”, you know? Nothing. It is just meditation. It’s simply meditation. The meditations and the processes are just aimed at pushing your energies up to such a point that your body will explode. Now, Now, why are we pushing the energies energies up? To put it very simply, simply, a very rudimentary example would be, let us say there is a light bulb here. It needs two hundred and forty volts to be fully lit, but here, in this rural power supply, supply, we are only getting one hundred volts. If it’s one hundred volts, you see only that much. If it becomes one hundred and fifty volts, you see a little bit more. If it becomes becomes two hundred and forty volts, it will show you everything that is in the area, isn’t isn’t it? So all we are trying to do is raise your voltage. We are not trying to make you see anything. I’m not saying, “Look there. This past life is there. God is coming; Jesus is coming; something else is coming.” No, we are just cranking up your energy to the highest possible pitch, full voltage. In full voltage, everything that is there, you simply see; that’s all. This is not suggested to you. We are not making an attempt to see anything. By wanting to see something, you will only go into imagination or hallucinations. Right now, now, it’s dark. Let us say in the evening you come into this garden. It is pitch dark. If you try to see something, you’ll imagine many things which are not there. Isn’t Isn’t it so? Trying to see is a stupid thing. There is no such thing as trying to see. Samyama is not trying to see your past life. It is just cranking up your energy to the highest pitch. If your voltage is full, your awareness will spread. That also is limited to the kind of bulb that you are. Okay? 17 1
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Let us say you are a big big halogen bulb. It lights up a whole big spa space, ce, but if you are just a little bulb, at full brightness it sees what it has to see. No matter how much we crank up the energy energy,, this bulb will see only that much, but the business is to crank it up to the full pitch, so that whatever is possible, it will see. Once it sees and dissolution happens, this little bulb, next time it meditatively sits, it will become a little bigger bulb, a little more potent. potent. Do you see this happening every time you go into very intense processes processes of meditation? Have you you attended attended Samyama? Samyama? Seeker: Yes.
day, when you came and sat in front of me, with what clarity did you see? Since then, Sadhguru: The first day, are you beginning to see many other dimensions of life? This is simply because slowly, slowly, your wattage – not the voltage, the wattage – is being upgraded. As your wattage increases, your vision is increasing, but if I tell you, “See, see, see,” you will hallucinate. The moment I say, say, “See,” there is no way to see, please see (laughs). Did you get that? that? I want you to know that that there is no way to see by making an effort. You can see only because of the light and your open eyes; that’s all. You are not willing to come to terms with the simple facts of life. That’s why spirituality seems to be so complex. complex. It is not complex. complex. You are not willing to come to the simple facts of life. You have silly ideas; that is the reason why it seems to be so complex. So why they say that if you surrender it becomes easy is because by surrendering, you keep all your fancy ideas aside. Surrender does not mean falling at somebody’s feet. Surrender simply means that you have kept all your fancy ideas aside. Everything that you consider as ‘myself’, ‘myself ’, you kept it aside. That is surrender, surrender, isn’t isn’t it? “No, I surrender to you, I fall at your feet, but I don’t don’t like this.” That is not surrender. surrender. Samyama meditations do not happen as a regression process. It is just a meditative process. process. Once a person moves into a higher level of awareness and a certain direction is there, naturally layers of the unconscious become conscious; that’s that’s why we call it Karma Samyama. It is an enormously liberating experience. Seeker: Sadhguru, is it better to handle past life memories energy-wise rather than memory-wise?
And if a person is energized, does past-life memory come up quickly? 17 2
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now, what is your experience experience in life? This moment you are experiencing life; you are are Sadhguru: Right now, sitting here and talking. This moment, what you are experiencing on one level is in the awareness awareness of your mind. In the general awareness of your mind, if you were asleep, you would not know what I’m talking about, but since you are awake awake and alert now, now, you know what I am talking about. That’s one level of experience. Another level of experience experience is the physical body sitting here. It has its own experience, but generally, generally, most of it is not in your awareness. Another level of experience is your sensations. Most people are not aware unless it touches them in a certain way; energywise also, certain things are happening which are not in your experience. experience. So you can bring back this situation that you are living right now, either in the form of memory, or in the form of body, or in the form of energy. energy. Like this, you can bring it back. Energy-wise if you bring it back, people will not remember, remember, but they work out the same karma on a much deeper level. Memory-wise if you bring it back, some people will work it out, but some people will get even more entangled than before. Seeker: Master, are you saying that actually on all four levels, the play of the karma’s manifestation is
going on? imprinted, Sadhguru: It’s like it is getting imprinted. Everything that happens here is constantly getting imprinted, which is having an influence on what you do next. It is easy to understand understand the imprints on the mind. That you can see, but people are not aware of other imprints that are also there. This memory, memory, first it is in your energy, energy, then in your sensation, then in your body, body, then in your mind. In yoga, it is said that one who has mastery over his ring finger can rewrite anybody’s destiny. destiny. If I just touch touch my ring finger in a certain way, way, I can rewrite rewrite your destiny if I wish to. It is a whole science by itself. See, your finger can be divided into three portions by the lines drawn on on it. The first portion of the ring finger, finger, from the tip onwards, carries lifetimes of experiences. experiences. Everything is in this. Everything is written into this, whether you touch here or here or here (gestures), every bit, every milli, milli, millimeter is rich with life. Every micro millimeter is different. There is a whole lot of sadhana for this. If you just know how to handle your ring finger like like you handle a computer mouse, you can scroll all your lifetimes just right right here. If you have mastery over it, you can do miraculous things to yourself and to the external situation. The second portion of your ring finger has elaborate detail of your prarabdha. The base digit d igit can be used to predict future possibilities, based on the past accumulations of karma karma and the present expressions of the prarabdha. 17 3
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Always in our tradition, for everything that you do, you must use the ring finger. finger. All the nadis 1 are activated by touching certain portions of the finger. If you want to take vibhuthi 2 or kumkum 3 you use this finger to apply it, simply because these are all different ways to defuse the karmic structure. Even unknowingly, unknowingly, if you touch something sacred sacred that has a certain energy energy quality to it with your ring finger, finger, it dissolves some karma; you get to shed shed some of it. Now this powerful vibhuthi here, when you take it with your ring finger, finger, unknowingly you will drop some karma right here. The whole tradition was built like that – whichever way, way, you must be slowly moving towards your liberation. Seeker: So if I just touch this finger like this…? Sadhguru: Once you raise your energy to a certain point, in a certain direction, there are certain nadis
which are keys keys to the karmic structure structure in the physiology. physiology. Not all the nadis are like like this. Some are keys keys to physical life, and others are keys keys to different aspects of life. Certain nadis are keys keys to the karmic structure. So the moment you touch that, if you are aware, the moment you touch those nadis – now with great intensity, intensity, the karmic substance just pours in. If huge volumes of karma pour into your life when you aren’t aren’t sufficiently prepared, or when the necessary awareness is not there, then it could lead to huge upheavals in your life. If the necessary awareness is there, when it pours in, the energy energy just works it out in a certain way. way. So the old karma, whatever it is, begins to work itself out at rapid pace. Right now, now, just sitting here, talking, living, breathing, is working out some karma. karma. This is happening at a very slow pace, because in the process of dissolving, you are also creating new karma. In heightened states of awareness, you have stopped creating, and dissolution is happening at a rapid pace. Seeker: Sadhguru, this yoga system, the Shakthi Chalana Kriya ,4 this also comes into our energy
memory? Nothin g has been taught mentally. Once it’s a question questio n of energy, energy, everything everythi ng that you Sadhguru: Yes. Nothing know on the mental state is also there on the energy energy state. Do you see that many things you have learned 1 2 3 4
nadis : nadis : channel through which the life force, or prana, flows through in the subtle body. vibhuthi : vibhuthi : sacred, consecrated ash. kumkum : vermilion or red powder that is applied between the eyebrows. Shakthi Chalana Kriya : Kriya : a powerful yogic practice created by Sadhguru that uses certain breathing techniques.
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